The other day Teri and I were streaming an old movie and had to give up after half-an-hour or so. The print was indifferent and the sound both incomprehensibly muddy and out of sync with the video. If you’re watching older films — which we do a lot — when you’re streaming you never know what you’re going to get. 

This is why I adore the Criterion Collection. Recently I decided that I needed to have my own copy of The Magnificent Ambersons, so I ordered it from Criterion. I got a perfect print with perfect sound, and in this packaging: 

Welles’s preferred vision of the film is, famously, lost, which means that the film as he cut it has never been seen by the general public — so the presentation of the booklet as a stapled screenplay is sheer genius: 

And the essays — by Molly Haskell, Luc Sante, and Jonathan Lethem, no less — are simply brilliant, worth the price of admission in themselves. Ditto with the many documentaries, short and long, that accompany the movies available from the Criterion Channel. (Just this morning I watched a brief chronicle of George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola reflecting on their relationship with Kurosawa.) 

There’s just so much crap being offered for sale or rent today — so much that we’re expected to spend money on and like even though it’s incompetently or carelessly made. In such an environment a company like Criterion seems like a miracle. I’m so grateful for the thought and care they put into everything they do. 

(A closely related concluding point: I may be the only person in America who would gladly have a significantly thicker, heavier Mac laptop if I could have one with a Blu-Ray/DVD/CD drive.)