Collector’s Notes: Issue # 8 The B&N Criterion Collection summer sale, Vinegar Syndrome Subscriber Week, Kino Cult update and some Discs on my radar
Welcome to another edition of Collector’s Notes, a column where I share journal-like entries about collecting films and television on home video discs.
There has been so much going on in just the last week with sales and pre-ordering and picking up discs that I just need to catch up a bit because I know I’m a bit behind with my Collector’s Notes series.
The past week marked the beginning of the Barnes & Noble Criterion Summer sale, and yes I have started picking stuff up and will be showing what Criterion Collection titles that I've gotten so far on this post, but I want to catch up with my June hauls first. I will be surely picking up some more before the end of the month, too. Today marks the end of the Vinegar Syndrome Subscribers week sale, which is different from their Halfway to black Friday sale because this is the last opportunity to apply for their subscriber package which is a deal on all their releases for the year. I’m not sure that I would subscribe to this particular package because although I think VS makes great products, not all of them are that worthwhile in the end. It’s just too hit or miss to risk. Kino is also having a sale, which is their Spring into Summer sale, where they have like 700 titles on sale, none of their new titles though, which is fine. Arrow Video is having their Camp Arrow sale which has a variety of titles on sale.
Since my last post I picked up two hauls and pre-ordered quite a bit that will be coming in later this month. In my first haul of June I went to Academy Records and Barnes & Noble to see what deals I could find and found a couple of cheap BD additions and some really cool deals on Kino titles and one of my favorite Animated movies of 2025 on 4K.
At Academy Records I picked up Ruby Gillman Teenage Kraken, which I still haven’t seen but I remember liking the trailer and being interested in it as possibly being a movie that was fun family-fair. I also picked up Tales from the Hood 2, which I also haven’t seen but I did like the original movie and I noted that it had the slipcover and so figured that if I ever did want to have this it might be hard to find with a slipcover and since it was cheap I figured why not.
I then went to Barnes and Nobles and saw they were still having their half off Kino Lorber titles and figured I could try to check off some of my recent wants. I picked up Godsend on BD, mostly because it was part of the Kino Cult collection and I had my mind set on trying to keep up with that line. I did own a BD of it already but decided I would sell the old one on eBay. Not really making a profit, but it might be a little to offset these purchases. I actually had several titles on BD or DVD that were going into the Kino Cult collection that I was doing this with, more on that later.
I also found the urge to upgrade my Stephen King collection by getting Cujo and Graveyard Shift. Again, these were two titles I already had on BD that I planned to sell to offset this cost so it didn’t feel like a bad decision. The thing about Cujo though is that, this particular 4K has been out for a while and I had been so hesitant to get it because we already had this beautiful edition that was released by a foreign company called Eureka that had a hard case and booklet and everything, the only issue being that it was Region B. This wasn’t actually a legitimate issue because we do have a Region free BD player, but we like to cover our bases and have a Region A just in case. So anyway the only reason I never felt like picking the Kino 4K edition before is because I felt we were good, but I just decided this time it was physically in my hand, was half off and it had a slipcover, so I figured why not.
The last thing I picked up was The Wild Robot on 4K UHD and it was a great deal because it was even cheaper than half off. Not sure why that happened but I’m just glad to have it, not even going to question it.
My second haul of June consisted of ordering a lot from Amazon because they were having a kind of buy 1 and get the second half off on some titles and I decided to take advantage of those deals and since B&N was having a Kino half off sale, Amazon was matching, so I decided to catch up on my Kino Cult gap. So basically from this haul I upgraded from a bunch of BDs I already had that I plan to sell on eBay. I had The Beast Within, Invasion of the Bee Girls, Crawlspace and as mentioned earlier Godsend. I felt it was worth the upgrade as I was catching up with the Kino Cult Collection as well as getting nice slipcovers too. The rest were all upgrades too from BDs I owned, some that had never been opened before even. Body Parts made sense to upgrade because I had upgraded Eric Red’s Hitcher recently. Orca and April Fools Day, were both titles I had from Scream Factory but Orca I never had the slipcover and although I liked the slipcover art of April Fools Day, that cover never felt like the movie I knew and this 4K better represented it for me. Far and Away I had to upgrade because of needing to have a better edition in my Ron Howard collection. The Cell and Invasion have been in my Arrow releases I need for a while and I just jumped at the chance of getting them on a deal. Lastly, I just needed to get Amadeus on 4K UHD, we’ve had the director’s cut on DVD and are still keeping it because the special features haven’t totally transferred over.
As you can see I’ve more or less up to date on the Kino Cult collection, I’m up to 28 complete out of a total of 35 that have been announced.
Just for the record the ones I have not picked up yet are:
Kino Cult # 29 Peter Walker Crime Collection
Kino Cult # 30 Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins
Kino Cult # 31 I, Madman
Kino Cult # 32 Sugar Hill
Kino Cult # 33 Mr Peters Pets/Everybody Loves it/50K Before Clothing
Kino Cult # 34 Vengeance of Dr Mabuse
Kino Cult # 35 Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror
Now as an update to where I’m at with Kino Cult reviews in The Spine No Column, I’m strongly considering changing up the schedule a bit on it. I may end up doing a different set of Kino Cult titles or maybe select a different collection to review, it’s kind of up in the air right now. Will have more clear direction soon though.
Now here is the most recent but not up to date because I also ordered Sorcerer and the Wiz on 4K but had to get it from Amazon because they were sold out when I got to B&N. First I’ll mention the non Criterion titles I got from Academy Records. I lucked out and found the recently made OOP and hard to find ARROW VIDEO 4K UHD edition of Demolition Man. Now I know it’s not that hard to find at prices like $60 plus, but sometimes when you come across an OOP title in the wild and it’s a fairly decent price considering you make choices. I also found cult action movies Drive Angry and Renaissance. I remember hearing good things about Drive Angry and thought it might be fun and Renaissance Paris 2054 which I hadn’t thought about in a long time. It was only $10 and it does look kind of interesting, plus it has voice work from Daniel Craig. It’s funny, because I had put this away a while ago and forgot where I placed it. This happens sometimes where I figure out where I can put a title and then when I decide to look for it either can’t remember what my reasoning for putting it where it is or I find something somewhere and wonder “Why did I think this belonged here?”
I found it in the foreign directors section, near French directors like Luc Besson. I was like “why did I put it here?”. Was I planning to get more from this director? I found a new place for it in the animated films section, so hopefully next time I look for it I’ll remember it’s an animated film.
The last thing I got from Academy Records was a great deal for Kino Lorbers edition of The Martian Chronicles. We’ve had the DVD for the longest time and although I wanted to get this set I was always hesitant.
Now is time for the B&N Criterion haul. I’ve been waiting for this sale because I really wanted to get back to filling in the gaps in picking up new 4K UHD, which I’m behind. I am all caught up with having bought all of the 4K UHDs they have released in 2021 to 2022. In 2023 I decided to become a bit more frugal by choosing to only buy new 4K UHD titles or upgrades that I didn’t own already or were upgrades from DVD. I was good up until April 2024 wherein I held off picking up Wreckmasters Harmonies and Perfect Days. From there I only have been able to pick up things I really wanted like Paper Moon, Happiness or The Gregg Arakki Teen trilogy. My plan was to try and check off more next November, but what has really set my mindset back is the whole Wes Anderson 4K UHD box set announcement. Now I know I’m absolutely going to be picking that up, but what I’m not so sure about is whether I would sell off my previous Blurays. I have to know more about this box set, because from what I’ve seen the set doesn’t seem to be representing the cover artwork from all the previous releases which is one of the biggest components of why I fell in love with the criterion collection in the first place. I really don’t understand Criterion sometimes when it comes to packaging design they sometimes (a lot more lately) fumble on this aspect. The packaging for the Wes Anderson box set is nice, but not great! It’s kind of simple in design (kind of cheap actually!). Designing the set to have each movie represented as a book is really cool, but those covers are plain, not how Anderson book designs in his movies look at all! The Wes Anderson film companion books have way better representation for their cover design for each of their films. But that leaves me to just submit to the fact that I may not part with my Blurays and also might have to get the (maybe just the BD editions) newly released Wes Anderson titles, as well. Honestly, I have really become fairly despondent with Criterion when it comes to their packaging choices. Like I am so hesitant to get the 4K UHD of Trainspotting because the shape of that release looks awful in general, much less on the shelf. I’m so close to buying both the bluray and 4k UHD putting the 4K edition in the BD case and selling off the BD in the awful 4K case. But I don’t want to do that. Also they have to get better quality BD cases for their 4 Disc sets like Underground and The Four Musketeers. When I was in B&N, I saw so many copies of these releases that were breaking or on the brink that I was close to ordering online. I took a chance and ended up with an Underground set that was broken, in that it wouldn’t fully close and a Four Musketeers that had its spine plastic torn. Like honestly, wtf is up with that!?
Don’t even get me started with the design of their coffee book Godzilla collection or their Guillermo Del Toro Trilogy box set that keeps all the discs in sleeves that make it super inconvenient to remove and replace the discs.
So, anyway that’s the first haul of July. Now looking ahead I’ve already pre-ordered a bunch of stuff. I decided I wanted to be Lionsgate Vestron Video complete ASAP, so I went ahead and ordered May, All of Me and Ghoulies go to College, which should all be arriving this week or next. I also pre-ordered Frailty in 4K UHD. I remember really liking this movie when it first came out. I’m really looking forward to revisiting this in 4K UHD.
I also pre-ordered Palindromes 4K UHD and Welcome to the Dollhouse BD both from Radiance. The reason I ordered from Radiance directly is because they had a restock of their recent OOP edition of Dollhouse and it was something I really wanted even though it was a Region B import. I wanted it for the booklet and exclusive extras, which my Region A Sony Home Video edition was missing. So I decided to get a bundle of Todd Solodz on disc.
Now I did end up making a foolish mistake when I placed the order, because while looking at their other titles I noticed a movie called In My Skin, 2022 was being released. This was a body horror movie that I had heard really good things about. I thought oh cool I’ll place an order for this and bundle them together, should be good. Later I realized how long I will have to wait and was like oh well, it’s gonna suck to wait but it’s not a big deal. But then I saw that In My Skin had a US release that was already available to order from Severin Films. They were both 4K UHD so region compatibility wasn’t a factor but what I saw was the extras in the Severin set were far more appealing to me than the Radiance release. I was like oh crap, even though it was like $10 more, I still really wanted the severin one. It just had a variety of contributors that I was familiar with giving their insights. Anyway, I ended up writing to cancel my Radiance order of In My Skin and hopefully will hear back with them saying that they’re going to ship the Solodz discs straight away.
The last order I placed was recently and from Vinegar Syndrome from the sales they had during their subscribers week. I got a good deal for their release of the Go Fish BD set, and I just bundled it with their BD limited edition set of Sidney Lumet’s Childs Play. For me it’s not been a lot of great deals that I went crazy for, I just thought I’ve been meaning to get Go Fish for a while now, and their discount price was significant, and I just really wanted to get caught up with our Sidney Lumet collection, because we had also just gotten the Criterion The Wiz as well.
I’ve gotta say also from all the announcements that came this week from VS there really hasn't been too many that I felt really excited for or that I felt I just needed to get.
Fire Maidens from Outer Space has caught my interest a bit, as it is a VSL title that I feel is somewhat in the same vein as the ones I liked from my Spine No Column reviews. I would probably wait for a sale and not really stress out if it didn’t have a slipcover. Now We’re No Angels is something I would most likely pick up eventually, I mean it is a Neil Jordan title, but it’s not one I will get before The Crying Game, so I have to keep in mind priorities. Mac and Me is one that I already own the Shout Factory edition of and so I’m not sure I need it on 4K UHD. But I don’t know, this actually has inspired me to start up a new series of reviews about reviewing discs I own and deciding whether or not I will keep it, sell it and/or upgrade it. It’s still in the speculation stage but we’ll see where I’m at with it.
I was kind excited when I first heard that they were releasing We Are What We Are, 2010 but realized they were releasing the original and not the remake from 2013 directed by Jim Mickle and featuring a young Julie Garner (soon to be known to the world as the Silver Surfer in the new Fantastic Four movie.) I had seen the 2010 original when it came out and thought it was okay, but I ended up really liking the direction style of Jim Mickle and the adaptation choices of the remake.
Vinegar Syndrome also announced Ghostlight from 2025 which was on my radar but one I missed out on watching last year. I heard good things. Rage Carrie 2 might’ve been of interest but I got the double feature from Shout Factory that includes the made for TV adaptation of Carrie, so I think I’m good. The Card Player is another fairly good announcement but not sure I’m that up for it. Lastly Yongary Monster from the Deep does sound appealing and I’m almost always up to add to the Kaiju collection, so there’s a big possibility on that one.
ARROW VIDEO had a couple announcements that sparked interest Lost in Space 1998 and The Woods, 2006. Now I’ve kind of had it on my radar to get Shout Factory’s Lost in Space but wasn’t sure. I mean it had a slipcover and a variety of transferred over extras with a new interview and the collector’s edition banner, but I don’t know I still held off because I guess I thought it cost too much for a BD. I mean $30 and it looks kind of standard. Now $35 and a 4K disc and beautiful packaging and limited edition banner. That’s the edition to get. I mean, ARROW VIDEO has really gotten it right making their editions and packaging look great, feel like they are worthwhile and also (and I can not stress this enough) making their discs consistently accessible. Right now there are so many ARROW titles I want to get like Deep Blue Sea, Swordfish and Dark City! I’m so concerned that it will go out of print before I get my hands on it. Cobra I could not care less about tho.
Alright, that’s all for this edition of Collector’s Notes.