Latest news with #Vidiots
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Good Burger,' ‘Hairspray' and ‘Rear Window' Among Vidiots Summer Matinee Series – Film News in Brief
Movie Den, a teen-centric matinee repertory series held in the MUBI microcinema, will run June 16 through August 27 at Vidiots. With programming focused on 'Engaging, delighting, and inspiring the next generation of film lovers,' screenings offered as part of the series include 'Rear Window,' 'Good Burger,' 'The Half of It' and 'Hairspray' (1988). 'As a Mom to teens, and a member of a community that has been through so much this year, it was important to me and our team, that we try to make what we know will be a hard Summer for so many a little easier by expanding programming with an intention to get us out of the house, off devices, and reconnected,' said Vidiots programming director Amanda Salazar. 'When I was a teenager, the movies were my sanctuary, and our kids (and their grown-ups) need that now more than ever. We can't wait to welcome you all to Movie Den.' More from Variety Criterion Collection's Mobile Closet Comes to Los Angeles Vidiots Sets Official Opening for New Theater, Bar and Video Store in June Vidiots Still Planning Eagle Rock Theater Opening as City Hearing Looms Movie Den screenings will be offered Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons at 1PM, with tickets priced at $2 and free popcorn. Parallel programming offering teens 'Expanded opportunities to learn about Vidiots' will be offered before and after screenings. Movie Den is supported by Vidiots Founding Members MUBI and Golden Globe Foundation. A full schedule and ticketing information can be found at Gianna Toboni's film 'Just Kids' has been selected to receive a $25,000 grant from Subject Matter at the 2025 Tribeca Festival. Subject Matter has provided funds and resources for documentary films that highlight social issues and support nonprofits tackling featured projects since its launch in 2022. The nonprofit has awarded $484,000 in grants to twelve social issue documentaries, with 'Just Kids' being its latest project added to its roster. 'Just Kids' is a film that examines the nationwide bans on gender-affirming healthcare for transgender individuals. The film follows three families navigating the bans and illustrates how the laws and rhetoric surrounding the social issue have become politicized by targeting marginalized communities. Subject Matter will also award a corresponding $25,000 grant to the Campaign for Southern Equality's Trans Youth Emergency Project. The Campaign for Southern Equality provides logistical and financial support, as well as individual patient navigation services to identify unimpacted healthcare providers and emergency grants for travel expenses through their Trans Youth Emergency Project. Additionally, Subject Matter will further support their initiatives by collaborating with the Tribeca Film Festival to raise additional funding for the LGBTQ+ organization. Subject Matter will be onsite at the Tribeca Film Festival screenings for 'Just Kids,' rallying audiences to join them in donating to the Campaign for Southern Equality's Trans Youth Emergency Project. The non-profit organization will match donations up to $5,000. Best of Variety What's Coming to Netflix in June 2025 New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week 'Harry Potter' TV Show Cast Guide: Who's Who in Hogwarts?
Washington Post
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
An L.A. video store with a theater has become a retro-cool attraction
LOS ANGELES — If you ask Vidiots executive director Maggie Mackay why the video rental store and theater is a buzzy hive of activity in the age of streaming and megaplexes, she'll respond with a story. This being Los Angeles, it obviously stars celebrities. The setting is Santa Monica, 2016. Vidiots, a cultural cornerstone for more than 30 years, was on the brink of closing because of changing tastes in entertainment. One June day, a note scrawled on a scrap of paper appeared in the store like a critical plot point in a Hallmark movie.
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Utopia Launches ‘Pavements' On '90s Indie Band As Hybrid Music Doc/Satire Hits The Road
Utopia, which knows its way around a music documentary (Meet Me In The Bathroom, Crestone) opened Alex Ross Perry's at the Film Forum in NYC to $13.2k with sold-out Q&As and plans to roll the Venice-premiering satirical hybrid doc/mockumentary across key markets in May ahead of a national release June 6. It's sitting at 97% on Rotten Tomatoes (31 reviews). Each stop of the road show from LA (sold out preview at Vidiots on the 8th) and Brooklyn next weekend (also holding at the Film Forum) to San Francisco, Nashville, Knoxville, Portland and Chicago — feature sold and selling-out sessions with directors and band members whose film is as much a satire of a music doc as the real thing. Actual archival footage and interviews alternate with a movie-within-a-movie that has actors playing band members (Joe Keery as Stephen Malkmus; Fred Hechinger as Bob Nastanovich; Natt Wolff as Scott Kannenberg) and Jason Schwartzman as Chris Lombardi, founder of the group's label Matador Records. There's a reimagining of an actual theatrical production called Slanted! Enchanted! and a museum memorabilia show. More from Deadline 'Rust', Western With A Tragic Past, Honors Work Of Slain Cinematographer, Proceeds Will Go To Her Family - Specialty Preview 'Pink Floyd at Pompeii - MCMLXXII' Remastered Concert Film Rocks Indie Weekend Faith-Based 'The King Of Kings', 'The Chosen' With Hatsune Miku Anime, 'Pride & Prejudice' Re-Release Indie Standouts Easter Weekend - Specialty Box Office The venerable slacker indie rock band came together in 1989 in Stockton, California. Utopia's head of marketing and distribution Kyle Greenberg says the Film Forum audience is multigenerational from Gen Z to boomers checking out the film with long lines and strong walk-up traffic. 'As we find on many releases, bands that might be a bit older, because of discoverability these days, there is a chance … for these bigger acts' to find new audiences. The indie film scene is a tough one and the overall marketplace crowded with new studio fare barreling into theaters at its fastest pace in months. Pavements' marketing, Greenberg says, will be 'hyper-localized' to the road show and mostly driven by social with paid picking up as word-of-mouth builds. The film will play a single screen in each market this month, leaning into its arthouse partners and activations around each theater, some of which will play bonus music videos before and after screenings. Others are creating Pavement museums and artifacts, 'having fun with the meta aspects of the film.' Before the real trailer hit (watch it here), Utopia released a fake teaser for the fake movie-within-the-movie. Other indie openings: Greenwich Entertainment's , a new adaptation of Françoise Sagan's coming-of-age novel, had a terrific debut with $102.6k on 228 screens. , a difficult movie to release, grossed $25k at 115 theaters, presented by Falling Forward Films. from Big World Pictures opened to $8.1k at the Film Forum. Oscilloscope's debuted at $5.2k. Joel Potrykus's fifth feature is a NYT Critics Pick and 98% with critics on RT. expands to additional screenings in NY and Los Angeles next weekend. Wide/moderate release indies include no. 7, Angel Studios' animated , which is sticking around in week 4 with $1.8 million on 2,035 screens. Closing on a $57.7 million cume. A24 is no. 8 with Warfare in week 4 on 1,315 screens for a $1.27 milion weekend and a $24 million cume. Sailesh Kolanu's Telugu breakout from Prathyangira debuted at no. 9 with $870k weekend on 590 screens, for a $2.1 million cume, as per Comscore. And from Roadside Attractions starring Nicolas Cage rounded out the top ten at $675k on 884 screens. Best of Deadline 2025 TV Cancellations: Photo Gallery Brad Pitt's Apple 'F1' Movie: Everything We Know So Far Everything We Know About 'Nine Perfect Strangers' Season 2 So Far
Los Angeles Times
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
‘Nashville' and the movie year 1975, plus the week's best films in L.A.
Hello! I'm Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies. Tim Grierson paid a visit to the Criterion Mobile Closet last weekend, as the cinephile totem made its first ever stop in Los Angeles, parked in front of Vidiots. Fans began lining up at 5 a.m. and the line was cut off at 9:30 a.m., before things had even opened. Folks waited in the rain for hours, with the closet staying open an extra hour to accommodate everyone. What were they all waiting for? A chance to spend three minutes surrounded by every available title from the venerable home video label, which celebrated its 40th anniversary last year. (Attendees could choose three discs to purchase at a discount.) Videos of celebrities stopping by the supply closet of the company's New York offices — Ben Affleck recently dropped in — have become an online phenomenon. The Mobile Closet extends that enthusiasm to everyday fans. 'For the 40th anniversary, we've been talking about, 'What could we do that truly engages all the people that love film?'' Nur El Shami, Criterion's chief marketing officer, explained about the Mobile Closet's origins. 'Somebody said, almost as a joke, 'What if we put the Closet in a truck?' We were like, 'You know what? Maybe that's exactly what we should do.'' The truck will be at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica on May 6 and 7. Plan to arrive early. The Egyptian Theatre is launching a series celebrating the movies of 1975. And it was quite a year. On Monday there will be a 35mm screening of Sidney Lumet's 'Dog Day Afternoon,' which won the first Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. award for best picture (shared with 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,' a tie). The screening will be introduced by LAFCA member Peter Rainer. Werner Herzog will be present for a screening of 'The Enigma of Kasper Hauser,' which won the grand jury prize at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival. A screening of 'Cooley High' will welcome director Michael Schultz and actors Glynn Turman and Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs. A Tuesday screening of Robert Altman's 'Nashville' will be introduced by Ronee Blakley, who plays country music queen Barbara Jean and wrote several songs for the film. Keith Carradine, who won an Oscar for his original song 'I'm Easy' from the film, will be there for a Q&A after the film moderated by critic and programmer David Ansen. In true Altmanesque fashion, 'Nashville' features 24 main characters woven together over five days leading up to a benefit concert for an outsider presidential candidate, all intersecting off one another across the city. The cast includes Lily Tomlin, Ned Beatty, Karen Black, Timothy Brown, Gwen Welles, Shelly Duvall, Michael Murphy, Geraldine Chaplin, Keenan Wynn, Scott Glenn and Henry Gibson. In many ways the crown jewel of Altman's sprawling, prodigious filmography, 'Nashville' is a biting satire, by turns rollicking and disturbing, with a still-relevant perspective on the intersection of politics, celebrity and entertainment. From the moment the film first came out, there has been a debate as to whether it is a cynical put-down of Nashville as an institution and a place, or a celebration of all its gaudy glory. Either way, the film is clearly intended as a broader metaphor for America at a moment when the country was racked by turmoil and transition. 'I think it could be all those things, depending on your viewpoint,' said Blakley in a phone interview this week. 'But at the time, I stuck with what I considered it to be — a tribute. I didn't consider it sarcasm. I thought it was profound and in some ways very deeply respectful of Nashville.' As for what made the film so special and why its legacy has lasted for 50 years, Blakley said, 'I think it's the concurrence of a bunch of gifted people at that time and place. Nixon was resigning. Altman, I think might be called a genius. It was just a bunch of talent put together by a bunch of great people. And I don't think you could put your finger on any one thing. You would have to say [cinematographer] Paul Lohmann did beautiful photography. The editing was superb. The performances were just beyond. And the political message, such as it was, is resonant even today.' Other films in the series include Francis Ford Coppola's 'The Godfather Part II,' Roman Polanski's 'Chinatown,' Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws,' Stanley Kubrick's 'Barry Lyndon,' Hal Ashby's 'Shampoo,' Joan Micklin Silver's 'Hester Street,' Mel Brooks' 'Young Frankenstein' and Chantal Akerman's 'Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.' The Academy Museum will celebrate the 20th anniversary of Judd Apatow's 'The 40 Year-Old Virgin' with a 35mm screening tonight with Apatow and star and co-writer Steve Carell in-person. Apatow's debut feature as a director, the film was a key title in the 2000s comedy boom. Carell stars as a grown man who is, indeed, still a virgin and is desperate to find someone not only to be physically intimate with, but also to forge a romantic and emotional connection with. The cast, which features Jane Lynch, Romany Malco, Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Nancy Walls, Jonah Hill, Mindy Kaling, Leslie Mann, Catherine Keener and others, is truly stacked, and the film's finale is so riotously joyful and unexpected that it alone is worth the price of admission. I actually spent two days on the set of the film, seeing the shooting of a nightclub scene and the now famous poker scene. (I nearly ruined a take by laughing out loud.) 'The Office' had only just started to air and Carell's star was obviously ascendant. As Carell described the film at the time, 'The name is misleading to a degree. … Just based on the title, you think it's going to be this extremely bawdy, over-the-top summer comedy. There are elements of that — really funny set pieces and craziness — but we really wanted something that was grounded in a sense of reality.' Carell added, 'I've certainly played a few characters that have been rather broad. With this, I didn't want to do that. We'll see. I hope it plays.' In a review of the film, Carina Chocano confirmed Carell's hopes, writing, 'Not to scare away the kids or anything, but what's best about 'The 40 Year-Old Virgin' isn't the business with a plastic medical model of a vagina, the projectile vomit or even the onanistic interlude set to the strains of an old Lionel Richie hit (though that constitutes one of the movie's most enjoyable moments). What's best about it — aside from the fact that it's very funny — is that, for a movie in which the most sophisticated jokes are variations on 'you're so gay,' it's refreshingly grounded in reality and (dare I suggest?) emotionally mature.' 'Kingdom of Heaven' director's cut in 4K Tonight the Egyptian Theatre will host the world-premiere screening of a new 4K restoration of the director's cut of Ridley Scott's 2005 adventure epic 'Kingdom of Heaven,' co-presented by the American Cinematheque and Beyond Fest. As with the extended cut of Scott's 'The Counselor,' the director's cut of 'Kingdom of Heaven' brings a clarity of focus to the film and is vastly preferred to the theatrical version. Set in the 1100s, the story follows a French blacksmith, Balian (Orlando Bloom), as he joins up with the Crusades and travels to Jerusalem. The cast includes Liam Neeson, Edward Norton, Eva Green, Jeremy Irons, David Thewlis, Brendan Gleeson and Marton Csokas. In his 2005 review of the original theatrical cut, Kenneth Turan wrote, ''Kingdom of Heaven' is not one of those cheerful combat movies that believe bloodletting is the answer to everything. It is a violent movie that laments a peace that didn't last, a downbeat but compelling epic that looks to have lost faith in the value of cinematic savagery for its own sake. If you combine this film with Scott's [2001] 'Black Hawk Down,' you find the director in a place where he is no longer exulting in his ability simply to put violence on screen; he wants you to feel its searing effects as well.' 'Kingdom' screenwriter William Monahan also wrote the script for Martin Scorsese's 'The Departed,' which happens to be playing at the New Beverly on Saturday and Sunday. 'M. Butterfly' in 35mm On Sunday there will be a 35mm showing of David Cronenberg's 1993 adaptation of ' — presented by Hollywood Entertainment and Skylight Books — to celebrate the release of Violet Lucca's book 'David Cronenberg: Clinical Trials.' Lucca will be there to introduce the film and sign books. Screenwriter David Henry Hwang will send in a video introduction. This is said to be the film's first L.A. showing since 2022. Hwang, who also wrote the libretto for the opera 'Ainadamar' currently at the L.A. Opera, adapted his own play. In the film Jeremy Irons plays a French diplomat in 1960s China who begins an ongoing affair with an opera performer (John Lone) who he believes to be a woman and, it turns out, is also a spy for the Chinese government. In her book, Luca describes the film as 'frequently overlooked in Cronenberg's filmography' while adding, 'it also stands out as the director's most overtly political work.' Lucca continues, 'This tension is perfectly suited to the inexplicable nature of love and sex, the messiness that exists between the spark of desire and its carnal expression. It shatters the illusion that we really do know a partner, or even ourselves — a difficult lesson learned every every day, quietly and loudly, by all sorts of people under far more quotidian circumstances.'
Los Angeles Times
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Criterion takes its viral closet on the road. When that van shows up, so does a scene
The Criterion faithful are very happy — standing out in the rain on a cold Saturday morning, hundreds of them, waiting in a line that stretches several blocks. Three fans, Daniel Solis, Marco Castaneda and Kian Mohammadlou, have just been informed that they've made the cut: They are the very last people today who will be allowed into the Criterion Mobile Closet, a shiny white delivery van decked out in the home video label's recognizable logo, which was parked in Eagle Rock this weekend in front of Vidiots. 'I'm pretty excited,' Solis, 33, says. 'It's a long wait, but it's a relief that we made it.' 'Last night he told me to wake up as early as possible and just show up,' says Castaneda, 33, a friend of Solis' since they were in seventh grade. 'This will be my first time buying any Criterion DVDs,' adds Mohammadlou, 24, who came by himself. 'Obviously, I've seen them at stores, but this pop-up event, I was like: This could be a cool way to start that collection.' They arrived in the morning at around 9:30. (The lineup started at 5 a.m.) Because of the rain, Criterion employees allowed guests to begin filing into the van early, at about 9:45, around the same time they officially closed the line to more people. 'This is the earliest we ever closed the line,' Nur El Shami, Criterion's chief marketing officer, tells me at the top of the day. 'It's never a great feeling to send people away.' Despite the stinging rain and unpredictable winds, the friendly, laid-back crowd — a diverse bunch mostly made up of millennials and zoomers — seem perfectly content to wait their turn. It may take hours, but they're all jazzed to spend three minutes selecting up to three movies for purchase (at 40% off) from the company's catalog of more than 1,000 titles inside that van, which has been decorated to resemble the legendary closet housed at Criterion's New York office. Perhaps no storage room is more hallowed in cinema than the 67-square-foot space known as the Criterion Closet. That tiny office closet is huge on social media thanks to Criterion's 'Closet Picks' videos, which launched in 2010, featuring famous actors, directors and musicians entering the space, picking movies to take home and explaining why those films mean so much to them. The videos, which now number more than 260, have become appointment viewing for movie lovers, who relish watching their favorite artists rhapsodize about cinema in unrehearsed, genuine ways. Many Criterion junkies have imagined what it would be like to hang out in that closet — to be enveloped in that cozy cocoon of great movies. For them, the Mobile Closet is the next best thing. 'For the 40th anniversary, we've been talking about, 'What could we do that truly engages all the people that love film?' ' El Shami explains about the Mobile Closet's origins. 'Somebody said, almost as a joke, 'What if we put the Closet in a truck?' We were like, 'You know what? Maybe that's exactly what we should do.' ' The Mobile Closet debuted at last year's New York Film Festival, with Criterion offering guests a first-come, first-served chance to buy the company's carefully curated, beautifully packaged movies. (The celebrities who do 'Closet Picks' get theirs for free.) A downpour intervened then as well, but over the festival's two weekends, the Mobile Closet was a hit, inspiring the company to do a stop in Brooklyn at St. Ann's Warehouse and then travel halfway across the country to South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. (It will return to L.A. June 6 to 7, parked at the Aero Theatre during the American Cinematheque's popular Bleak Week festival.) For all of the Closet's viral success, Criterion's executives seem to abhor talking about it as a marketing tool. El Shami, only hired a few months ago, insists, 'Criterion is not a very brand-forward or marketing-forward company.' Still, Criterion has taken care to ensure the Mobile Closet feels special. The company's New York staff have flown out for the weekend, wearing Criterion hats and handing out complimentary branded tote bags. And Criterion President Peter Becker walks up and down the line saying hello to everyone, even when it's raining. Wearing a clear poncho, he couldn't be bubblier as he answers questions and generally holds court. But he doesn't like using the word 'marketing' without putting it in finger-quotes. 'About 10 years ago, there was this phrase that we were using,' Becker tells me. 'We wanted to be a hub in film culture, a space that was welcoming for people around movies. We did a bunch of things, but they turned out to be a lot of work and maybe less visible.' What eventually proved successful was something fast, cheap and unplanned that the company had begun, tentatively, back in 2010: In September of that year, director Guillermo del Toro stopped by the office. The company always had a policy of inviting guests to grab whatever movies they wanted out of the Closet, but this time, according to Becker, their social-media person suggested they take a picture of Del Toro in the Closet and post it online. That gave Becker an idea as he reached for his iPhone. 'I think he might let us film him making his selections,' he recalls saying. 'I think people might like to see that.' Becker's instincts paid off. 'He's a natural showman and a very generous person,' he says of Del Toro. 'And he was enthusiastic, too. I don't think there's any cuts in that video. I think it's just three minutes, like a pop song. He invented the form.' Del Toro's giddy gobbling up of world cinema (actually only two minutes) set the template for what was to come. 'Little by little, people started to ask to do it, which was fun,' says Becker. 'It took on a life of its own.' Over the next 15 years, the videos evolved. The company installed better lighting so they wouldn't look so dark. Instead of shooting on an iPhone, the camera got upgraded to a Canon C70. And the presentation became more uniform, the original handheld approach replaced with a static head-on shot of the subject at the center of the frame, the Closet's glorious crammed-to-bursting shelves surrounding the person on both sides and behind. 'That happened around five years ago — it started as almost a pandemic precaution,' says Valeria Rotella, one of the two 'Closet Picks' series producers, along with Hillary Weston, about the decision to put the camera on a mount. 'It gave people more space in terms of moving around. It also gives them a sense that they're able to browse, they're able to take in things at their own rhythm and to almost be in dialogue with themselves as much as they're in dialogue with us.' Meditative revelries from celebrities like Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edebiri helped make film fandom cool — not to mention contagious. Even before Criterion started filming these visits, Becker suspected these unpretentious salutes to cinephilia (and physical media) would make an impression. 'It was really common, if somebody came into the office, for us to spend 45 minutes hanging out in the Closet just talking about movies,' he recalls. 'Something catches their eye and they say, 'I remember seeing that in such-and-such place with such-and-such person at such-and-such time, and this was moving for me in that way.' It was intimate. There was a feeling of real connection.' When I ask the people in line what they love about 'Closet Picks,' the word 'enthusiasm' comes up frequently. And that enthusiasm is palpable as guests prepare to enter the Mobile Closet. The rear van door, where they enter, is left closed during these quick sprees, maintaining the intimacy of 'Closet Picks,' and it's fun to watch the next people who are about to enter the closet. Some know exactly what they're going to pick. Some have two movies in mind, letting inspiration take over inside the Closet for the third movie. 'I'm thinking politically today,' says Elisabeth McKeon, 31, who was planning on grabbing 'The Great Dictator,' 'A Face in the Crowd' and Todd Haynes' 'Safe.' 'Every weekend, I've basically been going to a protest,' McKeon explains, 'so this is the first time that I'm doing something not like that. I was like, 'Well, if I am going to be here, the least I can do is pick a movie that is just a marker of this year and this time.' ' No matter how many times I watched it, the transformation in fans' faces after their Mobile Closet visit is striking. Any anxiety about what films to select melts away. They often emerge from the experience beaming, not quite believing what they just went through. Sometimes they're visibly moved. 'I imagined it would be overwhelming but also it was exhilarating,' says Daniel Tronco Velasquez, 23, who was born in Peru and grew up with films as a constant childhood companion. 'Every single movie in there has a story that resonates with anyone. Just being in the presence of all those films, it's amazing.' It really is. Early in the day, I had my own three-minute odyssey. No matter how many 'Closet Picks' you know by heart, no matter how convinced you are that you wouldn't let the collection's sheer scope inundate you, it's a humbling experience to be around so many stellar titles: Do you go for a Bruce Lee box set? Do you grab one of the brand-new releases, like Charles Burnett's recently restored 'Killer of Sheep,' before it's available to the general public? You feel the clock ticking in your head, you know you have to make decisions quickly. I went in with two films I knew I wanted — Krzysztof Kieślowski's luminous, hard-to-find-on-streaming 'Dekalog' and Hirokazu Kore-eda's 'After Life' — and then felt a wave of panic. Like a lot of people in line, I went with my heart, grabbing 'Wall-E,' a film that means everything to my wife and me. Per Criterion, the most popular titles purchased on Saturday were 'Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me,' 'Anora,' Richard Linklater's 'The Before Trilogy,' 'Pan's Labyrinth' and 'The Virgin Suicides.' The van was supposed to close at 8 p.m., but Criterion extended the run for an additional hour. Then on Sunday, the turnout was already so massive by 9:15 a.m. that the company had to close the line, breaking Saturday's record. The big crowds and cool vibes are certainly encouraging for Becker, but he insists that the popularity of 'Closet Picks' is hard to quantify. 'As a company, we have always fundamentally subscribed to the proposition that the product is the marketing — that the film is the point, that the brand is carried into the marketplace by the films,' he says. 'The slow accumulation of trust over decades is the way that we're going to build an audience.' He remembers Winona Ryder's 'Closet Picks,' recorded in June 2024 but posted in late August, shortly after Gena Rowlands' death. 'If Winona Rider makes you want to go see 'A Woman Under the Influence,' which is a Criterion disc release that's also on the Criterion Channel — but it's also on iTunes and on Amazon — however you go seek out that film, great,' he says. 'That's just generating energy around an important film and performer.' In other words, Criterion is happy to lead you to the Closet, but what you choose is up to you. Inside, you're the expert, you're the connoisseur, you're the one reconnecting with why movies are so crucial to you. That kind of safe space is precious, and reason enough to brave the elements and a seemingly endless line. 'I go to Comic-Con,' says Rebecca Safier, 43, who does background and stand-in work as an actor. 'I haven't been in Hall H in 15 years, but I have my own fan things that I care about. It's been a while since I've stood in a line this long, though.'
