Criterion announces first Blu-ray releases

The end is nigh for DVD! Probably not, but this is big news regardless. Criterion, the premier distributor of high-end art films in America, has announced that this October it will begin releasing Blu-ray titles. The launch titles for this new format, though not necessarily an inclusive list, were contained in Criterion's subscriber newsletter:

"Our first Blu-ray discs are coming! We’ve picked a little over a dozen titles from the collection for Blu-ray treatment, and we’ll begin rolling them out in October. These new editions will feature glorious high-definition picture and sound, all the supplemental content of the DVD releases, and they will be priced to match our standard-def editions."

Here’s what’s in the pipeline:

The Third Man
Bottle Rocket
Chungking Express
The Man Who Fell to Earth
The Last Emperor
El Norte
The 400 Blows
Gimme Shelter
The Complete Monterey Pop
Contempt
Walkabout
For All Mankind
The Wages of Fear

"Alongside our DVD and Blu-ray box sets of The Last Emperor, we’ll also be putting out the theatrical version as a stand-alone release in both formats, priced at $39.95. Our Blu-ray release of Walkabout will be an all-new edition, featuring new supplements as well as a new transfer; we will also release an updated anamorphic DVD of Nicolas Roeg’s outback masterpiece at the same time."

The most interesting releases here are Bottle Rocket, Chungking Express and El Norte. Word had been out that Bottle Rocket and El Norte were getting the Criterion treatment, but the rights for Chungking Express on DVD belong to Miramax and Kino. That DVD rights are not corresponding with Blu-ray may open up films for deluxe treatment that otherwise would be unavailable.

The announcement also leaves a lot of questions unanswered. First, what does the release schedule actually look like, since these are just "in the pipline," as it were? Then there's the issue of whether or not the unreleased films will also pop up on DVD, and with this, how much longer the DVD line will continue. We'll see what happens in the future, but this news should be quite a boon for cinephiles seeking out top quality film transfers.

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