Back in the days before DVDs, if you loved films and wanted to enjoy them in your own home, the Criterion Collection was king. Their Laserdiscs were the first to have careful, state-of-the-art transfers, the first to letterbox widescreen films, and the first to come in supplement-filled special editions.
They also, to my knowledge, invented the commentary track. The Laserdisc format had a "multilingual" feature that allowed a disc to have two (later four) mono soundtracks. Criterion brilliantly found a use for that, giving you the option to watch a movie while listening to a film historian, or the director, talk about the picture.
Laserdiscs were a niche market, and the major studios were often reluctant to put their own money into special editions. But they were happy to license their classics, and even some of their new films, to Criterion for that purpose. So in addition to the foreign and independent fare we associate with them today, Criterion got to release such titles as Bad Day at Black Rock, It’s A Wonderful Life, Jason and the Argonauts, From Russia with Love, The Great Escape, High Noon, and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.
And all of them had commentaries.
Today, all of these films are available on DVD. Many of them are even out on Blu-ray. But not by Criterion. The current releases often boast excellent transfers, extensive extras, and well-below Criterion prices. But they lack those wonderful, old Criterion commentaries.
Some of those commentaries are valuable artifacts in their own right. For instance, director John Sturges provided excellent insights in his Bad Day at Black Rock and Great Escape commentaries. He has since passed on, and will be recording no others. Somehow, these commentaries should be made available again.
Now the good news: Columbia’s forthcoming Blu-ray edition of Taxi Driver includes the Martin Scorsese/Paul Schrader commentary from the Criterion Laserdisc. (Columbia has sent me a copy and I hope to get my review up in the next few days). Let’s hope this is the beginning of a trend.
If it isn’t, let’s hope that Criterion finds a way to make these commentaries available on their own.
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political satire in this film, although not of the constant belly laugh variety. It follows an aging man with sad eyes as he travels by rowboat through a strange, salty world, listening to people’s tales of woe and collecting their tears. This is an astonishingly beautiful film, filled with striking, forbidding, yet lovely white landscapes and seascapes. The mood is oppressive, watchful, and occasionally funny in a dry, painful way. Part of the series 
knew what they were getting into. You okay a big budget end-of-the-world scifi adventure starring Will Smith (seems a safe bet), and you get a slow-paced, dark, brooding, humorless horror film where the action scenes are few and very terrifying, and the CGI is used mainly to put wild flora in Manhattan streets. I am Legend is the sort of big-budget movie that gives you hope for Hollywood. With Art Director Patricia Woodbridge in person as part of the series 
sequence that I hesitate to discuss if further–it’s like deconstructing Hamlet’s "To be or not to be" soliloquy. But I will add one thing that caught my notice last night: It’s the only character-driven scene in the movie. Within the space of those few minutes, Eisenstein lets us get close to and identify with several of the victims. There’s the young, scholarly-looking man, the elderly woman and her daughter, and most heart-breaking of all, the woman who sees her child shot down and trampled upon.
at different times, with separate admissions, and not as a double bill. The live-action collection is overall a worthy selection, with one remarkable gem, three good little pleasures (one of which won the Oscar), and only one near-turkey. Read 
Contest: You’re going to see an awful lot of adorably ugly dogs. (Believe it or not, even the one shown here looks lovable when cuddling with his owner.) What’s surprising is how involved the human contestants become, and why. There’s a real shot at fame and modest fortune by having your dog win this contest, which is covered by media from all over the world. And there are controversies. Should dogs qualify who are ugly because disaster or disease have disfigured them–opening up charges of exploitation–or just those who come by it naturally. But even here, the Chinese Crested are arguably bred for ugliness, giving them an unfair advantage. The festival web site lists Worst in Show as a 90-minute movie, but the review screener sent to me by the festival runs just under an hour. Part of 
