ACFmovie podcast

Titus & Armond White talk about the collapse of criticism & cultural journalism. The triumph of a shallow liberal ideology in several, maybe most, mass media has made both art & ideology invisible in ways that cause them to deteriorate.

Titus & Eric Cook offer a brief history of American Christmas. We talk about the great tradition of the war on Christmas, starting with the Puritans, who made Christmas illegal! We talk about how all the parts of the American Christmas came together: Santa Claus, gifts, the feast, the Christmas tree, toys, shopping, and everything else!

Titus & John Presnall talk about the Godfather. What's new to be said about the most admired tragedy to come out of Hollywood? Two things: 1. How the story reflects on changes in American society & the twisting relationship between power & legitimacy. 2. How we see, starting with Sollozzo, the arrival of Machiavelli as political philosopher, which of course also has to do with politics & economics...

Titus & Eric Cook discuss the lovely, hilarious Christmas movie Elf! The humor turns out to conceal a sophisticated, realistic look at the collapse of the American civil religion seen from the point of view of the family Christmas & it deals well with how to deal with this situation.

Titus & James Lileks discuss the experience of seeing Star Wars, again & again, in the summer of '77 & how a generation took that childhood love & ran with it well into the Social Security years. The future of Star Wars in an age where it's a movie a year plus tv on the internet plus, inevitably, VR, is also in discussion. The imagination is not what it used to be.

Titus & James Lileks discuss the cultural mark left by movies & how they affect generations. From Casablanca to Star Trek to Aliens to Radio Days to Last action hero, we talk about the personal & social impact of movies & how we try to share these passions, as movie lovers & as family members.

Titus & James Lileks are back with ruminations on middlebrow, this time going through post-war Christmas movies/animations/TV specials. Varieties of A Christmas Carol--old comedies like Christmas in Connecticut--fantasies like The bishop's wife--the 60s animations--A Christmas story--&, a recent one, Arthur Christmas.

Titus & James Lileks talk about middlebrow & mid-century America. We've got lots to offer: 1. Cultural archaeology & commercial archaeology--our fascination with what life was like in America before. 2. Hitchcock & the movies as inadvertent documentaries. 3. The great fracturing in the 50s: Freudianism--youthful alienation--smarmy rebels you want to slap the cool out of--The heiress (1949)--Monty...

Titus & Pete Spiliakos complete their discussion of Blade Runner with the new Blade Runner 2049. The question of soul shifts here to the question of birth. Self-knowledge shifts to our self-understanding as relational beings (we start from family relations & end with citizenship). Similarly, tyranny completely shifts from the state to corporations & we discuss the possibility that getting what we...

Titus & Pete Spiliakos discuss Blade Runner from the point of view of political philosophy. Pete's big insights are political: The story recalls the slavery question in the Americas & adumbrates a new threat to humanity, inasmuch as being the persons we are seems harder & harder. I bring up the possibility that the fantasies & philosophies of the Old World are taking over the New World, with inequ...

Titus & Pete Spiliakos (First Things online columnist) discuss the GOP as a budding oligarchy. We talk about the failed presidential ambitions of Senators & Governors; the principled constitutionalist conservatives who cannot seem to grapple with the big political questions of the day; the party's oligarchic turn and the threat of collapse following on the greatest electoral successes its had in m...

Titus & Carl Eric Scott & Flagg Taylor talk about the great movie The lives of others, dramatizing communism in East Germany through the relationship between a playwright & the Stasi agent (secret police) monitoring him. Carl & Flagg have co-edited the best book on the movie, Totalitarianism on screen, & talk about that as well.

Titus & Carl Eric Scott wrap up their discussion of Whit Stillman. After their Damsels in Distress podcast, they discuss Last days of disco, a lovely comedy of manners that tried to discuss the sentimental education of young Americans in terms of cocktails, dancing, & conversation.

Titus & James Poulos discuss Twin Peaks, the original series & the new season, the meaning of morality in an almost hopeless world, & the importance of art as a reflection on our predicament.

Titus & John Presnall discuss the most thoughtful gangster movie of our times, Carlito's Way. Brian de Palma manages to provide a kind of sequel & a kind of improvement over the much more famous Scarface. Like Scarface, this is also a running commentary on how America remembers the Bogart of Casablanca, but not the earlier gangster films. The movie is also a comparison with the famous Italian gang...

Titus & Pete Spiliakos discuss the business & culture of franchises & sequels, the importance of character arcs & stories built on psychological realism, & the fundamental philosophical & political bases of DC & Marvel superhero movies as tragedies & comedies. We're trying to educate writers, critics, & audiences all at once, so you're in for a treat!

Titus & Pete Spiliakos talk about the recent James Cameron quarrel about whether Wonderwoman is a strong woman--we go through characters from the first movies about Gen X-ers coming of age--we look at the difficulty of becoming an adult in suburbia & the heroines that emerge in these horror stories.

Titus & Carl Eric Scott & Flagg Taylor discuss Whit Stillman's most artful comedy, Damsels in distress (2012), about four college girls running a depression center on campus on a mission to save American youth from the social wasteland by inventing a dance craze.

Titus & Jason Eberl & George Dunn take a look at several movie made by the Nolan Brothers, Christopher & Jonathan, in light of various philosophical theories, from Aristotle's ethics of individual to Augustine, Kant's moral theory, & eventually Rene Girard's mimetic theory. Enjoy pop culture & philosophy!

Titus & Pete Spiliakos discuss the Christopher Nolan superhero movies & look at the DC superheroes from the point of view of themes in political philosophy: installing the rule of law, the relation between citizenship & humanity, & the relationship between human beings & powers beyond control or grasp.

Titus delivers a lecture on American society & cinema, from Tocqueville to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The ACF goes to college!

Titus & Eric Cook discuss Dunkirk, the new Christopher Nolan movie--the sources of heroism, patriotism, & prudence Nolan is working with. We talk about Churchill's speeches, the Homeric view of war, & the epic scope of movie-making. About sound design & the musical quotation from Elgar's Nimrod. About the range of forms of heroism on display in the story. About one of the strangely British heroes...

Titus & Eric Cook discuss The birds as a companion piece to Psycho--what is it about modern women leaving town in a hurry? What is it about remote houses from a bygone America that inspires tragedy? What does the scare in a horror movie conceal? Why did Hitchcock talk about his movies as comedies? Listen & share!

Titus & Felix discuss Predator, on its 30th anniversary this June. This was John McTiernan's first studio movie, & is an excellent study of varieties of manliness faced with a kind of natural horror. Seven men descend into the jungle, then the jungle begins to swallow them up, one by one.

Titus & Eric Cook discuss Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho--the conflict of innocence & respectability playing out against modern liberation. In post-war prosperity, people get a sense of the horror lying beyond the city--the ancient Biblical-Greek tragedy identification of the home as the place of tragedy & the modern discovery of meaningless crimes of passion. Redemption collapses into justice, justice...