criterionforum.org

Most stuff is never going to get a UHD release and even if Paramount releases that film themselves, you'd be lucky for a pressed Blu-ray.

colinr0380 wrote: Fri Apr 03, 2020 9:41 pm Maybe it could lead to The English Patient returning to Criterion!

I hope so.

I doubt anything like this will be replicated outside of France, where MK2 sells the rights to these films to local distributors (including Janus/Criterion); taking the streaming rights off the table by entering into their own bulk deal with Netflix would have a big impact on the perceived value of these titles and push away potential distributors. They can do it in France because MK2 releases their own catalog there.

They've actually been making video distribution deals with TF1 for quite some years, Potemkine a couple of years and Carlotta 1 year. It's been a long time IIRC since they last released somethikg directly themselves.

I was briefly excited by the news that dozens, possibly hundreds of Czech films were about to appear on Netflix, and then I realised that I was reading a Prague news site and that the deal was strictly local (in the UK, there are maybe two or three, all very recent).

On the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the UK version of Amazon Prime really does have dozens of Czech films (I counted at least sixty), although in general they're not the famous 1960s ones - there's a heavy bias towards the last fifteen years.

(I've just written a piece for the BFI website about the current availability of eastern European films on UK streaming services, and have to admit that I found more than I was expecting to find - my spreadsheet totted up about 230 titles when I'd covered the main sources. But only about 20% were made in the 20th century, and there's strong evidence of catalogues being acquired en bloc - for instance, you can watch ten Krzysztof Zanussi films online if the mood takes you, but I could only find two Andrzej Wajdas and the only Kieślowskis were the post-1990 ones.)

Adam Grikepelis wrote:Well, Vine’s already come ‘n’ gone, and now we’re in the middle of the apocalypse.

TikTok has replaced Vine and it's better in just about every way.

Luke M wrote: Thu May 07, 2020 12:49 pm

Adam Grikepelis wrote:Well, Vine’s already come ‘n’ gone, and now we’re in the middle of the apocalypse.

TikTok has replaced Vine and it's better in just about every way.

No

Some of us here are so old that they don't know what Vine is/was, much less Tik-Tok.

Things we could have perfectly lived without, but that seemingly some now can't.

Michael Kerpan wrote: Thu May 07, 2020 2:17 pm Some of us here are so old that they don't know what Vine is/was, much less Tik-Tok.

And some of us here don't care what Vine was or Tik-Tok is.

371229 wrote: Tue May 26, 2020 1:03 am And some of us here don't care what Vine was or Tik-Tok is.

That too....

I came across this just now – looks like a number of French labels have been struggling badly as a result of COVID-19, and are asking for government assistance:

https://www.lesinrocks.com/2020/06/08/c ... vernement/

50, then 60, indie labels have indeed reminded the government not to forget them from the culture stimulus package. They've lost up to 75% of their sales compared to forecasts because they depend up to 70% on physical stores, and many labels delayed their march-april-may releases to june-july-august (some even to september). Based on the CNC Q1 figures, I've calculated that the overall physical video market dropped by about 45% in the last weeks on march, after the lockdown started (on march 17th), which I suppose is the kind of drop we'll have for Q2 here (though the lockdown was lifted mid-may).

The issue is that when physical sales plummetted, SVOD kept soaring : it was already representing 57% of the French video market in 2019, imagine what the lockdown split will look like (SVOD could weigh up to 75% of the market and the physical sales less than 20%).

However, SVOD is a structural competitor to physical labels, and that's not the point of this plea for help, which really has to do about covering the lockdown's loss of sales.

Hope this stops people waiting for Criterion to board this train to nowhere

I have extreme doubts about the validity of that article because it seems to view the fact no announcements of further titles after next month’s two as confirmation, when it has in itself been six months since the last set of titles. Like, you could have had this same panic in March about no more releases after Star Wars but, wouldn’t you know it, there’s two releases next month. And the article itself says they are hopeful to do releases of James Cameron’s titles as well - which would be exactly the same as all the other Disney catalog titles, which have been tied in to/alongside similar current releases, which seems to suggest it’s more “it’ll still happen?” It makes too much money to do countless rereleases of franchise or same filmmaker/star movies every time a new one comes out to stop.

Hopeful about releases from Cameron ? This is the site who has been saying for 10 years the restoration of Abyss was just around the corner and yet.

They also didn't get something as simple as a region code right, because their sources can be so all over the place, sometimes it's just Amazon's product page.

All this to say that I don't take The Bits' word for Gospel anymore.

tenia wrote: Sat Aug 08, 2020 8:01 am
All this to say that I don't take The Bits' word for Gospel anymore.

I don't either, but the Disney rumor has been floating around for a couple of weeks and was worth sharing.

Absolutely, but I think The Bits' "confirmation" might be going a bit too quickly from rumor to facts (hence my remark).
But they're saying they cross-referenced the info, so maybe I'm overly pessimistic (or optimistic, depending on how you look at it !).

He, with some frequency, tends to use the same sourcing as confirmation of things happening that initial rumors do, which gives the impression of being confirmed but is actually just repeating the same info.

It’s also significant that for several of the studios the main driver in catalog UHD releases is tying them to theatrical releases that are relevant (indeed, this is what the Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars were all tied to), so without new releases firmly on the calendar, it’s a little hard to date anything for a tie-in. Who knows that if Jungle Cruise still had come out that the Pirates movies could have been tied to it, etc.

domino harvey wrote: Sat Aug 08, 2020 3:38 am Hope this stops people waiting for Criterion to board this train to nowhere

I doubt this is anything to do with the viability of the format, and instead all to do with Disney's disdain for physical media across the board, which has been evident for years (as the article says, Disney is the only studio whose home video stats are heading downward, because they release relatively fuck all already). If Bill is right, I very much expect this will apply just as much to Blu-ray as it will to UHD. So I guess now is the time to start collecting any Fox films absent from your collection, as once stock drys up they might never be available again on disc.

Disney probably doesn't have so much some disdain for physical media than a more profitable (I guess) streaming platform to move viewers to now.

A bunch of the executives from att/time warner got shit canned Friday for the pathetic hbo max numbers. Guess them making terrible and nonsensical decisions about streaming services a couple year ago indicted they weren’t going to be any good at their own streaming service.

Funny that firing all the talent you had running streaming services and shuttering all your successful streaming services somehow wasn’t indicative of being able to run a successful streaming service. Who could have Guessed?!

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-a ... vin-reilly

tenia wrote: Sat Aug 08, 2020 6:13 pm Disney probably doesn't have so much some disdain for physical media than a more profitable (I guess) streaming platform to move viewers to now.

Someone who wants to watch a Fox evergreen title like Aliens or Speed isn't going to ever find it on Disney's family friendly only streaming platform. They have many 4K HDR masters of these films ready to go (completed by Fox before the takeover), the Die Hard sequels and Patton to name a few, and it certainly seems like disdain to me to simply refuse to ever put them on disc.