Criterion Corner

Scroll to Info & Navigation

Fake Criterion Cover: NETWORK (dir. Sidney Lumet) 1976 Designed by:  midnight marauder “We know things are bad - worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my Criterion Blu-rays and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’ Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad!” (via randydemelo)

Fake Criterion Cover: NETWORK (dir. Sidney Lumet) 1976

Designed by:  midnight marauder

“We know things are bad - worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my Criterion Blu-rays and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’ Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad!”

(via randydemelo)

‹ ›

CRITERION CORNER GIVEAWAY!!!!

hey there. it’s been a while since i’ve randomly given stuff away, and that doesn’t jive well with my philosophy that love and / or readership should be shamelessly bought. so in honor of the holiday season - and to make up for lost time / clear my shelf of some extra stuff i’ve got lying around - i thought i’d throw the biggest Criterion Corner giveaway yet. 

The Prize:

- DVD of Sidney Lumet’s 12 ANGRY MEN! 

- Blu-ray of Claude Chabrol’s LES COUSINS!

- 1 DVD box set of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s THREE COLORS! (opened but never watched and in mint condition… long story)

- 1 MYSTERY DVD!!!! (maybe a Criterion film, maybe just something I want to share with a stranger. definitely previously loved).

TO ENTER: just “like” and / or Re-blog this post. each note will count as a separate entry, so every fellow blogger can therefore submit a maximum total of 2 entries.

giveaway will be closed at 12 P.M. EST on Friday, 12/3/2011. 1 winner will be randomly selected from the notes. so the odds should be okay if not super awesome, but someone’s gonna get some great stuff for nothing. 

good luck, and thanks so, so much for reading the blog and my Criterion Corner column on movies.com!

UPDATE: GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED.

‹ ›

International Poster Tour: 12 ANGRY MEN (dir. Sidney Lumet) 1957

“Life is in their hands. Death is on their minds!” 

reading genius copy like that, it’s hard not to think that the art of designing a poster / promotional campaign isn’t dead. especially after that Clash of the Titans poster that featured a brown mess of CG tentacles above the tagline: “Titans Will Clash.” …that one hurt.

anyway, Sidney Lumet’s masterful 12 ANGRY MEN is out via Criterion on 11/22/11. for what it’s worth, the film’s geometric nuance and attention to spatial relations (and how they’re conflated with moral standings) make it great warm-up viewing for Polanski’s CARNAGE.

Art for Sale: 12 ANGRY MEN (dir. Sidney Lumet) 1957 Artist: Kevin Ang Lumet’s film is imminently set to join the Criterion Collection, and artist Kevin Ang has delivered a great and fiercely stylized new poster for it just in the nick of time. i stumbled upon this thing via Posterocalypse, which has this to say about it: “Kevin Ang, an artist I’m not really familiar with, has done a great job capturing the eclectic (and by “eclectic” I mean white male) group of angry jurors, complete with the circumstantial evidence in the forefront. His use of black and white is certainly a nice touch and his depiction of the righteous and reasonable juror number 8 (Henry Fonda) is appropriately inspired.” ditto! if you dig it, Ang’s poster can be yours for $30 via Kingdom of Nonsense.

Art for Sale: 12 ANGRY MEN (dir. Sidney Lumet) 1957

Artist: Kevin Ang

Lumet’s film is imminently set to join the Criterion Collection, and artist Kevin Ang has delivered a great and fiercely stylized new poster for it just in the nick of time. i stumbled upon this thing via Posterocalypse, which has this to say about it:

“Kevin Ang, an artist I’m not really familiar with, has done a great job capturing the eclectic (and by “eclectic” I mean white male) group of angry jurors, complete with the circumstantial evidence in the forefront. His use of black and white is certainly a nice touch and his depiction of the righteous and reasonable juror number 8 (Henry Fonda) is appropriately inspired.”

ditto! if you dig it, Ang’s poster can be yours for $30 via Kingdom of Nonsense.

‹ ›

NOVEMBER’S CRITERION LINE-UP ANNOUNCED!

november is the biggest month of the year for Criterion (it’s when they drop all their major holiday stocking-stuffing stuff), and it’s become something of a fall tradition for them to unload all the big guns just before black thursday. it’s now pretttyyy clear that 2011 is going to be no exception. after a few summer months loaded with as many as 8 releases, criterion is approaching november with a quality over quantity ethos, releasing some of the biggest titles in the company’s recent history, and realizing a lot of fans’ most feverish dreams in the process. November isn’t going to unseat August as my favorite Criterion month of the year, but it’s going to be pretty epic all the same.

hold on to your butts.

NEW STUFF:

#587-590 THREE COLORS TRILOGY (dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski) 1993-1994

Criterion has made sure that literally every person on earth knew that this release was coming, and oh my god is this not going to suck. three of the best films ever made — a trilogy forming the lucid backbone of Kieslowski’s work — finally given the treatment they so desperately deserve. you need this. and if you don’t know that you need this, then you need this even more. pretty much everything you need to know about modern living is contained in these films, and the cohering final moments of RED stand among the most profound interactions you’re ever likely to share with a moving image.

the set is loaded… cinema lessons with Kieslowski (not sure what that means, but i’m sure i want to), interviews with everyone, scene-specific commentary from Juliette Binoche, video essays, Kieslowski short film THE TRAM (watch it here!), short docs, a feature-length doc about Kieslowski, multi-interview programs… whatever, we’re done here. this is amazing. not sure what to make of the box art, but this must have been a bitch and a half to design, don’t want to go the Miramax route and be too obvious, so Criterion settled for a more elliptical design that speaks to Kieslowski’s obsession with the fluidity of existence. i can dig it.

#591 12 ANGRY MEN (dir. Sidney Lumet) 1957

um… excuse me? was i the only one who didn’t know about this? the courtroom drama to rule them all and in the darkness bind them, Sidney Lumet’s beloved ode to justice and dissent is one of those big fish i never thought criterion would even try and land, but here ya go. the disc includes the television version, a serious bevy of interviews, and a Lumet teleplay. and then there’s that cover… look at that thing: it’s got 12 men, all of them angry. perfect. garish and gorgeous and soon to be ours.

UPGRADES:

#65 RUSHMORE (dir. Wes Anderson) 1998

it’s RUSHMORE. it’s on blu-ray. it’s RUSHMORE on blu-ray. what more do you need from me?

same cover art as the DVD, but if it’s totally perfect, don’t fix it.

#216 THE RULES OF THE GAME (dir. Jean Renoir) 1939

i dunno how many times i can write “one of the best films ever made” without the hyperbole losing its punch, but, i mean… have fun disparaging the merits of Renoir’s masterpiece to anyone. Renoir in 1080p is one of those things that cineastes have been fantasizing about since the early days of the HD revolution, and for Criterion to be handling the up-conversion of the director’s seminal work is… they should have sent a poet. Criterion mentioned something about different supplements, but the extras seem unchanged to me (not a problem, as the Rules DVD was a mess of great features). the art is the thing, here… the fragmented, cerulean cover that adorned Criterion’s original release perfectly captured the film’s nature as a broken puzzle, the new design looks like a New Yorker cartoon (probably because it was drawn by Edward Sorel, a long-time contributor to The New Yorker). it certainly nails the film’s madcap spirit, a giddy farce that falls down the rabbit-hole. two covers, two extremes… can’t make up my mind on which i prefer just yet.

#261: FANNY AND ALEXANDER (dir. Ingmar Bergman) 1982

hey look - it’s one of the best films ever made! Bergman’s magnum opus is the most visually wondrous work of the great auteur’s career, its fantastical use of color making it an ideal choice for the HD boost. this is the Bergman film for people who don’t like Bergman, a wondrously transportive childhood fantasia for kids of all ages. Criterion has graciously included both the theatrical and 5.5 hour TV cut, the latter of which can hopefully now fit on a single disc.

ECLIPSE

Eclipse #30: SABU! 1937 - 1942

ah, Sabu. the cinema’s most beloved young Indian actor — at least until Dev Patel showed up to blankly stare Slumdog Millionaire into the annals of Oscar history — even today one word is all you need to introduce this unlikely screen icon. SABU! the set comes with Elephant Boy, The Drum, and The Jungle Book… basically, if there’s a classic movie with a half-naked kid riding an exotic animal of some kind, it’s here. fun fact: Sabu died of a heart attack at age 39 in Chatsworth, California. he grew up like Mowgli and died like an actuary. total bummer. great films, as the Eclipse set keeps on delivering the goods.