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Posted by ryan on 05 Mar 2008 at 04:09 pm

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HB: Okay, dudes. We shouldn’t apologize on here, but we do have two movies at home we haven’t watched yet because somebody has had to spend all his time embroidering and can’t watch movies with subtitles. Sheesh. So, if you’re ever longing for lengthy analysis of classic films you feel very guilty for not having seen (or proud for having seen–I just think that’s less likely, you lowbrow rabble), one great place you can go is The Criterion Contraption, a blog by Matthew Dessem that he’s been running for several years while he attempts to watch every movie in the Criterion Collection (DVDs, not laserdiscs). Matthew focuses nicely on a lot of visual elements, complete with lots of stills from the movies, as well as history and where they fall in terms of importance and influence. Also whether or not he likes them. The thing is, he’s only up to #72 (at last posting). And the Collection is at or around #410 (probably skipping a few, as they’re nerds and like to save special numbers for special movies, and also probably because it’s complicated to get the rights to put these things out, and so even if they’ve planned that something will be, say, #218, it might take a while to get it or whatnot). So chances are that he’s either going to clone himself a la Multiplicity or die before he finishes it–which would be sad. Still, like all great plans involving lists, it is ambitious, and we respect that.

It also points up the role of the Criterion Collection as a modern canon, one that’s both bigger and quirkier than most other lists. Some of the quirkiness is dependent upon rights, again, and also probably the people who work there. If you have a big Beastie Boys fan in your office, you’re going to get things like this released, quirking up the canon you’re creating. Their selection of foreign film is particularly good and deep, and their focus on directors is welcome, even when one of those directors is Michael Bay,* because others of them are Dreyer** and Tati and Powell. I’m not saying that I watch everything on every Criterion DVD I buy, but I do buy the DVDs because that stuff is there. They’re kind of like the Norton Critical Editions of the DVD world. If you have to write a paper, or you’re curious, or you finish reading/watching the work of art and have nothing else to do, there’s more for you to explore.

They also prove that graphic design sells. It does to me. Some of their movies, like The Element of Crime, which I’ve seen and really disliked, can have such appealing covers that you want to buy the disc, even if you know you don’t like the movie, let alone if you just think you wouldn’t like it or don’t know anything about it. It’s incredible that this can pry $40-some out of one’s wallet, or come close to doing so, but a great DVD cover can sell even better than a great book cover can. Criterion’s covers for their American and French films from the 1930s and 1940s are some of their best, like Children of Paradise, Boudou Saved from Drowning, and Heaven Can Wait.*** Almost every cover seems to come out of an understanding of the film it embraces (and I later discovered after writing this post, how true that is from Criterion’s own excellent blog, which has a great post from a graphic designer on how he got to the end on two covers), which kind of encapsulates the appeal of the whole collection: it’s a desire for things that are beautiful both inside and out, and, especially, for a set of them. It’s made for the compulsive aesthete. So how many of them do you have?

* I secretly still like Michael Bay a little bit, but NOT this movie.

** We haven’t seen any Dreyer yet, but where else are you gonna get it, right?

*** Jared points out that this last one was painted by Caitlin Kuhwald, an excellent artist by whom we have a couple of paintings. Also that you can buy the cover art painting from her website.

Posted by teambrown on 26 Jul 2007 at 03:26 pm

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