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:

Listen to Episode 95, part 1: Concluding the 80s... Red Dawn, Do the Right Thing & Hail Mary (capsules on Stranger Things, Top Gun: Maverick, The Goonies, Gremlins, Midnight Run, Scarface + feedback/media/work updates including Encanto & more)

Listen to Episode 95, part 2: The 90s in September (& beyond) + 70s bonus... Pulp Fiction & Klute (capsules on Exotica, Network, Superman, Magnolia, Saturday Night Fever, Thelma & Louise, Reality Bites, Boogie Nights, Nashville, Scream, Gremlins II, Romeo + Juliet, Set It Off, The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, The Ice Storm, Dangerous Minds, archive readings of The Conversation & Enemy of the State)

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.

In August, I began an approach that will take me through the end of the year: focusing on a different decade beginning with the eighties and moving in different directions. Each subsequent episode, including this one, would pair at least one full review and a bunch of capsules on films from a post-eighties decade with a review and handful of capsules on films from a pre-eighties decade (plus some more reviews/capsules finishing off the previous episode's decade). So for one of my more sprawling Patreon podcasts, I'm offering capsules on a couple dozen films from the seventies, eighties, nineties - plus the most films in focus I've ever provided in one episode. This one episode, however, is a two-parter separated by several weeks in which I waited to access some of the titles I wanted to discuss. As a result, this patron reward (intended for September) did not conclude until very late in October and I didn't get to sharing it on this site until now. (I was able to immediately catch up with a Halloween special podcast - you can listen to that one on Patreon; it will be cross-posted here soon.)

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...

EXCLUSIVE advance: TWIN PEAKS Character Series #74, 73 & 71 (#72 already published)

(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.

PATREON EXCLUSIVE: Part 2 of Twin Peaks Conversations w/ John Thorne

Podcast Line-Ups for...

Oscar Blues montage: Honoring Spike Lee & Gena Rowlands

It's been a busy week. Since last Thursday, my long-delayed Fandor video on Anna Karina went up, I released three more (also long-delayed) videos that I'd been working on for a while (see The Killing & The Asphalt Jungle Side by Side and Rimbaud's "The Stolen Heart" in addition to this one), my short guest spot on the Twin Peaks Unwrapped podcast went up (and I also made appearances, via feedback, on a Star Wars episode of No Ship Network and guested on Obnoxious & Anonymous - jump to 35:16 for the beginning of our Twin Peaks season 3 speculation/discussion). Additionally, one of my videos was featured on this week's Twin Peaks Tuesday column on One Perfect Shot. After something of a dry spell in terms of productivity and (especially) output, the old saying "It don't rain but it pours" certainly applies.

With all of that catch-up out of the way, this latest entry in my Montage series may be the work I'm most excited to present this week. Its origins stretch back to my dissatisfaction with the Academy Awards six years ago, when I learned that they had decided to stop airing the Honorary Awards. Frequently given to film veterans who had never actually won an Oscar in competition, the Honoraries were a great way to pay tribute to the medium's past and remind us, amidst all the superficiality of the ceremony, that the movies are an art form created by imaginative, hard-working individuals, many of whom are misunderstood or underappreciated in their time.

Further explanation, relevant links, images from the video, and the Vimeo upload all follow the jump.

Remembering the Movies: Sep. 17 - 23

Due to the enthusiastic response last week, "Remembering the Movies" will become a permanent fixture at The Dancing Image. Each Friday, I will briefly revisit ten films released 10 - 100 years ago this week. I'll offer pictures, describe the movie, quote a critic, and link up to a video clip (either a trailer, a scene, or sometimes the whole movie). Then it's all yours - what did you think of the films in question? Do you remember seeing any of them when they first came out? Any anecdotes you have about them or their making, which I didn't mention and you'd like to share? Respond below with any of the above.

Today, we've got gangsters, gorillas, and revolutionary rabbits whizzing past the window on our ride back through time...

Waiting for the 25th Hour

[This review first appeared at Ibetolis' Film for the Soul as part of his great "Counting Down the Zeroes" series, which you should definitely check out. The review is quite long - including a lengthy quote from the movie as an introduction - and discusses crucial plot points, so beware. It begins after the jump.]

When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts

Mournful, occasionally playful, angry, and as direct as its maker's trademark personality, Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke assembles footage of the disaster and interviews with its victims into an elegy for New Orleans, a testimonial of Hurricane Katrina, and an indictment of the government that looked the other way. Katrina was not only a disaster of epic proportions, it was a turning point in American history. It finally unmasked President Bush and his administration as clueless, incompetent, and careless, and forever sank the estimation of his presidency. It revamped the media, empowering them going into the following year's election; it effectively turned conservatives against the president; it sank Bush into a popular miasma from which he never emerged. But if these were the indirect fruits of the disaster, they provided no consolation for the miserable, the dispossessed, and the increasingly hopeless Katrina left in its wake. The movie ends on a hesitantly hopeful note, as the city's citizens vow to move on, but it's been three years, the roots and results of the problem have not been addressed (and are not being addressed in the current campaign) and it seems increasingly likely that the glum scenario of a dispirited, dissipated metropolis will continue for the near future.