Stephen Sondheim’s 40 Favorite Films

in Film | December 10th, 2021

A true cineaste, a friend once told me, will have the most eclec­tic “best of” list, forged from a deep love of cin­e­ma and an absolute con­fi­dence in their choic­es. There will be no look­ing at a Great Movies book, no con­sid­er­a­tion of pub­lic taste. They have not a care for lega­cies or film schools. That’s why this recent­ly unearthed list of Stephen Sondheim’s favorite films is such a fas­ci­nat­ing read.

The com­pos­er passed away last month at 91, hav­ing changed Broad­way musi­cals from big and brassy pop­u­lar fare into some­thing that could tack­le strange and exper­i­men­tal themes and sto­ries yet be just as suc­cess­ful. He pro­vid­ed the lyrics for West Side Sto­ry and Gyp­sy, and then went on to a string of chal­leng­ing hits: Com­pa­ny, Fol­lies, A Lit­tle Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, Assas­sins.

The sub­ject mat­ters he tack­led were often dark and com­plex. He watched many of his musi­cals get the Hol­ly­wood treat­ment, occa­sion­al­ly wrote songs for cin­e­ma, and toyed with adapt­ing sev­er­al films for the stage, includ­ing Being There and Sun­set Boule­vard. So what must his film list be like?

Real­ly odd, is the answer. The pub­lished list is in alpha­bet­i­cal order, and there are very few clas­sics in there—Welles’ Cit­i­zen Kane, Bergman’s Smiles on a Sum­mer Night, Bresson’s Au Hasard Balt­haz­ar, and Kurosawa’s High and Low.

Con­spic­u­ous­ly miss­ing: oth­er musi­cals.

“The only kind of movie that held no inter­est for me what­so­ev­er was musi­cal,” he told the New York Times in 2003. ”We’re talk­ing about from the age of 10 to the age of 25. I knew the musi­cals because I would hear the songs, but I nev­er went out of my way to see them. Not the fab­u­lous Arthur Freed MGM unit, and it’s not that I thought they were bad. It’s what I loved were west­erns. Melo­dra­mas, even roman­tic come­dies. High dra­ma.’’

The inter­view sug­gests a method to the list—these were films Sond­heim loved but most had not seen; he would insist friends and col­lab­o­ra­tors watch them. That’s how he describes 1980’s The Con­tract, direct­ed by Krzysztof Zanus­si, a “movie of his I find so extra­or­di­nary, I want to share it with every­body,’’ he said.

Born in 1930, Sondheim’s favorite decade (by movie count) is his teenage years, from the fan­ta­sy of Michael Powell’s The Thief of Bag­dad to the hor­ror of Dead of Night. Lat­er years are more scat­ter­shot, with Lynch’s The Ele­phant Man and Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap being stand-out choic­es. His 1990s selec­tions, right up through the mid-2000s show his con­tin­u­ing inter­est in dark themes (Gus Van Zant’s school shoot­ing mood piece Ele­phant), large nov­el­is­tic inter­twin­ing nar­ra­tives (John Sayles’ Lone Star) and com­pli­cat­ed fam­i­ly dra­mas (Denys Arcand’s The Bar­bar­ian Inva­sions).

Sond­heim fans will find much to chew over on this list, that is, if they’ve even seen most of them. My per­cent­age is admit­ted­ly low, let us know yours in the com­ments.

via @j_fassler

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Stephen Sond­heim (RIP) Teach a Kid How to Sing “Send In the Clowns”

James Tay­lor Teach­es You to Play “Car­oli­na in My Mind,” “Fire and Rain” & Oth­er Clas­sics on the Gui­tar

Mar­tin Scors­ese Names His Top 10 Films in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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How Peter Jackson Used Artificial Intelligence to Restore the Video & Audio Featured in The Beatles: Get Back

in Artificial Intelligence, Film, Music, Technology | December 6th, 2021

Much has been made in recent years of the “de-aging” process­es that allow actors to cred­i­bly play char­ac­ters far younger than them­selves. But it has also become pos­si­ble to de-age film itself, as demon­strat­ed by Peter Jack­son’s cel­e­brat­ed new docu-series The Bea­t­les: Get Back. The vast major­i­ty of the mate­r­i­al that com­pris­es its near­ly eight-hour run­time was orig­i­nal­ly shot in 1969, under the direc­tion of Michael Lind­say-Hogg for the doc­u­men­tary that became Let It Be.

Those who have seen both Lin­day-Hog­g’s and Jack­son’s doc­u­men­taries will notice how much sharp­er, smoother, and more vivid the very same footage looks in the lat­ter, despite the six­teen-mil­lime­ter film hav­ing lan­guished for half a cen­tu­ry. The kind of visu­al restora­tion and enhance­ment seen in Get Back was made pos­si­ble by tech­nolo­gies that have only emerged in the past few decades — and pre­vi­ous­ly seen in Jack­son’s They Shall Not Grow Old, a doc­u­men­tary acclaimed for its restora­tion of cen­tu­ry-old World War I footage to a time-trav­el-like degree of verisimil­i­tude.

“You can’t actu­al­ly just do it with off-the-shelf soft­ware,” Jack­son explained in an inter­view about the restora­tion process­es involved in They Shall Not Grow Old. This neces­si­tat­ed mar­shal­ing, at his New Zealand com­pa­ny Park Road Post Pro­duc­tion, “a depart­ment of code writ­ers who write com­put­er code in soft­ware.” In oth­er words, a suf­fi­cient­ly ambi­tious project of visu­al revi­tal­iza­tion — mak­ing media from bygone times even more life­like than it was to begin with — becomes as much a job of tra­di­tion­al film-restora­tion or visu­al-effects as of com­put­er pro­gram­ming.

This also goes for the less obvi­ous but no-less-impres­sive treat­ment giv­en by Jack­son and his team to the audio that came with the Let It Be footage. Record­ed in large part monau­ral­ly, these tapes pre­sent­ed a for­mi­da­ble pro­duc­tion chal­lenge. John, Paul, George, and Ringo’s instru­ments share a sin­gle track with their voic­es — and not just their singing voic­es, but their speak­ing ones as well. On first lis­ten, this ren­ders many of their con­ver­sa­tions inaudi­ble, and prob­a­bly by design: “If they were in a con­ver­sa­tion,” said Jack­son, they would turn their amps up loud and they’d strum the gui­tar.”

This means of keep­ing their words from Lind­say-Hogg and his crew worked well enough in the whol­ly ana­log late 1960s, but it has proven no match for the arti­fi­cial intelligence/machine learn­ing of the 2020s. “We devised a tech­nol­o­gy that is called demix­ing,” said Jack­son. “You teach the com­put­er what a gui­tar sounds like, you teach them what a human voice sounds like, you teach it what a drum sounds like, you teach it what a bass sounds like.” Sup­plied with enough son­ic data, the sys­tem even­tu­al­ly learned to dis­tin­guish from one anoth­er not just the sounds of the Bea­t­les’ instru­ments but of their voic­es as well.

Hence, in addi­tion to Get Back’s rev­e­la­to­ry musi­cal moments, its many once-pri­vate but now crisply audi­ble exchanges between the Fab Four. “Oh, you’re record­ing our con­ver­sa­tion?” George Har­ri­son at one point asks Lind­say-Hogg in a char­ac­ter­is­tic tone of faux sur­prise. But if he could hear the record­ings today, his sur­prise would sure­ly be real.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Paul McCart­ney Com­pose The Bea­t­les Clas­sic “Get Back” Out of Thin Air (1969)

Peter Jack­son Gives Us an Entic­ing Glimpse of His Upcom­ing Bea­t­les Doc­u­men­tary The Bea­t­les: Get Back

Lennon or McCart­ney? Sci­en­tists Use Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence to Fig­ure Out Who Wrote Icon­ic Bea­t­les Songs

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Pro­gram Tries to Write a Bea­t­les Song: Lis­ten to “Daddy’s Car”

Watch The Bea­t­les Per­form Their Famous Rooftop Con­cert: It Hap­pened 50 Years Ago Today (Jan­u­ary 30, 1969)

How Peter Jack­son Made His State-of-the-Art World War I Doc­u­men­tary They Shall Not Grow Old: An Inside Look

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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What Movies Teach Us About Mozart: Exploring the Cinematic Uses of His Famous Lacrimosa

in Film, Music | December 1st, 2021

In the annals of sur­pris­ing­ly impres­sive IMDb pages, few can sur­pass that of Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart. Despite hav­ing died a cen­tu­ry before the birth of cin­e­ma, he has racked up and con­tin­ues to rack up more com­pos­er cred­its each and every year. Many of these owe to the use of one piece, indeed one move­ment, in par­tic­u­lar: the Lac­rimosa from his Requiem, which con­tains the very last notes he ever wrote. “We should prob­a­bly expect some of these uses to have a somber, fune­re­al qual­i­ty, and they do,” says Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer, in the new video essay above. In Amadeus, Miloš For­man’s film about the com­pos­er him­self, the piece accom­pa­nies a sequence show­ing “Mozart’s dead body being uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly trans­port­ed and dumped into a mass grave.”

The short­com­ings of Mozart’s bur­ial have sure­ly been com­pen­sat­ed for by the glo­ries of his lega­cy. But that lega­cy includes all man­ner of uses of the Lac­rimosa in film and tele­vi­sion, both glo­ri­ous and inglo­ri­ous. Giv­en its “sense of both sus­pense and inevitabil­i­ty, which is a unique and potent com­bo,” it typ­i­cal­ly scores scenes of vio­lence and vil­lainy.

“The repeat­ed asso­ci­a­tion of Lac­rimosa with evil con­di­tions us to think of evil when we hear it, to the point that film­mak­ers choose it as a kind of short­hand, draw­ing on our mem­o­ries of its past uses.” Even­tu­al­ly this hard­ened into cin­e­mat­ic con­ven­tion, ulti­mate­ly becom­ing “such a trope that it works bril­liant­ly for par­o­dy and satire too,” as in The Big Lebows­ki’s meet­ing of its two tit­u­lar fig­ures. (Note that the music becomes muf­fled when the Dude leaves the room, imply­ing that Lebows­ki had actu­al­ly put it on him­self.)

Else­where, the Lac­rimosa has been mar­shaled to evoke such emo­tions as lone­li­ness, des­per­a­tion, and reck­on­ing — and even, in one of Puschak’s more recent exam­ples, “the immense, unruly pow­er of the social inter­net.” If such a phe­nom­e­non would be dif­fi­cult to explain to Mozart him­self, imag­ine show­ing him the tele­vi­sion series The Good Fight, where “Lac­rimosa ampli­fies the com­e­dy of a scene in which the lawyers get their hands on Don­ald Trump’s alleged ‘pee tape.’ ” But Mozart obvi­ous­ly under­stood full well the under­ly­ing artis­tic prin­ci­ples at work: Amadeus also depicts him com­pos­ing the Dies Irae, anoth­er of the Requiem’s move­ments, whose melody he adapts from a thir­teenth-cen­tu­ry Gre­go­ri­an funer­al mass. Even in his time, the music of the past offered a means of height­en­ing the feel­ings of the present. 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Creepy 13th-Cen­tu­ry Melody That Shows Up in Movies Again & Again: An Intro­duc­tion to “Dies Irae”

The Wicked Scene in Amadeus When Mozart Mocked the Tal­ents of His Rival Anto­nio Salieri: How Much Does the Film Square with Real­i­ty?

Ani­ma­tion Pio­neer Lotte Reiniger Adapts Mozart’s The Mag­ic Flute into an All-Sil­hou­ette Short Film (1935)

How Ser­gio Leone Made Music an Actor in His Spaghet­ti West­erns, Cre­at­ing a Per­fect Har­mo­ny of Sound & Image

Why Mar­vel and Oth­er Hol­ly­wood Films Have Such Bland Music: Every Frame a Paint­ing Explains the Per­ils of the “Temp Score”

Hear All of Mozart in a Free 127-Hour Playlist

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch Paul McCartney Compose The Beatles Classic “Get Back” Out of Thin Air (1969)

in Film, Music | November 30th, 2021


In its near­ly eight-hour run­time Peter Jack­son’s new doc­u­men­tary series The Bea­t­les: Get Back offers numer­ous minor rev­e­la­tions about the world’s favorite band. Among the film­mak­er’s avowed aims was to show that, even on the verge of acri­mo­nious dis­so­lu­tion, John, Paul, George, and Ringo enjoyed stretch­es of pro­duc­tive­ness and con­vivi­al­i­ty. Much else comes out besides, includ­ing that the cater­ing at Apple Corps head­quar­ters was mis­er­able (amount­ing most days to toast and diges­tive bis­cuits) and that, even amid the excess­es of the late 1960s, the Bea­t­les dressed more or less respectably (apart, that is, from George’s occa­sion­al­ly out­landish choic­es of out­er- and footwear). But it also lays bare exact­ly how they cre­at­ed a song.

The Bea­t­les went into these ses­sions with lit­tle mate­r­i­al pre­pared. All they knew for sure was that they had to come up with a set of songs to be record­ed live, with­out over­dubs, in order to “get back” to the sim­plic­i­ty that had char­ac­ter­ized their process before such aes­thet­i­cal­ly and tech­ni­cal­ly con­vo­lut­ed albums as Revolver and Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band. These they would then per­form in a con­cert film. The whole project was under­tak­en with what Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield calls a “mag­nif­i­cent arro­gance. In a way, that’s what helped keep them togeth­er, through all their ups and downs. With­out that lev­el of arro­gance, there’s no way an adven­ture as admirably daft as Get Back could hap­pen in the first place.”

Some­how, to the very end, that arro­gance always proved jus­ti­fied. For much of Jack­son’s Get Back, the Bea­t­les appear to be just screw­ing around, crack­ing jokes, drink­ing tea and beer, and launch­ing into abortive per­for­mances in car­toon voic­es. And that’s when every­one shows up. “Lennon’s late again,” says Paul in the clip above. “I’m think­ing of get­ting rid of him.” But instead of nurs­ing resent­ment for his unpre­dictable musi­cal part­ner, he sits down and starts play­ing. His first chords will sound famil­iar to any Bea­t­les fan, though they belong to a song that does­n’t yet exist. Paul then adds to his strum­ming a bit of most­ly non-ver­bal vocal­iza­tion, which soon coheres into a melod­ic line: we (and a yawn­ing George) are wit­ness to the birth of “Get Back.”

Dur­ing the life­time of the Bea­t­les, Paul seems to have been the most pro­duc­tive mem­ber. Even since the band’s end half a cen­tu­ry ago, music has con­tin­ued to flow unim­ped­ed from his mind, shaped as if by pure instinct. In that time it has become ever more well-doc­u­ment­ed that he moti­vat­ed the group to work, espe­cial­ly after the death of their man­ag­er Bri­an Epstein in 1967. While Get Back attests to a cer­tain over­bear­ing qual­i­ty in his atti­tude toward the oth­er Bea­t­les, it also shows how McCart­ney’s hard­work­ing-yet-free­wheel­ing exam­ple encour­aged each of them to express his own par­tic­u­lar genius. When George gets stuck on the end of a lyric, for exam­ple, he, too, sim­ply sings what­ev­er comes to mind. Hence the tem­po­rary line “Some­thing in the way she moves / Attracts me like a pome­gran­ate” — and we all know how that tune even­tu­al­ly turned out.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Jack­son Gives Us an Entic­ing Glimpse of His Upcom­ing Bea­t­les Doc­u­men­tary The Bea­t­les: Get Back

Paul McCart­ney Breaks Down His Most Famous Songs and Answers Most-Asked Fan Ques­tions in Two New Videos

Watch Pre­cious­ly Rare Footage of Paul McCart­ney Record­ing “Black­bird” at Abbey Road Stu­dios (1968)

Chaos & Cre­ation at Abbey Road: Paul McCart­ney Revis­its The Bea­t­les’ Fabled Record­ing Stu­dio

Watch The Bea­t­les Per­form Their Famous Rooftop Con­cert: It Hap­pened 50 Years Ago Today (Jan­u­ary 30, 1969)

The Bea­t­les’ 8 Pio­neer­ing Inno­va­tions: A Video Essay Explor­ing How the Fab Four Changed Pop Music

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch Hilarious Spoofs of Classic Film Genres: Film Noir, Spaghetti Westerns, Scandinavian Crime Dramas, Time Travel Films & More

in Comedy, Film, Podcasts, Television | November 29th, 2021

Come­di­an Alas­dair Beck­ett-King has a keen ear for enter­tain­ment tropes and sub­scribes to the belief that “putting too much effort into things makes them fun­nier.”

The result is a series of one-minute videos in which he spoofs the con­ven­tions of a par­tic­u­lar genre or long run­ning series, with per­fect visu­als, meta dia­logue, and faith­ful­ly ren­dered per­for­mance styles.

Beck­ett-King put his Lon­don Film School train­ing to use with this project dur­ing lock­down, spend­ing “absolute­ly ages putting togeth­er some­thing very tiny.”

Wit­ness his take on every episode of Star Trek: The Next Gen­er­a­tion, in which the cap­tain of the ship, a Patrick Stew­art dop­pel­gänger and “veg­e­tar­i­an space social­ist who is always right” nego­ti­ates with a “rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a kind of iffy alien race not nec­es­sar­i­ly based on a spe­cif­ic human eth­nic­i­ty.” As Beck­ett-King told Eric John­son, host of Fol­low Fri­day pod­cast:

That one was very, very hard work because I had to do a CGI bald cap for myself because I have long, long flow­ing hair. I had to try and do an impres­sion of Cap­tain Picard of the Star­ship Enter­prise… it’s not that good. There’s so much work that went into it.

Before I post­ed it, I was con­vinced I’d wast­ed my time. Then luck­i­ly it did quite well and peo­ple real­ly liked it. Peo­ple kept say­ing, “When are you doing Cap­tain Picard again?” I’m like, “I’m not! because it took ages to do the bald head, and you’ve seen it now.” I think what’s nice about it though, is you get to try some­thing, com­mit to it and then see if it’s fun­ny after­wards. It’s quite like doing live standup.

(Beckett-King’s part­ner Rachel Anne Smith gets cred­its for the non-CGI cos­tumes.)

Some oth­er favorites:

Every Sin­gle Scan­di­na­vian Crime Dra­ma: The killer could be any­one in Hel­ga­sund. That’s over sev­en peo­ple.

Every Sin­gle Spooky Pod­cast: The frozen soil was lit­tered with what appeared to be dis­card­ed Casper mat­tress­es and Bom­bas socks.

Every Sin­gle Spaghet­ti West­ern: Yeah, well your lips don’t synch…

Every Haunt­ed House Movie: It’s the per­fect place for me to quit drink­ing, fin­ish my nov­el, and real­ly come to terms with that deer we hit on the way over.

Every Episode of Pop­u­lar Time Trav­el Show: Help us, Doc­tor. The intran­si­gent Implaca­blons are poised to destroy us.

How Every Film Noir Ends: Talk your way out of a snub nosed pis­tol held at waist height.

Should you find your­self at loose ends, wait­ing for the next Beck­ett-King “every sin­gle…” episode to drop, try  bid­ing your time with his Art House Movie Spoil­ers and North East of Eng­land spin on Jaws.

Buy a Cof­fee for Alas­dair Beck­ett-King here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hard­ware Wars: The Moth­er of All Star Wars Fan Films (and the Most Prof­itable Short Film Ever Made)

Down­load a Com­plete, Cov­er-to-Cov­er Par­o­dy of The New York­er: 80 Pages of Fine Satire

The Time When Nation­al Lam­poon Par­o­died Mad Mag­a­zine: A Satire of Satire (1971)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­maol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Blade Runner and Alien TV Shows Confirmed by Ridley Scott

in Film | November 26th, 2021

Rid­ley Scott is 83, and good on him for not slow­ing down. The Last Duel came and went, but it actu­al­ly exist­ed and was an orig­i­nal idea, based on a true his­tor­i­cal event, and with a script from Nicole Holofcener, and fea­tured a re-team­ing up of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. And as of this writ­ing, House of Guc­ci is set to open and give us some sala­cious scan­dal and mur­der among the hoity and toit, just in time for Oscar sea­son. He’s even recent­ly dropped some hot takes against the super­hero movie fac­to­ry of Hol­ly­wood. So Scott’s doing well. Then why does this lat­est announce­ment feel so under­whelm­ing?

Accord­ing to a BBC inter­view on Mon­day, Scott is also devel­op­ing a 10-episode lim­it­ed series based on Blade Run­ner *and* a lim­it­ed series based on Alien, this time set on earth.

It’s not total­ly clear how much Scott is active­ly involved.

“We [have already] writ­ten the pilot for ‘Blade Run­ner’ and the bible,” he says, refer­ring to the mas­ter plan of the 10 episodes. “So, we’re already pre­sent­ing ‘Blade Run­ner’ as a TV show, the first 10 hours.” But who his co-cre­ators are, we don’t know right now. And there are sim­i­lar ques­tions in the upcom­ing Alien series, which has been rumored since 2020. Noah Haw­ley, who turned the Coen Bros. Far­go into some­thing like a jazz riff on the Coen’s films spread across sev­er­al decades, is set to be the showrun­ner.

The Blade Run­ner announce­ment has sent the pop media press into a tizzy, try­ing to guess where and when the new series will be set. After all, the 1982 film was set in a bleak, dystopi­an 2019, and the Denis Vil­leneuve sequel was set in a bleak, dystopi­an 2049. And it was only because of this announce­ment that I even knew of the Adult Swim ani­mat­ed series, Blade Run­ner: Black Lotus, which is set in a bleak, dystopi­an 2032. Times have changed, but the Los Ange­les of the future sure hasn’t. So when will it take place? Who knows?

Look, the two new series might be good, they might be meh, but Scott’s sud­den promi­nence at the end of 2021 feels like an encap­su­la­tion of media’s diver­gent paths. On one hand you have his two films, both orig­i­nal con­tent, one that might have a sec­ond life on stream­ing on and anoth­er that feels like it will have some buzz and lead peo­ple back to the cin­e­ma. Either way, they tell sto­ries with begin­nings, mid­dles, and ends. On the oth­er hand you have the con­tin­u­al fran­chise-ment of cul­ture, revis­it­ing and rehash­ing two excel­lent films from the ear­ly ‘80s that exist per­fect­ly well as stand­alone sto­ries. Do we real­ly need more sto­ries about the xenomorph? Do we need more sto­ries about a very damp Los Ange­les and its repli­cants? Is cul­ture at a stand­still? Are we doomed to recy­cle every­thing from the 1980s onward?

How­ev­er, if any­body should be mak­ing mon­ey off of Rid­ley Scott’s lega­cy it’s Scott him­self. Leave your thoughts in the com­ments below, while I put on this Van­ge­lis sound­track.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Expe­ri­ence Blade Run­ner Like You Nev­er Have Before Through a Fea­ture-Length Remas­tered Sound­track

The Sounds of Blade Run­ner: How Music & Sound Effects Became Part of the DNA of Rid­ley Scott’s Futur­is­tic World

Three Blade Run­ner Pre­quels: Watch Them Online

What is a Blade Run­ner? How Rid­ley Scott’s Movie Has Ori­gins in William S. Bur­roughs’ Novel­la, Blade Run­ner: A Movie

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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Dueling as a Film Trope: Pretty Much Pop #109 Considers The Last Duel and Its Genre

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | November 26th, 2021

In light of the release of The Last Duel (which you need­n’t have watched), we talk about the trope of the hon­or-resolv­ing duel in movies and TV. Mark and guest co-host Dylan Casey of The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life are joined by Clif Mark, host of the Good in The­o­ry pod­cast who wrote his polit­i­cal the­sis and a 2018 Aeon arti­cle on the his­to­ry and log­ic of duel­ing.

Since we’re all phi­los­o­phy pod­cast­ers on this one (our enter­tain­ment pod­cast­er guest dropped out at the last minute), we bring in philoso­phers like Hegel and Niet­zsche in as need­ed, the cir­cle of eth­i­cal con­cern (who gets moral sta­tus and so is wor­thy to duel?), and of course the rel­e­vant class and gen­der cri­tiques.

We also touch on The Duelists (inci­den­tal­ly, Rid­ley Scot­t’s direct­ing debut, where The Last Duel is his lat­est), The Duelist and The Duel (two 2016 films), A Knight’s Tale, The Princess Bride, Dune, Hamil­ton, Bridger­ton, The Karate Kid, and more.

For more infor­ma­tion on the specter of duel­ing in pol­i­tics, read about Justin Trudeau and Trump/Biden.

Some arti­cles that fed our dis­cus­sion (in addi­tion to Clif’s “What Is Offen­sive”) include:

Fol­low Clif @Clifton_Mark.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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The Gift: The Journey of Johnny Cash

in Film, Music | November 21st, 2021

YouTube Orig­i­nals presents The Gift: The Jour­ney of John­ny Cash:

John­ny Cash stands among the giants of 20th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can life. But his sto­ry remains tan­gled in mys­tery and myth. This doc­u­men­tary, cre­at­ed with the full coop­er­a­tion of the Cash estate and rich in recent­ly dis­cov­ered archival mate­ri­als, brings Cash the man out from behind the leg­end. Tak­ing the remark­able Fol­som Prison record­ing as a cen­tral motif and fea­tur­ing inter­views with fam­i­ly and cel­e­brat­ed col­lab­o­ra­tors, the film explores the artis­tic vic­to­ries, the per­son­al tragedies, the strug­gles with addic­tion, and the spir­i­tu­al pur­suits that col­ored John­ny Cash’s life.

The Gift: The Jour­ney of John­ny Cash will be added to our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More. Enjoy!

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent

John­ny Cash’s Short and Per­son­al To-Do List

Tom Pet­ty, Some­where You Feel Free – The Mak­ing of Wild­flow­ers Is Stream­ing Free on YouTube

Watch John­ny Cash’s Poignant Final Inter­view & His Last Per­for­mance: “Death, Where Is Thy Sting?” (2003)

John­ny Cash Stars as a Men­ac­ing, Musi­cal Gang­ster in 1961 Film Five Min­utes to Live

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