Get access to this entire episode as well as all of our premium episodes and bonus content by becoming a Hit Factory Patron for just $5/month.CW: Discussions of cinematic sexual assault and violence.Film Critic Lex Briscuso joins us to discuss Satoshi Kon's masterful animated psychological thriller Perfect Blue. The film follows Mima, a former J-Pop idol who has recently left the music group Cham! that made her famous and beloved in order to pursue a career as an actress. As Mima struggles to adapt to the demands of her new profession, she becomes the victim of an obsessive stalker and steadily begins to lose her grip on reality. Visceral, confounding, and richly layered with considerations about celebrity, artifice, and the toll of creating a public persona, Perfect Blue represents the very best animated cinema has to offer and showcases what the medium is capable of in the hands of a brilliant artist.We begin by unpacking the film's contemplations of public image and the fledgling internet; how Kon anticipates the production of digital avatars and how these versions of ourselves skew people's perceptions of our interiority. Then, we discuss Perfect Blue's perspective on patriarchal, predatory systems within entertainment and art, as well as how the film conveys the top-down proprietary relationships that we build around celebrity. Finally, we examine the film's core tragedy - the loss of agency and sense of self that necessary follows any participation within a larger system of public visibility and the subsequent collapse of solidarity these losses breed.Follow Lex Briscuso on Twitter.....Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish.
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15:43
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15:43
Last Action Hero feat. Christopher Jason Bell
Filmmaker Christopher Jason Bell (Miss Me Yet, Attention Shoppers) joins us to discuss Last Action Hero, a meta action comedy featuring too many ideas, a healthy serving of great jokes, and a fascinating reckoning for its star Arnold Schwarzenegger as he was aging into the second act of his movie star career. We begin with a conversation about the action hero vehicle, its dominance in the 1980s, and its turn to self-reference and parody in the early 1990s. Then, we explore Last Action Hero's bizarre combination of action movie tropes and lighter cartoon comedy logic that makes its satirical targets more difficult to identify. After, we address the ways the film incidentally exonerates itself from some of the more ideologically thorny tendencies of police films by embracing fantasy and drawing attention to its artifice. Finally, we spend some time discussing Chris's latest brilliant and beautiful film Failed State, how its component parts all came together, and what it means to be a filmmaker in our moment of constant crises and social alienation.Follow Christopher Jason Bell on TwitterWatch Chris's films on Means.tv Watch the trailer for Failed StateGet access to all of our premium episodes and bonus content by becoming a Hit Factory Patron for just $5/month.....Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish
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2:26:34
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2:26:34
BONUS: Highest 2 Lowest feat. Robert Daniels *TEASER*
Get access to this entire episode as well as all of our premium episodes and bonus content by becoming a Hit Factory Patron for just $5/month.Associate Editor at Roger Ebert Robert Daniels joins to discuss the latest Spike Lee joint Highest 2 Lowest, a loose reimagining of Akira Kurosawa's 1963 procedural masterpiece High & Low that marks the fifth collaborationg between Lee and the inimitable Denzel Washington. Thematically rich, unabashedly confrontational and occasionally baffling, Highest 2 Lowest is everything you would hope for from a late period Spike Lee picture, as Lee grapples with personal concerns about masculinity, the contradictions of Black capitalism, and the generational divide around the nature of authenticity in art when success has finally come your way.We begin with a discussion of the bold formal choices of Highest 2 Lowest, including the stylistic gambit of dividing the film firmly into two aesthetic halves; the first half marked by an austere, antiseptic, and artificial atmosphere that finally gives way to a more daring, brash and musical rhythm when the film descends on the streets of Spike's native New York, escaping the Dumbo high rise apartment of the film's early chapters. Then, we explore the film as autocritique, with Lee and Washington examining their positions as elder statesmen of Black artistry, and the push-pull of working within systems of capital built upon racialized heirarchies. Finally, we tackle the film's thorny political propositions, its conservative tendencies, and the thrill of trying to parse where exactly an artist like Spike Lee stands on the issues and questions he presents within the text.Read Robert Daniels on Highest 2 Lowest at Roger EbertRead Alphonse Pierre on Highest 2 Lowest at PitchforkFollow Robert Daniels on Twitter.....Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish
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11:33
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11:33
Guelwaar
We inaugurate (and conclude) our coverage of Senegalese master Ousmane Sembène with a discussion of his 1992 feature Guelwaar, the late filmmaker's only work of the decade. In essence a minor comedy of errors revolving around the misplaced body of a departed community leader and political agitator, Guelwaar transforms several times over into a profound and moving chronicle of national identity, religious conflict, and the material politics required to resist colonial rule. We begin with an explication of Sembène's politics and how his Marxism informs the social milieu of his works. Then, we praise the film's feminism, its many nuanced women characters, and the director's progressive standpoint on sex work . Finally, we relate Sembène's invocation of aid as a tool of imperial oppression to current situations ongoing in Gaza.Get access to all of our premium episodes and bonus content by becoming a Hit Factory Patron for just $5/month.....Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish
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2:27:07
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2:27:07
SLC Punk! feat. Julian Glander
3D artist, animator and director of the new film Boys Go to Jupiter Julian Glander joins us to discuss the live wire pleasures of SLC Punk! starring Matthew Lillard as a Stevo, a brash, blue-haired anarchist punk rocker who, alongside his best friend Bob, seeks meaning in the aimlessness of Salt Lake City, Utah. Though set amidst the deeply conservative Reagan 80s, the film belongs to the long lineage of early 90s slacker movies, navigating the push-pull of material stability at the expense of authenticity and self-actualization. We discuss the film's take on the punk in the 80s and how it finds common throughlines with 90s slacker culture through a flattening of the political contours of the anarcho-punk movement. Then, we explore how the film fluctuates between flattery and fetishization for its disaffected protagonists' lifestyle and critique of its shallowness, as well as the harsh realities of conforming to the capitalist systems we all seek to rebel against. Finally, we discuss Julian's new film Boys Go to Jupiter, and how it updates many of the concerns of the 90s slacker era, finding rich satirical terrain in the gig economy, hustle culture, and a system that asks us to choose between integrity and comfort. Go see Boys Go to Jupiter, now playing at a theater new you.Follow Julian on Twitter.Get access to all of our premium episodes and bonus content by becoming a Hit Factory Patron for just $5/month.....Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish
A podcast about the films of the 1990s, their politics, and how they inform today's film landscape. Exploring the output of a seemingly bottomless decade. America's first and only movie podcast.
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