January 2024 Patreon round-up: EXCLUSIVE - Films in Focus podcast #1: The Red Shoes, True Detective: Night Country viewing diary (first part) & 2023 American Generations Reflections + TWIN PEAKS Character Series advance

January 2024 was the busiest month on my Patreon in five years - maybe ever. Not only did I offer the usual Twin Peaks character study for all patrons, kick off a new film podcast, and initiate a new reward system involving patron selections (including ten different polls or updates), I also offered bonus features for the $5/month tier: an ongoing viewing diary for the series True Detective: Night Country (the fourth season of the show whose every episode I covered in the past) and an essay reflecting on the past year in culture and politics through a generational lens. The crown jewel, however, was a podcast on Michael Powell's and Emeric Pressburger's Technicolor ballet masterpiece The Red Shoes - a film I'd never covered and barely if ever even mentioned in my previous work. Suggested by longtime patron Laurence Figgis, the popular pick cleared two rounds of voting including a run-off against Punch Drunk Love, with which it was tied after the first round. Watching this movie for the first time in decades, I was struck by the complexities of the art vs. romance, passion vs. comfort menage a trois trapping rising ballerina Victoria Page (Moira Shearer) between composer/lover Julian Craster (Marius Goring) and impresario/mentor Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook)...

What are the January rewards?

They Were Expendable, A Canterbury Tale, & Hail the Conquering Hero

Watching three films from 1944-45 back to back to back I was struck by World War II cinema's variety of flavors. Hail the Conquering Hero, an all-American Preston Sturges comedy, takes place far from the battlefield, on the homefront where all eyes are on a war which remains somehow elusive, even imaginary. They Were Expendable, on the other hand, is mired in the muck of war; it's one of John Ford's most Hawksian films, the male camaraderie (even featuring a "one of the guys" tough gal, played by Donna Reed) mostly untouched by sentimentality or mythologizing. Meanwhile, Powell and Pressburger, that eccentrically flamboyant yet surprisingly un-escapist duo, negotiate between these two spheres. A Canterbury Tale is set on a "home front" which is also at times a battlefield, a British countryside fundamentally transformed by modern warfare, with its troop transports, blackouts, and women at work. Together, the three films convey a fascinating triptych view of how movies presented the war while it was still unfolding.

Remembering the Movies, Apr. 1 - 7

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

Visit Remembering the Movies to further peruse the past

As you may notice, I made a few changes around the blog yesterday. The sidebar is now more visual, and the idea is to encourage new readers to explore the archives. Especially at a time when I am posting lightly (even as the audience share keeps growing) I want to keep the site's backlog alive. More on that tomorrow.

For now, we're highlighting a film that I actually haven't seen; nonetheless, the Powell-Pressburger operatic adaptation is probably the most renowned movie on this list and deserves its picture at the top. The Tales of Hoffmann is joined by two drug movies, two on/offscreen romances, and an early Murnau.

Remembering the Movies, Dec. 3 - 9

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

Visit Remembering the Movies to further peruse the past

This week, "Remembering the Movies" takes a walk on the wild side - surrealism, fantasy, and passionate affairs are all in the offing, as are deserted islands and dilapidated attics, exotic adventures and anthropomorphic westerns, the birth pangs of the "Felliniesque," the adolescent angst of Tim Burton, and the death rattle of the sixties counterculture. There are two personal recollections for films I saw in their initial run, two collections of screen-caps for short cartoons, and a fresh review of Flash Gordon, which I watched for the first time tonight. I have also excerpted a contentious contemporary argument between my favorite critic and my favorite documentary filmmakers (Point: filmmakers) about the hypnotic, hallucinatory and disturbing Gimme Shelter. See The Documentary Blog for the full back-and-forth. As always the black words are my own, the red, quotations.

The Small Back Room

Appropriately enough, given its title, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Small Back Room is one of their quieter and less celebrated films. Following the Technicolor extravagance of Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes, the directing/producing/writing duo adapted a well-known novel, shot in black-and-white and kept the scale down. It's the story of Sammy Rice, a wartime munitions expert with a game leg; he can't actually fight in the war, though he certainly does his part (working for a government agency which markets and analyzes weapons systems, emphasis on the former). He's a pro on the job, but a self-doubting, neurotic alcoholic on his own time.