criterionforum.org

jwd5275 wrote:In addition to Calvin's list, I found:

Richard Lester

!

ianungstad wrote:When it was just a few placeholders on the site, I thought it might indicate future releases but as more and more are found it seems less likely.

I'm starting to think that after the first few were discovered on Facebook that Criterion is now just throwing up random pages on the server as red herrings.

Wouldn't it be easier to just hide and/or make them unsearchable..? This is what they have done before (specifically thinking of the removal of the list of directors and the number of films they have from the film page because it was showing some of these placeholders with 0 films.)

Criterion is a business, one that enjoys whipping up speculation and anticipation. Creating a buzz about something they do not have and don't have any immediate plans to have would be counter-productive and would directly distract from legitimate products, both present and future. Though I doubt they meant for these placeholders to consciously fuel speculation, I don't doubt that they are legitimate placeholders. Now, what one reads into the placeholders is a whole different matter all together...

To me, all the names that come up make some kind of sense ...and the most disappointing thing is the names that do not come up. With the exception of the World Cinema restorations, there are no Chinese language directors, no Hungarian directors, no Romanian directors, no African, no Persian directors, no directors from anywhere south of the Rio Grande, etc...

There's also a placeholder page for Serge Bourguignon - I'm guessing that would probably mean Sundays and Cybele.

This thread has quickly gone from random speculation to "OMG, this movie exists, Criterion is releasing it!"

Could anyone link me to the list (if there is a definitive one) on this site of directors that had "phantom pages" discovered last year? I'm having a hard time remembering when that initial discovery was made. I'm hoping that it mirrors the time frame of two years ago when the Blurry Desk Photo was released so that maybe I know what month this year we might be expecting some random reveal a la those two techniques.

For all we know, those phantom pages could have been there since the moment Al Gore invented the internet. They certainly weren't strategically leaked by Criterion at the peak of extremely vague hint season.

swo17 wrote:For all we know, those phantom pages could have been there since the moment Al Gore invented the internet. They certainly weren't strategically leaked by Criterion at the peak of extremely vague hint season.

Fair point. I bet someone would've been all over that though the moment it happened. I seem to remember the site going under a slight reconstruction and that's when it was discovered. I do believe there is a method to the madness and they do like to do reveals like this.

swo17 wrote:For all we know, those phantom pages could have been there since the moment Al Gore invented the internet. They certainly weren't strategically leaked by Criterion at the peak of extremely vague hint season.

I don't think they were leaked on purpose, but I know that Criterion currently holds the rights to titles by Bruno Dumont, Jacques Rivette, Michael Mann, Howard Hawks, Ken Russell, Giuseppe De Santis, Jacques Feyder, Mario Peixoto, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Frantisek Vlácil, and several others that have phantom pages. I'd be willing to bet they've picked up titles by the other directors that I don't know about too. We've already seen the Reggio, Cimino, and Nolan come to pass. These releases may not all necessarily be imminent, but the pages are definitely not there by accident.

Well, to clarify, I wasn't suggesting that no hand of man created those pages. But their origins and significance are still unknown(/unknowable?). The names on those pages could just as easily be a wishlist of directors to work with as an indication of owning rights. (I can just hear the rumblings at the Criterion offices: "No Jimmy, don't create a secret blank hidden webpage for the Coen brothers yet--they haven't signed the paperwork!") And the phantom pages could have been there for a year or five or ten before anyone noticed them. Though granted, the way kids today obsessively trawl through Criterion's website for any possible semblance of a clue, the pages probably couldn't have gone unnoticed for long.

It is perhaps also worth noting that, at the time that those pages were discovered, we already knew that the Reggio, Cimino, and Nolan were on their way. So on second thought, these ones probably were clues, because if there's one thing Criterion can't resist it's making a redundant clue.

Some of the phantom pages are for the filmmakers who has had restorations done to films by the World Cinema Foundation. Now knowing Criterion never looks into Brazilian cinema, etc, the only reason for those phantom pages is because of the soon to be World Cinema Foundation releases by them. I doubt those have been up more than a year.

I don't remember if Robert Rossen had a page, but his Alexander the Great popped up on Criterion's website a couple years ago before disappearing, never to be heard from again

I'd love for them to release it. Not his best film, but by the standards of the genre it's pretty good.

Matt wrote:Not a definitive list, but as close as there is.

Here's a much more comprehensive list. It was put together a while ago so forgive any changes that may have come to the site in the meantime. It is long so I tried to edit out all directors listed on the Hulu titles too:

Lutfi Akad
Grigori Aleksandrov
Paul Thomas Anderson
Ken Annakin
Jean-Jacques Annaud
Joseph Anthony
Claude Autant-Lara
Compton Bennet
Tony Bill
Bertrand Blier
Frank Borzage
Serge Bourguignon
Frank Capra
Fred Coe
Joel & Ethan Coen
Bill Condon
Ian Dalrymple
Delmer Daves
Terence Davies
Philippe de Broca
Andre de Toth
Henri Decoin
Jean Delannoy
Richard Dembo
Jacques Demy
Susan Warms Dryfoos
Edward Dmytryk
Bruno Dumont
Ahmed El Maanouni
Maurice Elvey
Cy Endfield
Metin Erksan
Terence Fisher
Kinji Fukasaku
Pierre-Dominique Gaisseau
Abel Gance
Ritwik Ghatak
Francois Girard
Emilio Gómez Muriel
Michel Gondry
Heinosuke Gosho
Edmund Goulding
Emidio Greco
Peter Greenaway
John Guillermin
Alexander Hall
Howard Hawks
Jack Hazan
Mike Hodges
Brian Desmond Hurst
Jun Ichikawa
Tadashi Imai
Pat Jackson
Shehkar Kapur
Kim Ki-young
Kazuo Kuroki
Diane Kurys
Emir Kusturica
Claude Lanzmann
Jean-Paul le Chanois
Richard Lester
Frank Lloyd
Djibril Diop Mambéty
Rouben Mamoulian
Michael Mann
Lucrecia Martel
Joji Matsuoka
Russ Meyer
Edouard Molinaro
Robert Montgomery
Yoshimitsu Morita
Errol Morris
Mike Nichols
Hitoshi Ozawa
Sergei Parajanov
Mario Peixoto
Anthony Pelissier
Frank Perry
Elio Petri
Leni Riefenstahl
Dino Risi
Milton Rosmer
Robert Rossen
Arthur Rosson
Mogens Rukov
Junji Sakamoto
Koji Shima
Peter Stein
Robert Stevenson
Arne Sucksdorff
Masatoshi Takeuchi
J. Lee Thompson
Henri Verneuil
Charles Vidor
Thomas Vinterberg
Frantisek Vlacil
Herbert Wilcox
Kozaburo Yoshimura
Terence Young

Wow, if Criterion announces new releases from all of those directors next month, it could be their best month yet!

swo17 wrote:Wow, if Criterion announces new releases from all of those directors next month, it could be their best month yet!

BUT STILL NO RIVETTE!!!!!

Bill Condon
Michel Gondry

Gondry seemed sure on the Malkovich commentary that he was there to talk about one of his films. I listened to it again and it sounds genuine, so I'm sure something is coming from him.

Condon's inclusion baffles me. What could they include? Maybe Gods and Monsters. But even though Universal distributed it back in the day I'm pretty sure Lions Gate distributes it now. And I definitely don't see any of his other titles coming since it's pretty much limited to the last two Twilight movies and Dream Girls. Kinsey?

Brian C wrote:

swo17 wrote:Wow, if Criterion announces new releases from all of those directors next month, it could be their best month yet!

BUT STILL NO RIVETTE!!!!!

Rivette does have a phantom page. jwd5275 just didn't include it in his list because Rivette already has a Hulu title.

jwd5275 wrote:It is long so I tried to edit out all directors listed on the Hulu titles too

Taking into account his work in musicals along with Gods and Monsters, Condon would make for an inspired choice to provide commentary on the James Whale's version of Showboat. But that's just wishful thinking, especially if there's no phantom page for Whale himself.

cdnchris wrote:Condon's inclusion baffles me. What could they include? Maybe Gods and Monsters. But even though Universal distributed it back in the day I'm pretty sure Lions Gate distributes it now. And I definitely don't see any of his other titles coming since it's pretty much limited to the last two Twilight movies and Dream Girls. Kinsey?

Everyone assumes that Naqoyqatsi was a one off from Lionsgate but it's also possible they licensed more. Just based off the phantom pages one could make an arguement for these Lionsgate titles:

Bill Condon - Gods and Monsters
Terrence Davies - Distant Voices, Still Lives
Peter Greenaway - The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover

I agree with you that I don't see Criterion being interested in anything other than Gods and Monsters.

You might add Fred Coe and Edmund Goulding to that list; both have phantom pages on the site as well.

Sister Sister is pretty great but not exactly Criterion-bound!

Since Rouben Mamoulian has a page on the website, which one of his films would be considered worthy of the Criterion treatment?

Plenty of early stuff, ignoring rights issues, but I also wonder if he might get credited if Criterion were to release Porgy and Bess