ACFmovie podcast

Latest Episodes:

ACF Critic #18 Teachout, Double Indemnity Nov 17, 2018

Show notes

Titus & Terry Teachout talk about the pluperfect noir: Double Indemnity, written by Billy Wilder & Raymond Chandler. Every element of the all-American tragedy is present here, for the first time. We talk about the conflict between love & law, the different claims of eroticism & friendship, & also where insurance stands to the all-American future.

ACF Europe #3 Blow-Up Nov 08, 2018

Show notes

Titus & John Presnall talk Antonioni's Blow-Up, a movie about the erotic revolution of the '60s & what it meant to art, artists, the young, & society. Blow-up offers a version of a tragic hero--a man who thinks himself king of London because he's on top of the new erotic & artistic production of beauty. He thinks he's in control. Then he encounters mortality.

ACF Critic #17 Paul Cantor Nov 01, 2018

Show notes

Titus & Paul Cantor, America's eminent Shakespearian, talk movies, TV shows, & tragedy. From Godfather to Breaking Bad, from Aristotle to Mark Twain, we talk about how to understand pop culture & how to understand America's great love affair with tragic heroes (now called anti-heroes).

ACF Founders #3 John Marshall Oct 25, 2018

Show notes

Titus & Richard Brookhiser, famed biographer of the Founders, get to their third discussion--this time introducing his newest book, out just after the election, about the great Chief Justice, John Marshall. We talk about his life & his work in making the Supreme Court an institution to rival the presidency & Congress. We also talk about the Federalists' vision of the American people.

ACF Critic #16 Teachout, In A Lonely Place Oct 18, 2018

Show notes

Titus & Terry Teachout discuss In A Lonely Place, the 1950 Nicholas Ray noir, Bogart's most daring performance--a movie with a modern feel, with sophisticated adult characters, men & women, who nevertheless suffer great misery. We talk about Ray's talent for bending genre to tell stories that feel true to characters he establishes within genre. We also talk about film noir's connection to tragedy, to post-war America, & to our own times. Listen & share!

ACF #17 The Untouchables Oct 12, 2018

Show notes

Titus & John Presnall talk Al Capone & Eliot Ness--Brian De Palma & David Mamet's The Untouchables, their answer to Coppola's Godfather. We talk about law & justice, populism & rights, Puritans & Catholics, WASPs & immigrant Irish & Catholics, America & Europe, democracy & tyranny. Listen & share, friends!

ACF #16 Apocalypse Now Oct 04, 2018

Show notes

Titus & John Presnall discuss Apocalypse Now, which ended the 70s, the decade of vastly ambitious Coppola movies which started with the Godfather. We talk about Coppola's vision of America & the Vietnam war, his exploration of varieties of manliness, some more insane, others less, his ideas about British imperialism--his allusions to Kipling, Conrad, & T.S.Eliot--& the amazing & awful qualities of the movie, which lead the audience to discover, in the emerging chaos of war, possibilities that had seemed foreclosed by civilization & thus forgotten, but which come alive again as humanity regresses symbolically & thematically back beyond peace, war, & the cosmos.

ACF Middlebrow #26 Almost Famous Sep 27, 2018

Show notes

Titus & Carl Eric Scott discuss Cameron Crowe's autobiographical story Almost Famous, his touch of greatness! We talk about rock music & the era when it defined the identities of vast numbers of young Americans. About the rock demigods, especially Dylan, Bowie, & Led Zeppelin. About the need for community around music & the way American youth has changed. & about Carl's Rock Songbook, the series of essays to read on rock music!

ACF Middlebrow 25 Jack Ryan Sep 21, 2018

Show notes

Titus & James Lileks talk about Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, the new Amazon series, & the original Jack Ryan movie, John McTiernan's The Hunt for Red October. We talk about the portrayal of heroism in relation to national security, about analysts rather than fighting heroes, about national threats & whether commerce & public respectability allow the realistic portrayal of political enmity, & how the kid from the Office turned into an action star. Listen & share, friends!

ACF Critic #15 Teachout, On Dangerous Ground Sep 14, 2018

Show notes

Titus & Terry Teachout talk noir! Nicholas Ray's On Dangerous Ground, the best Robert Ryan noir--a story that moves between social criticism & Romanticism effortlessly, the tragic story of a man who believes in justice & who learns to believe in innocence, too. We talk about the many attractions of the movie--Ida Lupino, the Bernard Hermann score, George Diskant's cinematography, Ward Bond's remarkable portrayal of a father mad to avenge his daughter's murder--& we also talk about noir, genre pictures, social criticism, how America learned about tragedy in WWII, & the new depth of character in story-telling this ushered in. Listen & share!

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected