Criterion Announces First Batch of Blu-ray Releases (Including Bottle Rocket!)
Now that Blu-ray has officially vanquished its sworn enemy from store shelves, there are more and more distributors deciding to take the plunge and bring their releases into the world of high-definition. This week one of the most revered names in the biz, Criterion, have confirmed that they will also be bringing their pristine Criterion Collection catalogue to Blu-ray starting this fall.
Here is an excerpt from the latest Criterion newsletter announcing their plans:
“Our first Blu-ray discs are coming! We’ve picked a little over a dozen titles from the collection for Blu-ray treatment, and we’ll begin rolling them out in October. These new editions will feature glorious high-definition picture and sound, all the supplemental content of the DVD releases, and they will be priced to match our standard-def editions.
Here’s what’s in the pipeline:
The Third Man
Bottle Rocket
Chungking Express
The Man Who Fell to Earth
The Last Emperor
El Norte
The 400 Blows
Gimme Shelter
The Complete Monterey Pop
Contempt
Walkabout
For All Mankind
The Wages of Fear”
And did you notice Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket listed among the first batch of titles? I assume this means we can probably expect it to come before the end of the year. I’m totally stoked for that. Now all I have to do is find a way to stop buying all the massively discounted HD-DVDs and spend my money on a Blu-ray player instead! (Thanks to Michael for the heads up.)
Comments (6)
Jesus– “The Third Man” is my favorite movie. I bought the original criterion disc, I bought the criterion Re-release, I even have the criterion Laserdisc. Now this comes out– someone at Criterion is sending their kid through college on my Third Man purchases alone.
It will look mighty sweet in High-Def though.
I’m interested in the “Bottle Rocket” release, too. I hope it contains the original short film.
Posted by Jon Rocks on May 8th, 2008I’m pumped. Totally pumped up. Pumping.
Posted by Jay C. on May 8th, 2008I wonder if they are going to have the same licensing issues as before when they switched from Laser Disc to DVD??? My guess is we probably won’t see 99% of the current collection…
Posted by Mike Marshall on May 8th, 2008Probably not Mike, but I’m sure we’ll see their biggest sellers like the Kurosawa films and stuff like that will be on Blu. I’m also pretty sure that Criterion won’t be re-releasing the other Anderson films since that was a one off kind of deal. Hopefully the right holders will release them with the Criterion extras.
The best thing is that the Blu Ray’s will be the same price as the regular SD DVDs.
Posted by Swarez on May 8th, 2008Late last year Anderson already admitted he is working on the special feature for new bottle rocket release
If they can make a feature long documentary to record their journey of independent filmmaking from short film to feature film, like Kevin Smith did for his CLERKS X DVD (called SCREWBALL EFFECTS,right?), that will be AWESOME!
BTW: my company’s working cloth is just the same as Dignan’s so called “yellow jumping suit”!
Posted by Xu on May 8th, 2008Alright! I’ll be ready to buy em up when they release the Ozu collection in 5 years.
Posted by joe on May 9th, 2008Leave a Reply