ACFmovie podcast

Titus & James Poulos discuss Twin Peaks, the original series & the new season, the meaning of morality in an almost hopeless world, & the importance of art as a reflection on our predicament.

Titus & John Presnall discuss the most thoughtful gangster movie of our times, Carlito's Way. Brian de Palma manages to provide a kind of sequel & a kind of improvement over the much more famous Scarface. Like Scarface, this is also a running commentary on how America remembers the Bogart of Casablanca, but not the earlier gangster films. The movie is also a comparison with the famous Italian gangster movies of Coppola and especially Scorsese. It's New York setting, in the Seventies, revisits the glory & misery of lawlessness, but does so in order to bring out a version of the American dream.

Titus & Pete Spiliakos discuss the business & culture of franchises & sequels, the importance of character arcs & stories built on psychological realism, & the fundamental philosophical & political bases of DC & Marvel superhero movies as tragedies & comedies.

We're trying to educate writers, critics, & audiences all at once, so you're in for a treat!

Titus & Pete Spiliakos talk about the recent James Cameron quarrel about whether Wonderwoman is a strong woman--we go through characters from the first movies about Gen X-ers coming of age--we look at the difficulty of becoming an adult in suburbia & the heroines that emerge in these horror stories.

Titus & Carl Eric Scott & Flagg Taylor discuss Whit Stillman's most artful comedy, Damsels in distress (2012), about four college girls running a depression center on campus on a mission to save American youth from the social wasteland by inventing a dance craze.

Titus & Jason Eberl & George Dunn take a look at several movie made by the Nolan Brothers, Christopher & Jonathan, in light of various philosophical theories, from Aristotle's ethics of individual to Augustine, Kant's moral theory, & eventually Rene Girard's mimetic theory. Enjoy pop culture & philosophy!

Titus & Pete Spiliakos discuss the Christopher Nolan superhero movies & look at the DC superheroes from the point of view of themes in political philosophy: installing the rule of law, the relation between citizenship & humanity, & the relationship between human beings & powers beyond control or grasp.

Titus delivers a lecture on American society & cinema, from Tocqueville to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The ACF goes to college!

Titus & Eric Cook discuss Dunkirk, the new Christopher Nolan movie--the sources of heroism, patriotism, & prudence Nolan is working with. We talk about Churchill's speeches, the Homeric view of war, & the epic scope of movie-making. About sound design & the musical quotation from Elgar's Nimrod. About the range of forms of heroism on display in the story. About one of the strangely British heroes portrayed in the movie, Charles Lightoller, who had been second officer of the Titanic when she sank, before Dunkirk!

Titus & Eric Cook discuss The birds as a companion piece to Psycho--what is it about modern women leaving town in a hurry? What is it about remote houses from a bygone America that inspires tragedy? What does the scare in a horror movie conceal? Why did Hitchcock talk about his movies as comedies? Listen & share!