Lost in Criterion

This week Pat and Adam talk about Francois Truffaut's intense and wonderful 1959 drama The 400 Blows. Guess if they liked it or not?

Also, Adam completely butcher's Truffaut's name, but makes up for it by mispronouncing it a different way every time he says it. I promise I'm not a complete idiot; I even went to college.

This week Pat and Adam watch Federico Fellini's more than a little ridiculous 1973 coming-of-age tale Amarcord. Adam continues to not be able to pronounce non-English names despite not being dumb. I swear.

Also we compare the film to Hudson Hawk. Just because. So there.

Personally, I think we finally start hitting our stride on this one.

In this weeks Lost in Criterion we discuss Alfred Hitchcock's 1938 comedic mystery The Lady Vanishes and we surprise ourselves with just how long we can discuss a movie that is not nearly as heavy as the first two we watched. We also write off everything Hitchcock did prior to this, which I'd like to apologize for. While his pre-1940's British period is not filled with as many classics as the rest of his career, the movies prior to The Lady Vanishes are nothing to shake a stick at, no matter how large the stick may be.

In this episode we continue to get our footing on this whole "podcast" thing as we discuss Akira Kurosawa's 1954 epic Seven Samurai which clocks in at over three hours long, but somehow avoids feeling like it. The same may not be said for our 54 minute episode, but, hey, we're not Kurosawa.

Now seems as good a time as any to point out that our theme music is by the great Jonathan Hape. Check out his other work on JonathanHape.com

Welcome to the first episode of Pat and Adam's adventure through the Criterion Collection. This was originally recorded as a test to see what would happen if we tried, so our apologies that this episode is a bit rough. They do get better. They also get shorter. After this test we decided to shoot for 45-60 minutes episodes. This one is a bit over that.

In this episode we discuss Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion, a 1937 French (anti) war film that neither of us had ever heard of let alone seen. That's going to be a common description for many of the movies to come. Listen in to see what we thought, and feel free to comment with thoughts of your own.

We here at With Two Brains are excited to be starting a new long term project! Lost in Criterion will feature Pat and Adam and the occasional guest discussing every movie in the ever-growing Criterion Collection in order of their spine numbers.

Our first proper episode will be up on Friday when we'll be discussing Jean Renoir's 1937 classic The Grand Illusion, but to kick things off we've got a special Christmas episode with a special Christmas guest!

Our old friend Andy Heney joins us for a discussion of the Christmas classic Die Hard! Listen below or on iTunes! We look forward to you joining us for our Sisyphean task in the coming weeks, months, and years.