There is a thread on bluray.com where people have discovered that a lot of CC discs released around 2010 have begun bronzing and failing. Some of the effected titles include Pierrot le Fou, Stagecoach, Walkabout, and M. It might be a good idea to start checking your discs.

Oh Brother!
I own a bunch of those early releases, with Days Of Heaven and Walkabout being two of my "top 10" favorites. Would hate to lose either of those.
I think I watched Walkabout for a second time about a year back and didn't have any problems, but I'll be giving them a visual inspection over the next couple days.

Yeah, I've got a bunch of the early Blu-ray releases. I'll be taking a quick look at them all in the next week or so.

I do have Pierrot le Fou, but there's not much I can do if the disc is going bad anyway since it is out of print if I'm not mistaken.

The Seventh Seal and Walkabout for me.

I noticed them a while back I thought it was just me getting a fucked up disc and never noticing it till months later. I still have them around for some reason.

I'm not too worried about those chowderheads - I'd be more concerned if it were people at the Criterion forums discovering this.

I have a sickening feeling in my stomach from the news about failed Criterion pressings. Many of those BDs are out of print and Criterion would be barred from making replacements unless the license holders allowed it.

The quality control on Blu-ray pressings has generally been inferior considering the costs to manufacture a single one.

Is there a list of all of the Criterion Blu Rays that were released in 2010?

EDIT: nevermind. The only one I would have to worry about is Seven Samurai. I hope the blu-ray.com posters are exaggerating as usual.

I looked at about a dozen of the discs. I don't see any browning or signs of a problem. I will have to check them out on a player when I have a chance.

The latest clue seems to indicate Don't Look Now is entering the collection.

Also, I don't know if anyone has seen this, but Shout has acquired the Westchester library. This could lead to some titles going OOP.

Want to start name dropping some for us, mate?

Off the top of my head....Foreign Correspondent, To be or not to be, Insomnia, Stagecoach, Quadrophenia, I married a witch. Also, the story says they have the rights to the first 8 Godzilla films. I believe that the upcoming Monte Hellman titles are also Westchester. I'm hoping we don't have a Ran situation where the title gets pulled before release. But again, there's no details about how this affects the Criterion releases.

These were indicated by forum member Partyslammer on bluray.com.

Only the bolded (*) titles have been found with the issue, so far.



*Stagecoach (The Criterion Collection) Criterion May 25, 2010

By Brakhage: An Anthology, Volumes One and Two (The Criterion Collection) Criterion May 25, 2010

*Walkabout (The Criterion Collection) Criterion May 18, 2010

*M (The Criterion Collection) Criterion May 11, 2010

*Ride with the Devil (The Criterion Collection) Criterion Apr 27, 2010

Vivre Sa Vie (My Life to Live / The Criterion Collection) Criterion Apr 20, 2010

*Summer Hours (L'heure d'été / The Criterion Collection) Criterion Apr 20, 2010

*Days of Heaven (The Criterion Collection) Criterion Mar 23, 2010

Yojimbo (Yôjinbô / 用心棒 | The Criterion Collection) Criterion Mar 23, 2010

Sanjuro (Tsubaki Sanjûrô / 椿三十郎 | The Criterion Collection) Criterion Mar 23, 2010

Yojimbo / Sanjuro (用心棒 / 椿三十郎 | The Criterion Collection) Criterion Mar 23, 2010

Bigger Than Life (The Criterion Collection) Criterion Mar 23, 2010

Lola Montès (The Criterion Collection) Criterion Feb 16, 2010

Hunger (The Criterion Collection) Criterion Feb 16, 2010

Revanche (The Criterion Collection) Criterion Feb 16, 2010

*Paris, Texas (The Criterion Collection) Criterion Jan 26, 2010

Che (The Criterion Collection) Criterion Jan 19, 2010

8½ (Federico Fellini's 8½ / The Criterion Collection) Criterion Jan 12, 2010

A Christmas Tale (Un conte de Noël / The Criterion Collection) Criterion Dec 01, 2009

Gimme Shelter (The Rolling Stones / The Criterion Collection) Criterion Dec 01, 2009

Gomorrah (The Criterion Collection / Gomorra) Criterion Nov 24, 2009

*Howards End (The Criterion Collection) Criterion Nov 03, 2009

Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin / The Criterion Collection) Criterion Nov 03, 2009

*Monsoon Wedding (The Criterion Collection) Criterion Oct 20, 2009

The Complete Monterey Pop Festival (The Criterion Collection) Criterion Sep 22, 2009

*Pierrot le fou (The Criterion Collection) Criterion Sep 22, 2009

Monterey Pop (The Criterion Collection) Criterion Sep 22, 2009

Jimi Plays Monterey & Shake! Otis at Monterey (The Criterion Collection) Criterion Sep 22, 2009

I have checked most of these titles, and my copies appear to be fine. Some people are saying that you actually have to watch and FFWD through some of them to see if they're defective. I haven't done that yet...

It was the discussion at the CriterionForum.org that prompted the blu-ray.com thread. Make no mistake, this is a very real problem.

That said, I've checked a couple of my discs from the list (M, Days of Heaven, Walkabout) and I don't seem to have any bad ones.

edit: Here's the link to the relevant thread at Criterion forum: http://http://www.criterionforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13376

I did a visual inspection of my discs and didn't see anything, and that includes the original faulty Walkabout disc and the replacement that CC sent me. Some of the posters on the other forums have mentioned that the only way to know for sure is to watch or fast forward through the movie to see if it plays accurately. The only ones that I have that I know are fine are my copies of Che and the Yojimbo/Sanjuro set, since I watched those recently for the Criterion Challenge.

Yeah I agree with you. The original story I read didn't mention anything about streaming but it seems like Shout will only have tv/digital distribution rights. It might affect some titles but not all. For example, Stagecoach was licensed from Westchester films but Godzilla was not.

I definitely have a screwed up/defective copy of Summer Hours as I checked it yesterday. It pixleates at around the 51 minute mark and skips forward after that.

I watched some of Days of Heaven and didn't see any problems (reportedly at the 47 minute mark) on that one. But I will watch the whole movie just to be sure.

Are any of your defective discs "bronzing"?

I checked a few of mine, and they all looked fine, but I guess they can still be defective if they're not bronzing. And/or, they can also play fine for a while if they are bronzing, but it could lead to issues down the line.

Criterion has already confirmed they can't legally replace the defective Blu-rays they've lost the rights to.

The problems are most likely to show up around the layer change during the movie, usually the around the middle of the main feature.

I think that if they had old stock on hand they would be willing/able to replace the discs. What they're not allowed to do is to manufacture new discs for those titles that are oop. Not that it really matters. The end result is still the same.

Also, for those not following the thread over at blu-ray.com, a member there has gotten in touch with someone at Criterion who was pretty forthright with information regarding the situation at hand. The short version is that they are aware of the problem and are looking into it, but they probably won't be able to address it until they finish dealing with Eraserhead.

Yes, Summer Hours is definitely "bronzing." The other ones I checked looked ok but I'll try to watch a few of them over the next week to see if any issues pop up.

what exactly does "bronzing" mean?

I'm wondering if it being sealed stops it from bronzing (or slows it down). I had Days of Heaven still sealed - opened it up today and it looks fine... but does that mean it's fine, or is it too early to tell since I just opened it?

My Walkabout blu-ray is toast.

Opened it up, and sure enough, the playing surface of the disc was bronzed. It was darkest around the outer edge of the disc, and discolored about halfway to the center.

I put the disc in my player and it started up fine. I played the disc and used the chapter skip to play through it. It was fine through chapter nine, but it froze up when I attempted to go to chapter ten.