Charlene and Jackie discuss Andrew Ahn’s The Wedding Banquet, a 2025 update of Ang Lee’s celebrated 1993 film starring Lily Gladstone and Bowen Yang. 

Topics discussed include our favorite book to movie adaptations, how to retell a 1990s gay love story in 2025, Ang Lee being a repressed king, fake movie jobs, and how well placed plants can make a film more believable. 

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Time Stamped Notes: 

1:30 Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet (1993) 

2:30 “I have a lot of repression. So repression is what I make movies about” - Ang Lee, maestro of unrequited desire 

5:45 Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx, published in the New Yorker in 1997 

10:00 James Schamus, co writer of both versions of The Wedding Banquet 

12:00 Lily Gladstone in Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women 

19:00 Andrew Ahn’s authentic, intimate directing style and redefining the romcom 

25:40 The twists and turns of Park Chan-Wook’s The Handmaiden 

27:15 Chaebol: a large industrial South Korean conglomerate run and controlled by an individual or family

36:06 Robin Williams teaches Nathan Lane to ‘Act Like a Man’ in The Birdcage 

38:33 The obligatory Romantic Comedy Grand Gesture 

43:17 Emma Thompson losing it in Sense and Sensibility 

50:34 Materialists Trailer featuring Pedro Pascals 12 Million Dollar Apartment 

51:25 Do I Look Like I Belong Here? Working Girl and the Secrets of Class Politics 

53:17 Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, Non Fiction, french people getting in the literary zone 

54:05 Romeo and Juliet, or Juliet and Romeo????

54:54 You Can’t Out Baz Baz

58:29 The Historical Realism of Ryan Coogler’s Sinners

1:00:23 Tony McNamara on The Great - ‘‘Historians have to know we’re making mistakes on purpose’

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Charlene and Jackie debrief on Opus, the A24 pop star multi murder thriller/comedy (?) starring Ayo Adebiri and John Malkovich, a movie that shot straight from Sundance 2025 to the common multiplex in a mere two months. 

Topics discussed include tracing the trope of cults in 21st century indie film, unhinged behavior at Williamsburg Cinemas, celebrity profiles where the journalist gets lost in the sauce, would Lady Gaga ever commit serial murder?, and how a film can suffer from use of the wrong dining chairs. 

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Time Stamped Show Notes:

2:01 Community and Family: The Cult Indoctrination Techniques of ‘Midsommar’

4:53 “She will never stop huffing paint” scene from Bottoms

5:38 The Hustlers At Scores: the article Hustlers was based off of

12:00 BFI: 10 Great Films About Cults 

12:14 Oneida: The Peculiar Truth About The Sex Cult that Made Silverware 

25:00 The Unconvincing Music of Vox Lux 

34:00 Chris Evans: American Marvel 

38:00 A Brief History of Rihanna’s Party Plane 

40:45 Ayo Edebiri in Theater Camp as a counselor that lied on her resume

42:40 Would you expect to find these chairs in a New Mexican cult compound? 

47:40 Sick of Myself: When Main Character Syndrome Runs Amok

54:22 Sound of My Voice: A Movie About Cults and Journalists That Is Good 

59:50 Lady Gaga at Coachella: She Would Never Act In This Way 

1:02:12 The Celebrity Profiles of Taffy Brodesser-Akner

1:02:57 Molly Lambert and her interview with/profile of Charli XCX

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We discuss On Becoming a Guinea Fowl by Rungano Nyoni, a film that premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. 

Time Stamped Notes: 

1:22 I Am Not A Witch (Rungano Nyoni’s first film, premiered at Cannes 2017)

3:24 AMC Class Action Lawsuit of which Charlene was a benefitee 

5:30 Eileen (2023, dir. by William Oldroyd)

5:40 Mean Girls The Musical (2024, dir. by Samantha Jayne & Arturo Perez Jr.)

9:57 Joy Ride (2023, dir. by Adele Lim)

10:06 Brigsby Bear (2017, dir. by Dave McCary)

15:02 Shula dressed as Missy Elliot 

19:10 Jason Bateman's expressions of disbelief in Arrested Development

19:53 Sandra Oh and Awkwafina’s dynamic in Quiz Lady  

44:05 Zadie Smith: “​​ Can’t go home, can’t leave home: a subject close to my heart”

52:50 The Farewell (2019, dir. by Lulu Wang)

53:00 Minari (2020, dir. by Lee Isaac Chung)

54:35 The Joy Luck Club (1993, dir. by Wayne Wang)

58:48 A Discussion About Black Welsh Film 

1:06:20 The Bechdel Test 

1:07:24 Glengarry Glen Ross (1992, dir. by James Foley)

1:08:28 She Said and the Canon of #MeToo films 

1:13:13 Bob Trevino Likes It

1:13:22 Sister Midnight 

1:13:48 All We Imagine as Light (2024, dir. by Payal Kapadia)

1:14:12 Superhero movie where Florence Pugh (?) has a russian accent (??)

1:14:38 We Come to This Place for Magic 

1:15:44 La Chimera (2023, directed by Alice Rohrwacher)

1:16:00 The Florida Project (2017, directed by Sean Baker)

1:16:53 Girls Will Be Girls (2024, directed by Shuchi Talati)

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The pod's maiden voyage discussing Universal Language by Matthew Rankin, Ila Firouzabadi, and Pirouz Nemati.

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Time Stamped Notes: 

3:22 - The Twentieth Century

5:13 - High Maintenance

7:00 - The Grand Budapest Hotel

8:00 - Asteroid City, The Royal Tenenbaums and the precocious children and signage of Wes Anderson

10:23 - Brechtian Theater and drawing attention to artifice

13:30 - Agnes Varda, Sean Baker and ‘Film at the Margins’

24:00 - Winnipeg's Iranian Community

26:00 - Taste of Cherry 

27:00 - Iranian coming of age films that influenced Universal Language 

28:40 - The 180 Degree Rule that Matthew Rankin intentionally breaks

30:43 - The connections of all the characters in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia

31:25 - Macguffin

38:34 - Tim Horton’s Donut Shop 

44:53 - Iranian tradition of directors appearing in their own films and blurring the lines between fiction and reality

47:08 - (Some Of) Matthew Rankins Short Films (1) (2) 

50:50 - Public Sector Office

52:39 - David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds and Crimes of The Future 

53:06 - Rungano Nyoni’s On Becoming a Guinea Fowl

1:09:05 Don’t Worry He Won’t Get Far on Foot (2018) Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again (Also 2018)

Matthew Rankin Interviews: Q With Tom Power &

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