Holy Smokes - November Criterion! (1 Viewer)

Wow November is normally a good month for Criterion but this one takes the cake.

1. Berlin Alexanderplatz - Fassbinder
2. Sawdust & Tinsel - Bergman
3. Drunken Angels - Kurosawa
4. Lady Vanishes - Hitchcock

What a great slew of films - definitely looking forward to the Fassbinder and Bergman discs.

http://www.criterion.com/asp/coming_soon.asp

Maybe a re-release of The 39 Steps is coming soon too?

Lady Vanishes??

Is this a new transfer?

What to do now... Do I unload my old copy on eBay and try and pull in some $$ asap. Or will I depreciate the value of the orig. box set.. Should I sell that outright? What to do w/ the remaining films... Will they be reissued at some point by Criterion?

A new box set eventually?

Holy Smokes is right.

Lady Vanishes is one of my all time favorites, and is long overdue for a new transfer.

And as a nice bonus, Criterion thought to throw in some unreleased BERGMAN, KUROSAWA, and an extra 15 hours of FASSBINDER?!

Criterion deserves some serious kudos. If I had their address I might send some champagne.

That's quite the list of big directors right there.

The Fassbinder release is the most interesting to me. More Bergman is always welcome. I wonder if Criterion pushed up the Bergman release after he passed away.

Wow, that's quite a month! Criterion's page says that The Lady Vanishes is being released with a new transfer, and one of the extras is a whole other movie, Crook's Tour, one of the films where the stuffy cricket-obsessed characters of Caldecott and Charters re-appeared on-screen. I'll certainly be eager to see that one. I'll randomly pine here for the possibility that Criterion might release Carol Reed's Night Train to Munich at some point (I have no idea who owns the rights), which is the most famous re-appearance of those two characters, a great wartime comedy-thriller also written by Gilliat and Launder.

I've been wanting to see Drunken Angel for a long time, so that one is very welcome. And in a Bergman theatrical retrospective that was touring the U.S. a few years ago, the best "new-to-me" movie I saw was Sawdust and Tinsel (under its U.S. title of "The Naked Night"). I'm definitely excited to pick it up. The print I saw of it was pretty beat up, so it'll be great to see in a nice transfer from good elements.

If I remember right, Lady Vanishes and 39 Steps never went out of print, but the others (Notorious, Spellbound, and Rebecca) did. So this might not be any indication of any rights reverting back to Criterion on those three OOP titles.

Wow, very excited to see 'Lady Vanishes' being revisited. If I recall correctly, the previous disc was the slightly cut US print...hopefully this will be the original British version.

And hopefully more early Hitchcocks will follow...

This thread is useless without pics!

What a killer month.

Sawdust and Tinsel - one of my favorite Bergmans, definite buy
Drunken Angel - been wanting to see this for AGES, definite buy
The Lady Vanishes - amazing extras, definite double-dip
Berlin Alexanderplatz - not a huge Fassbinder fan, but I'm very interested - rental

My wallet thanks me for not buying the Fassbinder.

Love the Fassbinder and Bergman cover.

Criterion really did nice work on all the Bergman covers in their collection. Simple, yet elegant.

They've already indicated that the missing shot will be restored in the new edition.

Finally Berlin Alexanderplatz!!! Great cover, but it's ruined a bit by the Criterion logo.

Very nice news. Sawdust and Tinsel may be one of my least favorite of Bergman's films, but I'll still be buying it. Seeing it again may give me a new appreciation, as well. Gotta love how Criterion already call him a 'late master'

I've never had a chance to see Drunken Angel, but I've really wanted to. Nice to see Richie's doing a commentary as well. Great artwork.

The Lady Vanishes is my favorite Hitch and one of my very favorite films, so I'll be double-dipping. The extra film sounds good too.

I'll give Alexanderplatz a rent, surely, since I'm not a big Fassbinder fan. $125 MSRP too, eh? That comes to around $81 at DVDPlanet with the 35% discount. Oof.

it's always good to have more Kurosawa & Mifune

Criterion are also rumoured to be preparing Bergman's brilliant TV miniseries 'Face To Face' (from the mid-70's) for what would be a very welcome DVD release. It has what was arguably Liv Ullmann's greatest performance for Bergman. Apparently this was one of the titles they obtained from Paramount in their recent licensing deal.

That's good to know since those are the two titles most in need of new transfers as the original DVD's are among the first generation Crit. releases and even the cover art is pretty horrendous. It will be nice to be able to replace them.

I'm thinking of hanging on to the remaining three oop Hitchcocks, ditching the box itself and unloading the 39 Steps and Lady Vanishes on eBay while I can still rake in some decent dough for 'em... Maybe I should wait to have these in hand though.

Another month where all 4 releases are must buys for me. Must be the most expensive Criterion month cause even with the 35% DVDPlanet discount it is going to work out to over $150 for the Criterion releases alone. OUCH !!

The only bummer is that all 4 releases will be picture-boxed. I get a little annoyed each time I see a new release that is picture-boxed (it's amazing that a company like Criterion would do that to cater to people with the type of TVs that are fast becoming obsolete and that too so many years after the DVD format was introduced).

-D