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Made in USA is just terrible. His worst film by a country mile.

After a first viewing, I completely agree. It is the only Godard of that era I was bored by. It felt like I was watching a troupe of bored actors delivering lines from a screenplay they had no interested in. Perhaps a second viewing will reveal some kind of magic, but it is so far down the replay list, I just can't imagine any reason to revisit it. 2 or 3, on the other hand, is much more interesting.

Band of Outsiders is just so much fun. That dance sequence, that gallery run..... what a hoot!

Thanks for the suggestions guys, hope it's worth it. I also picked Roeg's "Bad Timing" on a blind-buy whim (it was either that or the "Walkabout" BD but the old non-anamorphic DVD copy I own looks fine to me).

I was going to suggest Masculin feminin. Of Godard's 1964-1967 films, it is the only one that I can say I truly love or enjoy (as opposed to merely admire or appreciate).

dad1153 wrote:I also picked Roeg's "Bad Timing" on a blind-buy whim (it was either that or the "Walkabout" BD but the old non-anamorphic DVD copy I own looks fine to me).

Really? That's one of their absolute worst SD transfers, especially for a film built on its visuals. (Though, I have to say, I really love Bad Timing, too, so it's not like a total loss of an opportunity. Just an odd reasoning.)

I think you'll find Bad Timing every bit as carefree and charming as Band of Outsiders.

Pierrot le fou (DVD) and Pierrot le fou (Blu-ray) for sale at Deep Discount (with '25MORE' code at checkout).

Why is Barnes & Noble still selling this title? Isn't it OOP?

felipe wrote:Why is Barnes & Noble still selling this title? Isn't it OOP?

Yes, it is OOP. But B&N still have copies in stick to get rid of. OOP isn't the same thing as a stop-sale order. Criterion stopped making new copies, but retailers have every right to sell remaining stock.

And I think there's circumstantial evidence (sudden shift from scarce to plentiful) that Criterion pressed a large batch of these just before they went out of print.

What are the rules on this kind of behaviour? Because if Criterion can just calculate the average number of DVDs they sell per Godard release and then press that number it seems to defeat the purpose of time limits to licenses.

John Edmond wrote:What are the rules on this kind of behaviour? Because if Criterion can just calculate the average number of DVDs they sell per Godard release and then press that number it seems to defeat the purpose of time limits to licenses.

Sucks for Studio Canal. And either way, scores of cinephiles will crop over the course of the next 5-10 years long after the release has gone out of print, who will then covet it themselves, and that'll keep its value up overtime.

Well yes, but it's only Studio Canal in this specific case. And glutting a market for 5-10 years basically kills the market for the next licence holder (and considering what's happening to physical releases it possibly kills the market for good).

If studios want to circumvent the problem of a glut of existing releases, they could always focus more on films that have not been available yet, which would be to the good. Otherwise, if a studio is late to the party, they've got to outdo the previous release(s) in some way if there's going to be any point to it beyond just making money. The majority of Criterion's releases are done so well that I'm happy to see them continue to be available as long as possible.

CSM126 wrote:

felipe wrote:Why is Barnes & Noble still selling this title? Isn't it OOP?

Yes, it is OOP. But B&N still have copies in stick to get rid of. OOP isn't the same thing as a stop-sale order. Criterion stopped making new copies, but retailers have every right to sell remaining stock.

Can criterion press a large number of copies just before the rights expire and keep selling them for years? is that possible?

Well amazon is out of stock of copies of Pierrot Le Fou.

It was a little while from what I remember before the value of Contempt truly started to shoot up. It didn't skyrocket in value right away.

On a side note, why wouldn't Criterion have done the same with other blu rays that went out of print like The Third Man and/or The Man Who Fell To Earth, or heck, even DVDs that went out of print? It seems that Pierrot Le Fou was one of the only ones available long after having gone out of print.

Though wasn't Pierrot le Fou the most recently released BluRay to be hit by the StudioCanal guillotine drop? Maybe Criterion had another pressing already scheduled and needed to go ahead with it in order to recoup their costs on the title.

Straw Dogs is another interesting case. Even though Criterion only ever had a small window of opportunity for the official in-print release, they must have pressed a lot of copies, because as I recall it was readily available at reasonable prices for years after it was officially OOP.

And I may be completely wrong about Pierrot's printings. My recollection was that this went out of stock very quickly at the big online stores after the OOP announcement, then became available again a few weeks before the deadline and has remained available since - though supplies are probably running out by now.

felipe wrote:Can criterion press a large number of copies just before the rights expire and keep selling them for years? is that possible?

No. Criterion has to have at least taken the order (and possibly shipped; not completely certain about that detail) by the time their license runs out. Any "new" cache of copies really ought to have left Criterion by the time their license ran out, and then been "lost" somewhere downstream in the distribution chain.

why does amazon keep going in and out of stock of these? Do lost caches keep turning up, or are they they choosing to only sell a few copies at a time?

The former - Amazon sells nearly every item known to man, they wouldn't have the foresight to sell these in drips and drabs deliberately.

I guess it's safe to say the Pierrot Le Fou Criterion will never be worth well over SRP. It seems like there's a limitless supply. At the time same time I wonder if out of print criterions will suffer from 80s baseball card syndrome and wind up being worth nothing, since everyone who obtains them will be bound to take good care of them, therefore inducing the market to be flooded with copies in perfect condition twenty years from now.

Well they are just DVDs and Blu-Rays afterall. 20 years from now, they may well be novelty items for all we know.

Well if 60s baseball cards and LPs are vintage today, there's no reason to think a criterion pierrot le fou disc won't be vintage in another 20-30 years, as long as a comparable product doesn't come into print in the meantime. Then again, maybe the fact I'm speculating a criterion release will become vintage is all the reason so assume it won't become valuable, since collector's items usually come into being when people don't preemptively foresee that it will gain value.

rrenault wrote:Well if 60s baseball cards and LPs are vintage today, there's no reason to think a criterion pierrot le fou disc won't be vintage in another 20-30 years, as long as a comparable product doesn't come into print in the meantime. Then again, maybe the fact I'm speculating a criterion release will become vintage is all the reason so assume it won't become valuable, since collector's items usually come into being when people don't preemptively foresee that it will gain value.

You mean you have to use your hands? That's like a baby's toy. says the folks of the future who are appalled at the idea of having a physical copy of something as ephemeral as music, television or film.

mfunk9786 wrote:The former - Amazon sells nearly every item known to man, they wouldn't have the foresight to sell these in drips and drabs deliberately.

But if they run out of stock how do they get more items? It's out of print so it couldn't be from Criterion, right? (or else Criterion itself would be selling it on the website, I assume)

Has anyone ever worried that these extra copies of Pierrot Le Fou floating around for the past year since it went out of print are the result of bootlegging, but then again, we'd probably have a similar situation with all the out of print criterions that have left the collection in the past year. Anyhow, I wouldn't put it past them that Criterion has "lost" copies of out of print releases lying around on their premises that they randomly and clandestinely ship to retailers in small shipments.