Afleveringen

  • This 1948 20th Century Fox Studios Year by Year episode is a doozy, a doubleheader of psychotic lovelorn men with bad ideas in their heads. First, in Jean Negulesco's rural noir Road House, Richard Widmark's spoiled road house owner selects Ida Lupino's unlikely and unforgettable femme fatale as his reluctant assassin, and then, in Preston Sturges' black comedy Unfaithfully Yours, Rex Harrison's celebrated symphony conductor spins murderous melodramatic fantasies and faces a recalcitrant slapstick reality when he suspects his much younger wife (Linda Darnell) of cheating on him. We unpack the practically infinite riches of these colossi of studio-era filmmaking, one with and one without an auteur at the helm.

    Time Codes:

    0h 00m 25s: ROAD HOUSE [dir. Jean Negulesco]

    0h 50m 02s: UNFAITHFULLY YOURS [dir. Preston Sturges]

    Studio Film Capsules provided by The Films of Twentieth Century-Fox by Tony Thomas & Audrey Solomon

    Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joe W. Finler

    +++

    * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

    * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

    * Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

    * Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

    Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

    Write to us at [email protected]

    We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

  • Part 1 of our Oscar Levant Special Subject sees us explain our very personal relationship with this singular figure of 1940s/50s Hollywood in preparation to discuss Gershwin biopic Rhapsody in Blue (1945), great Warner Bros. woman's picture/noir Humoresque (1946), Doris Day debut Romance on the High Seas (1948), and accidental Fred and Ginger reunion pic The Barkleys of Broadway (1949). Just a warning: if you're looking for an in-depth discussion for the latter two, this probably isn't the podcast episode you want. But if you're more interested in the relationship between Rhapsody in Blue and Humoresque (thanks to the contributions of screenwriter Clifford Odets), you've come to the right place. Levant adds his unique texture and authenticity to these stories of the cost of genius—for both the genius and those around them.

    Time Codes:

    0h 00m 25s: Scraping the Surface of Oscar Levant

    0h 11m 58s: RHAPSODY IN BLUE (1945) [dir. Irving Rapper]

    0h 36m 43s: HUMORESQUE (1946) [dir. Jean Negulesco]

    0h 57m 57s: ROMANCE ON THE HIGH SEAS (1948) [dir. Michael Curtiz]

    1h 11m 14s: THE BARKLEYS OF BROADWAY (1949) [dir. Charles Walters]

    +++

    * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

    * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

    * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

    * Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

    * Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

    Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

    Write to us at [email protected]

    We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

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  • For our penultimate Paul Robeson Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode we watched Thornton Freeland's Jericho (1937), in which Robeson plays a court-martialed WWI officer who takes up a new life as the leader of a group of Saharan herders and traders, and Pen Tennyson's The Proud Valley (1940), often cited as the film Robeson was proudest of, about the struggles of a community of Welsh miners. As in our last Robeson episode, he really makes his auteur presence felt in these films, although in almost opposite ways, taking centre stage in Jericho and acting as the presiding genius of The Proud Valley, which we discuss as both Robeson's vision of socialism and a mining horror movie.

    Time Codes:

    0h 00m 25s: JERICHO (1937) [dir. Thornton Freeland]

    0h 28m 48s: THE PROUD VALLEY (1940) [dir. Pen Tennyson]

    +++

    * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

    * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

    * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

    * Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

    * Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

    Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

    Write to us at [email protected]

    We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

  • For this 1948 Warner Bros Studios Year by Year episode, we watched a couple of the studio's most prestigious releases for the year, John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Jean Negulesco's Johnny Belinda. We explore some extraordinary performances by Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, and Jane Wyman in these tales of capitalist nihilism and rural prejudice.

    Time Codes:

    0h 00m 25s: THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE [dir. John Huston]

    0h 44m 11s: JOHNNY BELINDA [dir. Jean Negulesco]

    Studio Film Capsules provided by The Warner Brothers Story by Clive Hirschhorn

    Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joe W. Finler

    +++

    * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

    * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

    * Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

    * Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

    Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

    Write to us at [email protected]

    We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

  • For our 2024 Halloween Special Subject we watched two films in the German Expressionist tradition starring one of the greatest actors to be relegated to Hollywood character actor status, Peter Lorre: Fritz Lang's masterpiece M (1931), through which Lorre came to international recognition playing a child murderer, and Lorre's first Hollywood film, Karl Freund's Mad Love (1935), to which he also brought his special blend of pathos and perversion. We discuss serial killers, scapegoats, sadism, cyberpunk zombies, love, sex, and other topics certain to terrify.

    Time Codes:

    0h 00m 25s: M (1931) [dir. Fritz Lang]

    0h 32m 07s: MAD LOVE (1935) [dir. Karl Freund]

    +++

    * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

    * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

    * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

    * Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

    * Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

    Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

    Write to us at [email protected]

    We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

  • Things are looking up in this week's Paul Robeson Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, for which we watched Big Fella (directed by J. Elder Willis), in which Robeson is a dockworker who becomes involved in the search for a kidnapped rich kid, and King Solomon's Mines (directed by Robert Stevenson), the first film adaptation of the H. Rider Haggard colonial adventure epic. We make our arguments for Big Fella as an anti-Shirley Temple movie that both accomplishes and subverts its genre goals and for King Solomon's Mines' Verhoevening of its reactionary source material.

    Time Codes:

    0h 00m 25s: BIG FELLA (1937) [dir. J. Elder Willis]

    0h 28m 30s: KING SOLOMON’S MINES [dir. Robert Stevenson]

    +++

    * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

    * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

    * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

    * Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

    * Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

    Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

    Write to us at [email protected]

    We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

  • Our MGM 1948 Studios Year by Year episode is a Freed Unit double feature: the great Irving Berlin musical Easter Parade, starring Judy Garland and Fred Astaire, and Summer Holiday, a Mickey Rooney coming-of-age story based on a play by Eugene O'Neill, directed by studio-era "art director" Rouben Mamoulian. We discuss Easter Parade as a vehicle for presenting Judy Garland's "problematic" anti-star star persona and Summer Holiday's envelope-pushing leftist politics and middle-class sexual repression plot, wrapped up in cozy turn-of-the-century nostalgia.

    Time Codes:

    0h 00m 25s: SUMMER HOLIDAY [dir. Rouben Mamoulian]

    0h 36m 24s: EASTER PARADE [dir. Charles Walters]

    Studio Film Capsules provided by The MGM Story by John Douglas Eames

    Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joe W. Finler

    +++

    * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

    * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

    * Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

    * Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

    Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

    Write to us at [email protected]

    We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

  • In this episode of our Paul Robeson Acteurist Oeuvre-view series, we consider the ways in which Robeson, as acteur, inscribes himself on James Whale's Show Boat (1936) and J. Elder Wills' Song of Freedom (1936). First, we consider the racial themes of Show Boat, and how both the writing of Robeson's character, and Robeson's playing of him, undermines the stereotype ostensibly being presented; and then we look at the way Song of Freedom struggles to present a progressivism alternative to the racial politics of The Emperor Jones, while we attempt to reconstruct the motivations behind its political confusions.

    Time Codes:

    0h 00m 25s: SHOW BOAT (1936) [dir. James Whale]

    0h 31m 35s: SONG OF FREEDOM (1936) [dir. J. Elder Willis]

    +++

    * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

    * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

    * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

    * Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

    * Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

    Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

    Write to us at [email protected]

    We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

  • In this Paramount 1948 episode we dig deep to get the stories behind the stories of two great film noirs starring Ray Milland: The Big Clock (directed by John Farrow), based on a novel by Depression-era poet and Communist Party fellow traveler Kenneth Fearing, and So Evil My Love (directed by Lewis Allen), a historical noir/Gothic melodrama based on a novel by the prolific and many-pseudonymed Marjorie Bowen. We discuss the ways in which the source authors' viewpoints make for fascinating deviations from standard Hollywood treatment of capitalism and gender.

    Time Codes:

    0h 00m 25s: SO EVIL, MY LOVE [dir. Lewis Allen]

    0h 33m 22s: THE BIG CLOCK [dir. John Farrow]

    Studio Film Capsules provided by The Paramount Story by John Douglas Eames

    Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joe W. Finler

    +++

    * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

    * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

    * Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

    * Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

    Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

    Write to us at [email protected]

    We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

  • For our second Paul Robeson Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, we watched The Emperor Jones (1933), a film by Dudley Murphy loosely based on the Eugene O'Neill play, and the Kordas' Sanders of the River (1935), an experience that proved crucial in Robeson's own political education. We discuss the Modernist appropriation of African culture and the figure of the African American, methods of rationalizing British colonialism, and the kinds of protagonist roles available for a Black actor of Paul Robeson's popularity with white audiences in the first half of the 20th century.

    Time Codes:

    0h 00m 25s: THE EMPEROR JONES (1933) [dir. Dudley Murphy]

    0h 23m 45s: SANDERS OF THE RIVER (1935) [dir. Zoltan Korda]

    +++

    * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

    * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

    * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

    * Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

    * Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

    Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

    Write to us at [email protected]

    We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

  • We devoted our 2024 September Special Subject to American silent film auteur Lois Weber. We discuss four films, the allegorical Hypocrites (1915), which created a sensation at the time with its full-frontal female nudity, and three films that showcase Weber's progressive Christian social vision, Where Are My Children? (1916), which confusedly tackles the subjects of birth control and abortion, and the masterpieces Shoes (1916) and The Blot (1921), dramas centered on the consciousness of women that deal respectively with working-class and genteel poverty.

    Time Codes:

    0h 00m 25s: Brief Introduction: Lois Weber

    0h 05m 07s: HYPOCRITES (1915) [dir. Lois Weber]

    0h 18m 09s: WHERE ARE MY CHILDREN? (1916) [dir. Lois Weber]

    0h 27m 56s: SHOES (1916) [dir. Lois Weber]

    0h 40m 26s: THE BLOT (1921) [dir. Lois Weber]

    +++

    * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

    * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

    * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

    * Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

    * Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

    Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

    Write to us at [email protected]

    We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

  • In this 1947 Universal Studios Year by Year episode, a little Ella Raines never hurt no one: we struggle to understand her role in the intermittently riveting Gothic melodrama Time Out of Mind (stylishly directed by Robert Siodmak), while Edmond O'Brien struggles to understand her role in Vincent Price's life in The Web, a white-collar film noir directed by future blacklistee Michael Gordon.

    Time Codes:

    0h 00m 25s: TIME OUT OF MIND [dir. Robert Siodmak]

    0h 20m 07s: THE WEB [dir. Michael Gordon]

    Studio Film Capsules provided by The Universal Story by Clive Hirschhorn

    Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joe W. Finler

    +++

    * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

    * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

    * Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

    * Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

    Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

    Write to us at [email protected]

    We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

  • The first episode of our Paul Robeson Acteurist Oeuvre-view series has a high context-to-text ratio, as we introduce one of the most important figures in entertainment and political activism of the 20th century. The two movies we look at, Oscar Micheaux's Body and Soul (1925) and Kenneth Macpherson's Borderline (1930), by auteurs from radically different backgrounds with radically different aims, provide a fascinating glimpse of the spectrum of possibilities for independent cinema in the late silent era.

    Time Codes:

    0h 00m 30s: Brief Introduction to Paul Robeson

    0h 08m 53s: BODY & SOUL (1925) [dir. Oscar Micheaux]

    0h 34m 03s: BORDERLINE (1930) [dir. Kenneth Macpherson]

    References:

    Paul Robeson: The Artist as Revolutionary by Gerald Horne

    “The Homesteader” article in The Believer by Will Sloan

    +++

    * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

    * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

    * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

    * Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

    * Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

    Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

    Write to us at [email protected]

    We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

  • We've been waiting for this episode, a 1947 RKO noir double bill with two of the all-time greats, Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past, in which Robert Mitchum's cool detective and Jane Greer’s psychopathic moll work at cross purposes in their attempts to escape their shady pasts so that they can be free to love, and Robert Wise's Born to Kill, in which Claire Trevor's morally flexible social climber and Lawrence Tierney's paranoid psychopath just work at cross purposes. Elise agrees with Bosley Crowther that Born to Kill, one of her Top 10 favourite movies, "is not only morally disgusting but is an offense to a normal intellect," but will Dave be able to convince her that Out of the Past is "flawless"?

    Time Codes:

    0h 00m 30s: BORN TO KILL [dir. Robert Wise]

    1h 07m 09s: OUT OF THE PAST [dir. Jacques Tourneur]

    1h 35m 31s: Listener Communiqué

    Studio Film Capsules provided by The RKO Story by Richard B. Jewell & Vernon Harbin

    Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joe W. Finler

    +++

    * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

    * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

    * Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

    * Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

    Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

    Write to us at [email protected]

    We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

  • We went deep for our second King Vidor Special Subject episode, looking at four films from the 1930s: Street Scene (1931), adapted by Elmer Rice from his famous stage play about working-class New Yorkers; the little-known Cynara (1932), starring Ronald Colman as a kindly upper-middle-class man who stumbles into adultery and the abyss; Our Daily Bread (1934), Vidor's eccentric, self-produced response to the Great Depression; and Stella Dallas, one of the great woman's pictures, centered on one of Barbara Stanwyck's greatest performances. Class, gender, transformation of consciousness, and how they're served by melodrama story structures all come in for examination as we find links with the films of other auteurs, from Ozu to Lynch. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we take a quick look at monster movie tropes and James Cameron's masochistic feminism in The Terminator. All this and more feedback on our Lilli Palmer series!

    Time Codes:

    0h 00m 30s: More general musings on Vidor

    0h 05m 49s: STREET SCENE (1931) [dir. King Vidor]

    0h 26m 44s: CYNARA (1932) [dir. King Vidor]

    0h 45m 32s: OUR DAILY BREAD (1934) [dir. King Vidor]

    1h 00m 46s: STELLA DALLAS (1937) [dir. King Vidor]

    1h 39m 13s: Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto: James Cameron’s The Terminator (1984)

    1h 45m 23s: Listener Communiqués

    +++

    * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

    * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

    * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

    * Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

    * Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

    Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

    Write to us at [email protected]

    We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

  • Our final Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode is an odd one, with Dave arguing for the value of John Frankenheimer's The Holcroft Covenant (1985), a Nazi conspiracy thriller from a novel by Robert Ludlum, and Elise arguing for the value of The Other Side of the Wind (2018), Orson Welles' startling comeback film-that-never-was. Then we give our favourite Lilli Palmer films, with rationales, and respond to some listener communiqués.

    Time Codes:

    0h 00m 30s: THE HOLCROFT COVENANT (1985) [dir. John Frankenheimer]

    0h 22m 19s: THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND (2018) [dir. Orson Welles]

    0h 58m 27s: Lilli Palmer Top 10s; Letter from Listener Steven

    +++

    * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

    * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

    * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

    * Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

    * Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

    Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

    Write to us at [email protected]

    We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

  • This Fox 1947 Studios Year by Year episode looks at two examples of the docu-noir: Boomerang! (directed by Elia Kazan), starring Dana Andrews as a prosecuting attorney who has to decide between morality and political expedience; and Kiss of Death (directed by Henry Hathaway), in which Victor Mature's sympathetic gangster is menaced by Richard Widmark's psychopathic gangster and the legal system. Then another oddball assortment of movies in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto: Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), and Spellbound (1945).

    Time Codes:

    0h 00m 30s: BOOMERANG! [dir. Elia Kazan]

    0h 27m 35s: KISS OF DEATH [dir. Henry Hathaway]

    0h 54m 55s: Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (2022) by Daniel Scheinert & Daniel Kwan; Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) by Mike Nichols and Spellbound (1945) by Alfred Hitchcock

    Studio Film Capsules provided by The Films of Twentieth Century-Fox by Aubrey Solomon and Tony Thomas

    Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joe W. Finler

    +++

    * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

    * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

    * Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

    * Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

    Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

    Write to us at [email protected]

    We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

  • Our penultimate Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode brings us Lilli as a protagonist again at last, in Lotte in Weimar (1975), based on the Thomas Mann novel, and Lilli Lite in The Boys from Brazil (1978), an outrageous anti-Nazi sci fi story in which Laurence Olivier and Gregory Peck wage an epic battle (and also get into a very brutal girl-fight). And this week's Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto is a real smorgasbord: Saturday Night Fever, Coffy, It Happened One Night, and Beverly Hills Cop. From the charm of young John Travolta to screwball brutality and from exploitation auteurism to... the charm of young Eddie Murphy. We've got the movie talk you crave!

    Time Codes:

    0h 00m 35s: LOTTE IN WEIMAR (1975) [dir. Egon Gunther]

    0h 32m 51s: THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL (1978) [dir. Franklin J. Schaffner]

    0h 50m 08s: Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Saturday Night Fever (1977) by John Badham; Coffy (1973) by Jack Hill; It Happened One Night (1934) by Frank Capra; and Beverly Hills Cop (1984) by Martin Brest

    Studio Film Capsules provided by The Films of Twentieth Century-Fox by Aubrey Solomon and Tony Thomas

    Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joe W. Finler

    +++

    * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

    * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

    * Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

    * Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

    Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

    Write to us at [email protected]

    We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

  • This Warner Bros. 1947 Studios Year by Year episode features two gems that put their own particular slant on noir's familiar theme of murderous conflict between women and men: Curtis Bernhardt's Possessed, starring a more-than-usually deranged Joan Crawford, with Van Heflin as the rakish object of her obsession, and Delmer Daves' Dark Passage, starring an unusually passive Humphrey Bogart as a man convicted of killing his wife, with Lauren Bacall as an eccentric socialite who decides to help him. And in our Fear and Moviegoing segment, a real clash of moods: Ridley Scott's terrifying sci-fi/horror classic Alien and Wong Kar-wai's whimsical romantic comedy (of a sort) Chungking Express. Though admittedly it also has its terrifying aspects. (If only Van Heflin had been charmed by Crawford's fixation, how differently it could have gone!)

    Time Codes:

    0h 00m 35s: POSSESSED [dir. Curtis Bernhardt]

    0h 41m 53s: DARK PASSAGE [dir. Delmer Daves]

    1h 11m 24s: Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Alien (1979) by Ridley Scott at the TIFF Lightbox and Chungking Express (1994) by Wong Kar-wai at the Revue Cinema

    Studio Film Capsules provided by The Warner Brothers Story by Clive Hirschhorn

    Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joe W. Finler

    +++

    * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

    * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

    * Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

    * Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

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  • Our second Anna Magnani Sampler includes three Hollywood films, two with parts written for her by her friend Tennessee Williams, as well as the second film directed by Pasolini: The Rose Tattoo (1955), Wild is the Wind (1957), The Fugitive Kind (1960), and Mamma Roma (1962). Paired with a wacky Burt Lancaster, a bullying Anthony Quinn, a quietly intense Brando, or a nihilistic teenager, Magnani takes on such enemies as the racist South, patriarchy, and the class system with varying results, but always with ferocity and gusto.

    Time Codes:

    0h 00m 30s: THE ROSE TATTOO (1955) [dir. Daniel Mann]

    0h 23m 03s: WILD IS THE WIND (1957) [dir. George Cukor]

    0h 37m 34s: THE FUGITIVE KIND (1960) [dir. Sidney Lumet]

    0h 52m 55s: MAMMA ROMA (1962) [dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini]

    +++

    * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

    * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

    * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

    * Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

    * Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

    Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

    Write to us at [email protected]

    We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!