Another Kind Of Distance: A Time Travel, Twin Peaks, Film, Doom Patrol And Nostalgia Podcast

After some rocky episodes, our Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view uncovers a couple of gems: Nobody Runs Forever aka The High Commissioner (1968, directed by Ralph Thomas), a spy thriller bursting at the seams with the charms of Rod Taylor and Christopher Plummer, and Hard Contract (1969, the only feature film made by writer-director S. Lee Pogostin), one of the most eccentric movies we've ever seen, a meditation on love, murder, and modern life with Lee Remick and James Coburn as an improbably moving pair of lovers. Lilli Palmer adds her own flavour of eccentricity to Hard Contract as Remick's "immorally innocent" friend and makes a big impact as Christopher Plummer's wife in Nobody Runs Forever. Time Codes: 0h 00m 30s:      NOBODY RUNS FOREVER (1968) [dir. Ralph Thomas] 0h 25m 53s:      HARD CONTRACT (1969) [dir. S. Lee Pogostin] +++ * 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 * In

For this Paramount 1947 Studios Year by Year episode we watch a couple of films by producer/director team of Seton I. Miller and John Farrow: California, starring the belligerent sexual tension of Barbara Stawyck and Ray Milland in a left-leaning fable about the establishment of law and order in the West Coast, and Calcutta, a terrific Alan Ladd/Gail Russell noir, stylishly shot by Billy Wilder fave John F. Seitz.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 30s:      CALIFORNIA [dir. John Farrow] 0h 25m 44s:      CALCUTTA [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.

For our June Special Subject we revisit the work of Kenji Mizoguchi, looking at two films from earlier than his best-known (in the West) period: The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (1939), about cross-class lovers and what it takes to become a great artist, and The 47 Ronin (1941), based on a true story that became emblematic of samurai values. Topics discussed include King Vidor parallels, feminism, Marxism, revenge tragedy, and propaganda and its subversion. Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      Brief Mizoguchi briefing 0h 08m 00s:      THE STORY OF THE LAST CHRYSANTHEMUM (1939) [dir. Kenji Mizoguchi] 0h 42m 11s:       THE 47 RONIN (1941) [dir. Kenji Mizoguchi] +++ * 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 Agai

This week's Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view sees Lilli in two small but crucial roles: Sebastian (1968), starring Dirk Bogarde as a Cold War cryptanalyst of divided political loyalties, and Oedipus Rex (1968), starring Christopher Plummer as Freud's favourite plaything of the gods. We discuss Cold War politics, the Swinging Sixties New Woman, free will, and the perils of adapting ancient Greek tragedy. And in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, we briefly discuss the final Powell Pressburgers of TIFF cinematheque's retrospective, A Matter of Life and Death and Canadiana curiosity 49th Parallel, as well as Elise's first big-screen Cassavetes, A Woman Under the Influence, and how no one should ever have parties.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 30s:      SEBASTIAN (1968) [dir. David Greene] 0h 23m 17s:       OEDIPUS THE KING (1968) [dir. Philip Saville] 0h 44m 11s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto:  A Matter of Life and Death (1946) and 49th Parallel (1941) by Powell & Pressburger; A Woman Under the

For this Universal 1946 episode, we chose a B-movie double bill, The Cat Creeps (directed by Erle C. Kenton, best known for Island of Lost Souls) and She-Wolf of London (directed by Jean Yarbrough, Abbott and Costello specialist), hoping for hidden gems. But did we find any? And in the Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, our Powell and Pressburger retrospective viewing continues with Black Narcissus and Michael Powell's notorious investigation of cinema, voyeurism, and violence, Peeping Tom. Time Codes:  0h 00m 30s:       THE CAT CREEPS [dir. Erle C. Kenton] 0h 12m 00s:       SHE-WOLF OF LONDON [dir. Jean Yarbrough] 0h 26m 03s:       Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Black Narcissus (1947) by Powell and Pressburger and Peeping Tom (1960) by Michael Powell 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

In this week's Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, we encounter more Nazis in a couple of movies very loosely based on real WWII incidents: Disney's Miracle of the White Stallions (1963), based on Operation Cowboy (but with the equine eugenics shoved into the subtext), and Operation Crossbow (1965), about the attempt by British Intelligence to stop the threat of Nazi rockets. Sophia Loren shares a great scene with Lilli Palmer in the latter, but to say more would be spoilers. In Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we discuss our viewings of two more Powell Pressburgers, A Canterbury Tale and The Tales of Hoffman, plus an adjacent film, The Thief of Bagdad (1940), a Korda production co-directed by Powell and starring Sabu and Rex Ingram.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 30s:      MIRACLE OF THE WHITE STALLIONS (1963) [dir. Arthur Hiller] 0h 21m 17s:      OPERATION CROSSBOW (1965) [dir. Michael Anderson] 0h 35m 04s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto: The Thief of Bagdad (1940) by Michael Powell, Tim Whelan &

This week we have a whopping big episode for you: Part 2 of our look at Samuel Goldwyn Productions, dealing with the 1940s; and, in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, brief discussions of three Powell and Pressburgers, kicking off TIFF's May retrospective. For this episode we watched The Little Foxes (directed by William Wyler), The Pride of the Yankees (directed by Sam Wood), The Best Years of Our Lives (Wyler again), and My Foolish Heart (directed by Mark Robson). From scheming capitalists to heroic baseball stars to casting a critical eye on post-WWII America to a grown-up soap opera that defies the Production Code, we consider the legacy of the innovative independent producer who not only hired intellectuals but let them do their thing.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 30s:      THE LITTLE FOXES (1942) [dir. William Wyler] 0h 26m 57s:      THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES (1942) [dir. Sam Wood] 0h 39m 40s:      THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946) [dir. William Wyler] 1h 01m 00s:      MY FOOLISH HEART (1949) [di

In this RKO 1946 episode we discuss Crack-Up (directed by Irving Reis), an eerie noir with a couple of great Expressionist set pieces. Pat O'Brien oozes vulnerability as a WWII vet and populist art critic who has to find out who's trying to make him look, or go, insane; Claire Trevor plays the love interest who's trying to help him (or is she?). Oh yeah, and we also watched Step By Step (directed by Phil Rosen), a goofy spy drama in which Lawrence Tierney gets to play a nice guy for once. Remember this episode when we watch Tierney and Trevor at their nastiest in Born to Kill, coming soon!   Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      STEP BY STEP [dir. Phil Rosen] 0h 17m 09s:      CRACK-UP [dir. Irving Reis] 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 Goldke

This week's Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode is a George Seaton double feature that once again gives us Lilli the sophisticate and Lilli the saint: in The Pleasure of His Company (1961), she plays the ex-wife of Fred Astaire, an absentee father whose plan to recapture his youth by seducing their daughter into becoming his travelling companion she sets out to foil; while in The Counterfeit Traitor, she's a member of the German anti-Nazi resistance who imparts a conscience to William Holden's reluctant spy. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto we cover our final Marguerite Duras viewings: her first film, La Musica, and two from near the end of her filmography, Agatha et les lectures illimitées and the formally radical L'homme atlantique.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      THE PLEASURE OF HIS COMPANY (1961) [dir. George Seaton] 0h 24m 25s:      THE COUNTERFEIT TRAITOR (1962) [dir. George Seaton] 0h 45m 10s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto: La Musica (1967), L’homme atlantique (1981) and Agatha et

This week's Fox 1946 Studios Year by Year episode features the strange bedfellows of Henry Hathaway's The Dark Corner, a curiously feminist film noir in which the tormented protagonist is saved by the persistence of a good woman (played by Lucille Ball), and Edmund Goulding's The Razor's Edge, based on a Somerset Maugham novel about spiritual enlightenment and bourgeois ennui, featuring Gene Tierney's best performance, although Anne Baxter won the Oscar. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, the TIFF Cinematheque Duras retrospective continues with Nathalie Granger, Baxter, Vera Baxter, Le Navire Night, and Les Enfants. We discuss comedy, mysticism, nihilism, recalcitrant children, and happy endings in Duras's films. Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      THE DARK CORNER [dir. Henry Hathaway] 0h 25m 04s:      THE RAZOR’S EDGE [dir. Edmund Goulding] 0h 52m 22s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto: Nathalie Granger (1972), Baxter, Vera Baxter (1977), Le Navire Night (1979) and Les Enfants (1984) – all by Marguerite D

Our examination of the film career of Lilli Palmer continues with a couple of excellent films that show us Palmer's range when playing "loveable": But Not for Me, in which she gives a comedic performance as the ex-wife of a Broadway producer played by Clark Gable, benevolently interfering in his budding relationship with young actress Carroll Baker; and Conspiracy of Hearts, in which Palmer plays an Italian Mother Superior who persuades her nuns to help Jewish children escape from a concentration camp. Penned by a couple of American blacklistees, Conspiracy of Hearts has a surprisingly complex view of religion, as But Not for Me does of age difference relationships, offering plenty of fodder for good movie talk! Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      BUT NOT FOR ME (1959) [dir. Walter Lang] 0h 24m 25s:      CONSPIRACY OF HEARTS (1960) [dir. Ralph Thomas] +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for t

For this Warner Bros. 1946 episode we watched two fantastical biopics, Devotion (directed by Curtis Bernhardt), starring Ida Lupino and Olivia de Havilland as Emily and Charlotte Brontë, and Night and Day (directed by Michael Curtiz), starring Cary Grant as Cole Porter and Monty Woolley as himself. We found them to be like night and day in terms of their quality, but you'll have to listen to find out which of the two we deemed redeemable. And then for something completely different: in a long Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, tragic love, communism, colonialism, demons, and various approaches to deconstructing cinema dominate our discussion of the first half of TIFF Cinematheque's Marguerite Duras retrospective.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      DEVOTION [dir. Curtis Bernhardt] 0h 33m 42s:      NIGHT AND DAY [dir. Michael Curtiz] 0h 46m 48s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto: Détruire dit-elle (1969), La femme du Gange (1974), India Song (1975), Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert (1976) and Le c

In our April Special Subject, Part 1 of our look at the films of Samuel Goldwyn, we discuss Dark Angel (1935), These Three (1936), Dodsworth (1936), and Wuthering Heights (1939), a selection heavy on Dave favourites Merle Oberon, William Wyler, and Gregg Toland. We ask in what sense these are "quality" films, and in what ways they escape our expectations of that category, calling attention to the theme of psychological violence in These Three and Wuthering Heights and the role played by gender double standards in the tragedies of Dark Angel and Dodsworth. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto we discuss Terry Zwigoff's Ghost World (2001) and draw a surprising conclusion about it.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      Brief Introduction to Samual Goldwyn 0h 12m 18s:      THE DARK ANGEL (1935) [dir. Sidney Franklin] 0h 31m 44s:      THESE THREE (1936) [dir. William Wyler] 0h 54m 40s:      DODSWORTH (1936) [dir. William Wyler] 1h 09m 24s:      WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1939) [dir. William Wyler] 1h 26m 12s:      Fear a

For this week's Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, we watched Jacques Becker's The Lovers of Montparnasse (1958), in which Palmer, playing Modigliani's rejected lover Beatrice Hastings, perfects her persona of brittle dissociation; and Mädchen in Uniform, the 1958 remake of the famous Weimar-era film about a teenager at an all-girls' boarding school who falls in love with her teacher. Our viewings provoke topics from the relationship between art and capitalism to the relationship between gender, sexuality, and militarism.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      LES AMANTS DE MONTPARNASSE (1958) [dir. Jacques Becker] 0h 34m 14s:       MADCHEN IN UNIFORM (1958) [dir. Giza Von Radvanyi] +++ * 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 – “

This MGM 1946 Studios Year by Year episode is a Jules Dassin double feature that shows the range of the famed blacklistee even during his most constrained studio period: the noirish romantic drama Two Smart People, about two con artists (Lucille Ball and John Hodiak) and a cop who are all out to con each other; and the remarkable A Letter for Evie (starring Marsha Hunt and Hume Cronyn), a very postmodern (but also hilarious) deconstruction of gender conventions that's also a moving romance.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      1946 at MGM and Hollywod (per John Douglas Eames) 0h 04m 22s:      TWO SMART PEOPLE [dir. Jules Dassin]            0h 26m 38s:      A LETTER FOR EVIE [dir. Jules Dassin] Studio Film Capsules provided by The MGM Story by John Douglas Eames Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler                                     +++ * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with th

For this Lilli Palmer episode of our Acteurist Oeuvre-view series, we watched another West German movie, Devil in Silk (directed by Rolf Hansen), and Life Together (directed by Clément Duhour), a tribute to famed French playwright, screenwriter, and film director Sacha Guitry with an all-star cast. We analyze the surprisingly sophisticated structure of Duhour and Guitry's horned-up middlebrow French comedy (warning: one of the comedy sequences discussed is disturbingly racist), while Devil in Silk answers a question it never occurred to us to ask: what would Leave Her to Heaven be like if Lilli Palmer played the Gene Tierney part?  Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      TEUFEL IN SEIDE (1956) [dir. Rolf Hansen] 0h 44m 04s:       LA VIE À DEUX (1958) [dir. Clément Duhour] +++ * 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

In this Paramount 1946 episode we look at two movies featuring Veronica Lake which otherwise could not be more dissimilar: Miss Susie Slagle's (directed by John Berry), about the trials of pre-WWI Johns Hopkins medical students living in a boarding house presided over by Lillian Gish; and famous Lake/Ladd noir outing, The Blue Dahlia (directed by George Marshall and written by Raymond Chandler). We discuss the potential influence of the leftists involved in making Miss Susie Slagle's on its portrayal of race and gender and debate the amount of damage done to The Blue Dahlia by the studio-mandated change to the plot. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we take a brief look at three very different movies: Tarkovsky's Nostalghia (stolen by a German Shepherd), Joseph L. Mankiewicz's A Letter to Three Wives (stolen by Linda Darnell), and Douglas Sirk's All I Desire (starring Barbara Stanwyck).  Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      MISS SUSIE SLAGLE’S [dir. John Berry] 0h 27m 06s:      THE BLUE DAHLIA [dir. George M

In this Universal 1945 episode of The  Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year, we look at a couple of noir-adjacent films, Robert Siodmak's The Suspect, starring Charles Laughton as an abused husband who looks for a way out of his miserable marriage when he meets sweet and lovely Ella Raines, and the comedy/crime film Lady on a Train, which stars Deanna Durbin as an exuberant and resourceful murder mystery addict who gets involved in a real investigation when she witnesses a murder from her train window. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we discuss three short documentaries about James Baldwin, along with another Douglas Sirk masterpiece, There's Always Tomorrow (1956).  Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      THE SUSPECT [dir. Robert Siodmak] 0h 27m 39s:      LADY ON A TRAIN [dir. Charles David] 0h 38m 11s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – TIFF Cinémathèque – There’s Always Tomorrow (1956) by Douglas Sirk and three short documentaries about James Baldwin Studio Film Capsules provided by The Universal Story by Cl

In this Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, we discuss Tay Garnett's Main Street to Broadway (1953), a pleasant curiosity with an all-star New York theatre cast, including Palmer and Rex Harrison in a brief sandwich-themed couple cameo, but nearly stolen by Lynchian radio humourist Herb Shriner; and Fireworks (1954), Palmer's first German film, in which she plays a circus performer possessed by the guiding spirit of her clown father, as she expresses in the well-known song "O mein Papa." And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we discuss Douglas Sirk's outlandish yet subdued mystical melodrama Magnificent Obsession and the depressive side of soap opera. Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      MAIN STREET TO BROADWAY (1953) [dir. Tay Garnett] 0h 24m 49s:      FEUERWERK (1954) [dir. Kurt Hoffman] 0h 43m 57s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – TIFF Cinémathèque – Magnificent Obsession  (1954) by Douglas Sirk +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Marvel a

For this RKO 1945 episode, two beautifully filmed noirs (by Harry J. Wild), Edwin L. Marin's Johnny Angel, another noir with a femme fatale (Claire Trevor) who loves too much (and gets a very unexpected - and gory - redemption), and Edward Dmytryk's Cornered, in which Dick Powell learns why you shouldn't hunt down Nazis and kill them with your bare hands, but doesn't seem very interested. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we discuss the 1982 documentary I Heard It Through the Grapevine, in which James Baldwin talks to the people who were there about the failures of the civil rights movement and what they say about America.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      JOHNNY ANGEL [dir. Edwin L. Marin] 0h 29m 15s:      CORNERED [dir. Edward Dmytrk] 0h 46m 40s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – TIFF Cinémathèque – I Heard it Through the Grapevine (1982) by Dick Fontaine & Pat Hartley 0h 53m 22s:      Listener mail with Simon!   Studio Film Capsules provided by The RKO Story by Richard B. Jewell & Verno