Lost in Criterion

Spine 173: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

We return once again to films of The Archers, the illustrious British duo of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, with The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. Made during the blitz and released in 1943, Blimp is certainly a pro-war propaganda film, but specifically propagandizing what sort of war the British should be fighting. Spoiler: I find the moral of this film absolutely reprehensible. Pat doesn't find it much better

Spine 172: Pepe le moko

Julien Duvivier's early noir is a film so nice America remade it twice in under a decade.

Spine 171: Contempt

We give Jean-Luc Godard another shot and it really pans out for the best, considering Contempt (1963) is one of the greatest movies I've ever seen.

Spine 170: Trouble in Paradise

We have our first encounter with the legendary Ernst Lubitsch this week, with his 1932 film Trouble in Paradise. Released before the code was in effect, Trouble in Paradise has all the moral-rotting adult themes, innuendos, and victorious criminals the Motion Picture Production Code sought to protect us from. It also has, quite probably, my favorite opening establishing shot of Venice in any film ever.

Spine 167: The Complete Monterey Pop Festival

At the height of the Summer of Love powerhouses in pop music came together to hold the first Monterey Pop Music Festival, possibly the first pop music festival ever. D.A. Pennebaker was on hand to record the proceedings to be released as a film, though his footage was eventually released as three. We're talking all of them on this week's Lost in Criterion, including supplemental materials, as we explore the Complete Monterey Pop Festival box set containing Monterey Pop (1967), Jimi Plays Monterey (1986), and Shake! Otis at Monterey (1986).

Spine 166: Down by Law

It's just so much fun watching Roberto Benigni do anything.

Spine 165: Man Bites Dog

Man Bites Dog bites direct cinema in the butt.

Spine 164: Solaris

Stanislaw Lem, the author of the novel Solaris, hated Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 film adaptation so very very much, though as Pat points out in our extended conversation on what to do with the "death of an author" is the author just refuses to die, this is probably just because it was different from his vision. There's a lot to talk about here, and Pat and I do a lot of talking, though this episode could have easily been 5 hours long. It's not! Don't worry!

Spine 163: Hopscotch

Ronald Neame directs Hopscotch from 1980, a film co-written by Brian Garfield from his own novel, which is only interesting to point out in that Garfield also wrote the novel Death Wish. This movie is not Death Wish related, but isn’t that neat?

Spine 162: Ratcatcher

We here at Lost in Criterion have a thing for depressing coming-of-age stories. And there may be none more depressing than Lynne Ramsay's 1999 debut Ratcatcher. Set against the backdrop of the 1973 Glsagow garbage strike, Ratcatcher has all the child death of George Washington and the ambiguously (false?) positive ending of 400 Blows. Hurrah!

Spine 161: Under the Roofs of Paris

Under the Roofs of Paris, or Sous les toits de Paris, was Rene Clair's first sound film, released the year before our other two Clair's: Le Million and A nous la Liberte. Clair is full on just experimenting with sound and silence in this movie and it's brilliant. We've got scenes of action with no noise -- or a loud noise covering everything -- scenes of noise with no visible action, conversations that take place behind glass...as if Clair was forced to put sound into this film and his response was, "Oh yeah? I'll give you sound, alright" while rubbing his hands together. Beyond the technical marvel, it's a funny movie, though a bit light on plot as Pat is so quick to point out.

Spine 160: A Nous la Liberte

We're enjoying Rene Clair again, this time with his 1931 musical A Nous la Liberte. Like Le Million and, as we'll see next week, Under the Roofs of Paris, (and like Lang's M) Clair's early sound films are experimentation with the medium, playing with sound and silence, dialogue and ambient noise. It's a fascinating window into the mind of a creative person suddenly presented with new possibilities.

Holiday Special 4: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Every year we break out of the normal Criterion Collection journey for a special end of year episode watching a non-Criterion film that takes place at Christmas for no discernible reason. As always we're joined by dear friends -- that's important this time of year -- and this time around frequent guest Stephen Goldmeier and award-winning journalist Andrew Tobias join us in watching Christmas-fetishist Shane Black's 2005 directorial debut Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

Spine 159: Red Beard

Apparently Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune did not end their relationship on the best of terms, but if they had to part ways fighting, they still managed one heck of a film, but then could either ever make a bad film? Red Beard, from 1965, is not only the two greats' final collaboration, but also Kurosawa's finally black and white film. That probably makes it special, too, right?

Spine 158: The Importance of Being Earnest

If everyone where just open and honest with one another there would be no film.

Spine 157: The Royal Tenenbaums

White people love Wes Anderson, so a few white people join us to talk about his films. Joined by Jonathan and Casey Hape.

Spine 156: Hearts and Minds

I don’t often talk about our recording schedule, but this week’s episode is already terribly dated for terrible reasons. Pat and I watched Hearts and Minds, Peter Davis’s 1974 documentary on the Vietnam War, way back in September. I actually watched it on the 11th, because I don’t want to be happy. The world has changed a lot, even in the last eight weeks. On the one hand, we recorded this so long ago because Pat took paternity leave for the birth of his second child. On the other, the concerns of continued militarization of Japan Pat expresses in the episode have come to fruition, and it’s a bitter fruit. I rhetorically ask what it will take to forget the lessons we learned from the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, like we forgot the lessons of Vietnam -- naively suggesting that those wars are over and that we actually learned a lesson -- and it seems we may now have an answer.

Spine 155: Tokyo Olympiad

Kon Icihikawa' documentary of the 1964 Olympics is brilliant, hilarious, agonizing, and very human. No wonder the Japanese Olympic Committee hated it?

Spine 154: The Horse's Mouth

Alec Guinness first tried to read Joyce Cary's The Horse's Mouth during World War II, but couldn't bear its stream-of-consciousness narrative. Sometime later his wife impressed upon him to give it another shot and he went on to adapt it into a screenplay. Ronald Neame was brought into direct the resulting film, released in 1958, with Guinness staring as the eccentric artist Gulley Jimson. It's often called his funniest film, which is a pretty tough crowd to beat out. Personally, I'd lean toward Murder by Death or Kind Hearts and Coronets for that honor, but The Horse's Mouth is right up there, and quite a bit more poignant even as a comedy.

Spine 153: General Idi Amin Dada

Barbet Schroeder "directs" Uganda's Idi Amin in what the dictator hopes will be his "Triumph of the Will". Hilarity and death ensue.

Spine 152: George Washington

From the guy who would later bring you Pineapple Express comes a much more depressing, much more amazing film.

Spine 151: Traffic

Stephen Soderbergh not only directed his 2000 drug drama Traffic, but stepped behind the camera as well in order "to get as close to the movie" as possible. That is a weird metaphysical way of describing it, but sure. The film itself, based in part on the Channel 4 series Traffik, paints a sprawling portrait of the US drug trade as it stood -- and in many ways still stands -- at the turn of the century. Other films may do better to condemn the failure of the War on Drugs, but Soderbergh manages to drive home that the current angle just doesn't work.

Spine 150: Bob le flambeur

Jean-Pierre Melville is called Melville because he really liked Moby Dick and apparently the French Resistance just let you pick your own codename because anti-fascism. His 1956 film Bob le Flambeur is a French gangster film that is often called a precursor to the French New Wave, but Pat and I aren't buying it.

Spine 149: Juliet of the Spirits

If you've listened to any of our early episodes concerning her roles, you're no doubt aware that Pat and I love Giulietta Masina, long time wife and part time love interest of Federico Fellini. After the success of the great 8 1/2, Fellini decided to do some more navel gazing in 1965 with Juliet of the Spirits, but this time the author avatar character would be gender-flipped and played by Masina. It seems that Masina did not enjoy playing the female version of her husband, as rumor has it that the fights on set between star and director got so intense that friends were sure they'd divorce. They didn't, though that is certainly due to circumstances outside of the film, which flopped. And probably for good reason.

Spine 148: Ballad of a Soldier

After The Cranes are Flying a few weeks ago we may have set our hopes too high for our next foray into Soviet "Thaw" era films about World War 2. It's not that Grigori Chukrai's Ballad of a Soldier isn't good, but that bar was really high. Released in 1959, two years after Cranes, Ballad of a Soldier feels like a throwback, more influenced Eisenstein than, well, anyone other than Eisenstein. And Eisenstein is great! But Ballad's exploration of (rather chaste) love in many forms just doesn't land with us.