Swing Time (LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #43)

The fifth season of my main public podcast kicks off with a new theme: "Hollywood Classics". Some of these episodes will bundle several capsules together, others will focus on a single film (all will be re-edited versions of material released initially for patrons, as with earlier seasons). Our first movie, Swing Time, touches on a subject that - like Twin Peaks - I discovered and celebrated while launching my site back in 2008. I'd seen one or two Astaire/Rogers musicals before then but I watched them with a new eye that autumn, thrilled by their elegant choreography and performances in a way that I'd previously been only by Gene Kelly, and charmed by the stars' chemistry, the cheerfully stylized sets, and the lighter-than-air narrative concoctions. Inside their oeuvre, Swing Time is a bit unusual for reasons I'll discuss, primarily related to the direction of George Stevens and the characters' slight distance from the more elite bubble of some (but not all) of their other films.

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LINKS

My line-up of every Astaire/Rogers dance sequence

The Great Movies: Swing Time

by Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times)

MY RECENT WORK

New on other podcasts

Twin Peaks Cinema - Mysterious Skin (Traumatic Transformations #3) / Illustrated companions (w/ individual podcast links) for Lost in Twin Peaks #33 on Season 3 Parts 3 & 4 + #34 on Part 5, #35 on Part 6, #36 on Part 7 & #37 on Part 8

New on YouTube

Remembering the Class of 2002 (fictional documentary) / Twin Peaks Conversations w/ Queen of Hearts director Cameron Cloutier, part 1

New on Patreon

(for $5/month)

Twin Peaks Conversations w/ Queen of Hearts director Cameron Cloutier, part 2 (+ cross-post/intro)

(for $1/month)

Episode 91: The Morning Show (+ feedback/media/work updates: Everything Everywhere All At Once, Belfast, Benjamin Franklin, Latin American history, The Office finale, Joan Chen's career, the Oscars slap, generational shifts, archive reading: making my movie Class of 2002 & more) + (cross-post/intro) / Episode 92: The Power of Nightmares (+ feedback/media/work updates: King Kong vs. Godzilla, In the Line of Fire, political shifts, the Iraq War, archive reading: An American in Paris & more)

New on the site

Status update: The House is Black on Wonders in the Dark, barely keeping up w/ public podcasts, Patreon delay / Status update: "Remembering the Class of 2002" & getting ahead on Lost in Twin Peaks

Remembering the Movies, Apr. 22 - 28

 Every Friday, we look back at films released 10-100 years ago this week.

Visit Remembering the Movies to further peruse the past

Some weeks are busier than others. This week sees three hugely popular films, any of which could take the top picture spot. Amelie is probably the most popular among the general public, while Yojimbo would have the lead among cinephiles, but my personal pick would be the iconic screen-cap from The Public Enemy. Ultimately the Amelie image, with its heroine sitting engrossed in front of the silver screen, proved too apt to resist yet I couldn't bear to part with the rain-soaked gangster's grin, so Cagney appears below. Yojimbo, along with the other seven other films (including Oliver Stone's first movie, and the recently deceased Elizabeth Taylor playing a young mother), appears after the jump.

On another note, the visual tribute has returned this week, though from now on it will be on Wednesdays rather than Thursdays. Next week's is one of my more imaginative ones, so stay tuned. On with the show...