The Criterion Channel
 

https://i.postimg.cc/7Ybd4kCD/cc2.jpg

The Criterion Channel is one of my mainstays and since I've subscribed (from its launch) I've been on the lookout for Joan Crawford flicks. It's an weird obsession I've got with her. I don't think she's particularly hot (not my type anyway) and I certainly don't want to be her but that magnetism keeps me intrigued even in decidedly bad movies. So when I saw this on the channel today I flipped:

:D

I'll be distracted for days.

If you're subscriber what are you watching (or have you watched) on the channel lately?

I love Criterion. Didn't know they had a channel.

Went to see what is the price, says "unavailable in your region". Oh well.

Of course, that sucks. There are ways to watch it that I won’t go into here but if you do a little investigating (and some trial and error) you may find a way to watch. Meantime, if you have Amazon Prime, type “Criterion” in the search engine on PrimeVideo and you’ll get a nice sampling of titles on the CC label.

Joan Crawford you say?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyJUiDwZD14

I looked into the channel, but they don't have They Call Me Trinity, or even Evil Roy Slade, so right off the get-go it's no bueno. I could probably find something I like though if I searched for more than 30 seconds. lol

Not that kind of collection...;)

No Johnny Guitar, either. :( But their retrospectives are never even close to complete filmographies. They do currently stream the best collection of Akira Kurosawa and R.W. Fassbinder flicks you’ll find on the web, though.

^yes the Kurosawa DVD's that I have back in Holland are mostly from criterion I think

Nevermind, just eat your Weirdo!
 

Re: Crawford

Watching Straight-Jacket last night I snickered at the Pepsi plug Crawford (who was married to Pepsi CEO, Alfred Steel, at the time) got in the movie.

https://www.bing.com/images/blob?bcid=TqVGNOi0tekBYw

And if Criterion ever puts out a Crawford box set this sad excuse for a Pepsi plug has GOT to go in it.



https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sDJPcgCZx...ent%2B1969.jpg

Why does Criterion have a release for every single Wes Anderson film?

Got me. Not a single one on the channel, though. A few on APrime.

It looks like the channel has the same exact films as what was on Hulu when Hulu had the exclusive rights. You would think once Criterion actually created their own streaming service they would make their entire catalog available.

Seems like they're rotating most of the catalog from season to season, except for titles/directors they're known for carrying.. like Anderson, actually - which is why I was surprised to see nothing but a 28 minute 20 year old interview.

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ALT5hrrqP...essed%2B29.jpg

Possessed, but not married, should be the subtitle of this early 30s Crawford melodrama. Oh, Gable's in it, too. But the star is clearly Crawford. It's her story, anyway. Small town, box factory girl goes to the big city, meets a millionaire, becomes his main bitch but learns she can't marry him. Mind you, Gable never tells her that but she and all the world expect Crawford to disappear when he's asked to run for governor. And as Crawford reportedly said to studio chief, Louis Mayer, "You've always given me my share of bad scripts because you knew I'd make them work", she was right with this one too. In fact, imo, it's the Crawford/Gable selections that make the entire retrospective worth watching.

I'll watch Steve McQueen in anything, and though it's not part of their Horror promo this year (it's all 70s stuff), I'll take The Blob (1958) as a Halloween treat.

Not sure how long this 6 film Tarkovsky retrospective will stream on CC but I'll get through as many as I can over the weekend.

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-26QyMlCmT...chers+1978.JPG

Part of their 70's Horror Retrospective. Haven't seen this one in decades. Great ending.

Fun (and informative) review/discussion (spoilers too, see it first) >

https://vhx.imgix.net/criterionchann...360&q=70&w=640

Blind Alley (1939)
Possessed (1947)
The Dark Past (1948)
The Cobweb (1955)
Autumn Leaves (1956)
The Mark (1961)
David and Lisa (1962)
Pressure Point (1962)
The President’s Analyst (1967)
Solaris (1972)
Old Boyfriends (1979)
Bad Timing (1980)
Dressed to Kill (1980)
The Ninth Configuration (1980)
Ordinary People (1980)
House of Games (1987) (Dec.1)
The Prince of Tides (1991)

I'm starting with the hilarious President's Analyst

Found this one by accident. For a long time Carol Reed's classic, Odd Man Out (1947), was in my top 3 favorite films but it's dark material that can be a downer. However, like Reed's other classic, The Third Man (1949), it's impeccably shot, features a great lead performance and has an almost moronically simple storyline: James Mason plays the leader of a resistance organization (Reed adamantly refuted any similarities with the IRA, naturally) who plans an armed robbery to fund operations. The robbery is bungled, Mason accidently shoots a defender, is shot himself and is left by his comrades to find a way back to safety (wherever he can find it). It's essentially a dead-man-walking film that dramatizes the choices of people around him as they consider whether or not to become involved in his predicament. Highly Recommeded. The CChannel (or DVD) is the way to go but there's a decent YouTube copy currently streaming as well.

https://i.postimg.cc/x16VdnDR/4693-A...1-E0-D22-A.jpg

Odd that the sale is starting today (usually runs the entire month) but it’s on through November 30. Haven’t perused the latest releases but I’m still wishing for another/new Kurosawa box set. A Scorsese set would be nice too. The Early Fassbinder is tempting...

https://i.postimg.cc/L8LF5YLS/df1.jpg

The latest spate of Friday Double Features have been fun. I'm sure (or nearly-sure) I've seen Devil-Doll before but Mad Love (1935, Karl Freund) was new to me. And a pleasant surprise.



Fairly typical trailer but the film is anything but - everyone in the cast was on their A game that month. The movie easily topped most of the horror junk that I saw in October. See it if you can.

Discovered Written by Harold Pinter, added a few days ago by accident. CC, curiously, didn't add it to the banner "Now Playing" or "Newly Added" links.

featuring:
The Servant (1963)
The Pumpkin Eater (1964)
Accident (1967)
The Go-Between (1971)
The Homecoming (1973)
Butley (1974)
The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981)
The Comfort of Strangers (1990)
The Handmaid’s Tale (1990)

"In 1990, Martin Scorsese founded an organization whose stated mission told the world, in no uncertain terms, that movies mattered, that the art of cinema and its history was a legacy worth preserving. Three decades later, The Film Foundation has become an indispensable pillar of moving-image culture, helping to make possible 850 restorations to date and raising much-needed awareness of the urgent necessity of film preservation as central to the safeguarding of our cultural heritage. In recognition of thirty years of vital work, the Criterion Channel looks back at a selection of the many masterpieces that, thanks to the efforts of The Film Foundation, have been rescued from the ravages of time and now live on for future generations to discover. Beginning with these thirty titles, the series will expand over the next year, with new additions to be announced monthly."

Features: The Broken Butterfly (1919), Trouble in Paradise (1932), It Happened One Night (1934), L’Atalante (1934), The Long Voyage Home (1940) The Chase (1946), The Red Shoes (1948), The River (1951), Moulin Rouge (1952), The Bigamist (1953), Ugetsu (1953), Senso (1954), The Big Country (1958), Shadows (1959), The Cloud-Capped Star (1960), Primary (1960), The Connection (1961), Salvatore Giuliano (1962), The Masque of the Red Death (1964), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), The Night of Counting the Years (1969), Soleil Ô (1970), The Mattei Affair (1972), Insiang (1976), Xiao Wu (1997)

Shorts: The Fatal Glass of Beer (1933), Uncle Yanco (1967), Black Panthers (1968), The Eloquent Peasant (1970), Audience (1983)

There's also a rumor that the channel will do a Scorsese filmography in the near future. Now that will be a series to catch.

Godzilla
 

Well, the channel only has two of the 15 films currently streaming and I'm really only a fan one one, the first Godzilla. King of Monsters is the other streaming entry in the series. May watch it after another turn with the original but they seemed to get increasingly hokey as the series went on - and I'm not sure that the allusion to the nuclear age remains as poignant, if at all. This dude gives a nice run-down on the physical set -

https://worldscinema.org/wp-content/...1982041127.png

"...I'm not ready for this" encapsulates what I felt when I bought and initially starting watching Kon Ichikawa's An Actor's Revenge (1963) a few years back. Ready or not it's tonight's pick. Thing is, for me, ancient Greek and Kabuki theater always require a brain reset - a silencing of conditioned Western cinema expectations of narrative. A Cup o tea's not a bad idea...

https://www.dvd-covers.org/d/94149-3...d_Illusion.jpg

Grand Illusion (1937, Jean Renoir) isn't on the Criterion Channel, but should be. The hard copy has long been out of print. So I'm expecting a re-release. In the meantime I'll point out a good streamer when I find one. And while I tend to agree with Brando that there really are no great movies this one comes fairly close. It's in my top 3, at any rate.

https://vhx.imgix.net/criterionchann...360&q=70&w=640 https://i.postimg.cc/bJtNyjBj/jf1.jpg

Japanese Noir looks great but I've been into the Jane Fonda retrospective, supplementing it with films not included like Coming Home, Agnes of God and The Morning After.
Like her or not, she had fairly good judgement and most films she appeared in are worth seeing at least once.

Kinda like this collection that they recently pulled together on the channel -



You Only Live Once (1937)
They Live by Night (1948)
Gun Crazy (1950)
Where Danger Lives (1950)
Tomorrow Is Another Day (1951)
Pierrot le fou (1965)
The Honeymoon Killers (1970)
Badlands (1973)
Thomasine and Bushrod (1974)
One False Move (1992)
The Living End (1992)
Deep Crimson (1996)
Sun Don’t Shine (2012)
Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (2013)

Not a bad list. Badlands, starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, is a favorite. I see (for representation-sake, I guess) the gay semi-classic, Living End, is there but Wong Kar-wai's Happy Together is also streaming and (imo) a better flick. One False Move (the black pick?) is fun, too.

Alright, being a sole contributor to any thread sucks so I might as well make it worth any curious lurker's time.

The thread will now be dedicated to Criterion titles currently streaming on YouTube.

I'll start it off with something you actually won't find on the channel, anyway -

https://i.postimg.cc/C1VTW7F9/head.jpg

HEAD (1968, Bob Rafelson)

The Monkees, tripping. Screenplay by Rafelson and Jack Nicholson.

https://vhx.imgix.net/criterionchann...360&q=70&w=640

Tampopo (1985, Juzo Itami) Fun, different kind of story. A Japanese widow nearly breaks her neck in an attempt to make a good bowl of Ramen for her new restaurant. The YT post is in Japanese, naturally, with close captions in Japanese but, believe me, the story is so easy to follow that the English language track is hardly needed. But the channel version has it.

This one's in English. Richard Linklater's Slacker (1991) -

https://s2dbox.xyz/pic/movie/cover/aTo0MDg5Ow.jpg

Life of Brian (1979, Terry Jones) Still funny.

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Svcn4tbZG...Bblu%2Bray.jpg

The Innocents (1961, Jack Clayton) British nanny cracks up. New to me. Deborah Kerr is always interesting to watch.

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tsVdziYFr...2BDVD%2529.jpg

Branded To Kill (1967, Seijun Suzuki) One of my favorites. Highly influential. Various Yakusa vie to be killer No. 1.

following (1999, christopher nolan)

Quite a number of Criterion titles on YouTube now.

The Golden Chain - Very trippy animated short film. Can't wait to see what Adebukola Bodunrin and Ezra Claytan Daniels come out with next.

Fishing with John - Dank dry comedy by John Lurie.

Didn’t know Lurie directed films. Thanks.

Just renewed my sub today (different payment method). Gave me two weeks free. Bit weird but I’ll take it. Ha

https://i.postimg.cc/hjrPVNGS/throne1.jpg

throne of blood (1957, akira kurosawa)

Japanese version of Shakespeare's Macbeth. Best one (imo). Hope it's a permanent streamer on the channel.

Such a great film
Unrelated to criterion, I'm also excited about the new Macbeth because it has Frances mcdormand <3

Me too, but the trailer puts me off.



To me, either do something different with The Scottish Play or leave it in the attic.