Lost in Criterion

Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote and directed this 1975 film that almost made me vomit. I stopped it four times to keep from doing so.

This film is the reason we decided to do the podcast in order of Criterion's Spine numbers, because it forced us to have a system which meant we wouldn't just watch the ones we wanted to watch first and never ever ever watch Salo. I almost regret that. I watched this before Pat did and sent him an email apologizing for ever having the idea to watch the Criterion Collection and considered putting an end to it. 

I endured.  Pat endured. We chatted about it for an hour.

From now on whenever I am faced with a seemingly impossible task I will remember: I watched all of Salo; I can do anything. 

Well, Donovan Hill finishes off Hiroshi Inagaki's Samurai Trilogy with us as we discuss the 1956 end to the saga: Duel at Ganryu Island. It's not quite as action oriented as the other two films, but it does a lot to tie up loose ends and put a cap on the story.

Hopefully Donovan will be back, it was pretty fun having him on.

But I don't think we'll convince him or anyone else to join us next week. 

Donovan Hill joins us again as we continue our discussion on Inagaki's Samurai Trilogy, this time focusing on the second film in the series which came out in 1955 to quite a deal less acclaim internationally. But Mifune's still in it, so it can't be that bad, right? 

This week marks a string of episodes where we have a special guest to help us discuss Hiroshi Inagaki's Samurai Trilogy, a historic biopic of Japanese legend Musashi Miyamoto. Please welcome to the show Donovan Hill, an old friend whose father first tossed him into the river of Samurai culture at an inappropriately young age, but we'll let Donovan tell you all about that in this weeks episode. We're always happy to have guests, and if you'd like to join us, please feel free to ask in the comments section.

The Trilogy stars Toshiro Mifune, who was also in Seventh Samurai (a film Donovan probably would have loved to discuss with us as well), whose birthday was just this past Monday. How coincidental.

This week Lost in Criterion talks about Jonathan Demme's 1991 Oscar-winning thriller Silence of the Lambs. Pat's not a fan of psychological thrillers, but he didn't let that keep him from watching this one. And he certainly didn't let it keep him from delivering an incredibly well-reasoned argument on why this movie sucks. Personally, I still like it, even if he makes some fair points. This is probably the best conversation we've had so far, and I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed having it.

The first American film in our journey arrives with Rob Reiner's 1984 mockumentary This is Spinal Tap, a comedy classic that leads Pat and Adam to a rumination on the nature of good comedy. And Adam tells some stories about his work in the hospitality industry, which (strictly speaking) he isn't supposed to do. Well if this gets him fired it was probably worth it.

Also, it's so good to have one week where we don't have to look like fools unable to pronounce foreign words. Pat makes up for it by spending two minutes trying to say a perfectly English one. 

I feel like I need to apologize for this one. I don't like to do that -- it makes it feel like I somehow don't believe in our work -- but this episode has some issues I'd like to lay out.

Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal is an amazing and complex classic, incredibly heavy and heady. Pat and I recorded this at the height of last August, the heat doing nothing to assuage our fatigue, and none of it helped by my being a bit sick. All in all, we actually do pretty well, but neither of us are firing on all cylinders and it shows. I hope you enjoy listening to it anyway. I know I did.

In 1971 Nicolas Roeg made a rather weird movie called Walkabout. Mostly it seemed like an excuse to ogle his under-aged female lead, but only slightly less than that it was a rather good film. Lost in Criterion discusses it this week and talk about how there are so many butts in it. How many butts, you ask? You want me to say a butt load, but I won't. 

It's more John Woo this week on Lost in Criterion, as Pat and Adam watch the last movie he made before leaving Hong Kong for Hollywood: 1992's Hard Boiled. A word of warning: neither of us could find an official Criterion release for this -- Criterion has only released it on DVD and that DVD is out of print -- so we ended up watching an English-dubbed version on youtube. You smell that? That's the sweet scent of quasi-legality. 

This week Pat and Adam talk about the quintessential John Woo film: 1989's The Killer. It's got gun-fu, overtly Christian symbolism, Chow Yun-Fat, and doves! All the hallmarks of great Woo cinema with none of the Nicolas Cage! And Adam basically makes it the whole way without grossly mispronouncing anything! Truly we are blessed! Though his mic was really tinny this week. Hope that's ok.