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Noted Arnie fan Celia Mattison is back to discuss the swords and sorcery classic!John Milius’s CONAN THE BARBARIAN adaptation limits its view of the character to his pursuit of vengeance and conquest. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a rich, pagan paean to one’s drive for self-determination!
On this episode, we talk about what rocks in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s star-making role, how James Earl Jones’s cold, calculating Thulsa Doom is a perfectly cast contrast to Conan’s Austro-Cimmerian barbarism, and the different paths men can go after they become self-aware.
Find Celia on Twitter at https://twitter.com/CeliaMattison and on her Substack, “Deeper Into Movies”: https://deeperintomovies.substack.com/Donate to help our friend and previous guest Nick Ransbottom get life-saving cystic fibrosis care: https://www.gofundme.com/f/get-nick-lifesaving-cystic-fibrosis-care“Fathers True and False in Conan the Barbarian” by Chris Ryba-Tures for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/03/29/fathers-true-and-false-in-conan-the-barbarian/“Conan the Chad and Tolkien the Virgin” by Timothy Zila for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/03/29/conan-the-chad-and-tolkien-the-virgin/Contribute to Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/perisphere-blog-post-guidelines/Get tickets to the 43rd Annual Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival (April 11-15): https://mspfilm.org/mspiff/#OfSwordsAndSorcery #35mm
Follow us on Twitter at @trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at trylon.org.
Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing audio: "Anvil of Crom" by Basil Poledouris from the CONAN THE BARBARIAN soundtrack.
Timestamps
0:00 - Episode 274: CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1982) with Celia Mattison
4:20 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary
6:10 - A movie about conquering and being conquered
10:12 - A more moody, epic, anti-theist movie than you might assume
15:46 - How much character is there to Conan?
23:55 - Mythologization of the self as a man’s man
31:32 - “The opposite of ego death”
36:13 - Conan’s moral compass, such as it is
45:46 - How Thulsa Doom is cast in contrast to Conan
54:07 - How the ending foregrounds the action figure movies of the '80s
1:02:57 - The Junk Drawer
1:10:21 - To All the Loves We’ve Tried Before: 1982
1:13:30 - Cody’s Noteys: Conan the Parnassian (Conan-themed haikus)
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Two years before ALIEN (1979), Ridley Scott packed a bunch of audacious ideas about empire, masculinity, and class into his feature debut: THE DUELLISTS.
Rival officers in Napoleonic France, Gabriel Feraud (Harvey Keitel) and Armond d’Hubert (Keith Carradine) are thrown into a mythical, divinely comic cycle of nearly deadly clashes after d’Hubert is instructed to rein in Feraud’s glorified bloodlust. No matter how far he goes, d’Hubert always finds himself at the tip of Feraud’s sword. Over the course of almost two decades, Feraud and d’Hubert orbit concepts of honor, loyalty, and the essence of servitude as each hones their blade on the other’s ego.
In this discussion, we talk about how some of the movie’s ideas feel far ahead of their time; how the movie deflates and then glorifies the art of honorable single combat; how important a love story really is in a movie like this; and how THE DUELLISTS serves as something of a codex for almost 50 years of Ridley Scott’s directorial endeavors.
Donate to help our friend and previous guest Nick Ransbottom get life-saving cystic fibrosis care: https://www.gofundme.com/f/get-nick-lifesaving-cystic-fibrosis-care“Sword Master Rates 10 More Sword Fights In Movies And TV | How Real Is It?” by Insider (Feb. 16, 2021): https://archive.org/details/youtube-0edTDUQfqys“Harvey, the Haughty Hussar” by Alex Kies for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/03/16/harvey-the-haughty-hussar/Contribute to Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/perisphere-blog-post-guidelines/Get tickets to the 43rd Annual Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival (April 11-15): https://mspfilm.org/mspiff/#TheSimmeringFuryOfHarveyKeitel #35mm
Follow us on Twitter at @trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at trylon.org.
Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing audio: “Main Theme” by Howard Blake from the THE DUELLISTS soundtrack.
Timestamps
0:00 - Episode 273: THE DUELLISTS (1977)
3:50 - The episode actually starts
6:37 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary
11:18 - It’s goofy until it’s not
16:22 - The DNA of Ridley Scott’s filmmaking
19:36 - Modern-feeling characters in a movie set during the Age of Enlightenment
23:53 - Ridley Scott’s strengths and how he adapted to the constraints of this project
33:34 - Managed doses of Harvey Keitel vs. Keith Carradine, the doofus
43:23 - Laura and the point of d’Hubert’s romantic subplot
59:38 - The ending
1:10:22 - The Junk Drawer
1:19:23 - To All the Loves We’ve Tried Before: 1977
1:21:06 - Cody’s Noteys: Spot the Scott (Ridley Scott tagline trivia)
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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There wasn’t anything quite like Michael Roemer’s NOTHING BUT A MAN before it, and there arguably hasn’t been anything quite like it since. All the same, it’s often cited as “ahead of its time” – a critical, realistic look, almost documentary in nature, at the life of a black American man in the middle stages of the Civil Rights Movement. Duff Anderson (Ivan Dixon), the son of a deadbeat drifter hoping to avoid the same fate, leaves behind the independence of his railroad section gang to settle down with Josie (Abbey Lincoln), a well-to-do schoolteacher. Duff’s pride – in his independence, in his manhood, in his blackness – attracts Josie, but rankles the black community around him, who’ve adapted to leaving well enough alone in the deep Southern town they call home. Duff’s chief critics include the aggressive white populace and Josie’s father, a black preacher and community organizer sitting comfortably under the thumb of the town’s white movers and shakers.
Written and directed by a German Jew who left the country at the start of World War II and released just months after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the movie was critically lauded but underpromoted, underseen, and misunderstood at the time of its release. Its 1993 U.S. rerelease brought it back to the world stage, with its reevaluation cementing it as a forerunner of a storytelling and filmmaking style that wouldn’t find its footing until arguably the 2000s. In this episode, we discuss the semi-autobiographical nature of Roemer’s story, its contemporary appraisal, its show-stealing performances, stage-play blocking, inventive cinematography, and the implications of its ambivalent ending.
Donate to help our friend and previous guest Nick Ransbottom get life-saving cystic fibrosis care: https://www.gofundme.com/f/get-nick-lifesaving-cystic-fibrosis-care“Back to the Future: Michael Roemer’s Nothing but a Man” by Nazeeh Alghazawneh for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/03/18/back-to-the-future-michael-roemers-nothing-but-a-man/“Film Notes: NOTHING BUT A MAN” by Michael Kerbel for the Yale Film Archive: https://web.library.yale.edu/film/notes/fn00003Watch NOTHING BUT A MAN on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sKqyQ5eq2oGet tickets to the 43rd Annual Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival (April 11-15): https://mspfilm.org/mspiff/#TooFarInFront #35mm
Follow us on Twitter at @trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at trylon.org.
Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing audio: "(Love Is Like A) Heat Wave" by Martha Reeves & The Vandellas from the NOTHING BUT A MAN soundtrack.
Timestamps
0:00 - Episode 272: NOTHING BUT A MAN (1964)
4:44 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary
8:06 - How ahead of its time it really is
12:42 - How Roemer managed to “get it”
19:03 - Key performances
22:10 - Locking eyes vs. avoiding each other’s gaze
25:05 - Materialism for the marginalized and the need to feel like a man
31:02 - Surviving in a world that requires you to be more perfect than perfect
37:55 - The precariousness of these people’s way of life
49:56 - The climax of the movie
1:00:50 - What makes Lee the key to Duff’s decision to come back to Josie
1:05:06 - The ending
1:12:36 - The Junk Drawer
1:23:15 - To All the Loves We’ve Tried Before: 1964
1:25:31 - Cody’s NO-teys: When Was This Photo of Jason Dafnis Taken?
1:27:58 - The first photo
1:31:12 - The second photo
1:33:16 - The third and final photo
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Sweet, heartwarming, funny, and deeply weird, A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH plays to its creator duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s strengths: swift writing, a flair for the dramatic, and deeply affecting images.
David Niven stars as the should-be-late British RAF Squadron Leader Peter Carter, who falls in love with American soldier June (Kim Hunter) over the radio on his way to the hereafter. But in the throes of World War II, Carter’s demise slides under the radar of the reaper sent to collect his soul (Marius Goring as the foppish Parisian Conductor 71), leaving the lovestruck Lancaster pilot in the lurch, legally speaking: Does his passion for a woman he met minutes before his intended death warrant a stay of execution? Or should he be sentenced to serve out the term of his miscarried doom?
Going two for two on the Trylon’s Spring 2024 highlight of Powell and Pressburger’s production company The Archers, we discuss A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH from several angles on this episode: As postwar comfort cinema; as a visual piece astonishingly ahead of its time; as a consideration of the value of human emotion in the face of celestial stakes; and as a singular mixture of the comic, the tragic, and the existential.
Donate to help our friend and previous guest Nick Ransbottom get life-saving cystic fibrosis care: https://www.gofundme.com/f/get-nick-lifesaving-cystic-fibrosis-care“Make It So: A Journey in Overthinking ‘A Matter of Life and Death’” by Lucas Hardwick for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/03/01/make-it-so-a-journey-in-overthinking-a-matter-of-life-and-death/“War, love and weirdness: A Matter of Life and Death – 70 years on” by Brian Dillon for The Guardian: https://theguardian.com/film/2016/nov/04/war-love-and-wierdness-a-matter-of-life-and-death-70-years-onGet tickets to the 43rd Annual Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival (April 11-15): https://mspfilm.org/mspiff/#TwoByTheArchers #DCP
Follow us on Twitter at @trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at trylon.org.
Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing audio: "Opening Sequence" composed by Allan Gray and performed by the Queen Hall Light Orchestra from the A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH soundtrack.
Timestamps
0:00 - Episode 271: A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH (1946)
4:09 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary
6:30 - Did they EVER make ‘em like this?
16:23 - Fearlessness, experimentation, and creativity
24:37 - The controlled scattershot of ideas and how it wins you over again and again
31:38 - What works and doesn’t in the courtroom third act
54:16 - Our favorite shots
1:01:03 - The Junk Drawer
1:05:39 - Cody’s Noteys: A Platter of Life and Death (poisoned food dish movies trivia)
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Five nuns. One Briton man-whore. A harem-turned-convent high in the Himalayas. Fellas – what could go wrong???
In Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s BLACK NARCISSUS, an adaptation of Rumer Godden’s 1947 novel, external conditions reveal internal torment: Altitude, wind, and culture clashes in the hilltop former harem of Mopu help expose the repressed desires of a sisterhood operating in Calcutta. In our discussion of this Technicolor classic, we discuss BLACK NARCISSUS’s potential misnomer as a “haunted house” movie; its cultural implications in the wake of the British empire’s slipping stranglehold over India post-World War II; and how the film’s art, direction, and performances highlight its masterful double-dip into both “high” and “low” art.
Donate to help our friend and previous guest Nick Ransbottom get life-saving cystic fibrosis care:https://www.gofundme.com/f/get-nick-lifesaving-cystic-fibrosis-care
“Why Black Narcissus is a Haunted House Movie” by Sophie Durbin for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/03/03/why-black-narcissus-is-a-haunted-house-movie/
“Black Narcissus” by Dave Kehr for The Current (2001): https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/94-black-narcissus
"‘Black Narcissus,' British Study of Missionary Nuns, Starring Deborah Kerr, Bill at Fulton -- Based on Novel by Godden” for The New York Times (1947): https://www.nytimes.com/1947/08/14/archives/black-narcissus-british-study-of-missionary-nuns-starring-deborah.html
#TwoByTheArchers #DCP
Follow us on Twitter at @trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at trylon.org.
Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing audio: "Opening Theme" by Brian Easdale from the BLACK NARCISSUS soundtrack.
Timestamps
0:00 - Episode 270: BLACK NARCISSUS (1947)
5:59 - The episode actually starts
8:03 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary
10:05 - He’s a whore
12:29 - Location, ‘haunted house,’ and orientalism
20:15 - The movie’s construction and our mileage with BLACK NARCISSUS
25:35 - Irreverence, manipulative cinematography, and use of Technicolor
38:42 - Using heightened reality to reflect a certain perspective
44:12 - Mr. Dean, the holy man Sir Krishna Rai, and counterbalancing the nuns
54:02 - Striking scene-setting and an introduction to Mopu as a character
59:37 - The ending of the movie and why Cody muted the phrase “BLACK NARCISSUS” on Twitter
1:12:48 - The Junk Drawer
1:24:27 - To All the Loves We’ve Tried Before: 1947
1:26:50 - Cody’s Noteys: Pack of Narcissists (trivia about people who excel in their fields)
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With special guest Bret Berg (Theatrical Sales Director at the American Genre Film Archive and Creator/VJ at the Museum of Home Video)!
Bret Berg created the Museum of Home Video, a weekly stream comprising archival footage like commercials, TV shows, movies, and more, all edited for the quickest-hit emotional impact possible. Before he hosted two live MHV presentations at the Trylon (RING, RING: A DOORBELL CAM FANTASIA and THE MUSEUM OF HOME VIDEO’S GUIDE TO INFOMERCIALS), Bret sat down with us to chat about the project, his work, and the state of download culture.
In this special interview episode, we discuss...
The makings of a found footage showcaseMeeting the Trylon's John Moret and Barry Kryshka a decade agoHow you find the humanity in thousands of hours of strange, torrented contentYoung SheldonWhat all this must be doing to Bret’s brainFind the Museum of Home Video’s streams at https://www.museumofhomevideo.com/
Follow the Museum of Home Video on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/museumofhomevideo/
Get tickets to RING, RING: A DOORBELL CAM FANTASIA and THE MUSEUM OF HOME VIDEO’S GUIDE TO INFOMERCIALS (March 15-17 at the Trylon): https://www.trylon.org/film/the-museum-of-home-video-live-and-in-person/all/
#OtherProgramming #DCP
Follow us on Twitter at @trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at trylon.org.
Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing audio: “Hit It and Quit It” by Funkedelic (heard in the RING, RING: A DOORBELL CAM FANTASIA promotional video).
Timestamps
0:00 - Interview with Bret Berg, Creator/VJ/“Mad Scientist” of the Museum of Home Video
2:56 - Why people come back to the Museum of Home Video
5:23 - How Bret knows the Trylon
7:26 - What attracts Bret to film distribution
12:10 - Becoming a “mad scientist” to put on a good show
14:50 - Appointment viewing and “being people’s Tuesday night”
17:01 - RING, RING and why Bret’s showing this stuff at the Trylon
18:20 - Timely inspirations
21:02 - RING, RING in context of the Museum’s usual fare
24:18 - What it’s like to sift through lifetimes of torrented media
28:14 - Finding the uniting humanity in disparate content and the AI question
32:14 - Using contemporary content in the Museum
37:26 - Repertory cinema vs. download culture
40:45 - Joe Dante’s THE MOVIE ORGY (1968)
44:34 - What keeps Bret coming back to the Museum
46:43 - Bret’s favorite things that he’s put into the Museum of Home Video
50:35 - What is all this shit doing to Bret’s brain? (Also some Dune chat)
53:49 - Dumb Questions (SOUTHLAND TALES and other weird content Bret’s seen)
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With special guest and Minnesotan Drew Tenenbaum (@AshCoolBro)!
A threshing accident, exploding parade floats and trailers – contestants and participants in the Sarah Rose Cosmetics American Teen Princess Pageant meet untimely ends in a series of suspicious incidents in Mount Rose, Minnesota. In this episode (comprising exclusively Minnesota-born speakers), we discuss the class politics at play in the movie, its turn with the mockumentary format, how many of its jokes actually land, and the shared satirical nostalgia we feel for the uniquely “Minnesota-ness” of DROP DEAD GORGEOUS.
Find Drew…
On Twitter at @AshCoolBroMaking music mashups and other stuff on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/c/ashcoolbroOn a bunch of episodes of Stoop Kidz!, the Hey Arnold! podcast Harry, Cody, and Jason made with Emily Csuy: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/stoop-kidz-a-hey-arnold-podcast/id1553292788On itch.io: https://drewbys-games.itch.io/In the credits of Décorum, the tabletop game Drew and Harry and Charlie Mackin created: https://floodgate.games/products/decorum“I Want All the Bisexuals To Know: If I Can Edit a Film Blog, You Can Too” by Finn Odum for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/02/16/i-want-all-the-bisexuals-to-know-if-i-can-edit-a-film-blog-you-can-too/
#OnlySkinDeep #DCP
Follow us on Twitter at @trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at trylon.org.
Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing audio: "Love is All Around" by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts from the DROP DEAD GORGEOUS soundtrack.
Timestamps
0:00 - Episode 268: DROP DEAD GORGEOUS (1999)
3:22 - The episode actually starts
5:06 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary
6:59 - Drew’s background with DROP DEAD GORGEOUS – a jolt of Minnesota memories
18:53 - Earning “cult film" status
25:56 - Infusion of class adversity
40:10 - The comedy of DROP DEAD GORGEOUS
57:11 - An ode to endearingly awkward pacing
1:04:46 - The Junk Drawer
1:13:51 - To All the Loves We’ve Tried Before (f.k.a. "Other Loves We've Tried"): 1999
1:15:45 - Cody’s Noteys: Miss Trylove 2024
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With special guest Natalie Marlin (@NataliesNotInIt)!
Bi Gan’s lovelorn neo-noir follows Luo (Huang Jue) as he pursues Wan (Tang Wei), the woman he fell in love with years before. Luo weaves in and out of half-recalled memories to trace Wan’s whereabouts, only brushing shoulders with reality as he dodges his own past in pursuit of the fading memory of love through decades of lost time.
Famous for its non-linear structure, ethereal pacing, and the 59-minute long-take dream sequence that closes the film, LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT uniquely mixes the concrete drive of emotion with the fleeting nature of memory. In this episode, we talk about how the first half sets up the second, the protagonist’s intentional unreliability as narrator, the mechanical and narrative achievement of its dreamy long-take ending, and have a little fun picking out the first-act callbacks in the second half of the movie.
“Lost in the Dream” by Natalie Marlin for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/02/13/lost-in-the-dream/
Find Natalie…
On Twitter and Bluesky at @NataliesNotInItOn Letterboxd at @framingthepicOn Trylove Episode 162: THE THIRD MAN (1949), Episode 182: CHESS OF THE WIND (1979), Episode 197: RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1985), Episode 210: MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (2015), Episode 239: MILLENNIUM MAMBO (2001), Episode 249: THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999)#NoirFestival #DCP
Follow us on Twitter at @trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at trylon.org.
Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing audio: “Opening” (开场) by Lim Giong and Chih-Yuan Hsu from the LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT soundtrack.
Timestamps
0:00 - Episode 267: LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (2018)
3:50 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary
5:01 - Tang Wei pretty
6:00 - Why Natalie keeps coming back to this movie
14:59 - The “trap” of the second half
24:03 - The power and rhythm of the first half
41:06 - Abstraction and looking at Luo through a noir lens
47:02 - Everything is always about to happen
55:56 - Luo, Zuo, and dualism
59:43 - The cathartic 59-minute long-shot dream sequence
1:08:22 - Luo reconstructing a version of himself in the subconscious
1:12:42 - Cyclical loop-closing
1:32:55 - LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT Ending Explained
1:42:26 - The Junk Drawer
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Based on Charles Willeford’s noir novel, George Armitage’s MIAMI BLUES is ‘supposed’ to be about the escapades of Hoke Moseley (Fred Ward), a jaded, toothless Miami cop. Instead, it’s about Frederick J. Frenger Jr. (Alec Baldwin), a sociopathic, interloping hustler. Junior’s ongoing seduction of young prostitute Susie (Jennifer Jason Leigh) provides him insulation from Hoke’s suspicions, but threatens Junior’s own self-concept.
In this episode, we talk about the ‘happy Sisyphean’ Junior, the movie’s comparison to a more typical noir, the pieces of this story that don’t fit, and why it’s better for them.
MIAMI BLUES review by Roger Ebert (April 20, 1990) https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/miami-blues-1990
Review/Film: Cop, Thief and Prostitute in Miami by Janet Maslin for The New York Times (April 26, 1990) https://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/20/movies/review-film-cop-thief-and-prostitute-in-miami.html
#NoirFestival #DCP
Follow us on Twitter at @trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at trylon.org.
Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing audio: “Spirit in the Sky" by Norman Greenbaum from the MIAMI BLUES soundtrack.
Timestamps
0:00 - Episode 266: MIAMI BLUES (1990)
3:39 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary
4:38 - The movie’s left turn from neo-noir to dark comedy
8:17 - Favorite parts/shooting style
14:41 - The pieces that don’t fit become the point
26:14 - Junior’s main character magnetism
33:50 - What Junior wants vs. how he acts around it
43:43 - Junior, Susie, and wearing the consequences of your actions
47:59 - Susie, disillusionment, and seducing the audience
56:23 - The Junk Drawer
1:02:22 - Other Loves We’ve Tried: 1990
1:05:47 - Cody’s Noteys: Miami Haikus
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The truth behind the assassination at the center of Brian De Palma’s political paranoia thriller BLOW OUT isn’t really the point. It’s more about the ways in which fact comes to be distorted through many lenses, each built on relative understandings of the core event itself.
When he happens to catch the sound of a politician’s murder on tape while scouting new SFX for a movie, sound designer Jack (John Travolta) is driven to piece together the truth. But with only the audible half of the story, he needs the help of Sally (Nancy Allen), a survivor of the crash, to prove what he saw. Unfortunately for Jack and Sally, they’re both loose ends caught in the increasingly dangerous machinations of political rivals, a hitman gone rogue, and a media machine that thrives on the first thing it can call “truth”.
Watch BLOW OUT on the Internet Archive
Get tickets to THE FIFTEENTH FILM NOIR FESTIVAL: NEO-NOIR (Winter at the Trylon & the Heights)
“Paranoia, Failure, and Female Representation: Brian De Palma’s Blow Out” by Penny Folger for Perisphere, the Trylon blog
“Do You Hear What I Hear?: The Salacious Self-Flagellation of Brian De Palma’s Blow Out” by Chris Polley for Perisphere, the Trylon blog
“Blow Out: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Gadgeteer” by Pauline Kael (originally for The New Yorker in 1981, republished by The Criterion Collection in 2011)
#NoirFestival #35mm
Follow us on Twitter at @trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at trylon.org.Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing audio: “Main Theme” by Pino Donaggio from the BLOW OUT soundtrack.
Timestamps
0:00 - Episode 165: BLOW OUT (1981)
2:18 - The episode actually starts (ARGYLLE (2024) chat)
3:44 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary
7:00 - A prescient, paranoid political thriller?
18:48 - A manipulative movie about media manipulation
27:37 - Counterpoint: Selling the “bigness” of the conspiracy at the heart of BLOW OUT
38:53 - Collaging “truth” through character ideologies
48:55 - A call to be more affected by the real traumas of the world
1:09:12 - The romantic mechanics of sound design and sound editing
1:15:34 - John Lithgow as Burke
1:24:16 - Other Loves We’ve Tried: 1981
1:26:48 - The Junk Drawer
1:36:04 - Cody’s Noteys: Trylove Feud (Family Feud but with movies that have a niche genre tag on Letterboxd)
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In Béla Tarr’s dour, slow drama WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES, an aimless people’s anger and malaise is leveraged to violent ends by figures of power. A desolate town bristles when a traveling circus comes through with a stuffed whale as its centerpiece. Uncertain of its meaning, the townspeople respond with disbelief and skepticism as they suffer through the rapid decay of society playing out in parallel. Starry-eyed mail carrier János lets the grotesque attraction – and the shadowy Prince pulling the strings of the circus – enrapture his imagination while things fall apart, until János himself becomes its victim.
Whether you see optimism, pessimism, the unfeeling cosmos, or just a reflection of yourself in the eyes of the impotent carcass rotting at the center of the town and its story, WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES positions itself among Tarr’s most watchable films – an enigma opting to expose rather than instruct.
“A Whale of a Tale: Béla Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies” by Luke Mosher for Perisphere, the Trylon blog
#DCP #OtherProgramming
Follow us on Twitter at @trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at trylon.org.Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing audio: "Old" by Mihály Vig from the WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES soundtrack.
Timestamps
0:00 - Episode 264: WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES (2000)
4:54 - The episode actually starts
7:47 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary
10:51 - Scaling expectations of Béla Tarr and slow cinema in general
23:56 - Visual and non-visual framing devices
34:07 - The film’s expression of recognizable, universal themes
41:13 - János as our “way in” to WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES
52:22 - Grappling with the humanism of Béla Tarr
1:03:01 - The symbolism of the whale and the ending of the movie
1:14:34 - The Junk Drawer
1:19:41 - Other Loves We’ve Tried: 2000
1:22:22 - Back 2 the Junk Drawer 4 a Sec
1:24:06 - Cody’s Noteys: Whalemeister Harmonies (whale-related movie trivia)
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With returning guest Blake Hester!
BURST CITY is arguably more of a cultural document than a movie with a plot and a story. It consists largely of musical setpieces by the Japanese punk groups of its time, with plot threads (vengeful bikers, nuclear infrastructure, etc.) being more hinted at than shown. In this episode, Blake joins us to talk about BURST CITY's content, context, and creation.
Find Blake…
On Trylove episodes about POSSESSION (1981) and PULSE (2001)At Game InformerOn Something Rotten, the podcast he co-hosts about nihilism in video gamesOn Twitter at @metallicaisradOn Letterboxd at @blakedtfpNuclear Punks Run Amok: Gakuryu Ishii’s “Burst CIty” by Margaret Barton-Fumo for Metrograph: https://metrograph.com/nuclear-punks-run-amok-gakuryu-ishiis-burst-city/
“REVIEW: Burst City (1982)” by Grant Watson for Fiction Machine: https://fictionmachine.com/2021/11/15/review-burst-city-1982/
DCPFollow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/.
Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing audio: “Wild Supermarket” by The Rockers from the BURST CITY soundtrack.
Timestamps
0:00 - Episode 263: BURST CITY (1982)
00:45 - Poop talk, video game movies
10:12 - The episode actually starts
14:49 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary
17:49 - Ishii and the Japanese cyberpunk cinema movement
23:30 - BURST CITY’s inspirations
25:11 - Appreciating BURST CITY vs. enjoying it
34:24 - BURST CITY as deconstructive cacophony
40:06 - American cyberpunk vs. Japanese cyberpunk
50:40 - Japanese appropriation of Western punk in BURST CITY
56:55 - BURST CITY as a cultural document
1:03:46 - Blake’s pairing recommendations
1:08:42 - Other Loves We’ve Tried: 1982
1:10:48 - The Junk Drawer
1:16:08 - Cody’s Noteys: Splurge City (movie-buying ultimatum)
1:31:34 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF!
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You’ve seen movies like Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1996 directorial debut, HARD EIGHT. In fact, if you called it part of the PULP FICTION (1994) neo-noir craze, you wouldn’t be wrong.
Sydney (Philip Baker Hall) is an avuncular elder hustler who takes John (John C. Reilly) and Clementine (Gwyneth Paltrow) under his wing, keeping new blood small-timer Jimmy (Samuel L. Jackson) at bay while he sets up a better life for the young lovebirds. When things go south, Sydney goes to extreme measures to preserve the fiction he’s built so he can stay the person he thinks he is – the person he wants John and Clementine to see.
In this Dry Run discussion, we compare and contrast different takes about what HARD EIGHT is trying to ‘say,’ if anything, and the value of a frictionless story if it’s competently told.
“Meet Sydney: On Paul Thomas Anderson’s Hard Eight (1996)” by MH Rowe for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/01/14/meet-sydney-on-paul-thomas-andersons-hard-eight-1996/
Get tickets to “THE FIFTEENTH FILM NOIR FESTIVAL: NEO-NOIR” (Winter 2024 at the Trylon and the Heights Theater): https://www.trylon.org/films/category/neo-noir/
NoirFestival #DCPFollow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/.
Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing audio: “Sydney’s Work Walk” by Jon Brion and Michael Penn from the HARD EIGHT soundtrack.
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Tim Burton’s debut feature feels a little bit like a filmmaker finding his footing. At the same time, it’s a trial by fire for Paul Reubens and Phil Hartman as they brought their creation, the capricious Pee-Wee Herman, to the big screen. It paid off, of course, cementing Pee-Wee as an icon of character comedy and a mainstay of American children’s programming. Depending on your history with the character, you could find in PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE a constant, dull, childish annoyance or a charming work of self-aware bliss. “Things You Shouldn’t Understand, Things You Couldn’t Understand: A Love Letter to the Cast of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” by Sohpie Durbin for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/01/07/things-you-shouldnt-understand-things-you-couldnt-understand-a-love-letter-to-the-cast-of-pee-wees-big-adventure/ “I Lived It: The Joy of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” by Alex Kies for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/01/07/i-lived-it-the-joy-of-pee-wees-big-adventure/ “Pee-wee Herman- Unedited Interview (Big Adventure) 1985 [Reelin' In The Years Archives]”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4X4KbsLuzY #OtherProgramming #35mm This film was presented at the Trylon by the Cult Film Collective: https://cultfilmcollective.com/ Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/. Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing audio: "Breakfast Machine" by Danny Elfman from the PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE soundtrack.. Timestamps 0:00 - Episode 261: PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE (1985) 3:35 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary 5:11 - Our mileage with Pee-Wee 18:01 - Unpacking what the joke is 29:21 - When the nuance started to hit 42:23 - The disappearing “character” in comedy 45:30 - When the bits go on too long 49:51 - Our favorite bits 55:40 - The Junk Drawer 59:24 - Other Loves We’ve Tried: 1985 1:01:32 - Cody’s Noteys: IMDB’s Dig and Then Search (shared cast and crew trivia)
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We’re kicking off 2024 (THE YEAR OF THE #BIG #BALLER - "Let your nuts hang!") with William Richert’s gonzo political paranoia thriller WINTER KILLS! It’s kind of funny, but not funny enough to be a laugh-out-loud comedy. It’s kind of serious, but not serious enough to demand attention. Riding behind the unluckiest motorcade in American history, WINTER KILLS pitches Jeff Bridges as Nick Kegan, the half-brother of the late president, who’s suddenly clued into a vast conspiracy – and then promptly given the run-around from literally everyone. Along his circuitous route to the truth, he meets the archetypal figures: The lusty femme fatale, the omniscient information broker, the trenchcoat Italians, the horny capitalist dad who couldn’t POSSIBLY be pulling the strings. Depending on your point of view, it’s either a unique parody or kind of boring – but nobody can say it doesn’t try. This film was presented at the Trylon by the Cult Film Collective: https://cultfilmcollective.com/ “Slapstick for Paranoids” by Cole Seidl for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2023/12/29/slapstick-for-paranoids/ “Winter Kills: If You’re Not Paranoid, You’re Not Paying Attention” by Bob Aulert for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/01/04/winter-kills-if-youre-not-paranoid-youre-not-paying-attention/ Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/. Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing audio: Just the whole original trailer for the theatrical release of WINTER KILLS. Timestamps 0:00 - Episode 260: WINTER KILLS (1979) + Aaron is hungover 11:11 - The episode actually starts + the Apologia Corner 14:23 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary 16:13 - Biting satire or garbage? 27:39 - Sublime comedic sensibility or debilitating cynicism? 40:28 - The MGS2ification of WINTER KILLS 55:15 - The Junk Drawer 1:05:31 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF! 1:12:42 - Cody’s Noteys: 2024 Movie Resolutions
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Dozens of movies. Hundreds of hours of talking. Fifteen categories. No ties. The Golden Barrys return. Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/. Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Outro music: A song I don’t want to name in case some algorithmic corpo-cop somewhere decides to victimize me and my little unpaid podcast. Timestamps 0:00 - Episode 259: The 2023 Golden Barry Awards 6:59 - The episode actually starts 11:52 - Jason’s personal favorites of 2023 16:40 - Harry’s personal favorites of 2023 22:30 - Aaron’s personal favorites of 2023 28:23 - Cody’s personal favorites of 2023 35:15 - Trylove’s Best Dry Run 54:59 - Trylove’s Best Wet Run 1:06:48 - The Rashomonies 1:11:19 - The Best Animated Feature 1:27:29 - The Best Film Series at the Trylon 1:43:22 - The Best “The” Film 2:02:23 - The Best Non-Series Film 2:07:33 - The Best Cult Film Collective Screening 2:14:44 - The Best Director 2:20:33 - The Best Cody’s Notey 2:28:51 - The Year of the ___ 2:52:17 - The King of the Trylon 3:03:33 - The Queen of the Trylon 3:21:12 - The Best Picture 2023 4:08:00 - Recapping the winners 4:12:05 - Thanking our guests
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Content warning: Discussions of sexual assault. Twenty years after a string of murders in rural South Korea, Bong Joon-ho made a movie about the people who tried to catch the country’s first serial killer. What resulted was a harrowing chronicle of a trail slowly going cold, people who were unequipped for the heuristic exercise of catching a home-grown monster, and a government that cared more about defeating unrest than protecting its citizens – all told with the director’s signature balance of light, dark, and the humanity that contains both. Get tickets to THE FIFTEENTH FILM NOIR FESTIVAL: NEO-NOIR (Dec 2023 - Feb 2024 at the Trylon and the Heights Theater): https://www.trylon.org/films/category/neo-noir/ Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/. Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing music: "Memories of Murder" by Taro Iwashiro from the MEMORIES OF MURDER soundtrack. Timestamps 0:00 - Episode 258: MEMORIES OF MURDER (2003) 3:30 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary (under exclusive license from AG Enterprises, Ltd.) 4:54 - Watching and rewatching MEMORIES OF MURDER 11:04 - An explicitly political movie 12:45 - Intense watchability despite dense cultural context 21:58 - Small towns and a rot at the heart of a country 40:55 - The ending and a stare that implicates us all 59:18 - The Junk Drawer 1:07:38 - Other Loves We’ve Tried: 2003 1:09:37 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF! 1:16:35 - Cody’s Noteys: Love Joon-ho (Bong Joon-ho movie trivia)
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Juzo Itami’s “ramen western” TAMPOPO is… just a delight. The lines that separate class, sex, and generations are broken through the lens of food in vignettes that surround a sweet, satisfying A plot. The mundane and universal is elevated to indulgence through the presumption of taboo, with each character’s indulgence – a meddling supermarket crone, a wealthy, browbeaten elder, a gangster’s hedonist escape – building them as more human than caricature. Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/. Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing music: "Sonata for Bassoon and Cello in B-Flat Major, K. 292-196c - III. Rondo (Allegro)" by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart from the TAMPOPO soundtrack. Timestamps 0:00 - Episode 257: TAMPOPO (1985) 4:01 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary 13:26 - The vignettes 21:45 - A movie about indulgence 27:17 - The silly and the serious living together 32:31 - The gangster subplot and life as a short film you watch at death 45:12 - Treating everything with respect, whether silly or profane or deadly serious 48:29 - The birth of the “ramen western” 53:44 - The Junk Drawer 57:41 - Other Loves We’ve Tried: 1985 59:47 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF!
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With returning guest and Perisphere senior editor Finn Odum! Alejandro Jodorowsky’s best-known film, THE HOLY MOUNTAIN, is a psychedelic hero’s journey from rags to riches, from shit to gold, and from iniquity to enlightenment. It follows “The Thief” as he gives up his search for material wealth to join a cast of sinful sages on their way up the titular mountain and, hopefully, beyond the boundaries of human mortality. Its provocative antics and theatrics have made it a staple of arthouse cinema, and its never-ending jabs at every corner of taboo give it a provenance few other movies have shared. Joined by returning guest Finn Odum, we dive right in with a discussion of what “works,” what “doesn’t,” what “matters,” and what might be quietly brooding under Jodorowsky’s loud, panicked, off-the-rails storytelling style. “iPhones Will Also Be Sex Vibrators: An Ode to Little Freaks” by Finn Odum for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2023/12/01/iphones-will-also-be-sex-vibrators/ Find Finn… - On Twitter at https://twitter.com/Finnematic - On Letterboxd at https://letterboxd.com/finnofthedead/ - On Trylove episodes about THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951), DIABOLIQUE (1955), and CON AIR (1997) Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/. Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing music: "The Tarot Will Teach You" by Alejandro Jodorowsky from the THE HOLY MOUNTAIN soundtrack. Timestamps 0:00 - Episode 256: THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (1979) 2:51 - The episode actually starts 4:45 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary 6:26 - Jodorowsky and the Panic Movement 9:58 - A movie that rewards broad interpretation 18:55 - Cynicism and sacrilege 24:13 - The planets as flawed and penitent people 31:13 - The ending 37:56 - The provenance of this movie vs. the reality of watching it 49:16 - What’s gonna stick with us from THE HOLY MOUNTAIN? 53:43 - The Junk Drawer 58:50 - Other Loves We’ve Tried: 1973 1:00:33 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF!
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Takahide Hori’s one-man masterpiece-in-the-making is fun, sweet, and terrifying. In the distant future, after losing a war to the synthetic life forms they created, humans who’ve lost the ability to reproduce in a viral pandemic launch a last-ditch effort to correct the course of their species. Parton – a lonely prole who lives a vicarious, virtual existence – enlists in the effort to find a cure from the denizens of the depths… before catching a missile on the way down, losing his body and memory in the process. Adrift with a mission to secure humanity’s future, Parton finds himself instead audience to the weird, rich lives of the creatures below the surface. Watch JUNK HEAD (2017) on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyCCWHhH6R4 “Move It, Take a Shot, Easy: The DIY Magic of Takehide Hori’s Junk Head” by Luke Mosher for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2023/11/24/move-it-take-a-shot-easy-the-diy-magic-of-takehide-horis-junk-head/ Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/. Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing music from the JUNK HEAD soundtrack. Timestamps 0:00 - Episode 255: JUNK HEAD (2017) 1:46 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary 3:08 - Takahide Hori, MAD GOD (2022), and worldbuilding 21:43 - Disney, Dreamworks, Laika, Ghibli, and JUNK HEAD on the animation landscape 35:55 - Toyetic characters in a terrifying world 46:08 - Ideas tackled vs. what’s shown 57:31 - Alexander, Francis, Julian, and the ending 1:05:35 - Nico 1:10:06 - Other Loves We’ve Tried: 2017 1:10:20 - The Junk Drawer 1:13:42 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF! 1:17:33 - Cody’s Noteys: Sci-love (2017 sci-fi movie trivia)
- Visa fler
