Film School

Remember going over to Grandpa's house and watching cable television?

Pluto TV is a free, ad-supported streaming service from Paramount/Viacom that (in addition to some on-demand stuff as well) streams LIVE 24/7 CHANNELS of all your old favorite shows. There's 24/7 I Love Lucy, Star Trek, Mission: Impossible, Twilight Zone, MST3K, Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show, documentary channels, movies, news, home improvement...it's cable television for the new age. No signup even required. Just download and start watching. It's . . . glorious.

No, we're not being sponsored to rave about this. We just love it that much.

Miss you, grandpa.

Meet Patsy Brand...

It's Alfred Hitchcock's very first feature! At least that we know of and/or have the ability to watch. We're in the silent era; it's 1926 Britain. A pair of chrous girls at the famous "Pleasure Garden" theatre navigate love, sex, and ghosts--yes, ghosts! There's murder and a plantation thrown in there, too. So...how does Hitch's first effort stack up? CAN we see the master yet? We watch and discuss.

Is Alfred Hitchcock the best of them all? That's the question that watching the AFI's Top 100 films raised for us as we saw the British director at his peak.

We feel like in order to answer that question, we need to go allll the way back to the beginning--his beginning--and watch as many of his films as we can get our hands on. Several of Hitch's films, both feature-length and shorts, have been lost in the past hundred years, so it won't quite be ALL of his work, but we will be watching every single feature film that's available to the public. All 53 of them. Whew!

We're using several different lists, curated collections, and boxed sets to assemble our deep dive, and if you wish to follow along, here's the order we're watching them in, and where you can find them for yourself:

1. The Pleasure Garden (1926)
2. The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927)
3. The Ring (1927)
4. Downhill (1927)
5. The Farmer's Wife (1928)
6. Easy Virtue (1928)
7. Champagne (1928)
8. The Manxman (1929)
9. Blackmail (1929)
10. Juno and the Paycock (1930)
11. Murder! (1930)
12. Mary (1931)
13. The Skin Game (1931)
14. Rich and Strange (1931)
15. Number Seventeen (1932)
16. Waltzes from Vienna (1934)
17. The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
18. The 39 Steps (1935)
19. Secret Agent (1936)
20. Sabotage (1936)
21. Young and Innocent (1937)
22. The Lady Vanishes (1938)
23. Jamaica Inn (1939)
24. Rebecca (1940)
25. Foreign Correspondent (1940)
26. Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941)
27. Suspicion (1941)
28. Saboteur (1942)
29. Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
30. Lifeboat (1944)
31. Spellbound (1945)
32. Notorious (1946)
33. The Paradine Case (1947)
34. Rope (1948)
35. Under Capricorn (1949)
36. Stage Fright (1950)
37. Strangers on a Train (1951)
38. I confess (1953)
39. Dial M For Murder (1954)
40. Rear Window (1954)
41. To Catch A Thief (1954)
42. The Trouble With Harry (1955)
43. The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
44. The Wrong Man (1956)
45. Vertigo (1958)
46. North by Northwest (1959)
47. Psycho (1960)
48. The Birds (1963)
49. Marnie (1964)
50. Torn Curtain (1966)
51. Topaz (1969)
52. Frenzy (1972)
53. Family Plot (1976)

We hope you follow along, and we hope you have a blast! :)

A surrealist for the masses. The king of dreams. Sultan of non sequiturs. David Lynch's 10-film career spans 30 years, from Eraserhead in 1977 to Inland Empire in 2007. It also covers a surprising span of genres and styles, glimpses beyond his trademark ethereal and often disturbing style. Now that we've watched all his features, what did we learn? Both about him as an artist, filmmaker and storyteller, AND just about film, story, and artistry in general? We sit down and take a look back on our project to really get to know what Lynch is all about.

This is the way to the palace...

David Lynch makes his last film, at least as of 2023. Who knows, he might return to the silver screen again but FOR NOW...this is it. His finale. It completes an informal trilogy, Lost Highway and Mulholland Dr. being the other two. All three films are based largely in Los Angeles, all three films deal with dreams and nightmares, and all three films deal with an amorphous, hard to see, touch and understand, ever-present darkness. So, how does this one stack up? We dive in!

Is it possible to start a project and then realize that in the time you've spent working on it that you've grown beyond it? OR...is that thought just another version of 'shiny object syndrome' that's designed to keep you from actually finishing anything? This week, we wrestle with that question.

Also, Josh recommends Gordon Ramsey's classic Kitchen Nightmares on Hulu, and Ira recommends Star Trek: Picard Season 3, which is on Paramount+

No hay banda! There is no band...

Lynch returns to Los Angeles for his ninth feature film, and he revisits the world of dreams, old Hollywood, murder and love. All very much the themes he was wrestling with in Lost Highway, but is he simply repeating himself, or is he actually stating something more clearly that he's tried to say before? Can David get it right this time and blow our collective minds? We'll see...

What is the hardest feedback to hear? How does it make you feel? Why? And how do you handle it, both at your worst and at your best? Criticism is part of the gig, and it's tough even with it's constructive. Josh and Ira discuss their own painful moments. Hopefully it helps you in your own creative journey.

Also, Josh recommends Star Trek: The Next Generation on Paramount+, and Ira recommends a book this week: The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay.

There's no one knows your life better than a brother that's near your age.

For David's eighth feature, he's leaving behind the world of nightmares, sex and violence, and instead embracing the heart of Americana: the Greatest Generation. Inspired by the true story of a man who's too old to drive, so he rides his lawnmower across the country to visit his dying brother, David Lynch has found the perfect vessel through which to display his love for the heartland and times gone by. Richard Farnsworth, in particular, shines here; it's the last movie he ever made, and he knew during filming that he was dying. So how does it all come together? We discuss.

How important is a schedule to putting out creative work? Isn't creativity at the mercy of the muse? And isn't every day different? All true. True, too, is that there will always be distractions trying to keep us from our work. Turns out having a schedule is a valuable tool in protecting our creative time from the forces that would keep us away from it. We discuss how we build and use our own schedules.

Also, Josh recommends Star Trek: The Next Generation on Paramount+ and Arrested Development which is on Netflix, and Ira recommends Batman: Mask of the Phantasm on HBO Max (soon to be 'Max').