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I guess I was saying this as both someone who likes Lynch a lot (but might not buy this doc on its own) and as someone who teaches high school students. The kids who express an interest in film almost always mention Tarantino, Nolan, or Fincher; I've never heard any of them mention Lynch. Perhaps that happens when they go to college, but apparently not enough for any of them to actually buy tickets to his movies and take his advice about watching them on a big screen.

Anyway, not to beat a dead horse too much I'll try and get back to the topic by saying that I hope when Grand Budapest is released there is something additional about Zweig, or perhaps the '30s types like Lubitsch or that world. Would anyone recommend Matt Zoller Seitz' book about the movie?

JohnShade wrote:I guess I was saying this as both someone who likes Lynch a lot (but might not buy this doc on its own)

Wouldn't you buy it if it included his shorts?

JohnShade wrote:and as someone who teaches high school students. The kids who express an interest in film almost always mention Tarantino, Nolan, or Fincher; I've never heard any of them mention Lynch. Perhaps that happens when they go to college, but apparently not enough for any of them to actually buy tickets to his movies and take his advice about watching them on a big screen.

I'm not surprised. Tarantino, Nolan and Fincher are more accessible and marketed to the mainstream while Lynch is not nor tries to be. I agree that he would be more of a discovery to the college student.

Depends on the shorts. I like some of his shorts while others are the worst of his oeuvre.

JohnShade wrote:I guess I was saying this as both someone who likes Lynch a lot (but might not buy this doc on its own) and as someone who teaches high school students. The kids who express an interest in film almost always mention Tarantino, Nolan, or Fincher; I've never heard any of them mention Lynch.

I'm not surprised—it's been over 10 years since Lynch's last (rarely scene and little loved) film, and 16 years since the one before that. That's the entire lifetime of a high school student.

Are high-school students buying Criterion Collection releases? I fail to see what this anecdote has to do with how the company goes about their business decisions.

They'll discover him whenever they're cool enough to start doing drugs

^ And that's how domino got fired from his teaching job

The original point was that Lynch has more admirers than Tarantino and Fincher and my main objection was that Lynch's movies seem to get marketed poorly and have low box office returns for such a highly elevated cult filmmaker; the random personal anecdote I made was simply to show that somehow Tarantino and Fincher still are capable of ingraining themselves with certain young people (well, mostly young men). Whether or not Lynch's films make the biggest money from criterion is something...maybe somebody here possibly knows? Also the question was whether the recent documentary should get a standalone release, maybe with some shorts, that's just a case of we'll see I guess.

Meanwhile, I'm still going to try and steer this conversation back to dreaming of a loaded Grand Budapest disc with something other than making-of features, and wondering if anyone has the Zoller Seitz book and recommends it. Also for "random speculation" I'm wondering if the 4K of Pierrot might get back to Criterion or if that's not a dream worth pursuing.

For what it's worth, I bought the Zoller Seitz book for my wife. While I personally haven't had time to read much of it (though I can attest that it is a beautiful book), she loves it and it sent her on a Zweig binge.

med wrote:Are high-school students buying Criterion Collection releases? I fail to see what this anecdote has to do with how the company goes about their business decisions.

I was buying Criterion releases when I was in high school. But to be fair, I also knew about and admired David Lynch when I was in high school (perhaps more than I do now).

JohnShade wrote:The original point was that Lynch has more admirers than Tarantino and Fincher and my main objection was that Lynch's movies seem to get marketed poorly and have low box office returns for such a highly elevated cult filmmaker; the random personal anecdote I made was simply to show that somehow Tarantino and Fincher still are capable of ingraining themselves with certain young people (well, mostly young men). Whether or not Lynch's films make the biggest money from criterion is something...maybe somebody here possibly knows? Also the question was whether the recent documentary should get a standalone release, maybe with some shorts, that's just a case of we'll see I guess.

Lynch's feature film career goes back to 1977. His television career goes back to 1990, where the ratings hovered somewhere around 15-25 million viewers per week. He's been responsible for art exhibits, concerts, fundraisers for TM... there's an entire generation prior to Quentin Tarantino making anything that were able to engage with his work and with his mind who are, for the most part, still around. And this all happened before any of those high school students you spoke of were born. He broke the ground on which some of the recent auteurs you point to walk, and it will take a lot more career for them to reach those heights, if they ever do.

med wrote:Are high-school students buying Criterion Collection releases? I fail to see what this anecdote has to do with how the company goes about their business decisions.

Rushmore was one of the first DVDs I bought in high school, but your point is fair given that most teens today will either stream or download whatever they want to see

Also owned Rushmore criterion in high school, that and Brazil and later 8 1/2 were the gateways.

One last time I was never denying that Lynch is a great filmmaker with a solid fan base. Whatever heights he's reached in comparison to the others I was also really not speaking about. Probably a more comparable director would be Malick, a similar case of someone with a low output, a mystique and aura, and a fan base ready for any movie. In this case Lynch probably has the bigger support. I'll leave it at that.

I watched Criterion discs in high school, but I sure as hell couldn't afford them, much less had a parent or guardian willing to spend money on them.

I bought Criterion LaserDiscs in high school so take that you whipper snappers (of course they were so expensive I only bought a couple).

Chris, I think it's great that they have Internet access in your old folks' home

They let me use my AOL account, too.

Did you have to pay list price for Criterion LaserDiscs, or were they discounted? I saw Prince of Tides listed in the LaserDisc archive thread and was thinking about how I earned about $5/hour or less after taxes when that was released, so if PoT was $99.99, I would've had to work for about a week to get the money if I'd wanted to blind-buy it for some reason! Just getting the player itself probably would've been totally out of the question.

My main means of building a meager collection of movies back then involved two VCRs and a lot of secondhand tapes.

One was used but the other might have been full price. It was Trainspotting and I recall it being around $60 but not sure. I remember trying to save for Seven, Pulp Fiction, and Brazil, which were all around $150 or more (in Canada) each but that never happened. I bought a couple others later used.

I didn't do too bad money wise in high school so I had a decent sized LaserDisc collection (though wish I saved that money instead, ha!), but a lot of the Criterion titles were out of reach.

I bought a lot cheap and used VHS tapes, though, so that was most of my collection.

The most recent posts are just begging for a thread-split: when did you first discover Criterion?

med wrote:Are high-school students buying Criterion Collection releases? I fail to see what this anecdote has to do with how the company goes about their business decisions.

Yes, I'm a sophomore in high school and I've been buying CC Blu-rays for about 3 years now.

jbeall wrote:The most recent posts are just begging for a thread-split: when did you first discover Criterion?

right when I discovered DVD. I had just read lord of the flies, searched online to see if there was a film made, and found the criterion DVD (just released) on sale for $6 at a long defunct online store (they mispriced it probably thinking it was the 90s film version).

The catalog included was very helpful at me understanding it was a collection item I had just bought. I had known encountered seven samurai before this and knew it was too expensive to buy (a slightly older friend was insisting I was required to watch it) but hadn't paid attention to the branding, opting to borrow it from the library. A month or two later I saw silence of the lambs and robocop go oop, next time I was at suncoast I found both and bit the bullet and bought them. Then I was sort of hooked because now I was "invested"

This was not in fact begging for a thread split

jbeall wrote:The most recent posts are just begging for a thread-split: when did you first discover Criterion?

When I discovered that Rushmore had a special edition DVD, not released by the studio. I was pretty new to all this and I didn't have any concept of boutique labels. I probably checked out the website once I read the booklet it came with.

cdnchris wrote:They let me use my AOL account, too.

Apropos of nothing, I've just learnt that my old Freeserve e-mail address (that I haven't used in ten years, but still) is doomed! Who knew that even e-mail addresses had a lifespan?