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Criterion to Begin Releasing on Blu-ray in the UK
Posted March 4, 2016 06:27 PM by
The Criterion Collection has revealed that it will begin releasing its titles in the United Kingdom. The first batch of titles will arrive on the market on April 18.
Great news, I have a long Criterion wishlist which just keeps getting bigger and bigger because they're so expensive to import. There'll be limitations due to many of their titles being owned by other distributors in the UK, but it'll be interesting to see what they do release.
Wonderful news, not even diminished by the fact that I've long-since imported three of the opening titles anyway. Presumably these will be region B locked (o, the irony, the irony!)
The real trouble is suggested by PhillyQ above: nothing could be more desirable than UK releases of Criterion's elaborate editions of, say, The Leopard, Brazil, On the Waterfront and It's a Mad etc. World. But they're all available locally in miserable vanilla versions I don't imagine the dog-in-manger studio licensors will allow to be superseded. But we don't have Anatomy of a Murder, Autumn Sonata, Ikiru, My Own Private Idaho or Amarcord on BD at all here, to pick a few titles at random, so let's hope these duly materialise asap.....
So far it looks like a 'Criterion Range' distributed by Sony, according to the Amazon listings. Rights-wise, according to Kevin from Eureka they have already purchased a large catalogue of titles, some of which that Eureka themselves were after (and presumably Arrow were too). As for other titles coming from this new launch, it looks like we'll also be getting Only Angels Have Wings, Ivan's Childhood and L'Avventura too.
With the exchange rate so poor at the moment thanks to the whole Brexit Referendum shenanigans, this is definitely great news. Shame I've already got the four of those I want, but hopefully there will be more to follow, and not just from Sony's library.
Yes! Yes!! Yes!!! There are so many incredible Criterion releases I've wanted for years, particularly films by Wes Anderson, Mike Leigh, David Lynch, etc. Cassic titles like Paths Of Glory, Broadcast News, ¡Átame!, etc. And far superior releases of films like Y Tu Mamá También, Gilliam, Goddard and Kurosawa films, and essentially every release done by Criterion is superior to another studio's counterpart, so this is huge news for me. Thank you so much Criterion
This does indeed seem to be a primarily Columbia/Sony initiative in the UK, at least to begin with. It'll be VERY interesting to see if other studios play ball, like Fox, which might then bring us first UK BD releases of films such as Bigger Than Life, Broadcast News, The Rose and the new 4K restoration of The Innocents, which is vastly better than the speckly extant release by the BFI.
@sjt Yeah, although Kevin from Eureka mentioned that there are a ton of other titles that Criterion got a hold of (that they, Eureka, were planning on releasing) so I imagine that there's a great deal of non-Columbia/Sony stuff there too. That's rather unfortunate for Eureka, but I can't wait to see what else Criterion is planning for the UK.
Now, now Lino11, you should know you can't make jokes in a Criterion thread. No humor detectors here. Differing opinions aren't viewed kindly either, as those two unfortunate blokes at the top learned.
It's going to be different seeing those Criterion boxes with the big ugly ratings symbols in the lower left corner.
But as long as they release Armageddon soon, I'm great.
I really want those Harold Lloyd BDs, and we (the UK) could do with better transfers for Seven Samurai and the Chaplin features...but I hope this doesn't hurt Eureka/MoC or Arrow.
This is brilliant news. In for "Macbeth" and "Tootsie". Can't wait for the next batch. Hoping for the Wes Anderson and "Brazil" in the future at some point.
This is where bad business gets its name. Would one not think that it would actually make the most sense for Criterion to make their discs Region Free, where appropriate? Why make two sets when one will do? Don't get me wrong, I love the work of Criterion, but sometimes???
I noticed that Ivan's Childhood (by Sony/Criterion) in the UK is listed as region-free.
by the way, the Artificial Eye blu-ray is still listed on Amazon.
Fantastic news, obviously, and it'll be exciting to see what they're able to come up with. Some people are being a mite too optimistic, though -- there's such a thing as "rights", and just because Criterion have turned up here doesn't mean they necessarily get to re-release stuff like Seven Samurai or Brazil just because. (That feels like a painfully obvious point, but apparently it isn't.)
Nice news, but I imagine due to licensing restrictions that many of the existing releases will ever see a release over here (or would be a long way off as we're pretty far behind as it stands!)
This month I decided to buy a region free oppo player..I'm glad and very relieved that I didn't. About 90 percent of the titles I was planning on buying in region A are from Criterion. Of course it comes down to how many of their titles they will be able to release in the UK due to rights being spread around, we will just have to wait and see.
Boy, you said it Tom Servo. This site is ruled by the childish of fanboys. I still can't believe they have a rating for comments. talk about ass-kissing, this place is the worst. In the early days I used to use the links here to get to the deals at Amazon, but not any,ore. I come here to find the deals and then make sure I go to Amazon through some other site.
cnow777, can't you see the irony in your post? anyway, this is great news. With Arrow and now these guys, looking forward to seeing what we get down the line.
Hopefully it's just a little kneejerking in regards to hurting UK established entities like MoC. As an American who went region free to specifically get the superior encoded MoC titles over Criterion's, I can't help but be somewhat concerned. But I doubt it's much to worry over. MoC continues to release the more interesting films, while Criterion keeps botching encodes for the few interesting films they've recently released. I expect more of the same in the future.
@thrashbat, all the more reason MoC and other UK labels to following the example of Hannibal Barca and take the fight to Criterion's home turf, snatching up rights there and undercutting with inexpensive pricing.
I picked up The Curious Case of Benjamin Button today, which happens to be my very first Criterion in my collection. I didn't even know that the UK didn't have any Criterion release until now, as king of steelbook releases, I thought they'd at least have Criterion collection of their own (shocking that the US have something that the UK didn't blu-ray wise lol). Congrats to UK with this news!!!
i don't get the hype and the hurray atmosphere.... Criterion UK will only get a tiny fraction of the Criterion USA output + the price for the releases is just way too high
Solaris arrives in the UK on 23rd May as part of Artificial Eye's complete Tarkovsky release. There will be no other.
From the amount of cyberprint this has generated, it does seem clear that, initially at least, this is exclusively a releasing deal facilitated by Columbia/Sony, with no other studio's product involved. Is this how Criterion proposes to crack the UK market? Are there plans for future releases that don't involve Sony-controlled titles? How frequently are they proposing to release in future? I should have thought that all these were questions that would have been answered upfront, rather than left hanging in the air. So I'll ask: what's the business plan here?
@sjt, I hope that edition does not have strong saturation.
@Tiger Tanaka, welcome to the wonderful world of Criterion pricing. That title is twice the price of the Canadian price which in turn is twice the US price. From what little I can tell the Region A Arrows are more expensive then Arrow's UK releases.
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