ACFmovie podcast

Titus & Ben Sixsmith talk about writing & audiences in the age of social media. Digital technology has rapidly democratized communications, turning broadcasting into narrow-casting & exposing everyone to the promise of access, interaction, & even celebrity. This has fostered not a brave new world, but serious political & social conflicts we discuss. The public space has been unwittingly privatized in the keep of a handful of tech corporations now facing a lot of hatred & with no sense of what the future holds!

Titus & Eric Cook talk about Hitchcock's Catholic movie, I confess, about the conflict between justice & faith, public & private, secular law & holy men. Monty Clift plays a priest who receives confession of a murder only to gradually see himself get accused of that murder. A seeming accident turns into the theologico-political problem.

Titus & Eric Cook return to the Hitchcock series with Strangers on a train--a kind of companion piece to Rope. Both movies about murders committed out of enlightened immorality, one set among education elites in New York, the other among political elites in Washington--both stories about social climbers who have to face up to the ugliness of the elites they want to join & therefore warnings about the problems post-war liberalism will face.

Titus & Paul Cantor talk about David Milch's most famous achievement, Deadwood--the movie & the TV show both: A lawless, but orderly vision of America. An America with commerce but without religion, with freedom but without equality--what kind of community & what kind of justice is possible in such a situation?

Titus & Peter Paik discuss Alan Moore's comics, which have made for a number of movie adaptations, few of which are successes. Zack Snyder's Watchmen is good. HBO is now making a series which looks terrible. The Wachawski's V for Vendetta was rather bad, as also From Hell. We try to explain why with reference to two themes that recur in Moore's stories--radical political change & the power of suffering to make for greatness, both ideas simply to be rejected in an End-of-History version of liberal politics. We also discuss Miracleman for one of Moore's depictions of such a realized End of History.

Titus & Telly Davidson, critic & author of Culture War, a book about the 90s, return to Citizen Kane to wrap the discussion of the tyrannic soul, the erotic man who wants to be loved by everyone, & the characterization through love & friendship that helps us grasp what kind of man Kane was. We also talk about politics & media, how technology changes our situation & how we try to adapt to it.

Titus & Telly Davidson talk about Citizen Kane, the story of politics & media technologies, the transformations radio brought to public & private lives, & the arrival of the fully erotic man--the tyrant-soul who wants to be loved by everyone. We also talk about transformations since Kane: TV & the internet, & the political, social, & cultural changes they've brought.

Titus & Spotted Toad talk about education, the experience of the teacher, the crisis in public education & how to rethink it in the present circumstances. We talk about his book--13 Ways Of Going On A Field Trip--about his ten years teaching science in New York & the place of nature in our attempt to become rational.

Titus & Terry Teachout talk about North by Northwest, Hitchcock's perfect comedy. We move by way of thriller from the noir to what it would take for a noir hero, betrayed by a beautiful woman, nevertheless to find his way to romance in the element of comedy. Cary Grant pulls off a performance by turns comic & tragic, trying to make sense of life in modern America, & end up getting married.

Titus & Paul Cantor continue discussing his new book, Pop Culture & The Dark Side Of The American Dream: Today we talk about The Walking Dead as a post-modern Western. What's American character like in absence of institutions & technology? Can there be any meaningful freedom in the state of nature?