To kick off season 13 of the podcast, Neil and Dario get into the wonder of Talking Heads' and Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense (1984) and concert films in general. They touch on the performativity of music documentaries and what makes Sense such a seminal work. They also talk about its spiritual successor, David Byrne and Spike Lee's American Utopia from 2020.
Elsewhere there is a chat about Richard Fleischer's lean and nasty Mob pulp movie The Don Is Dead (1973), recently released by Masters of Cinema, our first ever release partnership with MUBI for Dea Kulumbegasvhvili's Beginning (2020) and the pair are joined by a fabulous mystery guest to talk about live performance, Brexit, the pandemic and 1988's My Neighbor Totoro.
Please excuse the odd electroglitch on our Mystery Guest's recording.
Show Notes
Pauline Kael on Stop Making Sense
Neil on Stop Making Sense for the Quietus
Devika Girish on Beginning
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Music Credits
‘Theme from The Cinematologists’
Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.
Her (live from the University of Chichester)
Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten (w/ director Julien Temple)
A Ghost Story
London Film Festival 2018 w/Filmmaker and Critic Marbelle
The Piano (w/ Ellen Cheshire)
American Animals director Bart Layton
Film-Philosophy Conference 2018
Steve McQueen
Lek and the Dogs (w/ Dir. Andew Kötting)
Unsocial Audiences
The Islands and the Whales (W/ dir. Mike Day)
Juice (w/ film critic & podcaster Leslie Pitt)
Claire Denis (with Dr. Felicity Gee)
Right Now Film Festival / Brexitannia (+filmmaker Daisy Asquith)
In a Lonely Place (w/ Prof. Julie Grossman)
Dark River (with Clio Barnard and Andrew Kötting)
Paul Thomas Anderson
Contemporary Film Criticism
Post-Weinstein (plus an interview with Dr. Tamsyn Dent.)
La Notte (featuring film critic Robert Koehler)
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