My Godzilla's are out for delivery today. Yay.

Delivered. I think I lost the remote to my Samsung 4K player, but if I do not have to order a new remote from Amazon I will crack open Godzilla vs. Biollante and enjoy this weekend.

Both of my 4Ks. The Godzilla movie and No Country for Old Men just arrived today, Overall, not a bad turnaround.

I guess.

I got my movies last Tuesday, and already watched After Hours over the weekend.

Not sure if Andicus or other Canadians will see this now, but a quick followup regarding other non-DHL shipments to Canada:

I normally partake in the Target ‘Buy 2 Get 1 Free’ sales, and the matching of same on the Amazon U.S. site, and then have the orders shipped to Michigan for pickup when I’m down there. Not keen on that nowadays, so I decided to place an order for three big, fairly heavy art books in Amazon’s most recent B2G1 sale and have them shipped up here, duties and tariffs be damned. These were among the last books I really wanted anyway (for now) so I figured I’d live with the hit if I had to.

Cost of the books with the discount was almost an even $80 US. Shipping to Canada was $14 US, much lower than Criterion’s $25 US for five Blu-rays they weighed considerably less than these books.

Amazon split the order, which worried me. I tracked both parcels from Kentucky through Michigan, clearing the border, then arriving at an Amazon warehouse here in Toronto, from where they were shipped to me.

No duties. No tariffs. Nothing. And I have a feeling I won’t be seeing a bill down the road because this isn’t the first time I’ve had Amazon US orders shipped to Canada over the years without hassle. Because of the company’s massive logistics, I suspect the majority of orders from the U.S. to Canada are probably ignored at customs. So speaketh Bezos, or whatever.

As a weird bonus, after the second parcel was delivered today, I got an email from Amazon claiming they were experiencing a delay in shipping this item. Which they already shipped. And which I already received! As a result, they were refunding the full shipping cost for the entire order. What the fuck, but I’ll take it.

(worth noting that I also separately ordered some smaller items in March, both from Amazon U.S. itself and Amazon U.S. marketplace sellers, and all three of these orders got into Canada with no additional fees.)

In terms of Criterion orders, it might be worth considering ordering from Amazon’s 50% Criterion sales on occasion, at least while the American government is run by incompetents for the next few years. Sure, you forego the points and gift certificates, but based on these recent experiences and several previous ones, your odds are much better at avoiding a ridiculous DHL invoice on top of your order.

Next up: an order for 31 discs from Kino, with the highest and most offensive shipping fee yet: $55 US Thankfully, the prices on what I’ve carefully selected are low enough that the eventual resale profit here (after I watch them) will still be significant. My only fear, of course, is that they’ll ship with DHL. If Amazon properly matched Kino’s sales, I absolutely go that route, but that’ll never happen.

^This makes me wonder... Normally, my orders through Amazon US have all the fees stated at the time of the purchase. In particular, there is an import charges fee which seems to have some threshold before it is applied. On occasion, I've received a refund to those fees when they end up being less than they charged. What I'm wondering is if the fees are ever MORE than they charged, and whether I would be billed extra, after having paid for the order. For example, if I had ordered a bunch of stuff, and then the orange fuckwit implemented tariffs, to which Canada implemented reciprocal tariffs applicable to my items, after I had placed my order.

Regardless, I don't remember the last time I was charged extra fees for an amazon US order.

I see that on my orders was well, at first, but when I select the option to pay in U.S. funds, it always goes away. Maybe the fee is hidden elsewhere along the way (??), but I don’t really recall paying ‘extra’ after the fact, and the difference (between paying CDN vs U.S.) is apparent on the order details. I did pay the import fee deposit a few times early on before starting to select the U.S. funds option, and often times it was refunded. Seemed like such a waste of time, especially as even on larger, heavier orders it never really amounted to much (and certainly wasn’t even close to a DHL bill).

Interesting. I didn't realize they went away if you paid in US funds. I don't have a US funds CC, so my bank will usually end up charging me more for currency conversion. I should add, however, that there is also a US conversion fee by amazon that 'guarantees' the rate, should you need to return an item. I.e. you won't lose out because of having to convert back and forth. It's minor, but not insignificant.

Actually, I just checked and my import fees don't go away if I switch to US funds.

Also, the import fees used to show a breakdown as to sales tax and any other fees. I can no longer find a way to see that breakdown.

My bad, I think. It’s indeed the ‘exchange rate guarantee’ that disappears when I switch to U.S. funds. I’ve long known that the bank might charge me more for the conversion, but in comparing my old U.S.-to-Canada orders, I’ve almost always found that the ‘final cost’ is very comparable to what’s on my invoice, sometimes a little more, other times actually less (perhaps it depends on the day and time of processing?) and because I never return stuff to Amazon because I largely only order books and DVDs/Blus on there and they tend to arrive intact (and I have more than enough replacement cases on hand if need be), I just pass on paying the fee.

I can say with certainty that the import fees deposit doesn’t show up on all orders to Canada. I just ‘tested’ a Blu-ray and a small-ish book totalling about $25 (plus a $9 shipping fee to Canada), and no import deposit shows up, and no exchange rate protection feee if I select U.S. funds. I went back and reset one of the items to a quantity of 2 and that added an import fee deposit. So I’m assuming there must be a threshold in the $25-$30 range? This would partly explain some previous orders where I just had one or two movies or books shipped up here because I couldn’t justify a trip to the U.S., most likely just after having come back from one.

Keep in mind that probably 98% of my Amazon orders over the years – and there have been a lot of them – went to my Michigan addresses for me to pick up and ‘smuggle’ back when I was in Sarnia to visit relatives, so that always made the occasional one-off order shipped up here more bearable no matter how much extra it might cost me (which often turned out to be surprisingly little, especially if I could find Markeplace sellers who didn’t mind sending ‘Used - Like New’ stuff across the border). So while Amazon definitely adds the import fees deposit over a certain amount (I assume), based on these recent orders it’s preferable to the additional $40 CDN we were both hit with for importing five lousy discs from Criterion!

Criterion Flash Sale is expected to start tomorrow -- Tuesday Oct 21, 2025 around Noon ET. No confirmation or emails from Criterions, but they did send $10 Certs to certain customers over the last few days and the Fall Sale has been 3rd Tues in Oct for a few cycles now

Nothing yet.

A bit odd that the Unobstructed View 50% Criterion flash sale (as Canadians are aware) went live, but the criterion.com sale hasn't yet. My guess is it happens at 1pm Eastern, or gets pushed a day or a week.

I wouldn't mind if it got pushed back to next week; I've been hitting up the Sintober sale over at VS for quite a few titles this past week. I get paid on Friday

I wonder if the AWS outage left them unprepared to do the sale today? (I have no idea if Criterion uses AWS.)

Doing one next week and having it bump right up against the BN sale would be weird, but I hope it happens. I've got a $25 coupon that expires on 10/31 that I've been saving.

Criterion Sale and B&N sale might have a lot of overlap, but a lot of separation too; I have a friend who never buys at the Criterion sale, only the B&N because he likes to hold the product in his hand to read the back cover (and yes I know the back cover is on the CC website if one wishes, we've had that argument many times). Me, I only buy from Criterion to earn the points.

Same here, under regular circumstances. The Unobstructed View sale up here, especially now that it’s up-to-50% off instead of their previous up-to-40% off, is a solid alternative to ordering from the U.S. site for Canadians, and an alternative for me to the long trip to pick up stuff from my U.S. addresses (which is a no-go these days for . . . reasons ). The cost is virtually the same now. The only drawback is that UV doesn’t offer points. They made a big deal about partnering with Criterion when that first happened, and when they brought the closet van to the Toronto film fest, but it would be nice if they could partner with them on the points and somehow have them added to accounts on the main site. Probably sounds like a big ask, but I’d bet it’s technologically feasible. Overall, though, buying Criterion on sale anywhere else makes less sense when it comes to sales, since any other online or brick-and-mortar retailers only offer the same 50% discount that Criterion does, but none of the points (and yeah, I realize Barnes has added discounts for members but they seem inconsistently applied). Don’t get the whole ‘gotta touch it to buy it’ thing, but then I’m often guilty of treating retail stores as catalogs and then buying cheaper online (especially if points add up).

My Criterion points are low at the moment as I redeemed a gift card in a recent sale there, and there’s not much I need from the label at the moment, so if I can only find a couple of things to buy, I’ll probably get them from UV.

"It’s that time again!

Because you’re a loyal Criterion.com shopper, we wanted you to be the first to know that our 24-hour Flash Sale starts tomorrow, October 22, at noon ET, and all in-stock discs will be 50% off SRP!"

It's live but it's probably getting mobbed right now. Glitchy as hell.

Very slow, but managed to snag the Wes Anderson set.
Site seems to be back up to speed, and the box set is still available.

Same experience here. Snagged the set myself!

My order:

• Altered States
• The Wes Anderson Archive: Ten Films, Twenty-Five Years
• Eyes Without a Face
• This Is Spinal Tap
• Flow
• The Burmese Harp

Had $35 in gift certificates, and ended up ordering these (all 4K/blu combos):

The Three Musketeers / The Four Musketeers: Two Films by Richard Lester
The Wages of Fear
Sorcerer
Days of Heaven

I have the Warner blu-ray of Sorcerer from 2016 (bare bones -- not even a trailer I think) and the old Criterion DVD of The Wages of Fear from 1999 (despite being a Criterion release, also bare bones, and a slightly shorter cut than this new release). I decided to upgrade the original and the remake at the same time.

I've never owned any home video iterations of the other titles, and in fact have never gotten around to seeing Days of Heaven at all. I haven't seen the Musketeers movies since they were new, but remember liking them at the time.

I think this flash sale is the right move for the Wes Anderson set. I feel more confident about safe/secure shipping straight from Criterion than from BN (which would be shipped twice, essentially). Anyone with experience having weighty box sets shipped from Criterion? Arrive safely?

I'm tempted to order the Wes Anderson Archive in the sale since 50% off makes it a good deal IMO. I like the aesthetics of the box, but I don't like the practicality of it. It looks to be an awkward size for going on the shelf with standard cases and the movies are not all immediately accessible inside the box (you have to pull out some to get to others):


I might wait until I have enough points for a $50GC though. Decisions, decisions...

I’d argue that none of the fancy Criterion sets are designed for practicality, unfortunately. I have a few of them (Godzilla, Bergman, Pasolini, Fellini…) and they all have their annoyances.
It’s nice to see that the Anderson set at least has good plastic disc holders.

Regarding the shipping question, I got the sets above from B&N, but I recall at least one of them being in Criterion’s own shipping boxes. They’re good about packing them to avoid damage.

I'll probably go one at a time with the Wes Anderson since there is no discount for buying the cumbersome set. Plus, I don't really feel the need to upgrade all of the films.

Today, i picked up the 4Ks for Spinal Tap, Twin Peaks, and upgraded Punch Drunk Love and Barry Lyndon.