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Thanks for the heads up !

They pricematched HMV, which stupidly raised the price of Panique at the same time to 34.99 (higher than the RRP)

mistakaninja wrote: Wed Nov 14, 2018 6:14 pm

Billy Beta wrote: Sat Oct 06, 2018 9:50 pm Why is Mishima and Sex, lies and Videotape £25 and they're both single disc Bluray's and most of the rest are £17.99?

mistakaninja wrote: Sat Oct 06, 2018 9:58 pm Recent digipak releases have been at the higher price point. Ambersons will be too. No idea why, and Strangelove and NOTLD weren't.

tenia wrote: Sun Oct 07, 2018 9:17 am Note that these still are sometimes at the usual £17.99 on Amazon. They're just much more rarely at this price, but Mishima had been for roughly 2 months around its release date, while Sex lies and videotape was for about a month during its preorder run.
Strangely, Dont Look Back and Dr Strangelove didn't have this issue.

Ambersons is currently £17.99 for pre-order at Amazon, which will be the cheapest it ever is, being a digipak.

Unless they've decided to go back to Scanavo, maybe? Either that or it's another random mispricing - I managed to get both The Complete Monterey Pop Festival and Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters for £17.99 on pre-order due to pricing errors. The best scenario would be them abandoning these higher prices entirely, or at least dropping them to something more reasonable (assuming it's multiple discs they're charging extra for). £21.99 would be a fair compromise, for example.

Either way it's good news in this specific case, as I'll definitely be getting it for a pre-Christmas treat to myself now. I was prepared to skip it at the £25.99 price - still trying to hold off double-dipping on The Tree of Life straight away, despite being one of my favourite films of recent years, but may actually cave and pre-order True Stories since it includes the soundtrack CD (which would generally cost another £10+ if bought separately).

The digipacks should have the same pricing as the regular releases (like they do in the US). I always pre-order digipacks if they hit 17.99, but the only real misprice was the Complete Monterey Pop set when all things considered. Was any digipack release ever included in the 2 for 25 UK sale before (maybe Mishima, but I can't be certain since I pre-ordered it)? If so, Magnificent Ambersons might be included in the next offer.

perkizitore wrote: Wed Nov 14, 2018 11:00 pm The digipacks should have the same pricing as the regular releases (like they do in the US). I always pre-order digipacks if they hit 17.99, but the only real misprice was the Complete Monterey Pop set when all things considered. Was any digipack release ever included in the 2 for 25 UK sale before (maybe Mishima, but I can't be certain since I pre-ordered it)? If so, Magnificent Ambersons might be included in the next offer.

Yes - Dr. Strangelove, Dont Look Back and Night of the Living Dead were generally available in every offer to date. I think NotLD was omitted from the recent Zoom offer for some reason, even though it was advertised, which was probably an error (I noticed it advertised on banners/social media/newsletters as being in the offer). However, due to the price hike, Mishima has not been 2 for £25 and I don't expect Sex, Lies and Videotape will be either unless Criterion decide to bring the price back down to a reasonable one (as with The Tree of Life, I would be double-dipping on that one so wouldn't want to pay more than £17.99 myself).

In other words, if anyone wants Ambersons for the regular price, I'd advise pre-ordering. Mishima was at £17.99 for only a couple of weeks then went up to £25.99 and has stayed at that point since release.

You're right that the digipacks should have the same price as the regular ones. I can understand putting the price up a bit for 2-disc affairs such as Othello and The Tree of Life, but think it's a bit silly to charge extra just for alternate packaging which they decided in the first place. If I had my way, I'd probably prefer all Criterion titles to be in Scanavo cases (save for Mishima, and maybe Strangelove).

Wow, that was short-lived. Ambersons back up to £25.99 - guess it was a misprice after all! Glad I snuck a pre-order in.

Of course it was a 'misprice', Criterion UK needs to stop releasing digipacks or adjust their pricing accordingly. Instead they will continue blaming consumers for their low sales...

February 2019 releases:
La Vérité
Tokyo Drifter
24 Frames

Some good releases in recent months.

March's releases have leaked on Amazon:
4th - Ugetsu Monogatari
18th - Death in Venice
25th - To Sleep with Anger

Excellent releases, even though I already have Ugetsu and Anger is very light on extras.

It probably goes without saying that Japón is probably not likely to get released in the UK for similar reasons to Andrei Rublev - partly because of Artificial Eye having a DVD edition out and perhaps more importantly that the film was previously edited (both theatrically and on video) by the BBFC for animal cruelty

April releases up on Zoom:

1st - Detour
22nd - The Last Temptation of Christ
29th - Au Hasard Balthazar

Good news about the first two - the Universal disc I have of the latter is pretty crap - but slightly confused about the Bresson as it already has been released by Artificial Eye. Have they lost the rights? Will probably double-dip on this eventually.

AE announced this for release on blu literally years ago, then pulled it until they could source better materials. This could either be another Criterion rights cock-up, as with A Matter of Life and Death, or as you suggest, AE relinquishing the rights, if it was too much hard work for them.

Ah yeah for some reason I got confused with Mouchette. I hope this isn't another cock-up at Criterion's end as it has obviously taken years for Artificial Eye to get Au Hasard Balthazar released for some reason. They even release A Man Escaped last year, so it must be some failing at their end. My guess is they decided that within their home video license period, it wasn't worth the costs of pursuing a Blu-ray release as they only had a year or two left of their license by the time the HD master was ready.

Anyway, good news all round then! Will be buying all three of these at one point or another.

2/3 ain't bad. Criterion UK is getting better. Just need another 2 for £25 sale.

TMDaines wrote: Wed Jan 23, 2019 7:54 pm 2/3 ain't bad. Criterion UK is getting better. Just need another 2 for £25 sale.

Hoping for one soon; wanted to get The Uninvited, My Man Godfrey and A Raisin in the Sun (and Shampoo too if it’s included).

dwk wrote: Fri Feb 01, 2019 3:25 pm BFI's website is having a competition for Criterion's December and January UK releases

Competitions are open to UK residents only. Bummer, I’d love to get all those & haven’t picked up any yet, except for the Bergman.

May's releases:
6th - A Face in the Crowd
20th - Badlands
27th - My Brilliant Career

I might have missed it if it's been noted before, but Zatoichi and the Fugitives has been trimmed by 4 seconds for animal cruelty.

Dr Amicus wrote: Tue Mar 05, 2019 12:06 pm I might have missed it if it's been noted before, but Zatoichi and the Fugitives has been trimmed by 4 seconds for animal cruelty.

Interesting...is this the first Criterion title ported the UK they've had to re-encode then? If so, that's odd they didn't do the same for Andrei Rublev for example. They just cancelled the release entirely when they realised they'd be up against cuts for animal cruelty.

rapta wrote: Wed Mar 13, 2019 11:09 pm They just cancelled the release entirely when they realised they'd be up against cuts for animal cruelty.

Do we know it was actually that reason it was cancelled for? I’ve never heard anything official.

neilist wrote: Wed Mar 13, 2019 11:35 pm

rapta wrote: Wed Mar 13, 2019 11:09 pm They just cancelled the release entirely when they realised they'd be up against cuts for animal cruelty.

Do we know it was actually that reason it was cancelled for? I’ve never heard anything official.

No, it was assumed that because they'd have to cut it they decided to cancel the release entirely. There's no other reason they can't release Andrei Rublev as they acquired the rights directly from Mosfilm (I assume Mirror will be announced here around the same time the US release is announced).

Obviously it's a little more strange if they decided to a new encode of one of the Zatoichi discs just to cut a few seconds, but wouldn't do the same for something arguably just as if not more lucrative (Tarkovsky).

June:
Dazed and Confused
The Heiress
For All Mankind