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Bete_Noire wrote:

Jeff wrote:I think Chungking Express might be one of my favorite covers. Seriously. Why would it matter how long the cover designer spent working on it? I would imagine that swimminghorses spends hours laboring over his horrible joke covers. That doesn't make them good. There's beauty in simplicity.

Except that it resembles an undergrad's first project on Photoshop and doesn't match the film at all. Even the Tarantino face cover on the Rolling Thunder release was better. Think about that for a moment.

If CC had taken that cover and just removed the Tarantino part I would've loved it, but this one continues to grow on me. I feel like the cover should use both stories from the film, but far be it from me to complain about seeing Faye Wong's cute face.

EDIT: Just noticed what I think is a blurry Takeshi Kaneshiro just under the title and now think this cover is wonderful.

Bete_Noire wrote:Except that it resembles an undergrad's first project on Photoshop and doesn't match the film at all. Even the Tarantino face cover on the Rolling Thunder release was better. Think about that for a moment.

I've thought about it. I think it's infinitely better than the previous cover and captures the spirit of the film beautifully. To each his own I guess.

Why is a bad drawing of Roger Clemens on the cover of Fanfan?

Tom Hagen wrote:Why is a bad drawing of Roger Clemens on the cover of Fanfan?

I think it's actually a pretty good drawing of Roger Clemens.

I don't really hate the style of this cover, I just think it's poorly laid-out. I do wonder why they didn't go with a variation of the Rialto poster art. I mean, it's not worse.

It's nice to see Rumer Willis getting work

Also, I know lots of people complain about Kino's cover art, and not without good reason, but I think they did a good job with their WKW titles. They capture the grunginess of those films perfectly.

It's sad that the cover art with Quentin Tarantino's face at the top is actually better than this one.

Bete_Noire wrote:Except that [CHUNGKING's cover] ... doesn't match the film at all.

Huh? The cover is melancholic and elusive, and conveys an interest in the ephemeral. The same should be said of the film. Good work, Criterion.

I also like the BOTTLE ROCKET cover a lot. Don't understand the objections to the figures, which are perfectly in line with Wes' obsession with miniaturistic detail. They're exactly the sorts of images you'd find on Richie Tenenbaum's walls -- the cover would be pointless without them. I guess you guys also hate the other Wes covers.

jaredsap wrote:Don't understand the objections to the figures, which are perfectly in line with Wes' obsession with miniaturistic detail. They're exactly the sorts of images you'd find on Richie Tenenbaum's walls -- the cover would be pointless without them. I guess you guys also hate the other Wes covers.

Not at all. I think I just prefer Eric Anderson's drawings to Ian Dingman's. The figures also seem pasted on rather than part of the drawing. It's the labels that bug me the most though. If they'd 86 those, I'd be much happier with it.

Jeff wrote:Not at all. I think I just prefer Eric Anderson's drawings to Ian Dingman's.

I do too, but not enough to make me complain about it.

It's the labels that bug me the most though.

Straight out of the TENENBAUMS opening credit sequence. I know we're talking about BOTTLE ROCKET here, but it seems odd to take the cover to task for remaining completely true to Wes' universe.

Bete_Noire wrote:Even the Tarantino face cover on the Rolling Thunder release was better. Think about that for a moment.

Poo. In my 1000+ DVD collection, that Chungking Express cover is the worst by such a wide margin that it is the only one I have replaced with my own pathetic photoshop effort. It wouldn't even occur to me to do that with the Criterion version.

mfunk9786 wrote:

Svevan wrote:Red on pink is a color combo Anderson's used before

When? Where?

I was thinking of Royal Tenenbaums when I said that, where the primary colors of the first half of the film are pink and red (though the palette becomes more natural by the second half of the film, and throughout there are highlights of bright green, purple, and dark blue).




More examples here, here, and here.

I'm sure the combo appears in Life Aquatic somewhere, but not as often. That film's primary color combo is blue and yellow.

Chungking Express is the class of this set. While the Bottle Rocket Cover looks more like King of the Hill or Beavis and Butthead than the other Anderson covers so I don't like it as much as I like those covers.

Spy Who Came in From the Cold is an easy fix. have the letters following the perspective of the wall, rather than sitting on top of it. Very easy to do. but still, that cover is so pathetically bad it must be a placeholder of some sort

Fan Fan la Tulipe initially looked okay at a glance, then I looked at it again and realized that the pasting in of heads that was going on and it's possibly the most amateurish, poorly made cover in criterion's recent history. Even the non efforts of eclipse's covers are better.

jaredsap wrote:I know we're talking about BOTTLE ROCKET here, but it seems odd to take the cover to task for remaining completely true to Wes' universe.

But Bottle Rocket isn't a "Wes Anderson film" in the same mould as what that means today. It strikes me far more as a head-to-toe collaboration between Anderson and Owen Wilson before either was a name. It certainly has nothing like the obsessive mise-en-scene of the later films and a far looser, sillier, warmer sensibility. This cover (and accompanying blurb) seems like an attempt to retrospectively peg it as a pure-bred "Wes Anderson film" which, having seen the film, I don't necessarily buy.

I changed the colours a bit:

Jeff wrote:The Blu-ray covers on the sell sheets look to be identical to the standard def covers, but they appear to have a slightly translucent blue sticker with a "Wacky b" and the word Blu-ray on them.

Anyone have a link to the sell sheets? I'm interested in the Blu-ray presentation.

The Bottle Rocket cover would be the best if not for the detached characters. The others just look flat-out uninspired. Ugh.

I initially hated all of these covers. I was indifferent to The Spy Who Came in from the Cold because I haven't seen the film, but it is bland. Fanfan (which I also haven't seen) is just ugly, but I thought the same of the similarly odd-looking Thief of Bagdad. Bottle Rocket is boring, figures at the bottom or no. Even if they were taken out it would be a horribly mediocre cover.


I thought the same of Chungking Express, too. I thought it was the best of the lot, but still unremarkable. But it's grown on me. The blur isn't a particularly difficult effect to achieve, but it certainly resembles the movie's style. I think someone indicating the out-of-focus figure in the bottom left corner is what sealed it. Before it was just Faye Wong's silhouette, but now I see him in her peripheral (because if you look close you can see her eye and it's not quite looking at him) and it captures the essence of that story pretty well. Nervous, wistful, yearning.
I suppose one could claim it should represent both stories (although that store is the intersecting point), but I'd be satisfied with this cover. I may even really like it.

Chunking is kinda good, but all the others are terrible. They really need to fire the cover designers...

swo17 wrote:I was hoping for Marienbad this month, but now I don't want it to come out until they hire new cover designers.

Agreed. If the cover for that one is gonna look as bad as these, they`d better not release it

Man, Criterion seems terribly intent to make every other boutique label in the business look better than they are when it comes to cover art.

Fanfan la Tulipe freaking burns.

mfunk9786 wrote:

Svevan wrote:Red on pink is a color combo Anderson's used before

When? Where?

There is an example in Rushmore. The blond boy gives Max a Christmas gift - a red penknife wrapped in pink gift wrapping.

DignanSWE wrote:I changed the colours a bit:

What an improvement!

Hmmm...

DignanSWE wrote:I changed the colours a bit:

Not just the colors dude... Well done!

i haven't ever had a problem with any of the cc covers. if i didn't like any of them, i probably didn't like the movie. this might be the wrong forum for me, but i kind of believe in "can't judge a book by its cover". i wish i could, then i might like movies like Border Radio. some of my favs have the worst covers (contempt/bed&board..).

i really hope they have a new cover for contempt. i really liked the poster for the FILM FORUM release.

nickoberg wrote:i really hope they have a new cover for contempt.

Given that the five announced Blu-rays show identical artwork as the SD releases, I would not count on there being new artwork for any upcoming Blu upgrades.

That being said, the fact that the announced Blu art is exactly the same as the existing cover art (without even distinguishing that the release is BD) makes me think these could just be placeholders. In any case, we could fill another few pages full of speculations on this thread, but until we see some actual packaging or get a solid response from Mulvaney, I don't really see the point. Unless of course they actually read these message boards to see what the "people" want. In which case, put me in the "keep the existing packaging (including digipaks!)" camp.