Mcsheehey, That is funny that you asked that! I had just ordered Thief of Bagdag new Criterion two disc release the day before leavin this post! I got it in the mail since then and WOW!!! They did a great job (in my opinion, although I would have loved a custom case like my 3disc Seven Samurai or my Two disc The Third Man but all in all it is wonderful!). I lover Michael Powell and EMeric Pressburger's films! From The Red Shoes to A Matter of Life and Death to Black Narcissus to Life and Death of Colonel Blimp! tHEY ARE ALL GREAT! Mike Powell made Thief of Bagdad before any of those other Technicolor masterpieces and did you listen to that commentary?? wasn't it wonderful! and the lil making of was nice too. I have watched that Jack Cardiff "Painting with light" on the Black Narcissus dvd many times and I also watch the "Glorious Technicolor" feature on my Two-disc Adventures of Robin Hood (1939) WB release dvd... I wish I had the complete Jack Cardiff documentary that Painting With Light came from (the one thats on Black Narcissus, it came from a longer Cardiff documentary). Do you know of it? or know how to get it?
Anyway yes I am a film nut! and proud of my collection (although my wife also likes classic cinema she sometimes frowns on my many expensive amazon purchases LOL). I own everything that you could think of except for Salo because I just don't ever care to see it.. I know I have read all sorts of reviews (mixed) and I just personally don't want to spend 2 hours of my time watching people eat poo etc.. NOTE: Please no one take offense to me not liking Salo, I know that some people regard it as fine art and I am not trying to get it pulled from the shelves I just don't want a copy in my "almost complete" Criterion Collection. The thing is about Criterion is that my collection gets to continually grow as they release new films. yay!
I also own every Hitchcock dvd or box set that is worth owning from the WB Signature collection to the Universal Masterpiece collection to The Early years collection to the Wrong Men and Notorious Women that I luckily bought when it came out.. Now I am excited about this new MGM set "The Premiere Collection"! I know I already on all of these Rebecca, Notorious, Spellbound etc.. but the extra features are AMAZING!!!! There are gonna be extensive making of documentaries on almost every disc! Rebecca has a making of and a documentary on D.D. the author of the story, not to mention several commentaries! I can't wait to sit down and watch "The making of Notorious"! and all the rest of those "well worth the 85 bucks" extras. I have heard a few people say "well I have the criterion set and the signature WB set and the Universal Masterpiece set so I am not gonna shell out 85 whole bucks for that set.." WHATEVER!! I will!!! in a hot second! Those extras are unbelievable and are way more extensive than some people think. I emailed someone at ..... to find out the duration on some of the "Making of's" and they emailed me back... some of them are over 45minutes each! so it won't be one of those little wimpy 10 or 20 minute making of documentary, they will be extensive and well made. So I am definitely buying (pre-ordered already!) one of the Alfred Hitchcock Premiere Collections.
Well to wrap this lil message up, yeah I know what you meant about Thief of Bagdad it was awesome! I had not seen the whole thing before and it was just awesome! So do you collect Mcsheehey? I have around 1200.. and right around 400 Criterions although a couple are doubles but not many.
Once again a few of my favs are:
-Citizen Kane - Orson Welles (1941)
-Casablanca - MichaelCurtiz(1943)
-The Third Man - Carol Reed (1949)
-Seven Samurai - Akira Kurosawa(1954)
-Touch of Evil - Orson Welles (1958)
-Rules of The Game - Jean Renoir (1939)
-Gone With The Wind - Victor Flemming/George Cukor (1939)
-Lawrence of Arabia - David Lean (1962)
-The Godfather - Francis Ford Coppola (1972)
-Wizard of Oz - Victor Flemming (1939)
-Singing In The Rain - Stanley Donen (1952)
-Vertigo - Alfred Hitchcock (1958)
-On The Waterfront - Elia Kazan (1954)
-Double Indemnity - Billy Wilder (1944)
-400 Blows - Francois Truffaut (1959)
-Charade - Stanley Donen (1963)
-The Grand Illusion - Jean Renoir (1937)
-8 1/2 - Federico Fellini (1963)
-The Seventh Seal - Ingmar Bergman (1957)
-The Magnificent Ambersons - Orson Welles (1942)
-The Red Shoes - Powell & Pressburger (1948)
-Treasure of the Sierra Madre - John Houston (1948)
-Gaslight - George Cukor (1944)
-The Black Narcissus - Powell & Pressburger (1946)
-The Maltese Falcon - John Houston (1941)
-Now Voyager - Irving Rapper (1942)
-Sunset Blvd. - Billy Wilder (1950)
-The Big Sleep - Howard Hawks (1946)
-All About Eve - Joe Mankiewicz (1950)
-North By Northwest - Alfred Hitchcock (1959)
-The Trial - Orson Welles (1962)
-Laura - Otto Preminger (1944)
-The Lost Weekend - Billy Wilder (1945)
-The Lady Eve - Preston Sturges (1941)
-Night of The Hunter - Charles Laughton (1955)
-The Searchers - John Ford (1956)
-Battleship Potemkin - Sergei Eisenstein (1925)
-The General - Buster Keaton (1927)
-Breathless - Jean-Luc Godard (1959)
-Sweet Smell Of Success - Alexander Mackendrick (1957)
-L'Atalante - Jean Vigo (1934)
-Metropolis - Fritz Lang (1927)
-Out Of The Past - Jacques Tourneur (1947)
-The Lady Vanishes - Alfred Hitchcock (1938)
-Mr. Arkadin - Orson Welles (1955)
-Rear Window - Alfred Hitchcock (1954)
-The Killers - Robert Siodmak (1946)
-The Lady From Shanghai - Orson Welles (1947)
-Ace In The Hole - Billy Wilder (1951)
-The Theif of Bagdad - Michael Powell (1940)
I love classics! and Film Noir is one of my fav. genres and I mean 1941 thru 1958, not alot of neo noir etc.. because anything after Touch of Evil knew that it was attempting to be "Noir"... before Touch of Evil they just made the movies and thats what you got.. Thats why I prefer 41-58. Now that doesn't mean I don't own some 1960's Criterion Collection Noir films.. and it doens't mean I don't appreciate films like "Body Heat" but they are not and will never be what we were given in that post WWII era.. Like> Double Indemnity, The Maltese Falcon, Detour, Kiss Me Deadly, In A Lonely Place, Out of The Past, Touch of Evil!, Ace In The Hole, The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Big Heat, The Third Man, Asphalt Jungle etc... I like'em all, the darker the better.
-Hitchcockfan/Lebiglebowski (My two user names)
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