Spændende læsning fra Criterions chef Peter Becker. Hvis det er postet andetsteds beklager jeg.
My name is Peter Becker. I'm the president of Criterion. Thanks for taking the time to write in.
You're right to call the Criterion schedule a juggling act, and juggling this year's schedule has been more challenging than any since laserdisc days. I understand some of the frustration you're feeling about the balance of new and classic titles, especially in the later 2009 Blu-ray schedule. Making the Criterion schedule is always a series of impossible compromises, and in the end, some people, some years, are going to end up unhappy. Clearly this was not a good year for you. I'm sorry about that. I know it may not solve anything, but I thought you might appreciate a quick look at some of the factors that came into play with this year's schedule.
For what it's worth, we've spent much more time on classic film this year than our announced schedule shows. The single most time consuming and expensive mastering project in the history of the company was Kobayashi's THE HUMAN CONDITION -- that is, until we started work on Rossellini's War Trilogy, which is still not finished. We had originally hoped to have the Rossellini set ready for October release, then November, then December. Ironically the easiest of the masters, the 2007 restoration of ROME, OPEN CITY, is the one that is giving us the most trouble. PAISAN, which has never been available in a watchable video version, has taken us three straight months of digital restoration, an amount of time and an expense that will probably never come back, but the film will finally, for the first time, look good -- still damaged, but with a beautiful black and white image that will be a revelation to anyone who has ever seen the old tapes and 16 mm prints that are still in circulation. Our tech director is about to make his third trip to Italy on this project, just to try to straighten out the last master, next week.
You also mention STAGECOACH. We never announced it for December, but it's true that we had hoped to release it then. Again mastering turned out to be more complicated than we anticipated. The original negative of the film is lost, and we have been evaluating a number of different elements. We are now working closely with UCLA's restoration team to evaluate all available elements and create a new HD master, starting from scratch. The bad news is that it's taking a long time. The good news is that in the time we've been working on the master, we've had the opportunity to unearth some interesting supplemental materials, so the edition will be all the better for it. That said, it's frustrating that it didn't come out -- the cover's been on the wall of our office for weeks now, and we're looking forward to making it a part of the collection.
Those two big classics that we've been hard at work on were never announced, which helped to give disporportionate weight to the contemporary releases of this fall/winter. I can understand why you would think we were stepping back from classics in favor of more contemporary films, but in fact, the opposite has been true. Our Blu-ray schedule has been heavily weighted toward international classics with THE SEVENTH SEAL, PLAYTIME, WAGES OF FEAR, THE THIRD MAN, REPULSION, 400 BLOWS, THE LAST METRO, IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES, LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD. And when you throw in our DVD schedule with Z, JEANNE DIELMAN, 2 OR 3 THINGS..., HUMAN CONDITION, MY DINNNER WITH ANDRE, the Imamura box, Painlevé, etc., I don't think we pulled any punches or spared any expense where classics were concerned. Integrating Blu-ray production into our workflow has been challenging in its own right. Adding an existing DVD upgrade is about equivalent to adding a new DVD production to the schedule, at least where our technical team is concerned, and that is where our capacity is most constrained. New Blu-rays released day and date with the DVD editions are marginally more efficient, and many of our customers are avidly urging us not to release DVD-only editions anymore, but each simultaneous release we do is one more DVD catalog classic we aren't revisiting that month. Right now we're struggling to bring our Blu-ray capacity up from one to two a month to three or four. As our capacity increases, it will be easier to keep a balance, but in the meantime it's an inexact science.
The other title that you say you were expecting, but which we didn't officially announce for December, is CHE. It's coming, and as you can imagine there's a wealth of great content getting developed. We wanted to be ready for December, but Steven Soderbergh needed time to reconstruct some deleted scenes, and we were also able, in what we think is going to be a controversial coup, to persuade Che biographer Jon Lee Anderson to do commentaries on both films, but he also needed more time to prepare. In short, it became clear that if we delayed the release a month we would be able to make a much better set. That's a trade we will always make, even if it means we don't get the benefit of sales in the holiday season, and we think that's the kind of decision our collectors would want us to make.
To touch briefly on some of the other things you mention: more Eclipse is a goal for us too. Again, this is a capacity issue. Each disc in a set represents multiple passes for our QC department, and when we're working on large-scale projects like Rossellini, HUMAN CONDITION, or the Imamura box, that has a tendency to cramp our capacity to handle multi-disc Eclipse sets at the same time. Still, we're proud of what we've been able to do in Eclipse this year, but we are definitely looking forward to getting more out next year. As for "two-release months," by which I assume we're referring to December, I've already mentioned that we intended to have STAGECOACH and CHE ready for December as well but we delayed them to make them better rather than sooner. That said, when one of the two releases is a 25-disc set, that also factors in. I'm sorry you don't like the Kurosawa box idea, but we felt that his centennial was an important opportunity to draw attention to his monumental body of work, and so far we've had some very positive feedback from people who have not been as diligently collecting his work as you have.
I don't expect anything I've said will change your mind about our slate, but I hope at least you'll know that we have no desire to dismiss your concerns. We do value feedback from our customers, especially longtime supporters like you, and we hope we'll earn your loyalty again in 2010.
All the best, Peter Becker
Wishlist hos Axelmusic: http://www.axelmusic.com/wishlist.php?uid=11140
"Wisely, Warner doesn't try to disguise the film's age or give it a "facelift" by smoothing out and doctoring up the image. The studio merely provides the sharpest, cleanest, most balanced, and best color-timed picture it can, given the elements it had to work with."
Tror måske jeg har postet det før, men play.com har 2 blu-ray for £18, hvor titlerne bliver nedskrevet til £9 pr stk = 72kr = under bagatelgrænse og ingen fare for told. http://www.play.com/DVD/Blu-ray/3-/434371/2-/Promo...
#1691 Notional 15 år siden
Den kommer 6.10. ;)
#1692 evermind 15 år siden
#1693 filmz-Bruce 15 år siden
My name is Peter Becker. I'm the president of Criterion. Thanks for
taking the time to write in.
You're right to call the Criterion schedule a juggling act, and
juggling this year's schedule has been more challenging than any since
laserdisc days. I understand some of the frustration you're feeling
about the balance of new and classic titles, especially in the later
2009 Blu-ray schedule. Making the Criterion schedule is always a
series of impossible compromises, and in the end, some people, some
years, are going to end up unhappy. Clearly this was not a good year
for you. I'm sorry about that. I know it may not solve anything, but I
thought you might appreciate a quick look at some of the factors that
came into play with this year's schedule.
For what it's worth, we've spent much more time on classic film this
year than our announced schedule shows. The single most time consuming
and expensive mastering project in the history of the company was
Kobayashi's THE HUMAN CONDITION -- that is, until we started work on
Rossellini's War Trilogy, which is still not finished. We had
originally hoped to have the Rossellini set ready for October release,
then November, then December. Ironically the easiest of the masters,
the 2007 restoration of ROME, OPEN CITY, is the one that is giving us
the most trouble. PAISAN, which has never been available in a
watchable video version, has taken us three straight months of digital
restoration, an amount of time and an expense that will probably never
come back, but the film will finally, for the first time, look good --
still damaged, but with a beautiful black and white image that will be
a revelation to anyone who has ever seen the old tapes and 16 mm
prints that are still in circulation. Our tech director is about to
make his third trip to Italy on this project, just to try to
straighten out the last master, next week.
You also mention STAGECOACH. We never announced it for December, but
it's true that we had hoped to release it then. Again mastering turned
out to be more complicated than we anticipated. The original negative
of the film is lost, and we have been evaluating a number of different
elements. We are now working closely with UCLA's restoration team to
evaluate all available elements and create a new HD master, starting
from scratch. The bad news is that it's taking a long time. The good
news is that in the time we've been working on the master, we've had
the opportunity to unearth some interesting supplemental materials, so
the edition will be all the better for it. That said, it's frustrating
that it didn't come out -- the cover's been on the wall of our office
for weeks now, and we're looking forward to making it a part of the
collection.
Those two big classics that we've been hard at work on were never
announced, which helped to give disporportionate weight to the
contemporary releases of this fall/winter. I can understand why you
would think we were stepping back from classics in favor of more
contemporary films, but in fact, the opposite has been true. Our
Blu-ray schedule has been heavily weighted toward international
classics with THE SEVENTH SEAL, PLAYTIME, WAGES OF FEAR, THE THIRD
MAN, REPULSION, 400 BLOWS, THE LAST METRO, IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES,
LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD. And when you throw in our DVD schedule with Z,
JEANNE DIELMAN, 2 OR 3 THINGS..., HUMAN CONDITION, MY DINNNER WITH
ANDRE, the Imamura box, Painlevé, etc., I don't think we pulled any
punches or spared any expense where classics were concerned.
Integrating Blu-ray production into our workflow has been challenging
in its own right. Adding an existing DVD upgrade is about equivalent
to adding a new DVD production to the schedule, at least where our
technical team is concerned, and that is where our capacity is most
constrained. New Blu-rays released day and date with the DVD editions
are marginally more efficient, and many of our customers are avidly
urging us not to release DVD-only editions anymore, but each
simultaneous release we do is one more DVD catalog classic we aren't
revisiting that month. Right now we're struggling to bring our Blu-ray
capacity up from one to two a month to three or four. As our capacity
increases, it will be easier to keep a balance, but in the meantime
it's an inexact science.
The other title that you say you were expecting, but which we didn't
officially announce for December, is CHE. It's coming, and as you can
imagine there's a wealth of great content getting developed. We wanted
to be ready for December, but Steven Soderbergh needed time to
reconstruct some deleted scenes, and we were also able, in what we
think is going to be a controversial coup, to persuade Che biographer
Jon Lee Anderson to do commentaries on both films, but he also needed
more time to prepare. In short, it became clear that if we delayed the
release a month we would be able to make a much better set. That's a
trade we will always make, even if it means we don't get the benefit
of sales in the holiday season, and we think that's the kind of
decision our collectors would want us to make.
To touch briefly on some of the other things you mention: more Eclipse
is a goal for us too. Again, this is a capacity issue. Each disc in a
set represents multiple passes for our QC department, and when we're
working on large-scale projects like Rossellini, HUMAN CONDITION, or
the Imamura box, that has a tendency to cramp our capacity to handle
multi-disc Eclipse sets at the same time. Still, we're proud of what
we've been able to do in Eclipse this year, but we are definitely
looking forward to getting more out next year. As for "two-release
months," by which I assume we're referring to December, I've already
mentioned that we intended to have STAGECOACH and CHE ready for
December as well but we delayed them to make them better rather than
sooner. That said, when one of the two releases is a 25-disc set,
that also factors in. I'm sorry you don't like the Kurosawa box idea,
but we felt that his centennial was an important opportunity to draw
attention to his monumental body of work, and so far we've had some
very positive feedback from people who have not been as diligently
collecting his work as you have.
I don't expect anything I've said will change your mind about our
slate, but I hope at least you'll know that we have no desire to
dismiss your concerns. We do value feedback from our customers,
especially longtime supporters like you, and we hope we'll earn your
loyalty again in 2010.
All the best,
Peter Becker
#1694 McPeter 15 år siden
http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/1382/wizardofoz.ht...
"Wisely, Warner doesn't try to disguise the film's age or give it a "facelift" by smoothing out and doctoring up the image. The studio merely provides the sharpest, cleanest, most balanced, and best color-timed picture it can, given the elements it had to work with."
#1695 chronaden 15 år siden
£5 rabat med denne kode: AFFWELCOME5
En del gode Bluray tilbud imellem, og med den kode = Excellent!
#1696 filmz-Bruce 15 år siden
[url=
#1697 evermind 15 år siden
#1698 chronaden 15 år siden
#1699 filmz-Utyske 15 år siden
Takker, jeg fandt lige et par film jeg ikke gad at betale alverden for. :)
#1700 McPeter 15 år siden
http://www.play.com/DVD/Blu-ray/3-/434371/2-/Promo...
Derudover har de en voucher til forudbestilling af Braveheart på £2 - tast BRAVE2, så koster den kun £13:
http://www.play.com/DVD/Blu-ray/4-/11500859/Braveh...
£2 voucher gælder også:
Fight Club: FCLUB2
Elektra: ELEK2
Walk the Line: WALK2
Doomsday Collection: DOOMS2
Rocky Complete Saga: ROCKY2