12 Sept 2022

Gina Prince-Bythewood's Closet Picks

While in New York to promote her film The Woman King , the director stopped by our office and picked up some of her favorite movies, including Black Orpheus and Broadcast News .

Gina Prince-Bythewood: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

12

11 single, 1 box set

single films

11

chosen on their own

box sets

1

one choice, many films

films reached

17

the same visit, box sets opened

Criterion's own upload · on criterion.com

This visit as a strip, a cell for each choice: paler the older the film, indigo for a box set, which is one cell however many films it holds. The order is the order Criterion's own page lists them in, which is probably but not provably the order they came off the shelf.

1097 Love & Basketball 2000 48 Black Orpheus 1959 147 In the Mood for Love 2000 552 Broadcast News 1987 953 A Dry White Season 1989 SET John Cassavetes: Five Films 162 Ratcatcher 1999 553 Fish Tank 2009 1135 Devil in a Blue Dress 1995 1052 Claudine 1974 175 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas 1998 912 An Actor’s Revenge 1963

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	Love & Basketball	Gina Prince-Bythewood	2000	12
2	Black Orpheus	Marcel Camus	1959	10
3	In the Mood for Love	Wong Kar Wai	2000	10
4	Broadcast News	James L. Brooks	1987	4
5	A Dry White Season	Euzhan Palcy	1989	2
6	John Cassavetes: Five Films box set, 6 films			30
7	Ratcatcher	Lynne Ramsay	1999	8
8	Fish Tank	Andrea Arnold	2009	8
9	Devil in a Blue Dress	Carl Franklin	1995	7
10	Claudine	John Berry	1974	9
11	Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas	Terry Gilliam	1998	2
12	An Actor’s Revenge	Kon Ichikawa	1963	2

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1959 to 2009, box sets 1959 to 2000

John Cassavetes: Five Films

a single film, at its year a box set, across the years of its films the collection, by decade

The axis is the same 1920 to 2030 on every visit page, so a haul that stayed inside one decade looks like one. A box set is drawn across the years of the films inside it, which is a range of release dates and not a claim about the set. Nothing here is in the order the choices were made: displayed position moves film year by a fifth of one percent of its variance, which is not a slope worth drawing.

How long this haul is

Its 17films run 34.3 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 171.5 minutes of film for each of its 12 choices, counting a box set as the one choice it was. Across the 375 visits with a complete total, the median is 136.4 minutes.

How unusual this haul was

Its 12 choices had been taken by 8.67 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. Every one of them has been taken by somebody else too. The least-picked was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, taken by 2 visits in total.

This visit reached the work of Carl Franklin, through Devil in a Blue Dress, Euzhan Palcy, through A Dry White Season, James L. Brooks, through Broadcast News and Terry Gilliam, through Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, who have been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

One of the choices is their own: Love & Basketball. Left out of the lineage count, because reaching for yourself is not reaching for somebody else.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com