Why Every Nominated Film Will Win the 2020 Oscar: A Pretty Much Pop Podcast Debate (ep. 30)

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | February 6th, 2020

The 2020 Acad­e­my Awards are near­ly upon us! Real­is­ti­cal­ly, most of you will find this episode well after the win­ners have already been announced, but seri­ous­ly, that should not affect your enjoy­ment of this dis­cus­sion. Your intre­pid non-film-crit­ic Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast hosts have each been ran­dom­ly assigned three of the best pic­ture nom­i­nees to argue for either for why it should with the Oscar, or if we real­ly don’t like it, why we think it will win any­way. The assign­ments were as fol­lows:

  • Mark Lin­sen­may­er: 1917, Lit­tle Women, Jok­er
  • Eri­ca Spyres: Jojo Rab­bit, Par­a­site, Once Upon a Time…in Hol­ly­wood*
  • Bri­an Hirt: Ford v Fer­rari,  Mar­riage Sto­ry, The Irish­man**

*Cov­ered in our ep. 12.
**Cov­ered in our ep. 29.

As we hash out the rel­a­tive mer­its of these films, we reflect on what it is to be an Oscar-win­ning type-of-film as opposed to one peo­ple might actu­al­ly enjoy watch­ing, pat­terns of what kinds of films win in which cat­e­gories, and the effect of view­ing con­di­tions, pri­or knowl­edge, and pre­con­cep­tions on our enjoy­ment.

In prepa­ra­tion, we all watched all nine films and looked at some of the pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive reviews about them. Here are a few more arti­cles cov­er­ing the Oscars more gen­er­al­ly that we also used to make our­selves more sus­cep­ti­ble to OSCAR FEVER.

The par­tic­u­lar neg­a­tive 1917 review Mark talks about was by Richard Brody. Here’s an arti­cle about Joaquin Phoenix impro­vis­ing his stunt work as Eri­ca men­tions. Speak­ing of Jok­er, have you heard the (sub)Text pod­cast pre­sen­ta­tion by Mark’s Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life co-host Wes Alwan on the psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic dimen­sions of that film?

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion mus­ing about past win­ners and 2020 act­ing cat­e­gories that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. 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 or start with the first episode.

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

in Film, Literature | February 4th, 2020

Why, in the course of two extra­or­di­nary films by Rid­ley Scott and Denis Vil­leneuve, do we nev­er learn what the term Blade Run­ner actu­al­ly means? Per­haps the mys­tery only deep­ens the sense of “super-real­ism” with which the film leaves audi­ences, including—and especially—Philip K. Dick, who only lived long enough to see excerpts. “The impact of Blade Run­ner is sim­ply going to be over­whelm­ing, both on the pub­lic and on cre­ative peo­ple,” he wrote. As usu­al, Dick saw beyond his con­tem­po­raries, who most­ly panned or ignored the film.

Dick seemed to have “had no beef with the fact Blade Run­ner was not a faith­ful adap­ta­tion of his nov­el,” writes David Bar­nett at the Inde­pen­dent. Not only did he not write a book called Blade Run­ner—the film was loose­ly adapt­ed from his 1968 book Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep?—but he also nev­er used those words, “Blade Run­ner,” to describe his char­ac­ters. “It’s not a phrase used in the book and it doesn’t real­ly make much sense in the con­text of the movie…. It’s sim­ply a throw­away slang for cops who hunt repli­cants.”

The phrase, as Keele Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Oliv­er Har­ris tells The Qui­etus, is so much more than that. It brings along with it “a weird back­sto­ry that tells us some­thing about how the Bur­roughs virus spreads around,” infect­ing near­ly every­thing sci­ence fic­tion­al and coun­ter­cul­tur­al over the past half-cen­tu­ry or so. That’s William S. Bur­roughs, of course, author of—among a few oth­er things—a 1979 nov­el­is­tic film treat­ment called Blade Run­ner: A Movie.

If Scott and screen­writer Hamp­ton Fanch­er had adapt­ed Bur­roughs’ night­mar­ish 21st cen­tu­ry to the cin­e­ma, we would have seen a much dif­fer­ent film—though one as whol­ly res­o­nant with our cur­rent dystopia. The sto­ry imag­ines “a med­ical-care apoc­a­lypse,” in which med­ical sup­plies like scalpels become smug­gled contraband—hence “blade run­ners.” Bur­roughs’ book is itself an adaptation—or a re-writ­ing and re-editing—of sci-fi writer Alan Nourse’s 1974 pulp sci-fi nov­el The Bladerun­ner.

It is Nourse who intro­duced the sce­nario of a “med­ical apoc­a­lypse” and who coined the term “blade run­ner,” though we owe its sep­a­ra­tion into two words to Bur­roughs. “Read­ing one text against the oth­er is fas­ci­nat­ing,” says Har­ris. “Nourse writes pedes­tri­an, real­ist prose with two-dimen­sion­al char­ac­ters who all talk in the same colour­less style.” Bur­roughs, on the oth­er hand, writes with “extra­or­di­nary econ­o­my, mas­tery of idiom, and wild­ly unbound imag­i­na­tion.”

In the crum­bling New York (not L.A.) of Bur­roughs’ future world, the gov­ern­ment con­trols its cit­i­zens “through the abil­i­ty to with­hold essen­tial ser­vices includ­ing work, cred­it, hous­ing, retire­ment ben­e­fits and med­ical care through com­put­er­i­za­tion.” Grant­ed, this might not seem to lend itself to a very cin­e­mat­ic treat­ment, but Bur­roughs was attract­ed to the cen­tral con­cept of Nourse’s book, one inher­ent­ly rich in human tragedy: “med­ical pan­demics appealed to his vision of a species in per­il, a plan­et head­ing for ter­mi­nal dis­as­ter.”

Dick imag­ined a species in per­il from a dif­fer­ent kind of infec­tion, as Bur­roughs would have it—artificial intel­li­gence. Was the most cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly-adapt­ed sci-fi nov­el­ist aware that he had indi­rect­ly helped rein­tro­duce a strain of the Bur­roughs virus—a para­noid, if jus­ti­fied, sus­pi­cion of authority—back into pop­u­lar cul­ture through Blade Run­ner? We might expect, giv­en his sta­tus in the sci­ence fic­tion com­mu­ni­ty at the time of his death, three months before the film debuted, that he might be aware of the con­nec­tion. But he gave no hint of it, leav­ing us to pon­der what Bur­roughs’ Blade Run­ner: The Movie, the movie, would be like, made with the skill and sen­si­bil­i­ty of a Scott or Vil­leneuve.

via The Verge

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Blade Run­ner Cap­tured the Imag­i­na­tion of a Gen­er­a­tion of Elec­tron­ic Musi­cians

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

How Jim Jar­musch Gets Cre­ative Ideas from William S. Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Method and Bri­an Eno’s Oblique Strate­gies

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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How Walter Murch Revolutionized the Sound of Modern Cinema: A New Video Essay Explores His Innovations in American Graffiti, The Godfather & More

in Film | February 3rd, 2020

Wal­ter Murch, per­haps the most famed film edi­tor alive, is acclaimed for the work he’s done for direc­tors like Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, George Lucas, and Antho­ny Minghel­la. As inno­v­a­tive and influ­en­tial as his ways for putting images togeth­er have been, Murch has done just as much for cin­e­ma as a sound design­er. In the video above Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer, exam­ines Murch’s sound­craft through what Murch calls “worldiz­ing,” which Filmsound.org describes as “manip­u­lat­ing sound until it seemed to be some­thing that exist­ed in real space.” This involves “play­ing back exist­ing record­ings through a speak­er or speak­ers in real-world acoustic sit­u­a­tions,” record­ing it, and using that record­ing on the film’s sound­track.

In oth­er words, Murch pio­neered the tech­nique of not just insert­ing music into a movie in the edit­ing room, but re-record­ing that music in the actu­al spaces in which the char­ac­ters hear it. Mix­ing the orig­i­nal, “clean” record­ing of a song with that song as re-record­ed in the movie’s space — a dance hall, an out­door wed­ding, a dystopi­an under­ground war­ren — has giv­en Murch a greater degree of con­trol over the view­er’s lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence. In some shots he could let the view­er hear more of the song itself by pri­or­i­tiz­ing the orig­i­nal song; in oth­ers he could pri­or­i­tize the re-record­ed song and let the view­er hear the song as the char­ac­ters do, with all the son­ic char­ac­ter­is­tics con­tributed by the space — or, if you like, the world — around them.

Puschak uses exam­ples of Murch’s worldiz­ing from Amer­i­can Graf­fi­ti and The God­fa­ther, and notes that he first used it in Lucas’ debut fea­ture THX 1138. But he also dis­cov­ered an ear­li­er attempt by Orson Welles to accom­plish the same effect in Touch of Evil, a film Murch re-edit­ed in 1998. What Welles had not done, says Murch in an inter­view with Film Quar­ter­ly, “was com­bine the orig­i­nal record­ing and the atmos­pher­ic record­ing. He sim­ply posi­tioned a micro­phone, sta­t­ic in an alley­way out­side Uni­ver­sal Sound Stu­dios, re-record­ing from a speak­er to the micro­phone through the alley­way. He did­n’t have con­trol over the bal­ance of dry sound ver­sus reflect­ed sound, and he did­n’t have the sense of motion that we got from mov­ing the speak­er and mov­ing the micro­phone rel­a­tive to one anoth­er.”

Doing this, Murch says, “cre­ates the son­ic equiv­a­lent of depth of field in pho­tog­ra­phy. We can still have the music in the back­ground, but because it’s so dif­fuse, you can’t find edges to focus on and, there­fore, focus on the dia­logue which is in the fore­ground.” In all ear­li­er films besides Welles’, “music was just fil­tered and played low, but it still had its edges,” mak­ing it hard to sep­a­rate from the dia­logue. These days, as Puschak points out, any­one with the right sound-edit­ing soft­ware can per­form these manip­u­la­tions with the click of a mouse. No such ease in the 1970s, when Murch had to not only exe­cute these thor­ough­ly ana­log, labor-inten­sive process­es, but also invent them in the first place. As any­one who’s looked and lis­tened close­ly to his work knows, that audio­vi­su­al strug­gle made Murch expe­ri­ence and work with cin­e­ma in a rich­ly phys­i­cal way — one that, as gen­er­a­tions of edi­tors and sound design­ers come up in whol­ly dig­i­tal envi­ron­ments, may not exist much longer.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

How the Sounds You Hear in Movies Are Real­ly Made: Dis­cov­er the Mag­ic of “Foley Artists”

Hear Dzi­ga Vertov’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Exper­i­ments in Sound: From His Radio Broad­casts to His First Sound Film

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

The Alche­my of Film Edit­ing, Explored in a New Video Essay That Breaks Down Han­nah and Her Sis­ters, The Empire Strikes Back & Oth­er Films

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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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Akira Kurosawa’s List of His 100 Favorite Movies

in Film, Life | January 30th, 2020

In movies like Sev­en Samu­rai and High and Low, direc­tor Aki­ra Kuro­sawa took the cin­e­mat­ic lan­guage of Hol­ly­wood and improved on it, cre­at­ing a vig­or­ous, mus­cu­lar method of visu­al sto­ry­telling that became a styl­is­tic play­book for the likes of Mar­tin Scors­ese, George Lucas and Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la. In movies like Ikiru, The Bad Sleep Well and The Low­er Depths, Kuro­sawa relent­less­ly strug­gled to find the rays of light among the shad­ows of the human soul. This philo­soph­i­cal urgency com­bined with his visu­al bril­liance is what gives his work, espe­cial­ly his ear­ly films, such vital­i­ty.

“One thing that dis­tin­guish­es Aki­ra Kuro­sawa is that he didn’t just make a mas­ter­piece or two mas­ter­pieces,” Cop­po­la said dur­ing an inter­view. “He made eight mas­ter­pieces.”

So when Kuro­sawa comes out with a rec­om­mend­ed view­ing list, movie mavens every­where should take note. Such a list was pub­lished in his posthu­mous­ly pub­lished book Yume wa ten­sai de aru (A Dream is a Genius). His daugh­ter Kazuko Kuro­sawa described the list’s selec­tion process:

My father always said that the films he loved were too many to count, and to make a top ten rank. That explains why you can­not find in this list many of the titles of the films he regard­ed as won­der­ful. The prin­ci­ple of the choice is: one film for one direc­tor, entry of the unfor­get­table films about which I and my father had a love­ly talk, and of some ideas on cin­e­ma that he had cher­ished but did not express in pub­lic. This is the way I made a list of 100 films of Kurosawa’s choice.

Orga­nized chrono­log­i­cal­ly, the list starts with D.W. Griffith’s Bro­ken Blos­soms and ends with Takeshi Kitano’s Hana-Bi. In between is a remark­ably thor­ough and diverse col­lec­tion of films, mix­ing in equal parts Hol­ly­wood, art house and Japan­ese clas­sics. Many of the movies are exact­ly the ones you would see on any Film Stud­ies 101 syl­labus — Truffaut’s 400 Blows, Car­ol Reed’s The Third Man and DeSica’s Bicy­cle Thieves. Oth­er films are less expect­ed. Hayao Miyazaki’s utter­ly won­der­ful My Neigh­bor Totoro makes the cut, as does Ishi­ro Hon­da’s Goji­ra and Peter Weir’s Wit­ness. His pol­i­cy of one film per direc­tor yields some sur­pris­ing, almost will­ful­ly per­verse results. The God­fa­ther, Part 2 over The God­fa­ther? The King of Com­e­dy over Good­fel­las? Ivan the Ter­ri­ble over Bat­tle­ship Potemkin? The Birds over Ver­ti­go? Bar­ry Lyn­don over pret­ty much any­thing else that Stan­ley Kubrick did? And while I am pleased that Mikio Naruse gets a nod for Ukigu­mo – in a just world, Naruse would be as read­i­ly praised and cel­e­brat­ed as his con­tem­po­raries Yasu­jiro Ozu and Ken­ji Mizoguchi – I am also struck by the list’s most glar­ing, and curi­ous, omis­sion. There’s no Orson Welles.

You can see his 100 essen­tial movies below. Above we have the sec­ond film on the list, The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari, which you can oth­er­wise find in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

1. Bro­ken Blos­soms or The Yel­low Man and the Girl (Grif­fith, 1919) USA
2. Das Cab­i­net des Dr. Cali­gari [The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari] (Wiene, 1920) Ger­many
3. Dr. Mabuse, der Spiel­er – Ein Bild der Zeit (Part 1 — Part 2) [Dr. Mabuse, the Gam­bler] (Lang, 1922) Ger­many
4. The Gold Rush (Chap­lin, 1925) USA
5. La Chute de la Mai­son Ush­er [The Fall of the House of Ush­er] (Jean Epstein, 1928) France
6. Un Chien Andalou [An Andalu­sian Dog] (Bunuel, 1928) France
7. Moroc­co (von Stern­berg, 1930) USA
8. Der Kongress Tanzt (Charell, 1931) Ger­many
9. Die 3groschenoper [The Three­pen­ny Opera] (Pab­st, 1931) Ger­many
10. Leise Fle­hen Meine Lieder [Lover Divine] (Forst, 1933) Austria/Germany
11. The Thin Man (Dyke, 1934) USA
12. Tonari no Yae-chan [My Lit­tle Neigh­bour, Yae] (Shi­mazu, 1934) Japan
13. Tange Sazen yowa: Hyaku­man ryo no tsubo [Sazen Tange and the Pot Worth a Mil­lion Ryo] (Yamana­ka, 1935) Japan
14. Akan­ishi Kaki­ta [Capri­cious Young Men] (Ita­mi, 1936) Japan
15. La Grande Illu­sion [The Grand Illu­sion] (Renoir, 1937) France
16. Stel­la Dal­las (Vidor, 1937) USA
17. Tsuzurika­ta Kyoshit­su [Lessons in Essay] (Yamamo­to, 1938) Japan
18. Tsuchi [Earth] (Uchi­da, 1939) Japan
19. Ninotch­ka (Lubitsch, 1939) USA
20. Ivan Groznyy I, Ivan Groznyy II: Boyarsky Zagov­or [Ivan the Ter­ri­ble Parts I and II] (Eisen­stein, 1944–46) Sovi­et Union
21. My Dar­ling Clemen­tine (Ford, 1946) USA
22. It’s a Won­der­ful Life (Capra, 1946) USA
23. The Big Sleep (Hawks, 1946) USA
24. Ladri di Bici­clette [The Bicy­cle Thief] [Bicy­cle Thieves] (De Sica, 1948) Italy
25. Aoi san­myaku [The Green Moun­tains] (Imai, 1949) Japan
26. The Third Man (Reed, 1949) UK
27. Ban­shun [Late Spring] (Ozu, 1949) Japan
28. Orpheus (Cocteau, 1949) France
29. Karu­men kokyo ni kaeru [Car­men Comes Home] (Kinoshi­ta, 1951) Japan
30. A Street­car Named Desire (Kazan, 1951) USA
31. Thérèse Raquin [The Adul­tress] (Carne 1953) France
32. Saikaku ichidai onna [The Life of Oharu] (Mizoguchi, 1952) Japan
33. Viag­gio in Italia [Jour­ney to Italy] (Rosselli­ni, 1953) Italy
34. Goji­ra [Godzil­la] (Hon­da, 1954) Japan
35. La Stra­da (Felli­ni, 1954) Italy
36. Ukigu­mo [Float­ing Clouds] (Naruse, 1955) Japan
37. Pather Pan­chali [Song of the Road] (Ray, 1955) India
38. Dad­dy Long Legs (Neg­ule­sco, 1955) USA
39. The Proud Ones (Webb, 1956) USA
40. Baku­mat­su taiy­o­den [Sun in the Last Days of the Shogu­nate] (Kawashima, 1957) Japan
41. The Young Lions (Dmytryk, 1957) USA
42. Les Cousins [The Cousins] (Chabrol, 1959) France
43. Les Quarte Cents Coups [The 400 Blows] (Truf­faut, 1959) France
44. A bout de Souf­fle [Breath­less] (Godard, 1959) France
45. Ben-Hur (Wyler, 1959) USA
46. Oto­to [Her Broth­er] (Ichikawa, 1960) Japan
47. Une aus­si longue absence [The Long Absence] (Colpi, 1960) France/Italy
48. Le Voy­age en Bal­lon [Stow­away in the Sky] (Lam­or­isse, 1960) France
49. Plein Soleil [Pur­ple Noon] (Clement, 1960) France/Italy
50. Zazie dans le métro [Zazie on the Subway](Malle, 1960) France/Italy
51. L’Annee derniere a Marien­bad [Last Year in Marien­bad] (Resnais, 1960) France/Italy
52. What Ever Hap­pened to Baby Jane? (Aldrich, 1962) USA
53. Lawrence of Ara­bia (Lean, 1962) UK
54. Melodie en sous-sol [Any Num­ber Can Win] (Verneuil, 1963) France/Italy
55. The Birds (Hitch­cock, 1963) USA
56. Il Deser­to Rosso [The Red Desert](Antonioni, 1964) Italy/France
57. Who’s Afraid of Vir­ginia Woolf? (Nichols, 1966) USA
58. Bon­nie and Clyde (Penn, 1967) USA
59. In the Heat of the Night (Jew­i­son, 1967) USA
60. The Charge of the Light Brigade (Richard­son, 1968) UK
61. Mid­night Cow­boy (Schlesinger, 1969) USA
62. MASH (Alt­man, 1970) USA
63. John­ny Got His Gun (Trum­bo, 1971) USA
64. The French Con­nec­tion (Fried­kin, 1971) USA
65. El espíritu de la col­me­na [Spir­it of the Bee­hive] (Erice, 1973) Spain
66. Sol­yaris [Solaris] (Tarkovsky, 1972) Sovi­et Union
67. The Day of the Jack­al (Zin­ne­man, 1973) UK/France
68. Grup­po di famiglia in un inter­no [Con­ver­sa­tion Piece] (Vis­con­ti, 1974) Italy/France
69. The God­fa­ther Part II (Cop­po­la, 1974) USA
70. San­dakan hachiban­shokan bohkyo [San­dakan 8] (Kumai, 1974) Japan
71. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (For­man, 1975) USA
72. O, Thi­as­sos [The Trav­el­ling Play­ers] (Angelopou­los, 1975) Greece
73. Bar­ry Lyn­don (Kubrick, 1975) UK
74. Daichi no komo­ri­u­ta [Lul­la­by of the Earth] (Masumu­ra, 1976) Japan
75. Annie Hall (Allen, 1977) USA
76. Neokonchen­naya pye­sa dlya mekhanich­esko­go piani­no [Unfin­ished Piece for Mechan­i­cal Piano] (Mikhalkov, 1977) Sovi­et Union
77. Padre Padrone [My Father My Mas­ter] (P. & V. Taviani, 1977) Italy
78. Glo­ria (Cas­savetes, 1980) USA
79. Haruka­naru yama no yobi­goe [A Dis­tant Cry From Spring] (Yama­da, 1980) Japan
80. La Travi­a­ta (Zef­firelli, 1982) Italy
81. Fan­ny och Alexan­der [Fan­ny and Alexan­der] (Bergman, 1982) Sweden/France/West Ger­many
82. Fitz­car­ral­do (Her­zog, 1982) Peru/West Ger­many
83. The King of Com­e­dy (Scors­ese, 1983) USA
84. Mer­ry Christ­mas Mr. Lawrence (Oshi­ma, 1983) UK/Japan/New Zealand
85. The Killing Fields (Joffe 1984) UK
86. Stranger Than Par­adise (Jar­musch, 1984) USA/ West Ger­many
87. Dong­dong de Jiaqi [A Sum­mer at Grand­pa’s] (Hou, 1984) Tai­wan
88. Paris, Texas (Wen­ders, 1984) France/ West Ger­many
89. Wit­ness (Weir, 1985) USA
90. The Trip to Boun­ti­ful (Mas­ter­son, 1985) USA
91. Otac na sluzbenom putu [When Father was Away on Busi­ness] (Kus­turi­ca, 1985) Yugoslavia
92. The Dead (Hus­ton, 1987) UK/Ireland/USA
93. Khane-ye doust kod­jast? [Where is the Friend’s Home] (Kiarosta­mi, 1987) Iran
94. Bagh­dad Cafe [Out of Rosen­heim] (Adlon, 1987) West Germany/USA
95. The Whales of August (Ander­son, 1987) USA
96. Run­ning on Emp­ty (Lumet, 1988) USA
97. Tonari no totoro [My Neigh­bour Totoro] (Miyaza­ki, 1988) Japan
98. A un [Bud­dies] (Furuha­ta, 1989) Japan
99. La Belle Noiseuse [The Beau­ti­ful Trou­ble­mak­er] (Riv­ette, 1991) France/Switzerland
100. Hana-bi [Fire­works] (Kitano, 1997) Japan

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Jan­u­ary 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Did Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Make Such Pow­er­ful & Endur­ing Films? A Wealth of Video Essays Break Down His Cin­e­mat­ic Genius

David Lynch Lists His Favorite Films & Direc­tors, Includ­ing Felli­ni, Wilder, Tati & Hitch­cock

Andrei Tarkovsky Cre­ates a List of His 10 Favorite Films (1972)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa & Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la Star in Japan­ese Whisky Com­mer­cials (1980)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Scorsese’s The Irishman in the Context of his Oeuvre–Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #29 Featuring Colin Marshall

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | January 30th, 2020

What dis­tin­guish­es the high­ly laud­ed 2019 film The Irish­man with­in direc­tor Mar­tin Scors­ese’s body of work? Fre­quent Open Cul­ture con­trib­u­tor Col­in Mar­shall joins Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to talk about what we do and don’t con­nect with in Scors­ese’s work and how these films qual­i­fy as “art films” despite their watch­a­bil­i­ty, not to men­tion the big bud­gets and stars.

We cov­er CGI age alter­ation, the con­nec­tion to The Jok­er, his com­ments about the Mar­vel fran­chise vs. him being a fran­chise unto him­self, his use of music, and mak­ing films as an old guy. We hit par­tic­u­lar­ly on Rag­ing Bull, Taxi Dri­ver, Bring­ing out the Dead, The King of Com­e­dy, Good­fel­las, Gangs of New York,  The Depart­ed, Casi­no, Silence, and Cape Fear. (There are no sig­nif­i­cant spoil­ers about any of these oth­er films, just The Irish­man.)

Beyond just watch­ing or re-watch­ing a lot of films, here are some arti­cles we used to prep:

Col­in rec­om­mends the books Easy Rid­ers, Rag­ing Bulls, Scors­ese on Scors­ese, and Gang­ster Priest: The Ital­ian Amer­i­can Cin­e­ma of Mar­tin Scors­ese. Read Col­in’s Open Cul­ture arti­cles on Scors­ese. Also, Col­in reviews The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life in 2012.

Here’s that clip from Sin­gles about “the next Mar­tin Scorseeze.” Here’s Peter Boyle in Taxi Dri­ver giv­ing “Wiz­ard” advice. Watch Abed in Com­mu­ni­ty con­sid­er whether Nico­las Cage is good or bad.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. 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 or start with the first episode.

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The Secret of the “Perfect Montage” at the Heart of Parasite, the Korean Film Now Sweeping World Cinema

in Film | January 28th, 2020

For near­ly as long as mankind has tried to com­mit the per­fect crime, mankind has tried to tell sto­ries of the per­fect crime. Both endeav­ors demand inten­sive plan­ning, the sto­ry of the crime per­haps even more rig­or­ous­ly so than the crime itself. No less obses­sive a teller and reteller of “per­fect crime” sto­ries than Alfred Hitch­cock knew that well, and so he remains an icon of such sto­ry­telling in cin­e­ma. Hence the visu­al ref­er­ence, albeit a van­ish­ing­ly brief one, to the mas­ter of sus­pense in Kore­an block­buster auteur Bong Joon-ho’s Par­a­site, which has run vic­to­ry laps around the world ever since win­ning the Palme d’Or last year. Or so Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer, tells it in his new video essay on Par­a­site’s “per­fect mon­tage.”

This mon­tage comes at the end of the film’s first act, about 40 min­utes in, at which point Bong has clear­ly estab­lished the plot, both in the sense of the sequence of events that sets the sto­ry in motion, and of the devi­ous plan devised by the main char­ac­ters. Those main char­ac­ters are the Kims, a poor fam­i­ly in Seoul who, one by one, ingra­ti­ate them­selves with and obtain employ­ment with­in the house­hold of a rich fam­i­ly, the Parks — all while pre­tend­ing not to be relat­ed. After the father becomes the Parks’ chauf­feur, the son becomes their Eng­lish tutor, the daugh­ter becomes their art ther­a­pist, the Kims all work togeth­er to get the moth­er hired as the house­keep­er. But this requires the dis­place­ment of the rich fam­i­ly’s exist­ing house­keep­er, who’s worked in the home ever since it was first built.

That dis­place­ment is the sub­ject of the mon­tage, which over five min­utes relays to the view­er both how the Kims devise their plan — which involves turn­ing the old house­keep­er’s peach aller­gy into a seem­ing case of tuber­cu­lo­sis — and how they pull it off. Puschak under­scores “how bal­let­ic every­thing is, helped along by a clas­si­cal piece from Han­del’s Rodelin­da,” as well as the “mes­mer­ic” qual­i­ty enriched by Bong’s use of “both slow-motion and lin­ear cam­era moves.” Pre­sent­ing new infor­ma­tion in each and every one of its 60 shots, the mon­tage also fore­shad­ows com­ing events and ref­er­ences pre­vi­ous ones with­in itself, inspir­ing Puschak to com­pare it to a con­ver­sa­tion, and lat­er to “an organ­ism all its own.”

All well and good as a demon­stra­tion of cin­e­mat­ic tech­nique, and indeed “a tes­ta­ment to Bong Joon-ho’s con­trol of his craft.” But unless form aligns with sub­stance, no art can attain great­ness; what makes this a “per­fect mon­tage” is how its very per­fec­tion reflects that of the Kim fam­i­ly’s machi­na­tions — at least at the point in the film at which it arrives. As with most sto­ries of the per­fect crime, things start to fall apart there­after, though even as they do, Bong’s hand (as well as that of his edi­tor Yang Jin-mo) nev­er fal­ters. This sequence, and Par­a­site as a whole, would sure­ly com­mand the respect of Alfred Hitch­cock. But Hitch­cock would also rec­og­nize, as Bong him­self must, that a mon­tage can always be more fine­ly tuned. There may be no such thing as the per­fect crime, but it remains a promis­ing the­mat­ic vehi­cle for get­ting ever clos­er to per­fec­tion in cin­e­ma.

Below, as an added bonus, you can watch the direc­tor him­self break down Par­a­site’s open­ing scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP-eqx2X9AY

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

How David Lynch Manip­u­lates You: A Close Read­ing of Mul­hol­land Dri­ve

Mar­tin Scors­ese Intro­duces Film­mak­er Hong Sang­soo, “The Woody Allen of Korea”

The Five Best North Kore­an Movies: Watch Them Free Online

A Crash Course on Sovi­et Mon­tage, the Russ­ian Approach to Film­mak­ing That Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Cin­e­ma

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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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A Concise Breakdown of How Time Travel Works in Popular Movies, Books & TV Shows

in Film, Literature, Sci Fi | January 24th, 2020

As least since H.G. Wells’ 1895 nov­el The Time Machine, time trav­el has been a promis­ing sto­ry­telling con­cept. Alas, it has sel­dom deliv­ered on that promise: whether their char­ac­ters jump for­ward into the future, back­ward into the past, or both, the past 125 years of time-trav­el sto­ries have too often suf­fered from inel­e­gance, incon­sis­ten­cy, and implau­si­bil­i­ty. Well, of course they’re implau­si­ble, every­one but Ronald Mal­lett might say — they’re sto­ries about time trav­el. But fic­tion only has to work on its own terms, not real­i­ty’s. The trou­ble is that the fic­tion of time trav­el can all too eas­i­ly stum­ble over the poten­tial­ly infi­nite con­vo­lu­tions and para­dox­es inher­ent in the sub­ject mat­ter.

In the Min­utePhysics video above, Hen­ry Reich sorts out how time-trav­el sto­ries work (and fail to work) using noth­ing but mark­ers and paper. For the time-trav­el enthu­si­ast, the core inter­est of such fic­tions isn’t so much the spec­ta­cle of char­ac­ters hurtling into the future or past but “the dif­fer­ent ways time trav­el can influ­ence causal­i­ty, and thus the plot, with­in the uni­verse of each sto­ry.” As an exam­ple of “100 per­cent real­is­tic trav­el” Reich points to Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, in which space trav­el­ers at light speed expe­ri­ence only days or months while years pass back on Earth. The same thing hap­pens in Plan­et of the Apes, whose astro­nauts return from space think­ing they’ve land­ed on the wrong plan­et when they’ve actu­al­ly land­ed in the dis­tant future.

But when we think of time trav­el per se, we more often think of sto­ries about how active­ly trav­el­ing to the past, say, can change its future — and thus the sto­ry’s “present.” Reich pos­es two major ques­tions to ask about such sto­ries. The first is “whether or not the time trav­el­er is there when his­to­ry hap­pens the first time around. Was “the time-trav­el­ing ver­sion of you always there to begin with?” Or “does the very act of time trav­el­ing to the past change what hap­pened and force the uni­verse onto a dif­fer­ent tra­jec­to­ry of his­to­ry from the one you expe­ri­enced pri­or to trav­el­ing?” The sec­ond ques­tion is “who has free will when some­body is time trav­el­ing” — that is, “whose actions are allowed to move his­to­ry onto a dif­fer­ent tra­jec­to­ry, and whose aren’t?”

We can all look into our own pasts for exam­ples of how our favorite time-trav­el sto­ries have dealt with those ques­tions. Reich cites such well-known time-trav­el­ers’ tales as A Christ­mas Car­ol, Ground­hog Day, and Bill & Ted’s Excel­lent Adven­ture, as well, of course, as Back to the Future, the most pop­u­lar drama­ti­za­tion of the the­o­ret­i­cal chang­ing of his­tor­i­cal time­lines caused by trav­el into the past. Rian John­son’s Loop­er treats that phe­nom­e­non more com­plex­ly, allow­ing for more free will and tak­ing into account more of the effects a char­ac­ter in one time peri­od would have on that same char­ac­ter in anoth­er. Con­sult­ing on that film was Shane Car­ruth, whose Primer — my own per­son­al favorite time-trav­el fic­tion — had already tak­en time trav­el “to the extreme, with time trav­el with­in time trav­el with­in time trav­el.”

Har­ry Pot­ter and the Pris­on­er of Azk­a­ban, Reich’s per­son­al favorite time-trav­el fic­tion, exhibits a clar­i­ty and con­sis­ten­cy uncom­mon in the genre. J.K. Rowl­ing accom­plish­es this by fol­low­ing the rule that “while you’re expe­ri­enc­ing your ini­tial pre-time trav­el pas­sage through a par­tic­u­lar point in his­to­ry, your time-trav­el­ing clone is also already there, doing every­thing you’ll even­tu­al­ly do when you time-trav­el your­self.” This sin­gle-time-line ver­sion of time trav­el, in which “you can’t change the past because the past already hap­pened,” gets around prob­lems that have long bedev­iled oth­er time-trav­el fic­tions. But it also demon­strates the impor­tance of self-con­sis­ten­cy in fic­tion of all kinds: “In order to care about the char­ac­ters in a sto­ry,” Reich says, “we have to believe that actions have con­se­quences.” Sto­ries, in oth­er words, must obey their own rules — even, and per­haps espe­cial­ly, sto­ries involv­ing time-trav­el­ing child wiz­ards.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What’s the Ori­gin of Time Trav­el Fic­tion?: New Video Essay Explains How Time Trav­el Writ­ing Got Its Start with Charles Dar­win & His Lit­er­ary Peers

Pro­fes­sor Ronald Mal­lett Wants to Build a Time Machine in this Cen­tu­ry … and He’s Not Kid­ding

Mark Twain Pre­dicts the Inter­net in 1898: Read His Sci-Fi Crime Sto­ry, “From The ‘Lon­don Times’ in 1904”

What Hap­pened When Stephen Hawk­ing Threw a Cock­tail Par­ty for Time Trav­el­ers (2009)

Pret­ty Much Pop #22 Untan­gles Time-Trav­el Sce­nar­ios in the Ter­mi­na­tor Fran­chise and Oth­er Media

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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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Actor Margaret Colin (VEEP, Independence Day) Joins Pretty Much Pop #28 to Take On the Trope of the Alpha Female

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television, Theatre | January 23rd, 2020

What’s the deal with images of pow­er­ful women in media? The trope of the tough-as-nails boss-lady who may or may not have a heart of gold has evolved a lot over the years, but it’s dif­fi­cult to por­tray such a char­ac­ter unob­jec­tion­ably, prob­a­bly due to those all-too-famil­iar dou­ble stan­dards about want­i­ng women in author­i­ty (or, say, run­ning for office) to be assertive but not astrin­gent.

Mar­garet was the female lead in major films includ­ing Inde­pen­dence Day and The Dev­il’s Own, is a main­stay on Broad­way, and has appeared on TV in many roles includ­ing the moth­er of the Gos­sip Girl and as an unscrupu­lous news­cast­er on the final sea­sons of VEEP. Her height and voice have made her a good fit for dom­i­nant-lady roles, and she leads Mark, Eri­ca, and Bri­an through a quick, instruc­tive tour through her work with male direc­tors (e.g. in a pre-Mur­phy-Brown Dianne Eng­lish sit-com), play­ing the lead in three Life­time Net­work movies, on Broad­way as Jack­ie, and oppo­site Har­ri­son Ford, Al Paci­no, Melanie Grif­fith, Michael Shan­non, Wal­lace Shawn, and oth­ers.

Giv­en the lim­i­ta­tions of short-form sto­ry­telling in film, maybe some use of stereo­types is just nec­es­sary to get the gist of a char­ac­ter out quick­ly, but actors can load their per­for­mances with unseen back­sto­ry. We hear about the actor’s role in estab­lish­ing a char­ac­ter vs. the vision of the film­mak­ers or show-run­ners. Also, the rel­a­tive con­ser­vatism of film vs. stage vs. TV in grant­i­ng women cre­ative con­trol, the “fem­i­nine voice,” why women always appar­ent­ly have to trip in movies when chased, and more.

A few resources to get you think­ing about this top­ic:

Some­one’s post­ed a tape of Carousel fea­tur­ing Eri­ca and Mar­garet.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. 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 or start with the first episode.

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