Archived Criterion Streaming Discussion

[Sandman]

I do wish they'd add Last Year at Marienbad. I bought the dvd last year, but never got a chance to see it as it was one of many dvds stolen from me (actually, all of my dvds including my entire Criterion collection). I do wonder what is the decisionmaking process for selecting Criterion titles. Isn't the assumption that all Criterions will eventually be available? If that's true, then why wouldn't all of them be available now?

[Max von Mayerling]

To me it seems like they are back to the pre-summer speed of posting new titles. Perhaps they were pushing the 101 days of summer to promote the brand. I doubt that kind of every day release pace will ever be the norm.

[Matt]

I do wish they'd add Last Year at Marienbad.

They don't have the rights to that film anymore. The DVD/BD is out of print. I'm sure they put on Hulu everything they have the streaming rights for, but that's not nearly everything in the collection.

[knives]

Summer's over.

[member24958]

New group of free titles. Year of 1963 theme. Expires September 30th (though they appear to expire early in the day rather than at a typical midnight time zone).

The Bakery Girl of Monceau
The Fire Within
Hands Over the City
High and Low
The Insect Woman
A Legend or Was It? (Legend of a Duel to the Death)
Lord of the Flies
The Organizer
Shock Corridor
The Silence

[KeystoneCop]

Anyone know what's up with the release schedule on Hulu Plus now? I was getting used to a new batch of rare old films showing up every so often. Seems like it has been dry for a long while now.

[bamwc2]

Anyone know what's up with the release schedule on Hulu Plus now? I was getting used to a new batch of rare old films showing up every so often. Seems like it has been dry for a long while now.

Just earlier this week I posted on their FB wall asking when the next releases would be...no response. The same question asked of them the same way about a year ago got an immediate positive reply.

[rrenault]

Does anyone else have frame skipping problems with Hulu? I've done everything from restarting to the computer to closing all other programs, and it never completely goes away. I don't have the same issue with Netflix streaming. Could it just be a Hulu problem, or something having to do with software updates?

[Stuart Galbraith IV]

Speaking of Criterion and Hulu, Stephen Bowie and I discuss issues of streaming vs. physical media (and the impact of torrents and copyright laws on the latter) here.

[Minkin]

Unsure if you want all streaming/tech news in here or the forthcoming page (when it isn't Hulu- perhaps this can be "Criterion on Hulu/Itunes"?).

J. Lee Thompson’s Tiger Bay (1959) was just added to Criterion's Itunes. (via CriterionCast)

[Rashomon66]

It's been at least 6 months since Criterion put any new titles on Hulu. Lately they have been farming out the older titles to Amazon and iTunes.
'Tiger Bay' by J. Lee Thompson from 1959 will be on iTunes soon.
'Madeleine' by David Lean from 1949 will be on Amazon streaming soon.
And titles like 'Tess' and 'Judex', which might have shown up are not on Hulu either.

I can only speculate that Criterion found they were losing sales when titles went to Hulu. Why else would they let a film like Tiger Bay go to iTunes only? Either that or the contract with Hulu only specified releasing titles to them over a certain period of time. And the rest would be there as an archive only until the contract runs out.

[Cinephrenic]

We probably can say that they also have Lean's The Passionate Friends.

[MongooseCmr]

It's been at least 6 months since Criterion put any new titles on Hulu. Lately they have been farming out the older titles to Amazon and iTunes.
'Tiger Bay' by J. Lee Thompson from 1959 will be on iTunes soon.
'Madeleine' by David Lean from 1949 will be on Amazon streaming soon.
And titles like 'Tess' and 'Judex', which might have shown up are not on Hulu either.

I can only speculate that Criterion found they were losing sales when titles went to Hulu. Why else would they let a film like Tiger Bay go to iTunes only? Either that or the contract with Hulu only specified releasing titles to them over a certain period of time. And the rest would be there as an archive only until the contract runs out.

I would guess that the plan to debut the WCF films on Hulu before going to disc backfired. In theory it makes perfect sense to give buyers a way to see these more obscure films, but the 6 month gap between hulu and blu-ray gave everyone more than enough time to see all 6 films and decide if it was worth a hundred dollars or not just to own them.

[rrenault]

It's been at least 6 months since Criterion put any new titles on Hulu. Lately they have been farming out the older titles to Amazon and iTunes.
'Tiger Bay' by J. Lee Thompson from 1959 will be on iTunes soon.
'Madeleine' by David Lean from 1949 will be on Amazon streaming soon.
And titles like 'Tess' and 'Judex', which might have shown up are not on Hulu either.

I can only speculate that Criterion found they were losing sales when titles went to Hulu. Why else would they let a film like Tiger Bay go to iTunes only? Either that or the contract with Hulu only specified releasing titles to them over a certain period of time. And the rest would be there as an archive only until the contract runs out.

I would guess that the plan to debut the WCF films on Hulu before going to disc backfired. In theory it makes perfect sense to give buyers a way to see these more obscure films, but the 6 month gap between hulu and blu-ray gave everyone more than enough time to see all 6 films and decide if it was worth a hundred dollars or not just to own them.

So in other words, your conjecture is that the Criterion Hulu channel is dead due to financial constraints. Or are they now going to wait until several months after a title is physically released to put it on Hulu?

[jwd5275]

It's been at least 6 months since Criterion put any new titles on Hulu. Lately they have been farming out the older titles to Amazon and iTunes.
'Tiger Bay' by J. Lee Thompson from 1959 will be on iTunes soon.
'Madeleine' by David Lean from 1949 will be on Amazon streaming soon.
And titles like 'Tess' and 'Judex', which might have shown up are not on Hulu either.

I can only speculate that Criterion found they were losing sales when titles went to Hulu. Why else would they let a film like Tiger Bay go to iTunes only? Either that or the contract with Hulu only specified releasing titles to them over a certain period of time. And the rest would be there as an archive only until the contract runs out.

I would guess that the plan to debut the WCF films on Hulu before going to disc backfired. In theory it makes perfect sense to give buyers a way to see these more obscure films, but the 6 month gap between hulu and blu-ray gave everyone more than enough time to see all 6 films and decide if it was worth a hundred dollars or not just to own them.

So in other words, your conjecture is that the Criterion Hulu channel is dead due to financial constraints. Or are they now going to wait until several months after a title is physically released to put it on Hulu?

There has often been a huge gap between the last fall release and a new one in the spring on Hulu. Just because we have one now doesn't mean that the Hulu channel is dead. Plus if there is an issue with the Hulu channel (which I see no evidence of), it likely has something to the internal restructuring Hulu has been going through, not how many WCF boxes they sold. I doubt Criterion expected a box of generally unknown foreign (also non-european) directors to be an easy sell in the first place and the chance to see them on Hulu probably did help generate sales and interest. iTunes and Amazon have a different payment structure than Hulu. You pay for each movie individually, not for the film bundled in a streaming subscription like Hulu that you can watch whenever you wish. It is likely that they have rights to sell a digital copy of these films but not stream them in a subscription. Tiger Bay is not particularly special since there actually are quite a few films like this, especially ITV/Rank licensed titles like the Powell and Pressburgers, the David Leans or the British Hitchcock...

[rrenault]

What sort of internal restructuring has Hulu been going through? With that said, the one issue I do have with the Hulu channel is that playback has been perpetually choppy for the past several months, and I'm certain it's Hulu, because I never seem to have that issue with a Netflix stream. The frame skipping never completely goes away.

[MongooseCmr]

What sort of internal restructuring has Hulu been going through? With that said, the one issue I do have with the Hulu channel is that playback has been perpetually choppy for the past several months, and I'm certain it's Hulu, because I never seem to have that issue with a Netflix stream. The frame skipping never completely goes away.

Hulu plays near perfectly for me compared to netflix, which buffers constantly and barely plays at 480p. The only problem I get from hulu is that the image is very light, like the brightness is turned up too high

[bringmesomechemicals]

The balance of the Zatoichi box set is now up on Hulu+.
Zatoichi the Outlaw
Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo
Zatoichi Goes to the Fire Festival
Zatoichi Meets the One-Armed Swordsman
Zatoichi at Large
Zatoichi in Desperation
Zatoichi's Conspiracy

[ando]

Thanks. Does anyone have a link to an online listing of the newest Criterions (and/or full length movies in general) added to Hulu+? Their site seems designed with television shows as a priority and the Criterion on Hulu page is most cumbersome. The Hulu side of instantwatcher.com is also a mess (why can't they fomat it like their Netflix listings? (which is excellent, btw)).

[knives]

http://www.hulu.com/grid?name=recently- ... /criterion" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[ando]

Thanks. Link is useless on an android tab. In fact, many Hulu+ television series are unavailable to view on tablets. Seems like a relatively minor issue to solve. No problem with any Netflix streaming on my tab. Ah well...

[Minkin]

Via Criterion Cast, two additions to Criterion's Itunes page:

Carol Reed's Odd Man Out
Hitchcock's The Lodger!!

[FrauBlucher]

I guess part or all of the Hitchcock 9 will be coming to The Collection!

[Minkin]

I guess part or all of the Hitchcock 9 will be coming to The Collection!

At the very least this bodes quite well for The Pleasure Garden, Downhill, and Easy Virtue - which are the other 3 "Hitchock 9" titles owned by ITV. Studio Canal has the other five - so those will be less likely (though me thinks Studio Canal has largely abandoned all hope in the US - given the lack of any new titles for quite some time -I'm surprised they haven't been bothered to re-license stuff out again, but I digress).

I'm very happy to see Criterion picking up more and more of Hitchcock's British period films (I prefer his pre-Rebecca films to post - and this period's films are certainly in need of greater attention, given all the shit PD bandit releases out there-thus Criterion's Man Who Knew Too Much was a revelation). Young and Innocent and Sabotage being the other two titles confirmed (Criterion's Itunes page). I think Secret Agent and Number 17 are also possibly with Janus.

[ianungstad]

The Lodger was with MGM along with Young and Innocent and Sabotage. I don't think there's any reason to think Criterion has plans for any other British Hitchcock besides the former MGM titles.