Michael and Us

PATREON BONUS - https://www.patreon.com/posts/55643199 Just as the American media has turned on Joe Biden following the announcement of withdrawal from Afghanistan, the British media has given a rapturous reception to Tony Blair as he's waded back into the discourse. Luke talks to writer and author Richard Seymour about the British establishment’s crack-up over Afghanistan, its inability to quit B...

PATREON EPISODE - https://www.patreon.com/posts/55508789 Our Superdelegate patrons have selected Paul Thomas Anderson's much-loved parable about American capitalism, THERE WILL BE BLOOD (2007), and we drank it up. PLUS: the state of the Canadian election, and memories of eccentric characters from our university days.

Andrei Tarkovsky's debut film IVAN'S CHILDHOOD (1962) sends us into a discussion about poetic cinema, memory, Russia, and what it means to be a national filmmaker. PLUS: Spike Lee's flirtation with 9/11 truth, and check-ins with two reactionary celebrities.

PATREON EPISODE - https://www.patreon.com/posts/55227370 Al Gore changed the way millions of people think about the climate crisis, but a full 15 years after the intended wake-up call of AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH (2006), the crisis is worse than ever. We look back at the documentary and analyze why Gore's brand of neoliberal environmentalism hasn't worked. PLUS: the Canadian election, The Sopranos, an...

In 1987, Oliver Stone introduced the world to a man who was not your daddy's capitalist: Gordon Gekko. We revisit WALL STREET to consider the strengths and limitations of its distinctly New Deal Liberal perspective on American capitalism; to marinate in the particular left-liberal Boomer perspective of Stone; and determine once and for all if greed is, in fact, good.

PATREON EPISODE - https://www.patreon.com/posts/54951772 You've probably seen the show. But you probably haven't seen the movie. We put ourselves through Jerry Springer's one and only feature film vehicle, RINGMASTER (1998), and have emerged with a clearer sense of what the king of trash TV thought he was doing. PLUS: we've both been watching reality TV lately, and are more than eager to share our...

In 1994, the most vilified member of the Reagan administration tried to stage a political comeback, and it almost worked. The documentary A PERFECT CANDIDATE (1996) follows Oliver North's attempt to unseat Democrat Chuck Robb as a Virginia senator, and captures the political currents in both Virginia and the United States as a whole. Pod Damn America and Redacted Tonight's Anders Lee fills in for...

PATREON EPISODE - https://www.patreon.com/posts/54650386 It was Homer Simpson who said, "What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind." This aphorism is much more useful than anything in WHAT THE BLEEP DO WE KNOW!? (2004), the pseudo-science docu-fiction movie that blew a lot of minds during the Bush era. We analyze the film's brand of hokum, which exists somewhere between The Secret and Sc...

With an election looming in Canada, we decided to look back on a time when Justin Trudeau's father received his punishment at the hands of the Canadian media. The National Film Board of Canada documentary HISTORY ON THE RUN: THE MEDIA AND THE '79 ELECTION (1979) chronicles the unusual media landscape that led to a nine-month interruption in Pierre Trudeau's long tenure as Prime Minister. We discus...

PATREON EPISODE - https://www.patreon.com/posts/256-remembering-54272869 Bill Pullman, Balthazar Getty, Robert Blake... what if we told you that these three men are all the same? That's the situation in David Lynch's LOST HIGHWAY (1997), if not real life. Perennial guest Alex Ross helps us deconstruct a prickly film, and provides a political reading that will have your galaxy brain expanding. PLUS...

PATREON EPISODE - https://www.patreon.com/posts/54116739 Revisiting the Coen Brothers' masterpiece INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS (2013) gives us ample opportunity to discuss the history, meaning, and politics of New York's brief but legendary folk music scene, and to try to articulate the Brothers' dark philosophy. PLUS: thoughts on the two greatest songwriters of our time: Bob Dylan and Matt Farley.

You may love Bugs Bunny, but you will never own him. That's the thesis of SPACE JAM: A NEW LEGACY (2021), which sends Bugs and LeBron James through a tour of WarnerMedia's intellectual property while never letting you forget that its WarnerMedia's intellectual property. "Th- th- th- th- that's bad, folks!" PLUS: Vanity Fair in the '20s, Jeff Bezos in space, and some alarming new trends in movie ma...

PATREON EPISODE - https://www.patreon.com/posts/53847856 The former Governor of Alaska can see Nick Broomfield from her house in SARAH PALIN: YOU BETCHA! (2011), the British muckraker's irreverent documentary about Sarah Palin. Broomfield reconstructs the life and turbulent political times of the onetime Tea Party standard-bearer, and your hosts find themselves with a split verdict on his success....

At last, we have decided to stop worrying and love the bomb. We discuss Stanley Kubrick's immortal DR. STRANGELOVE (1964) and how its depiction of small, pitiable men against a vast backdrop brought the Kubrick project into sharp focus. PLUS: why the billionaire space race encapsulates what's wrong with this damnable world of ours.

PATREON EPISODE - https://www.patreon.com/posts/53583912 Gadfly documentarian Nick Broomfield claims he wanted to make a movie about the "real" Margaret Thatcher, but TRACKING DOWN MAGGIE (1994) - which documents his failed quest to land an interview with the former Prime Minister - ended up being about the limits of the strange, cloistered world of the global elite, and the limits of "access jour...

The classic documentary BURDEN OF DREAMS (1982) captures director Werner Herzog as he's mounting the most ambitious feat of his career: attempting to haul a literal steamship over a literal mountain for his film Fitzcarraldo. We discuss how this legendary saga of directorial megalomania in a world where directorial megalomania has gone out of fashion. PLUS: the complicated reasons why there are no...

PATREON EPISODE - https://www.patreon.com/posts/53342923 Your hosts met in person to record for the first time since March 2020, and the result is their wackiest, most stream-of-consciousness episode in years! The boys crack open a few cold ones and discuss AMERICANS (2012), a short "public service" film by Sean Penn and Kid Rock that clumsily sought to build a bridge between Red and Blue America....

The HBO documentary THE SWAMP (2020) follows three "maverick" Republican congressmen who seek to fulfil Donald Trump's promise to "drain the swamp," even if that means alienating their party leaders. But what you really need to know about this documentary is that the main one is Matt Gaetz, and he is a huge doofus. PLUS: thoughts on Canada Day, Alex Gibney's Agents of Chaos, and a look back at the...

PATREON EPISODE - https://www.patreon.com/posts/53013461 We did everything we could to avoid watching Lin-Manuel Miranda's HAMILTON, but our Superdelegate patron tier finally made us confront the inevitable. We watched the 2020 Disney+ filmed recording of the biggest Broadway hit of the past decade. We found that it was - as advertised - the ultimate artistic expression of a certain kind of Obama-...

We're still not entirely sure what the mega-bestselling 2005 book "Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything" was about, but it seems to have had something to do with arguing that economics is all about incentives. The 2010 anthology film adaptation FREAKONOMICS explores this thin thesis across segments directed by such documentary legends as Eugene Jarecki, Alex Gibne...

PATREON EPISODE - https://www.patreon.com/posts/52738757 The acclaimed documentary CRUMB (1994) tells the story of Robert Crumb, the legendary underground cartoonist who has channeled his pain and unleashed his darkest thoughts into some of the funniest and most offensive comics ever made. We discuss how this film captures a longtime culture war lightning-rod during a very different moment in the...

He once served under Gerald Ford and rose to become Bill Clinton's labor secretary, but the economist Robert Reich has more recently been been a two-time supporter of Bernie Sanders' primary runs. But in the documentary INEQUALITY FOR ALL (2013), Reich claims he's not a socialist, and wants to tackle income inequality to save capitalism. We discuss the virtues and limitations of Reich's brand of l...

PATREON EPISODE - https://www.patreon.com/posts/243-more-things-52451160 In 1961, a famous Hollywood actor named Ronald Reagan recorded an LP warning his fellow citizens about the dangers of "socialized medicine." On this episode, we dig up RONALD REAGAN SPEAKS OUT AGAINST SOCIALIZED MEDICINE (1961) to examine how the pillars of Reagan's talking-points remain more or less unchanged 60 years later...

The archetype of the shadowy, Machiavellian political strategist is potent in the popular imagination, and no strategist has leaned into this potency harder than Roger Stone. We look back at one of Trumpworld's wackier characters by watching the Netflix documentary GET ME ROGER STONE (2017) and discuss how he is both a more and less significant figure than he seems. PLUS: Roger Stone's fashion blo...

PATREON EPISODE - https://www.patreon.com/posts/52173881 Ross, Rachel, Chandler, Phoebe, Joey, Monica... even 17 years after their show ended, these characters remain as dear as real-life friends for millions of viewers. But why has a show that's so stubbornly of the '90s endured? On the occasion of the megabucks FRIENDS: THE REUNION (2021) special, a longtime Friends hater (Will) and a Friends fa...