Word: criterion
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...Richard Lacayo explains in the illuminating essay that accompanies this one, the company built its lustrous reputation two decades ago in its intermediate stage between Janus the movie distributor and Criterion the DVD producer: as the Voyager label in the brief, glorious age of laser discs. Voyager was noted for the care its took in reproducing, sometimes restoring, pristine print quality. In graphics and production, the discs had the elegance of art books; they were the first coffee-table movies...
...Fifty years after their founding of Janus Films, the company has evolved into the Criterion Collection, the foremost packager of DVDs of foreign and specialty films. I can't think of another area of popular art, or commerce, where one brand is considered the standard of excellence, so far above its competitors, as Criterion. Consider: that it's the only label to have its own section in many video stores; that a copy of the out-of-print "white ring" edition of Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salo has been bid up, last time I checked, to $1,025 on eBay...
...have to say it drives me nuts that these discs don't include any of the extras I've extolled; a Criterion disc without all the cool Easter eggs is missing something... essential. But the box is a testament not to Criterion but to Janus; indeed, to serious lovers of serious films. As such, there's not a richer gift (if you happen to be rich) for someone ready to experience the wonders of movies beyond Hollywood than this sumptuous...
...appeared in, Devil Doll and The Projected Man, were cheesy enough to be riffed on Mystery Science Theater 3000.) The company was taken over by Saul Turrell and William Becker, who steered Janus into its non-theatrical middle age, and whose sons Jonathan Turrell and Peter Becker run Criterion today. They eventually did fine; the foreign-film genre didn...
...what has turned out to be my most enduring obsession is DVDs, since it's just the product-line expression of my lifelong fascination with movies. So it was only a matter of time before I found my way to Criterion, the DVD company that grew out of the Janus film collection and Voyager/Criterion laser disc...