The Olympic Films, part 6 of 7: Summer 1952 / 1948 / 1936 (+ 1932 bonus) & Winter 1998 / 2002 / 2006

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running from August 2021 to February 2022

March 2019 Patreon Podcasts: LOST IN TWIN PEAKS #2 - Season 1 Episode 2 and LOST IN THE MOVIES #53 - John Thorne conversation, pt. 3 (+ Roma, problematic art/artists, Venezuela, Late Spring, The River, La Roue, Pandora's Box, Gone With the Wind, Ivan the Terrible Part II, Scarface, Jaws, The Seventh Seal, God's Country, Satantango, podcast recommendations, Listener Feedback bonus - Catholicism vs. Protestantism in First Reformed, Democratic Socialists of America, Spirituality & Psychology in Twin Peaks & much, much more)

As winter turns to spring, I thought my podcasts were going to become more streamlined, but even as I pare my approach down to its essentials there's way too much material to keep the titles short, let alone the episodes. For starters, my "Lost in Twin Peaks" rewatch podcast continues for second-tier patrons with an extensive overview of the first regular episode in season one. This incorporates everything from my analysis of the episode's structure to what went down on Cheers the night that Twin Peaks made its Thursday debut.

Lost in Twin Peaks #2 - S1E2 (Traces to Nowhere/"Episode 1")

On the main episode, John Thorne and I wrap up our extended Twin Peaks conversation...for now. We zoom in on questions about Judy, the Experiment, and Diane (among others) and I won't be surprised if we do this again, soon, because just in the time since recording this John has already revised some of his thoughts on Cooper and written about them for The Blue Rose. The archive "favorites" series continues with a mix of very obscure, hard-to-find titles and a couple of the biggest blockbusters of all time, and after offering some brief reflections on the recent Academy Awards ceremony and the acclaimed nominee (but not winner) Roma I end the episode with an extended podcast recommendations session. This yields long deep dives into topics like problematic art and artists, the ongoing crisis in Venezuela, and Bernie Sanders' 2020 campaign.

Lost in the Movies Episode 53: John Thorne's Twin Peaks conversation, pt. 3
(+ Roma, Oscars, True Detective season 1, podcast recommendations, problematic art/artists, Venezuelan crisis, favorite films archive #78 - 68: Late Spring, The River, La Roue, Pandora's Box, Gone With the Wind, Ivan the Terrible Part II, Scarface, Jaws, The Seventh Seal, God's Country, Satantango & more)

I've been thinking for a while that it might become necessary to present listener feedback as an independent, bonus entry alongside the main podcast and it surely was this month. Often the feedback circulates around Twin Peaks, but in February and March there were a number of topics provoking fascinating discussions. Some are tangentially Peaks-related (whether trauma or mysticism, or both, provides a better lens for the show's drama, branching off into conversations about Carl Jung and the David Cronenberg film A Dangerous Method, about early psychoanalysis). Others aren't at all (including a dive into the theology and ethos of First Reformed - ok, maybe that gets a little Peaks-y - and a fascinating report from a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, one of the fastest-growing political organizations in the U.S., about the community work they are doing in San Francisco). You'll have to scroll all the way down to the bottom of this post for the full array of topics, because I couldn't even to begin to fit them all into the title.

Lost in the Movies Episode 53 (listener feedback bonus)
First Reformed & Catholicism vs. Protestantism, Democratic Socialists of America, Spirituality vs. Psychology, Carl Jung, A Dangerous Method, Trauma in Twin Peaks, Netflix movies, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, DC vs. Marvel, True Detective season 3, critique of my Satyajit Ray video, how I cover Twin Peaks & more

Podcast Line-Ups for...

Triumph of the Will

As I may have mentioned recently, I've been tracking down classics I haven't seen (and re-watching old favorites) in anticipation of a long-awaited, perpetually postponed canonical exercise. On Netflix, I set up a queue of about 50 films which it seemed especially pressing to watch. The list ranged from iconic hits without a great deal of critical acclaim (Saturday Night Fever, A Nightmare on Elm Street) to widely acknowledged classics I had seen only parts of (The Great Dictator, Orpheus) to unseen films by auteur directors (Made in USA, Simon of the Desert, Salo). I proceeded chronologically and finished just before the new year; but at task's end I realized there were still a few films I meant to see which had slipped through the cracks.

One of them was Leni Riefenstahl's notorious 1935 Triumph of the Will, probably the most famous, castigated, and cautiously celebrated propaganda film of all time. Documenting the National Socialist Party rally of '34, when Hitler had just ascended to power but had already taken complete control of the country, the film has been imitated even as it's been held at arms' length. Today, Hitler and the Nazis tend to be viewed primarily in conjunction with the Holocaust but to watch Triumph of the Will in 2010 is to be reminded not just how the Nazis saw themselves but how the world first came to see them. Before his name became synonymous with pure evil, the German dictator and his bizarre, unexpected, and wildly popular movement were regarded with a mixture of awe, dread, and comic incredulity - sometimes all three at once. Triumph of the Will was widely screened and, while scorning the political content, many filmmakers admired the craft and later imitated it for their own propaganda films (once Hitler's Germany had unqualifiably become the enemy). Indeed, seeing this film after the films which followed it, one can see all the sources of the Hitlerite myth, both the one he fostered and the one that sprung up when his toxic brand of fanatical monumentalism encountered foreign sensibilities.