Episode 188 – Our Fifth Year Anniversary / ANONYMOUS / IN TIME
Here it is our Fifth Year Anniversary Special! Includes such items as banter, witticisms, back-talk and reviews of ANONYMOUS and IN TIME. As well as our favorite filmic picks from the past 187 shows, thoughts on Steve Jobs, the end of the film camera and the Most TFT Film of All Time.
Episode 187 – DRIVE / THE IDES OF MARCH / The COYOTE REQUIEM Kickstarter Project
Thoughts on the beautiful and disturbing tone poem that is DRIVE and an exhortation to participate in the exciting new film COYOTE REQUIEM. Oh, and Gareth saw THE IDES OF MARCH apparently.
Episode 185 – CONTAGION / THE GUARD / TIFF 2011
Cough, cough. Eck. Cough, it’s CONTAGION folks and Gareth’s Film of the Year THE GUARD. All that plus Jett’s thoughts on the films of TIFF 2011 including THE BROOKLYN BROTHERS BEAT THE BEST, THE HUNTER and THE WOMAN IN THE FIFTH and a brief mention of the new Criterion Jean Vigo Collection.
WARRIOR: Bodies in Motion
For a film about mixed martial arts, it would have been cool of Gavin O’Connor’s WARRIOR to demonstrate some mixed martial arts. But maybe I’m projecting my own priorities onto a film more interested in showing us, ad nauseam, how this great whatsit is provoking the audience.
COLOMBIANA Can’t Stop
As CONAN THE BARBARIAN represents the nadir of chaos cinema with its unfocused camerawork evoking nothing but a lazy director, Olivier Megaton’s COLOMBIANA represents its potential, finding purpose in the rapid cutting and manic energy that defines the End of Cinema.
THE HELP: Based on the Novel The Help by Uncle Remus
To call THE HELP caricature insults Aunt Jemima, but it’s difficult to define precisely how this grotesque sideshow operates without associating it with camp, melodrama, slapstick, Southern Gothic, and other broadly emotional modes
Contributor Crosstalk 2: Back in the Habit (April-June 2011)
BRANDON NOWALK: Hello, and welcome to Contributor Crosstalk 2: Back in the Habit, the quarterly look back at the good, the bad, and the weird cinema offered us below-the-liners. This episode: April-June, or Planet Hollywood’s journey from SOURCE CODE to CARS 2. Oof.
Episode 181: CAPTAIN AMERICA / THE ROCKETEER / BEGINNERS / COWBOYS AND ALIENS / Special Guest: Zaid Abu Hamdan director of Bahiya & Mahmoud
Episode 181 – Gareth and I watch COWBOYS AND ALIENS so you don’t have to.
HARRY POTTER & THE DEATHLY HALLOWS 2: Childish Things
As half-films go, David Yates’ HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2, FILM 8: ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET VOLDEMORT lurches from scene to setpiece like it’s Daniel Radcliffe’s awkwardly effortful performance.
MEEK’S CUTOFF: State of the Union
“Is he ignorant, or is he just plain evil?” Michelle Williams’ pioneer asks of hapless guide Stephen Meek as their wagon train of three loosely tied families winds up lost in the wasteland with depleting resources and a native prisoner in Kelly Reichardt’s MEEK’S CUTOFF.
OUR BELOVED MONTH OF AUGUST: Burden of Dreams
I’ve started and stopped this review so many times it’s like I’m practicing Kegels while peeing. Fitting, too, considering my subject, a fictionalized documentary (think THROUGH THE OLIVE TREES) about its own crew searching for inspiration to film the outright fiction of its last act after a dead financier imperils the project
SUPER 8: Plan 9 From the Spielberg Home for Daddy Issues
The problem with making an entire movie about the wonder and torment of lens flares is that the human eye is hardwired to detect artifice.
Episode 176 – TREE OF LIFE / ROAD TO NOWHERE / Special Guest: Steven Gaydos
Episode 176 – Thoughts on the syrupy yet beautiful TREE OF LIFE and the mysterious and stunning ROAD TO NOWHERE; includes an interview with ROAD writer Steven Gaydos. Also discussed: STAVISKY… and REJOICE AND SHOUT.
ROAD TO NOWHERE Feels Like It Was Shot Tomorrow
Monte Hellman’s new pic ROAD TO NOWHERE is so fresh in its digital image making it feels like it was shot tomorrow.
Episode 175 – MIDNIGHT IN PARIS / Brief Thoughts on THE HANGOVER 2, KUNG-FU PANDA 2 and PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 4
Episode 175 – Review of the brilliantly light and lovely MIDNIGHT IN PARIS; how THE HANGOVER 2 could have been saved and brief thoughts on KUNG-FU PANDA 2 and PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 4: ON STRANGER TIDES.
BRIDESMAIDS: Funny Girl
I’m shocked—shocked!—to find the big, dirty bone of contention with Paul Feig’s BRIDESMAIDS is the centerpiece gross-out scene, when whole mailing lists of people expecting a nice, polite feminist comedy were driven to conniptions
Episode 174 – THOR / BRIDESMAIDS
Episode 174 – Review of the “I’ve already forgotten if I’ve seen it” THOR and my film of the year BRIDESMAIDS. Enjoy!
THOR: Norwegian Wood
If you only see one small-town American story with an Oedipal skeleton enveloping space and time and prehistoric beasts this summer, please, for the love of all that is cinematically holy, make it Terrence Malick’s THE TREE OF LIFE, because Kenneth Branagh’s nominally Norse still-life THOR is so cosmically incompetent
Carlos Reygadas, BATTLE IN HEAVEN and the Sound of Silence
The Film Talk’s magnificent JumboChat5000 operating system, which also coughs up my lottery numbers, recently flagged up a months-old post by my comrade Tony Youngblood about cinema anima.
Episode 171 – OF GODS AND MEN / AU HASARD BALTHAZAR
In what might quite possibly turn out to be our penultimate show we talk about Gareth’s film of the year so far: OF GODS AND MEN as well as one of the greats: AU HASARD BALTHAZAR.
JANE EYRE: Bride of Rochester
For a film about a singular meeting of minds, Cary Fukunaga’s JANE EYRE is kind of undistinguished. Now, the words remain delicious morsels straight from Charlotte Bronte’s novel, and the performances (Mia Wasikwoska, Michael Fassbender, Jamie Bell, and Judi Dench) embody three-dimensions like James Cameron never dreamed of.
Episode 170 – The Secrets of Pitching with Darris Hatch / The Nashville Film Festival / Erin Buckley on NDAPEWA
In today’s show Gareth and I talk with producer and manager Darris Hatch on the secrets of pitching and Erin Buckley stops by to discuss the child produced Namibian short NDAPEWA; all part of the 2011 Nashville Film Festival.
Episode 169 – The Nashville Film Festival / BUCK / An Interview with Director Cindy Meehl / THE CONSPIRATOR
In today’s show Gareth and I talk with Cindy Meehl, the director of the Sundance and Full Frame Audience Award Winning documentary BUCK as part of the 2011 Nashville Film Festival and muse slight on Robert Redford’s new historopic THE CONSPIRATOR.
MILDRED PIERCE: A Woman’s Picture
In the grand tradition of Ingmar Bergman and Rainer Werner Fassbinder comes Todd Haynes’ television miniseries MILDRED PIERCE, which seems like a gray area for The Film Talk but such is the modern age: the difference between Michael Curtiz’ MILDRED PIERCE and Todd Haynes’ is one of degree, not kind, and if cinephilia embraces Youtube [...]
