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I simply can't get over how beautiful this box is. And how much bigger it is in person than it appeared in the pictures. Unbelievable job by Criterion here.

Quick remark : I received the boxset two days ago, and god is it a beautiful set ! Criterion also especially didn't broke their promise about trying to get it as small as possible, despite having 27 discs to hold.
However, it seems to me that they could have used much less DVDs than what they did. Looking at Chris details of the DVDs, it seems to me that Criterion could have easily used 4 or 5 discs less than the 18 they ended up using. I understand though that it's probably because it was more practical this way from a internal artwork point of view (3 movies per BD leading the internal text, they needed to have the DVDs following this split), but anyway.

The Blu-rays are easy to get out but oddly the DVDs are a little more difficult.

Chris, do you still have to rub the blu-ray disc AGAINST the package, like with the Hitchcock set, in order to get the disc out? For me, that type of package, no matter how hard I try, always causes very small dot-like scratches to the discs.

The discs do still rub against it.

cdnchris wrote:Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project

Are the digipacks thicker than a typical blu-ray case? After getting the Francis Ha and City lights disc, it looked like it would be easy to fit a third disc in the same amount of space if there was no booklet included, but those packs look a bit fatter than I'd have expected.

EDIT: Oh, and boo hoo wah wah, the DVD takes up more room than it needs to. There, I said it. Now nobody else has to.

jindianajonz wrote:Are the digipacks thicker than a typical blu-ray case?

I just have the one for Tokyo Story, where the disc holder (not counting the outer sleeve) is maybe 1/8" wider than a standard CC Blu-ray case.

Don't let your beautiful Zatoichi label go to waste. Try dressing up a crappy, freebie water bottle. Now it's the coolest water bottle in town! Anybody else do anything interesting with their stickers?

Just a heads-up, when I unwrapped my box, the stickers on the exterior of the plastic wrap just peeled right off without a problem. So if you're jonesing to put a Zatoichi sticker somewhere, it's a nice little bonus item.

That's probably the best post from someone with a lurker-level post count ever

At first glance, I thought it was a beer bottle and that Criterion had done a Zatoichi/craft-beer crossover with Rogue or whatever.

scubadonc wrote:Anybody else do anything interesting with their stickers?

Much less inspired : I blandly stuck them inside the booklet, on the 2nd and penultimate page.

Mine went in the trash. They are now decorating landfill.

tenia wrote:

scubadonc wrote:Anybody else do anything interesting with their stickers?

Much less inspired : I blandly stuck them inside the booklet, on the 2nd and penultimate page.

Ditto. These are just blank, black pages and the stickers look nice there.

mfunk9786 wrote:That's probably the best post from someone with a lurker-level post count ever

Thank you?

tenia wrote:I blandly stuck them inside the booklet, on the 2nd and penultimate page.

That's pretty good. That sticker is just too nice to cast off.

The front sticker went on the end of one of my 7" vinyl boxes, the back went on the inside cover of my current work notebook. Wish I had thought it through more, the water bottle idea is so much better.

scubadonc wrote:That sticker is just too nice to cast off.

Absolutely. Plus, the black background makes it blend nicely.
(it looks like this, courtesy of PowellPressburger@ blu-ray.com : http://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p ... tcount=332" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;).

But, to be honest, being in France makes Criterion releases pretty expensive, so I always keep the stickers (at this stage, if that would make sense to keept the flowwrap somewhere, I'd do it. Hey, I paid for this too !).

Anyone else have the glue or whatever come detached from the Blu slots?

My Blu discs are all "sunken" into the slots and the first disc actually just slides right through the two halves of card and out the bottom. I can probably glue it to fix it but really shouldn't have to. This is why I hate this "clever" packaging.

I have some slots that are sunken, and others were you can barely get the disc in (and one or two where the disc sticks out of the the slot by half a centimeter) but thankfully none that completely fall through the package.

Moe Dickstein wrote:Anyone else have the glue or whatever come detached from the Blu slots?

My Blu discs are all "sunken" into the slots and the first disc actually just slides right through the two halves of card and out the bottom. I can probably glue it to fix it but really shouldn't have to. This is why I hate this "clever" packaging.

AMEN.

I love this release, but I do not worship its packaging and, um.... Actually, don't get me started. I'll shut up now.

Just got the Zatoichi set. Very awkward packaging, with the discs at the risk of friction and scratching against the cardboard. One BD disc was scuffed,

Blu-rays are very resilient. I've taken knives to the bottom of them as a demo of how they don't scratch easily. The only time I've seen Blu-rays skip playback is for fingerprints/smudges that were easily wiped away. The DVDs in the set on the other hand....

So what you are saying is that we should really be using the Blu-rays for both playback and drinks coaster purposes?

colinr0380 wrote:So what you are saying is that we should really be using the Blu-rays for both playback and drinks coaster purposes?

Do both: Rig up a BD player to play discs with the top open so that you can stick a drink on top of the disc.

Yeah well, my Zatoichi blu-ray discs have a number of small scratches and/or pits on their playing sides (similar to most other slotted blu-ray packages I've encountered... one of those previous pitted/scratched discs had to be replaced due to garbled playback). Not sure if that qualifies as resilient, but it sure qualifies as annoying. (One of the Zatoichi scratches is actually not all that small either.) Stupid cardboard packaging strikes again.