28 Feb 2024

Tim Blake Nelson’s Closet Picks

The award-winning actor, writer, and director shares his love for the hard-boiled voice-over in Blast of Silence, praises the exquisite acting and production design of Topsy-Turvy, and selects favorites by his frequent collaborators Joel and Ethan Coen.

Tim Blake Nelson: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

6

every one a single film

single films

6

chosen on their own

box sets

0

none this visit

films reached

6

no set to open

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.

428 Blast of Silence 1961 558 Topsy-Turvy 1999 254 The Killing of a Chinese Bookie 1976 794 Inside Llewyn Davis 2013 1112 Miller’s Crossing 1990 217 Tokyo Story 1953

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	Blast of Silence	Allen Baron	1961	1
2	Topsy-Turvy	Mike Leigh	1999	2
3	The Killing of a Chinese Bookie	John Cassavetes	1976	5
4	Inside Llewyn Davis	Joel Coen, Ethan Coen	2013	2
5	Miller’s Crossing	Joel Coen	1990	6
6	Tokyo Story	Yasujiro Ozu	1953	10

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1953 to 2013

a single film, at its year 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 6films run 12.2 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 121.5 minutes of film for each of its 6 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 6 choices had been taken by 4.33 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. One of them has been taken by nobody else. The least-picked was Blast of Silence, taken by this visit alone.

This visit reached the work of Mike Leigh, through Topsy-Turvy, who has been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com