ACFmovie podcast

Titus & Paul Cantor discuss H.G. Wells's War of The Worlds, his remarkable imagination & his penchant for scientific tyranny both--then the famous Orson Welles radio show--then alien invasion movies. War of The Worlds, both the Cold War George Pal version and & the post-9/11 Spielberg, then Tim Burton's Mars Attacks & the flying saucer movies by which it was inspired.

Titus & Flagg Taylor discuss Katyn, the great Polish director Andrzej Wajda's fourth & last Oscar-nominated film--his story about honor & prudence, about faith & suffering--about the Nazi-Soviet dismemberment of Poland, the Soviet massacres at Katyn, & the subsequent totalitarian propaganda & the Polish struggle to remember & retain their national identity. It is also his own family story, since his father was murdered at Katyn.

Titus & Flagg Taylor switch chairs: ACF President Flagg today interviews ACF Exec. Director Titus Techera--about the American Cinema Foundation, its past, its plans, & its projects, about his learning about movies in post-Communist Eastern Europe & coming to America, to writing, & cultural criticism, & about the future--digital cinema, education, & heroism.

Titus & Armond White discuss the great movies of 1968, especially the Godard pictures then first brought to America, Les Carabiniers ('63), Weekend, & La Chinoise ('67), which form a sort of trilogy of the past, present, & future of Europe--from war to revolution. (We also talk about his latest, The Image Book.) We focus on Godard's ironic documentary style & prophecies about modern society, his criticism of left-wing terrorism & right-wing consumerism--both versions of materialism. We also point to one of his signs of the alternative: Goethe.

Titus & Caitlin Peartree get to our fourth Wallace Stevens podcast--this time, we talk about the uncertainty that can get in the way of recognizing a human being & the existential implications of such an event. This is also the poem in which Stevens says he will illustrate his principle of poetry: The poem should resist the intellect almost successfully. Education & wisdom are involved in seeing that man is uncanny!

Titus & Jody Bottum talk about Michael Crichton & his most unusual novel, Eaters Of The Dead, as well as the movie that was based on it, The 13th Warrior--directed by the great John McTiernan.

Titus & Sonny Bunch discuss Watchmen, the super-hero movie most dedicated to super-heroes, their tragic & all-American character. We also talk about Zack Snyder as auteur--a man who has managed to bring a cinematic style to blockbuster production.

Titus & Caitlin Peartree continue their series of interpretations of poems by Wallace Stevens with Of Mere Being, one of the latest of his works, a brief statement on the separation between the beautiful & happiness, or the limits of human experience.

Titus & Terry Teachout turn to Out Of The Past, Bob Mitchum's best noir, his defining role as a chump, & a great variation on the femme fatale & the corrupted noble man. This is a rare story for juxtaposing the morality of the small town & the corruption of the city, the erotic lawlessness South of the border with the disheartening unhappiness of American life, & then showing how erotic tragedy grows out of this opposition between innocence & experience. The corruption of glamour is the them, & it's all-American.

Titus & Henry Olsen (Senior Fellow at EPPC, editor Unherd.com) continue the PostModern Conservative criticism of elite corruption & incompetence with a look at the coalitional, demographic, & electoral changes of recent decades--especially our elections since 2014. We show how far the electorate has moved from the elite & what a crisis is stirred by institutions & elites that no longer represent the majority.