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As you may have seen, the cover art for Criterion’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou DVDs hit the internet this week, and I found myself terribly disappointed with it. And that got me thinking about just how good Criterion’s covers always are.

The Criterion Collection covers are consistently hands down the best in the industry. There’s no other studio who so willingly eschews commerciality (read: star headshots, standard poster art–usually with star headshots superimposed, taglines and the like) in the interest of compelling design. This might be related to how low the commercial value of some of Criterion’s product is, but it usually follows through to their more widely known titles as well. Here, let me do a little comparison for you of Criterion cover designs and their corresponding Hollywood studio designs (and I’ll just use bigger, more commercial titles to better illustrate my point). The major studio’s art is on the left, Criterion’s on the right:

God, Disney sucks, eh? They definitely have some of the worst cover art in the industry and they’re certainly one of the studios most willing to corrupt decent theatrical key art with stupid actors’ stupid faces.

Now, here’s one where Disney’s cover design was actually pretty decent, but Criterion just took it to the next level:

And a couple more well known ones:

Now, that isn’t a Criterion DVD on the right there, but the packaging for the New Line Platinum Series edition of Se7en is a direct port of the old Criterion laserdisc art. I should add here that the original box art for Se7en (on the left) is, itself, a direct port of what has to be one of the worst ratios of successful theatrical poster design to the graphic opportunity afforded by a specific film in history. That was basically the only promotional art for Se7en until the Criterion laser. Yuck.

Two more quickies… on this one, the original USA Entertainment art is reasonably decent, but look at what Criterion was able to do with it just by removing the dumb heads and bringing it back to what the theatrical poster had been:

And this one’s a little weird. These are actually both Criterion covers. With Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums, Criterion achieved a first by distributing a major studio’s first run film’s initial DVD release. To satisfy the studio’s (Disney again–surprise, surprise) commercial concerns, the packaging included a slip-on cover (on the left) with lots of famous people on it which obscured the more Criterion-y inner art (on the right):

Which brings me back to The Life Aquatic, Anderson’s most recent film, and the second film to be distributed directly by Criterion like that. So, like I said, I was pretty disappointed when I saw this cover art. I guess we can only assume that it’ll include an outer/inner packaging scheme like Tenenbaums. At least one would hope.

From left to right, that’s the single-disc version, the two-disc version (both Criterion releases) and the original theatrical art. That’s why it’s a disappointment. Who needs to see that theatrical art again (especially when it isn’t anything terribly compelling)? Anyway, I’m sure the inner cover will be more interesting.

If it were up to me, Criterion would put out a book of its covers. Excellent stuff. Here are a couple smaller titles that have never been put out by a big distributor. This is what cover art should be:

Okay, before I go: Happy Birthday, Dad. 70 is a nice, round number.

Read this article from Wired about the destruction of our postal system:

Stop the US Mail!
When we end the Postal Service’s government-backed monopoly, private carriers will deliver better alternatives.

By Andy Kessler

VIEW|essay

It’s been said that Americans will put up with anything - as long as it doesn’t involve waiting in line. And as I wasted half a day mailing a gift this past holiday season, I asked myself why that sentiment doesn’t apply to the US Postal Service. In the age of instant communication, with trillions of dollars crossing borders in nanoseconds and grandmas sending email, why do post offices even exist?

As a kid, I subscribed to National Lampoon, which had about a dozen blow-in cards per issue that basically read, pay us $7.95 a year and we will have a snappily dressed government employee personally deliver our magazine to your door. How’d they do that? Well, in 1825, Congress outlawed private mail delivery within cities and gave the USPS a monopoly over first-class letters and third-class items like magazines, catalogs, and junk mail (a prize if you can tell the difference).

But why does the USPS still have this monopoly? The only possible argument is that the US economy would grind to a halt without the postal service. It is, after all, one of the largest civilian employers. Its 707,000 workers need 37,000 post offices, 200,000 vehicles, and 15,000 daily flights to deliver some 550 million pieces of mail a day.=

Sure, the numbers look impressive. But so would track miles of horse-drawn trolleys if that industry had a monopoly on travel. Consider that each day 35 billion emails are sent, 1 billion SMS messages traverse the ether, and 2 billion instant messages are delivered by AOL alone. Does any of this take almost three-quarters of a million workers? Nah, just a few latte sippers in data centers to reboot the servers a couple of times a day.

Meanwhile, the USPS raked in a $3 billion profit in fiscal 2004 (untaxed) and plans to raise its rates, again, in 2006. The price hike is needed to cover the rising labor costs that make up a majority of their $65 billion in operating expenses. The Ludditious American Postal Workers Union has time and again fought labor-saving technologies that would increase efficiency. And postal workers’ wages seem to stay above those of average factory employees. The USPS monopoly means no shareholders to complain, and no lawyers to file class actions against it.

So what would happen if this 180-year-old trust disappeared tomorrow? Would the US seize up like an engine without oil? Hardly. Better alternatives to the USPS are already here, and plenty of others would emerge.

Bills offer the best opportunity to bury the USPS. Companies need to be paid. But mailing bills and checks is terribly inefficient, costing $2 to $10 per transaction. Some analysts suggest that 25 percent of the cost of a phone call covers billing. Companies should persuade more of us - through incentives - to pay bills online, a method that could easily scale to 105 million households. Bank and brokerage statements, too, are a click away. For those without computers, banks would fill the void. After all, they already deal with all those personal checks. Tellers could pull up your bills and assist you with those to be paid, for a fee (and a wait in line), of course.

Private carriers would compete for contracts to deliver catalogs and magazines. Junk mail doesn’t make the cut - like you care. Electronic payment replaces stamps, removing a lucrative float enjoyed by the USPS. Innovation coupled with a free market would lead to profitable opportunities in rural areas, currently subsidized by city dwellers and suburbanites.

Which leads me to the best reason for ending the postal monopoly: to make home package delivery cheaper. UPS and FedEx can, and almost do, handle many of the packages that Amazon.com and eBay and my household rely on for their existence. But it’s no secret that UPS and FedEx hate delivering to our homes, because of the time it takes to get out of the truck and ring the bell. The penalty is staggering - residential deliveries often cost 10 to 20 percent more than those for businesses. Allowing these package humpers to carry first- and third-class mail would make this "suburban tax" disappear.

Let’s take the first step and end the postal monopoly now. As the USPS collapses under its own weight, entrepreneurs will start companies that will offer today’s mail carriers more productive jobs. And the new firms may even offer snappy outfits.