Showing posts with label lost in the movies podcast. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lost in the movies podcast. Show all posts
belated October 2023 Patreon round-up: EXCLUSIVE - Star Trek & Star Wars: The Clone Wars viewing diaries & Podcast Episode 100 Films Reviews
FINAL Lost in the Movies Patreon podcast • Episode 100 - Concluding the 10s & Reaching the 20s w/ 12 Films in Focus: The Tree of Life as Twin Peaks Cinema, The Lighthouse w/ guest Riley MacDonald, The Fabelmans, Avatar: The Way of Water, Moonlight, The Master, The Act of Killing, Amour, The Florida Project, The Turin Horse, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Toni Erdmann, 40s/30s/silent archive readings of Kiss of Death, Bambi, The Magnificent Ambersons, Three Comrades, The Mind Reader, The Battleship Potemkin, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Be Kind Rewind, Landmarks of Early Film + feedback & more
For most of this year, I've been promising a grand finale to the patron podcast that began in January 2018. This episode also doubles as a conclusion to the decades series launched in August 2023, in which I initially covered films from the 1980s and then stretched out in either direction, finally reaching the 2010s and 1950s in Episode 99. The bulk of the movies discussed in those earlier episodes were given the capsule treatment (less than ten minutes, often less than five, dwelling on just a few aspects); this time, every single topic is a "film in focus" with my review running at least fifteen minutes, in many cases in half hour, and in a few even longer than that. These dozen films wrap up the teens decade and tiptoe into the twenties with two relatively new releases - Avatar: The Way of Water and The Fablemans - which I saw in theaters earlier this year, and which pair up nicely given their complementary contrasts. The line-up also includes a guest discussion with Riley MacDonald on Robert Eggers' crusty psychological horror flick The Lighthouse and one last "Twin Peaks Cinema" analysis, comparing the David Lynch/Mark Frost series, especially but not exclusively the third season, to The Tree of Life, Terrence Malick's epic meditation setting a fifties Texas childhood against the backdrop of the creation of the universe. While a couple selections are fairly random (The Master and The Florida Project), six of the other titles were specifically selected because they are the most acclaimed films from the decade that I'd never seen before: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Toni Erdmann, The Turin Horse, Amour, Moonlight, and The Act of Killing.
All of those reflections are packed into a single massive upload (my longest single podcast file) that was finally published a few days ago as a belated October $1/month tier reward; however, I'm cross-posting the whole Episode 100 separately from my monthly round-up because it actually spans several months. I released a set of public archival readings earlier in the year (extending the decades theme in the other direction by sharing pieces I'd previously written about forties, thirties, and silent cinema), and a couple months ago I published the opening of the podcast, an intro with some updates and a long gathering of listener (and viewer and reader) feedback. Though I intended to end that section before Episode 100, I received so many interesting responses in the spring and summer that I wanted to give it one last go. Altogether, the entire package runs over eight and a half hours. If you've not yet become a patron, keep in mind that by joining you'll be able to access not only this whole episode but an archive spanning half a decade including much material that was never made public. The monthly round-up will be presented in a few days but for now, the focus is on this farewell to one of my longest running endeavors...
belated January 2023 Patreon round-up • LOST IN THE MOVIES patron podcast #99: The 10s in January (& beyond) + 50s bonus & Concluding the 00s & 60s... Under the Skin & All That Heaven Allows (capsules on Jailhouse Rock, Sweet Smell of Success, Shane, From Here to Eternity, Bell, Book, and Candle, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Manchurian Candidate, The Departed, Mystic River, The Descent, Saw, Idiocracy, Anchorman, Zoolander, Fahrenheit 9/11, Fahrenheit 11/9, American Sniper, The Big Short, Fruitvale Station, Snowden, Mad Max: Fury Road, Jurassic World, The Great Gatsby, Uncut Gems, Straight Outta Compton, The Witch, 13th, Gravity, Hereditary, It Follows, The Phantom Thread, Looper, Knives Out, Birdman, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Bridesmaids, The Love Witch, Joy, Personal Shopper, Mother!, Carol, Baby Driver, John Wick, Disney cartoon shorts, archive readings of The Force Awakens, Some Came Running, Kiss Me Deadly, Funny Face + feedback/media/work updates including A Goofy Movie & much, much more) + 3 TWIN PEAKS Character Series advances & Twin Peaks Conversations podcast
The Patreon episode intended for the previous month was released in two main parts plus an archive prologue and epilogue.
Listen to PUBLIC Episode 99 prologue - Zeitgeist Fiction (10s Archive)
(readings on Lady Bird, Get Out, The Dark Knight & Frozen + excerpts on Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers, Her, Guardians of the Galaxy, Inside Out, La La Land, Black Panther)
All That Heaven Allows (capsules on Jailhouse Rock, Sweet Smell of Success, Shane, From Here to Eternity, Bell, Book, and Candle, The Manchurian Candidate, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Departed, Mystic River, The Descent, Saw, Idiocracy, Anchorman, Zoolander, Fahrenheit 9/11, archive readings of Some Came Running, Kiss Me Deadly, Funny Face + feedback/media/work updates including A Goofy Movie & more)
Under the Skin (capsules on Jurassic World, Knives Out, American Sniper, Mad Max: Fury Road, It Follows, Personal Shopper, The Phantom Thread, Fahrenheit 11/9, Uncut Gems, Gravity, Straight Outta Compton, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, The Big Short, Joy, Mother!, Fruitvale Station, Carol, The Witch, Hereditary, The Love Witch, Looper, 13th, Snowden, Birdman, Bridesmaids, Baby Driver, The Great Gatsby, John Wick, archive reading of The Force Awakens & more)
Listen to PUBLIC Episode 99 epilogue - A Decade of Olympics (10s Archive)
(readings on documentaries about 2010 / 2014 / 2018 Winter Olympics & 2012 / 2016 Summer Olympics + 2022 Winter Olympics broadcast)
Introducing the episodes
Six months after initiating the decades series on my Patreon podcast, the project has (mostly) concluded. Begun with the eighties, it spread out to encompass capsule reviews in either direction - with light offerings from the earlier eras and heavier catalogues from the later ones. The episodes also incorporated archive readings and films in focus, at least one for each decade. These included: the eighties for August (anchored by Desperately Seeking Susan and Top Gun); finishing the eighties and beginning the nineties and seventies for September (anchored by Red Dawn, Do the Right Thing, Hail Mary, Pulp Fiction, and Klute); continuing the nineties with a Halloween special in October (anchored by Bram Stoker's Dracula); finishing the nineties and seventies and beginning the zeroes and sixties in November (anchored by Southland Tales - in discussion with guest Andrew Cook - and Jean Luc Godard's Weekend); and continuing the sixties with a Christmas/New Year's special in December (anchored by The Apartment). Along the way I added over a hundred titles to my library of podcast capsules - nearly doubling the total. You can browse all of my capsules in these directories, organized several different ways. This is the last time I'll be offering podcast capsules...but more on that in a moment.
Like earlier entries, my January podcast was delayed into the following month and presented in multiple parts (a couple of those parts were longer than any single audio file I'd uploaded previously). This collection concludes the zeroes and sixties, while taking us into the teens and fifties. From 2013, it's anchored by Under the Skin, Jonathan Glazer's riveting, avant-garde sci-fi starring an unforgettable Scarlet Johansson as a disguised, van-driving extraterrestrial hunting men in Glasgow and the surrounding countryside. (My discussion of the film expands to include the very different novel on which it's based.) And from 1955, it's anchored by All That Heaven Allows, Douglas Sirk's moving, old-fashioned romance between a lonely widow (Jane Wyman) and her free-spirited gardener (Rock Hudson). A record forty-five capsules further explore these and other themes: five dabbling in the fifties, a whopping twenty-eight recalling the recently passed teens, eight to round out my previous zeroes coverage, and a couple to wrap the sixties. And then there were a couple random Disney viewings with my nephew which tie into their own zeitgeists, with Mickey Mouse lionizing Lindbergh in the very twenties Plane Crazy and Goofy's road trip leading his moody teen son to a rock concert in the very nineties A Goofy Movie. (I also, after this was published, added a few more details to a discussion of Daisy Visits Minnie which make it a full-length capsule instead of just a fleeting mention.) Between this post's full title, the individual episode titles, and the line-ups listed below, the rest of the capsules are already laid out three different times on this page, so I won't repeat myself any further. Episode 99 is bracketed by archive prologues and epilogues as well, the first sharing full and partial reviews written by me about (and often during) the past decade, while the second dips into my Olympics documentary coverage which ended a year ago (plus a bonus covering that year's winter broadcast).
Aside from the enveloping decade theme, nearly an hour and a half of the episode ties up my five-year update system, where I'd offer podcast recommendations, recaps of my general TV/film viewing, and listener feedback. I'm ending this main Patreon podcast with the next episode - #100, a free-floating non-monthly reward which will probably publish in mid-March. However, that will consist almost entirely of full-length film in focus reviews, so this is the last time I'll be checking in on other topics, at least in this format. I would like to continue updating patrons on my work behind the scenes in the coming months and even years, but those audio offerings would probably just run ten minutes or so. This and the next episode represent the end of an era, one which began back in 2018 (you can explore all the subjects covered on the Politics and Random Topics directory pages). Throughout the spring, the main $1/month reward will be the advances of the TWIN PEAKS Character Series. Speaking of which...
The January previews round up three women, each a bit mysterious in their own ways. As always, their identities will remain a mystery - the public pieces aren't scheduled until late March and early April - for those who are not patrons. You can unlock their names and the full entries on each for $1/month...
(become a patron to discover their identities)
(Meanwhile, the next advances actually went up in the midst of the belated January podcasts; I'll wait to link those in the February cross-post in a couple weeks, though you can find them on Patreon - update 3/6: they were accidentally linked here in lieu of the January rewards, but I've now corrected that above.)
Finally, February saw me join forces with Blue Rose Task Force host John Bernardy for the first time, aside from a panel we shared with several other podcasters last summer. I used the opportunity to survey the history of both his own and the more general Twin Peaks fandom, a journey included in the exclusive Part 2 of this podcast, for the $5/month tier...
Podcast Line-Ups for...
December 2022 Patreon round-up • LOST IN THE MOVIES patron podcast #98: Holiday Special / Continuing the 60s... The Apartment (capsules on How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, A Charlie Brown Christmas, 00s archive reading of A Christmas Tale, Andrew Cook's further reflections on 300 & 00s cinema + my plans for the 3 big Twin Peaks projects, feedback/media/work updates & more) + 3 TWIN PEAKS Character Series advances & Twin Peaks Conversations podcast
As with Halloween, I'm taking a breather between massive omnibus decade studies for a slimmer holiday-themed episode that still maintains the latest decade theme. In this case, I'm continuing my sixties coverage by exploring a favorite Christmas/New Year's comedy - Billy Wilder's iconic The Apartment - in a full review alongside shorter capsules on classic cartoon specials from the era. I'm also diving deep into my plans for the coming week and (depending how that goes) year. And I received some great written feedback from last month's guest, who has more thoughts to offer on Southland Tales and 300 alongside a number of other zeroes films I discussed in that episode.
To wrap up the year, I'll be offering three more character studies just for patrons (these entries aren't ready yet at the time of this cross-post but will be linked here as soon as they are). Behind the scenes, I'm hoping to plunge deep into a backlog over the next week so that I can finally justify prioritizing this series for public release come 2023. Patrons will continue to receive access to full pieces at least a month ahead at that point.
(become a patron to discover their identities)
December's Twin Peaks Conversations was cross-posted on Patreon a week ago but here's the official $5/month reward on its own. The second part of the discussion runs fifty-two minutes and dives deeper into the details of my guests' unique experiences with Twin Peaks and Neon Genesis Evangelion (one of them started with The Return, the other with the "Rebuild" films) - and what we each see as connections between the two works.
Podcast Line-Up for...
belated November 2022 Patreon round-up • LOST IN THE MOVIES patron podcast #97 coming this week: The 00s in November (& beyond) + 60s bonus & Concluding the 90s & 70s... Godard's Weekend & Southland Tales w/ guest Andrew Cook (w/ his feedback & my capsule on 300, more capsules on Bonnie & Clyde, The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy, The Swimmer, Dr. Strangelove, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Zodiac, A History of Violence, Brokeback Mountain, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Darjeeling Limited, The Dark Knight, Gangs of New York, 500 Days of Summer, The Ring, Donnie Darko, The Box, Dog Day Afternoon, The Muppet Movie, The Muppet Christmas Carol, The Witches, Heat, The Blair Witch Project, Edward Scissorhands, Election, Groundhog Day, Total Recall, Dick Tracy, archive readings of my reflections on the 00s decade, To Kill a Mockingbird, Breathless + much, much more including feedback/media/work updates) + 3 TWIN PEAKS Character Series advances & Twin Peaks Conversations podcast
The Patreon episode intended for last month will be released in four parts.
These links will be updated as the episodes are published in mid-December...
Jean-Luc Godard's Weekend (capsules on Bonnie & Clyde, The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy, The Swimmer, Dr. Strangelove, Dog Day Afternoon, The Muppet Movie, The Muppet Christmas Carol, The Witches, Heat, The Blair Witch Project, Edward Scissorhands, Election, Groundhog Day, Total Recall, Dick Tracy, archive reading of To Kill a Mockingbird + feedback/media/work updates & more)
(readings of Breathless, The Wild Bunch, Cleo From 5 to 7, Before the Revolution, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, Loves of a Blonde, Primary, 4 Days in November, Dear Brigitte, The Trip, Greetings & the Olympics + 60s/00s crossover w/ The Life & Death of Peter Sellers)
Southland Tales w/ guest Andrew Cook (w/ his feedback & my capsule on 300 + capsules on No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Zodiac, A History of Violence, Brokeback Mountain, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Darjeeling Limited, The Dark Knight, Gangs of New York, 500 Days of Summer, The Ring, Donnie Darko, The Box & archive reading of my reflections on the decade)
(readings of 25th Hour, Inland Empire, earlier reviews of The Dark Knight & 500 Days of Summer, You Can Count on Me, Funny Ha Ha, Thirteen, The World, Iraq in Fragments, The Story of Marie and Julien, The Girlfriend Experience & the Olympics)
Introducing the episodes
As we spread out from August's focus on the eighties, moving into earlier and later decades in each direction, we reach two eras forty years apart. Yet they make the perfect pairing in my mind, in part because I was obsessed with the sixties during the zeroes, a time I experienced firsthand and which shaped my perceptions of the world for better or worse. In a way, these decades are a natural fit at least from the American perspective: both haunted by national traumas (Kennedy's assassination and 9/11), both dogged by quagmire wars of choice (Vietnam and Iraq in particular), both racked by technological transformations which troubled as well as enticed (inward for the age of the iPhone, outward for the epoch of the moonshot). But while the sixties gave birth to a vibrant youth counterculture and political resistance, the zeroes often felt like a dead zone to those of us living through it. This was part of my hunger for sixties media; I sought work which excavated and explored the turbulence that I could feel under the surface in the cold, sterile, repressed Bush era but which somehow always remained locked off. These were periods of deep societal alienation which expressed that alienation in very different ways.
With all that in mind what better film to focus on than Richard Kelly's Southland Tales, the sprawling, notorious follow-up to his cult classic Donnie Darko (which I discuss more briefly in this podcast, along with its own deep if different zeroes zeitgeist connections)? Set in an alternate version of 2008 but shot in 2006, it imagines an America whose War of Terror tremors have caught up with a culture that just wanted to go shopping - transforming the country into a manic police state with an active resistance and wild sci-fi developments emerging virtually overnight. Ambivalent after my first viewing years ago, I invited Andrew Cook as a return guest (after our Eyes Wide Shut episode); he's a big Kelly fan who knows the film inside and out which made for an interesting dynamic as I tried to wrap my head around it. This is one of the longest film in focus podcast segments I've ever recorded, running over an hour as we dig into both the film and the era it depicts...and re-invents as something else (perhaps the Trump era to come). This also makes for an offbeat but appropriate pairing with my sixties film in focus, the very different avant-garde apocalypse of Weekend. Here Jean-Luc Godard reaches the apotheosis and negation of his radical sprint through the decade, anticipating the chaos of May '68 months ahead of time. The selection, in which I wrestle with a film that converted me to Godard when I first saw it but which I had more trouble with this time, is one more tribute to the legendary director who passed away in September (I also focused on his eighties film Hail Mary in a previous episode).
Elsewhere, Andrew's contributions continue when I read his in-depth feedback (alongside my own short reflection) on Zack Snyder's 300, an iconic, and much more popular, film by another of his favorite directors. In capsule form, I run through a number of memorable zeroes films alongside a smaller selection of sixties classics, wrap up my viewings of the nineties (alongside a pair of quite different seventies classics), and offer updates on my recent intake and output in several mediums. Most notably, in addition to a couple archive pieces that I wanted to center and share on their own - a meditation on the power and limitation of To Kill a Mockingbird and a broad polemic expressing my frustration with the state of American culture in the Bush era - I'm also gathering a number of pieces focused on each decade into two public archive episodes, offering a survey not just of zeroes and sixties cinema, but my own perception of them at various points.
As noted in the introduction to this podcast, I am planning to wrap up this podcast approach - combining updates with film reviews and other topics in a main montly episode - after reaching #100 in February. Though there's still much content to come in those months, I can't think of a better way to begin my ending than with this particular episode(s).
Meanwhile, I've continued chugging along with my advance character studies every month - although I need to pick up the pace if I want to have the necessary backlog ready at year's end for a 2023 public debut. November's trio includes one of the third season's scummiest characters alongside one of its most heroic. Unlock these pieces for $1/month to learn more...
(become a patron to discover their identities)
And Patreon also housed my $5/month tier reward, the second part of my discussion with the director of The People's Joker (as discussed in last week's cross-post). Southland Tales comes up again too!
Podcast Line-Ups for...
belated October 2022 Patreon round-up • LOST IN THE MOVIES patron podcast #96: Halloween Special / Continuing the 90s... Bram Stoker's Dracula (+ archive readings of Dracula, Frankenstein & The Wolf Man, feedback/media/work updates including Cooper's identity, the Professional Managerial Class & more) + 3 TWIN PEAKS Character Series advances & Twin Peaks Conversations podcast
My "September" patron podcast (which only wrapped up hours before the end of October) was so sprawling that I wanted to take a simpler approach for the next one. October's $1/month reward - which made it up on Halloween despite this much-delayed cross-post - focuses on a single film while continuing the nineties theme from the previous month. I saw Bram Stoker's Dracula during a theatrical re-release for its thirtieth anniversary, and I was frankly blown away re-visiting it on the big screen many years after watching it on DVD. Proudly over-the-top in borderline campy fashion but also (pun intended) wearing its heart on its sleeve, the film is an overwhelming cinematic experience that offers a compelling spin on the great vampire myth. Elsewhere in the podcast, I keep tabs on my October activity and read earlier reviews of three Universal horror classics to complete the holiday theme.
October's advance character studies were actually shared with patrons before I'd finished the September podcasts; after a long delay in mid-summer I've managed to keep up with these rewards month by month - in fact (although I'm writing this introduction a couple weeks ahead of publication so I can't be sure) November's advances are probably already live. October features one single alongside two doubles, characters who can only be considered in conjunction with one another. The full pieces are available to $1/month patrons.
(become a patron to discover their identities)
The month's Twin Peaks Conversations - already cross-posted on this site in greater detail last week - concluded on Patreon for the $5/month tier. Unlike the characters and the Halloween podcast, this episode was released a bit late; however, the timing worked out because my conversation with the host of the Creamed Corn and the Universe character podcast was able to coincide with my guest appearance on his podcast (to discuss Sarah Palmer).
Podcast Line-Ups for...
belated September 2022 Patreon round-up • LOST IN THE MOVIES patron podcast #95: The 90s in September (& beyond) + 70s bonus & Concluding the 80s ... Pulp Fiction, Klute, Red Dawn, Do the Right Thing & Hail Mary (capsules on Stranger Things, Top Gun: Maverick, The Goonies, Gremlins, Midnight Run, Scarface, Thelma & Louise, Scream, Gremlins II, Romeo + Juliet, Set It Off, The Firm, Exotica, Network, Superman, Magnolia, Saturday Night Fever, Thelma & Louise, Reality Bites, Boogie Nights, Nashville, The Pelican Brief, The Client, The Ice Storm, Dangerous Minds, archive readings of The Conversation & Enemy of the State + feedback/media/work updates including Encanto & more) + 3 TWIN PEAKS Character Series advances & Twin Peaks Conversations podcast
The Patreon episode intended for a couple months ago was released in two parts:
To represent the postmodern Gen X nineties, I easily chose Pulp Fiction - a film I'd surprisingly never really discussed on this site. Klute, on the other hand, was more a case of happenstance; I'd received the Criterion blu-ray as a gift a while ago but hadn't watched the film in a decade or more and remembered little about it. The film provides a fascinating snapshot of New York City right as the sixties/post-sixties cultural changes were taking hold alongside a phenomenal performance by Jane Fonda as a troubled, fairly independent, and deeply introspective call girl stalked by a mysterious figure. The other films I covered for the September podcast ended up being surprises - for me. I initially watched Red Dawn as something I'd mention briefly in capsule form but I ended up discussing it for much longer than that because there was so much to dig into with this Cold War relic (pairing its absurd premise with a tight, even thoughtful approach to the war film genre). Do the Right Thing and Hail Mary I did initially intend to be films in focus; after watching, I wondered if I'd have enough to say to justify that treatment but ended up elevating them from capsule status while pursuing various threads. My coverage of Hail Mary also serves as a tribute to the recently deceased Jean-Luc Godard - as will another film in focus in the November podcast.
My advance character studies went up on time in September (I've already released October's round-up, which will be more officially cross-posted alongside the other reward intended for that month). For September, the trio of characters - ranked as always by screentime - included two familiar faces with new material in The Return and one entirely new entry on someone introduced in 2017. Patrons can now unlock each of these pieces...
(become a patron to discover their identities)
Finally, though I already cross-posted this conversation on its own, September saw John Thorne return to the Twin Peaks Conversations podcast; the longer part of our discussion - on his new book Ominous Whoosh and his further thoughts about Twin Peaks and especially the third season - is reserved for the $5/month tier.
Podcast Line-Ups for...
August 2022 Patreon round-up • LOST IN THE MOVIES patron podcast #94: The 80s in August... Desperately Seeking Susan & Top Gun (capsules on Stranger Things, Poltergeist, Beverly Hills Cop, Witness, The Breakfast Club, Wall Street, Twins, The Hunger, archive readings on Fast Times at Ridgemont High, E.T., Muppet Babies, An American Tail, Brave Little Toaster, The Secret of NIMH, The Last Unicorn + feedback/media/work updates including Captain America: Civil War & more) + 3 TWIN PEAKS Character Series advances & Twin Peaks Conversations podcast
I stumbled across a theme for this podcast, and by extension the next several months, only when I watched Top Gun about halfway through August. Then the idea kept getting reinforced by the outside world: what was playing in theaters, showing on TV, trending on social media, and even being given as gifts at a cousin's birthday party (a vinyl record player accompanied by an LP of the Top Gun soundtrack provided the score for that evening). Having bought a Top Gun blu-ray on a whim this past spring, I only found time to watch it after catching up with various other projects and was inspired to keep exploring eighties films as the month went along. I pulled some DVDs from my own collection and ordered others from Netflix; Top Gun itself was initially only meant to be a brief capsule discussion, so for my longer film in focus section I found (free on YouTube), watched, researched, and reviewed the wry, whimsical Desperately Seeking Susan. That choice may have been inspired by the Madonna-scored montage from the third season of Stranger Things which I also talk about on this podcast, finally catching up years after I watched the first episode. And as it turned out, there was so much to dig into with not just Top Gun but its production and tangential themes (the USSR as an implicit enemy, the totalizing eighties aesthetic) that the Tom Cruise action flick became my second film in focus for the month, the first time I've doubled up in years.
I didn't make it to 2022's Top Gun sequel on the big screen, as initially planned, nor was I able to finish watching the newer fourth season of Stranger Things by month's end - those capsules will have to wait till September. However, I did get to reflect - often for longer-than-usual capsules - on a couple first-time viewings (The Hunger and Witness) and return to some classics I'd already seen (Wall Street, Poltergeist, The Breakfast Club, Beverly Hills Cop, and Twins). Twins, I'm pretty sure, was the first live-action film I ever saw in a theater, as a five-year-old in 1988. It's kind of amazing to consider that my college rewatch in 2005 (when the seventeen-year-old movie and my childhood viewing of it seemed like ancient history) is in fact exactly halfway between the present and '88, a generation's length in either direction.
Speaking of generations, that favorite subject comes up not only in some of these capsules (particularly The Breakfast Club) but also the archive reading of my 2012 Fast Times at Ridgemont High review, and the 2022 reflection which follows now that another ten years has passed since I wrote that retrospective. (There were so many potential Opening the Archive picks this month that, in addition to an excerpt on the '84 Olympics in my main episode, I also published an entire bonus episode of readings: reviews of E.T., Brave Little Toaster, An American Tail, The Last Unicorn, and The Secrets of NIMH, plus an essay on meta cultural references in Muppet Babies and other cartoons.) The topic of generations appears first in my behind-the-scenes work update in the non-eighties part of the podcast, which also includes another Marvel capsule for Civil War.
Next month there will probably be more non-decade-themed capsules but also probably even more hailing from that particular decade. But which decade will that be? Should I move backward to the seventies, or forward to the nineties (and onto the zeroes and teens, catching up with many recent acclaimed and popular movies I missed in my lost decade of cinephilia)? I'm leaning toward the latter, but perhaps I'll make some room for at least a sample of the former as well.
As for other Patreon rewards, after falling behind in the mid-summer I was able to publish all three character advances for August well before the end of the month. These entries provided a particular challenge since a couple of them actually covered more than one character, entailing research into multiple actors...
(become a patron to discover their identities)
I already cross-posted the full conversation a week ago, but specifically on Patreon I published almost an hour of extra discussion with author Lindsay Hallam for the $5/month tier. The occasion that night was the thirtieth anniversary of Fire Walk With Me...
Podcast Line-Ups for...
belated July 2022 Patreon round-up: LOST IN THE MOVIES patron podcast #93: Coffee and Cigarettes (+ feedback/media/work updates including Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Russian Revolution, failures of the decadent right, history of malls, archive reading: Lady and the Tramp & more) + 3 TWIN PEAKS Character Series advances & Twin Peaks Conversations podcast
Once again, a fairly random viewing - one of just two movies I watched in July - provides the film in focus to anchor this month's podcast. I happened to see Jim Jarmusch's quirky Coffee and Cigarettes because I was visiting someone who had an old DVD of it onhand and was intrigued by the title. Reflecting on both its seventeen-year production (assembled into an anthology from disparately shot but aesthetically similar short films) and the nineteen years since its release, I'm able to explore themes that always interest me regarding the passage of time - alongside other threads working their way through these blackout sketches of (usually) two actors playing themselves in a fictional, often contentious, conversation.
There were a lot of political topics dredged up by this month's podcast recommendations, including the legacy of revolutions, what Boris Johnson's resignation tells us about the state of the right and its appeal, and how shopping malls have evolved as cultural touchstones. There's a bit more feedback this time than last time (all from YouTube), another Marvel movie to discuss in brief capsule form, and for the second month in a row I have an essay on a fifties classic to share from my archive.
Meanwhile, having finally caught up to June's Twin Peaks character studies in late July, I caught up to July's just a few days into August. That's an improvement at least, and now I'm on pace to provide three advance entries to patrons every month going forward. This trio was particularly striking despite the low ranking, not only for the characters' onscreen antics but also the performers' offscreen lives...
(become a patron to discover their identities)
I introduced and cross-posted the full conversation on the site last week but actually the one post to make it up on schedule in July was Part 2 of this exchange with the hosts of the weird fiction podcast Counter Esperanto for the $5/month tier's reward...
Podcast Line-Ups for...
belated June 2022 Patreon round-up: LOST IN THE MOVIES patron podcast #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) + 3 TWIN PEAKS Character Series advances & Twin Peaks Conversations podcast
Just a few weeks after my last (belated) monthly podcast, there wasn't much to update in terms of viewing, listening, or behind-the-scenes work, but I did have one film/series I wanted to zoom in on. Adam Curtis' eccentric 2004 BBC program The Power of Nightmares offers a cutting, hypnotic audiovisual analysis of the dance between American neoconservatives and Middle Eastern Islamists which eventually led to the War on Terror. I'd seen, and never forgotten, the first chapter not long after it was first released. This time I watched the whole thing and reflected on it from a different standpoint than I had at the time, further to the left and more deeply skeptical of the government line on Al Qaeda (even so, some of the wild discrepancies and overreaches that the film highlights remain astounding). Hopefully I can watch more Curtis films in the near future; I've been fascinated by his style for a long time but never really explored his work. A year ago, my all too ambitious plans included a chapter-by-chapter reaction to the director's recent analysis of the left's ambitions and failures, Can't Get You Out of My Head. Perhaps that will be next in my exploration - when I finally find some time in my schedule.
Elsewhere, I offer some capsules on a handful of films I watched in June, riff on similar Bush era themes based on some podcasts I listened to (touching on my own political evolution - or evolutions), and end the podcast on a lighter note with a reading from my past work on a Gene Kelly musical, albeit one that also toys with issues of war, loss, and wistful regrets.
As I struggled to keep up with various projects, particularly Lost in Twin Peaks, I fell behind on the latest patron reward: the presentation of three character studies each month. Only several weeks after the month ended could I finally share the first one (the other two followed the next week, and I'm already moving ahead on July's advances so they won't suffer the same fate). Despite the delay, this represents a major breakthrough. Remarkably, I never wrote a single character study in all the years since The Return - despite my oft-stated goals. That half-decade was spent, when I focused on this work at all, slowly putting together the posts on minor characters and the like. Hopefully from now on I can move forward at a much quicker pace (on a positive note, when I finally got down to writing it, the first piece didn't take very long at all). (This cross-post accidentally went up last week with most of what you see here, and the reason I removed it and re-publushed today was because two these character studies were not yet ready.)
I won't discuss who these entries cover - the public gets to find that out if/when the series begins official publication in early 2023. But here's where you can find out, and read them ahead of time...
(become a patron to discover their identities)
following the announcement of
I've already cross-posted both parts of my conversation with Cameron Cloutier in a separate entry, but just to be thorough, here's the $5/month exclusive that went up in June...
Podcast Line-Ups for...
belated May 2022 Patreon round-up: LOST IN THE MOVIES patron podcast #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) + 7 TWIN PEAKS Character Series advances & Twin Peaks Conversations podcast
Delayed almost a week by my work on Lost in Twin Peaks (which I discuss extensively at the outset), this exclusive Patreon podcast was supposed to be a relatively brief overview of recent activity. After all, I was covering a shorter period than in other recent updates. And I didn't expect the podcast to have an anchoring subject due to the time crunch as my deadline passed, the relative paucity of movies viewed this spring, and the conclusion of my "Twin Peaks Cinema" patron series in February. Nevertheless, Episode 91 blossomed into not only a lengthy discussion (over three hours, requiring my podcast recommendations to be shuffled off into a couple bonus mini-episodes), but also one with a nearly-fifteen-minute "film in focus" - or rather "series in focus" - at its center.
I came across the Apple TV series The Morning Show mostly by accident, and was initially turned off by what I heard (literally: my first exposure was audio from another room as someone else watched it). Yet I found myself slowly reeled in by the hook of season two, and soon I was making my way backwards into the story - in a show which is already itself structured around a major flashback. There is quite a lot to dig into: the coronavirus pandemic, the #MeToo phenomenon, the toxic "PMC" culture of media elites, and even similarities to Twin Peaks/Fire Walk With Me's storytelling arc. Fair warning: to meaningfully discuss the series in this context, I have to reveal major plot points of season one.
Elsewhere in this sprawling podcast, I offer shorter capsules on several films I did see during this time, reflections on recent awards ceremonies (including, yes, the notorious Slap), and musings about generational divides and commonalities - a subject of growing fascination - in literally every category of the episode including some introductory anticipation of a potential project as well as my conclusive archive reading about the making of my film Class of 2002...a selection that coincides with the twentieth anniversary of that class' graduation. And while I concluded my standalone "political reflections" section in March there's still plenty of commentary sprinkled throughout these various parts of the podcast as well (much of it as grim as what I ended with a few months ago).
Having spent my March and April patron podcasts catching up with the prior six months to a year of what I'd been viewing, listening to, and receiving as feedback, my (belated) May podcast catches up with what I've been consuming or working on in March, April, and May themselves. From this point on, the $1/month Patreon reward will be able to focus on just that particular month's film capsules, listener feedback, behind-the-scenes work, and other activity.
Meanwhile, alongside this regular recurring feature, I provided a new reward throughout May (it began a week earlier, with different intentions, in April). Going forward, I'll be sharing three new or revised Twin Peaks character entries each month for all patrons, well in advance of the eventual public series. In fact, within these entries I advanced more content than I usually would in May, since I was initially expecting a different schedule this month. Here's what you can currently read on Patreon...
TWIN PEAKS Character Series advance entries in May:
Finally, although I also cross-post these separately, no Patreon round-up would be complete with my highest-tier reward, the second part of my monthly Twin Peaks Conversations offered to $5/month patrons. In May, the exclusive discussion with Andreas Halskov, the Danish scholar behind TV Peaks and other Peaks/Lynch books and commentary, spanned almost an hour and a half, twice the length of the public introduction available on YouTube. In other words, two-thirds of the entire conversation is reserved for patrons at that tier (who always have exclusive access to at least half the material).
Podcast Line-Ups for...
April 2022 Patreon podcast LOST IN THE MOVIES #90 - Listener Feedback (Twin Peaks subjects include Sleeping Beauty connections, was The Return a passion project?, Fire Walk With Me's subversion of intent, ironic vs. sincere responses, Cooper's identity in flux & more + Snow White & Sleeping Beauty archive reading) + Twin Peaks Conversations podcast
With this podcast - reading and sometimes responding to feedback I've received from my audience on Patreon, YouTube, and this site since last August - I'm finally caught up with the commitments of last summer (aside from the longer-term project of making the Lost in Twin Peaks podcast public). There was a lot to dig into from these responses - topics are listed below - but I especially wanted to highlight my patron Laurence's fascinating connections between Sleeping Beauty and Twin Peaks, which spurred larger digressions into Walt Disney vs. David Lynch, Anne Sexton's Transformations, and the explicit, experimental proto-anime Belladonna of Sadness (which I'll be covering in a public Twin Peaks Cinema podcast in a few days). This feedback also inspired an inordinate amount of time spent crafting a "Twin Peaks" font for the image above - sometimes the most ridiculous effort goes into the littlest things - as well as an archive selection in which I compared Sleeping Beauty to another work (in this case, Disney's own Snow White). Incidentally, "Opening the Archive" will continue month-to-month but aside from that, changes are on the way. I'm not exactly sure what my approach will be to patron podcasts in the coming months; my "Twin Peaks Reflections" approach to characters, locations, and storylines is complete, and my patron-exclusive "Twin Peaks Cinema" entries are done for the time being. Aside from keeping up monthly with brief comments on what I've been watching, reading, or listening to (as well as more consistently fielding feedback), I may offer a longer review in each episode, returning to the "Film in Focus" format. Above all, though, my main priority is to give myself the time for the three big Twin Peaks projects: the aforementioned public Lost in Twin Peaks; the long, long-delayed character series; and finally the last set of Journey Through Twin Peaks video essays.
See you in May...
March 2022 Patreon podcast - LOST IN THE MOVIES #89 - Film/TV Capsules & Political Reflections (Don't Look Up, war in Ukraine, state of the left, many podcast recommendations, The Hunt, Olympic documentaries, generational youth zeitgeists w/ Mazzy Star & the Super Bowl, The Civil War or Who Do We Think We Are documentary on Reconstruction legacy, The Three Stooges, Disney & disturbing fairy tales, surrealist shorts, Alone in the Wilderness, Rick Steves' The Holy Land, Hill Street Blues final season, Carter/Biden, the conservative mood, a political pause, The Wolf of Wall Street archive reading & more) + Twin Peaks Conversations podcast
After many months - a year in the case of podcast recommendations - I've finally caught up with most of the "bonus sections" I planned to record last fall (aside from listener feedback, which will be featured next month). Film/TV capsules include an eclectic, grab bag mix of shorts, documentaries, shows, and events; how could I, with my generational obsessions, avoid talking about this year's Super Bowl halftime show and commercials? This part is headlined by several minutes (not a full review, but one of the longer capsules) discussing Don't Look Up, a film whose dire, if absurdist, political themes match the spirit of this episode overall. Then I split the podcast recommendations into five different mini-parts that can be used simply as a collection of links to explore or listened to if you want to hear my thoughts on some of these subjects (as always, the longer topics - the ones featured for a minute or more in my rundown - are listed in the show notes). Finally, in time to mark the grim anniversary of Super Tuesday two years ago, I uploaded my latest - and probably last, for a while - political reflections on the country's current, if mercurial, political status (or stasis), the discouraging rut that the left seems to be in, and, of course, the recent invasion of Ukraine by Russia which further complicates what we might have thought we understood. This podcast is a mix of celebration - a lot of these audiovisual pieces were fun to dig into - and catharsis, because if the status quo of politics doesn't offer much hope, it's a relief to get those frustrations off my chest (and not in the antagonistic, chopped-up form of Twitter). Besides, as I note at the end, any time things are this uncertain that means there's still a chance for some sort of change.
Lost in the Movies patron episode #89...
February 2022 Patreon podcasts: LOST IN THE MOVIES #88 - Twin Peaks Cinema: The Sweet Hereafter w/ book & podcast recommendations (+ Twin Peaks Reflections - Cliff, Jeffries, Carl, Mo's Motor, Oregon FBI office, Annie's message/Season 3 Part 7 + bonus: Bobby killed a guy/Season 3 Part 9, Affliction archive reading & more) plus LOST IN TWIN PEAKS - Fire Walk With Me for all patrons & TWIN PEAKS CONVERSATIONS
For thirty-two months, since July 2019, my Patreon podcast has followed a single format: a "Twin Peaks Cinema" subject comparing a feature film to Twin Peaks and "Twin Peaks Reflections" highlighting several characters, locations, and storylines using, as a springboard, whichever Lost in Twin Peaks episode I opened up to $1/month patrons that month. Now that approach comes to an end with selections based on Fire Walk With Me, published during the week in February that the film's story unfolds. For starters, I opened eight of the twelve Lost in Twin Peaks podcast episodes up to all patrons (the other four were already available as public archive pieces). Then I shared a podcast I'd recorded last year but held back until now, on Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter: a winter film if ever there was one, with atmospheric and narrative links to Twin Peaks and especially deep thematic connections to Fire Walk With Me. This is one of my longest discussions, especially when you include my thoughts on the novel that the film is adapted from, plus some recommendations of other podcasts on the topic. The archive reading focuses on another Russell Banks-inspired film from 1997, while I wrap up my collection of subject sketches with Fire Walk With Me touchstones like Carl Rodd and that essential subplot "Bobby killed a guy." Finally, my guest on this month's Twin Peaks Conversations is Courtenay Stallings, author of a book about Laura Palmer's impact on the fan community.
In the next couple months, I'll catch up with some bonus features like listener feedback, film capsules, political reflections, and podcast recommendations before settling on a new approach to the main podcast going forward. For now, this feels like a good way to wrap up a certain chapter.
January 2022 Patreon podcasts: LOST IN THE MOVIES #87 - Twin Peaks Cinema: On Dangerous Ground (+ Twin Peaks Reflections: Pete, Doc, Spirits, Glastonbury Grove, Bank, Mystery box/Mulholland Drive & more) plus TWIN PEAKS CONVERSATIONS
As I plan to focus on a handful of major projects in 2022, I will probably be scaling back my main Patreon podcast somewhat. February will be the last month (at least for a little while) for the "Twin Peaks Cinema" approach as well as the "Twin Peaks Reflections" on characters, locations, and storyline connections. However, January also represents something of a milestone for me. Since I actually pre-recorded the February film a long time ago, my choice for January - Nicholas Ray's fifties noir On Dangerous Ground - was the last new "Twin Peaks Cinema" I recorded, wrapping up a project begun in mid-2019. (The public Twin Peaks Cinema podcast will of course continue every month, pulling from the Patreon archive.) On Dangerous Ground completes a trilogy of Ray/Peaks connections and its city vs. country theme also reflects the book I discussed in this month's Twin Peaks Conversations podcast, about the murder of Hazel Drew who was caught between (and perhaps killed by) her own urban/rural divide. Meanwhile, my penultimate Reflections topics are inspired by the season two finale, which I just opened up to the $1/month tier - another benchmark has been reached for Lost in Twin Peaks with all of seasons two and three available to all patrons (and all of season one available to the public). February will be very Fire Walk With Me-themed all around.
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