Everyone has a different opinion regarding the greatest films in history. Since half the fun is in the arguing, pity the poor cinephile who thinks they've got it all figured out. A new DVD box set from Criterion and Janus may not claim to have finally compiled the greatest films ever, but they've gotten off to a pretty good start.

Janus was a distribution company founded in 1956 by Bryant Haliday and Cyrus Harvey. They had been showing foreign films in their Massachusetts theater for a few years before becoming the premiere distributors of foreign films in the US. Janus has teamed with their sister company Criterion to create Essential Art House: 50 Years Of Janus Film. This whopper of a collection is now available and includes films from directors like Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Luis Bunuel and Akira Kurosawa -- you can read about Criterion's remastered Seven Samurai here. In total, this box set contains 50 different films, numerous extras, and a 240-page book with an introduction written by Martin Scorsese. Most of these films have been available through Criterion for years, but not in one collection.

All of this film history doesn't come cheap though, the set has a retail price of $850. If that seems a little excessive, don't worry; Criterion is also planning on releasing individual discs from the series as well.

[via CNN Entertainment]

It's official: Beck has lost his damn mind. Based on the abundant evidence of a single feature, he has elevated Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess into the film stratosphere alongside none other than Federico Fellini. Seriously. That really happened. Talking to a stunned Rolling Stone reporter, Beck dropped the following bomb: "No filmmaker since Fellini has had such an eye for amazing characters [as Hess]." Um, wow. Read that carefully, now: I realize he's not comparing Hess' visual style to that of Fellini, but still - in Beck's personal world of great characters, there are only two masters, and one of the is Jared Hess. Man, if Wong Kar Wai knew who Beck was, he would totally come kick his ass, and Michelangelo Antonioni might just tie him to a chair and force him to watch The Passenger over and over again.

Sadly for those two, the lack of Beck love means that he'll never, ever score one of their films. Since his first ever foray into movie scores will be for Hess' Nacho Libre, he clearly has very high standards for such things - if Fellini were alive, he'd be the only other man with a shot. In addition to scoring Hess' film, Beck will also contribute songs to the soundtrack (though it's unclear if they'll be new recordings); the movie hits theaters June 2.