Scratch those arthouse films off your movie queue. There are Fake Criterion films to consider.
Ever wondered why Ernest Goes to Jail wasn’t an Oscar darling? Or why more people didn’t rave about Air Bud? Well, that’s because — like a book without an Oprah’s Book Club seal — the marketing plan was way off.
In comes Fake Criterions, a new Tumblr blog that takes the formula perfected by the renowned company, the Criterion Collection — which artfully repackages important classic and contemporary films — and turns it on its head. Dismissed are the Akira Kurosawa classics or anything by Bergman, Fellini or Kubrick. No, Fake Criterions redefines the trope of judging a book by its cover and rebrands movies like Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and Ghost Dad to make those stellar pieces of film work seem worth watching just by making their DVD covers, well, Criterion-like. Soul Man never looked so appealing.