Dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot. Starring Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Folco Lulli The Wages of Fear is a two and a half hour movie. I was surprised at the length, knowing what I knew about it before viewing for the first time: some guys have to haul nitroglycerine across some hazardous terrain, and some obvious problems ensue.… Read More The Wages of Fear (1953)
Created by David Simon. Starring Dominic West, Larry Gilliard, Jr., Sonja Sohn I remember how frustrated I was watching Glee, a show which in its first season gave meaningful screen time and plot directions to, by my count, at least sixteen different characters. Plot arcs which could have sizzled and developed over the course of… Read More The Wire, Season 1
Dir. Michael Haneke. Starring Emmanuelle Riva, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Isabelle Huppert After Anne has had her first stroke – indeed, towards the tail end of her life as a more or less ambulatory, thinking human being – she and Georges are eating a meal together. He’s almost cleared his plate. She still has a fair bit… Read More Amour (2012)
Dir. Steven Spielberg. Starring Sam Neill, Richard Attenborough, Laura Dern As a general rule, I don’t make a habit of seeing blockbusters in theaters. Most of them don’t really interest me, and I am in deep superhero-movie fatigue; the concept of the Marvel Universe painstakingly coming to film after film after film, an idea that… Read More Jurassic Park (1993)
Dir. David Livingston. Starring Avery Brooks, Louise Fletcher, Rosalind Chao (I’ve had this blog for three years now, and I have never written a post on Deep Space Nine. Not once! That amazes me.) There’s a wonderful scene in “Q-Less,” the sixth episode of DS9, where Q shows up with Vash for reasons not much… Read More Star Trek: Deep Space Nine S1E20, “In the Hands of the Prophets”
Dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Starring Deborah Kerr, Kathleen Byron, David Farrar Once again, I find myself a little lost for words trying to talk about a Powell and Pressburger movie, so once again I’ll go to a shot and try to work backwards. There are fewer famous images in Black Narcissus than in… Read More Black Narcissus (1947)
Last hour, we gave some overdue ink to Neville Longbottom, grieved for a spate of sudden corpses, and found out how Aberforth Dumbledore would have fit into Casablanca. Let’s finish this sucker off. Hour #6: p. 659-end (“The Prince’s Tale” through “Nineteen Years Later.”) –There’s an offhanded comment made in “The Prince’s Tale” by Dumbledore where he says… Read More Live Blogging Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Sixth (and Final) Hour
Josh returns, covered in glory, to the podcast as we dip into Harry Potter. In this installment, the B&B B&B runs through its favorite Harry Potter novels. We talk about the universality of Ron Weasley, draft real life athletes to be Quidditch stars, discuss the pedagogy of Hogwarts teachers, get deep into our feelings about… Read More Baumann and Burch, Episode 19: Podcast Yes!
In the sudden tradition that we’ve come across, we’ve made a Top 100 Disney Songs list that you can see below. We bring back Josh to talk Disney with us, and we spare no thought for scope of this audio feast: we discuss whether Disney’s rollicking tunes or its introspective ballads are its most indicative… Read More Baumann and Burch, Episode 18: Jiminy Brisket
Dir. Tom McCarthy. Starring Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams With about half an hour left in Spotlight – one of those two hour movies which is punctual about its length – Mike Rezendes (Ruffalo) is on Sacha Pfeiffer’s (McAdams) porch, calmer than he was a few minutes ago but still blindingly angry. He has… Read More Spotlight (2015)
Seeing Things Secondhand 