2014 Criterion Forum Awards

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

BEST RELEASE
1. All That Jazz
2. Judex
3. Persona
4. Il Sorpasso
5. Breaking The Waves

BEST ECLIPSE
Kinoshita

BEST BOXED SET
Les Blank

BEST "BONUS" FILM
The World of Jacques Demy

BEST BOOKLET
A Hard Day’s Night

BEST ON-DISC NON-COMMENTARY EXTRA
Jacques Demy A-Z

BEST R1 RESCUE
Safe

BEST REISSUE
Hearts and Minds

BEST UPGRADE
Vengeance is Mine

BEST DISCOVERY
Sundays and Cybele

BEST COVER
1. Scanners
2. Judex
3. Hearts and Minds
4. Love Streams
5. Il Sorpasso

WORST COVER
Tie Me Up Tie Me Down!

BEST PACKAGING
Picnic at Hanging Rock

MOST DISAPPOINTING RELEASE
Rififi – supplements and cover showed very little extra consideration

MEMBER OF THE YEAR
colinr0380

BEST NON-CRITERIONS
Alain Robbe-Grillet: Six Films 1963-1974 (the Tim Lucas commentaries alone are worth it), Possession, White of the Eye, Hail Mary, The Complete Dr Phibes, The Shout, and Ginger Snaps.

[Black Hat]

Curious: why is It Happened One Night disappointing to you?

It's a favorite of mine and considering the film's status I thought the extras were lacking — Molly Haskell's great but Phil Lopate behaved like a halfwit — by the end of it I was half expecting him to deflate and fly out of there like you'd see with a balloon. Hopefully next time they shoot him up with a couple of espresso shots before rolling.

It was also the first release I purchased with this new girl scout cookie leaflet thing they're doing so it received bonus scorn points. I'm not one to complain much but I find them appalling. Has there been any word from Criterion as to why they've done this and if they plan to continue?

[rossen]

BEST RELEASE
1. Jacques Demy
2. Il Sorpasso
3. Les Blank
4. Jacques Tati
5. All That Jazz

BEST ECLIPSE
Kinoshita

BEST BOXED SET
Jacques Demy

BEST MODERN FILM
Like Someone in Love

BEST COMMENTARY
Monte Hellman with Bill Krohn and Blake Lucas on The Shooting and Ride in the Whirlwind

BEST BOOKLET
A Hard Day's Night

BEST "BONUS" FILM
The World of Jacques Demy

BEST ON-DISC NON-COMMENTARY EXTRA
Jacques Demy A to Z

BEST R1 RESCUE
Red River

BEST REISSUE
Hearts and Minds

BEST UPGRADE
Picnic at Hanging Rock

BEST DISCOVERY
Il Sorpasso

BEST COVER
Persona

WORST COVER
Tootsie

BEST PACKAGING
Persona, Red River and Picnic at Hanging Rock (Personally I'm sad about the demise of the dual format. I don't give a damn about the shelf space, some of the most beautifully designed Criterion editions were digipacks, well, maybe the cover of Y Tu Mama Tambien is not representative, but I've bought the movie so...)

MOST DISAPPOINTING RELEASE
Tootsie and The Big Chill (The Criterion Collection is dedicated to gathering the greatest films from around the world...)

BEST THREAD
Film club

MEMBER OF THE YEAR
Sloper

RICHARD CRANIUM AWARD
n/a

[ordinaryperson]

I hate to sound like an eager jerk, but are the winners going to be announced soon?

[swo17]

You must have driven domino away.

[artfilmfan]

Best Releases:

1. L'avventura (Blu-ray)
2. The Essential Jacques Demy (this vote is primarily for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg)
3. Persona
4. It Happened One Night
5. My Darling Clementine

[ordinaryperson]

Voting closed on Thursday artfilmfan.

[artfilmfan]

Ooops! Somehow I missed the deadline for voting.

[domino harvey]

Sorry not sorry. Real life &c. Voting closed (I'll accept that last one), will update at some point in the near future with resultz

[swo17]

This is almost as bad as when we had to wait a month for Tootsie to come out.

[swo17]

domino has fallen down a well or something and so asked me to either tabulate this year's results or call for an ambulance, I can't remember. Anyway, I hope I've done the right thing.



BEST RELEASES OF THE YEAR
01 The Essential Jacques Demy
02 Persona
03 Les Blank: Always for Pleasure
04 Il sorpasso
05 The Complete Jacques Tati
06 Eraserhead
07 Judex
08 La dolce vita
09 The Shooting/Ride in the Whirlwind
10 King of the Hill

BEST ECLIPSE
Kinoshita and World War II (Runner-up: Late Ray)

BEST BOXED SET
The Essential Jacques Demy

BEST MODERN FILM
The Great Beauty

BEST COMMENTARY
Stephen Prince, The Hidden Fortress

BEST BOOKLET
A Hard Day's Night

BEST "BONUS" FILM
The Underneath

BEST (NON-COMMENTARY, NON-ESSAY, NON-BONUS FILM) SUPPLEMENT
Interviews with Soderbergh on King of the Hill

BEST R1 RESCUE
Safe

BEST REISSUE
All That Heaven Allows and Picnic at Hanging Rock (tie)

BEST BLU-RAY UPGRADE
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

BEST DISCOVERY
Il sorpasso

BEST COVER


WORST COVER


BEST PACKAGING


MOST DISAPPOINTING RELEASE
The Big Chill

BEST THREAD
The 1980s List thread and Art films should look bad, just like poor people (tie)

MEMBER OF THE YEAR


RICHARD CRANIUM AWARD

[The Narrator Returns]

Great results all around. If domino was here (I'm presuming Benji hasn't come to rescue him yet), I'm sure he would have loved to see his (and my) beloved The Underneath win the votes of so many.

[ordinaryperson]

Interesting, I was actually tallying up the nominations in case domino didn't post them. I only got to Best Reissue, but there wasn't a lot of difference. I was surprised to see King of the Hill do well; I might have to pick up Il sorpasso and King of the Hill next time I go to Barnes & Nobel. Also, I think this is the first time a boxed set has won Best Release.

[The Narrator Returns]

King of the Hill is well worth picking up, on the strength of the films (especially King, but Underneath is a technical marvel) and the supplements.

[matrixschmatrix]

Congrats to sloper, who won through sheer strength of posting lots and lots of great stuff.

[Sloper]

Many thanks to those who voted for me - I'm honoured. The rest of you will be dealt with at some unspecified point in the future.

[TMDaines]

BEST PACKAGING

That's Criterion right now in a nutshell.

[tenia]

BEST PACKAGING

That's Criterion right now in a nutshell.

Reminder : 2013 Best Packaging :

SpoilerShow

[aox]

Then, perhaps next year:

"Best Conceptual Packaging"

"Best Packaging in theory" (in theory: communism works. In theory...)

[tenia]

Pierre Desproges used to say "I'd like to live in Theory, because in Theory, everything's fine".

[zedz]

BEST PACKAGING

That's Criterion right now in a nutshell.

Thanks swo (and THANKS DOMINO - - ANKS DOMINO - - KSDOMINO - - omino - - noooo)

No big surprises, including that Criterion seems to get a free pass with problematic releases so long as they're by favoured directors.

I'm a bit confused about what was so wrong with the DVD release of Safe that the new edition qualifies as "best rescue", especially when it's up against a couple of masterpieces that have been butchered for decades. Are people just voting for this category as "my favourite film that was previously already available in R1"? If so, maybe that should be the official category.

[swo17]

Presumably it's because the previous R1 DVD had been out of print forever. For what it's worth, the Hellman set only lost that category by one vote. Also, Love Streams was only one point away from making the top 10 releases of the year, Judex only one vote away from best cover, the Tati set only one vote away from most disappointing release, etc.

[Shrew]

Eh, for both the 2013 and 2014 packaging winners, the ambition and design overcomes the technical problems (and honestly, having the discs stick out of the Tati box a bit is far from the end of the world).

[Gregory]

Yeah, the votes for the Tati boxset's packaging suggest that appreciation for David Merveille's artwork (and digipak boxes in general to some extent?) far outweighed any annoyance over the sizing problem. Besides, zedz's method of narrowing the spines slightly by rubbing a fingernail against the edges worked well for me. I only slightly mangled one of the spines (the first one I attempted because I wasn't being gentle enough), and even that one doesn't look bad at all.

[swo17]

I do love his artwork, and it's so ingrained in the whole set that I guess it wouldn't make sense to vote for just a part of it as Best Cover. There were other worthy candidates for the category though, where no allowances needed to be made.

I did stare long and hard between my set and zedz's rubbing instructions for several minutes once, but I couldn't bring myself to go any further than that. I don't pay $3,000 for a suit to have to hem it myself!