We live in the best of times in which we are able to learn about the world and its incredible diversity of cultures/beings/places/perspectives in a way never historically possible. We live in the worst of times when we are able to isolate ourselves completely from anything different from our own narrow view/conception of the world/reality. The choice is yours!
Brown, Darryl K, et al. "Null and Void."Radiolab (May 12, 2017) ["Today, a hidden power that is either the cornerstone of our democracy or a trapdoor to anarchy. Should a juror be able to ignore the law? From a Quaker prayer meeting in the streets of London, to riots in the streets of LA, we trace the history of a quiet act of rebellion and struggle with how much power “we the people” should really have."]
Henrietta Lacks."Radio Lab (April 18, 2017) ["With all the recent talk about HBO's upcoming film, we decided it would be good time to re-run our story of one woman's medically miraculous cancer cells, and how Henrietta Lacks changed modern science and, eventually, her family's understanding of itself."]
Montgomery, Ben. "Why Cops Shoot."Tampa Bay Times (April 5, 2017) ["
An unprecedented review of Florida police shootings reveals how fear and bias breed confusion, how order quickly dissolves into chaos, and ways to avert the violence."]
Burgoyne, Robert. "The Columbian Exchange: Pocahontas and The New World." Film Nation: Hollywood Looks at History. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010: 120-142. [BCTC Library: PN1995.9 H5 B87 2010]
Like Stories of Old. "The New World: The Lost Art of Grief." (Posted on Youtube: September 29, 2017) ["An examination of sorrow and grief in Terrence Malick’s The New World based on Francis Weller’ The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief. North Atlantic Books: "The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and be stretched large by them. Noted psychotherapist Francis Weller provides an essential guide for navigating the deep waters of sorrow and loss in this lyrical yet practical handbook for mastering the art of grieving. Describing how Western patterns of amnesia and anesthesia affect our capacity to cope with personal and collective sorrows, Weller reveals the new vitality we may encounter when we welcome, rather than fear, the pain of loss. Through moving personal stories, poetry, and insightful reflections he leads us into the central energy of sorrow, and to the profound healing and heightened communion with each other and our planet that reside alongside it. The Wild Edge of Sorrow explains that grief has always been communal and illustrates how we need the healing touch of others, an atmosphere of compassion, and the comfort of ritual in order to fully metabolize our grief. Weller describes how we often hide our pain from the world, wrapping it in a secret mantle of shame. This causes sorrow to linger unexpressed in our bodies, weighing us down and pulling us into the territory of depression and death. We have come to fear grief and feel too alone to face an encounter with the powerful energies of sorrow. Those who work with people in grief, who have experienced the loss of a loved one, who mourn the ongoing destruction of our planet, or who suffer the accumulated traumas of a lifetime will appreciate the discussion of obstacles to successful grief work such as privatized pain, lack of communal rituals, a pervasive feeling of fear, and a culturally restrictive range of emotion. Weller highlights the intimate bond between grief and gratitude, sorrow and intimacy. In addition to showing us that the greatest gifts are often hidden in the things we avoid, he offers powerful tools and rituals and a list of resources to help us transform grief into a force that allows us to live and love more fully."]
Roark, David. "Terrence Malick and the Christian Story."Balder & Dash (March 10, 2016) ["Smith’s belief that human beings are primarily lovers rather than thinkers is, of course, nothing new; it is an understanding founded in Scripture, as well as the thought of early Christian theologian and philosopher St. Augustine of Hippo. Augustine, in perhaps his most famous work, City of God, argues that humans are innately lovers or worshippers, which means that it is not whether people worship; it is what people worship. As a direct consequence, there are liturgies—most affectively stories—all around us that prime the pump of the heart, shaping its affections and desires toward a vision of the good life. Appealing to our emotions and imaginations, liturgies use kinesthetics and aesthetics to teach and change the human condition around a particular story or vision. Out of this understanding, Smith ultimately calls for a response. He challenges Christians to reconsider anew the liturgy of the Church, taking back 2,000 years of tradition; moreover, he challenges Christians to create alternative, sacred liturgies in light of the numerous bad liturgies within popular culture. In one sense, Smith’s is a call to the arts—or, in Malick’s case, cinema."]
Homberg, Jan, et al. "The Seventh Seal."In Our Time (September 21, 2023) ["Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most celebrated film of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007). It begins with an image that, once seen, stays with you for the rest of your life: the figure of Death playing chess with a Crusader on the rocky Swedish shore. The release of this film in 1957 brought Bergman fame around the world. We see Antonius Block, the Crusader, realising he can’t beat Death but wanting to prolong this final game for one last act, without yet knowing what that act might be. As he goes on a journey through a plague ridden world, his meeting with a family of jesters and their baby offers him some kind of epiphany."]
LoBrutto, Vincent. "Defining Theme, Metaphor, and Character Through Color, Texture, and Environmental Design: Se7en." Becoming Film Literate: The Art and Craft of Motion Pictures. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005: 280-285. [BCTC Library: PN1994 L595 2005]
Screened. "What is an Allegorical Movie?" (Posted on Youtube: April 9, 2021) ["In our second Film Club theme we wanted to dive into the niche world of cinematic allegories. This literary device is a great tool to explore serval concepts in a more approachable manner. We will show how they are made and why by analyzing the following movies: Snowpiercer (2013) by Bong Joon-ho, The Lobster (2015) by Yorgos Lanthimos, and The Seventh Seal (1957) by Ingmar Bergman."]
Accomando, Beth, et al. "A Better Tomorrow (1986)."The Projection Booth #350 (December 26, 2017) ["John Woo's A Better Tomorrow(1986). The film, a hallmark of the “heroic bloodshed” subgenre of action films, did for gunplay what a generation of Hong Kong films had done with swords. The film tells the tale of Ho (Ti Lung), a criminal whose younger brother, Kit (Leslie Cheung), is a police officer. He's betrayed by a fellow gangster (Waise Lee) and sent up the river. When he returns to Hong Kong he wants to stay on the right side of the law which is more difficult than it should be. The film speaks to loyalty, brotherhood, and put Chow Yun-Fat on the map as a bankable action star. Cinema Junkie's Beth Accomando and Mike wax fondly about the glory days of HK Cinema, twin brothers, strange sequels, and the true colors of a hero."]
Collins, Max Allan. "Kiss Me Deadly (1955)."The Projection Booth #352 (February 13, 2018) ["Based on the 1952 Mickey Spillane novel, Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly (1955) stars Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer, a hard-boiled gumshoe who gets dragged into a mystery involving a glowing case, duplicitous dames, and two-fisted violence. Max Allan Collins, director of Mike Hammer's Mickey Spillane, talks about his career and working on Mickey Spillane's posthumous work. Writer Andrew Nette and Professor Kevin Heffernan join Mike to discuss paranoia, the cold war, and much more."]
Grabowsky, Jessica, et al. "Tom of Finland (2017)."The Projection Booth #348 (November 11, 2017) ["Finnish artist Touko Laaksonen redefined gay erotica with his intricate, fetishistic drawings of muscle-bound uniformed men. Dome Karukoski's 2017 bio-pic Tom of Finland explores the life of Laaksonen (Pekka Strang) and his legacy. Maitland McDonagh (120 Days Books) joins Mike to discuss Tom of Finland, Daddy and the Muscle Academy, and more."]
Booth, Heather, et al. "Mrs. Hamer Echoes."Making Contact (October 4, 2017) ["Civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer, spoke words that are all too relevant today. Mrs. Hamer would have turned 100 years old on October 6th 2017. Today on Making Contact, you’ll hear archival recordings, and excerpts from a powerful new film featuring Fannie Lou Hamer’s contemporaries– themselves now elders. You’ll hear about the context of her life, and the lives of other sharecroppers in Mississippi from a seldom heard film produced for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee or SNCC."]
Norton, Blake and Sophie Novack. "Texas Woman: I Was Forced to Consent to Bury Fetal Remains After Miscarriage in 'Horrific' Ordeal."Democracy Now (April 25, 2018) ["Last week, a U.S. appeals court declared unconstitutional an Indiana law signed by then-Governor, now Vice President, Mike Pence, that requires fetuses to be buried or cremated. This comes as Texas passed a law last year saying all fetal remains had to be buried or cremated, and also banned donation of that tissue for research purposes. In January, U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra temporarily halted the fetal remains law, but Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has vowed to continue fighting for it. For more, we speak with Blake Norton, who had a miscarriage in 2015 at the Seton Medical Center in Austin, Texas, and was forced to choose whether she would let the hospital bury the remains in a shared grave, or arrange for a “private burial” at her own expense. We’re also joined by Texas Observer reporter Sophie Novack, whose cover story about Blake Norton is headlined 'Indoctrinated: A Catholic hospital in Austin forces patients who miscarry to consent to fetal burials. For one woman, that made a painful loss even worse—and she worries it could soon become routine across Texas.'"]
Schafer, Simon. "How To Think About Science (Part 1)."Ideas (October 10, 2017) ["In 1985 a book appeared that changed the way people thought about the history of science. Until that time, the history of science had usually meant biographies of scientists, or studies of the social contexts in which scientific discoveries were made. Scientific ideas were discussed, but the procedures and axioms of science itself were not in question. This changed with the publication of Leviathan and the Air Pump, subtitled Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life, the book's avowed purpose was - "to break down the aura of self-evidence surrounding the experimental way of producing knowledge." This was a work, in other words, that wanted to treat something obvious and taken for granted - that matters of fact are ascertained by experiment - as if it were not at all obvious; that wanted to ask, how is it actually done and how do people come to agree that it has truly been done. The authors of this pathbreaking book were two young historians, Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, and both have gone on to distinguished careers in the field they helped to define, science studies. Steven Shapin will be featured later in this series, but How to Think About Science begins with a conversation with Simon Schaffer. David Cayley called on him recently in his office at the Whipple Museum of the History of Science at Cambridge where he teaches." - entire series here ]
Wright, Ann. "'Our Dreams are Coming True': Peace Activists Celebrate as Korean Leaders Vow to Officially End War."Democracy Now (April 27, 2018) ["History has been made on the Korean peninsula today, as South Korean President Moon Jae-In and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un shook hands at the Demilitarized Zone between the two countries and pledged to work to denuclearize the peninsula and to declare the official end to the Korean War. Today’s historic summit marks the first time a North Korean leader has ever set foot inside South Korea. During the meeting, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said “I came here to put an end to the history of confrontation.” The North and South Korean leaders pledged to pursue talks with the United States aimed at negotiating a formal peace treaty to replace the uneasy 1953 armistice. For more we speak with Ann Wright, retired U.S. Army Colonel and former State Department diplomat. She is a member of Women Cross DMZ, a group of international peacemakers who have been calling for an end to the Korean War."]
Brown, Raymond, et al. "How Black Students Helped Lead the 1968 Columbia U. Strike Against Militarism & Racism 50 Years Ago."Democracy Now (April 23, 2018) ["Fifty years ago today, on April 23, 1968, hundreds of students at Columbia University in New York started a revolt on campus. They occupied five buildings, including the president’s office in Low Library, then students barricaded themselves inside the buildings for days. They were protesting Columbia’s ties to military research and plans to build a university gymnasium in a public park in Harlem. The protests began less than three weeks after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The 1968 Columbia uprising led to one of the largest mass arrests in New York City history—more than 700 people arrested on April 30. It also inspired student protests across the country. Today, we spend the hour looking back at this pivotal moment. We are joined by Raymond Brown, former leader of the Student Afro-American Society; Nancy Biberman, a Barnard College student who joined the protests as a member of Students for Democratic Society; Mark Rudd, chair of the Columbia University chapter of SDS during the student strike; Juan González, Democracy Now! co-host who was a Columbia student and strike organizer; and Paul Cronin, editor of the new book “A Time to Stir: Columbia ’68.” We also feature excerpts from the 1968 documentary “Columbia Revolt” by Third World Newsreel."]
Brynjolfsson, Erik, et al. "On the New Era of AI."Open Source (October 19, 2017) ["The “intelligence explosion” foretold 50 years ago, could be here any minute. Artificial intelligence has now survived the “AI winter” — and is back in public conversation. It’s not just a Silicon Valley buzzword or a subject for speculative fiction, but a real possibility on the tech horizon, with real money backing it. As the machines move beyond just beating their masters’s in games like Chess and Go and start honing in on deep learning, neural networking, and “Big Data” sorting, we’re asking the Big Question: where’s this whole thing going?"]
Collins, John, et al. "Militarisation and the 'War on Crime.'"London School of Economics and Political Science (November 7, 2017) ["From the 70 year old "War on Drugs", to the more recent "War on Human Smuggling", politicians use militarised responses to look decisive on crime. The deployment of armies, navies, military assets and militarised approaches can send a powerful message, but have produced mixed results. This debate, co hosted between the LSE US Centre and the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime will discuss four different areas of criminality – wildlife crime, piracy, human smuggling and drug trafficking – to see how effective a militarised response can really be, and what might be lost as collateral damage."]
Gordon, Emily and April Wolfe. "Bone Tomahawk."Switchblade Sisters #1 (November 9, 2017) ["April talks with the writer and producer of The Big Sick, Emily Gordon. Things get gruesome quickly as the two of them discuss the 2015 horror-western, Bone Tomahawk. April and Emily examine what makes the movie so good; the insane violence, the heartbreaking monologues, the beautiful cinematography. Plus, Emily talks about the making of The Big Sick and how she uses her psychology background in her writing."]
"Kristen Stewart and Chloë Sevigny."Film Comment Podcast (October 26, 2016) ["Kristen Stewart took a quick breather from promoting her triptych of new films at NYFF to reflect on collaborating with Olivier Assayas and Kelly Reichardt. She also shares her excitement about stepping behind the camera for the first time. And speaking of directorial debuts, Chloë Sevigny discusses making her first short film, Kitty, on the heels of its North American premiere at NYFF, as well as the pursuit of a unique, substantive acting career in a white male-centric independent film landscape."]
Nasser, Latif, et al. "Nukes."Radiolab (April 7, 2017) ["President Richard Nixon once boasted that at any moment he could pick up a telephone and - in 20 minutes - kill 60 million people. Such is the power of the US President over the nation’s nuclear arsenal. But what if you were the military officer on the receiving end of that phone call? Could you refuse the order? This episode, we profile one Air Force Major who asked that question back in the 1970s and learn how the very act of asking it was so dangerous it derailed his career. We also pick up the question ourselves and pose it to veterans both high and low on the nuclear chain of command. Their responses reveal once and for all whether there are any legal checks and balances between us and a phone call for Armageddon."]
Later when he becomes an important player, he will learn that people are not bribed to shut up about what they know. They are bribed not to find it out. And if you are as intelligent as Kim,it is hard not to find things out. Now, American boys are told they should think. But just wait until your thinking is basically different from the thinking of a boss or a teacher ... You will find out that you aren't supposed to think. -- William S. Burroughs, The Place of the Dead Roads (Picador, 1983: 16)
Akuno, Kali. "Worker Cooperatives, Economic Democracy, and Black Self-Determination."Left Out (January 18, 2018) ["In this episode, we sat down with Kali Akuno — the co-founder and co-directer of Cooperation Jackson. We discuss the emerging network of worker-owned cooperatives and the people behind it building an alternative, solidarity-based economy inside the majority-black and impoverished city of Jackson, Mississippi. ... In Jackson Rising, Akuno helps chronicle the history, present and future of one of the most dynamic yet under-documented experiments in radical social transformation taking place in the United States. The book follows the surprising story of the city’s newly elected Mayor, Choke Antara Lumumba, whose vision is to “encourage the development of cooperative businesses” and make Jackson the “most radical city on the planet.” In the first part of the interview, we ask Akuno about the ongoing organizing and institution building of the black, working-class political forces concentrated in Jackson dedicated to advancing the “Jackson-Kush Plan.” We then dive deeper into the different types of worker-owned cooperatives that makeup Cooperation Jackson; the importance of developing cooperatives with clear political aims; and the need for a nationwide network of cooperatives and solidarity economic institutions as a viable alternative to the exploitative nature of our current economic, social, and environmental relations. Cooperation Jackson is one of the most important stories for those of us struggling for social justice, for human emancipation and self-determination, and for a solidarity economics as a base for working class political struggle and the fight against the systematic economic strangulation."]
Faloon, Mike, et al. "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973)."The Projection Booth #351 (January 18, 2018) ["Released in 1973 in a truncated form, Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid has had a long, contentious history. We’ll be talking about that as well as the film itself in which Kris Kristofferson plays the titular Billy the Kid. He’s the friend and eventual enemy of James Coburn as Pat Garrett. The film stars a host of familiar faces and character actors with this speaking to the passing of the torch from one generation of Westerns to the next... Or perhaps snuffing that flame. Author Mike Faloon and artist David Lambert join Mike discuss Peckinpah's film. Interviews include screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer (Two Lane Blacktop), Bob Dylan scholar David Wolf, and author/editor Paul Seydor (The Authentic Death and Contentious Afterlife of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid: The Untold Story of Peckinpah's Last Western Film). "]
Subissati, Andrea and Alexandra West. "Compendium of Fear: Creepshow (1982) and Trick R' Treat (2007)."Faculty of Horror #43 (October 20, 2016) ["The possibilities are endless when it comes to a good scare. The horror anthology is a rarity in the genre but when executed successfully they are beloved. Andrea and Alex do a deep dive into two infamous cult classics which deal in a variety of stories taking place around everyone’s favourite holiday."]
Balaban, Bob, et al. "Altered States (1980)."The Projection Booth #216 (April 28, 2015) ["Based on the book by and adapted for the screen by Paddy Chayefsky, Ken Russell's Altered States tells the tale of Edward Jessup (William Hurt), a scientist who’s looking for answers to some of the big questions of life, memory, spirituality, and more. He meets, marries, divorces, and reconciles with Emily (Blair Brown) over the course of a decade of study where he ingests some questionable substances while subjecting himself to sensory deprivation. Here Eddie finds a way to travel back in time through his own body’s chemistry to the days of primeval man."]
Bradley, S.A and Derrick Carey. "All The Sins of the World: Extreme Horror."Hellbent for Horror #53 (September 14, 2017) ["Extreme Horror Films: they are the "Elephant in the Room" for horror fans. These films push the limits of the viewer to such the extent that they even divide the horror community on whether they go too far. A large majority of these films have little, or no, socially redeeming value. And yet... There are a few extreme films that use the violence, and obscenity, and nihilism to create something that defies expectations and becomes something horrible/beautiful. For those who dare to watch. ... Movies Discussed: Cannibal Holocaust (1980) Irreversible (2002) Scrapbook (2000) Martyrs (2008) Found (2012)"]
Jupin, Andrew, Alex Kohagen and Peter Medak. "The Changeling."The Production Booth #260 (March 1, 2016) Coal Miner's Daughter (USA: Michael Apted, 1980: 125 mins)
Bradley, S.A. and J. Blake Fichera. "Sympathetic Monsters."Hellbent for Horror #43 (June 6, 2017)
["Can you sympathize with a monster? In some cases I think you can. It depends on the story and how well the story is told and acted. ... George Romero, Fritz Lang, Martin Scorsese, Joe Spinell, Michael Powell, and Patty Jenkins all presented monsters who were more than simply killers. While we don’t condone the actions of the characters in these films, these killers display complex psyches that are worth discussing. We tackle some old and newer films to talk about, among other things, how people empathized with Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, and how Peeping Tom possibly destroyed Michael Powell’s career because the critics and audiences related to the main character... a little too much."]
Deighan, Samm, et al. "The Ninth Configuration (1980)."The Projection Booth #323 (May 16, 2017) ["Written and directed by William Peter Blatty, The Ninth Configuration (1980) ... and was based on his novel Twinkle Twinkle Killer Kane. The film stars Stacy Keach as Col. Hudson Kane, a new psychiatrist at an unusual retreat for men who have cracked up during the Vietnam War. Also at this fog shrouded castle is Captain Billy Cutshaw (Scott Wilson), an astronaut who freaked out before his mission to the moon. The two men are at odds about the world, especially around the question of faith."]
Hancock, James and Martin Kessler. "Canuxploitation."Flixwise (May 30, 2017)
Shogun Assassin (Japan/USA: Robert Huston and Kenji Misumi, 1980: 85 mins)
Kohagen, Axel, Geoff Todd and Mike White. "The Lone Wolf and Cub Saga."The Projection Booth #303 (December 31, 2016) ["The Lone Wolf & Cub Films (also known as the Babycart Films, the Kozure Okami Films, the Shogun Assassin series and more) are six movies released from 1972-1974 starring Tomisaburo Wakayama as Ogami Itto, the Shogun's decapitator. After he's framed by the villainous Yagyu clan, he travels the countryside with his young son in a tricked-out baby cart as an assassin and son for hire. Adapted from the manga by author Kazuo Koike, the films are both gorgeously contemplative and gory bloodbaths. Geoff Todd and Axel Kohagen join Mike to discuss the original manga, the television adaptations, the 1989 follow-up film, the 1992 reboot, and a handful of influences that the films have had on American popular culture."]
Solo Sunny (East Germany: Konrad Wolf, 1980: 100 mins)
Brockmann, Stephen. "Solo Sunny (1973) or Even Socialism Can't Stave Off Loneliness." A Critical History of German Film Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2010: 274-282. [Professor has copy of the book]
Terror Train (USA: Roger Spottiswoode, 1980: 97 mins)
Barton-Fumo, Margaret. "Location, Location, Location."Film Comment Podcast (July 18, 2017) ["Plenty of films open with an establishing shot of a city’s iconic skyline, or of a few iconic barns, only to go on and use the location as an anonymous backdrop. But few and far between are films that actually use the specificity that comes from location shooting to express something about the city’s history, the characters, and the story itself. The cover story of our July/August issue is the Safdie Brothers’ Good Time—a New York film through and through—and in the same issue’s Art and Craft column, we asked veteran location manager Ken Lavet to reflect on the art of scouting for Steven Soderbergh and other filmmakers. “It always starts with the story—whether it’s in a beat sheet form or a script or a treatment of some kind,” Lavet writes. “Hopefully I get some description from the screenwriter—of, say, a house, or an apartment building, or an office. And I start looking with that in mind.”"]
Conrad, Marjorie, Heather Drain and Michael White. "Looker."The Projection Booth #256 (February 2, 2016) ["In Looker, writer/director Michael Crichton examined the allure of advertising. Plastic surgeon Dr. Larry Roberts (Albert Finney) has been performing millimeter-specific procedures on models including Cindy Fairmont (Susan Dey). When his patients start dying under suspicious circumstances, the trail leads to mogul John Reston (James Coburn)."]
Alda, Rutanya, et al. "Mommie Dearest (1981)."The Projection Booth #322 (May 10, 2017) ["Based on the scandalous memoir by Christina Crawford, Frank Perry's Mommie Dearest (1981) gave the world a powerhouse performance by Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford. On this episode of The Projection Booth, Joshua Grannell and Terry Frost join Mike to discuss the movie and its reception. Guests this episode include actress Rutanya Alda who gives a behind-the-scenes account of the shooting of the film and Justin Bozung who is currently writing a book about director Frank Perry."]
Pennies From Heaven (USA: Herbert Ross, 1981: 108 mins)
Rappoport, Mark. "The Empty Screen."Talkhouse (Posted on Youtube: February 7, 2017) ["The screen is a neutral element in the film-going experience. Or is it? It projects dreams but is also the receptacle of our dreams. It’s the vehicle for delivering the image to an audience — but does it also watch the audience at the same time? Is it a complicitous membrane which audience members can penetrate and which interacts with the spectators, despite its seeming passivity? Maybe — to all of the above …"]
Longworth, Karina. "Dorothy Stratten (Dead Blondes Episode 13)."You Must Remember This (April 25, 2017) ["Our Dead Blondes season concludes with the story of Dorothy Stratten. Coaxed into nude modeling by Paul Snider, her sleazy boyfriend-turned-husband, 18 year-old Stratten was seized on by Playboy as the heir apparent to Marilyn Monroe. She ascended to the top of the Playboy firmament quickly, and just after Hugh Hefner decided to make her Playmate of the Year, she met filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich, who fell in love with her and rewrote his upcoming film, They All Laughed, to give Dorothy a star-making role. After filming They All Laughed Dorothy planned to leave Snider and Playboy for life with Bogdanovich -- but her husband had other ideas."]
Lee, Kevin B. "Bruce Lee, Before and After the Dragon."Keyframe (July 18, 2013) ["From orphan child star to kung fu clones: on the 40th anniversary of Bruce Lee’s death, a look at the bizarre bookends of his legendary career."]
Smith, Gavin. "Wolfen: Territorial Imperatives."Reverse Shot (July 15, 2022) ["Loosely adapted from the 1978 novel by Whitley Streiber, Wolfen transcends the framework of its solid genre format to deliver an overarching and absolutely singular vision (both literally and metaphorically) of human civilization on the skids, one that brings together ecological, social, folkloric, and postcolonial perspectives. Former medical student Wadleigh’s reaching ambition comes as no surprise. His only previous directing credit, the massively successful rock documentary Woodstock (1970), and his background as DP on half a dozen independent films, including David Holzman's Diary (1967) and No Vietnamese Ever Called Me Nigger (1968), attest to his politicized counterculture background. As well as being an extraordinary depiction of New York at the dawn of the 1980s, Wolfen lives up to those ambitions—despite the extensive tampering of its producer, Orion Pictures, Wadleigh’s film should be considered one of the most remarkable and visually innovative Hollywood films to be released in 1981."]
Ashes and Embers (USA: Haile Gerima, 1982: 120 mins) Gerima, Haile. "Ashes and Embers."The Treatment (March 28, 2016) ["Filmmaker Haile Gerima left Ethopia for the US where he studied acting and ultimately found a voice in film, becoming a leading member of the "LA Rebellion" film movement. With an African American perspective on social commentary at the forefront of his work, his 1982 film Ashes and Embers is now being re-released through Array, the LA-based film collective founded by filmmaker Ava DuVernay. Today, Germina joins Elvis Mitchell in a discussion about cultural usurpation and historical discrimination in Hollywood."] Burden of Dreams (USA: Les Blank, 1982: 95 mins) Koski, Genevieve, et al. "The Lost City of Z / Burden of Dreams, Part 1."The Next Picture Show #74 (May 2, 2017) ["James Gray’s new jungle adventure THE LOST CITY OF Z inspired us to take another trip to the Amazon via Les Blank’s BURDEN OF DREAMS, the 1982 documentary chronicling the notoriously difficult filming of Werner Herzog’s Amazonian epic FITZCARRALDO. In this half, we talk about Herzog — both the director and the pop-culture character we’ve come to know — and the borderline-mania that seems to drive his unique process. We also wrestle with what BURDEN reveals about how the indigenous people who worked on Herzog’s film were treated. "]
---. "The Lost City of Z / Burden of Dreams, Part 2."The Next Picture Show #75 (May 4, 2017) ["There’s a lot more connecting Les Blank's BURDEN OF DREAMS with James Gray’s new THE LOST CITY OF Z than the jungle setting, though that of course factors into our discussion of the two films. In this half, we share our reactions to Gray’s stately new film before delving into how the two films engage with obsession and hubris, the clash between European and South American cultures, and the handling of early-19th-century stories."]
Subissati, Andrea and Alexandra West. "Compendium of Fear: Creepshow (1982) and Trick R' Treat (2007)."Faculty of Horror #43 (October 20, 2016) ["The possibilities are endless when it comes to a good scare. The horror anthology is a rarity in the genre but when executed successfully they are beloved. Andrea and Alex do a deep dive into two infamous cult classics which deal in a variety of stories taking place around everyone’s favourite holiday."]
The Dark Crystal (USA/UK: Jim Henson and Frank Oz, 1982: 93 mins)
"Revisiting The Dark Crystal."Breaking the Glass Slipper (August 23, 2018) ["If you haven’t seen this cult Henson classic, The Dark Crystal tells the story of Jen, the last – or so he believes – Gelfling, who is prophesied to bring about the fall of the evil Skesis and heal a powerful relic, the titular Dark Crystal. His story is modelled on the classic chosen one trope, where a young and inexperienced boy holds the fate of the world in his hands. This film was made in 1982, so how does it hold up? The advantage of fantasy is that it has the potential to avoid looking as dated as films like The Terminator or The Lost Boys. At the time it was made, TDC was hailed as the only live action film in which a human character makes no appearance. So is it the use of puppetry that keeps the years at bay? And can we forgive the film its stereotypes that – after 30 years of commercial fantasy – now make us cringe?"]
Stickwell, Bernard, et al. "Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains."See Hear #2 (February 17, 2014) ["... the 1982 film Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains directed by Lou Adler. The film is prophetic in seeing a less-than-talented band gain a loyal following using the help of the media. No publicity is bad publicity. Moral compasses from nearly every character in the film are pointing south."]
Deighan, Samm and Kat Ellinger. "Lust for a Female Vampire: The Evolution of Lesbian Vampires in Cinema, Part 2."Daughters of Darkness #2 (March 28, 2017) ["Kat and Samm continue their three-part discussion of lesbian vampire films, this time with a focus on European cult directors like Jess Franco, Jean Rollin, and Walerian Borowczyk. They begin their discussion with the career of the prolific Jess Franco, who produced a number of films with lesbian vampire themes, namely Vampyros Lesbos (1971). This starred his first muse, Soledad Miranda, as the mysterious Countess Carody, who sunbathes by day but thirsts for blood at night. Franco also adapted Bram Stoker’s novel with the relatively traditional Count Dracula (1970), but continued to explore his own perverse variations on vampire mythology in Dracula’s Daughter (1972) and the explicit Female Vampire (1975), with his longtime partner Lina Romay. Also explored is the work of French director Jean Rollin, known for his dreamlike, often surreal vampire films such as The Rape of the Vampire (1968), The Nude Vampire (1970), The Shiver of the Vampires (1971), and Requiem for a Vampire (1973). While these films infrequently use overt depictions of lesbianism, they are generally concerned with pairs or groups of female vampires banded together against the world. In films like Fascination (1979), about blood-drinking socialites, and The Living Dead Girl (1982), the tragic tale of a love that survives beyond death, Rollin expanded on his early themes. The episode concludes with a discussion of a few films that touch upon the legend of historical murderer and alleged blood-drinker Elizabeth Bathory. Most importantly is Belgian film Daughters of Darkness (1971), the podcast’s namesake, which follows a newly married couple who encounter an elegant and possibly ageless woman at a seaside hotel."]
Sorlin, Pierre. "The Night of the Shooting Stars: Fascism, Resistance, and the Liberation of Italy." Revisioning History: Film and the Construction of a New Past. ed. Robert A. Rosenstone. Princeton University Press, 1995: 77-88. [Your professor has a copy]
Querelle (West Germany/France: Rainer Wender Fassbinder, 1982: 108 mins)
Power, Nina, Helen Rollins, and Benjamin Studebaker. "Querelle."The Lack (April 25, 2023) ["This episode is on the 1982 film Querelle, directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and based on the novel by Jean Genet."]
Koski, Genevieve, et al. "Ready Player One / Tron (Part 1)."The Next Picture Show #122 (April 3, 2018) ["Steven Spielberg’s new READY PLAYER ONE turns videogaming into both a fantasy adventure and a meta-narrative about adventure fantasies, a premise that feels directly inspired — and given Ernest Cline’s source novel, almost certainly is — by Steven Lisberger’s 1982 Disney oddity TRON. Before digging into what connects the two films, we dive into TRON’s glow-y, rudimentarily CGI-ed mainframe to consider the bits and bytes that drive this fascinatingly flawed film, from its confusing religious undertones (overtones?) to its strange real world/virtual world disconnect."]
---. "Ready Player One / Tron (Part 2)."The Next Picture Show #123 (April 5, 2018) ["Steven Lisberger’s groundbreaking live-action Disney film TRON is one of the few 1980s properties that doesn’t get explicitly referenced in Steven Spielberg’s new adaptation of Ernest Cline’s novel READY PLAYER ONE, but the earlier film makes up a significant portion of RP1’s source code. After discussing our reactions to READY PLAYER ONE, and hashing out what made Cline’s novel become so strangely controversial, we look at what connects and distinguishes these two films about life inside a video game, from their attitudes about human/computer relationships to how they approach the idea of corporate control."]
Tafoya, Scout. "The Unloved, Pt. 74: Vigilante."Roger Ebert (February 3, 2020) ["Video essay introduction: "When Robert Forster passed, the tragedy was compounded by the fact that he never quite got to shine the way other actors do. His career revival, when Quentin Tarantino cast him in "Jackie Brown" in a rare leading man role (an even rarer leading man role for a guy over 50 playing a guy over 50), happened two decades ago, and led only to him playing more character parts in frequently lamentable movies. Not that he ever gave less than his best. To hear Forster talk about his work, you'd think he was the best rated contractor in town—just a guy who showed up with his toolkit and left you with a full, functioning, beautiful, sturdy house. As big a fan as I am of his poignant later work, my favorite period of Forster's is his '80s period, when he played downcast, slightly sleazy dudes on missions of mercy. I love his depressive hero shtick in "Alligator," the way he never once lets on that he's doing more than the job of city cop requires, even as he's trying to blow up a 30-foot reptile terrorizing his city. But his work in William Lustig's "Vigilante" catapulted it into the upper echelon of late grindhouse. Even though "Maniac Cop 2" is Lustig's masterpiece, "Vigilante" is Lustig's most soulful work—a "Death Wish" remake with an actual moral underpinning, asking questions of its violent world and characters every step of the way. If not for an everyman type like Forster in the role, the film would slip off balance. With him in the role, it became a classic."]
Cribbs, John, Chris Funderberg and Martin Kessler. "Shohei Imamura."Flixwise (September 19, 2017) ["Martin Kessler is joined by Chris Funderberg and John Cribbs of thepinksmoke.com to discuss the films of two-time Palme d’Or award-wining director Shohei Imamura. They talk about his dark subject matter, his bleak point of view, the phases of his career, and his wild sense of humour. They discuss how Imamura has been handled by critics, compare him to New German Cinema, Luis Buñuel, and discuss why comparing him to other Japanese filmmakers may be misleading."]
Nagy, Phyllis. "Carol Screenwriter talks Cate Blanchett, Todd Haynes, and Isabelle Huppert’s Pact with The Devil."Flixwise (February 14, 2017) ["The funny and brilliant Phyllis Nagy is here to talk about adapting Carol’s screenplay from Patricia Highsmith’s original source material and the lengthy, and at times frustrating, process of getting the film into production. They chat about Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara’s rendering of the two lead characters, as well as the standout performance from supporting players, Sarah Paulson and Kyle Chandler. Plus, Phyllis offers a scoop on what happened to a few scenes from the book that didn’t make the final cut of the film. ... In addition to filling us in on details from behind-the-scenes of Carol, Phyllis is also here to discuss a pair of standout performances by the incomparable French actress, Isabelle Huppert. This year Huppert was, at long last, nominated for her first Academy Award. However, Huppert has been giving Oscar-worthy performances well before she ever worked with Verhoeven. If you are unfamiliar with her work up to this point, you might not know where to begin, as her filmography is quite extensive. Fortunately, Phyllis is here to offer up two of her favorite Huppert films as suggestions for your watch list: Claude Chabrol’s 1988 film: Story of Women, and Diane Kurys 1983 film: Entre Nous. Both Story of Women and Entre Nous are period dramas which find Huppert playing malcontented married women, both of whom form deep attachments to their closest female friends. In Story of Women she plays Marie Latour, a woman who, despite her husband’s objections, traffics in abortions and other illegal various dealings in German occupied France. In Entre Nous, Huppert plays Lena Weber, a woman who falls into an expedient marriage in order to escape Nazi control, but after the war is over falls in the love with another woman."]
Bradley, S.A. "If You Aren’t Afraid in The Woods, You Haven’t Gone Deep Enough."Hell Bent for Horror #2 (March 18, 2016) [Discussion of the films The Hallow (2015), Eyes of Fire (1983), and Witchfinder General (1968). Also Algernon Blackwood's 1910 short story "The Wendigo."]
Cosbey, Janet. "Reel Families: The Delicate Balance of Family and Work in Film." Cinematic Sociology: Social Life in Film. Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2013: 194-207. [In BCTC Library PN1995.9 S6 C543 2013]
Longworth, Karina. "Dorothy Stratten (Dead Blondes Episode 13)."You Must Remember This (April 25, 2017) ["Our Dead Blondes season concludes with the story of Dorothy Stratten. Coaxed into nude modeling by Paul Snider, her sleazy boyfriend-turned-husband, 18 year-old Stratten was seized on by Playboy as the heir apparent to Marilyn Monroe. She ascended to the top of the Playboy firmament quickly, and just after Hugh Hefner decided to make her Playmate of the Year, she met filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich, who fell in love with her and rewrote his upcoming film, They All Laughed, to give Dorothy a star-making role. After filming They All Laughed Dorothy planned to leave Snider and Playboy for life with Bogdanovich -- but her husband had other ideas."]
Bursztynski, Maurice, et al. "Suburbia."See Hear #11 (November 18, 2014) ["This month, it’s Bernie’s pick for a film to discuss, and he’s gone for 1984 film, Suburbia directed by Penelope Spheeris and produced by Roger Corman. It’s a disaffected teenagers story, but rather than just being another tale of misunderstood youth versus adults who “just don’t understand us”, there are other layers to this. There’s even a case to state that PT Anderson may have been influenced by this for Boogie Nights. How so? Tune in and find out. What’s the music connection? The music and energy of punk."]
Ashton, John, et al. "Beverly Hills Cop (1984)."The Projection Booth #315 (March 21, 2017) ["In Martin Brest's Beverly Hills Cop (1984), Eddie Murphy stars as Detroit police officer Axel Foley. He pursues the killers of his childhood friend to Beverly Hills where the local constabulary find his methods questionable. We talk to screenwriter Daniel Petrie Jr, actors John Ashton, Ronny Cox, and Steven Berkoff along with composer Harold Faltermeyer. As an added bonus, we talk to the original writer of Beverly Hills Cop III, Steven E. de Sousa."]
Kempenaar, Adam and Josh Larsen. "Blindspotting - Body Double / You, The Living."Filmspotting #590 (June 17, 2016)
Takal, Sophia and April Wolfe. "Body Double."Switchblade Sisters #6 (December 14, 2017) ["Things get steamy as April talks to actress and director Sophia Takal about the somewhat problematic Brian De Palma erotic thriller, Body Double. The two discuss how the film influenced Sophia's own work and her debut film, Always Shine. Sophia recalls her time as an actress, and the objectification that came with the audition process. They also analyze the violence against women's bodies in the film and the sexuality of Melanie Griffith's character, Holly Body. Despite its issues, April and Sophia also marvel at the craftsmanship of Brian De Palma, and how this film can be used as a template for how NOT to treat female characters."]
Cleaver, Sarah Kathryn and Mary Wild. "Fashion Films Episode 5: Fashion & Fetish."Projections #5 (April 3, 2019) ["Sarah and Mary discuss fetishism, fashion and wigs in Ken Russell’s Crimes of Passion (1984) and David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986)."]
Koski, Genevieve, et al. "Ghostbusters (2016) / Ghostbusters (1984), Pt. 1"The Next Picture Show #37 (July 26, 2016) ["The strange controversy over Paul Feig's gender-reversed GHOSTBUSTERS has us looking back at the original 1984 GHOSTBUSTERS to see what about it has inspired such strong feeling. In this half of the conversation, we focus on the then-and-now of Ivan Reitman's original, while trying (unsuccessfully) to dodge the dreaded "N" word: "nostalgia.""]
---. "Ghostbusters (2016) / Ghostbusters (1984), Part 2."The Next Picture Show #38 (July 28, 2016) ["Our GHOSTBUSTERS discussion turns its attention to Paul Feig's new remake, which was made with obvious affection for (and cameos from) the 1984 version, and replicates certain character types and plot points. But it also breaks from it in significant ways we'll discuss, as well as thoughts on the effects, the villains, New York City, blockbuster culture, and more."]
Gremlins (USA: Joe Dante, 1984: 106 mins) Dante, Joe, et al. "Gremlins."The Projection Booth #127 (106 mins)
McKenna, Juliet, et al. "Fight Scenes and Women Warriors."Breaking the Glass Slipper 2.8 (April 13, 2017) ["As Kameron Hurley discusses in her Hugo Award-winning article, ‘We Have Always Fought‘, women have always fought. So why don’t we see more women warriors in science fiction and fantasy novels? History is full of women on battlefields and in brawls, even if the history books might gloss over it. Remember: much of the history we hold as the gold standard was written by men who were reinforcing the social structures they created. When it comes to fight scenes, there’s already enough to think about without worrying about gender representation (and no, that’s not an excuse…). A well-written fight scene is a rare gem. We talk to writer and martial artist Juliet McKenna about the common mistakes writers make when writing fight scenes, from grand military battles to a pub fight, we talk weapons, fight styles, point of view, and more. What makes a fight scene interesting? How much detail is too much? And it wouldn’t be an episode of Breaking the Glass Slipper without us championing some of our favourite examples of great women warriors in SFFH."]
Messner, Michael A. "The Masculinity of the Governator: Muscle and Compassion in American Politics." Cinematic Sociology: Social Life in Film. Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2013: 135-148. [In BCTC Library PN1995.9 S6 C543 2013] TerrorVision (USA: Ted Nicolau, 1986: 83 mins) Hadley, Josh, Moe Porne and Mike White. "Terrorvision (1986)."The Projection Booth #345 (October 19, 2017) ["... offbeat horror comedy TerrorVision (1986). Written and directed by Ted Nicolaou, the film centers on the Putterman Family who, while father Stan (Gerrit Graham) is installing a new satellite dish and accidentally receive a distant transmission of a horrific hungry monster which proceeds to feast on the family including wife Rachel (Mary Woronov), son Sherman (Chad Allen), grandpa (Bert Remsen), daughter Suzy (Diane Franklin), and her metal head boyfriend O.D. (Jon Gries)."]
Sutherland, Jean-Anne. "Constructing Empowered Women: Cinematic Images of Power and Powerful Women." Cinematic Sociology: Social Life in Film. Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2013: 149-161. [In BCTC Library PN1995.9 S6 C543 2013]
Subisatti, Andrea and Alexandra West. "Revamp: Fright Night (1985) and The Lost Boys (1987)."The Faculty of Horror #40 (July 27, 2016) ["In the 1980s, vampires left their castles and European hideaways for American suburbs and small towns. In this episode, Andrea and Alex examine what happens when the monster you fear is part of your community and discuss what is to be done when they want to borrow more than just sugar…."]
Harris, Mark, et al. "Before and After, Live."The Film Comment Podcast (February 21, 2017) ["In his 1985 film God’s Country, Louis Malle visits a small town in Minnesota both before and after Reagan’s election, documenting the stark economic despair that the agricultural community was forced to face. Following a screening of God’s Country in the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s screening series Film Comment Selects, we conducted a live the Film Comment Podcast about how we differently perceive certain films before and after the election. To discuss this fraught political moment, we invited Mark Harris, author of Pictures at a Revolution and FC‘s Cinema ’67 Revisited column; Genevieve Yue, critic and assistant professor at the New School’s Eugene Lang College; and Farihah Zaman, filmmaker, critic, and Production Manager for Field of Vision to join FC Editor Nicolas Rapold and FC Digital Producer and podcast host Violet Lucca. Films discussed include those by Chris Marker, Errol Morris, Jason Osder, Alexander Payne, and more."]
Hail Mary (France/Switzerland/UK: Jean-Luc Godard, 1985: 107 mins)
Rappoport, Mark. "The Empty Screen."Talkhouse (Posted on Youtube: February 7, 2017) ["The screen is a neutral element in the film-going experience. Or is it? It projects dreams but is also the receptacle of our dreams. It’s the vehicle for delivering the image to an audience — but does it also watch the audience at the same time? Is it a complicitous membrane which audience members can penetrate and which interacts with the spectators, despite its seeming passivity? Maybe — to all of the above …"]
When the new housemate (Jeffrey Combs) of Miskatonic Medical School student Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) turns out to be an arrogant genius experimenting with a green-glowing, brain-reviving reagent, he will soon be embroiled in morgue-set mayhem and face life-or-death dilemmas with a randy rival professor (David Gale) and his own girlfriend Megan (Barbara Crampton). Updating one of H.P. Lovecraft’s weaker short stories (‘Herbert West – Reanimator’, 1922), Stuart Gordon crafts a schlockily psychosexual take on the Frankenstein myth that is pure 80s in its exaggerated excess – funny, outrageous, gory and wrong in every way. – Anton Bitel
Accomando, Beth, et al. "A Better Tomorrow (1986)."The Projection Booth #350 (December 26, 2017) ["John Woo's A Better Tomorrow(1986). The film, a hallmark of the “heroic bloodshed” subgenre of action films, did for gunplay what a generation of Hong Kong films had done with swords. The film tells the tale of Ho (Ti Lung), a criminal whose younger brother, Kit (Leslie Cheung), is a police officer. He's betrayed by a fellow gangster (Waise Lee) and sent up the river. When he returns to Hong Kong he wants to stay on the right side of the law which is more difficult than it should be. The film speaks to loyalty, brotherhood, and put Chow Yun-Fat on the map as a bankable action star. Cinema Junkie's Beth Accomando and Mike wax fondly about the glory days of HK Cinema, twin brothers, strange sequels, and the true colors of a hero."]
D'anna, Becky, James Hancock and Jacob Rivera. "Woody."Wrong Reel #205 (November 2016) ["Wide ranging discussion of his comedies prefaced by some clear analysis of his personal controversies"]
Hynes, Eric, et al. "New York, New York."Reverse Shot (June 15, 2011) ["Check out Reverse Shot's inaugural foray into video film criticism and the failure of video film criticism. We look at Taxi Driver, Hannah and Her Sisters, and their varying visions of New York."]
Subisatti, Andrea and Alexandra West. "Crime Spree: Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) and Zodiac (2007)."Faculty of Horror #75 (July 31, 2019) ["This month, Andrea and Alex pull back the veil on narrative cinema and the true-crime phenomena. From John McNaughton’s nightmarish debut to David Fincher’s gumshoe epic, the answers to our response and responsibility to real-life events is almost always more complex than they appear on the surface."] The Hitcher (USA: Robert Harmon, 1986: 97 mins)
"‘Horror Implied, as Opposed to Explained… That’s Michael Mann’s Strength (Will)’—Manhunter."Cinephilia & Beyond (2018) [“Will Graham, the detective in Manhunter, finds himself trapped, stuck to some degree in madness and nightmare. It bores me to present the events of the story in a realist style. My approach instead is to conceptualize the elements of the plot, taking into consideration the various torments of the human spirit. My aim is to exteriorize the spiritual in the Expressionist manner, and this always leads me to reject realism. What drew me to the story was its connection to the essence of evil, which emerges in the process of dehumanization that leads a simple human being with no exceptional past to become a killer capable of the most terrible atrocities. And when the victims cease being human beings, they become morsels… bits of matter. I want to understand just what this is all about, and also something about dangerous psychopaths, as well as the influence of social context on the behavior of individuals, such as fascism, genocide. This was the theme I explored in The Keep, whose action is set during the Second World War."]
Bettman, Gil, et al. "Never Too Young to Die. (1986)"The Projection Booth (February 28, 2017) [""I kinda wanted it to be Rocky Horror Picture Show meets Rambo" - Director Gil Bettman. An outstanding example of '80s Action Cinema, Never Too Young to Die (1986) stars John Stamos as Lance Stargrove, the "son of Bond", who teams up with Peter Kwong and Vanity to take down the evil intersex rock-n-roll cult leader Velvet Von Ragnar (Gene Simmons). The brainchild of Steven Paul (Baby Geniuses, Slapstick of Another Kind, The Double 0 Kid)"]
Lee, Kevin B. "Once Upon a Screen: Explosive Paradox." (Posted on Vimeo: "The most mentioned video essay in the Best Video Essays of 2020 Survey conducted by Sight & Sound Magazine" - it is a reflection of his experiences watching Oliver Stone's 1986 movie Platoon in the theater with his family."]
The Sacrifice (Sweden/UK/France: Andrei Tarkovsky, 1986: 149 mins)
Kimmel, Michael. "Sitting in the Dark with Max: Classical Sociological Theory Through Film." Cinematic Sociology: Social Life in Film. Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2013: 27-41. [In BCTC Library PN1995.9 S6 C543 2013]
Blind Chance (Poland: Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1987: 123 mins)
Koski, Genevieve, et al. "Multiple Choice, Pt. 1 — Blind Chance."The Next Picture Show (April 12, 2022) ["In addition to being an examination of how much chance determines the person we become, as well as something of a Rosetta Stone for the work of Krzysztof Kieslowski, BLIND CHANCE also plays like the 1980s version of a multiverse story, making it a clear precursor to Daniels Kwan and Scheinert’s new EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE. But Kieslowski’s film has different ideas about fate, determination, and the invisible forces that shape our lives as much as the choices we make, all of which we attempt to unpack in our conversation, along with what connects BLIND CHANCE's three timelines, what about the politically minded film invited resistance upon its release, and the significance of that opening scream."]
---. "Multiple Choice, Pt. 2 — Everything Everywhere All At Once."The Next Picture Show (April 19, 2022) ["Despite its clear thematic and philosophical connections to the other film in this pairing, Krzysztof Kieślowski’s BLIND CHANCE, Daniel Schienert and Daniel Kwan’s new EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE is a unique experience, a bold, humanistic film full of big messages and also butt jokes. It’s a film that’s built to surprise and delight on first viewing, but what does it offer in terms of rewatch value? That’s one of the things we debate in our discussion of the Daniels’ film, before bringing Kieślowski’s back into the picture to talk through some of those thematic and philosophical connections."]
May, Elaine and Mike Nichols. "Mike Nichols, Part 1."Close Up #6a (December 2014) ["In this special two-part episode of The Close-Up, we pay tribute to the late Mike Nichols. For Part 1, we present a conversation between Mike Nichols and Elaine May after a screening of May's "Ishtar" here at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in 2006."]
Stevens, Brad. "Ishtar, Elaine May, and the Road Not Taken."Sight and Sound (April 24, 2017) ["Elaine May’s misunderstood 1980s comedy critiqued 1980s American foreign policy and parodied male narcissism, which is probably why it also destroyed its director’s career."]
The Journey (also known as Resan) (Australia/Canada/Denmark/Finland/Italy/Japan/New Zealand/Soviet Union/Sweden/Norway: Peter Watkins, 1987: 873 mins)
Sicinski, Michael. "Nuclear Nightmares, Mapped: Peter Watkins’ The Journey."Keyframe (October 25, 2014) ["Watkins’ 873-minute global documentary focuses on nuclear proliferation and unmasks why we can’t envision a better, safer world."
Cargill, Robert C. and Brian Salisbury. "Lethal Weapon."Junk Food Cinema (April 13, 2017) ["... the flick that redefined buddy cop cinema: Lethal Weapon. Sure, it's a spectacular, hilarious, and quotable action comedy...but it's also an intensely dark foray into the scarred psyche of Vietnam vets?! Brian and Cargill delve into the darkness, the extended director's cut of the movie, and the cavalcade of actors who were offered the role of Riggs before Mel."]
Subisatti, Andrea and Alexandra West. "Revamp: Fright Night (1985) and The Lost Boys (1987)."The Faculty of Horror #40 (July 27, 2016) ["In the 1980s, vampires left their castles and European hideaways for American suburbs and small towns. In this episode, Andrea and Alex examine what happens when the monster you fear is part of your community and discuss what is to be done when they want to borrow more than just sugar…."]
Love Rites (France: Walerian Borowczyk, 1987: 100 mins)
Lee, Kevin B. "When Porn Goes Deep: Love Rites."Keyframe (September 14, 2015) ["A fearless Walerian Borowczyk offers up the cruel base instincts of male desire, as well as the inner resolve of a woman to overcome them."]
Henriksen, Lance, Mike Mayo and Edward G. Pettit. "Near Dark."The Projection Booth #122 (July 9, 2013) ["Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark is a hybrid vampire film in which "The V Word" is never uttered. We discuss this film, penned by screenwriter Eric Red, and other vampire flicks this episode."]
Kusama, Karyn and April Wolfe. "Near Dark."Switchblade Sisters #2 (November 16, 2017)
Carhill, C. Robert, Greg MacLennan and Brian Salisbury. "Over the Top."Junk Food Cinema (April 21, 2017) Predator (USA: John McTiernan, 1987: 107 mins) Cargill, Robert C. and Brian Salisbury. "Predator."Junk Food Cinema (June 8, 2017)
Kempenaar, Adam and Josh Larsen. "The Predator / Burt Reynolds Tribute (Deliverance)."Filmspotting #697 (September 13, 2018) ["As long as there are people to remember Burt Reynolds, they’re most likely to recall the goofy, charismatic, hard-driving star of movies like "Smokey and the Bandit" and "Cannonball Run" and as the benevolent despot of the late-70s porn scene in his Oscar-nominated role in PTA's "Boogie Nights." But it's possible that none of those Reynolds performances would have existed without his star-making turn in 1972's DELIVERANCE. Reynolds's death gives Adam and Josh a chance to catch up with John Boorman's Best Picture-nominated film and give it a 'Blindspotting' review. "]
Cohen, Rob, et al. "The Running Man (1987)."The Projection Booth (September 10, 2017) ["Set in the distant year of 2017, The Running Man(1987) is set in a dystopian world where reality television rules the airwaves and the most popular show pits criminals against muscle-bound, spandex-clad "stalkers". Based loosely on a novella by "Richard Bachman" (AKA Stephen King), the film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as Ben Richards, a man framed as "The Butcher of Bakersfield" and thrown Running Man game, hosted by Killian (Richard Dawson), and featuring a cadre of killers including Jesse Ventura, Jim Brown, Professor Toru Tanaka, and more. Andrew Nette and Aaron Peterson join Mike to discuss the film, its odd production history, and the resonance to today's world. We also discuss the work of Robert Sheckley and his influence on "people hunting people" films including The Million Game, The Price of Peril, The Tenth Victim and Freejack."]
The Sicilian (USA: Michael Cimino, 1987: 115 mins)
Surf NAZIs Must Die (USA: Peter George, 1987: 83 mins) George, Peter, et al. "Surf NAZIs Must Die."The Projection Booth #128 (August 20, 2013) ["The Fourth Reich hangs ten in Peter George's Surf Nazis Must Die, the post-apocalyptic tale of Nazi surfers trying to take over the beaches and create a new world from the ashes of the old; a world where Adolf and his crew rule the beaches."]
Subissati, Andrea and Alexandra West. "Strange and Unusual: Beetlejuice (1988)."Faculty of Horror (November 27, 2017) ["Ghosts, possession, autonomous sculptures and that’s just scratching the surface of Tim Burton’s genre-bending cult classic, Beetlejuice. In this episode, Andrea and Alex manage to avoid saying his name three times while diving into the aesthetics, capitalist virtues and bureaucracy of the afterlife that surrounds everyone’s favourite bio-exorcist."]
Camp de Thiaroye (Senegal/Algeria/Tunisia: Ousmane Sembene and Thierno Faty Sow, 1988: 157 mins)
Ford, Hamish. "From Otherness 'Over There' to Virtual Presence: Camp de Thiaroye - The Battle of Algiers - Hidden. Postcolonial Cinema Studies. ed. Sandra Ponzanesi & Marguerite Waller. NY: Routledge, 2012: 63-77. [Available in BCTC Library PN1995.9 P6 P68 2012]
"John Waters."Close Up #5 (November 2014) ["On the occasion of our comprehensive John Waters retrospective in September, Eugene Hernandez sat down with the director at his New York apartment to talk about his career and influences. For this episode, we're happy to present that conversation as well as one between film critic J. Hoberman and the director after a screening of his 1974 film, 'Female Trouble.'"]
Nayman, Adam. "The Words Don’t Really Matter."The Ringer (April 14, 2023) ["Thirty-five years later, there’s still nothing quite like Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro."]
The Nest (USA: Terence H. Winkless, 1988: 89 mins)
Nagy, Phyllis. "Carol Screenwriter talks Cate Blanchett, Todd Haynes, and Isabelle Huppert’s Pact with The Devil."Flixwise (February 14, 2017) ["The funny and brilliant Phyllis Nagy is here to talk about adapting Carol’s screenplay from Patricia Highsmith’s original source material and the lengthy, and at times frustrating, process of getting the film into production. They chat about Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara’s rendering of the two lead characters, as well as the standout performance from supporting players, Sarah Paulson and Kyle Chandler. Plus, Phyllis offers a scoop on what happened to a few scenes from the book that didn’t make the final cut of the film. ... In addition to filling us in on details from behind-the-scenes of Carol, Phyllis is also here to discuss a pair of standout performances by the incomparable French actress, Isabelle Huppert. This year Huppert was, at long last, nominated for her first Academy Award. However, Huppert has been giving Oscar-worthy performances well before she ever worked with Verhoeven. If you are unfamiliar with her work up to this point, you might not know where to begin, as her filmography is quite extensive. Fortunately, Phyllis is here to offer up two of her favorite Huppert films as suggestions for your watch list: Claude Chabrol’s 1988 film: Story of Women, and Diane Kurys 1983 film: Entre Nous. Both Story of Women and Entre Nous are period dramas which find Huppert playing malcontented married women, both of whom form deep attachments to their closest female friends. In Story of Women she plays Marie Latour, a woman who, despite her husband’s objections, traffics in abortions and other illegal various dealings in German occupied France. In Entre Nous, Huppert plays Lena Weber, a woman who falls into an expedient marriage in order to escape Nazi control, but after the war is over falls in the love with another woman."]
The Vanishing (Netherlands/France/West Germany: George Sluizer, 1988: 107 mins) Devens, Arik and Herb van der Poll. "The Vanishing."Cinema Gadfly #21 (June 18, 2016)
Batman (USA/UK: Tim Burton, 1989: 126 mins) Koski, Genevieve, Keith Phipps and Scott Tobias. "Batman (1989) / The Lego Batman Movie (Pt. 1)."The Next Picture Show #64 (February 21, 2017) ["This week’s show tells a tale of two Batmen — plus a whole bunch of other Batmen in between. The success of the new family-friendly LEGO BATMAN MOVIE inspired us to go back to a very different earlier iteration of The Caped Crusader: Tim Burton’s 1989 series-starter BATMAN, which took the comic-book hero into darker realms than he’d previously occupied onscreen. In this half, we talk about how Burton and Michael Keaton’s vision for the character functions in the larger context of Batman adaptations over the years, as well as Burton’s subsequent career. "]
---. "Batman (1989) / The Lego Batman Movie (Pt. 2)."The Next Picture Show #65 (February 23, 2017) ["Tim Burton’s BATMAN kick-started the cinematic and pop-culture proliferation of the now-ubiquitous Batman, who today can not only sustain multiple movies at once, but also provides ample fodder for the reference-happy new THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE. In this half of our discussion of all things Batmen, we talk about all the ways LEGO BATMAN draws on — and benefits from — the character’s long history, and consider how the larger Bat Universe has evolved on film since Burton’s day."]
Black Rain (Japan: Shôhei Imamura, 1989: 123 mins)
Cribbs, John, Chris Funderberg and Martin Kessler. "Shohei Imamura."Flixwise (September 19, 2017) ["Martin Kessler is joined by Chris Funderberg and John Cribbs of thepinksmoke.com to discuss the films of two-time Palme d’Or award-wining director Shohei Imamura. They talk about his dark subject matter, his bleak point of view, the phases of his career, and his wild sense of humour. They discuss how Imamura has been handled by critics, compare him to New German Cinema, Luis Buñuel, and discuss why comparing him to other Japanese filmmakers may be misleading."]
Crimes and Misdemeanors (USA: Woody Allen, 1989: 104 mins) D'anna, Becky, James Hancock and Jacob Rivera. "Woody."Wrong Reel #205 (November 2016) ["Wide ranging discussion of his comedies prefaced by some clear analysis of his personal controversies"]
Kwiatkowski, Al and Brad Strauss. "Andrzej Zulawski."Director's Club #126 (March 14, 2017)
Mystery Train (USA/Japan: Jim Jarmusch, 1989: 110 mins)
Bursztynski, Maurice, et al. "Mystery Train."See Hear #10 (October 20, 2014) ["This time around, Tim has picked Jim Jarmusch’s ensemble cast anthology film of 1989, Mystery Train including Steve Buscemi, Nicoletta Brasschi, and Screaming Jay Hawkins. Three stories, one hotel in the one and only Memphis. We discuss whether this actually qualifies as a music film, Memphis the iconic town versus the ordinary Memphis displayed in this film, Elvis versus Carl Perkins, and the nineties independent film movement."]
Watson, Garry. "Michael Moore: A Man on a Mission or How Far a Reinvigorated Populism Can Take Us."Cineaction #70 (2006) Romero (USA: John Duigan, 1989: 102 mins)
Eisenbrandt, Matt. "'Assassination of a Saint': Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero Is Canonized as Murder Remains Unsolved."Democracy Now (October 15, 2018) ["As Pope Francis names Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero a saint, we continue our interview with Matt Eisenbrandt, a human rights lawyer and the author of “Assassination of a Saint: The Plot to Murder Óscar Romero and the Quest to Bring His Killers to Justice.” Romero was a champion for the poor and oppressed who was murdered by a U.S.-backed right-wing death squad in 1980 at the beginning of the brutal U.S.-backed military campaign in El Salvador. Eisenbrandt served on the trial team that brought the only court verdict ever reached for Romero’s murder."]
---. "Vatican Canonizes Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero, Who Was Killed by a U.S.-Backed Death Squad."Democracy Now (October 15, 2018) ["Pope Francis has named Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero a saint. Romero was a champion for the poor and oppressed who was murdered by a U.S.-backed right-wing death squad in 1980 at the beginning of the brutal U.S.-backed military campaign in El Salvador. Wearing the blood-stained rope belt that Romero wore when he was assassinated, Pope Francis praised Romero for disregarding his own life “to be close to the poor and to his people.” We speak with Matt Eisenbrandt, a human rights lawyer and the author of “Assassination of a Saint: The Plot to Murder Óscar Romero and the Quest to Bring His Killers to Justice.” Eisenbrandt served on the trial team that brought the only court verdict ever reached for Romero’s murder."]
Seinfeld (NBC: Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, 1989-1998)
Subissati, Andrea and Alexandra West. "Class Act: Society (1989)."The Faculty of Horror #109 (July 30, 2022) ["The elite are literally a different breed in Brian Yuzna’s cult classic film about the perils of popularity and privilege. In this episode, Andrea and Alex dive into the mystique that surrounds the wealthy and explore why they need the rest of us to survive."]
Shinya Tsukamoto’s extreme, low-budget cyberpunk classic was self-funded and took 18 months to complete. Shot on 16mm, in black and white and partially in collaborator Kei Fujiwara’s own apartment, Tetsuo follows a sadomasochistic metal-fetishist (played by Tsukamoto) into a bizarre love triangle of sorts with a salaryman and his girlfriend, after they hit him with their car. In a film shot through with indelible imagery of painful penetration – including a terrifying rotating drill penis – Tsukamoto expresses the co-existence of destruction and creation with a furious creativity that recalls the work of Lynch and Cronenberg at their most uncompromising.– Katherine McLaughlin
Hal HartleyPinewood Dialogues (January 14, 1995) ["Hal Hartley's films are marked by spare, precise visuals, a stylized approach to dialogue that allows characters to speak their innermost thoughts, and an intuitive gift for playing with the conventions of movie-making and storytelling. Playing off the contrast between cerebral characters and quotidian settings, Hartley creates comedic inquiries into the nature of belonging and the search for personal freedom. In the role of writer, director, editor and composer, Hartley exerts control over films about characters for whom control is a fragile and elusive concept. This dialogue took place at a complete retrospective early in Hartley's career."]
