Criterion goes Blu-Ray!

This from the latest Criterion newsletter:

"Dear Criterion Collection Newsletter subscriber,

We’ve got some exciting news for this fall, and we wanted you to hear it first.

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."

I'm very excited about Bottle Rocket. I knew they were working on a release of the film, but it's great that I can get it in Blu-Ray. Chungking Express is also new to Criterion, a film I have a love/hate relationship with. But I'm sure Christopher Doyle's work will look amazing in hi-def. Wong-Kar Wai fans may also be interested in Kino's first step into the Blu-Ray waters: Fallen Angels. You can read the details here. I say, bring on a decent edition of Ashes of Time!

My worry, with all the Blu-Ray hoopla, is that we're going to see fewer older titles released. Soon, the double-dipping will really start. Instead of finally seeing a decent DVD or Blu-Ray copy of Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, we get crap like this. I mean, it's a cute movie, but who was beating down doors asking for this?!?