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Vintage Sand Episode 57: Alternative Oscars: 1940's Edition, Part I
Manage episode 461818471 series 2293503
Kandungan disediakan oleh Vintage Sand. Semua kandungan podcast termasuk episod, grafik dan perihalan podcast dimuat naik dan disediakan terus oleh Vintage Sand atau rakan kongsi platform podcast mereka. Jika anda percaya seseorang menggunakan karya berhak cipta anda tanpa kebenaran anda, anda boleh mengikuti proses yang digariskan di sini https://ms.player.fm/legal.
Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America and all ships at sea, and welcome to Episode 57 of Vintage Sand, our first of 2025. In this episode and the next one we return, for the penultimate time, to the source of some of our most popular episodes: Danny Peary’s hard-to-find 1993 classic "Alternative Oscars". In the past, we have used Peary’s model to approach every full decade in which the Academy has handed out Oscars except two: the 2010’s, and the topic for this two-part episode, Alternate Oscars: The 1940’s Edition. It's interesting that the 40’s are considered to be the peak of Hollywood’s Golden Age, yet many films that were beloved and honored back then have not well withstood the passage of time. The early part of the decade’s most important development was the rise of the writer/director in Hollywood. Preston Sturges was the first, with his incredible run of films from 1940-1945, and he was followed quickly by the Billy Wilder/Charles Brackett team and, of course, that clever young fellow from the Mercury Theater. The 40’s also marked the arrival of Hitchcock to these shores, and the rise to prominence of new directorial voices like Huston, Preminger, Zinnemann and Nicholas Ray. There were also many high points in the decade for well-established directors like Ford, Capra, Hawks, Lubitsch and Wyler. We have the incredible run of films between 1942 and 1946 made by Val Lewton’s brilliant B-movie unit at RKO, and, of course, the birth of film noir, overseen predominantly by expats like Wilder, Lang, Preminger, Ulmer, Lewis and Siodmak. The latter half of the decade, which we will cover in Episode 58 in February, saw two major developments. The end of the war saw the return to strength of many European film industries as well as studio filmmaking in Japan. In France, in the wake of 1945’s miraculous "Les Enfants du Paradis", directors as different as Cocteau, Clouzot and Bresson began or restarted their careers. This explosion of creativity was matched in the UK, with the arrival of Lean, Reed, and especially with the flowering of the Powell-Pressburger Archers team. Clearly, though, the most important such event was the rise of what today is called Italian Neo-Realism, as directors like Rossellini, De Sica, and to a lesser extent Visconti, created a brand new way to tell stories on film that is still influencing directors today. The second big change of the late 40’s was really two changes in one: the landmark Paramount court case in 1948 that ended the vertical monopoly the studios had long held as owners of theater chains as well, and the mass arrival of television. Between 1948 and 1952, Hollywood lost nearly half of its audience, bringing down the curtain on that so-called “Golden Age” of Hollywood. In terms of the Oscars, the Academy made solid choices for Best Picture--they certainly picked better films than they did in the 1930’s! These included enduring works like "The Best Years of Our Lives", "All the King’s Men" and especially, "Casablanca". Who could argue with that? (Hint: us.) But there were plenty of head scratchers as well. Prestige choices like "How Green Was My Valley", "Mrs. Miniver" and Olivier’s "Hamlet" look a little creaky these days. Hell, we might argue that "Rebecca" was not even Hitchcock’s best film of 1940! And the less said about "Going My Way" and "Gentlemen’s Agreement", the better. So kick back, round up the usual suspects, and help us make this podcast more important than the gas in that light…
…
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61 episod
Manage episode 461818471 series 2293503
Kandungan disediakan oleh Vintage Sand. Semua kandungan podcast termasuk episod, grafik dan perihalan podcast dimuat naik dan disediakan terus oleh Vintage Sand atau rakan kongsi platform podcast mereka. Jika anda percaya seseorang menggunakan karya berhak cipta anda tanpa kebenaran anda, anda boleh mengikuti proses yang digariskan di sini https://ms.player.fm/legal.
Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America and all ships at sea, and welcome to Episode 57 of Vintage Sand, our first of 2025. In this episode and the next one we return, for the penultimate time, to the source of some of our most popular episodes: Danny Peary’s hard-to-find 1993 classic "Alternative Oscars". In the past, we have used Peary’s model to approach every full decade in which the Academy has handed out Oscars except two: the 2010’s, and the topic for this two-part episode, Alternate Oscars: The 1940’s Edition. It's interesting that the 40’s are considered to be the peak of Hollywood’s Golden Age, yet many films that were beloved and honored back then have not well withstood the passage of time. The early part of the decade’s most important development was the rise of the writer/director in Hollywood. Preston Sturges was the first, with his incredible run of films from 1940-1945, and he was followed quickly by the Billy Wilder/Charles Brackett team and, of course, that clever young fellow from the Mercury Theater. The 40’s also marked the arrival of Hitchcock to these shores, and the rise to prominence of new directorial voices like Huston, Preminger, Zinnemann and Nicholas Ray. There were also many high points in the decade for well-established directors like Ford, Capra, Hawks, Lubitsch and Wyler. We have the incredible run of films between 1942 and 1946 made by Val Lewton’s brilliant B-movie unit at RKO, and, of course, the birth of film noir, overseen predominantly by expats like Wilder, Lang, Preminger, Ulmer, Lewis and Siodmak. The latter half of the decade, which we will cover in Episode 58 in February, saw two major developments. The end of the war saw the return to strength of many European film industries as well as studio filmmaking in Japan. In France, in the wake of 1945’s miraculous "Les Enfants du Paradis", directors as different as Cocteau, Clouzot and Bresson began or restarted their careers. This explosion of creativity was matched in the UK, with the arrival of Lean, Reed, and especially with the flowering of the Powell-Pressburger Archers team. Clearly, though, the most important such event was the rise of what today is called Italian Neo-Realism, as directors like Rossellini, De Sica, and to a lesser extent Visconti, created a brand new way to tell stories on film that is still influencing directors today. The second big change of the late 40’s was really two changes in one: the landmark Paramount court case in 1948 that ended the vertical monopoly the studios had long held as owners of theater chains as well, and the mass arrival of television. Between 1948 and 1952, Hollywood lost nearly half of its audience, bringing down the curtain on that so-called “Golden Age” of Hollywood. In terms of the Oscars, the Academy made solid choices for Best Picture--they certainly picked better films than they did in the 1930’s! These included enduring works like "The Best Years of Our Lives", "All the King’s Men" and especially, "Casablanca". Who could argue with that? (Hint: us.) But there were plenty of head scratchers as well. Prestige choices like "How Green Was My Valley", "Mrs. Miniver" and Olivier’s "Hamlet" look a little creaky these days. Hell, we might argue that "Rebecca" was not even Hitchcock’s best film of 1940! And the less said about "Going My Way" and "Gentlemen’s Agreement", the better. So kick back, round up the usual suspects, and help us make this podcast more important than the gas in that light…
…
continue reading
61 episod
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1 Vintage Sand Episode 58: Alternative Oscars: The 1940's Edition Part 2 1:24:58
1:24:58
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Please see the description in Episode 57, our previous episode, as a guide for this, the latest in our Alternate Oscars series. This one focused on the films of the 1940's. Only decade left to cover is the 2010's so don't touch that dial!
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1 Vintage Sand Episode 57: Alternative Oscars: 1940's Edition, Part I 1:28:40
1:28:40
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Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America and all ships at sea, and welcome to Episode 57 of Vintage Sand, our first of 2025. In this episode and the next one we return, for the penultimate time, to the source of some of our most popular episodes: Danny Peary’s hard-to-find 1993 classic "Alternative Oscars". In the past, we have used Peary’s model to approach every full decade in which the Academy has handed out Oscars except two: the 2010’s, and the topic for this two-part episode, Alternate Oscars: The 1940’s Edition. It's interesting that the 40’s are considered to be the peak of Hollywood’s Golden Age, yet many films that were beloved and honored back then have not well withstood the passage of time. The early part of the decade’s most important development was the rise of the writer/director in Hollywood. Preston Sturges was the first, with his incredible run of films from 1940-1945, and he was followed quickly by the Billy Wilder/Charles Brackett team and, of course, that clever young fellow from the Mercury Theater. The 40’s also marked the arrival of Hitchcock to these shores, and the rise to prominence of new directorial voices like Huston, Preminger, Zinnemann and Nicholas Ray. There were also many high points in the decade for well-established directors like Ford, Capra, Hawks, Lubitsch and Wyler. We have the incredible run of films between 1942 and 1946 made by Val Lewton’s brilliant B-movie unit at RKO, and, of course, the birth of film noir, overseen predominantly by expats like Wilder, Lang, Preminger, Ulmer, Lewis and Siodmak. The latter half of the decade, which we will cover in Episode 58 in February, saw two major developments. The end of the war saw the return to strength of many European film industries as well as studio filmmaking in Japan. In France, in the wake of 1945’s miraculous "Les Enfants du Paradis", directors as different as Cocteau, Clouzot and Bresson began or restarted their careers. This explosion of creativity was matched in the UK, with the arrival of Lean, Reed, and especially with the flowering of the Powell-Pressburger Archers team. Clearly, though, the most important such event was the rise of what today is called Italian Neo-Realism, as directors like Rossellini, De Sica, and to a lesser extent Visconti, created a brand new way to tell stories on film that is still influencing directors today. The second big change of the late 40’s was really two changes in one: the landmark Paramount court case in 1948 that ended the vertical monopoly the studios had long held as owners of theater chains as well, and the mass arrival of television. Between 1948 and 1952, Hollywood lost nearly half of its audience, bringing down the curtain on that so-called “Golden Age” of Hollywood. In terms of the Oscars, the Academy made solid choices for Best Picture--they certainly picked better films than they did in the 1930’s! These included enduring works like "The Best Years of Our Lives", "All the King’s Men" and especially, "Casablanca". Who could argue with that? (Hint: us.) But there were plenty of head scratchers as well. Prestige choices like "How Green Was My Valley", "Mrs. Miniver" and Olivier’s "Hamlet" look a little creaky these days. Hell, we might argue that "Rebecca" was not even Hitchcock’s best film of 1940! And the less said about "Going My Way" and "Gentlemen’s Agreement", the better. So kick back, round up the usual suspects, and help us make this podcast more important than the gas in that light……
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1 Vintage Sand Episode 56: "He's Making a List:" Team Vintage Sand's Favorite Christmas Movies 1:34:45
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No deep insight or analysis here, Vintage Sand fans. Just a list of our favorite Christmas and Christmas-adjacent films as the season approaches. (Not counting blazingly obvious choices like “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Christmas Story”). May your days be merry and bright, may your heart grow three sizes that day, as they say in Whoville, and, may your favorite holiday films always be streaming.…
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1 Vintage Sand Episode 55: Megalopolis and Necropolis 1:29:41
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Vintage Sand listeners this month will get something of a twofer, a BOGO episode. Since we really have not had the chance to do a full necrology since July, Michael takes the time to relate the accomplishments of some very bright lights in the film business that have gone out over the past four months. These include artists who leave behind a great legacy and holes that can never really be filled, including people like Dame Maggie Smith, James Earl Jones and Alain Delon. Before we get to that point, though, we begin with a very different kind of eulogy: our reflections on Francis Ford Coppola’s summa, the egregious "Megalopolis". We felt, as we did for Scorsese in our episodes on both "The Irishman" and "Killers of the Flower Moon", that a sprawling work by one of our greatest filmmakers, in this case a film that had a gestation period of nearly fifty years, deserved to be examined both in its own right as a work of art and in context as part of its creator’s career. In hindsight, it’s risible to think that at the end of the 70’s, film fans were heatedly debating who among the heroes of the American New Wave would end up with the greater career: Scorsese or Coppola? (Let’s not even talk about some of the others around the periphery of that conversation at the time, like De Palma, Bogdanovich, Friedkin, Rafelson, Cimino, Lucas and yes, perhaps even Spielberg—although, surprisingly, Paul Schrader has been coming up with a few late-period masterpieces). Megalopolis ends that debate, and stands, as I referred to "Eyes Wide Shut" relative to Kubrick’s career in our episode devoted to that film, as a cardboard tombstone to the career of a gifted filmmaker. While the members of Team Vintage Sand, whose bottomless intrepidity was confirmed by each of us successfully wading through (a la Andy Dufresne) the 2 ½ hours of dreck that is "Megalopolis", did find the occasional positive to light on, for the most part it was an example of a work of incredible consistency, in that just about every choice Coppola makes as writer and director was the wrong one. Perhaps the comparison with Scorsese is unfair, and certainly nothing could ever erase the impact of Coppola’s four films of the 1970’s, or even the smaller delights of his later work (Mike’s a fan of "The Cotton Club", and I’ve always thought that "Tucker" was a much better film than its reputation dictates). But for us, the truth is that between the gratuitous literary and high culture references, the sophomoric philosophizing that would make any actual 10th grader cringe, the derivative film tributes sprinkled throughout (including, unbelievably, a moment where the film appears to physically burn up in the projector—a brilliant idea had Bergman not done it 60 years ago in "Persona"), and a script that even good actors like Adam Driver and Giancarlo Esposito can’t save, "Megalopolis" was, quite unintentionally, the funniest film of the year—and given how much we love and admire its creator, the most painful. Once can only hope that this is not Coppola’s final statement, and that in future efforts he will trust his audience, not try so hard to impress us with his erudition, and remember what made him so great in the first place…
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1 Vintage Sand Episode 54: Director's Cut: Joseph Losey 1:30:46
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Elegant. That was the adjective used by Team Vintage Sand’s own Michael Edmund to describe why the films of Joseph Losey are so important to him, and why he has been such a huge fan of Losey’s for nearly all of his film-going life. Losey’s was a name that seemed to keep popping up in a wide variety of contexts over the course of the podcast, so, after many delays, we are proud to present Episode 54—Director’s Cut: Joseph Losey. Losey’s is a unique career in the sense that it really was two distinct careers. After growing up in a life of privilege in Wisconsin (where he was a high school classmate of another pretty good director, Nicholas Ray) and an education at Harvard and Dartmouth, Losey made his way to Hollywood and directed a couple of interesting, low-budget films. Among these were the stilted but prescient "The Boy with Green Hair" (1948), and the rather senseless remake of Lang’s "M" (1951), the latter replete with awful soundtrack music and LA sunshine. One possible reason that Losey might have gotten involved with this misguided effort might have been to give actors (Luther Adler, Martin Gabel) and other creatives (screenwriter Waldo Salt), who had been or were about to be blacklisted, a shot at getting some work. Losey himself, an unapologetic member of the Communist Party and an important creative associate of Bertolt Brecht, knew that when Brecht was called before HUAC, it was only a matter of time before he would meet the same fate. So before he could be summoned, he fled to London, and never again worked in the United States for the remaining three decades of his life. He began his English period with some low budget films, some of which, like 1954’s "The Sleeping Tiger", still hold some interest. It was during this period, however, that he met two men who were going to help him create the reputation that he still carries to this day, that of a director of great style whose films, not surprisingly given his own life experience, were always political without ever dealing directly with politics: the actor Dirk Bogarde, and the legendary playwright Harold Pinter. Their first work together, 1963’s "The Servant", is generally regarded as Losey’s masterpiece. It is an absolute evisceration of a rotting class system that has yet to realize its time has passed and that the empire on which it was founded has disintegrated. The complex, ever-changing relationship between upper class twit Tony (the wonderful James Fox) and Barrett, the manservant Tony hires (Bogarde), is cold, chilling and surprising right to the very end. Losey continued his obsession with social class in the World War I drama "King and Country" (1964), a film with a setup similar to "Paths of Glory" that in some ways is an even more powerful anti-war statement than Kubrick’s film. Losey teamed up again, somewhat less successfully, with Pinter and Bogarde for 1967’s "Accident", and with Pinter for one more masterpiece, 1971’s "The Go-Between", a gorgeous period piece featuring pitch-perfect performances by Alan Bates, Margaret Leighton, newcomer Dominic Guard as the titular young man, and especially by the never-more-luminous Julie Christie. There are no easy answers when it comes to Losey, but two things come to mind. As John notes in the episode, had Losey not fled persecution and stayed in America, he probably would have been nothing more than a more-talented-than-average studio hack. Exile turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to him, and it may be a direct result of his outsider status that Losey was able to cast an even sharper eye on the follies and perils of the dying English class system more effectively even than the great native British directors of the 1960’s. Whatever your thoughts on his work, in the end, it is that aforementioned elegance and intelligence that make Losey’s best films worth watching today.…
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1 Vintage Sand Episode 53: Hidden Gems, Volume IV 1:22:19
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For the fourth time in the history of the podcast, Team Vintage Sand returns to one of its most popular formats, the Hidden Gems episode. As we did previously in episodes 11, 30, and 40, Michael, John and I each choose one film to discuss that we feel has been unjustly neglected and overlooked by the huddled masses yearning to see anything besides a prequel, sequel, spinoff or reboot. So please enjoy Episode 53, which features three films that could not be more different from one another. Michael takes us back to the 70’s and to a John Cassavetes film that was ignored and even despised upon its (very limited) initial release but has only gained in reputation and influence across the years. I focus on a very imperfect genre film, Neill Blomkamp’s second feature, 2013’s "Elysium" that, perhaps even more powerfully and viscerally than acknowledged masterworks like "The Social Network" and "Her", predicted a desperate future that we appear to be headed for much sooner than the filmmaker anticipated. Finally, John shines the spotlight on Alice Wu, a unique filmmaker and storyteller. Her second film, The Half of It, a lovely variation on the "Cyrano de Bergerac" formula, had the misfortune of being premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival…that never took place, because it was 2020. It ended up in the undifferentiated mass of content that is Netflix, from which John will hopefully save it. Enjoy, stay cool in the heat, see great movies, and Thank You for Listening, Citizen!…
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1 Vintage Sand Episode 52: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Films of 1974 1:26:11
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The end of 1974 saw the implosion of the Director’s Company, founded just a year earlier by three of Hollywood’s hottest directors: Francis Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, and William Friedkin. Funded by Paramount, the idea was that within a certain budget, these directors would make whatever they wanted, have final cut on their work, and split the profits on each other’s films. Its rapid collapse, amid artistic failure and hubris and egged on by corporate intrigue, signaled the beginning of the end of what later came to be known as the Hollywood New Wave. A year later, the phenomenon that was "Jaws" recentered the narrative so that blockbuster weekend box office was everyone’s sole and explicit goal. This in turn led to the return of the money people to power, and they have barely relinquished any of that power in the ensuing half-century. It's not a coincidence that 1974 also saw "Hearts and Minds", one of the great antiwar films ever made in this country, win the Oscar for Best Feature-Length Documentary. The film was also a milestone in that it was the last film ever released by BBS, the renegade company founded by Bert Schneider, Bob Rafelson and Steve Blauner in 1969. Buoyed by the money they had made from the success of the Monkees, BBS disrupted an already-crumbling industry by releasing "Easy Rider", which grossed $60 million on a budget of $400K. The next few years saw releases from BBS like Rafelson’s "Five Easy Pieces" and "The King of Marvin Gardens", Jack Nicholson’s directorial debut in "Drive, He Said", Jaglom’s "A Safe Place" and Bogdanovich’s mainstream breakthrough, "The Last Picture Show". By the middle of the decade, however, BBS had been swallowed up by Columbia, and the writing was on the wall for the days of the creative freedom that came with this iteration of American independent film. So while few realized it at the time, 1974 would mark the end of something unique and the beginning of something else. Come, then, and join our intrepid Team Vintage Sand as we step into the Way-Back Machine to say goodbye to Tricky Dick Nixon, spend weekend days waiting on line for gasoline, and explore that sui generis year in film. It was, of course, the year of young Vito Corleone, Jake Gittes and Harry Caul, but also a time when even many low-budget genre films ended up as classics. In the end, you very well might end up agreeing with our own John Meyer, who back in Episode 5 called 1974 the greatest year in film history.…
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1 Vintage Sand Episode 51B: Alternate Oscars: The 1960's Edition 1:22:06
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Our Alternate Oscars episodes, based on Danny Peary’s fantastic 1992 book of the same name, have always been among our most popular. Over the course of the podcast, we’ve covered the 1930’s, 1950’s, 1970’s, 1980’s, 1990’s, and the 2000’s. Comparing what films actually won Best Picture to what we believe should have won is always a fun challenge, and it has given us a chance over the years to open or reopen some doors for our listeners to movies that are overlooked and forgotten. When we came to the 1950’s episode, in an (eerily prophetic) split decision, we chose to include only English-language works, since the sheer volume of brilliant films from around the world in that decade would overwhelm both us and you, dear listeners. As we approached the 1960’s for this episode, however, we reasoned that the relative lack of great American films from the decade suggested that this time around, we should open our tent to the entire world. We could not stand idly by, for instance while "A Man for All Seasons", lovely though it is, walked away with Best Picture in the year of films like "Persona", "Masculin/Feminin" and "Blow-Up". Our worries about the length of the episode, however, turned out to be justified and then some; therefore, we needed to split the episode into two parts. So with that, we are thrilled to present our first episode(s) since our triumphant, celebratory live recording of Episode 50 in March: thus Episodes 51A (1960-1964) and 51B (1965-1969), Alternate Oscars: The 1960’s Edition. There were a couple of things that really hit us as we were creating this entry in the Vintage Sand catalogue. The first is that an unexpectedly high number of our choices were, in fact, American films, suggesting that while common wisdom avers that Hollywood suffered a creative decline in the 60’s, there were a lot of great things happening just below the surface that were, unwittingly perhaps, paving the way for the revolution of the American New Wave that would come in the early 1970’s. And the deeper we dove into the cinema of the 60’s, we came to really understand the fundamental difference between those works and film today. Simply put, it was a time when directors really seemed to trust their audience’s intelligence and imagination. This is most obvious in structurally elliptical puzzle films like Resnais’ "Last Year at Marienbad", Buñuel’s "The Exterminating Angel", Antonioni’s "L’Avventura" and "Blow-Up", Bergman’s "Persona" and even Kubrick’s "2001: A Space Odyssey". But in ways big and small, and in terms both of performance and filmmaking technique, there is in 60’s film a refreshing absence of rat-on-the-balcony-rail-at-the-end-of-"Departed" heavy-handedness that seems to be a common thread in the work of even our greatest directors today. So with all this in mind, strap in and join us for our odyssey through 60’s cinema. It promises to be highly irregular, Dave……
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1 Vintage Sand Episode 51A: Alternate Oscars: 1960's Edition, Volume I 56:37
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Our Alternate Oscars episodes, based on Danny Peary’s fantastic 1992 book of the same name, have always been among our most popular. Over the course of the podcast, we’ve covered the 1930’s, 1950’s, 1970’s, 1980’s, 1990’s, and the 2000’s. Comparing what films actually won Best Picture to what we believe should have won is always a fun challenge, and it has given us a chance over the years to open or reopen some doors for our listeners to movies that are overlooked and forgotten. When we came to the 1950’s episode, in an (eerily prophetic) split decision, we chose to include only English-language works, since the sheer volume of brilliant films from around the world in that decade would overwhelm both us and you, dear listeners. As we approached the 1960’s for this episode, however, we reasoned that the relative lack of great American films from the decade suggested that this time around, we should open our tent to the entire world. We could not stand idly by, for instance while A Man for All Seasons, lovely though it is, walked away with Best Picture in the year of films like Persona, Masculin/Feminin and Blow-Up. Our worries about the length of the episode, however, turned out to be justified and then some; therefore, we needed to split the episode into two parts. So with that, we are thrilled to present our first episode(s) since our triumphant, celebratory live recording of Episode 50 in March: thus Episodes 51A (1960-1964) and 51B (1965-1969), Alternate Oscars: The 1960’s Edition. There were a couple of things that really hit us as we were creating this entry in the Vintage Sand catalogue. The first is that an unexpectedly high number of our choices were, in fact, American films, suggesting that while common wisdom avers that Hollywood suffered a creative decline in the 60’s, there were a lot of great things happening just below the surface that were, unwittingly perhaps, paving the way for the revolution of the American New Wave that would come in the early 1970’s. And the deeper we dove into the cinema of the 60’s, we came to really understand the fundamental difference between those works and film today. Simply put, it was a time when directors really seemed to trust their audience’s intelligence and imagination. This is most obvious in structurally elliptical puzzle films like Resnais’ Last Year in Marienbad, Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel, Antonioni’s L’Avventura and Blow-Up, Bergman’s Persona and even Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. But in ways big and small, and in terms both of performance and filmmaking technique, there is in 60’s film a refreshing absence of rat-on-the-balcony-rail-at-the-end-of-Departed heavy-handedness that seems to be a common thread in the work of even our greatest directors today. So with all this in mind, strap in and join us for our odyssey through 60’s cinema. It promises to be highly irregular, Dave……
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1 Vintage Sand Episode 50: Of Bombs and Bombshells - 2023 in Film 1:28:40
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It began six years ago, in the before time, with three film nerds who have been friends for four decades. Through the years, whenever we hung out together, we would inevitably end up talking for hours about film. So, we wondered aloud, why not make it official? Thus was born, in the spring of 2018, Vintage Sand, your film history podcast. One pandemic, one insurrection, a few erasures and rewritings of the film business and several hundred loyal listeners later, we thought it might be appropriate to commemorate our 50th episode by inviting friends and recording said episode live at the 14th Street Y in Manhattan. As you will hear, around 30 people came to support us, to hurl the occasional metaphorical tomato, and to remind us why we love doing this so much, as we recorded our roundup of 2023 in film in an episode we call “Of Bombs and Bombshells”. As with the last few years, this one was difficult to read. We applied our usual measure, wondering which of this year’s films, beyond “Barbie”, “Oppenheimer” and Scorsese's epic will folks will still be watching 25 or 50 years from now. Hard to say, but at least it was a year where, with the exception of Aster’s “Beau Is Afraid”, we were able to avoid a repeat of 2022, where some of our most interesting filmmakers (Russell, Aronofsky, Chazelle, Iñárritu, Luhrmann, Garland, et al.) released films that were not just bad but disastrous on an epic scale. 2023 was marked by labor strife in Hollywood, huge existential questions about the business as it has been run for over a century, and anxiety over the implications of technologies like AI and streaming. But it was also a year that welcomed a solid return to form of Vintage Sand favorites like Todd Haynes and Alexander Payne, gave us Wes Anderson’s first Oscar for his reunion with Roald Dahl, and brought forth astonishing new voices in works as varied as Celine Song’s “Past Lives”, Cord Jefferson’s “American Fiction”, and Emma Seligman’s follow-up to “Shiva Baby”, the wonderful “Bottoms”. It also gave us perhaps the most ambitious American film of the century, Ava Duvernay’s stunning imagining of Isabel Wilkerson’s “Caste”, in her epic “Origin”, an underseen gem that may in time prove to be the year’s greatest film. To top that off, there was the gently surprising return to classic form of the Oscars, featuring first wins for the aforementioned Wes, Christopher Nolan, and Robert Downey, Jr. Emma Stone won for her incredibly complex performance in “Poor Things”, but this Oscars may be remembered as the year Lily Gladstone was robbed for a performance that was much less showy than Stone’s but in our opinion, much more powerful. And as for the show itself, Ryan Gosling’s performance of “I’m Just Ken” may have been the greatest dance number the Oscars has seen in recent memory, though it only served to remind us how intensely the genius and talent behind “Barbie” were ignored by the Academy. Writing in the “New York Times”, Mark Harris, perhaps our favorite working film writer today, posited that film as the central force in American popular culture may be dying out. But like Harris, we don’t necessarily mourn the change; after all, the “death of cinema” has been a hot topic of discussion ever since the talkies arrived 95 years ago. In fact, we agree with Harris that 2024 may be another 1970, a year when out of the rubble of the collapse of the familiar emerged a revolution of unprecedented creativity and innovation. We have no idea what the future of film will bring, but whatever it is, we hope to be there to share our thoughts with you, not as frustrated film critics or experts in any way but as passionate film lovers who want to open as many doors as possible to new films and to new lenses through which to view old ones. To Billie Eilish’s eternal question, what were we made for? Hopefully another 50 episodes—at least!…
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1 Vintage Sand Episode 49: "Killers of the Flower Moon": It's Just the Way This Is Going 1:31:04
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When a director of Martin Scorsese’s stature releases a new movie, it’s time to drop everything else and discuss. When last we did this, with "The irishman", our thoughts on that film were mixed; it was a summation of some of the themes and ideas that have characterized Scorsese’s work, and it also contained certain thematic elements of his “spiritual” trilogy of "Last Temptation of Christ", "Kundun" and "Silence". Michael summed it up best when he characterized "The Irishman", and not in a disparaging way, as the film of an old man, an elegy for a passing time. And here we are, once again, with the director in his early 80’s, releasing a very different kind of 3 ½ hour epic that, in our view, not only feels like it could have been made by someone in his 30’s, but encompasses an ambition (both emotional and temporal/spatial) that Scorsese has never attempted before. So we present Episode 49, "Killers of the Flower Moon: It’s Just the Way This Is Going.” As we did with our study of "The Irishman", we divide this episode into two parts. In the first, we discuss the film on its own terms. Here, we disagree somewhat (which always makes for an interesting discussion) on the overall impact of the film; Michael sees it as an unalloyed masterpiece, while John and I, while recognizing its brilliance, express some reservations. We all agreed, for example, that the film’s extended running time was actually insufficient to tell this story, and that it might have been better done as a mini-series or some longer format. Another thing we all agree on is the acting which, down to the smallest roles, is pitch-perfect. This is especially true of the three leads, and of the stunning performance by Lily Gladstone as Mollie in particular. And we all love the opening and the ending of the film, and how brilliantly Scorsese uses the music of Robbie Robertson (who acts as almost a presiding spirit over the film) to underscore the themes and the mood of the piece. We also appreciate how Scorsese, in adapting David Grann’s brilliant book for the screen, shifts Grann’s emphasis on how the Osage murders helped put the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover on the map and puts his focus up, until nearly the very end, on the human side of these horrific crimes, centered around the extraordinarily complex relationship between DiCaprio’s Ernest and Gladstone’s Mollie. Then, as we did with "Irishman", we try to place the film in the context of Scorsese’s body of work, and this is where things get really interesting. While his films often focus on violence, and often depict this violence through elaborate set pieces, Scorsese’s approach is very different here. For one, with the possible exception of the misbegotten "Gangs of New York", Scorsese has never attempted to show organized violence perpetrated over such a long period of time and on such an epic scale. Paradoxically, though, while this film contains countless acts of brutal violence, Scorsese chooses to show them in the most blunt, matter-of-fact way. It’s as though he felt that calling attention to his own craft would only distract from the horrific story he is trying to tell. And this raises the stakes for the director in an unprecedented way. Rather than focusing on the violence between rival gangs, or internecine strife within a gang, Scorsese seems to be saying that the whole of American history is at least in part a kind of gang war, with profit and gain for some happening only with the suffering, exploitation and murder of "othered" peoples across the centuries. It is an exploration of the darkest corners of the American Dream, and we think you will find our conclusions about where it fits in the Scorsese canon to be interesting. "Killers of the Flower Moon" is a film of tremendous resonance, depth and contradiction as seen through the eyes of someone who, as an artist, has always been one of the sharpest observers of the complexities of who we are as a people.…
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1 Vintage Sand Episode 48: "The Union Forever!" 1:34:56
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As of our taping of this episode, Hollywood is still under the shadow of the labor problems which have arisen periodically since the beginnings of the industry. After all, remember that the formation of the Academy and the establishment of the Oscars were in many ways the studio moguls’ attempts to crush the burgeoning union movements. Periodically, since the unions were established, they have engaged in strikes, most memorably in 1960 when both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA struck to create a fair distribution of revenue from the then relatively-new medium of television. And every time in the ensuing years when the modes of distribution changed, from syndication to video tapes to DVD’s, these issues of equity have led to labor tensions across the board. With the double whammy of streaming and the technological possibilities of AI upon us, both the writers and the actors went on strike again earlier this year. The writers have settled, but the actors are still on the picket lines, and seem far away from a settlement. Some casual observers see this as a case of millionaires fighting with billionaires. So Team Vintage Sand wades into the fray by beginning this latest episode with Michael, who is a longtime and proud member of SAG-AFTRA, discussing the issue from the lived perspective of the 95%+ of his fellow union members who cannot make a living as actors. Simply put, what’s at stake is the ability of talented, hard-working people without whom the industry could not exist to put food on their table and make this month’s rent. From there, it was a logical pivot to focus the episode on films that deal with labor movements, workers’ rights and unionization. We each chose three movies, and naturally, you will find well-known films like "The Grapes of Wrath" and "Norma Rae" in the mix. But the real revelation of the episode for us is that in spite of the powerful human drama that is inherent in the struggles of labor, Hollywood has produced almost no films that touch on the subject beyond a well-known handful. We suppose this should not be a huge surprise given the industry’s deep-rooted animosity towards organized labor, but the fact is that of our nine films on the issue, three are from England, one is from France, and one was rejected by the studios and produced and distributed independently. Our hope, as always, is that the episode will open some doors to films you’ve never seen or haven’t seen in a long time. In the end, we make no claims to objectivity here; to quote 8-year-old Charlie Kane (in a completely different context), “The Union Forever!”…
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1 Vintage Sand Episode 47: "Dead Reckoning" 1:28:59
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Combine the fact that we are preparing for the run of episodes in the fall that will culminate in our 50th episode in November and that summer has kept the old gang apart for a couple of months, we could not in good conscience let go the passing of some figures both major and minor figures in the history of film whom we have lost since last we convened in May. Therefore, as kind of a bridge to what is to come, Episode 47 will function as an extended necrology, though we do begin with a detour into some of our favorite film moments of the summer. And an interesting summer it was! Let’s put it this way--it was more than Kenough. We will explore the lives of towering figures like Glenda Jackson and Alan Arkin, controversial figures like William Friedkin, and the less well-known as well. Come catch up with us, and for goodness’ sake, at least see "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" on a big screen before the summer is over……
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1 Vintage Sand Episode 46: "The House that Jack Built": Warner Brothers at 100 1:40:37
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It is one of the great wonders of American business that the same handful of companies have run the movies in Hollywood, almost since the beginning. After all, how many American industries of 2023 feature a power structure that would be familiar to someone from the late 1920’s? Yes, there were mergers then, like the ones that created MGM, Universal and Fox, and today there are yet more mergers, the challenges of adjusting to a streaming culture, and globalization. And yes, there is Dreamworks, but there’s still Paramount, and Columbia, and Universal, and Fox, and iterations of both MGM and UA, and of course the looming shadow of Disney. And while Warner Brothers is now part of Time Warner, which is part of Discovery (SO complicated), it’s still very much the powerful and influential studio that the eponymous brothers opened on April 4, 1923. After wars, depressions and recessions and other complete erasures and redrawings, those familiar logos that we and our grandparents saw as children remain. Therefore, since TCM seems to have stolen so many ideas from us (viz Episode 31 on best final films by great directors), we return the favor here by using this episode to celebrate Warners’ centennial. We thought it silly to try to come up with our three favorite films by the studio, so we each came up with three (warning, there are double entries) films for which the studio was either producer, the main distributor or both, that have had the most impact on us. We also tried to avoid films we’ve already discussed a lot, and strike out in some new directions. So come join us as among our many stops, we ride the rails with the wild boys of the road, make a stop in Ford Country, go as far afield as Bette Davis in Malaysia and Audrey Hepburn in the Congo, and end up in space with the Mercury astronauts. We promise an amazing trip, though, as Warners’ greatest star often said, we should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque……
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1 Vintage Sand Episode 45: Mapping the Metaverse: 2022 in Film 1:26:26
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2022 was definitely the everything bagel of movie years. No less an authority than Stephen Spielberg anointed Tom Cruise as the savior of movies this summer, which made sense given the success of "Top Gun: Maverick". Then came the fall, and excellent movies were released…and no one showed up. And even when they did, as with the $2.2 billion dollar gross accumulated by James Cameron’s "Dances with Smurfs Part Deux", the movies barely seemed to make a dent in the cultural landscape. It didn’t help that so many of our beloved directors released crappy movies: Aronofsky with the odious "The Whale", Russell with his how-could-it possibly-go-wrong-with-that-cast disaster "Amsterdam", Alex Garland with the puzzling (and not in an interesting way) "Men", Iñarritú inadvertently reminding us how brilliant both "Roma" and "8 ½" are with "Bardo", and the literal crapfest (elephant, in this case) that was "Babylon". Sometimes, it felt like 2022 was a living, breathing argument against the auteur theory. Yet there were some very good spots too, including not one but two really interesting portrait-of-the-filmmaker-as-a-young-man movies with "Fabelmans" and "Armageddon Time". The scene of the year? Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tar (née Linda Tarr of Staten Island!) arguing with one of her students about the pointlessness of cancelling Bach in Todd Fields’ most welcome return. "Everything Everywhere" became the only film in history to win three acting Oscars and Best Picture. Underappreciated gems like "The Menu" and (sorry, John and Michael) "Don’t Worry Darling", and even appreciated ones like "Aftersun" wormed their way into our brains and didn’t let go, though I will never look at s’mores the same way again. And we even had a solid Oscars ceremony, with powerhouse performances by Rihanna and Lady Gaga and nearly an epic battle between Malala and Cocaine Bear. Plus, we got perhaps the most sublime moment in American film this century: David Lynch playing John Ford in a Spielberg film. That glorious scene almost took away the sour taste of the “Look, I’m doing Bergman!” montage of film history that ended "Babylon" not nearly soon enough. And while we liked "EO" better when it was "Au Hasard Balthasar", and "Living" better when it was "Ikiru", and we thought that the Siegfried Sassoon biopic "Benediction" was a better World War I film than "All Quiet", there were definitely some tasty tidbits to be found on that everything bagel. An up and down year, but to paraphrase the wondrous Lashana Lynch as Miss Honey in Matilda, it wasn’t much, but it was enough for us.…
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