cgray

I'm sure it's not a flawless system. It did work for me: I did "Pick Me Up" on Tuesday with Red Shoes blu-ray, Black Narcissus blu-ray, and the Pedro Costa set. I received emails within 20 minutes, and was at the store probably 2 hours later. They were waiting behind the desk. So... it works sometimes.

Scotts35

Traveled to a few stores around MD today. At one got Yojimbo/Sanjuro Blu Rays and Army Of Shadows. Was able to use coupon for Yojimbo/Sanjuro but denied for Army as it "was under $20".

Went to another store, nothing. Last store had M. Hulot's Holiday, didn't bother with the coupon as it was $13 with member discount.

I'm still looking for Red Shoes and am leaning towards picking up By Brakhage.

Mosskeeto

The "Search" factor isn't very reliable due to a couple reasons. It isn't real-time inventory and won't track sales up to the minute and also won't show any title holds that were placed that day. I had a store see how many The Red Shoes were in stock and was told 4 but then a clerk added 2 were holds phoned in that morning, etc. and actually none were left.

goosh

Although the system to search and reserve in-store is a good place to start, a quick phone call to the store before making the drive is highly recommended.
My local B&N still shows The Man Who Fell to Earth in stock and it's nowhere to be found.

Mr. Cinema

Any recommendations for Robinson Crusoe on Mars? I saw that many, many years ago, but don't remember the film that much. Is it worth getting? I almost bought it the other day, but held off.

My latest purchases are M (BD), Lady Vanishes, and Downhill Racer. I've bought 13 now, including the Monsters & Madmen set and spent about $225. I thought I was done, but there's always that urge to grab a few more titles before the sale ends.

Is everyone confident that we'll have this sale again in November?

WEEDEDOUT

Revanche Blu
In the Realm of the Senses Blu
House of Games
Homicide
Le Samourai
Yi Yi

flansered

You can always go to your local B&N and have them special order something for you. That's what I am doing with the Antoine Doinel box. The perk of that is that you don't pay for it until you pick up the item and you can use the coupons.

clckworang

I had a not so good day yesterday. My friend was making the 40-minute drive to McAllen, so I hitched a ride with her to pick up my reserved copy of The Red Shoes on Blu-ray and return the defective copy of Yojimbo. I was able to make the return without any problem. I then looked around to verify no copies of Black Narcissus (there weren't) and happily went to retrieve my copy of The Red Shoes. The cashier pulled out the movie, accepted the $5 off coupon without any issues and put the movie in my bag. As we were driving away from the store, something told me to double-check the bag. Turns out I was given the DVD instead of the Blu-ray. Whoever reserved it for me grabbed the wrong thing. And the final copy of the Blu-ray had been sold earlier that day.

I was not happy at all. She couldn't tell me when they would be getting another copy, but of course that would mean having to make the drive up there again. I finally decided to just get my money back, which resulted in a wait of about 15 minutes for a manager to come. I was tempted to point the situation out to a manager, maybe I could have received a store credit or something, but I just let it slide.

As mad as I was that I made the trip over there for nothing, I reminded myself of the fact that I -- or a friend on my behalf -- had used 19 coupons at the two Barnes & Noble stores in McAllen since the sale began. So, I decided to just order Red Shoes and Black Narcissus online. I know I could have saved a bit of money waiting to do the in-store thing, but I will get them sooner ordering online. I ordered them last night and both are already scheduled to ship today.

Gobear

I gave up trying to find The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus in Blu, so I ordered them online with my gift card, along with the new Ozu 2-pack. Minus the GC, all 3 only came to $6.67.

I'm going to pick up Le Doulos and Le Deuxieme Souffle this weekend, and that will be it until November.

sauce07

Sorry man, the B&N in Reston only got 1 of each on Blu. I went in on Monday and had them put Black Narcissus behind the counter for me.

Jaymole

Just came back from the Union Square store and picked up 4 more Blu-rays as they just got a bunch in stock (there were over 10 copies each of Red Shoes & Black Narcissus). Salesperson didn't even blink when I gave him four $5 coupons and asked to ring each up separate. A Christmas Tale Blu-ray is the only title I can't seem to get anywhere. This sale seems to be the easiest so far for me in using the coupons.

Trevor

Do either of you ever see Ed there anymore? He was a Criterion fan and cool to chat with, but haven't seen him working there in months.

illennium

From Criterion's Facebook page:

In the past month or so, some customers have noticed a little change in the way we’re pricing new DVD releases, and they can’t seem to figure out whether to cheer or complain. We’ve been charging $10 less for fully loaded DVDs than we used to, dropping our suggested retail price for most new special editions from $39.95 to $29.95. So what’s the problem? Well, back when we started issuing Blu-rays, we promised that we’d price them the same way we’d been pricing DVDs, not make them more expensive, even though Blu-ray authoring and manufacturing costs were then and are still much higher than those costs ever were for DVD. Our goal was to take price out of the equation for buyers considering which edition to pick up, and up to now, that’s what we’ve done. Recently, some costs associated with producing finished DVDs have fallen dramatically, and we wanted to pass that savings on to our DVD customers. Should our pledge not to jack up the price of Blu-ray have prevented us from offering better pricing on DVD when the economics permitted it? We decided it shouldn’t, but some Blu-ray customers were understandably distressed when they saw the two formats priced differently. What do you think?

Gobear

Ah, so now I know who to blame! (J/K). I didn't feel like hassling with the coupons anyway, so ordering online works just as well. I ordered them this morning, and I just got a shipping notice! Color me happy.

stiroe

Maybe a bit premature but anyone know if there will be a November sale? I think I finished my spending for this one... but looking for few of the new releases by then. I already pre-ordered Thin Red Line because I don't want to wait for that but the rest I can wait but maybe not till next July. Thanks for the info

Sweet Baby James

Nobody knows just yet. However, I feel pretty confident that it will be back in November. I would imagine that B&N would like to clear out some stale stock and increase foot traffic the month before Xmas.

BuckNaked2k

Should be a sale this November, if form follows.

adrenaline78

I wish I had more $ to spend on this sale! But if there is a November sale I'll pick up a few more.. I am still jonesing over getting the Kurasawa 25 film box.. But I think I can wait on that one. I will def be checking more out from the library to see which ones I should buy, instead of just buying because it's criterion. So far their films have been hit or miss for me.

illennium

Yesterday I had a couple of very different experiences at 2 stores that I'd never been to in the Bay Area. (Actually, I went to 4 stores, but 2 of them turned out not to have music/film sections. Kind of a waste.)

The first store was pretty sleepy, which is usually a good sign. Only one (female, 30-ish) clerk in the whole section, possibly a manager but I'm not sure. I decided to try for 3 at once. When I pulled out the coupons, she yelled, "Yay! Coupons!" That was pretty reassuring. She rang them all up in the same transaction without a problem, and I actually even went back and got one more, for 4 total.

The second store was also very sleepy, and the sole clerk there was a male, around 30. He was a bit oafish and seemed like he might be into movies. I asked him if they had The Red Shoes on Blu-Ray and he knew about the movie right away. We talked for a second about movies and I figured I was in. However, when I tried to buy 2 movies with 2 coupons, he said, very politely, "I'm sorry, I'm not going to be able to apply both of these. We got an email 2 days ago specifically about these $5 coupons. People are using too many of them and we're only supposed to accept one." I said, "OK, that's fine. I'll just take one then." He said, "I'm sorry, but I'm not going to be able to ring up a separate transaction for the second one." I said, "It's fine, I'm just getting one." Anyone know what this business about an email is? I hadn't heard that one before. This guy seemed on top of it in terms of following some sort of policy that may or may not exist.

Anyway, I've now used the $5 coupon 11 times during this sale, and I think I'm done with the stores. There are still 19 items on my high-priority to-buy list, but I'm just going to get them online. I'll end up paying about $90 more, which is worth it to me to not have to drive around and play the will-they-or-won't-they game.

BuckNaked2k

Yea, same for me. The nice thing about this sale is you can take more chances on blind buys. I find it's easy to sell a used Criterion for what I payed for it, especially at $13 per!

Sweet Baby James

^^

Did you have both the July coupon and the September one? I'm always able to get at least two titles because these are technically different coupons.

jrsl76

I've been waiting and waiting to find out if I will be booking a show to work on for the rest of the year. If I can get that info, then I can buy some more Blus.

At this point, I think what I'll pick up in this scenario will be:

Che
Bottle Rocket
Last Year At Marienbad
The Secret Of The Grain
M
Walkabout
In The Realm Of The Senses
Lola Montes
Bigger Than Life
Ride With The Devil
Pierrot Le Fou

Maybe not that many, but those are the ones I'm thinking about. I mean,hell, I've already bought like 10 Blus already.

goosh

I had reserved copies of Stagecoach and Black Narcissus and received the email on Tuesday stating they were available for pick-up. I was finally able to get down there today only to find my Black Narcissus was not Blu. The sales clerk looked it up on his computer and stated that it either didn't come in Bluray or they just weren't able to get it. Hmmm. This may be why people are not finding it in stores?
Anyway, he was nice enough to take my $5 coupon for Stagecoach.
I then found Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes at the Best Buy across the street. They were more than happy to price match B&N to make the sale.
(No $5 or 20% coupons, though. Oh well.)

Undeadcow

Trying to pick up one box-set this go round...

Fassbinder's BRD Trilogy or Rossellini's War Trilogy

Any advice?

bse

Fassbinder