criterionforum.org

So...

... The Birth of a Nation is not coming out this year as it was expected.
... The Passion of Joan of Arc is coming out earlier than expected and will use some sort of "exclusive restoration".
... Die Nibelungen isn't spine #40 as it was expected.
... Eureka is going back to separate DVD-only releases, whereas Blu-ray will be available only in Dual Format releases. WTF? Why?

eerik wrote:So...


... The Passion of Joan of Arc is coming out earlier than expected and will use some sort of "exclusive restoration".

It'll be an "in house" job I'm guessing, I had a feeling they'd get this out this year.

eerik wrote:So...
... Eureka is going back to separate DVD-only releases, whereas Blu-ray will be available only in Dual Format releases. WTF? Why?

This seems really odd. All I can think is that the standalone DVDs have been selling better than the Dual Formats, but I can't see why as it's not like there's a huge difference in the price. Glad the Blu-rays are staying Dual Format in general though - those DVDs come in useful sometimes.

eerik wrote:... The Birth of a Nation is not coming out this year as it was expected.

Things do seem to have gone very quiet around the MoC issue of 'The Birth Of A Nation' since the comments here that there's a more restored version in preparation for the BFI. It makes sense that it may be on hold at the moment, although it could well still be in the works and has just seen a slight hold up and will be out early next year.

eerik wrote:... Eureka is going back to separate DVD-only releases, whereas Blu-ray will be available only in Dual Format releases. WTF? Why?

I think this one's just down to economics. Some people would rather pay less to just get a DVD and are put off by the higher price point of the Dual Formats. A Blu-ray only release would probably be priced around £12, which is the price Dual Formats seem to be coming out at the moment. I see it as more of a Blu-ray that happens to include a DVD than a pack designed to cover both formats, but this Dual Format method does also cater for a market in the middle, people who can only watch a DVD at present, hope to upgrade soon and so will pay a bit more to get both. I can totally see the point of putting out a cheaper DVD only package, while if the price of producing a Dual Format is little more than that of a Blu-ray only release, it seems like the best way to go.

JPJ wrote:

bdsweeney wrote:Bugger, Park Row only on DVD.

Better than dvd-r from MGM.

Not if it's PAL. But, GATE OF HELL will be most welcome, and my first MOC purchase in quite a while, unless Criterion slides it in between now and then.

Now that everything (except some Universal titles) are getting their separate DVD-only editions, I wonder if dual format upgrades for Tabu and Muriel are still planned? Or will the DVDs just go back to print? That would be a bummer.

Minkin wrote:

eerik wrote:In September, a trifecta: (1) Pasolini's OEDIPUS REX (dip-back into REAL final-final Pasolini...) on Dual Format and (update) standalone DVD
Cecil B. DeMille's masterpiece CLEOPATRA, on Dual Format (BD + DVD), and (update) standalone DVD!

Add RoGoPaG to that DVD standalone additions. Seems like an odd choice to go back to a separate DVD only edition. What's the point of Dual format then? It not catch on as hoped?

New addition to that list: For All Mankind (DVD only release)

eerik wrote:Now that everything (except some Universal titles) are getting their separate DVD-only editions, I wonder if dual format upgrades for Tabu and Muriel are still planned? Or will the DVDs just go back to print? That would be a bummer.

No, they are not quitting the blu-ray business.

With the recent announcement of Kubrick's Fear and Desire (although that has the distinction of never being released before), I've been thinking that MoC could make a pretty good package of Spielberg's early features. Duel is a pretty good film but I doubt it would take much for Universal to licence it out. Maybe Spielberg would make things difficult but it was just a thought.

Agreed on Duel, Calvin. One of Spielberg's finest in my opinion, with a really good Richard Matheson script. They could include the TV and theatrical cut.

I'd love to see both cuts of Duel - along with his early shorts, the only one of which I can find is a terrible print of Amblin'. Encounter (1966) especially sounds intriguing, it's described in Steven Spielberg: A Biography as "a film noir with existential overtones". I'd say that the shorts would be practically impossible to licence though, as the rights probably lie with Spielberg himself.

Calvin wrote:I'd say that the shorts would be practically impossible to licence though, as the rights probably lie with Spielberg himself.

Does he have a strong antipathy towards them?

I haven't seen him comment on any of them but Amblin which he's described as "a great Pepsi commerical" with "as much soul and content as a piece of driftwood". I heard somewhere that he felt it's only purpose - to impress Universal executives - was fulfilled. It's a lovely little short though and it looks like Allen Daviau did a great job beneath the compression of YouTube and the condition of the source. I'd certainly encourage MoC or any other company to at least try and licence the shorts if they were to put together an early Spielberg release.

No chance of Spielberg coming out on MoC.

Thank god

Anyone else think it's possible MoC are collaborating with Olive on an HD master for Ford's The Sun Shines Bright? The film was in Craig's S&S Top Ten, was Ford's own favourite, one of Tag G's, widely considered one of his very best films critically... and it doesn't have a UK release. Seems like a no-brainer to me (unless there's some rights issue).

perkizitore wrote:Thank god

+1

perkizitore wrote:Thank god

Hipsters... ](*,)

I quite like Spielberg. Some films of his I like, some I can't stand but it's the same for the majority of directors who's names aren't Welles, Mizoguchi or Tarkovsky.

--

I know that MoC were after The Sun Shines Bright at one point, whether they're still after it, I do not know.

To me Spielberg has a very limited worldview. The scope of his imagination sings out in every one of his films, and notes that are struck seem monotonous and false to me. I don't dislike every one of his films, but I don't generally go to his films expecting to think and feel the way I do when I watch movies by Herzog or Fassbinder, Suzuki or Hawks, P.T.Anderson or Quentin Tarantino, Bunuel or Terayama, Elo Havetta or Jean Renoir, or any of the filmmakers you list. But I also usually don't see the determined cynicism of Lang or the scathing critical eye of Polonsky in Spielberg pictures, and I don't see the focus of Sogo Ishii or the penetrating emotion of Peckinpah. Spielberg does resemble Otto Preminger in his liking for sensational subject and compelling commercial packages, but he doesn't have that master's patience in withholding judgement of people, and he doesn't have Preminger's lucidity that allows him to pursue complex problems and make them clear. I think Spielberg's observations about character tend to be snatched on the fly and left without serious examination. I even think Yasuharu Hasebe conveys a broader awareness of the breadth of the world around him with a narrower field of subject matter than Spielberg seems to notice in a much broader range of subjects.

Spielberg presents other problems for me. His terrific pace slackens periodically throughout all his movies (save maybe Raiders of the Lost Ark), and in the interim he can't usually find much to sustain interest and imagination. I don't think he can be satisfied filming people behaving the way they normally do. When he does attempt to recreate the documentary feel of Truffaut, as in the domestic scenes in Close Encounters, he comes off very awkward and forced. I don't know that standard-variety life holds much interest for him--and he's not about to dress it up in some fantastic metaphor, a la Kurosawa and his samurai stories--such as would sustain his dynamic energy. Spielberg doesn't usually get bad performances from his actors, but he seldom gets interesting ones, and he is not drawn to ambiguity or contradiction. His world is full of problems that are relatively clear-cut, and when ambiguity exists Spielberg the director comes in with a definite "take" on how you should read the situation. Dreyfus in Close Encounters is crappy to his family, but he's also "right" in terms of the values set up by the film, and justified in his actions by an exuberant light-and-music show and the chance to take first contact with an alien race to the next logical step. Dreyfus leaves the Earth with a clear conscience, untroubled by the way he abandons the people that have been in his life. That action is in-and-of-itself plausible, but imagine how a director like Preminger might take the same events and cast an eye on them that is less convinced of the truth in Dreyfus' feelings. As it is in Spielberg, the music, the light show--all are on Dreyfus' side. But why try and play that momentous encounter with a particular side in mind?

So he bothers me. He has a pretty serious claim to auteurist glory, but to me he seems not developed enough in any direction. His style is lucid without convincing observation of people; energetic without passion or madness; pressurized without any feel for strain or hurt in people. He's opportunistic with subject matter, taking on things he knows will distinguish him and pull in an audience drawn not to cinema so much as topical sensation, and he bends that subject matter to his will only in the crudest, most direct ways. He sticks to his limited set of minor themes as if he picked them up from reading reviews of his own films. To me his work lacks exactly the resonance of an artful director, yet as an entertainer he has ambitions too large for entertainment's simple boundaries. He aspires to avoid the confrontational bent of Peckinpah, but he isn't satisfied with the modest aims of, say, Terence Fisher, or Robert Clouse. And Preminger's unique position, with facile art shaking hands unabashed with avid commercial interest, was a difficult enough stance for Preminger to inhabit; but Spielberg seems to me much less successful in trying to straddle the same contradictions. He's too innocent of how other people live, and too convinced he's right in his judgements of people, events and action. To me the combination is very unappealing.

So I'd much rather MOC devote its time to more successful and more interesting movies than what Spielberg generally presents. The rest of the world is brimming with great movies that have far less hope of finding satisfactory distribution than anything put out by Spielberg has.

That was a very well reasoned post and I agree with you on most points. Objectively, I would say that your opinion is correct but I do enjoy quite a few films he's directed and I would say that he is an important figure in the history of cinema, though not in the artistic development of the medium. I wouldn't mind his films being included in the MoC series (I'd certainly put Duel on a par with Rumble Fish and Silent Running) but don't get me wrong - I'd much rather see some Taiwanese, Chinese or South American cinema or, from Universal, The Magnificent Ambersons and Afraid to Talk. But I'm pretty sure I've mentioned them all before!

Spielberg makes feelgood movies. Nothing wrong with that in my opinion.

Sorry if this has been discussed somewhere and sorry for my ignorance, I know less than nothing about rights issues. But is there a possibility for Moc release of The Magnificent Ambersons?

Kauno wrote:Sorry if this has been discussed somewhere and sorry for my ignorance, I know less than nothing about rights issues. But is there a possibility for Moc release of The Magnificent Ambersons?

They've asked for it before, and it is conceivably possible considering their relationship with Universal, but at this point it's still just wishful thinking!

Titles for Jan/Feb will be announced in two weeks' time, as per twitter.