Does Michael Bay Have Nude Photos of Someone At Criterion

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Laserdisc and DVD fans might be familiar with the Criterion Collection. Criterion releases what they consider “important movies” in definitive editions, usually with pristine prints and sound, commentaries by the filmmakers and/or film historians, and other extras.

Now, nowhere do they claim to release exclusively good movies, but they do try to limit it to movies that were important in the history of cinema, or are excellent representatives of genre films, or bring little known foreign films to a broader public. Among their titles are lowbrow fare like “The Blob” and “Carnival of Souls,” genuine classics like “The Seven Samurai” and “The Lady Vanishes,” and modern material like “Chasing Amy” and “Do The Right Thing.” They’ll even shoot for purely artsy stuff like “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeousie.”

Last year, they released an enormously hyped, two-disc set of “Armageddon.” OK, this was a big, loud, dumb summer blockbuster. It made a boatload of money. It’s a perfectly representative example of the state of Hollywood moviemaking. So, to that extent, I suppose it qualifies as an “important movie,” although important for all the wrong reasons.

Now comes word that Criterion is giving similar treatment to “The Rock.” And all I can ask is, WTF? Is Michael Bay such a force in the field of cinema that two of his titles merit this treatment? Was “Armageddon” not considered a complete enough examination of his contributions to the “Poorly Scripted Exploding Things Action Movie” genre? Does someone owe him money?

::::::::::sigh:::::::::::

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Criterion has also released a DVD of Beastie Boys’ videos. Forget about questionable quality; that doesn’t even qualify as a movie.

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Either Michael Bay is always on speed during editing, or he assumes his audience is while watching. I encourage all to try the Michael Bay movie drinking game. If there is any cut or edit from one shot to another in less than about 4 seconds, take a drink. Trust me, you’ll be trashed in half an hour.

“Hey, look over here! An explosion!”
“Enough of that, over here!”
“Wait, no, look at this!”

Wham, bam, thank you Mr. Bay.

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Rather than an example of Mr. Bay’s influence, I think it’s more of an example of how irrelevant Criterion has become. They could have become the leading distributor of interesting DVD’s if it wasn’t for their idiotic business decisions – they would produce an absurdly low quantity of each title and charge an absurdly high amount for them. Needless to say, the interesting titles sold out almost immediately (before most people even got a DVD player), and even if you were lucky enough to get your hands on them, they cost about twice as much as an average disc.

Sure, their DVDs were good with regard to extras, quality, etc., but so is Anchor Bay’s stuff, which is cheap and easily accessible. Anchor Bay is by far the coolest distributor out there, in my humble opinion.