The Rock/Armageddon - Why the Criterion treatment? (1 Viewer)

[Michael Reuben]

As noted earlier in this thread, Criterion did The Rock on LD before it even started releasing DVDs.

M.

 

[richardWI]

Gotta get seed money for DVD production somewhere!

 

[Michael Reuben]

That might apply to Armageddon, but when The Rock was released as a Criterion LD, most content providers (including Criterion) were still taking a wait-and-see attitude toward DVD. Criterion's market was still a niche market of film enthusiasts who owned LD players and were willing to spend $100 on a single title. Whatever Criterion's motivations for the initial venture with Bay, the chronology and the economics make it highly unlikely that it was part of master plan to fund a DVD startup.

M.

 

[Ernest Rister]

"Prince of Tides, nominated for 7 Oscars, isn't exactly in the same category as a summer blockbuster."

I was not speaking of "summer blockbusters" -- Bram Stoker's Dracula, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Prince of Tides were all released in the Fall or early winter prior to the Academy deadline.

I was speaking of films that received Criterion treatment that were not necessarily "acclaimed art house" films heralded by the intellegentsia. Prince of Tides may have received seven oscar nominations, but with every day that passes, that film is heading increasingly towards the same dustbin of forgotten cinema as many other "Oscar nominated" films of yore. In it's own way, The Prince of Tides is just as much a form of empty Hollywood studio system porn as Armageddon.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

This is getting off-topic, but I don't think of Chainsaw as the genesis of the "teen slasher" genre - I DO agree that Halloween is, though. If you look at all the entries in that genre that came out after 1978, they look an awful lot more like Halloween than they do Chainsaw. The latter was a horror flick, but not a "slasher". But it's a sticky issue, so I can see why some might view Chainsaw in that manner...

 

[JulianK]

The release of Armageddon and The Rock doesn't seem to be so odd when you remember that there was a Criterion LD of Ghostbusters, too!

 

[Chris Rein]

Why Criterion continues to exist is beyond me.

They were noted for their laserdiscs as being full of features and other things that you couldn't get anywhere else. It's so random what they put out, and if you ask me, should really be used for classics only (sort of like if AFI were to do their own disc thing, this would be it).

 

[Kevin M]

Why do they exist? Name another (dvd) studio that would have given us a two disc SE of Naked Lunch or Videodrome or Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas? None of the studios who released these films would have given these less than successful films this kind of treatment....Criterion does. Blue Underground and the like are stuck in the realm of genera....Criterion isn't, they have a much more far reaching brush then any of the competition.
They bring us Classic & Modern "Classic" drama, horror, comedy & obscure (and not so obscure) foreign fair is why they exist...they exist for us.


And God bless them.