Another Kind Of Distance: A Time Travel, Twin Peaks, Film, Doom Patrol And Nostalgia Podcast

This Paramount 1933 Studios Year by Year episode features two of the studio's defining stars of the era: the Marx Brothers, in their final, most famous, and (maybe) most nihilistic Paramount film, Duck Soup, directed by Leo McCarey, and Gary Cooper, miscast (or maybe not) in One Sunday Afternoon in the role that would go to James Cagney in the Warner Bros. remake, The Strawberry Blonde. We zero in on Groucho's authoritarian anti-authoritarianism and Cooper's embodiment of a charismatic man's class resentment. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we share our first experience with the cinema of Nouvelle Vague primitivist Luc Moullet, his quirky and candid examination of second-wave feminism's effect on his relationship (and anatomy), Anatomie d'un rapport (1976)   Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:      1933 and Paramount 0h 06m 53s:      ONE SUNDAY AFTERNOON (1933) [dir. Stephen Roberts] 0h 27m 01s:      DUCK SOUP (1933) [dir. Leo McCarey]              1h 01m 22s:      Fear & Moviegoing in Toronto – Luc Mou

For our November 2025 Special Subject we watched the Antoine Doinel films of François Truffaut: The 400 Blows (1959), Antoine et Colette (1962), Stolen Kisses (1968), Bed and Board (1970), and Love on the Run (1979). In addition to the charms of star/auteur avatar Jean-Pierre Léaud, we focus on the films' evolving style and increasing interest in the women in Doinel's life. And in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto section we discuss Paul Leni's horror comedy The Cat and the Canary (1927) and a Hitchcock double feature, Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and Saboteur (1942). Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:    THE FOUR HUNDRED BLOWS / LES QUATRE CENTS COUPS (1959) [dir. François Truffaut] 0h 28m 50s:    ANTOINE ET COLETTE (1962) [dir. François Truffaut] 0h 37m 30s:    STOLEN KISSES / BAISERS VOLÉS (1968) [dir. François Truffaut] 0h 54m 42s:    BED AND BOARD / DOMICILE CONJUGAL (1970) [dir. François Truffaut] 1h 05m 15s:    LOVE ON THE RUN / L'AMOUR EN FUITE (1979) [dir. François Truffaut] 1h 19m 32s:    Fear and Moviego

Our Gloria Grahame Acteurist Oeuvre-view continues with two  1955 liberal institutional melodramas: Stanley Kramer's Not as a Stranger, starring Robert Mitchum as a monomaniacally idealistic doctor, Olivia de Havilland as the wife he takes for granted, and Gloria as the Other Woman; and Vincente Minnelli's underrated The Cobweb, starring Richard Widmark as a monomaniacally idealistic psychiatrist, Gloria (in one of her best roles) as the wife he takes for granted, and Lauren Bacall as the Other Woman. The relatively counter-intuitive casting of the latter film is an indication of its greater subtlety, but the pairing of the two makes (so we hope) for interesting discussion. And then in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto we say goodbye to Diane Keaton (belatedly, by the time this episode will go up) with a viewing of Annie Hall and ask whether either its "feminist" or its "misogynous" reputations are deserved.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:    NOT AS A STRANGER (1955) [dir. Stanley Kramer] 0h 36m 29s:    THE COBWEB

We've got a Halloween Hangover on this week's episode, with two Universal 1932 horror movies, James Whale's The Old Dark House (based on a novel by J. B. Priestley) and Karl Freund's The Mummy, starring Karloff. We explore the curious tone, social themes, and stellar cast (including Charles Laughton, Ernest Thesiger, Eva Moore, Melvyn Douglas, and the excellent Lilian Bond) of Whale's Gothic oddity and The Mummy's connection to Dracula movie history. Then the hangover continues in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto: we discuss our latest theatrical viewing of the great Dead of Night (1945) as well as a Canadian Thanksgiving viewing of the boomer classic The Big Chill (1983) for a different kind of grappling with mortality and confrontation with horror.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      THE OLD DARK HOUSE (1932) [dir. James Whale] 0h 35m 45s:      THE MUMMY (1932) [dir. Karl Freund] 0h 58m 08s:      Fear & Moviegoing in Toronto – Dead of Night (1945) by Basil Dearden, Cavalcanti, et al and The Big Chill (1983

Our 2025 Halloween episode is a double feature in the "mentally disintegrating men" genre: in Ingmar Bergman's Hour of the Wolf, Max von Sydow is beset by some unusual vampires, and in Robert Bierman's Vampire's Kiss, Nicolas Cage becomes an even more unusual one. If people attempting to bite each other to death without proper vampire fangs is your idea of horror, this is the right Halloween film podcast episode for you. (And if it's not, watch these movies and you may change your mind.) If your idea of horror is desperately needing other people without being able to stand being around them then you've also come to the right Halloween episode.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:    HOUR OF THE WOLF (1968) [dir. Ingmar Bergman] 0h 27m 18s:    KISS OF THE VAMPIRE (1988) [dir. Robert Bierman] +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with th

In this week's Gloria Grahame Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode our heroine reunites with Fritz Lang and Glenn Ford in Human Desire (1954), based on the Zola novel La bête humaine, which was more faithfully filmed by Renoir in 1938. We debate the relative merits of the two adaptations as well as the potential weakness that links them. Then we turn to the quirky little noir Naked Alibi (also 1954, co-starring Sterling Hayden), in which Gloria gets to be the hero against a thoroughly incoherent backdrop to which we apply some scattershot social analysis. Irresponsible opinions galore await the courageous listener!  Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:    HUMAN DESIRE (1954) [dir. Fritz Lang] 0h 28m 43s:    NAKED ALIBI (1954) [dir. Jerry Hopper] +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * R

In this RKO 1932 Studios Year by Year episode we discuss a couple of trademark Selznick productions: What Price Hollywood?, the first iteration of the A Star Is Born story, starring Constance Bennett as the rising star Mary Evans, "America's pal," and Lowell Sherman as her tormented director mentor; and The Animal Kingdom, based on the Philip Barry play, with Leslie Howard, Ann Harding, and Myrna Loy in a highbrow Pre-Code love triangle. Marriage takes a real beating in these rare movies exploring alternative kinds of loving relationships between women and men. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we cover the second new movie we've seen in 2025, Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD?  (1932) [dir. George Cukor] 0h 28m 33s:      THE ANIMAL KINGDOM (1932) [dir. Edward H. Griffith] 1h 00m 00s:      Fear & Moviegoing in Toronto – Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another (2025)   Studio Film Capsules provided by The RKO Story by Richa

This week's Gloria Grahame episode sees our acteur making some questionable career decisions: a rare headlining role in Columbia's Orientalist stinker Prisoners of the Casbah (1953), displaying a phenomenal lack of chemistry with Turhan Bey; and a micro-role in intriguing British heist noir The Good Die Young (1954) as a pragmatic actress tormenting husband John Ireland with her indifference. We find what there is to like in this quality dip, or, failing that, what there is to mock.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:    PRISONERS OF THE CASBAH (1953) [dir. Richard L. Bare] 0h 18m 43s:    THE GOOD DIE YOUNG (1954) [dir. Lewis Gilbert] +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again” * Check out Dave’s Robert Bench

For this 1932 Fox Studios Year by Year episode we watched Frank Borzage's unloved Young America, an idiosyncratic, primitive melodrama starring Spencer Tracy as a wealthy drugstore owner at odds with a disadvantaged delinquent, and Passport to Hell, Fox's surprisingly good take on the Sternberg-Dietrich formula, starring Elissa Landi as a woman of ill repute at odds with the colonial authorities in German West Africa. No rural themes in sight in this episode, just the tribulations and heroism of the underdog.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      YOUNG AMERICA (1932) [dir. Frank Borzage] 0h 28m 14s:      PASSPORT TO HELL (1932) [dir. Frank Lloyd] Studio Film Capsules provided by The Fox Film Corporation: 1915-1935 by Aubrey Solomon Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler 1932 Information from Forgotten Films to Remember by John Springer                                 +++ * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Je

In this week's episode of the Gloria Grahame Acteurist Oeuvre-view series, our heroine battles an organized crime ring in Fritz Lang's classic noir The Big Heat and the Soviets, or in any case her beleaguered circus capitalist husband, Fredric March, in Elia Kazan's Man on a Tightrope (both 1953). Dave and Elise are somewhat at odds about the effectiveness of Tightrope's anti-censorship message, but united on the effectiveness of Lang's use of the noir genre, and Grahame, to depict heroism in a world familiar with the horrors of fascism.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:    Man on a Tightrope (1953) [dir. Elia Kazan] 0h 22m 10s:    THE BIG HEAT (1953) [dir. Fritz Lang] +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange A

Our Special Subject for September 2025 led us to watch a couple of wartime British films starring Laurence Olivier and his amazing accents: Québécois in Powell and Pressburger's The 49th Parallel (1941), which opposes a Platonic Idea of Canada to Nazi ideology, and Russian in Anthony Asquith's The Demi-Paradise (1943), an alarmingly Soviet-friendly use of the romantic comedy genre to promote cross-cultural understanding. The accents may lack technical accuracy (much like the films' depictions of various cultures), but the ideas on display are worth grappling with and the presentation entertaining, while Olivier himself is rivetingly eccentric and weirdly endearing. Other notable players include FOP Penelope Dudley-Ward, Margaret Rutherford, Glynis Johns, Leslie Howard, Felix Aylmer and Powell/Pressburger regulars Eric Portman and Anton Walbrook.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:    The 49th Parallel (1941) [dir. Michael Powell] 0h 43m 38s:    THE DEMI-PARADISE (1943) [dir. Antohny Asquith] +++ * Listen to our gues

This Warner Bros. 1932 episode is a double feature of Glasmon-Bright scripts directed by Pre-Code wizards: Mervyn LeRoy's Three on a Match, a tight little melodrama about the cryptic and arbitrary nature of self-destruction with Ann Dvorak as a wealthy housewife beset by ennui; and Roy Del Ruth's Taxi!, in which Loretta Young has to stand up to James Cagney's hot-headed cab driver, although neither his violence nor her self-control is going to help them fight those who have more power under capitalism. At 63 and 69 minutes respectively, they pack a Cagney-style punch--no flab, just Warners Pre-Code energy! Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:      Warner Brothers and 1932 0h 05m 08s:      TAXI!  [dir. Roy Del Ruth] 0h 33m 09s:      THREE ON A MATCH [dir. Mervyn Leroy]   Studio Film Capsules provided by The Warner Brothers Story by Clive Hirschhorn Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler 1932 Information from Forgotten Films to Remember by John Springer                                

Our Gloria Grahame Acteurist Oeuvreview recovers from last week's rough spot with two excellent roles in two excellent films that display her range as a character actress. In Vicente Minnelli's The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), for which Gloria won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, she's a sweet but silly Southern belle curiously sacrificed by Kirk Douglas' relentlessly driven movie producer; and in Maxwell Shane's The Glass Wall (1953), she's a fed-up proletarian who rediscovers her humanity by helping Vittorio Gassman's Hungarian refugee. Our conversation moves from the opaque depths of Minnelli's Hollywood melodrama to the cruel but redeemable America of Shane's leftist docu-noir, which somehow slipped under the radar of the blacklist. Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:    THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL (1952) [dir. Vincente Minnelli] 0h 28m 48s:    THE GLASS WALL (1953) [dir. Maxwell Shane] +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Marvel at our meticulously ridic

This 1932 MGM Studios Year by Year episode is a Robert Montgomery double feature, although the spotlight is on his leading ladies: an incandescent Marion Davies in Blondie of the Follies (directed by Edmund Goulding), and a distraught Tallulah Bankhead in Faithless (directed by Harry Beaumont). We discuss the strengths and incoherencies of Anita Loos' and Frances Marion's screenplay for Blondie of the Follies (spoilers: it may have been tampered with by some guy named Hearst) and then turn to our strong reactions to MGM's intense Depression melodrama, in which Hugh Herbert plays a sexual predator so convincingly it gave Elise a nightmare! Speaking of nightmare fuel: in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto we discuss Mike Figgis' Leaving Las Vegas (1995), starring Elisabeth Shue and Nicholas Cage in a kind of reverse Vertigo, which was playing as part of the TIFF Story in 50 Films series.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:      1932 and MGM 0h 05m 41s:      BLONDIE OF THE FOLLIES [dir. Edmund Goulding] 0h 37m 26s:      F

Our August Special Subject is Literature vs. Welles vs. Moreau: we discuss the three finished films that Orson Welles made with Jeanne Moreau, whom he considered "the greatest actress in the world." The Trial (1962) stars Anthony Perkins in an adaptation of the Kafka novel; Chimes at Midnight (1965) stars Welles as Falstaff in an adaptation of Shakespeare's Henriad focused on the Prince Hal/Falstaff relationship; and The Immortal Story (1968) stars Welles and Moreau in an adaptation of a Karen Blixen story. Come for Welles' handling of these immortal stories, stay to find out how Moreau assisted the magician.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:    THE TRIAL (1962) [dir. Orson Welles] 0h 35m 24s:    CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT (1965) [dir. Orson Welles] 0h 52m 19s:    THE IMMORTAL STORY (1968) [dir. Orson Welles] +++   * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette O

In this episode of our Gloria Grahame Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, our protagonist is rudely shoved into the background of the movies, barely appearing in Josef von Sternberg's Macao (1950) (she would have liked to have appeared in it even less) and playing a rote schemer in David Miller's Sudden Fear (1952). The movies themselves don't make up for her under-use, despite the amiable pairing of Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell in the former and the great Joan Crawford sobbing her way to an Oscar nomination in the latter. We do our best to articulate what went wrong for us, before turning our attention to James Gunn's Superman (2025) in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment. Gunn's approach triggers Dave's superhero comics nostalgia, but Elise is skeptical.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:    MACAO (1952) [dir. Josef von Sternberg] 0h 22m 52s:    SUDDEN FEAR (1953) [dir. David Miller] 0h 42m 15s:    Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – James Gunn’s Superman (2025) at the Scotiabank Theatre on Richmond Street Ex

For this round of Paramount 1932, we watched our first Marx Brothers movie for the podcast (hard as that is to believe), Horse Feathers (directed by Norman Z. MacLeod), alongside Ernst Lubitsch's only sound-era drama, Broken Lullaby. Lubitsch's batshit WWI melodrama, bursting with intensity and unease, claims our attention first, and then we turn to the detached anarchy of the Marx Brothers. Elise probes Dave's obsession with their antics and offers her outsider's take on the poetics of their personas for his contemplation.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:      Paramount and 1932 0h 08m 41s:      THE MAN I KILLED aka BROKEN LULLABY [dir. Ernst Lubitsch) 0h 41m 01s:      HORSE FEATHERS [dir. Norman Z. McLeod]   Studio Film Capsules provided by The Paramount Story by John Douglas Eames Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler 1932 Information from Forgotten Films to Remember by John Springer                                 +++ * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete View

This week in our Gloria Grahame Acteurist Oeuvre-view we watched one of her best-known films, In a Lonely Place (1950), directed by Nicholas Ray and co-starring Humphrey Bogart, alongside the unpromising Cecil B. DeMille circus drama The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). This may be the only time you find these two movies discussed together with roughly equal enthusiasm. Ray's portrait of a romance doomed by male violence may have psychological perception and stylish writing, but DeMille's Technicolor spectacle has a clown with a dark secret (played by Jimmy Stewart no less), Cornel Wilde shirtless in tight pants, a train wreck, the blood transfusion bonding trope, and of course, a love-crazed Nazi dangling an elephant's foot over Gloria Grahame's face. Unhinged Bogart meets unhinged DeMille, brought together by our Acteur giving restrained performances as wary observers.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:    IN A LONELY PLACE (1950) [dir. Nicholas Ray] 0h 41m 24s:    THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH [dir. Cecil B. DeMille

For our Universal 1931 Studios Year by Year episode we took in a Sidney Fox double feature, Bad Sister (adapted from a Booth Tarkington novel, with an early role for Bette Davis as the good sister) and Strictly Dishonorable (adapted from Preston Sturges' only successful play and directed by John Stahl). Laemmle Jr.'s protegée uses her ingenue quality to good effect whether she's playing an unsympathetic Alice Adams or a complex early Sturges heroine, and in fact we argue that the latter performance is something of a tour de force, leading us to lament the brevity of her career. Lewis Stone and Paul Lukas also impress in Strictly Dishonorable, while George Meeker gives a game performance as an Ugly WASP American at home.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:    BAD SISITER [dir. Hobart Henley] 0h 31m 02s:    STRICTLY DISHONORABLE [dir. John M. Stahl] +++ Studio Film Capsules provided by The Universal Story by Clive Hirschhorn Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler Additional 1930 inf

Our final Oscar Levant Special Subject episode covers his contribution to two of the greatest MGM musicals, Vincente Minnelli's An American in Paris (1951) and The Band Wagon (1953), plus a 20th Century Fox curiosity, The I Don't Care Girl (1953) in which Mitzi Gaynor supposedly plays early 20th century vaudeville wild woman Eva Tanguay. Levant reaches new heights as a cinematic presence in An American in Paris, a film that, we argue, forms part of an "art life" Levant trilogy with Rhapsody in Blue and Humoresque, then flaunts some virtuoso piano performances in The I Don't Care Girl before succumbing to a heart attack prior to filming The Band Wagon. We give our general impressions of these must-see musicals while also trying to determine what quality Levant brings to An American in Paris, in particular, that it wouldn't have without him (besides self-loathing narcissism). What does Oscar Levant have to tell us about the figure of the artist? Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:    AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951) [dir. Vi