Get those wallets ready, fanatics!

I seem to come back to this every few months, but in the waning days of the DVD market, the Cap'n finally has the opportunity to show you just how tricky it is for a smaller distributor like Criterion to keep movies, let alone get the ones you really want them to carry*. For the first time that I can remember, Criterion sent out an email letting viewers know exactly which movies would be added to the dreaded "Out of Print" list.

The list is as follows:

Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard)
Carlos Saura’s Flamenco Trilogy (Eclipse Series 6)
Le corbeau (The Raven - Henri-Georges Clouzot)
Coup de torchon (Bertrand Tavernier)
Diary of a Country Priest (Robert Bresson)
The Fallen Idol (Carol Reed)
Forbidden Games (René Clément)
Gervaise (René Clément)
Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir)
Le jour se lève (Marcel Carné)
Last Holiday (Henry Cass)
Mayerling (Anatole Litvak)
The Orphic Trilogy (Jean Cocteau)
Peeping Tom (Michael Powell)
Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard)
Port of Shadows (Marcel Carné)
Quai des Orfèvres(Henri-Georges Clouzot)
The Small Back Room (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
The Tales of Hoffmann (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
Trafic (Jacques Tati)
Le trou (Jacques Becker)
Variety Lights (Federico Fellini and Alberto Lattuada)
The White Sheik (Federico Fellini)

Criterion is losing the rights to these films soon, and they'll revert to Lionsgate, who will release them in their own way as they see fit. I wouldn't be surprised to see several films by the same director released in "no extras" boxed sets, which Lionsgate has done recently with other "art" films. Or they might get Blu-Ray releases. It's hard to say, because as DVD winds down, studios are groping for whatever they can get in order to package quickly and get into stores.

As they mention in the email, Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion has another important distinction for any serious Criterion collector: in addition to being a terrific film, it bears the Spine Number 1. Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai is still Spine Number 2 (and Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes 3), but soon it's going to be tricky to begin your collection. I suspect, like many low numbered items, that Grand Illusion will become the expensive "collector's item" out of this batch, but it's a hefty list of movies to pick up quickly, if that's your steez.

In the mean time, if you were still wondering why your favorite random movie wasn't getting the full-on Spine Number treatment, they have their hands full hanging on to the films they have. Taxi Driver probably isn't going to be the kind of movie they can get ahold of. In fact, the HD release of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas has none of the Criterion supplements; just the barebones Universal dvd "spotlight on location" and some deleted scenes. But, if I may interject, 2010 is the 25th anniversary of Terry Gilliam's Brazil, so maybe Universal and Criterion could cut some kind of Blu-Ray deal. Maybe?

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Finally, I found at least half of this video - which posits the question "what if famous directors filmed the Super Bowl?" - amusing. The David Lynch joke has been done to death, but the video is totally worth it for the one-two punch of Jean-Luc Godard and Werner Herzog at the end.



If only they'd thrown in some footage from Natural Born Football Any Given Sunday and pretended it was Oliver Stone's "Super Bowl" footage.


* Yes, this goes back to the long-standing "Troll 2: The Criterion Collection" joke, among others, like Cannibal! The Musical.