Tuesday
Apr092013
Podcast: The Place Beyond the Desiring Images of the 90s
Tuesday, April 9, 2013 at 11:58PM 
Surprise Podcast Attack!
For this impromptu conversation, Nick Davis, Joe Reid and Nathaniel R (c'est moi) travel back in time to the 1990s to talk VHS, Jurassic Park, Box Office vs. Lasting Power, Charactor Actors, and Desired Images (on account of Nick's book!) like Brad Pitt or Velvet Goldmine.
In addition to the time travelling we check in with new movies like the documentary Leviathan, the Ryan Gosling/Bradley Cooper drama The Place Beyond the Pines and Tyler Perry's Temptation.
You can download the podcast on iTunes or listen right here at the end of the post.
Reader Comments (18)
Yay! My day needed this.
Listened to it twice. Loved the return.
So glad I am not the only one with this sense of that I have to be at a movie screening much earlier with this underlying fear it will be sold out if I cut it too close. I have done this for matinees on weekdays. I should know better.
And now for when she appears on a movie screen I will audibly say aloud, 'DERN!!!!!'
Re: VCRs and VHS tapes: I just graduated college a year ago. I know VCRs like the back of my hand. Who are these students who laughed at Nick? They're not that much younger than me.
Nathaniel, which Spielberg 6 films?
I didn't imagine that Finding Nemo would be anyone's favourite Pixar. Weird.
arkaan -- i listed them here. Those + Lincoln
cmg --- me too. "DERN!"
eurocheese -- for a second i thought you wrote "my dad needed this" and i was feeling so very old. haha.
Why can you guys not do a weekly podcast because I would listen to that every second. Loved the podcast again but I hope Katie can make it back.
Nathaniel, thank you for your astute opinion on Cooper's "Movie Star Magnetism" compared to that of Gosling... He's a solid actor but he's NOT a Movie Star. And there isn't anything wrong with that.
When I used to go to movies with my dad, I would insist to be there about an hour early. The employees of the theater I went to probably thought I was crazy. We just wanted really good seats, and my dad would be fine with it because he would bring a book and just sit there before the movie started.
Great conversation. And thank you to Joe for allowing me to finally check the Zeljko Ivanek box on my podcast bingo card.
Not to focus too much on one thing, but Joe is also right on the money re: Tyler Perry's Temptation. That movie is 31 flavors of wrong. If there was ever any doubt about how much Tyler Perry absolutely hates women in general, it all comes into focus here. That may seem hyperbolic, but honestly, not that much. Best case scenario, he thinks women are imbeciles with no agency. Dude is seriously working through some issues and I have to wonder if he's aware of what he's doing.
The Pretentious Know It All: Word! I don't know why Tyler Perry's treatment of women doesn't get any press. I watched one of his movies (for professional reasons) - don't remember which, but it had Kathy Bates in it - and the big audience cheer moment is when a cheating wife is slapped across the room by her husband.
Mike in Canada, the Kathy Bates movie is The Family That Preys -- Tyler Perry hates himself, he's a glass closet case, and devoutly religious.
The dudes were bro-ing it out today, huh? I dig it. (You still rock, Katey!) I guess this convo took place before the Ebert news came out. I figured that was going to monopolize most of this conversation. I found myself nodding my head at much of what you guys were talking about. I vividly remember a pre-Internet era (VHS in the house, baby!) where you had to get your "inspiration" any way you could (my weakness at the time was magazine cutouts of Kelly Slater . . . yum . . . that's about when I "knew" too yet denied it every chance I could get). I also greatly underestiimated Bradley Cooper's acting chops until "Silver Linings Playbook" shut me up for good. He was always "Doug" to me, and I never saw "Alias" or "Wet Hot American Summer." I haven't seen "Jurassic Park" since the 90s either, and I've avoided the sequels like the plague. You guys may have convinced me to go and see this again! It's just so expensive. I couldn't gather what Nick's new book was about. It's your dissertation? Seriously? I knew you were a smart dude, but holy shit! I thought you were a film critic like the rest of them. Do you think your book is going to go over well to a lay crowd? Joe's comments about Pixar were right on. Instead of relying on old branding and merchandising for these sequels, Pixar could be branching out like they did in the past with original stories very easily. The fact that they aren't is depressing. But then a part of me feels like the bloom is withering a tad even in the original storylines department over at Pixar. I thought that "Brave" was very average by their standards, and winning the Oscar over "Wreck-It Ralph" was a real disappointment. Nice podcast, guys! Do them more often!
I once showed up an hour ahead for the opening night 11 pm showing of Inception, made my friends leave dinner early to get there, and we were the only five people in the theatre until 10 minutes before it started.
Nathaniel, I was so happy you used Strange Days as a reference. I purchased one of the tickets that accounted for Strange Days' boffo opening weekend if you love that film, you should read the Kathryn Bigelow: Hollywood Transgessor book. Lots of interesting Strange Days info.
Oh God! I swear I've just heard your podcast after throwing away my last batch of VHS. My tapes of Law of Desire and Body Heart were particularly worn...
I saw Living Out Loud all alone at the movie theatre. It's interesting because for some reason I don't remember 98 as a particular memorable year, as I do with 99, but if you look at the movies they're very interesting.
@Reynolds: Thanks for asking about the book! As an academic book, written to secure tenure from specialists in my field, it's certainly more scholastic in language and argument than anything I write on the site. Readers with an aversion to film theory or to philosophical experiments might well be put off, or baffled, or bored. I did, try, though, to write the book to be accessible to readers from a large range of backgrounds, and to make film-theory discussions more widely digestible than they tend to be, even though I'm writing about a theorist (Gilles Deleuze) who used some of the weirdest, self-devised vocabularies for thinking and writing about film. He's not, for example, a Freudian. I find his concepts extremely interesting and suggestive, and I trust him because he was such an obvious and voracious movie nut, which a lot of film theorists aren't. So, I hope other readers even outside academia might feel some of the funk. But, we'll see! The next book will be aimed from the start at a wider audience, for sure.
i enjoyed it but seriously boys, the word "like" hasn't been that overused since the last valley girl reunion
We're so busted!
We are. I am loathe to wonder how long it will take me to edit out every "like" in the future. An extra 5 hours in the editing room, perhaps?
I've listened to this podcast like 3-4 times now and i really love it (I should also update my iTunes more often, in case a new one pops up!).
I still have some love for VHS tapes, since there are still quite a lot of films that haven't made the transfer to DVD format yet (such as "Looking for Mr. Goodbar").
I agree about Bradley Cooper not having the movie star charisma as say, Ryan Gosling, but I do think Cooper is a solid actor as well. I mainly knew him as the hottie in "Failure to Launch" "He's Just Not That Into You" "Case 39" and for dating Renee Zellweger before his big stardom from the "Hangover" films, so I was glad to see him do some fine dramatic work in "Silver Linings Playbook." I really wonder if he has what it takes to win an Oscar in the future.
Haven't seen "Velvet Goldmine" yet although I may rent it from the library today and see it finally!
Not sure if I'll see "Jurassic Park 3D" in theaters, since I do remember liking the film as a kid in the 90s, but not so much to watch it again.
"Tyler Perry's Temptation" is a really bad movie. I had liked (not loved) previous films of his, and I was really disappointed by this one. The only things I liked about it were Brandy and Lance Gross' abs. OH, and the audience participation ("Yeah, slap that girl!" "Dayum, he's FINE!"), haha.
Hmmmm....what else, what else?
Just watched "Rob Roy" for the first time last week and I didn't really care for it too much (Ugh, that rape scene), but I do agree Tim Roth stole the show. I only knew him from the movie "Hoodlum" (due to me being then-huge Vanessa Williams fan), so perhaps I'll check out his other films during that career 'height'?
Lastly, um...I got around to watching "The Place Beyond the Pines" a few nights ago and I liked it. I agree about how the film kinda falters with each following chapter (and oh, my cousins & I did not care for Emory!). The horrible thing about the experience though was that the movie projector broke with like 5-7 mins remaining, so I had to resort to looking up the ending on Wikipedia when I got home. AMC gave me a free ticket to make up for it, but I wouldn't wanna see it all over again JUST to see the ending.