The Third ManWoo…awesome news for movie nerds…according to The Digital Bits, Criterion is going Blu-ray! I’ve expressed my undying love for Criterion many times before (I’ve had three different posts expressing said love in the headline alone), but these days, I’m an HD-only guy. Yeah, the PS3 does a decent job upscaling standard def DVDs, but there’s just no comparison.

So it’s great to hear that Criterion, having wisely sat out the high-def war, has decided to embrace Blu-ray. And the first round of movies includes some of my all-time favorites, too: The Third Man, The 400 Blows, Gimme Shelter and Walkabout. All gems, and I can’t wait to see how they look in shimmering 1080 (here’s hoping Gimme Shelter has lossless audio, too!).

Great news indeed. Now I just need them to reissue some of the other gems in their collection like Brazil, the Kurosawa collection, the Croenenberg collection, The Last Temptation of Christ, Rififi, and just for me, Kicking and Screaming (not the Will Ferrel one). Plus some of the many other hundreds of amazing movies in their library.

Such great news. The only thing that could top it is news that the Kenneth Branagh Hamlet will come out in HD. It was supposed to (I even got all excited about it), but then it never materialized, and I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch it in low-def. For that one, I can keep waiting.