ACFmovie podcast

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ACF Middlebrow #24 Die Hard Sep 04, 2018

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Titus & Pete Spiliakos talk about Die Hard on its 30th anniversary. We talk about the everyman role that made Bruce Willis a star & how director John McTiernan arranged an entire story about arrogant, failing institutions--corporations, the media, the police, FBI, &c.--& the moral virtues of working class Americans like John McClane. We also talk about the skill & care put into making the movie--the action, the design, the characterization, & the sequences in the plot. Die Hard redefined action just like it defined a sort of populist patriotism. We then turn to how action movies failed as a genre & were replaced by superhero movies & the new situation--economic, political, social, technological--in which nobody finds it possible to imagine a working class hero. We try to show what middlebrow art does in bringing social concerns & storytelling together, as well as how it might be done again.

ACF Middlebrow #23 Netflx v. Disney Aug 28, 2018

Show notes

Titus is joined by Richard Rushfield, newshound extraordinaire, author of the Ankler newslater, the favorite Hollywood commentary at the American Cinema Foundation. We talk Netflix, Amazon, Disney--the changes in our entertainment & technology--as well as how the conflict between them is shaping up in America's fight for a monopoly in the glamour business.

ACF PoMoCon #2 The corruption of The Elites Aug 24, 2018

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Titus & Pete Spiliakos return to PoMoCon, the post-modern conservative podcast, & discuss the various political & intellectual forms of corruption afflicting elites. We find things to notice, & criticize, among both parties & all ideological points on the compass. Sure to make us popular.

ACF Europe #2 Burning Bush Aug 20, 2018

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Titus & Flagg Taylor talk about Agniezska Holland's story in honor of Jan Palach, Burning Bush. This is the 50th anniversary of the violent end of the Prague Spring, so we talk about the promise of freedom in in Czechoslovakia, the Soviet invasion that ended it, & the noble self-immolation of the young student Palach in protest against tyranny. We talk about the moral realism & the technical competence of the Burning Bush mini-series & connect it to Charter77 & the collapse of communism in 1989.

ACF Critic #14 Teachout, Night of The Hunter Aug 10, 2018

Show notes

Titus & Terry Teachout discuss Charles Laughton's directorial debut, The Night Of The Hunter, a remarkable movie about false prophets--the possibility that the devil would come among us in the clothes of a preacher. We talk at length about the various aspects of the making of the movie--actors, script, production, score, & even some editing & cinematography. & we also talk about the moral seriousness served by all these crafts & Laughton's unity of conception.

ACF Masters #5 Wild Bunch Aug 03, 2018

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Titus & John Marini discuss the most impressive of Sam Peckinpah's Westerns, The Wild Bunch. We talk about Peckinpah's ambivalent view of Progress, his Rousseauan attempt to ground human happiness in an innocent state of nature that recalls Eden, & his thoughts on nobility--what does it mean to have integrity, to be a man of one's word, & to stick together with other men. Peckinpah made the Western into a tragedy & raised the spectacle of freedom to the pitch of agony & is for this reason the worthy counterpart to John Ford's epic grandeur.

ACF Middlebrow #22 The Death Of Stalin Jul 26, 2018

Show notes

Titus & Flagg Taylor talk about Comedy & Communism--under the banner of Middlebrow, we talk about the recent movie The Death of Stalin, but also about Milan Kundera's Joke & the plays of Vaclav Havel, about Solzhenitsyn & Leo Strauss, about the tragic movie The lives of others & about the black Soviet comedies of Ilf & Petrov... We talk about comedy as truth-telling & retrieval of nature under the threat of ideological tyranny, about comedy's relation to evil, & about how we in democracies can understand life under tyranny.

ACF Critic #13 Teachout, Laura Jul 19, 2018

Show notes

Titus & Terry Teachout discuss Laura, the most beautiful noir movie--a beautiful noir about the beautiful. We talk about the great achievements of the actors--the cinematography--the score--the direction--the source novel--in every way we try to bring out what a surprising collaboration of talents this movie is, rather than the handiwork of one single author. More, we discuss the achievement of middlebrow culture in Laura & the meaning of noir!

ACF Founders #2 Gouverneur Morris Jul 12, 2018

Show notes

Titus & Richard Brookhiser, famed biographer of the Founders, discuss the Gentleman Revolutionary, Gouverneur Morris, The Rake Who Wrote The Constitution, as the Brookhiser bio is titled. Morris was the most aristocratic of the Founders & he is the one with the best seats for both world-changing events. We talk about his many accomplishments, from writing the New York Constitution & the US Constitution to the Erie Canal, & his impressive career & the character that made it possible.

ACF #15 Unforgiven Jul 05, 2018

Show notes

Titus & Flagg Taylor discuss the last Western--& the movie that won Clint Eastwood his first Oscars. Unforgiven is a movie about the origins of law in sacred law--not in mere order. It shows what fearful deeds are required to establish the equal natural rights of all human beings, whereas an orderly system might simply treat women as prostitutes & property.

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