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Tiny Furniture (Lena Dunham, 2010, United States)

I’ve always been a fan of low-contrast and simultaneous contrast.

Three Outlaw Samurai (Hideo Gosha, 1964, Japan)

The package design is pretty straightforward with some nice illustration work. The most interesting element is the design on the actual disc, with its effective use of the Criterion logo designed by the great Paula Scher.

La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1963, France)
Sans Soleil (Chris Marker, 1983, France)
My brief critique of this particular packaging may be biased by how highly I think of Chris Marker. Let’s begin with what is without a doubt the best use of a “Blu-Ray” sticker. These stickers are placed on the cases to prevent buyers from accidentally purchasing a Blu-Ray Disc for their DVD Player, and it usually takes away from the appeal of the package design. But here we have Chris Marker’s official avatar, before avatars were cool. Marker uses illustrations inspired by his cat Guillaume in place of publicity photos and has even anonomously attended screenings of his films only to leave a sketch his feline alter-ego in the sign-in book.

The Art Director modifies Scher’s logo to contrast La Jetée’s black and white visuals with Sans Soleil’s full spectrum of color. Represented on the cover of the booklet by a pink bar and a gray bar.

A friend of mine was enrolled in a History of French Cinema class and was disappointed by the selection of films shown on the syllabus. I told my friend I would compile a list of French New Wave movies for her to watch. The first two movies on the list were Le Jetée and Sans Soleil, bookends to my favorite film movement.

Check back in about two weeks to see images from the late February releases:
World on a Wire (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1973, Germany)
Vanya on 42nd Street (Louis Malle, 1994, United States)
Anatomy of a Murder (Otto Preminger, 1959, United States)

In the meantime, check out more pics of Guillaume.

Promo for essay-film The Case of the Grinning Cat.

Second-Life Guillaume. The avatar becomes meta-avatar.

Real-life Guillaume?

And in case you missed it, I’ve updated the Criterion Collection – January 2012 Releases post with more images.