Establishing Shot

 In this month’s episode of Establishing Shot, Ted and Ricky breakdown the schedule with special guest Dr. Dan Graff, a close friend of and frequent collaborator with the Browning Cinema. Professor Graff is the director of Notre Dame’s Higgins Labor Program and teaches about labor history and 19th-century American history out of the History Department.

Among the amazing speakers, timely roundtables, community organizing, and integrating labor discussions into various campus intersections, the Higgins Labor Program also maintains the Labor Song of the Month blog, where you can listen and read about the history of the workplace. With Professor Graff’s help, Ted and Ricky run through the series and one-offs that make September such a busy month.

There are currently four ongoing film series, each offering a unique addition to the Browning Cinema’s programming:

The Learning Beyond the Classics series this semester is Truth and Fiction: How to Analyze Documentary Films. Those not enrolled in the publicly available film course are welcome to attend any of the individual film screenings at regular ticket price.The Operation Frankenstein series—which is a collaboration between Notre Dame’s Departments of Political Science and English—has a sampling of early adaptations of Mary Shelley’s infamous creature.Professor Pfinklepfunder’s $1 Sunday Family Films continue on with the Studio Ghibli classic Howl’s Moving Castle (co-sponsored by the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies), the 1980s inspirational teacher biopic Stand and Deliver (co-sponsored by the Institute for Latino Studies), and the thoroughly British and thoroughly charming Paddington.The launch of the 2018-2019 National Theatre Live season rounds out our series offerings in the month of September with Julie, a new adaption of Miss Julie, and King Lear with Sir Ian McKellen in the title role.

Along with the semester-long series, various new and classic films are screening at the Browning Cinema in September, including the highest-grossing German film of 2016 Welcome to Germany which hits topic of refugees in Europe (co-sponsored by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies); the buzzy Eighth Grade about the perilous transitional year into high school; and American Animals which blends documentary and narrative techniques to tell the story of an actual rare books heist at an American university.

Lastly, a couple of classic films of note include an evening of silent-era films directed by women in the Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers Shorts Program (a Because Gender...

In this month's episode of Establishing Shot, Ted and Ricky breakdown the schedule with special guest Dr. Dan Graff, a close friend of and frequent collaborator with the Browning Cinema. read more

This academic year, Establishing Shot’s monthly Top Three episodes are, befitting its conceit, slipping out of a two-seat booth and filling out a table for three (anything the New Yorker does we do with 50% more effort) with the help of some special guests. Fresh off her gig on Establishing Shot discussing ANDkids World Film Festival, Dr. Paulette Curtis joins Ricky and Ted at the new makeshift table cobbled together from microphones and music stands and empty Pamplemousse La Croix cans like the background scenery in Rent. And just as Rent is an adaptation of Puccini’s La Boheme, Ted, Ricky, and Paulette will be discussing adaptations while burning their art for fire to stay warm during this cold, cold August. In particular, adaptions that transform the source material in an interesting way, make use of film’s properties as a medium or transport an original story to an unexpected new location.

Up for Paulette are three films falling generally under the science-fiction umbrella, which tracks given she teaches popular courses on science-fiction literature here at Notre Dame. On her list is the original Planet of the Apes (spoilers on spoilers on spoilers) from 1968, an adaptation of La Planète des singes by Pierre Boulle. That cat Boulle is a pretty interesting figure given that his major works are Planet of the Apes and the almost identical The Bridge over the River Kwai.

After touching on the merits of newer adaptations of the book (your Burtons, your Caesars), Paulette hits David Cronenberg’s adaption of Dead Zone, the Stephen King novel of the same name. Perhaps an easy adaption heading from Canada to Maine, Cronenberg directed this forward-seeing thriller in 1983 and has Christopher Walken (and not Anthony Michael Hall) take the audience on a roller-coaster ride through creeping fascism. Lastly, Paulette unpacks last year’s popular and critical darling Logan, inspired by the Old Man Logan comic series by Steve McNiven and Mark Millar, which was the first film to be adapted from a superhero comic book to be nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award (if you don’t count The Remains of the Day).

Ricky’s top three starts with Rear Window from 1954, which is an adaptation of Cornell Woolrich’s 1942 story It Had to Be Murder. While the shifts from the story to the film are intriguing, the adaptation is also an opportunity breakdown Woolrich’s life trajectory and how it tracked Rear Window. Following that is Who Framed Roger Rabbit based on Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, which begs two questions: (1) who censored that question mark from the movie and (2) if musicals get to end in exclamation marks then why shouldn’t many, many more mysteries end in a question mark?

Gary Wolf’s novel focuses on comic strips and the personalities therein making the shift to film and animated features lively. Further, the darkness in Wolf’s novel helps explain the seedy undertones in the movie because, try as one may, you can’t dip all of those subtexts out of a PG-rating. Lastly, Ricky chats about Candyman—featuring upcoming Presenting Series artist and composer Philip Glass—and the film’s journey aboard the Goodship Lollipop f...

Dr. Paulette Curtis joins Ricky and Ted to discuss film adaptations that transform the source material in an interesting way, make use of film’s properties as a medium, or transport an original story to an unexpected new location. read more

As Establishing Shot re-establishes itself for the upcoming academic year, the podcast is moving up and out of its duplex into two separate shacks. (The podcast had a rough game of MASH.) Don’t worry, intrepid listeners! The content will still be the same with the traditional episode being cleaved into two episodes: (1) what’s playing at the Browning Cinema and what Ted and Ricky have been catching in the festival/screener world and (2) the heretofore(ver) un-trademarked Top Three portion of the show.

As it’s both exciting and daunting to be expanding, Ted and Ricky will be enlisting the help of some special guests to help carry the load. This episode, Notre Dame’s own Dr. Paulette Curtis has the onerous job of being the first guest and tasked with schlepping the sofas to the U-Haul (moving houses metaphor still active). She’s on hand to discuss with Ted and Ricky the rundown of Ted’s recent trip to the Munich Film Festival as well as the 10th Annual ANDkids Film Festival, which is upcoming August 1–3 in the Browning Cinema with screenings daily at 11 a.m, 1 p.m., 3 p.m., and 7 p.m. and a Foley Workshop on August 1–2 at 5 p.m.

An annual collaboration between WNIT Public Television and co-presented by the Lauran E. and Justin L. Tuck Endowment for Children’s Programming, ANDkids offers international films for kids of all ages for exactly zero (count ‘em: zero) bucks. The free screenings come from almost every continent (sorry again, Antarctica) with an abundance of languages and cultures and genres and topographies and stories depicted. Kids are given a passport if they intend to attend multiple screenings which can be stamped to show all the amazing places they’ll go via the movies. After each screening, kids can vote for the ANDkids Best of the Fest award.

This year’s festival kicks off with a shorts program called Dig Deep, Fly High with animated shorts from the United States, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Mexico, Slovenia, Argentina, France, Russia, Canada. The shorts are intended for all ages with many dialogue-less shorts and, as with all shorts programs, any subtitles being read aloud for any pre-literate attendees. A live-action shorts program, Dream Catchers, follows with stories from Turkey, Australia, India, The Netherlands, Suriname, Iraq, Lebanon, and the United States featured for audiences roughly of ages 8+. The first feature film screens thereafter, a G-rated animated trio of comic barnyard stories from France dubbed into English called The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales.

Kevin Krizmanich, the Cinema Production Manager and Engineer of this very podcast, leads the Foley Workshop where children are able to create the sound effects for a scene (think: clapping coconuts shells to sound like a horse’s canter). Wednesday closes with a crossover from the Summer Classics series, which is featuring musicals this year, and a sing-a-long of the original 1982 film version of Annie. 

Thursday begins with a shorts program for all ages about nature called Tall Trees, Big Sky,

In this episode of Establishing Shot, Notre Dame’s own Dr. Paulette Curtis joins Ted and Ricky to discuss the rundown of Ted’s recent trip to the Munich Film Festival as well as the 10th Annual ANDkids World Film Festival, which is upcoming August 1-3 in the Browning Cinema. read more

With the academic year wrapped up in tissue paper and sent down the elevator, we move into the light and airy summer months here at the Browning Cinema. While the Browning Cinema goes dark in June, programming returns with the relatively new yet quickly beloved Summer Classics series. Running on Wednesdays at 7:00 p.m. starting July 11, the Summer Classics look to present a cross-section of filmic eras.

This year, the films come from various moments in the history of musicals. (A sign that we’re trading in musicals is that more films end with exclamation mark than don’t.) The series starts with the Rodgers and Hammerstein Oscar-winning classic Oklahoma! from 1955 before skipping into the next decade with Hello, Dolly!, another awards favorite, from 1969. While about the 1960s, Milos Forman’s version of Hair hit screens in 1979 and marks the midpoint of the series. As a tie-in with the ANDkids World Film Festival, a sing-along version of Annie from 1983 will be screened to kick off the festival. The last film in the series is Moulin Rouge!, a recent classic from 2001 and ignitor of the newest eras of musicals.

Turning to the Top 3 portion of Establishing Shot, Ted and Ricky discuss the films they watched too young, a common childhood memory for people who walked in on horror films or psychological thrillers or foreign films and were left with minor scars or major questions (or often a combination of the two). As two children of the cable/satellite era, Ted and Ricky have much fodder for movies they weren’t ready to comprehend.

Summer Classics at the Browning

Establishing Shot Podcast

Running on Wednesdays at 7:00 p.m. starting July 11, the Summer Classics look to present a cross-section of filmic eras. This year, the films come from various moments in the history of musicals. read more

Alongside the academic cycle, the Browning Cinema’s programming wraps up this month and reopens in July with the Summer Classics Series followed by the ANDkids World Film Festival come the beginning of August. There’s a lot happening in May prior to “dark June,” however, including the 8th Annual Michiana Jewish Film Festival which runs May 14-17. Joining Establishing Shot to discuss this year’s festival is Sarah Snider, a Michigander who graduated from Yeshiva University with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and minors in History and Women’s Studies before completing her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame in 2017.

Currently, Sarah is a professor of multimedia writing and rhetoric at Notre Dame and serves on this year’s MJFF’s Film Committee. Chaired by Steve Lotter and Sheri Alpert, the committee has been convening since October and has watched dozens of feature-length and short films to pull together a slate that includes a wide range of subjects, eras, nations, and genres.

In the mix are Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, a biodoc about the screen legend’s overlooked off-screen accomplishments; Foxtrot, the Ophir-sweeping war drama; GI JEWS: Jewish Americans in World War II, a documentary on faith and military service; 1945, a Hungarian drama about post-Holocaust re-integration; Remember Baghdad, a documentary about Jewish-Iraqis in recent history; The Last Suit, a drama on age and personal indebtedness that spans Argentina and Poland; Keep the Change, a rom-com that took top honors at Tribeca last year; and The Wedding Plan, an Israeli comedy that would pair well with My Big Fat Greek Wedding with its meditations on marriage, faith, and fate. Each evening begins at 5:15 p.m. with a short film before the feature begins at 5:30 p.m. After a dinner break, the second feature screens nightly at 8:00 p.m.

Ted and Ricky then pivot effortlessly to their monthly Top 3 segment. With Mother’s Day around the corner, May is the perfect month to discuss moms in movies. Ted and Ricky run down their favorite cinematic motherly portrayals, with Annette Bening, Alison Steadman, and Dame Angela Lansbury among some of the screen moms of note.

May, Moms, and Movies

Establishing Shot Podcast

In this Establishing Shot episode, Cinema Program Director Ricky Herbst is joined by Sarah Snider to discuss the 8th Annual Michiana Jewish Film Festival which runs May 14-17. read more