Have You Seen This?

Jen and Tim look back at a dark entry from the often astonishing oeuvre of Nicholas Ray, the thrilling melodrama Bigger Than Life. Also Tim has medical trauma.

Errata: Jen says “They Drive By Night” when she meant They Live By Night, confusing Raoul Walsh’s 1940 hit with Nicholas Ray’s 1948 debut feature. Her pay will be docked accordingly.

The Classic Film Noir website has a wonderful visual essay about the film, including details about the negative critical response when it was released.

Adrian Danks writes about Bigger Than Life and the psyche of its central character in a 2009 essay for Senses of Cinema. Sam Wasson’s article at the same site gives cultural context to the film,including the chilling affect of the Cold War and anticommunism.

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Tim and Jen weeb out over an overlooked-in-its-time tale of an outsider navigating a closed and unforgiving society, The Yakuza.

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Jen oversimplifies the origins of the yakuza here, plus she just plain doesn’t know a hell of a lot about Japanese culture! A YouTuber going by ANIKI has an entire playlist of deep dives on yakuza and their history that will leave you better informed.

Read an archived version of Paul Schrader’s primer on yakuza-eiga (gangster films) from 1974.

From the Alienated in Vancouver blog: Allan MacInnis interviews author AJ Devlin about, among other things, Leonard Schrader and The Yakuza.
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Jen solos for a conversation with gangster expert God’s Own Monster (@scabbyscribe.bsky.social) about a weirdly clammy biopic, Josh Trank’s Capone.

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The Hollywood Reporter had some dirt on the Fox/Trank spat, including intel claiming that the filmmaker’s dogs damaged a rental property in Baton Rouge to the tune of $100,000 (Jesus Christ).

Trank attempted to smooth things over in an LA Times interview, and claimed that he definitely did not melt down on 4Chan:
As for rumors that he was behind an angry, defensive rant that surfaced last week on the anonymous Internet bulletin board 4Chan, Trank said that was simply a bizarre hoax someone perpetrated at his expense. “Everybody wanted to go out there and say, ‘Josh has lost his mind,’” he said. “It’s just been an avalanche of things.”

This YouTube essayist covers the alleged Josh Trank 4Chan post in his exhaustive coverage of the director’s career trajectory (clicking through will take you directly to the relevant section).
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Jen and Tim invite comedian Kath Barbadoro back to the show to puzzle over Brady Corbet’s weird stab at pop mythmaking, Vox Lux.

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Brady Corbet and Natalie Portman chat about the film on some kind of Yahoo offshoot called Build. Maybe they explain themselves. I dunno, I’m not gonna watch it.

The Variety critic actually liked the movie. He’s entitled to his opinion!
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Tim and Jen marvel at an overlooked Sean Connery performance in Sidney Lumet’s similarly overlooked police procedural, The Offence.

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See some of the existing locations from The Offence, via the BFI.

This representative example of a John Hopkins-penned episode of Z Cars features a young and almost unrecognizable Brian Blessed as a uniformed cop.
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