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I picked up Palm Pictures' Directors' Label, Vol. 2 the other day and was flipping through the booklet on Mark Romanek. The first question from Spike Jonze asked how long he's been working on this compilation:

Mark Romanek: Well, I was asked to do one with Criterion initially, like over five years ago. We spent a year and a half working on that, but then it felll apart. So it's been, I don't know, well over six or seven years.

This got me thinking about other possible Criterion deals that fell through. We know about David Lynch and "Eraserhead", but are we aware of many others?

It seems like Criterion and the Russians are having a cold war over getting Eisenstein's silent films out. Hopefully this deal is still in place.

The Game by David Fincher

and even though I can't remember the details they were unable to get the rights to some Bogdanovich flick, which is a shame since he's done quite a bit with criterion in terms of special features and stuff.

cinephrenic wrote:It seems like Criterion and the Russians are having a cold war over getting Eisenstein's silent films out. Hopefully this deal is still in place.

cold war- that's hilarious ))

Wow, there are a couple really great Bogdanovich films which Criterion should put out: They All Laughed (incidentally one of Tarantino's Greatest of all time) and Saint Jack.

There is a DVD of Saint Jack out but it went OOP a long time ago and I'm not sure as to the quality of the transfer, so I'm sticking to my VHS copy.

By the way, maybe we should add Pandora's Box and Last Year at Marienbad to the DEAD LIST.

Last Year in Marienbad hasn't screened yet from Rialto.

How about Olympia?

Or is it still getting caught in the rights tug-of-war even after Riefenstahl's death? (Who holds the rights anyway? Riefenstahl's estate? The IOC? Or someone else?)

There's always Eric Rohmer Moral Tales (Chloe, claire's knee etc.)

And also no news on Von Sternberg's Shanghai Express.

I thought that The Game came out on Laserdisc from Criterion, but that they were unable to put out a Criterion DVD of the film. The one that pretty much everyone knows about is Eraserhead, but I think that there were some other films that were subpost to have came out at the end of their Laserdisc run or that they were going to try to work on at sometime but it never happened. I think Gone with the Wind was one of them???

Is it at least in Universal's radar to release a SE of The Game? Fer Christ's sake, All of Fincher's other work has been given the SE treatment (even Alien3 although I guess that was more Fox's thing). The Game is one of my personal favorites, and it'd be sad not to see someone do something with it.

Dodes Kaden. However though with the release of Tales of Hoffman there still may be hope for this and some of the other films mentioned waaayyy back like COusine Cousine and Cocktail Molotav.

Why are so many people on this forum interested in THE GAME? Really, it wasn't that great a film, and it was only mediocre Fincher. I don't think I'll ever NEED to see this film on DVD, let alone Criterion-style, like I do other films such as 8 1/2 or the upcoming Le Samourai and Ugetsu.

counpk39 wrote:
Eraserhead is not dead. It was released by David Lynch through his personal web site. He wanted to control its production and distribution. It's been available for a few years for a price of about $40 (90 autographed). [/url]


"Dead" is meant to say that it was going to be a Criterion title, but the deal fell through.

Eraserhead will be distributed on a larger market. There was news on the internet about a month or two ago, but forgot what the company was. There is info on his website on this.

I hope Pandora's Box isn't dead, but I'm not holding my breath.

Seven Samurai and High and Low. About a year back now, they announced the 2-disc editions of both of these with brand new and better transfers, at some press conference. I've been eagerly anticipating them for a while. I had heard December, but clearly that's not happening, and it looks like January has "The Bad Sleep Well" as the only new Kurosawa disc. I'm hoping February or March hold these two.

Also, Eisenstein: The Silent Years... where is that???

I've also been waiting for a reissue of High and Low, but unfortunately Criterion never really announced it. They merely mentioned it as one possibility of something that might benefit from an anarmorphic reissue.

Seperate from the re-issues, i'm guessing the next Kurosawa will be Drunken Angel and I Live in Fear, and possibly the limbo titles Dodes'ka-den, Sanshiro Sugata.

cinephrenic wrote:Seperate from the re-issues, i'm guessing the next Kurosawa will be Drunken Angel and I Live in Fear, and possibly the limbo titles Dodes'ka-den, Sanshiro Sugata.

I know that Sanshiro Sugata was once announced then taken off, is there a chance that the sequel be a bonus? It is definately Kurosawa's worst film, and is interesting to watch to see what an amazing director can do when not inspired at all.

They could definately release a sub par print of it on the second disc like they did with the French version of Mabuse.

Balzer

Criterion were going to release The Game on DVD ported over from their laserdisc; but I believe they lost the rights to the film (much like Spinal Tap, Silence of the Lambs etc. during the early days)

Anyways the rights I believe are with Polygram and they certainly don't deal with Criterion anymore....correct me if I'm wrong about this.

Still a great Fincher flick that should have a special edition out. Alas.

Anyways the rights I believe are with Polygram and they certainly don't deal with Criterion anymore....correct me if I'm wrong about this.

Polygram doesn't exist anymore since they merged with Universal back in 1999. So The Game is Universal property now.

So The Game is Universal property now.

That's a shame because even if it is re-issued it's not likely to be a great release.

Last thing I remember hearing on the subject of "The Game," taken from a U.K. interiew with David Fincher when the "Panic Room" SE was released:

There are rumours about you doing a DVD version of "The Game"...

No. It's funny. I got a call from Criterion [the specialist DVD producer in the US] and they left a message saying, "The Game?" I don't know what there would be to do, though. I don't think there's a lot of material.

So it was considered. But, if anything was done on it, we would have probably seen it by now.

-BJ

It looks like Universal are putting out a Special Edition of The Game pretty soon. There's a thread about it over at the Home Theater Forum. Extras have started getting clearances from the British Ratings Board and from what people are saying, it looks like many of the extras are ports from the Criterion laserdisc.

stroszeck wrote:...And also no news on Von Sternberg's Shanghai Express.

According to Robert Harris, Universal is planning a Dietrich "Franchise Collection" set which will probably include all her Von Sternberg films.