Hollywood on the Tiber is a dazzling blend of the epic and intimate

featuring a glittering cast of screen gods and goddesses. This vibrant

chronicle recounts how Hank Kaufman and Gene Lerner became unsung

movers and shakers of a unique and unrepeatable era: the rise of Rome as

the center of Europe’s film industry in the 1950s and ’60s. Written in the late 1970s and now published in English for the first time, this edition features a new foreword by Sandy Lieberson, who worked alongside Kaufman and Lerner in Rome.

It can be purchased here.

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A crossover episode as I talk with Martin Woessner the author of Terrence Malick and the Examined Life, one of the best books written on the visionary filmmaker. We talk about the book before settling in to a discussion of Knight of Cups, Malick's seventh film.

Martin's book is available here.

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Buy the book here, or here.

Revolution in 35mm: Political Violence and Resistance in Cinema from the Arthouse to the Grindhouse, 1960–1990 examines how political violence and resistance was represented in arthouse and cult films from 1960 to 1990.

This historical period spans the Algerian war of independence and the early wave of postcolonial struggles that reshaped the Global South, through the collapse of Soviet Communism in the late 1980s. It focuses on films related to the rise of protest movements by students, workers, and leftist groups, as well as broader countercultural movements, Black Power, the rise of feminism, and so on. The book also includes films that explore the splinter groups that engaged in violent, urban guerrilla struggles throughout the 1970s and 1980s, as the promise of widespread radical social transformation failed to materialize: the Weathermen and the Black Liberation Army in the United States, the Red Army Faction in West Germany and Japan, and Italy’s Red Brigades. Many of these movements were deeply connected to culture, including cinema, and they expressed their values through it. 

Twelve authors, including film critics and academics, deliver a diverse examination of how filmmakers around the world reacted to the political violence and resistance movements of the period and how this was expressed on screen. This includes looking at the production, distribution, and screening of these films, audience and critical reaction, the attempted censorship or suppression of much of this work, and how directors and producers eluded these restrictions.

Including over two hundred illustrations, the book examines filmmaking movements like the French, Japanese, German, and Yugoslavian New Waves; subgenres like spaghetti westerns, Italian poliziotteschi, Blaxploitation, and mondo movies; and films that reflect the values of specific movements, including feminists, Vietnam War protesters, and Black militants. The work of influential and well-known political filmmakers such as Costa-Gavras, Gillo Pontecorvo, and Glauber Rocha is examined alongside grindhouse cinema and lesser-known titles by a host of all-but-forgotten filmmakers, including many from the Global South that deserve to be rediscovered.

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This interview with Jack Fisk was recorded as part of my research for the book The Magic Hours: The Films and Hidden Life of Terrence Malick. As such it was never meant for broadcast but with Jack's permission I'm presenting this edited version. Jack picks up from part one to talk about his later collaborations with Malick on The Thin Red Line and The New World, as well as his work on the Weightless Trilogy.

My book is now available from all good book shops and online sources, including here.

Camille Saint-Saëns: Le Carnaval des Animaux

Performers

Pianos: Neil and Nancy O'Doan

Orchestra: Seattle Youth Symphony, conducted by Vilem Sokol.

Composed 1886; recorded c. 1980.

Source The Al Goldstein collection in the Pandora Music repository at ibiblio.org.

Used under the license.

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I'm joined by Walter Chaw to talk Walter Hill and his book A Walter Hill Film as well as look back on the year of 2024.

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Terrence Malick's 6th film premiered at the Venice Film Festival and starred Ben Affleck and Olga Kurylenko as a pair of lovers watching their relationship fall apart.

My biography of Terrence Malick The Magic Hours: The Films and Hidden Life of Terrence Malick is available from all good book shops and online sources, including here.

Camille Saint-Saëns: Le Carnaval des Animaux

Performers

Pianos: Neil and Nancy O'Doan

Orchestra: Seattle Youth Symphony, conducted by Vilem Sokol.

Composed 1886; recorded c. 1980.

Source The Al Goldstein collection in the Pandora Music repository at ibiblio.org.

Used under the license.

Get NordVPN 2Y plan + 4 months extra here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/fspn It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! -

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Terrence Malick's fifth film was a culmination of decades of work: The Tree of Life. It won the Palme d'Or and boasted his most intimate and cosmic vision.

Shane Hazen worked on the film, first as an intern before finishing the film as one of the last editors on board.

My biography of Terrence Malick The Magic Hours: The Films and Hidden Life of Terrence Malick is available from all good book shops and online sources, including here.

Camille Saint-Saëns: Le Carnaval des Animaux

Performers

Pianos: Neil and Nancy O'Doan

Orchestra: Seattle Youth Symphony, conducted by Vilem Sokol.

Composed 1886; recorded c. 1980.

Source The Al Goldstein collection in the Pandora Music repository at ibiblio.org.

Used under the license.

Get NordVPN 2Y plan + 4 months extra here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/fspn It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! -

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Die Hard - is it a Christmas movie? or not? Do we care? Did we ever?

But it's a good excuse to talk to Brian Abrams about his brilliant book Die Hard: an Oral History, available here.

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Joseph McBride - film historian and one time actor for Orson Welles - talks about his new book George Cukor's People: Acting for a Master Director. It is available as an e-book now and will be published the first week of January, 2025, in hardback. For more information click HERE.

From the publisher:

"The director of classic films such as Sylvia Scarlett, The Philadelphia Story, Gaslight, Adam’s Rib, A Star Is Born, and My Fair Lady, George Cukor is widely admired but often misunderstood. Reductively stereotyped in his time as a “woman’s director”—a thinly veiled, disparaging code for “gay”—he brilliantly directed a wide range of iconic actors and actresses, including Cary Grant, Greta Garbo, Spencer Tracy, Joan Crawford, Marilyn Monroe, and Maggie Smith. As Katharine Hepburn, the star of ten Cukor films, told the director, “All the people in your pictures are as goddamned good as they can possibly be, and that’s your stamp.”

"In this groundbreaking, lavishly illustrated critical study, Joseph McBride provides insightful and revealing essayistic portraits of Cukor’s actors in their most memorable roles. The queer filmmaker gravitated to socially adventurous, subversively rule-breaking, audacious dreamers who are often sexually transgressive and gender fluid in ways that seem strikingly modern today. McBride shows that Cukor’s seemingly self-effacing body of work is characterized by a discreet way of channeling his feelings through his actors. He expertly cajoled actors, usually gently but sometimes with bracing harshness, to delve deeply into emotional areas they tended to keep safely hidden. Cukor’s wry wit, his keen sense of psychological and social observation, his charm and irony, and his toughness and resilience kept him active for more than five decades in Hollywood. George Cukor’s People gives him the in-depth, multifaceted examination his rich achievement deserves."

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