ACFmovie podcast

Titus & Terry Teachout discuss L.A. Confidential, another story about the origins of Los Angeles & the modern America of glamour. We have a reversal of the noir--the femme fatale helps redeem rather than damn protagonists who were corrupt before they came to make a serious moral decision. Curtis Hanson's movie makes for a revision a heroism away from noir's tragic destiny toward American drama, wh...

Titus & Steven Fairchild discuss Red, the conclusion of Kieslowski's Colors Trilogy--the movie where the disjunction between what people want out of life & what modern society is arranged for is most shocking. Kieslowski treats his theme, abandonment, through desire this time, its fickleness & the way it is aroused & disappointed by technology.

Titus & Steven Fairchild talk about White, the centerpiece of Kieslowski's Colors Trilogy, the story of equality--where the theme of abandonment is treated through revenge, the need to get even, inflicting suffering repaying suffering incurred, desire returning as hatred. As with love, so also with France & Poland, & the EU.

Titus & Steven Fairchild discuss Kieslowski's Colors Trilogy--starting with Blue, the movie about liberty presented as loneliness. Juliette Binoche plays a woman who, faced with a catastrophe, tries to abandon everything so that she may be herself, only to find herself drawn to her duties to dead & living together.

Titus & Tyler Malone talk Kubrick--the erotic thriller, the possibility that love leads to horror, the strange education eros offers in its attack on morality & the stranger politics of elite corruption.

Titus & Jody Bottum talk about Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress, a wonderful combination of history & comedy that reveals uniquely Kurosawa's vision of justice for Japan, a remarkable story about a young girl's transformation into a princess, & the movie where Toshiro Mifune assumes his full grandeur.

Titus & Peter Paik & George done complete our discussion of Park Chan-wook's Vengeance trilogy--after Oldboy, Lady Vengeance. A femme fatale who is also an angel of death becomes the necessary agent of justice for a number of bereaved families; Korea is modernizing, but the future turns out to be childless; the needs of punishment face the challenge of Christian forgiveness. A number of themes com...

Titus & John Presnall talk about The Black Dahlia, Brian De Palma's story about the corrupt origins of Hollywood, the aristocratic habit of concealing cruelty behind splendor, & the necessary violence involved in glamour.

Titus & Terry Teachout discuss Chinatown, a story about the origins of Los Angeles & the doomed attempt to learn the ugly truth about these origins. John Huston plays the grand, corrupt aristocrat, Jack Nicholson the petty, corrupt democrat & they come to fight over the future of America.

Titus & John Presnall conclude their discussion of Scarface, the tragedy of freedom, desire, and chasing after dreams. We talk about the description of politics in tragedy and also reveal the logic of the plot in relation to the cycle of regimes in Plato's Republic.

Titus & John Presnall talk Scarface--Brian De Palma's most infamous movie & the most influential, the tragedy of American freedom. Desire leads to violence--as Rene Girard says, desire is imitative, creates competition, & leads to catastrophe. Hence, both liberal tolerance, not to say optimism, & conservative insistence on property rights, not to say pessimism, reach a crisis when commerce & immig...

Titus & George Dunn & Peter Paik discuss Park Chan-wook's Oldboy, the centerpiece of his vengeance trilogy, which won him the Palme d'Or in Cannes. Korea's transformation into a prosperous democracy & one man's transformation into a superman go together to first conceal & then reveal the dark secret at the foundation of civil society: The sacred law on which politics is based is the family, which...

Titus & Molly McGrath discuss Rashomon, Akira Kurosawa's finest movie about the problem of justice. We talk through the different contradictory testimonies which deepen the crisis of justice--the conventional lies lead gradually to the full collapse of honor--but also about the relationship between humility, telling the truth, & saving a baby. Human nature emerges not only in its ugliness, but als...

Titus & Ben Sixsmith talk about writing & audiences in the age of social media. Digital technology has rapidly democratized communications, turning broadcasting into narrow-casting & exposing everyone to the promise of access, interaction, & even celebrity. This has fostered not a brave new world, but serious political & social conflicts we discuss. The public space has been unwittingly privatized...

Titus & Eric Cook talk about Hitchcock's Catholic movie, I confess, about the conflict between justice & faith, public & private, secular law & holy men. Monty Clift plays a priest who receives confession of a murder only to gradually see himself get accused of that murder. A seeming accident turns into the theologico-political problem.

Titus & Eric Cook return to the Hitchcock series with Strangers on a train--a kind of companion piece to Rope. Both movies about murders committed out of enlightened immorality, one set among education elites in New York, the other among political elites in Washington--both stories about social climbers who have to face up to the ugliness of the elites they want to join & therefore warnings about...

Titus & Paul Cantor talk about David Milch's most famous achievement, Deadwood--the movie & the TV show both: A lawless, but orderly vision of America. An America with commerce but without religion, with freedom but without equality--what kind of community & what kind of justice is possible in such a situation?

Titus & Peter Paik discuss Alan Moore's comics, which have made for a number of movie adaptations, few of which are successes. Zack Snyder's Watchmen is good. HBO is now making a series which looks terrible. The Wachawski's V for Vendetta was rather bad, as also From Hell. We try to explain why with reference to two themes that recur in Moore's stories--radical political change & the power of suff...

Titus & Telly Davidson, critic & author of Culture War, a book about the 90s, return to Citizen Kane to wrap the discussion of the tyrannic soul, the erotic man who wants to be loved by everyone, & the characterization through love & friendship that helps us grasp what kind of man Kane was. We also talk about politics & media, how technology changes our situation & how we try to adapt to it.

Titus & Telly Davidson talk about Citizen Kane, the story of politics & media technologies, the transformations radio brought to public & private lives, & the arrival of the fully erotic man--the tyrant-soul who wants to be loved by everyone. We also talk about transformations since Kane: TV & the internet, & the political, social, & cultural changes they've brought.

Titus & Spotted Toad talk about education, the experience of the teacher, the crisis in public education & how to rethink it in the present circumstances. We talk about his book--13 Ways Of Going On A Field Trip--about his ten years teaching science in New York & the place of nature in our attempt to become rational.

Titus & Terry Teachout talk about North by Northwest, Hitchcock's perfect comedy. We move by way of thriller from the noir to what it would take for a noir hero, betrayed by a beautiful woman, nevertheless to find his way to romance in the element of comedy. Cary Grant pulls off a performance by turns comic & tragic, trying to make sense of life in modern America, & end up getting married.

Titus & Paul Cantor continue discussing his new book, Pop Culture & The Dark Side Of The American Dream: Today we talk about The Walking Dead as a post-modern Western. What's American character like in absence of institutions & technology? Can there be any meaningful freedom in the state of nature?

Titus & Paul Cantor talk about Breaking Bad--the Macbeth of Meth. We talk about the dark side of the American Dream, the new situation created by institutional failure, agonized manliness, & the desire to escape the middle class in the direction of excellence &, indeed, tyranny.

Titus & John Marini wrap up a trilogy on Sam Peckinpah's Westerns with his most comic, least violent picture: The Ballad Of Cable Hogue. The only movie he made about a Founding also turns out to be his story about dealing with movability, mutability, & mortality in America. Progress is a killer, but human beings can remember their love of the natural, tranquil life. It's also Peckinpah's Lockean W...