(Michael Fassbender in Hunger via Caravaggio or something, this is so beautiful)
Hello, Criterion Collection. The most glorious DVDs you'll ever see in your life. I've always been peripherally aware of TCC - I've seen the odd DVD at a HMV or something and stroked it in silence, awestruck; I've also borrowed them from the Esplanade Library and pretended for a week that they were mine - but I knew that I shouldn't investigate too much because it'd only end up being another Anthropologie scenario, me spending hours at their site, transfixed like a moth with a flame, cursing my moneyless lot in life. And even though I know it's bad for me I keep coming back to ogle at their products through the cold, cold screen of my computer, thinking to myself, "One day, one day..." Because stores like that keep a little part of my soul with them forever. So really I should do my best to avoid them at all costs.
(I don't know this one but boy does the Criterion Collection know how to make you want to see something.)
Well. Too late.
The Criterion Collection is very consciously arthouse (with the odd popular film - I think I saw Robocop in there for some reason) and mostly foreign, so I don't recognize the majority of their titles - they tend to release the more obscure parts of a director's oeuvre. But with such beautiful packaging I don't care what language it is, I WANT IT. And besides the uniformly breathtaking artwork (oh those covers. Can you imagine having all of these sitting in a row on your DVD shelf? All that beauty in one place?) each film is in state of the art quality (fancy digital-transfer process) and comes with a lavishly curated set of special features including really great commentaries by directors or scholars and (my favourite part) a little booklet containing critical essays on the film. Be still my heart!
I actually own one. The Red Shoes. I won it in a lucky draw from the Landmark (the cinema that gave us that awful Black Swan experience, so I think I only got what I deserved). But I want MORE. One day. One day. Hopefully by that day they will have released the titles I really need to have for my life to be complete, like The Piano, Manhattan, Basterds, Memento, Vertigo, Pan's Labyrinth, Eternal Sunshine, 28 Days Later, Assassination of Jesse James, and so on.
(And you know what, I'm just going to put this out there once and it applies for my whole life: if you're ever unsure about what to get me for any occasion, birthday... Christmas... wedding... whatever, an Amazon.com gift card will always do the trick. Clothes are temporary but a good book or movie is forever, yknow?)
(They have all of Wes Anderson's movies.)
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