31 Jan 2023

Yo La Tengo’s Closet Picks

The acclaimed band talks about Japanese films about family, the rock music in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, and a festival viewing experience of Carnival of Souls.

Yo La Tengo: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

10

9 single, 1 box set

single films

9

chosen on their own

box sets

1

one choice, many films

films reached

11

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.

1001 The Daytrippers 1996 SET The Complete Monterey Pop Festival 852 Black Girl 1966 836 Beyond the Valley of the Dolls 1970 967 I Wanna Hold Your Hand 1978 1164 The Velvet Underground 2021 217 Tokyo Story 1953 1120 The Girl Can’t Help It 1956 649 Ministry of Fear 1944 63 Carnival of Souls 1962

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	The Daytrippers	Greg Mottola	1996	6
2	The Complete Monterey Pop Festival box set, 2 films			5
3	Black Girl	Ousmane Sembène	1966	7
4	Beyond the Valley of the Dolls	Russ Meyer	1970	4
5	I Wanna Hold Your Hand	Robert Zemeckis	1978	1
6	The Velvet Underground	Todd Haynes	2021	1
7	Tokyo Story	Yasujiro Ozu	1953	10
8	The Girl Can’t Help It	Frank Tashlin	1956	1
9	Ministry of Fear	Fritz Lang	1944	1
10	Carnival of Souls	Herk Harvey	1962	4

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1944 to 2021, box sets 1968 to 1986

The Complete Monterey Pop Festival

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 11films run 16.8 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 101 minutes of film for each of its 10 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 10 choices had been taken by 4 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. Four of them have been taken by nobody else. The least-picked was Ministry of Fear, taken by this visit alone.

This visit reached the work of Todd Haynes, through The Velvet Underground, who has been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com