Podcast: West Side Story, The Tender Bar, Don't Look Up... and Faye Dunaway?

Nick and Nathaniel reunion finale (part 3 of 3). Dear readers we hope you've enjoyed this epic talk between your host here and the long lost Nick Davis. Here's the final part in which we talk more 2021 movies plus a discussion of Gena Rowlands and Faye Dunaway due to the new class Nick is teaching.

 

78 minutes
00:01 Lana Wachowski going full meta in Matrix Resurrections
10:15 Nick's trouble with Leos Carax's Annette  (with some Pola X history)
17:50 Tony Kushner's reworking of West Side Story and its redux performances. Plus a bit of In the Heights thrown in for reasons Nathaniel objects to
32:00 France's Petite Maman  and Austria's Great Freedom 
39:30 Adam McKay's Don't Look Up and its limitations as well as the harsh critical response
47:00 An extremely odd double feature: Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch and George Clooney's The Tender Bar 
          BIG ACTRESSEXUAL FINISH
1:01:06 Nick is teaching a class called "Female Performance in Modern Hollywood" so we discuss our favourite Faye Dunaway and Gena Rowlands performances (with very brief asides to several other post-Method actresses)

You can listen to the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher or Spotify or download the attachment below. If you missed our previous recent discussion covering a full dozen 2021 movies, that's here. 

West Side Tender Bar with Faye

"And the nominees for 'Outstanding Cast who happen to already be famous!' are..."

by Nathaniel R

Each year when the SAG nominations for Outstanding Cast are named, we bemoan the rules which cause unneccessary exclusions. If an actor is in a movie lucky enough to be nominated for OUTSTANDING CAST it doesn't actually mean that they themselves were nominated. Allow us to explain...

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Chart Updates: Film Editing, Production Design, Cinematography!

by Nathaniel R

All of the Visual categories in the Oscar charts have now been updated save Costume Design which we tend to give its own articles -- playing favourites, sorry! But looking over the charts and the possibilities, it does beg the question: are Dune and West Side Story just going to be nominated in every category? And will any other films core as many nominations?  The year isn't short on films that are visually remarkable of course. There's Power of the Dog, Nightmare Alley, Tragedy of Macbeth, The French Dispatch, The Green Knight, Passing, and more.

But the question is always what are voters actually watching and what are they liking? Being remarkable only gets you so far...

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Review: Netflix's all star comedy "Don't Look Up"

Netflix's latest release, "Don't Look Up" sees a cast of A-listers staring down the apocalypse.by Christopher James

Satire is a precise tool, not a blunt object.

Adam McKay has led a polarizing, yet successful career trying to tackle tough topics with a sardonic edge. In The Big Short, he broke apart the 2008 financial crisis with some degree of success through raucous and audacious storytelling techniques. Vice, which received many Oscar nominations, took the “more is more” cinematic devices to dine out on anger towards the right. While I found it smug, it makes sense why some nodded their heads and found some shred of insight in a film confirming their own biases. That begs the question: what do we do with our anger towards people and movements that we believe are leading to the destruction of our world? 

Don’t Look Up is a disaster movie that bills itself on being a prescient allegory for our inability to deal with climate control (aka the big comet heading to destroy us). McKay presumes the world, and all of us who inhabit it, are doomed and good riddance because everyone sucks. It’s a nihilistic movie with many ill formed targets...

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Quickies to Catch Up: West Side Story, Don't Look Up, Nightmare Alley, House of Gucci

by Nathaniel R

It's that time of year when it is literally impossible to keep up. Most weeks have one maybe two if we're lucky films of interest opening. But in December it's like 10 high profile movies per week or something outrageous. So much can get lost in the shuffle which is always sad.

Here are some quick thoughts on four recent high profile screenings though we'll do full reviews when they open...

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