Establishing Shot

Ted and Ricky are back with a rundown of the titles springing up inside the Browning Cinema this April. On hand to help is longtime Establishing Shot recording engineer, Kevin Krizmanich, who is pulling double duty both in front of and behind the microphones. Together, the three discuss the busy month, including the close out of the Hitchcock Learning Beyond the Classics series, a new slate of Professor Pfinklepfunder $1 Sunday Family Films, and some great new and classic films from Spain, Italy, Switzerland, France, Poland, Denmark, Germany, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The April Rundown with guest Kevin Krizmanich

Establishing Shot Podcast

Establishing Shot is happy to present Top 3, Part 2: The Chatting with Dr. Paulette Curtis. The title isn’t lying either as Ted and Ricky are again joined by Dr. Paulette Curtis on a very special episode to discuss sequels each thinks supersedes the original.

Ricky’s sequels avoid any Roman numerals and kick off with the recent Paddington 2, which builds out the marmalade-loving immigrant’s experiences with the Brown family in winsome directions (despite Paddington landing in jail). So winsome are those directions that the end result was the film generating a rare 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. After that, he hits a much more divisive film in Gremlins 2: The New Batch, which director Joe Dante made so differently from the Old Batch that legions of fans were left fuming. Not Ricky Herbst, though! He loves how the sequel actively cashes out/tarnishes the goodwill created by the first installment. Lastly, Ricky’s rollercoaster ride of sequels comes to an end with Final Destination 3, the middle child in the series that follows fate as it comes for its due.

Ted begins his Top 3 with The World of Apu, the last film of the Apu Trilogy by Satyajit Ray. Following Pather Panchali and Aparajito, The World of Apu upon its release in 1959 garnered international acclaim and remains one of the best known Parallel Cinema films today. Staying with trilogies and sequels not clearly denoted by a number, Ted endorses Before Sunrise, the middle of the Before Trilogy that follows the very talky relationship between Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke. Ted closes his list with Superman II, the mashup of Richards (Donner and Lester) that gave the world, albeit fleetingly, Non, Ursa, and General Zod.

Paulette hangs out in outer space with her first two films. First up is Aliens, James Cameron’s reins-taking of the monster movie franchise from 1986/2179. Paulette stays in outer orbit with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan that reignites a long-simmering feud between Starfleet and the tyrant Khan Noonien Singh, who has various axes to grind. Paulette’s final sequel, although in no means the final sequel in the series, is Rocky II, which similarly rehashes a previous feud as Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed give the world a rematch of their 1976 bout.

With that, the sequels discussion is over, but there’s definitely a To Be Continued… card popping up after Paulette’s second appearance on the show.

TOP THREE, PART 2: THE CHATTING WITH DR. PAULETTE CURTIS

Establishing Shot Podcast

After a brief winter hibernation, Establishing Shot is reestablished and back to discuss a busy month of March. It’s so busy that Ted and Ricky have called in a heavy hitter to work through all that is happening. Answering the call is Dr. Paulette Curtis, a longtime friend of the Browning Cinema and, broadly, the arts here at Notre Dame.

March has a particular uptick in new releases, some of which come with awards laurels and others from less recognized paths. One film now able to tout an Oscar is Free Solo, the documentary about a climb up the 3,000-ft. El Capitan monolith performed with no ropes, no safety harnesses, and no protective gear. Similarly, Capernaum stood for an Academy Award, that being for Best Foreign Language Film against juggernaut Roma, and continues to impress audiences with its story of a savvy kid who manages life on the streets of Lebanon. Museo, another foreign language film, comes from Mexico and stars Gael García Bernal as a perpetrator of the major heist at the Anthropology Museum in 1985. Another Spanish-language feature playing is Los Niños de María, a documentary on the struggles faced by Puerto Rican children in the wake of 2017’s Hurricane María produced by Laura Duque, who is scheduled to appear at the Browning Cinema with the film.

Three films about, in part, gentrification are playing, including Blindspotting about Oakland’s quickly changing landscape and The Bread Factory Part 1 and The Bread Factory Part 2, both on a fictional small town’s challenges to outside investment. The rights of those marginalized also comes into focus in On the Basis of Sex, the biopic of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg prior to her time on the Supreme Court that is being presented in conjunction with Notre Dame Law School.

Lastly, three art films round out the month of new releases: Permanent Green Light about a high schooler’s search for meaning, Notes on an Appearance about people on the hunt for a recluse, and Madeline’s Madeline about the blended line between stage parents and the stage.

Other ongoing series include the Met Live performances, which include La Fille du Régiment by Donizetti and Die Walküre by Wagner. The Learning Beyond the Classics focus on Hitchcock continues with three of his best-known films: Strangers on a Train, Shadow of a Doubt, and Rear Window. The Nanovic Institute Film Series continues with In My Room, a German take on The Leftovers, and Professor Pfinklepfunder’s Sunday Family Films include Boys Town, The Lego Batman Movie, and The Lorax. A new series done in partnership with the Michiana VegFest is bringing

Ted and Ricky meet up for December’s installment of their Top 3 program as the 2018 programming has taken its bows and 2019 waits in the wings. With the closing of the year, Ted and Ricky are taking a moment to do their own in memoriam, discussing people who passed during 2018 and who made, in their own and unique ways, great contributions to the entertainment world.

Ted begins his list with the Italian filmmaker Ermanno Olmi, who directed films that would appear to many to fit squarely within the Italian Neorealist movement; however, Olmi himself claimed that he was trying to make something unique from that style. Regardless of how he is categorized, his films received accolades throughout his lifetime, including a Palme d’Or win for his The Tree of Wooden Clogs in 1978. Next on Ted’s list is Neil Simon, the prolific and bankable writer for stage and screen whose works set the tone for relationship dramedies that felt the friction and constraint of urban living. (A particular favorite there for Ted would be The Heartbreak Kid from 1972.) Ted closes his list with Robby Müller, a cinematographer who popped up on fascinating sets and contributed greatly to the works of very different directors, including the works of Wim Wenders (Paris, Texas), Jim Jarmusch (Mystery Train), and Lars Von Trier (Breaking the Waves).

Ermanno Olmi (1931-2018)

Neil Simon (1927-2018)

Robby Müller (1940-2018)

Ricky begins his list with narrator/background actor/magician/historian Ricky Jay, whose own prowess in writing and the arcane attracted him to directors like Paul Thomas Anderson and David Mamet. Jay also was a renowned sleight of hand magician who delivered grandiloquent stories alongside his prestidigitation that often matched the styles of the films in which he was cast. Ricky then discusses Nicolas Roeg, who began as a cinematographer working with the likes of David Lean before transitioning to trippier fare, including Performance with Mick Jagger, The Man Who Fell to Earth with David Bowie, and an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches, which will be playing in the Professor Pfinklepfunder series next semester. Lastly, Ricky discusses the work of Mark Tenser, who built up Crown International Pictures, a grindhouse producing films that both served as a zeitgeist collection pond (as grindhouses do) while also defining the look, feel, and audiences for B-films of the 1970s and 1980s.

With that, we look forward to 2019 and the many exciting films, directors, guest lecturers, and events happening in the Browning Cinema next year.

Ricky Jay (1946-2018)

Nicolas Roeg (1928-2018)

Mark Tenser (1920-2018)

THE TOP THREE: 2018 MEMORIAM OF GREATNESS

Establishing Shot Podcast

Ted and Ricky are in the very merry Browning Cinema to run down the December slate of films. While a shorter month with the semester ending, there are still a wide variety of films playing. The month kicks off with Crazy Rich Asians, the summer blockbuster that ranks in the top five romantic comedies of all time. It also happens to be the first Hollywood film to feature a majority Asian cast since the Joy Luck Club. Alongside that will be Dario Argento’s 1975 thriller Deep Red, which is receiving some notoriety lately given the remake of his Suspiria.

A mini-retrospective of Paul Schrader’s films begins December 4–8 in advance of his anticipated visit to campus next semester. After collecting wheelbarrows of awards for First Reformed, Schrader is no stranger to hugely important American films, including these featured titles screening at the Browning Cinema: Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, Taxi Driver, American Gigolo, and Raging Bull.

The Browning will have slightly cheerier fare as the Truth and Fiction series closes with Won’t You Be My Neighbor? about America’s favorite neighbor, Fred Rogers. Professor Pfinklepfunder’s final films of the semester will be yule-themed, including It’s a Wonderful Life and Dolly Parton’s Christmas Coat of Many Colors. And lastly, the reason for the PG-13 rating’s establishment, Gremlins, adds some kick to the holiday film line-up.

The programming for the calendar year closes with what promises to be a lavish performance of La Traviata in the Met Live series. Despite the short month, there’s plenty to keep everyone warm and entertained during the holiday season.

THE DECEMBER RUNDOWN

Establishing Shot Podcast

Happy Thanksgiving 2018, everyone! We have three movie lovers gathered around a banquet of microphones for the patent-pending Top 3 episode of Establishing Shot. Joining Ted and Ricky is Professor Michael Kackman who teaches in the Film, Television, and Theatre Department while also co-hosting Aca-Media, the official podcast of the Society for Cinema & Media Studies and the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies.

In honor of Thanksgiving, Establishing Shot wanted to give turkeys their proper due. Accordingly, Ted, Ricky, and Michael will be talking about their three favorite turkeys (i.e., films that flopped). Now, you might ask: What construes a flop? Answer: We all have our own different opinions! And if you listen, you’ll hear exactly how each guest approaches that question.

Now to the best butterballs in the bunch.

Michael comes out of the gate with Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the 1971 adaptation of Roald Dahl’s classic story of tempting children to steal industrial trade secrets and corporally punishing them once entrapped. He follows that with the campiest of all camp counselors: Showgirls, which records show is the first NC-17 film to hit a Top 3 episode as well as the first SBTB alum vehicle to make the list. Michael closes out his list with the small screen going to Cop Rock, a TV show that was sort of a proto-Glee minus much, well, glee.

Ricky isn’t quite willing to turn the page from Halloween and starts with Only Lovers Left Alive, Jim Jarmusch’s film from 2013 about the most emo vampires in all of Detroit. Flipping his color palette entirely, he then zips over to the Wachowski’s Speed Racer from a decade ago. Leaving his two-fold confusion of how that film was made and why it wasn’t embraced, Ricky closes with Roar, a bore of a film stuffed with wild lions and hubris that actually keeps the viewer on the edge of their seat because, as the tagline says: No animals were harmed in the making of the film but 70 cast and crew were.

Ted’s turkeys start locally here in the Hoosier State with Orson Welles’ 1942 adaptation of Booth Tarkington’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Magnificent Ambersons. After the rise and fall of the Ambersons, Ted discusses Brian De Palma’s 1981 neo-noir Blow Out (which Michael will let you know deserves to in the turkey coop or wherever turkeys might live). Ted closes his Thanksgiving list with the biggest tom of all turkeys who’ve ever tommed, that being Ishtar, a film whose title has become synonymous with box office bombing. Ted, though, is here to serve as its apologist and encourage you to get lost in the desert.

With that, a Happy Thanksgiving to all and, if you’re looking to power through your food coma this holiday, we hope you can find some energy binging on some of these silver screen turkeys.

Top 3: Thanksgiving Edition

Establishing Shot Podcast

Ted and Ricky sit down to discuss what is a veritable cornucopia of November films at the Browning Cinema—such a cornucopia that it will undoubtedly signal the theme of the Top 3 that will drop in the middle of the month. While Thanksgiving pauses programming for that weekend, November still has a hefty mix of new and classic films screening.

To start, Professor Pfinklepfunder’s movie-making machine will hopefully be properly calibrated and creating films like Song of the Sea from Irish myths, The Parent Trap from the early Lohan days, and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory from Roald Dahl.

The Learning Beyond the Classics Series, this semester on how to analyze documentary films, remains open to all and will be screening a series of short documentary essay films with guest lecturer Jill Godmilow as well as the documentary The Honour of All wherein First Nations play themselves.

The live-streaming or captured-live broadcasts from National Theatre Live include Julius Caesar and from Met Live in HD include La Fanciulla Del West by Puccini.

Operation Frankenstein screenings close out with the Director’s Cut of Blade Runner and the 90s cult gem Gattaca. Otherclassics include Big Night, which is being shown in conjunction with the ongoing Higgins Labor CLASSics series; Deep Red, Dario Argento’s Giallo that should be worth a rewatch given the hype surrounding the remake of his Suspiria; and The Blues Brothers, which is playing the role of the concert/musical film shown annually the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.

Closing out the month are a slew of new films, including Frederick Wiseman’s close-to-home documentary Monrovia, Indiana; the horror/comedy with heavy 80s toppings Slice; the new documentary from Notre Dame Professors Nets of Memory about the Irish immigrant experience in the United States; a documentary on Kusama Yayoi called Kusama: Infinity that will be shown alongside Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece; a neo-realist account of the Romani population living in Italy with A Ciambra; a courtroom/marital thriller The Children Act about the strain the justice system places on the home and vice versa in the UK; The Miseducation of Cameron Post, a fictional film set in rural Pennsylvania in the 1990s about conversion therapy; and lastly Crazy Rich Asians, which will have both its success and its messaging broken down with a panel.

All of those films should be ample antidotes to any tryptophan comas. As will also be, hopefully, our rousing episode of Top 3 later this month with a v/s v/s/g.

THE NOVEMBER RUNDOWN

Establishing Shot Podcast

It’s a very special episode of Top Three [insert Registered Trademark symbol here… if it would only apply. Get back to us, USPTO!] because Ted and Ricky are talking about when TV shows get so big the little screen simply can’t hold them anymore— we’re talking about the Top Three films to be adapted from television shows. With them is the best person in the world for such a conversation, Professor Chris Becker, who teaches in Notre Dame Film, Television, and Theatre. Of the F, T, and T, Chris primarily focuses on the Television side of things and literally knows oodles of history about how film and television have cross-pollinated throughout the millennia.

Chris’s three films kick off with one of the most expensive (and successful, using the same financial yardstick) Saturday Night Live adaptations. That’d be The Blues Brothers, John Landis’s 1980 film on a mission from God that might just be playing at the Browning Cinema in the near future. (Stay tuned!) Next up is the infinitely quotable and quoted Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which was adapted faithfully from the CBS cartoon Dungeons & Dragons from the early 1980s. Rounding out her Top Three is The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! from 1988, which as the name suggests is based off the short-but-bright-burning run of Police Squad! from earlier in the decade, and marks both the pitching debut of Queen Elizabeth II and the singing debut of Enrico Palazzo.

Ever the bastion of highbrowness with Top Three, Ricky stays true to form with Jackass: The Movie from 2002. Somewhat unique to the film is that its reviews tend to be very polarizing but which direction they’re tilting can be difficult to discern. For example, is the “feel-sick movie of the year” a compliment? After trying to answer that question, Ricky moves on to 1992’s Wayne’s World, the only Saturday Night Live adaptation bigger than The Blue Brothers—and also one of the rare nesting dolls to feature a TV-show-within-a-TV-show-made-into-a-movie. Ricky closes his lot with A Very Brady Sequel from 1996, which continues the fish-out-of-water nature of The Brady Bunch Movie from the year prior but, much like TV shows as seasons pass, ups the ante on the hijinks.

Ever the bastion of lowbrowness with Top Three, Ted starts out with Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage (1973), a film condensed from the six-part miniseries Bergman also directed that depicts a disintegrating marriage over a decade. Ted chases that feel-good romp with the trippy Head from 1968, an extension of The Monkees presence on television that, reportedly, had a scenario written while the screenwriters were smoking marijuana and then those scenarios were cobbled into a script while the screenwriter was on LSD, which one wouldn’t find all that surprising when watching it. Lastly, Ted presents Armando Iannucci’s In the Loop from 2009, an adaptation of The Thick of It, which ran for a couple of seasons (or series, as it were) on BBC. It also has an American cousin in Iannucci’s Veep, which similarly scrutinizes the pettiness and insecurity of governmental officials through the lens of creative swearing and insults.

As always, big thanks to Kevin Krizmanich for handling the sound engineering and to Staci Stickovich for giving each episode its online home.

TOP 3: SMALL TO BIG SCREEN ADAPTATIONS

Establishing Shot Podcast

The hosts of the Establishing Shot podcast are thrilled to have an amazing guest sitting down with them to discuss what's at the Browning Cinema this October.

Ted and Ricky are back with another episode of Establishing Shot’s Top Three segment with guest host Professor Dan Graff, director of the Higgins Labor Program. The trio discusses their top three picks for bosses in film.