Author: ccradio

Reel 37: You Can Like Both, Part 2

This is one of those pairings that’s a little tough to understand why people would be asked to choose between the two films, because they really couldn’t be much more different from one another. But, here we are, telling you that despite what other people have to say, you don’t have to make a choice, Sophie.

Both of our films this time around are from 1946. We begin with The Best Years of Our Lives, directed by William Wyler and starring Frederic March, Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews and Harold Russell, whose performance led to a once-and-never-again event at the Academy Awards. Our male leads are having a tough time adjusting to civilian life after their success in the Pacific Theater of World War II, and we follow their tribulations in those first few months back in the U. S. of A.

From there we move on to It’s a Wonderful Life, directed by Frank Capra and starring James Stewart, Donna Reed and the rest of the Mighty Capra Art Players. Most of the film is a flashback recounting the life story of a man contemplating suicide one Christmas Eve, and whether redemption is possible for him.

Because both films are so long, and therefore we just had so much to say, we broke the episode in two for faster downloading, so there are two parts, both in your podcatcher and right here. So you’re not seeing double!


Short Subject: Reel 36 Outtake

This one isn’t an outtake so much as it is a little bit of extra stuff we did after recording Episode 36. But we made the template and we’re gonna keep using it.

In this clip, Sean had some comments about Auteur Theory when it comes to film, and Claude mostly let him do his thing, though there’s a small portion in there where he gets to say his piece as well.

Enjoy! Episode 37 will be out in just a few days.

Reel 36: You Can Like Both, Part 1

When it comes to daily emails, there are only a few that Claude reads on a regular basis. You know how it goes: you skim the rest of them and maybe click if something is of interest, but generally you’re deleting them until finally you realize that you’re deleting ALL of them and haven’t bothered to unsubscribe.

The point here—and we do have one—is that there’s one daily email that he reads every day, without fail. It’s Seth Godin’s Blog. Godin is a business wizard, and while Claude isn’t in the world of business, Godin’s advice for relationship-building in the business world is something that anyone can take, and use, and generally improve their work surroundings.

As it happens, this past Sunday, Godin’s daily email was specifically about these two films, and the approach that the main character takes to the situation that they’re in. Godin, of course, takes a different view of what was done and why, and—because he’s Seth Godin—he’s absolutely right. Read for yourself and see if you don’t agree. 

And in an amazing case of post hoc, ergo propter hoc, we’re going to conclude that Godin watched these films in preparation for this episode of the podcast, because he’s a huge fan, and it occurred to him to write a blog post about it.

At any rate, this episode is the first in a series of five episodes wherein we look at two films that people tend to compare to one another and decide that you can like one or the other, but not both. And to that, we say, “Nonsense.” Of course you can like both.

So we start off with 1952’s High Noon, starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly, and about 182 character actors. Fred Zinneman does a terrific job of keeping the tension ratcheted up, while Floyd Crosby’s cinematography is flawless, indoors and out. From there we slide on over to 1959 and a little film called Rio Bravo, starring John Wayne and Dean Martin, and directed by Howard Hawks. It’s an overstuffed episode, and the intermission (as usual) is only 30 seconds long, so get ready for some fantastic discussion.

COMING ATTRACTIONS:

In Reel 37 we bring you Part 2 of our five-part series with a pair of films that are vastly different in nearly every way, but there still seems to be insistence on one or the other. We have The Best Years of Our Lives, starring Frederic March and Dana Andrews, and It’s a Wonderful Life, starring James Stewart and Donna Reed, both from 1947. The Best Years of Our Lives is an epic-length film with no intermission, so be ready for that. And we know it’s warming up outside, but go watch It’s a Wonderful Life anyway, because now you have a reason to.

Short Subject: Reel 35 Outtake

This was a chunk of Episode 35 that went off-topic and we decided to cut it for time, but also thought most of what was said was actually kind of important.

Also, we both made a mistake regarding Cecil B. DeMille near the end of the clip, so Claude took the opportunity to eat crow on behalf of both of us.

At any rate, we present you with this Bonus audio, to keep your appetite whetted until Reel 36 drops. Enjoy!

Reel 35: Scorsese and Christianity

Martin Scorsese has never shied away from the fact that he is a Catholic, and that his religion oftentimes informs his work. There are few places where it’s more overt than in the two films we cover this week. 
First we have 1988’s The Last Temptation of Christ, which portrays a side of Jesus (Willem Dafoe) that many of us suspected he had, but most of which is never portrayed in the Bible. Roughly the last third of the film gives us a “what if” scenario that had a lot of religious conservatives up in arms for awhile–and that was before anyone had even seen the film. 
From there we jump forward to 2016 (and from the first century AD to the seventeenth), for Silence, starring Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver and Liam Neeson. It’s not an especially famous title in the Scorsese catalog, at least not to the casual movie fan, but it’s a powerful piece of work that will have you questioning your faith and that of the characters in the film. 

COMING ATTRACTIONS:
Episode 36 is the first in a series of episodes featuring films that critics seem to think you can like one or the other but not both. Well, we argue that you can, indeed, like both, and we show you why. We start with a pair of Westerns: beginning with 1952’s High Noon, and then it’s on to 1959’s Rio Bravo. The plots are similar enough to echo one another, but you won’t think “remake” when you see the second film. 

Reel 34: Epic Altman

In which we take nearly six hours of film and reduce it to about eleven minutes of synopses and and hour or so of scintillating discussion.

Robert Altman’s work had a lot of “trademarks” that delineated his films: overlapping dialogue, huge casts, multiple storylines and a way to subvert whatever genre he was working in. And in this episode we look at a pair of epic-length films which do nearly all of these, but there’s an interesting difference between the two.

In 1975’s Nashville, Altman’s multiple storylines all manage to converge on a single time and place. Then we go to 1993 and Short Cuts, where again all the stories take place in a single city, but the stories almost-not-quite intersect but still manage to remain on parallel tracks, even as the thing that ties them together is an outside force which affects each of them differently.

Sean and Claude have some great discussion in this one. Enjoy!

COMING ATTRACTIONS:

For Reel 35 we return to the world of Martin Scorsese, specifically his views on Christianity. We start with The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), which is mostly remembered nowadays for the controversy it stirred up, but it’s really so much more. Then in the second half it’s 2016’s Silence, which has an interesting premise and an ending that will simultaneously depress you and give you hope. Join us, won’t you?

Wha’ Hoppen?

You might have noticed that the website hasn’t been getting updated, even though new episodes have been coming through for the past few weeks.

We’ve been having a weird issue with GoDaddy, our website provider, and after spending literally hours on the phone with them (most of it on hold), we realized that we weren’t getting anywhere with them and we made the decision to migrate the site to another host.

At your end it probably doesn’t look any different from the way it looked previously, given that both locations are powered by WordPress, but it does look a little different at our end, so we hope you’ll excuse the dust while we get used to a slightly different interface. (This is also why we had to return to the previous theme–the new one wasn’t behaving correctly.)

In the next couple of days we’ll be putting up the links to Reels 34, 35 and 35a (the bonus audio), and by this time next week you’ll be able to see a brand new post for Reel 36, thus getting everyone caught up.

For those of you who have been listening to the show and missing these amazing show notes, we thank you for hanging in there with us. But don’t be too disappointed by the fact that the show notes won’t be remarkably different from the ones we give to Anchor, the host for the RSS feed (which hasn’t changed).

 

Reel 33: Modern-Day Kurosawa

…and by “Modern-Day” we mean that, while Akira Kurosawa is best known for period pieces, in this episode we’re checking out a couple of instances where the film is set in the present day. They have something else in common, too, but you’re just going to have to listen to the episode to find out what that is.

So the first film we have loaded into the projector is Stray Dog, from 1949 and starring the crown jewel of the Mighty Kurosawa Art Players, Toshiro Mifune, along with Takashi Shimura and Keiko Awaji.

(She’s mentioned here mostly because Claude used to own a dog named Keiko, and she had to be put down a few years ago this very week. It’s still a sore subject.)

(But make no mistake, she’s very good in the role as the girlfriend of a disgruntled veteran played by Isao Kimura.)

After that, we move on to 1963 and a film called High and Low (in America; the literal translation of the title is Heaven and Hell). This one stars Toshiro Mifune (surprise!), Tatsuya Nakadai and Kyōko Kagawa. It starts with some corporate intrigue in which you thought you’d never be interested. But then it moves into a taut thriller that will have you gobbling down the rest of your popcorn without realizing it.

COMING ATTRACTIONS:

In our next episode we also concentrate on a single director. This time around it’s Robert Altman. First up is Nashville, from 1975. Much like his earlier M*A*S*H, it’s several stories looking for a movie, but it’s a ton of fun. Then it’s 1993’s Short Cuts, which is also multiple storylines but they manage to intersect in odd and interesting ways.

Reel 32: Cop & Crook Team Up

Sean chooses most of the movies that we cover, and occasionally he chooses stuff that’s a little tough to find. But in the long run you don’t mind going through the hunt, because they’re still a romp.

In this episode we first take a look at The Killer, a film from 1989 directed by John Woo. It stars Chow Yun-fat, Danny Lee and Sally Yeh, and nobody’s motivation is what you think it is. Are people acting out of malice, avarice, guilt or something else?

From there we move to 2002 and So Close, directed by Corey Yuen and starring Shu Qi, Zhao Wei and Karen Mok. Once again, everyone has some deeply buried motives. Perhaps they’re so deep that they’re only released through subtext. You really have to “read between the lines” to understand what people are thinking. Or, you could just listen to this episode and we’ll tell you.

COMING ATTRACTIONS:

In our next episode we remain in Asia to look at a pair of films that Sean calls “Modern-Day Kurosawa,” though they’re kind of in the middle of his oeuvre. (Hint: it’s because they’re set in the present day.) First it’ll be 1949’s Stray Dog, starring—surprise!—Toshiro Mifune. Then we look at High and Low, from 1963. Did you guess that it has Toshiro Mifune in it? That’s a good guess.

Reel 31: Pacino and DeNiro Together

It’s not our worst title, but it does get to the point. 

Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro appeared in four films together. And that’s if you count The Godfather Part II, in which they shared zero screen time because they appeared in separate timelines. So that really makes three, including a 2008 movie called Righteous Kill, which was bad enough that even Robert DeNiro regretted making it. And he was in What Just Happened the same year, so. 

Maybe 2008 just wasn’t Robert DeNiro’s Year of Quality Films. 

At any rate, in this episode we check out 1995’s Heat, starring a couple of guys of whom you may have heard, directed by Michael Mann, and Martin Scorsese’s 2019 film The Irishman, which was made for Netflix but also spent about six hours in theaters so it would qualify for Academy Awards contention. We have two very different films here which still manage to have a lot in common other than the stars. But, of course, that’s the point of this podcast, isn’t it.

COMING ATTRACTIONS: 

In Reel 32, the good guys and the bad guys team up, coincidentally in Hong Kong both times. First on the projector is 1989’s The Killer, and from there we move to So Close, from 2002. The Killer is a tough one to find, but fortunately we found it on YouTube for you. Just go to this link and turn on the English captions.