CC40

[hearthesilence]

Including forty already extant discs is vastly easier and cheaper than specifically authoring and QCing forty new ones, so the price tag for a project along the latter ones would be (even more) eye-watering.

And of course a much bigger commercial risk from Criterion's standpoint, as I'm sure we all have quite a few of the titles on zedz' list in perfectly good Blu-rays already - I definitely have Ordet, Closely Watched Trains, Loves of a Blonde, Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, Knife in the Water, Salvatore Giuliano, The Testament of Dr Mabuse, Early Summer, Tout va bien, Kanal, Burden of Dreams, Shoot the Piano Player, La Bête Humaine, The Spirit of the Beehive and Cria Cuervos, and quite a few others are also available. And very possibly with better encoding than Criterion would give them!

This too. Again, as much as I'd welcome a giant box set of new-to-HD titles, even if there were no alternatives from overseas boutiques, there's no getting around the fact that it would be an extremely costly risk. And again, it would be far more aggravating to have a much-coveted title only be available in an expensive box set filled with movies I already have or don't want - it's so ridiculously unfriendly to consumers, nobody should be suggesting that.

[tenia]

Again, as the set stands today, it perfectly fits Criterion standards of making no wave when it comes to this. It has no exclusive, no new disc, nothing that might get them flack because it'd be seen as forcing to buy a whole set just for a few discs.

And that's fine. I don't think putting exclusives in there would be a good idea, for reasons others have already expressed (hell, we ranted about the Peter Strickland set overlaps, and it's a way cheaper set).

But it also means this is a purely repacking set, nothing more, and as such, it's totally boring and un-eventful, which clashes a bit with the marketing they're putting it in.

It's also, as others wrote, too big of a set to feel immediately who it's aiming at. Many people would be better off smoothing out purchases of individual releases over a year / 2 sales. Even at half price, $400 is a big ticket to spend in 1 time.

And, now that I'm thinking about it, the set being a repacking of in-print discs is certainly why it's not cheaper : because it would devalue the individual releases. But it makes this set feeling very expensive when compared to the other biggest Criterion sets : the 39-movies Bergman set is $300 (MSRP), the 20 Varda is $250, the 25 Zatoichi is $200.

[pzadvance]

But it makes this set feeling very expensive when compared to the other biggest Criterion sets : the 39-movies Bergman set is $300 (MSRP), the 20 Varda is $250, the 25 Zatoichi is $200.

That’s a fascinating comparison point and it is definitely mind boggling they thought they could charge over 2x what they charge for the Bergman box for this set!

[yoloswegmaster]

The Bergman set contains 30 discs with 5 different licensors, while this set has 49 discs included with 26 different licensors being attached. So I would imagine that the cost would have to be higher for this set in order to pay whatever royalties that some of these companies are asking for.

[andyli]

This is practically just a bundle. Do they really need to pay anything extra to the licensors?

[yoloswegmaster]

It all depends on the licensor. I doubt they would be able to bundle a package like this without notifying the respective rightholders.

[tenia]

The Bergman set contains 30 discs with 5 different licensors, while this set has 49 discs included with 26 different licensors being attached. So I would imagine that the cost would have to be higher for this set in order to pay whatever royalties that some of these companies are asking for.

The Bergman set offered several Blu-ray upgrades and movies that were new on disc (DVD included) within the collection, several of them still not available outside of this set. A few new extras were produced, some others were included, new writings commissionned, older discs were re-encoded (like Fanny and Alexander). It might not be a good reference-point (like that famous Herzog BFI set), but it wasn't cheap either.

This one is "merely" taking existing discs and bundling them together, some of them having appeared almost years ago and, I suppose, having reached breaking point years ago (like 8 1/2, Naked, Sweet Smell of Success, The Battle of Algiers, House or The Red Shoes). They're rinsed discs, really. The average release date of these is 9.5 years ago. The median is 10.2 years. The most recent disc is almost 3 years old (Ratcatcher). 27 of these releases will be 9+ years old. 15 are 11+ years old !

And since we're not talking about a label having to negociate with other video labels to bd the one doing the set instead of them, since these movies on BD are clearly only coming from Criterion, it's not even like those Gaumont/TF1 set we got in France. I'm not sure how Criterion's contracts are, but this shouldn't be different than when they did their Bergman or Varda sets after having released some of the movies individually. The rightholders will get their contractual share, yes, but nothing more, so there shouldn't be anything specific.

Also, this set will technically bring these releases to the lowest they'll ever be ($10 a piece during the B&N sales). Criterion certainly know this, and it's hard to assume it's expensive for some reason yet will bring these discs to the cheapest individually-available within the whole collection (cheaper even than the barebones discs, that are $15 during the sales).

So the equation doesn't make this argument work to me.

On a different note : the Bergman set was bringing (except for a couple of cases) the most up-to-date technical presentations. It's the opposite with this set, since it'll instead re-use existing discs, and their 10+ years old presentations (like 8 1/2, Naked or 3 Women), though it's not uninteresting to notice this set has 0 movie that was upgraded to UHD from a new 4K master (with the BD staying old, like the 3 Colors trilogy or Days of Heaven).

[agnamaracs]

Did Criterion do any other giant, non-themed boxes besides this one and Essential Art House? I thought they did at least one more. (But I also thought the Janus box and the EAH box were different things, so...)

[Matt]

It was not giant, but they did a box celebrating Rialto Pictures

[rrenault]

I never understood why for titles like 8 1/2 they didn’t just use the new master for future standalone pressings.

[tenia]

It'd be deemed an upgrade, which would need to be a dedicated release for Criterion (eating up a monthly slot), because that's how they operate.

[dwk]

Allmost no one would make a silent running change to just upgrade a master. Can you imagine the hell they'd cause, the returns and exchanges they would have to deal with when people found out.

[rrenault]

To be fair, Criterion would regularly upgrade titles from non-anamorphic to anamorphic DVD back in the day, so remastering a Blu-ray title, especially if it’s a significant improvement, shouldn’t be any bigger a deal. It’s not something they should feel the need to do regularly, but for certain “legacy” titles like 8 1/2 it couldn’t hurt in my opinion.

[dwk]

That is a little different, because they almost always did whole new editions with new extras for those titles they upgraded to anamorphic. The two exceptions that leap to mind are Charade and Brazil, which were upgraded with no new extras.

In the Blu-ray era, they've upgraded two Blu-ray with transfers, Monterey Pop and, when it came back into print, Pierrot le fou two UHDs have new Blu-rays Le cercle rouge and In the Mood for Love. And the Bergman box has a number of different transfers compared to the solo releases and, of course Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love in he WKW set.

I assume the upgrade plan for the legacy titles is UHD, and I agree they probably should include the upgraded Blu-ray in those releases, but I'm not sure solo Blu-ray upgrades are really going to sell enough to justify releases instead of UHDs.