it is perfectly clear in essay why movie is included.
“Brad Pitt is a man who is born in his eighties and ages backward and Cate Blanchett is the woman he is destined to love forever in David Fincher’s monumental, Academy Award–winning The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a powerful testament to life and death, love and loss.”
you may not see it that way, they do.
@Micky
Forget about the that movie for specific. I just want to know a general rule they rely on to include a movie in the collection. The Curious Case was very special production, It did talk about life and death, love and loss. But it’s not the first movie to talk about that.
Money. Brad Pitt.
The only objective criteria are that usable elements of sufficient quality have to exist and Criterion has to be able to obtain the rights to release the film on DVD and/or BD. Their stated mission is to release “important classic and contemporary films,” which obviously leaves a lot of room for interpretation.
Benjamin Button could be deemed an important film as far as Hollywood movies go because of the seamless use of live action and CGI that were necessary in order for the performance to work.
I think BENJAMIN BUTTON’s Criterion release was an honest attempt at incorporating current Hollywood releases into the collection, you know, a sort of bid against charges of art-house snobbery. And I don’t think it would have been a problem if the film in question hadn’t been such a colossal piece of corn-studded shit.
Exactly, @ Malik.
This has been discussed already on this site, but everybody has to remember that pre-DVD, back in the days of the old Video Disks, a ton of titles such as The Graduate and Lawrence of Arabia and Fritz the Cat and American Graffiti got Criterion “treatments,” too. It’s because of the wide-sale profit margins when DVD debuted that the copyrights for many of these became jealously guarded by their owners.
Also remember … the profits made by the Benjamin Buttons and the Armageddon s and The Rocks for the Criterion people help to fund all of the “deep and profound” Dryer and Renoir and Neorealist and Third World titles the rest of us monocle-wearing, riding-crop-swatting snobs enjoy.
Ma'moon
What are the basis that the Criterion Collection rely on to include a movie in its collection (e.g. “The Curious of Benjamin Button”) ?