It won an Oscar, but will it get on Criterion?

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Sure, It Won an Oscar. But Is It Criterion?

How the Criterion Collection became the film world’s arbiter of taste.

By Joshua Hunt
Feb. 29, 2024
Updated 8:40 a.m. ET

In October 2022, amid a flurry of media appearances promoting their film “Tàr,” the director Todd Field and the star Cate Blanchett made time to visit a cramped closet in Manhattan. This closet, which has become a sacred space for movie buffs, was once a disused bathroom at the headquarters of the Criterion Collection, a 40-year-old company dedicated to “gathering the greatest films from around the world” and making high-quality editions available to the public on DVD and Blu-ray and, more recently, through its streaming service, the Criterion Channel.

Today Criterion uses the closet as its stockroom, housing films by some 600 directors from more than 50 countries — a catalog so synonymous with cinematic achievement that it has come to function as a kind of film Hall of Fame. Over four decades, through a combination of luck, obsession and good taste, this 55-person company has become the arbiter of what makes a great movie, more so than any Hollywood studio or awards ceremony.

Read more. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/29/maga ... &sgrp=c-cb