for the introduction & line-up of monthly capsules
running from August 2021 to February 2022
Mad Men - "The Other Woman" (season 5, episode 11)
Story (aired on May 27, 2012/written by Semi Chellas and Matthew Weiner; directed by Phil Abraham): The major story turns of this episode - some of the most important in Mad Men history - are seeded so subtly that it's a shock when they not only rapidly develop but pay off before "The Other Woman" is done. At dinner with Herb Rennet (Gary Basaraba), a major car dealer and crucial vote in Jaguar's agency selection, Pete and Ken are informed about as bluntly as possible that Herb's vote is contingent upon them prostituting one of their employees to him. It seems Herb has a thing for redheads. Ken consistently deflects while Pete plays along: always keep the client happy, right? Even if you have to temporarily promise the impossible...but is Pete "playing"? Are his placating reassurances merely "temporary"? Is a night with Joan Harris, who's been with the company for fifteen years (longer than half the partners) really "impossible"? Pete, who once used his own father's death to seal a deal, goes where no one else would even consider. Quickly rebuffed by Joan, he seizes any opening he can find in the language of her refusal and convenes a vote. While Lane and Roger are initially shocked, they drop their resistance after Pete implies that Joan could be willing if the price is right. Lane even encourages her to ask for much more - a partnership and stake in the company - based on his own experience of getting short shrift and perhaps, his own nervousness about getting caught in embezzlement. It wasn't clear to me if he was encouraging her to make the partnership ask in lieu of Pete's $50,000 - if so, this adds a particularly cynical tinge to his admission that he's giving her this advice because of his feelings for her.
Only Don remains indignant but by leaving the room in a huff he is considered absent and therefore not a definitive "no." Joan, feeling the pressure (from her financial/living situation as well as her colleagues) and implicitly reasoning that if she's going to be so thoroughly disrespected she might as well profit for it, gives in. When Don visits her on the night of her rendezvous and tells her it's not worth it, she finally realizes that not everyone was eager to use her...but as it turns out, even if she doesn't tell him (he realizes the next morning when she's called into a partner meeting), he's too late. She's not showering in preparation for the "date" - she's just gotten back. Adding an even sicker tinge to the trade-off, Don's creative campaign hinged on the idea of the Jaguar as an expensive but worthwhile mistress with Michael coming up with the tagline, "Jaguar, finally something beautiful you can truly own." And sure enough, Jaguar votes for SCDP to represent them - due to the combination of that enticing tagline and the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of Pete to prove that tagline true. The entire office celebrates - except for two individuals. Don tells Peggy he's "not in the mood," and Peggy tells Don...well, let's rewind to when that seed was planted, before we see how it blossoms.
Actually, the season has been subtly building toward this point all along as Peggy's frustrations with the SCDP dynamic, and particularly Don's patronizing treatment of her, have been brewing through the failed Heinz campaign, her exclusion from Jaguar, and now a brilliant, last-minute rescue of the flailing Chavalier Blanc spot, for which she gets little credit. For years, others - including good old Freddy Rumsen - have been advising her to test the waters, and this time she decides to follow through on Freddy's tips by scheduling a series of interviews with other agencies. At first, as with the ludicrous trade-Joan-for-Jaguar conceit, it just seems like a moment of minor dramatic inflection. Peggy will do some interviews, realize why she wants to stay with SCDP and/or capitalize on the threat to finally get the raise, promotion, and respect she deserves, right? Instead she is scooped up immediately by Ted Chaough of CGC, the impudent creative exec Don spent much of season four contending with; Ted not only agrees to her request for an $18,000 salary, he crosses it out and adds another grand. Coincidentally forced to break this news to Don at the exact moment of the agency's ascendency, if Peggy had any doubts they are swept away in rat-a-tat fashion as she discovers Joan was just promoted and that she is definitively not going to be working on Jaguar. In one of the greatest scenes in the entire series, scooping up sixty-two episodes of character development while still managing to contain most of the emotional overflow (even if Peggy finally cries when Don kisses rather than shakes her hand), Don's protegee says goodbye. Only standing at the open elevator door, bathed in warm light with a slim porfolio of work under her arm, does Peggy's dazed expression resolve into a smile of satisfaction, as the joyful riff of the Kinks' "You Really Got Me" declares her independence.
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High and Low (LEFT OF THE MOVIES podcast #5/LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #27)
This is the last "Left of the Movies" podcast to appear on the Lost in the Movies feed - when this series resumes in October, it will have its own feed. (Previous episodes include Medium Cool, Sorry to Bother You, High-Rise, and the climactic class violence of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Joker, The Irishman, and Parasite. On this episode I discuss the Akira Kurosawa film High and Low, which depicts class stratification via a kidnapping thriller set in a spacious high-rise apartment and the sprawling city below. At first tightly-wound around a specific location and playing in what feels like real time, the movie defied both my memory and expectations. A later influence on Ransom, the first R-rated film I ever saw (which I'm surprised I didn't mention in the review - I thought I had), High and Low dedicates itself to a shifting point of view which entertains us yet subtly undercuts our identification. What is achieved at the film's end, for all of the various characters? Is High and Low as clear-cut a morality play as it may initially appear, or are the police chasing a shallow victory at real, dangerous cost? In the surrounding intro and outro, I offer some thoughts on the current context: inequality, housing, and other denied, dangled, and threatened benefits for those who often shouldered the greatest burdens of the pandemic.
Mad Men - "Christmas Waltz" (season 5, episode 10)
Story (aired on May 13, 2012/written by Victor Levin and Matthew Weiner; directed by Michael Uppendahl): Spectacles are apparently the ticket to stardom in this week's episode, as Lane Pryce and Harry Crane (of all people) take the lead. Lane is under pressure from the British government to pay back taxes in a matter of days; at breakneck speed, he convinces a bank manager to authorize $50,000 in credit, devises a proposal to distribute Christmas bonuses (leaving him with the $8,000 needed), and attempts to swat down all the casual obstacles that his unsuspecting colleagues throw his way. His parries are ultimately unsuccessful; they'll get their bonuses, but not in time for his tax deadline. The stalwart, by-the-book partner is reduced to sneaking through the office at night, photocopying a check and forging the signatures. And then a strike at Mohawk Airlines tightens the agency's belt, encouraging the partners to deny themselves bonuses while offering them to the staff. Where will this leave Lane? Harry's crisis, meanwhile, is really someone else's. Reunited with good old Paul Kinsey from Sterling Cooper days, he learns that Paul has become a Hare Krishna, following his manipulative girlfriend Lakshmi Bennett (Anna Wood) into a spiritual practice that, at first glance, has brought Paul peaceful euphoria but in fact leaves him still dissatisfied. Paul believes that success will come with a spec script for Star Trek (an obvious, cringeworthy allegory titled "The Negron Complex"), and everyone - including Laskhmi who seduces and then berates the horny adman - advises Harry to give it to Paul straight. Instead, Harry tells his friend to follow his dreams to Los Angeles, offering $500 and some lies about how network readers really liked his work - all for the greater good of helping the depressed searcher start over.
SCDP also faces a fresh opportunity as Pete has put them in the running for a new Jaguar campaign (Lane's pal, their prior failed connection, has finally humiliated himself out of the company). Don uses this as an excuse to take a Jaguar for a joyride, posing as Joan's husband - she needs an excuse for an excursion after a process server delivers Greg's divorce papers. Afterwards they get soused at a bar, listening to Sinatra, cocking Don's fedora, and reminiscing over old times before their growing flirtation is cut off by her former boss (in name anyway; as he recalls, she held all the intimidating authority in the office when he was a newbie). Don drives home in a fury only to find Megan more agitated than he is. She tosses her plate of spaghetti against the wall and lashes out at her husband's growing apathy about both his domestic and professional life. "You used to love your job," she reminds him at one point. And in the closing scene, Don finds that old inspiration, offering a stirring rally cry for the Jaguar campaign which he promises will be the agency's ride out of survival mode. What will that mean for him?
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The Olympic Series: full directory
Introduction
With the long delay of the 2020 Olympic games, we now face the shortest gap between summer and winter events since the International Olympic Committee switched to an alternating schedule nearly thirty years ago (from 1924 to 1992, both seasonal games were held in the same year). To bridge that gap from August 2021 to February 2022 (Tokyo to Beijing), each month* I will be reviewing between six and seven Olympic documentaries in a single round-up, with capsules focusing as much on the historical context, geographical/cultural flavor, and cinematic style of the films as the notable athletic achievements or personalities. Few sporting events end up capturing their zeitgeists - and all the consequent political implications - as thoroughly as these international games, for all their attempts to eschew the tensions of their times. Think Tommie Smith and John Carlos infamously raising their fists in the air in Mexico 1968, or the Black September hostage-taking in Munich 1972 which led to the deaths of the Israeli team, or the reconciliation between North and South Korea which reached its peak in PyeongChang 2018 - or, of course, Adolf Hitler and Leni Riefenstahl collaborating to glorify the Nazi regime in Berlin 1936.
Although I will be watching many of these movies through the Criterion Collection boxset which spans 1912 to 2012, I'll also be checking out some newsreels on YouTube as a bonus (for the early years that either didn't have official films or lost those films), and watching the more recent post-Criterion documentaries, on 2014, 2016, and 2018, which are available on the IOC's website. My approach will balance recent and distant past, as well as winter and summer, by moving backwards through the summer games and forward through the winter ones. I will be bookending the series with comments on the broadcasts (since the films aren't ready yet) of the just-finished Tokyo summer games and, once these too have concluded, the Beijing winter games. This will be a fun, zigzag rhythm to establish in my journey through time.
Here is the schedule, which will be updated with images and links as the pieces become available. They will appear once a month on Wednesdays, encompassing multiple films at the same time. (*2022 update: After the first entry, the series was delayed and re-scheduled as weekly, so it will now be published every Wednesday from January 19 to February 23.)
Films by Twin Peaks episode directors - After Dark, My Sweet, Code Name: Emerald, Losing Isaiah, Matthew Blackheart: Monster Smasher (TWIN PEAKS CINEMA podcast #5/LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #26)
This episode wraps up my "Twin Peaks Cinema" miniseries, in which I discussed a dozen films directed by Twin Peaks episode directors (in this podcast episode, James Foley, Jonathan Sanger, and Stephen Gyllenhaal following entries in September, January, and May) along with a film directed by Peaks co-creator Mark Frost and a film written by Peaks writer Robert Engels (also in this episode). There's still more where that came from, though: the original Patreon episode in which most of this coverage was packed together also includes a deep dive into an arc of the 1990 series Wiseguy, which Engels wrote in tribute to Twin Peaks, so check that out if you haven't had enough yet. And "Twin Peaks Cinema" is just getting started (publicly, anyway, it's been going on over at Patreon for two years). I will be opening this up as its own monthly public podcast in October, with a dedicated stream just for comparisons between Twin Peaks and various movies (for the most part, by non-affiliated creators, aside from some Lynch films eventually - this episode director miniseries is a bit apart from the rest of the material). For now, you can find out what a sun-baked neo-noir, a World War II spy thriller, a racially-charged custody dispute, and a time warp supernatural slayer have in common not just with Peaks overall but with the particular episodes their directors helmed. Some of the connections are pretty surprising!
Mad Men - "Dark Shadows" (season 5, episode 9)
Story (aired on May 13, 2012/written by Erin Levy; directed by Scott Hornbacher): Never one to shy away from using holidays to illustrate themes, often by ironic counterpoint, Mad Men spends its latest Thanksgiving episode reminding its characters what they aren't thankful for. A slimmed-down but still heavier-than-usual Betty reappears, now visiting Weight Watchers and struggling not to overeat even if the temptation is a mere morsel (or a mouthful of whipped cream she spits out before succumbing). Visiting the city to pick up her kids, she is disturbed by the luxurious penthouse view, by the children's comfort with a friendly stepmother who kisses them all on their way out, and especially by a stolen glimpse of the svelte Megan getting dressed. In her comparatively frumpy overcoat and scarf, Betty makes a marked contrast to her hip, colorful replacement (we must strain our imaginations to summon the memory of Mrs. Francis' breathtaking glamor in the season two premiere, just four and a half years earlier). This contrast drives Betty to reinvent herself as the original replacement wife, informing Sally that Don used to be married to someone named Anna. Tension arises between Sally, Megan, and Don as the daughter, feeling betrayed, tests her new knowledge, but ultimately Betty does not succeed in driving that wedge very deep. Sally completes the family tree illustration that spurred this peek into Don's past (although how on earth does she deal with the question of her grandparents?!), gets an A+, and leaves Betty to sort out her own complicated feelings of pride and abandonment without a companion in misery.
At the office, Don develops a semi-pathetic rivalry with his newest employee, the brilliant Max. They each develop print campaigns for Sno-Ball and despite a consensus that Max's (snowballs chucked at unsympathetic figures) holds a slight edge over Don's (a devil relishing his dessert with the caption "Maybe things are about to change" - get it?), Don only shows his own work to the clients. Petty, but he's able to truly shiv the underling on a subsequent elevator ride as Don effortlessly swats down all of Max's snarling assertions. For all his creativity, the greatest Draper talent may be wielding power within interpersonal (at least professional) relations. Peggy, going through a rough patch, has her own elevator confrontation with Roger after he turns to Max instead of her. The senior partner is tagging Max into a Manischewitz campaign (based on none-too-subtly expressed assumptions by both Roger and a frail-looking Bert about Max's "Semitic" suitability). Roger's LSD-fueled euphoria fading, he nonetheless retains a trace of self-awareness from that trip. When he invites the Jewish Jane to a client meeting under false pretenses, feels a tinge of jealousy from her flirtation with the client's handsome son, and then beds his ex (in the apartment he supposedly bought her in order for her to forget about him), his guilt seems genuine if a bit too late.
Even in the most minor of subplots, Megan's reading with an actor friend for a campy gothic soap opera (from which the episode takes its name), the green-eyed monster rears its head. When Megan later warns Don not to open the sliding door to the balcony because the air quality is so poor, the metaphor is as overt as little Bobby's drawing of a smiling whale with bloody harpoons in its side, on the back of which (Betty discovers) Don has written a simple love note to his young wife about buying a light bulb so he can gaze upon her. When faced with dark shadows or a milky haze, best to flip the switch and close the door in order to focus on what you have rather than what you don't.
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The Social Network (LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #25)
After several delays, I am finally kicking off my third season of the podcast with a discussion of The Social Network - David Fincher's film about Facebook (or rather, its creator), a story that plays a little differently when you're watching it unfold in 2004, 2010, or 2018 (which is when I recorded the bulk of this episode, originally for patrons). This is a film I enjoy revisiting precisely for that reason - I've discussed it with others and paid tribute to its visual motifs before (both linked below), and I'd love to hear your thoughts on it too so that discussion can continue. What's your favorite Fincher film? Do you like Aaron Sorkin's approach, and if not is this film an exception? If the two collaborators checked in on Zuckerberg and Facebook a couple decades after their initial, impressed but ambivalent depiction, what do you think that film would look like? I'll share any feedback in upcoming episodes. From this point on, I will be publishing episodes every Wednesday through the end of September, when I'll begin to spread my podcasts across several feeds (as discussed in this earlier announcement).
Ill-Gotten Gains
A bizarre concoction of offbeat nineties independent cinema, with one foot in Hollywood fringe filmmaking, the other much further afield (geographically and formally), Ill-Gotten Gains plays like a mash-up of Amistad and Eraserhead. The first comparison, to the 1997 Steven Spielberg film, is not incidental; not only does this film depict a slave revolt on an old wooden ship (according to one of the few online commentators, the same artifact as used in Amistad although I can't confirm), it does so in a period when the slave trade to the U.S. was supposed to be illegal. In Amistad's case this is the early 1840s, when the illegally captured men could still be legally sold in the United States (as long as their origin point was obscured), in Ill-Gotten Gains' case the late 1860s, when not just the trade but slavery itself was illegal almost everywhere except Brazil. But the comparison runs more deeply still: Amistad and Ill-Gotten Gains were released the same year, the same month if IMDb is to be believed, and most strangely of all they both happened to cast Djimon Honsou as a proud, much-abused leader of the revolt. The Eraserhead connection is more diffuse; I'm admittedly using that film as more of a shorthand to allude to the film's rich shadow-laden, chiaroscuroed black-and-white aesthetic and depiction of eerie magic rituals in which props like a spoon and slab of wood come to uncanny life (one shot of the shamanic Barc, played by Mario Gardner, digging into the floor of the ship to unearth some mystical dirt particularly calls to mind David Lynch's 1977 debut). The totem of this aspect of Ill-Gotten Gains is a woodsprite who appears to live within the framework of the ship; depicted as a stop-motion/claymation plank with a tribal mask-like angry face, she is voiced by Eartha Kitt.
Mad Men - "Lady Lazarus" (season 5, episode 8)
Story (aired on May 6, 2012/written by Erin Levy; directed by Scott Hornbacher): Megan and Pete are both keeping secrets from their spouses. Pete's train companion - Howard Dawes (Jeff Clarke), the life insurance salesman - blabs, as usual, about how he has a mistress in the city. The timing of this revelation is convenient (if not necessarily coincidental) because a night or two later, Pete runs into Howard's wife Beth (Alexis Bledel) at the Connecticut station. Her car won't start and she asks for a ride to her house but it's clear she wants much more than that, and she gets much more than that. After a tryst on the floor of the Dawes suburban home, an enamored Pete wants to continue the relationship despite Beth's insistence that this fling be a one-off. He invites her to a hotel suite in the city (smashing his champagne glass against the wall when she refuses to show), calls her incessantly, and eventually even convinces Howard that he wants to take out a new policy in order to get himself back over to their house and plead for Beth's attention in person. The distressed housewife feigns a migraine rather than serve Pete supper at her husband's request, but the next time she sees him at the station she draws a heart in the fogged up window of her car and stares at him across the parking lot with puppy dog eyes before her own philandering, oblivious companion drives her away.
Although Don worries about what Megan is hiding from him, it turns out to be a relatively harmless mystery (or does it?). She's begun auditioning for plays again, fueled by frustration with the back-biting cynicism of SCDP and also of course her intellectual father's dismissive attitude toward her current career. When she finally admits why she's been coming home late and lying to him about her whereabouts, Don tries to reassure her, citing the glory she'll feel when she sees her work on a billboard or in a magazine. But Megan feels more alive getting rejected for a part than accepted for a pitch, and all sorts of familial pressures reinforce this temperamental disposition because not only do her parents encourage a more bohemian work life, her husband's overbearing (if affectionate) presence at the office suffocates her. In letting her go, at least, Don is understanding if vaguely worried. Saying goodbye at the elevator, he watches her go down with ease, only to call up his own and come face to face with an empty shaft. There is no near-step into the void but the sense of foreboding is impossible to shake off, as unsettling as the jangling cacophony that greets Don on the last track of Revolver at episode's end. The lyrics tell him to "turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream" but the avant-garde orchestration inspires him to turn off the record instead. After a moment of silence, the song returns for the end credits - we're all on this journey, and have been ever since 1966, but maybe this is where Don gets off the train.
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Podcast Schedule for Late Summer (LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast announcement)
The Lost in the Movies public podcast will publish weekly into early October (including several bonus episodes to fill in this schedule), at which point it will branch out into several different feeds.
Here is my announcement of these and other changes to my plan for the third season:
(Also available on the Apple Podcasts site and on Spotify and Pinecast among many other podcast platforms.)
My viewing diary on Mad Men is finally finished (the bonus podcast on that subject will be up soon, probably tomorrow, and will be shared here when it's ready). This took up much more time than expected, pushing back my normal podcast schedule, so I've decided to re-invent my approach for the coming months. The details are discussed in the podcast above, but here are the upcoming dates to keep in mind:
(Also available on the Apple Podcasts site and on Spotify and Pinecast among many other podcast platforms.)
My viewing diary on Mad Men is finally finished (the bonus podcast on that subject will be up soon, probably tomorrow, and will be shared here when it's ready). This took up much more time than expected, pushing back my normal podcast schedule, so I've decided to re-invent my approach for the coming months. The details are discussed in the podcast above, but here are the upcoming dates to keep in mind:
August 4 - Regular episodes resume w/ The Social Network (weekly thru end of September)
August - Last time Left of the Movies & Twin Peaks Cinema will appear on this feed
August & September - Re-releasing conversations w/ other commentators originally recorded for Patreon/YouTube
September 8 - Arrival bonus (first new film review for a public podcast)
September 15 - This week's episode will be an official announcement/preview for the 3 podcasts branching off or premiering in October
September 29 - First coverage of a new release (planning for Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch)
October - Returning to every-other-week schedule for the main Lost in the Movies podcast, but independent feeds for Left of the Movies & Twin Peaks Cinema will publish in the off-week, plus there will be an independent feed for the daily or near-daily Lost in Twin Peaks podcast
Mad Men - "At the Codfish Ball" (season 5, episode 7)
Story (aired on April 29, 2012/written by Jonathan Igla; directed by Michael Uppendahl): In the autumn of '66, Don's personal and professional lives, and - perhaps consequently - the personal and professional lives of those around him, are ascendant. After over a year of teasing a relationship, the many potential goldmine clients who compose the American Cancer Society appear ready to commit to Don's services. He's receiving an award at a gala event and Roger is enlisting his well-connected and now-bemused ex-wife (tickled by both his acid trip and impending divorce) to do some reconnaissance for SCDP. The agency almost faceplants days earlier, when Megan discovers - during a trip to the ladies' room with the apologetic client's wife Alice Geiger (Robin Pearson Rose) - that the insufferably picky Heinz rep is about to finally dump the agency. On the spur of the moment, Megan and Don sell the fickle Raymond on Megan's recent epiphany: a beans commercial that spans millennia from Flintstones era to Jetsons age with a mother and son sharing their wholesome meal to the tagline "some things never change." Elated by not just the success of her idea but the grace with which she improvisationally pulls it off under immense pressure, Don and Megan get frisky during the cab ride home and go back to the office to make love.
They can't go back to their apartment because it's currently stuffed with family members from both sides. After Sally accidentally trips and injures her step-grandmother with a precarious phone cord (while talking to the increasingly Holden Caulfield-esque Glen Bishop, currently enrolled in some private school upstate), she is sent to stay with Don in the city. Meanwhile, Megan's parents are visiting from Canada, her father Emile Calvet (Ronald Guttman) an irascible lefty professor and her mother Marie (Julia Ormond) a sophisticate with a wandering eye. The whole gang goes out to the ACA ceremony, dressing up for the occasion (though Don makes Sally drop the make-up and go-go boots). They're in a good mood but the mood doesn't last, except perhaps for Marie and Roger; after some flirtation, the latter goes down on the former in an otherwise unoccupied room (where Sally stumbles across them, spoiling her mood for sure - when Glen later asks her how New York is, she simply replies, "dirty"). Don is crushed when Ken's father-in-law blabs at the bar, informing him that none of these bigwigs will ever give him their business; they may agree with the moral thrust of his retaliatory strike against Lucky Strike but how could they ever trust him after he stabbed a client, even their enemy, in the back? Megan, however, may fall the hardest. Her father expresses contempt for what she's achieved, characterizing her success as mere piggybacking on a wealthy husband, at the price of sacrificing her noble dreams as an aspiring actress. So much for the big night.
Peggy also receives a rebuke from a parent, in this case inviting her mother to dinner with her boyfriend to share the big news: they're getting......an apartment together. When Abe himself asked Peggy a few nights earlier, she could barely hide her disappointed embarrassment (although there may be some relief mixed in; even if she'd begun to suspect a marriage proposal, she'd initially worried that he was going to dump her). Joan, disillusioned by her own husband, offers encouragement at the office, but Mrs. Olson is only disgusted. Peggy's not sure which is worse in the family's eyes: that Abe the Jew is corrupting her nice Catholic daughter or that said daughter has chosen to live in sin with anyone of any religion. Told that he'll use her for practice before settling down with someone whom he respects more, Peggy is dismayed but not totally shocked by this attitude, which feels related to her status as a working girl rather than an aspiring homebody/child-rearer. There is a frustrated feeling that she's coming up against limits on all sides. When Peggy hears of Megan's Heinz success (where she herself failed), she tells her less experienced co-worker, "This is as good as the job gets." She means this as congratulation, but it could easily be taken as a warning.
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