dsa_shea

I can say without hesitation that I do not like the foldouts that have seemingly replaced the booklets that I have really looked forward to. I thought that this might have just been for The Night Porter but I bought Safe and Tootsie and they both had the foldouts as well.

slop101

Yeah, Time Bandits and La Dolce Vita had cheap foldouts as well. At least the one for Time Bandits re-created the movie's time-map.

Paul_SD

Those were the same three titles I just got.
I was holding one of them and thinking "this feels light". Then I looked down through the plastic and couldn't see a substantial booklet and wondered if I got a copy that forgot to include it.

Shame to see those being phased out, as it looks like a trend is developing here.

DaveyJoe

Yep, they are officially using leaflets instead of booklets now, which really sucks. Macbeth also has the leaflet, and they're just not as nice or convenient to read. Some people speculate it's to offset the cost of printing separate versions for BD and DVD since they abandoned the dual formats.

Randy Miller III

Yeah, I noticed this too in recent weeks/months. I really don't like them at all...the only exception is if one side showcases artwork (Time Bandits' Map of the Universe) or for layout gimmicks (Ace in the Hole, which was designed like a newspaper).

dsa_shea

Leaflets. It is sad to see that Criterion has gone cheap on us while losing some their luster with packaging. One of the things that sold me on spending the extra bucks per movie was the feeling of getting a nicer package than the standard studio releases out there.

Shagrath

You still are. How many releases coming out even have an insert at all?

</sarcasm>

dsa_shea

Well, I will have 4 of them after picking up Time Bandits today and they are all releases from within the past few weeks. However, I will be even more selective about blind buying Criterions in the future due to the cheapness of these.

rocket1312

Yah, the switch to fold-outs is almost certainly a result of the switch back to separate dvd and blu-ray releases, which is a shame.

kefrank

I think Shagrath's point was that other studios aren't even putting any kind of insert in Blu-ray releases. At least Criterion is including something.

Shagrath

You got it.

I obviously miss the big books from an aesthetic point of view, but I hardly ever read through the whole thing. The film and supplements are way more important to me.

hdnmickey

Since they are not putting int he same effort, and materials as before, they MSRP will be dropped to relfect that, right?

Not a chance.

But at least Criterions can usually be had cheaper than titles from Twilight Time.

dsa_shea

This is true. However, I have seen most of Criterions releases as secondary titles despite many of them being better than a majority of the movies released by major studios. I also knew that we were paying a few dollars more per film due to the fact that there is likely more cost for Criterion to put the best visual and audio version of the film out there, try and gather quality extras as well as license these films in order to do all of this. I have become accustomed to seeing the booklet as part of that and it is sad to see them try and sneak it in there without at least giving a heads up to their customers. I'm also a tad irked that they haven't revised their list for bronzing discs to include a few other titles that I own that are also having problems: Monsoon Wedding and Kagemusha being a few of them. I wonder if this change is to try and recoup lost money from that fiasco? If they save 50 cents per new title sold with the foldout over the booklets then they see it as a slight recoup for each bad disc they had to replace. I would guess that the replacement discs they have going out is costing Criterion at least a dollar apiece.

hdnmickey

We're completely on the same page there. If they do end up eventually revising that list, they have lost any thought I had of them being better than the others. I'll still buy the occasional BD from them because they have the only/best release (Time Bandits will be my next purchase). But now it will really be the same as Fox, Warner, and the rest.

dsa_shea

To be honest, that bronzing list should have already been revised. They have had a couple of months to check into those titles and pave the way for us to get all of our bad discs from that era replaced. I'm not shipping off various packages of discs. They are all going at once or not at all.

rocket1312

A different way to look at it is that Criterion is cutting back on inserts instead of raising prices. We already know that Criterion wanted to shift to dual-format because it would save them money. Once those savings went away, costs had to be trimmed elsewhere. And as someone who works in the printing industry, I can tell you that printing costs are not going down anytime soon.

I guarantee you that the discs coming out now with the foldouts were in production LONG before the bronzing fiasco. As someone with no knowledge of the situation beyond my own speculation and experience in the manufacturing world, something like this would have to be at least covered partially by the disc manufacturer or an insurance company.

dsa_shea

Not if the policy says that the discs only have to be guaranteed to function for a year, which we were way past when this problem was identified. What would be the typical time frame a disc would have to be guaranteed to work? 3 months? A year?

dsa_shea

I think a raise in price would be a turnoff and further limit their fanbase. Yes, some people would just suck it up and still buy some movies but undoubtedly others would become more limited in what they buy or just move away from Criterions altogether. Let's be honest here and call most Criterion releases what they are and that is niche titles. If saving money is priority number one and they actually saved money by having the dual releases then that is what they should have continued to do. I think they would be less likely to actually lose customers this way than by trimming the quality of their product or raising prices. Having a nice booklet was one of three things that make Criterions what they are.

1. The movie and the special features.
2. The book that usually has pictures and a nice essay or information.
3. Many of the releases (but not all) having nice looking cover art.

rocket1312

The thing is, the shift to dual-format did raise the price for DVD buyers. The outcry from that segment of their customer base (which I believe includes a lot of libraries, universities, etc.) was probably the biggest reason for going back to separate releases. Assuming that rising production/warehousing costs is a legitimate problem for Criterion, then they're kind of between a rock and a hard place. Raise prices and people get upset; cut content and people get upset. While I certainly will miss the nice fat booklets, if I had to sacrifice one aspect of the Criterion package, that would be what I would choose. I bet the average consumer doesn't even read them most of the time. Especially when one considers the abundance of written material available on the web (which maybe wasn't the case even a decade ago), the booklets seem less and less valuable.

Coral

I'm actually surprised Criterion is still making DVDs. I guess they sell enough DVD that they can't forgo those sales.

Their market is aimed towards cinephiles and I have to believe a major subset of that market are cinephiles who will pay more for the best picture quality possible (one of the reasons of buying Criterion). If they were to drop DVD altogether, I wonder how many of their DVD customers would finally just switch to BD. Maybe it's too big a risk for Criterion to take?

Jaymole

Hint in this month's newsletter is an easy one to guess...Limelight

dsa_shea

Are Criterion collectors "average consumers"? It's a fair question.

OldBoy

looking forward to the original The Vanishing.

Shagrath

As mentioned earlier, they get a huge number of sales from libraries and universities. I'm sure their average retail customer is getting the blu-ray version.

islandclaws

I have a friend who owns over 7400 DVDs/BDs and owns every single release Criterion has put out. He still buys a DVD version over a BD simply because of price, the PQ is practically secondary.

I think he's nuts.