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

In our second Jennifer Jones episode, we defend William Dieterle's LOVE LETTERS (1945), putting it in the context of 40s psychiatric melodramas and WWII amnesia movies, and consider the good and bad of what Ernst Lubitsch's CLUNY BROWN (1946) has to say about female sexuality and English complacency.   Time Codes: 0h 1m 00s:            Love Letters (dir. William Dieterle) 1h 00m 28s:          Cluny Brown (dir. Ernst Lubitsch)                     1h 31m 37s:          Fall Cinemagoing Update 1h 33m 28s:           Listener Mail with Evan Dokos and Todd Murry +++ * Find Elise’s latest published film piece – “Elaine May’s Male Gaze” – in the Elaine May issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room* *And Read Elise’s Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.* Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com Theme Music: “What’s Yr Take on Cassavetes?” – Le Tigre

In our first 1930 Warner Bros. episode, we consider DAWN PATROL as an early example of cahier hero ‘Auward ‘Awks's philosophy of masculinity, and note the emergence of the Warners ethos in Mervyn Leroy's PLAYING AROUND, including consciousness of class, sympathy for criminals, vaudeville Yiddish characters, and a touch of patriarchal anxiety.   Time Codes: 0h 1m 00s:       The Dawn Patrol (dir. Howard Hawks) 0h 39m 19s:     Playing Around (dir. Mervyn Leroy)      1h 16m 29s:     Fall Cinemagoing Update – Euzhan Palcy 1h 23m 06s:     Listener Mail with Todd Murry +++ * Find Elise’s latest published film piece – “Elaine May’s Male Gaze” – in the Elaine May issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room* *And Read Elise’s Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.* Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com Theme Music: “What’s Yr Take on Cassavetes?” – Le Tigre

“Autumn is the most bourgeois month,” as Keats said. Elise and Dave prove this is so by exploring Nora Ephron's two autumnal Upper West Side romantic comedies, WHEN HARRY MET (1989) and YOU'VE GOT MAIL (1998), a remake of Ernst Lubitsch's THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER. Elise passes judgment on the two latter movies on the basis of her extensive experience of working in retail and intimate knowledge of the Bookstore Wars of the turn of the millennium. Dave defends Bernie Bros. Time Codes: 0h 1m 00s:       Topic Intro & When Harry Met Sally (dir. Rob Reiner)  0h 32m 05s:     You’ve Got Mail (dir. Nora Ephron) & The Shop Around the Corner (dir.                              Ernst Lubitsch)          1h 45m 45s:     TIFF Autumn Schedule unboxing 1h 59m 51s:     Listener Mail with Todd Murry +++ * Find Elise’s latest published film piece – “Elaine May’s Male Gaze” – in the Elaine May issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room* *And Read Elise’s Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.* Follow us on Twitte

In the first MGM episode of our Studios Year by Year series, the year is 1930, and Elise and Dave watch as the straggler studio struggles with the challenges of early sound in THE BISHOP MURDER CASE, starring Basil Rathbone as Philo Vance, with two credited directors (Elise posits a third, unknown genius). Then we switch over to a Marion Davies comedy, NOT SO DUMB, directed by King Vidor, Dave's favourite director for many reasons that he enumerates in the episode, none of them relevant to this movie. We conclude that Lynn Fontanne stage vehicles are not the forte of either Vidor or Davies; however, Donald Ogden Stewart is on hand to provide handsy amusement. “Guess who!” “It was you!” Too bad that's not the movie's most problematic moment (trigger warning—our first—included in segment). Also: some reflections on the sadism of comedy and the role of the “other man” in film comedy.   Time Codes: 0h 1m 00s:       The Bishop Murder Case (dirs. Nick Grindé & David Burton) 0h 52m 59s:     Not So Dumb (dir. Kin

Join Dave and Elise for episode one of our (near-)complete filmography series on the great Jennifer Jones (née Phylis Isley). We provide a few preliminary thoughts re: our take on the Jones/Selznick synergy and then dive right into the films. Song of Bernadette kicks things off with quite a blessed bang, situating our star at the conceptual vanishing point between the instinctual and the ineffable; while the following year’s Since You Went Away dabbles with domesticating the Jones persona (as a nod to the war effort, y’know), for the first and perhaps the only time.       Time Codes: 0h 1m 00s:       Introduction to Jennifer Jones 0h 16m 15s:     Song of Bernadette (1943) dir. Henry King 1h 21m 37s:     Since You Went Away (1944) dir. John Cromwell 2h 19m 38s:     Listener Mail with Todd Murry +++ * Find Elise’s latest published film piece – “Elaine May’s Male Gaze” – in the Elaine May issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room* *And Read Elise’s Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.* Follow us on Tw

Elise and Dave launch their extended excursion into oligarchic auteurism with a pair of films from the studio whose special touch may very well have been its hands-off approach to directorial oversight. Certainly Behind the Make-Up (aka The Feeder) makes a very interesting companion piece to Dorothy Arzner’s later masterpiece Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) – a film discussed on this very feed earlier in 2019. It stars William Powell, Kay Francis, Fay Wray, and Hal Skelly, none of whom would wind up becoming intimately associated with Paramount (although an argument could be made for Francis). Then we turn our attention to that great cinematic marvel of the early sound era – the picture that proved talkies could move! In fact, filmed out of Paramount’s Astoria Queens facility, Applause rambles magnificently all over pre-Chrysler Building and Empire State Building Manhattan. It’s also damned moving, with a performance from Helen Morgan that’ll leave you wondering why any of us were born.   Time Codes: 0h 1m 00s:    

Dave and Elise close out their discussion of the Dietrich/Sternberg septet with three films that examine three distinct paths (and aftermaths) to victory for the Dietrich persona. From superhero weepie to Henry James inflected Game of Thronery to a kind of class-conscious Carmen– this one’s got it all! Time Codes: 0h 1m 00s:       Blonde Venus 0h 33m 00s:     The Scarlet Empress 1h 09m 52s:     The Devil is a Woman 1h 42m 54s:     Elise and Dave rank the 7 films 1h 52m 01s:    Listener Mail with Todd Murry +++ *Read Elise’s Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.* Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com Theme Music: “What’s Yr Take on Cassavetes?” – Le Tigre

Welcome to the first installment of Fear & Moviegoing in Toronto! This time out, it’s part one of our mammoth conversation covering Marlene Dietrich and Josef von Sternberg’s inspired 1930s collaborations. We saw the films as part of The TIFF Lightbox’s recently concluded retrospective, Insolent Enigma/Arrogant Auteur.  Join us as we feel our way toward a critical counternarrative to the anemic analyses which have plagued the skin-deep celebration of this cinematic septet for too long. (Much of our discussion takes place in dialogue with Andrew Sarris’ 1960s monograph The Films of Josef von Sternberg.)     Time Codes: 0h 1m 00s:       Preamble 0h 22m 27s:     The Blue Angel 0h 46m 00s:     Morocco 1h 15m 43s:     Dishonored 1h 48m 30s:     Shanghai Express 2h 11m 23s:    Listener Mail with Todd Murry +++ *Read Elise’s Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.* Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com Theme Music: “What’s Yr Take on Cassavetes?” – Le Tigre

This week’s episode serves as both a prolegomenon to our imminent Hollywood Studios Year By Year series and as a wistful look back to Dave’s teen years, when he picked up Ethan Mordden’s freewheeling speed date with Old Hollywood History and discovered a new way to split the difference between Adornian culture industry theory and auteurist ontology. Journey back to a time when oligopoly really meant something and most entertainment companies weren’t somehow beholden to Disney. We quote from and quibble with Mordden’s characterizations of the quintessential qualities of Paramount, MGM, Warner Brothers, Fox, RKO, and Universal (Dave gets particularly riled up about yet another slight to the sacred memory of Carl Laemmle Jr.). What’s your favourite Golden Age Studio? We want to know! Time Codes: 0h 1m 00s:   The Hollywood Studios 2h 15m 43s    Listener Mail with Todd Murry +++ *Read Elise’s Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.* Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@g

Welcome to our brand-new movie podcast! In this episode, Elise Moore and David Fiore ramble on about their respective lives cinematic and present impressionistic lists of their characteristic enthusiasms. Last, but not least, we sketch out the shape of ‘casts to come. Among the topics covered here:  our not being a David Lynch podcast, RCA Videodiscs, Canadians watching New England PBS stations, Xanadu, The Lady in the Lake, reading about movies you fear you’ll never see, The Strawberry Blonde, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, Bette Davis in general, Stanley Cavell, Ray Carney, Jonathan Rosenbaum, and the great Jerry Lewis. Time Codes: 0h 1m 00s:   Dave and Elise’s Nitrate Nativities 1h 16m 33s: 4 Impressionistic lists 1h 57m 35s: Coming attractions   *Read Elise’s Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.* Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com Theme Music: “What’s Yr Take on Cassavetes?” – Le Tigre

In the second half of our Dorothy Arzner marathon, we cover the remaining entries in the recent TIFF retrospective (Christopher Strong, Merrily We Go To Hell, and Dance, Girl, Dance), along with a pair of items we scrounged up on our own (Nana and Craig’s Wife). Dance, Girl, Dance is justifiably considered the director’s summative work, gathering all of Arzner’s countervailing preoccupations and themes into its sui generis structure like a bull in the narrative shop. The other four films form quite an interesting group, collectively emphasizing a more fatalistic side to the auteur only hinted at in the darker moments of The Bride Wore Red.    Also: this is Dave's first chance to wax rhapsodic about the great Helen Chandler (who got her last decent film role in Christopher Strong).  Arzner Gratia Artis!

Inspired by TIFF Lightbox's Winter 2019 Dorothy Arzner retrospective, Elise and Dave dive into a lengthy discussion of this absurdly neglected auteur's career and context. On leg one of the journey, we examine WORKING GIRLS (1931), THE WILD PARTY (1929) and THE BRIDE WORE RED (1937), zeroing in on the director's penchant for dichotomously paired protagonists (Judith Wood/Dorothy Hall; Clara Bow/Shirley O'Hara; Joan Crawford/Joan Crawford - with MVP kibitzing from Mary Phillips), her unflinching analysis of patriarchal gender codes, and her Transcendental poetics of the Will-To-Efflorescence.

Happy holidays from Elise and Dave! This year's X-Mas offering was inspired by Elise's new piece in The Threepenny Review and by Dave's lifelong obsession with New England Transcendentalism.  See you in 2019!

Join Elise Moore and David Fiore as they gear up for David Lynch's imminent return to the Pacific Northwest with an extended discussion of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. We'll be covering every episode of the show's much-anticipated third season, and we're more excited than ever after our most recent viewing of the director's divisive prequel/coda. Powered by Sheryl Lee's galvanizing performance, Lynch's first "Woman In Trouble" masterpiece emerged from the ashes of the TV show's rather confused (to put it charitably) second season. This Passion of Laura Palmer is a centrifuge which separates all of the most potently Manichean elements out of the folksy flannel Brigadoon Lynch and Frost had created for the network - generating some of the most soaring and soul-shatteringly debilitating moments ever filmed. We worry that Season 3 may walk back FWWM's extraordinary final shots of Laura, Coop and the Angel; talk a lot about Victor Fleming's hyper-Freudian 1941 version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; and bear witness

Finally, the long-promised amnesia episode! If you haven't forgotten. (BOOM! Amnesia joke right away.) Elise and Dave look at Canadian cult film Archangel (1990) (the one not with Daniel Craig in it) by Guy Maddin and one of its sources, another amnesiac soldier film, Mervyn LeRoy's classical Hollywood melodrama Random Harvest (1942). We make our case for why amnesia movies in general, and these two in particular, ought to be thought about in a time travel narrative context. Elise, who used to be married to Guy, tries to explain the thought processes behind some of the scenes in Archangel, but Dave arguably does a better job.   Time (Travel) Table: 0:01:37       Random Harvest (1942) 1:44:37       Archangel (1990) 3:04:51       Mailbag!             We've got a time-Tumblr! Please do check it out and interact with us there! Don't forget, you can always write us at anotherkindofdistance@gmail.com, or contact us through our Facebook Page or Twitter account (@TimeTravelFilms).  We're on all of the podcast deliv

Returning to you after the most re-recordings since our PRIMER episode plus technical difficulties with the computer, Dave and Elise take on a movie that gets better when you think about it, TRIANGLE (2009) and one that gets worse with thought, TIME LAPSE (2014). Elise gets excited about fan theories about Triangle; Dave is unimpressed. But Elise and Dave agree, re: TIME LAPSE, that you shouldn't make a character-based movie and then forget to include any human beings. Episode Related Links: Triangle Movie Logic Explained Paradox (Time Travel Podcast) episode on Time Lapse Time (Travel) Table: 0:01:37       Triangle (2009)   1:31:18       Time Lapse (2014) 3:02:07        MORE Triangle! 3:34:15        Mailbag!             We've got a time-Tumblr! Please do check it out and interact with us there! Don't forget, you can always write us at anotherkindofdistance@gmail.com, or contact us through our Facebook Page or Twitter account (@TimeTravelFilms).  We're on all of the podcast delivery services, including iTu

Dave and Elise examine an unlikely cinematic duo, Our Town (1940), Sam Wood's adaptation of Thornton Wilder's experimental Pulitzer-winning play about turn-of-the-19th-century American small town life, death, time, and family, and Synecdoche, New York (2008), Charlie Kaufman's experimental movie about a theatre director in a small American city (Philip Seymour Hoffman), death, time, and family. Well, I guess it doesn't sound all that unlikely when you put it like that. Although we've once again gone off the beaten path of strict time travel, that produces some of our favourite episodes, and this is one, so we hope you'll like it too.   Time (Travel) Table: 0:01:37            Our Town (1940) 1:56:47           Synecdoche, New York  (2008) 3:39:41           Mailbag!   We've got a time-Tumblr! Please do check it out and interact with us there! Don't forget, you can always write us at anotherkindofdistance@gmail.com, or contact us through our Facebook Page or Twitter account (@TimeTravelFilms).  We're on all of

Elise and Dave try to philosophically and narratively untangle two precog movies more-or-less based on Philip K. Dick tales, Minority Report (2002) directed by Spielberg and starring Tom Cruise, and Next (2007), starring Nicolas Cage and directed by Lee Tamahori. We discuss how Minority Report has been politically castrated (i.e. de-Dicked) for the sake of Spielberg feel-goodism, and debate how much of a bitch Julianne Moore really is in Next. Elise marvels at Nick Cage's “sad dad” seduction moves, but decides he's her favourite action star ever. Note: apologies for the long break, everyone, Dave had to recover from our one-block move! The next podcast will take place from an air- conditioned location.   Time (Travel) Table: 0:01:37   Minority Report (2002) 1:54       Next (2007)   We've got a time-Tumblr! Please do check it out and interact with us there! Don't forget, you can always write us at anotherkindofdistance@gmail.com, or contact us through our Facebook Page or Twitter account (@TimeTravelFilms).

It's an episode of complicated plots. Dave and Elise struggle to understand the plot and world of Toni Dove's visually and formally inventive sci-fi noir SPECTROPIA (2006), and admire the plot of John Dahl's forgotten UNFORGETTABLE (1996). Elise explains why Ray Liotta is androgynous. Dave defends John Dahl's directorial distinctiveness. Anti-capitalist 1930s toasters anachronistically quote DETOUR (1945). Episode-related Links: Time Travel: The Quintessential List! Time (Travel) Table: 0:01:37     Spectropia (2006) 0:53:00     Unforgettable (1996) 2:53:00      Mailbag    We've got a time-Tumblr! Please do check it out and interact with us there! Don't forget, you can always write us at anotherkindofdistance@gmail.com, or contact us through our Facebook Page or Twitter account (@TimeTravelFilms).  We're on all of the podcast delivery services, including iTunes, TuneIn radio and Stitcher, so please rate/review us there, if you can! Finally, as suggested by listener Jay, here's an Amazon link to Dave's time

Elise decides Alan Moore is the problem with Zack Snyder's WATCHMEN, defends BATMAN V SUPERMAN as "Romantic art." Dave shouts about Kant, explains how both Snyder and Moore get superheroes wrong, while inveighing against some guy named Alex Ross. And much, much more in this epic discussion of a couple of movies they didn't really like, that don't have much to do with time travel, for your mental delectation. Episode-related Links: Some of Dave's previous (written) ramblings about Watchmen (the comic) can be found here. Article on Terry Gilliam's more time travel heavy ideas re: a Watchmen movie Time (Travel) Table: 0:01:37      Watchmen (2009) 3:41:30      Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) 4:34:30      Mailbag + closing the book on 11.22.63   We've got a time-Tumblr! Please do check it out and interact with us there! Don't forget, you can always write us at anotherkindofdistance@gmail.com, or contact us through our Facebook Page or Twitter account (@TimeTravelFilms).  We're on all of the podca