There's Sometimes a Buggy

We conclude our Deborah Kerr Acteurist Spotlight with a couple of her big Hollywood movies after the turning point of From Here to Eternity: Vincente Minnelli's Tea and Sympathy (1956), in which she appears as Laura Reynolds, a role she originated on Broadway; and Henry King's Beloved Infidel (1959), in which she stars as Hollywood gossip columnist Sheilah Graham in an autobiographical account of a fascinating rags-to-modest-wealth-and-influence story intersecting with F. Scott Fitzgerald's final years of alcoholic decline and exile in Hollywood. We discuss Minnelli and playwright/screenwriter Robert Anderson's very contemporary-feeling analysis of the performance of gender (masculinity in particular) and Kerr's role as a Sex Christ, and Beloved Infidel's good-bad-and-ugly, but empathetic, approach to a troubled, abusive relationship.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:       TEA AND SYMPATHY (1956) [dir. Vincente Minnelli] 0h 33m 45s:       BELOVED INFIDEL (1959) [dir. Henry King] +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again" * Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

Our MGM 1934 episode this week is a Jean Parker (Beth in RKO's 1933 Little Women) double feature. She plays the rebellious daughter in the family melodrama Wicked Woman, which features a fine central performance by noted theatre actress and blacklistee Mady Christians, and a conservationist's daughter who starts an "unlikely animal friends" experiment with a puma cub and a fawn in Sequoia. While the former treads relatively familiar territory with a mixture of pre-Code intensity and wacky domestic humour (supplied by Sterling Holloway and Betty Furness, an odder couple than the puma and fawn), the latter, we argue, is an animal protagonists movie with some genuinely original features.   Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:      1934 & MGM 0h 04m 39s:      A WICKED WOMAN [dir. Charles Brabin] 0h 26m 28s:      SEQUOIA [dir. Chester M. Franklin] Studio Film Capsules provided by The MGM Story by John Douglas Eames Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler 1934 Information from Forgotten Films to Remember by John Springer                                 +++ * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise's latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating. * Check out Dave's new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com   We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

 For the 2nd part of our Deborah Kerr Acteurist Spotlight we check in on Kerr's "lost years" at MGM to see what Hollywood was finding for her to do before her breakthrough performance in From Here to Eternity. In Norman Taurog's Please Believe Me (1950) she leads a cast of oddballs, including Robert Walker and Peter Lawford, as a respectable British girl who learns how to be American by first being mistaken for, and then deciding to become, a Stanwyck-type comedy heroine; and in Sidney Sheldon's satirical Dream Wife (1953) she helps the future I Dream of Jeannie creator and bestselling trashy novelist work out some interesting ideas about gender via miserable Orientalist stereotypes and an oil crisis backdrop of unfortunate contemporary relevance. If these aren't masterpieces, it can't be said, anyway, that these are run-of-the-mill Hollywood comedies (if there is such a thing).  Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:       PLEASE BELIEVE ME (1950) [dir. Norman Taurog] 0h 24m 18s:       DREAM WIFE (1953) [dir. Sidney Sheldon] +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again" * Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

With this episode we launch the first of Elise's three-part Special Subject, Family Freak-Outs. We start with some musings about how to define this micro-genre, what makes it different from a standard family melodrama and its relationship to horror, and then we move into our first two freak-outs, Charles Burnett's To Sleep with Anger (1990) and Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenebaums (2001). While the problems these families are dealing with in their very specific milieus of middle-class black South Central LA and upper-middle-class white fairy-tale Manhattan are very different, the capacity to freak out may be a universal feature of the family; and in these two movies, at least, freaking out can lead to healing. Then a quick Fear and Moviegoing in honour of Catherine O'Hara's passing, Christopher Guest's Best in Show. Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:       Microgeneric Musing Re: Freak-Outs 0h 06m 03s:       TO SLEEP WITH ANGER (1990) [dir. Charles Burnett] 0h 31m 50s:       THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS (2001) [dir. Wes Anderson] 1h 03m 22s:       Fear & Moviegoing in Toronto: Christopher Guest's Best in Show (2000) at the Carlton Cinema (Catherine O'Hara Tribute) +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again" * Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

For this Paramount 1934 episode we watched Search for Beauty, which pits beauty-as-health (a wasted and almost unrecognizable Ida Lupino and frequently topless, sometimes bottomless, and always witless Olympic swimmer Buster Crabbe) against beauty-as-sex in a meta-commentary on pre-Codes released just before the crackdown, and the Hecht-MacArthur-Garmes Crime Without Passion, starring Claude Rains and Margo as a couple destined to destroy each other in a full-blown film noir six years before that "cycle" started. The latter adds to the evidence for Paramount as the studio of idiosyncratic auteur experimentation, while the former adds to the evidence that Paramount often flounders without its auteurs.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:      1934 & Paramount 0h 09m 04s:      SEARCH FOR BEAUTY [dir. Erle C. Kenton] 0h 26m 53s:      CRIME WITHOUT PASSION [dirs. Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur & Lee Garmes] Studio Film Capsules provided by The Paramount Story by John Douglas Eames Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler 1934 Information from Forgotten Films to Remember by John Springer                                 +++ * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise's latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating. * Check out Dave's new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com   We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!           

Our Deborah Kerr Acteurist Spotlight starts strong with two entertaining progressive WWII-era British films, John Baxter's Love on the Dole (1941), a socialist portrayal of working-class life in Manchester during the Great Depression, and Alexander Korda's Perfect Strangers (aka Vacation from Marriage), a sort of comedy of remarriage that envisions a radically new kind of marriage arising out of wartime upheavals in gender roles and middle-class routine. Elise confesses and recants her previous opinion that Deborah Kerr was a solid but slightly boring choice. Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:       Brief intro – Deborah Kerr 0h 06m 20s:       LOVE ON THE DOLE (1941) [dir. John Baxter] 0h 34m 29s:       PERFECT STRANGERS aka VACATION FROM MARRIAGE (1945) [dir. Alexander Korda] +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Capsule reviews from John Springer's Forgotten Films to Remember (Citadel Press, 1980) * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again" * Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

For this Universal 1933 Studios Year by Year episode we commit the sacrilege of trashing a James Whale movie, The Invisible Man, which is also Claude Rains' first major screen role, albeit mainly as a voice. A ranting, irascible voice in a movie with very little evidence (in our irresponsible opinion) of Whale's voice. But then we turn to a movie bearing a strong directorial imprint, William Wyler's Counsellor at Law, which contains probably John Barrymore's best screen performance. We discuss Wyler's contested status among auteurists and the multiple layers of Elmer Rice's adaptation of his play about early 20th century American antisemitism and how to live with the knowledge of one's moral compromises. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we took in a Valentine's weekend screening of Sternberg's The Devil Is a Woman at the TIFF Lightbox cinematheque, giving us another opportunity to grapple with its ironies and opacities.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:      1933 and Universal 0h 03m 51s:      THE INVISIBLE MAN (1933) [dir. James Whale] 0h 19m 21s:      COUNSELLOR-AT-LAW (1933) [dir. William Wyler] 0h 48m 06s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto: Josef von Sternberg's The Devil is a Woman (1935) at TIFF Lightbox Studio Film Capsules provided by The Universal Story by Clive Hirschhorn Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler 1933 Information from Forgotten Films to Remember by John Springer                                 +++ * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise's latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating. * Check out Dave's new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com   We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

We bid a fond farewell to our Acteurist Spotlight on Delphine Seyrig with the greatest movie of all-time (as of the most recent BFI critics' poll), Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai de Commerce 1080 Bruxelles (1975) and its "sequel," Golden Eighties (1986), Akerman's retro-80s-while-it's -still-happening musical. We give our latest thoughts on anxiety, oppression, and orgasms in Jeanne Dielman before turning to a very different Jeanne played by Seyrig and a different aspect of Akerman's grappling with her family history. In Golden Eighties, Akerman takes a wistful snapshot of the moment when postwar capitalism was undeniably failing but denial hadn't yet failed, smuggling social commentary and emotive dramaturgy into goofy musical comedy.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:       JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES (1975) [dir. Chantal Akerman] 0h 41m 06s:       GOLDEN EIGHTIES (1986) [dir. Chantal Akerman] +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again" * Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

Our 2026 Valentine's Day episode explores the romantic appeal of Adam Sandler through his first rom com pairing with Drew Barrymore, The Wedding Singer (1998), and his celebrated collaboration with Paul Thomas Anderson, Punch-Drunk Love (2002). While The Wedding Singer pursues a sweetness and sincerity alien to the studio-era romantic comedies it in some ways emulates, Anderson's enigmatic fairy tale riffs on the combination of terrifying vulnerability and terrifying rage in Sandler's persona, positioning him between the grace of romantic salvation and the gravity of a punitive superego (who owns a mattress store). May you say: "That's that!" to your superego this Valentine's Day. Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:    THE WEDDING SINGER (1998) [dir. Frank Coraci] 0h 34m 05s:    PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE (2002) [dir. Paul Thomas Anderson]  +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again" * Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

This 1933 RKO Studios Year by Year episode takes us from the sweepings on the floor of a palatial early 20th century department store to celestial shenanigans high above Rio de Janeiro. Lester Cohen's adaptation of his Dreiseresque novel Sweepings (directed by John Cromwell), another failson saga strongly anticipating HBO's Succession, struggles to translate generational saga into a coherent 80 minutes, but Gregory Ratoff's performance as a hired man trying to get his dues in spite of anti-Semitism is one of the things that make it worth watching; and while a climactic bevy of aerial showgirls can't make Flying Down to Rio the equal of either the 1933 Warner Bros. Busby Berkeley musicals or the Fred and Ginger musicals at RKO to come, the Astaire and Rogers team film debut does offer a curious glimpse of an alternate universe in which they were comic buddies instead of love interests at odds. But already setting the world on fire when they put their heads together as a dance team.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:      1933 and RKO 0h 04m 02s:      SWEEPINGS (1933) [dir. John Cromwell] 0h 26m 14s:      FLYING DOWN TO RIO (1933) [dir. Thornton Freeland] 0h 45m 16s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto: Final Screening of the Naruse Retrospective at TIFF Lightbox – Untamed (1955) Studio Film Capsules provided by The RKO Story by Richard B. Jewell & Vernon Harbin Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler 1933 Information from Forgotten Films to Remember by John Springer                                 +++ * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise's latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating. * Check out Dave's new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com   We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!           

For the second part of our Delphine Seyrig Acteurist Spotlight we disregarded chronology to discuss two intensely experimental Marguerite Duras films, India Song (1975) and Baxter, Vera Baxter (1977). We enumerate Duras' peculiarities as a writer and filmmaker and their effects in these studies of sexual and existential crisis, set against the backdrop of European colonialism and the second-wave feminist movement, respectively; and consider the range of qualities Seyrig brings to them, from ghoulish abstraction to salutary warmth. Then in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, the TIFF Lightbox Naruse continues with two starkly different family melodramas, the raw and electric Older Brother, Younger Sister (1953) and the lush and star-studded Daughters, Wives and a Mother (1960), in which a vacuum cleaner brings out a new side of Setsuko Hara; and Elise realizes she was wrong about Bill Murray in Lost in Translation. Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:    INDIA SONG (1975) [dir. Marguerite Duras] 0h 32m 39s:    BAXTER, VERA BAXTER (1977) [dir. Marguerite Duras] 0h 51m 04s:    Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Mikio Naruse's Older Brother, Younger Sister (1953) and Daughters, Wives and a Mother (1960) at TIFF Lightbox; Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation (2003) at The Carleton Cinema   +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again" * Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

In this episode we revisit three Technicolor melodramas made by British cinema's great auteur duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, bursting with vibrant emotions and sensuality that exercise a dangerous allure over their protagonists: Clive Candy, the upper-class colonialist twerp played by Roger Livesey in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) who discovers the poetry in his soul thanks to the influence of three in-Kerr-nations of Deborah Kerr and the friendship of Anton Walbrook; Sister Clodagh (Kerr again) in Black Narcissus (1947), futilely pitting the Protestant work ethic against the infinite; and Victoria Page (Moira Shearer) in The Red Shoes (1948), torn between the demands of art and mere humanity. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, more Naruse: Flowing (1956), a study of a declining geisha house through the perspective of Kinuyo Tanaka's kindly but powerless servant, and The Stranger Within a Woman (1966), a film noir about being consumed by guilt while the world just wants you to move on.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:    Brief Intro - Powell and Pressburger 0h 07m 11s:    THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP (1943) [dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger] 0h 29m 14s:    BLACK NARCISSSUS (1947) [dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger] 0h 46m 41s:    THE RED SHOES (1948) [dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger] 1h 06m 35s:    Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Mikio Naruse's Flowing (1956) and The Stranger Within a Woman (1966) at TIFF Lightbox +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again" * Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

This week's 1933 Fox Film Studios Year by Year episode paradoxically digs into the Hollywood beginnings of a couple of Paramount powerhouses via William Dieterle's Adorable, a musical based on a German operetta co-written by Billy Wilder (who'd be writing for Fox directly by 1934), and William K. Howard's The Power and the Glory, with an innovative screenplay by Hollywood newcomer Preston Sturges. Important early 30s Fox stars Janet Gaynor (permitted to play against type as a saucy princess who wants to play with the plebs) and Spencer Tracy (as a self-made - with a little help from his wife - tycoon) supply the charisma for the respective proceedings. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, the TIFF Lightbox Naruse retrospective continues with Hideko the Bus Conductress, The Whole Family Works, and Sudden Rain (starring Setsuko Hara), and we see a new restoration of Erich von Stroheim's famously unfinished, visually lavish, absolutely unhinged censor-baiting silent melodrama Queen Kelly. Join us as we bat the ball around – but try to keep your knickers on! Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:      1933 and Fox 0h 06m 00s:      ADORABLE (1933) [dir. William Dieterle] 0h 19m 39s:      THE POWER AND THE GLORY (1933) [dir. William K. Howard] 0h 39m 17s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto: Naruse Retrospective at TIFF Lightbox (3 films) The Whole Family Works (1939), Hideko the Bus Conductress (1941) and Sudden Rain (1956) and Reconstruction of Queen Kelly, directed by Erich von Stroheim Studio Film Capsules provided by The Fox Film Corporation: 1915-1935 by Aubrey Solomon Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler 1933 Information from Forgotten Films to Remember by John Springer                                 +++ * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise's latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating. * Check out Dave's new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com   We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

Our Acteur Spotlight kicks off with six movies starring Delphine Seyrig, beginning this episode with Alain Resnais' Muriel (1963) and Marguerite Duras' debut as a feature film director, La Musica (1967) (co-directed with Paul Seban). We find that these two films about former couples discussing, debating, and negotiating how to live with their past make a good pairing for their existential contrasts as well as their thematic and structural similarities. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, a New Year's Eve viewing of Trading Places (1983), the Eddie Murphy/Dan Aykroyd comedy, is a reminder of a time when unabashed criticism of capitalism and white supremacy was the concern of mainstream Hollywood (coinciding with maybe the all-time historical nadir of representation of women in film); and two more Mikio Naruse films, Lightning (1952) and A Wanderer's Notebook (1962), both starring the versatile Hideko Takamine and based on works by Fumiko Hayashi, give the hopeful and despairing sides of the search for meaning in the midst of economic hardship and disappointing relationships.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:    MURIEL (1963) [dir. Alain Resnais] 0h 34m 08s:    LA MUSICA (1967) [dir. Marguerite Duras] 0h 57m 00s:    Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – John Landis' Trading Places (1983) at The Carlton Cinema + Mikio Naruse's Lightning (1952) and A Wanderer's Notebook (1962) at TIFF Lightbox +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again" * Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

This week's Warner Brothers 1933 Studios Year by Year episode brings the studio-as-auteur question back into focus with two highly distinctive Pre-Code musicals with a similarity of style and social outlook that can't be attributed to the directors, screenwriters, source material, or the presence of Hollywood's most idiosyncratic choreographer and stager of musical numbers, Busby Berkeley. We argue for the dramatic and comedic merits of 42nd Street (directed by Lloyd Bacon) and Gold Diggers of 1933 (directed by Mervyn LeRoy), without failing to grapple with the more deranged elements of the musical sequences. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, the focus on sex, gender, and harsh economic realities continues with further screenings from TIFF Cinematheque's ongoing Mikio Naruse retrospective: Late Chrysanthemums, Scattered Clouds, and When a Woman Ascends the Stairs. We also briefly mention our TIFF Lightbox viewing of Hitchcock's North by Northwest, which allowed us to see Cary Grant narrowly escape multiple elaborately complicated and indirect murder attempts in 70 mm.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:      1933 and Warner Brothers 0h 05m 13s:      42nd STREET [dir. Lloyd Bacon with Busby Berkeley] 0h 50m 20s:      GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 [dir. Mervyn Leroy with Busby Berkeley]   1h 30m 40s:      Fear & Moviegoing in Toronto: Alfred Hitchcock's North By Northwest (1959) and Mikio Naruse's Late Chrysanthemums (1954), Scattered Clouds (1967) & When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960) – all at TIFF Lightbox    1h 40m 16s:      Listener Jason's Top Gloria Grahame films +++ Studio Film Capsules provided by The Warner Brothers Story by Clive Hirchhorn Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler 1933 Information from Forgotten Films to Remember by John Springer                                 +++ * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise's latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating. * Check out Dave's new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com   We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

Our S&xMas episode looks at two provocative, controversial, and not very sex-positive works made by aging auteurs after a long hiatus, Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999) and Paul Verhoeven's Elle (2016). Join us as we trace Tom Cruise's all-American odyssey of sexual paranoia and Isabelle Huppert's very European journey away from sex with men, asking such important questions as "Is Paul Verhoeven the most masochistic male feminist director?" and "Is there a significance to Christmas in these movies beyond irony?" And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, just one Naruse, Wife (1953), another uninspiring look at marriage that extends a surprising amount of sympathy toward Ken Uehara, the Japanese George Brent. Is there a significance to covering these movies in our Christmas episode beyond irony? Listen and find out! Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:    EYES WIDE SHUT (1999) [dir. Stanley Kubrick] 0h 25m 30s:    ELLE (2016) [dir. Paul Verhoeven] 0h 47m 34s:    Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Mikio Naruse's Wife (1953) 0h 51m 36s:    ELLE (2016) returns!  +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again" * Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

It's our final Gloria Grahame Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, with which we also say goodbye to our comprehensive approach toward attaining a privileged vantage point on an actor's entire oeuvre. Of course, we cheated a little on this one and stopped short of Gloria's exploitation film era. Our oeuvre-view ends with two Westerns, Ride Out for Revenge (1957) and Ride Beyond Vengeance (1966), entirely unrelated despite their similar titles, which we liked for very different reasons, and a last Gloria Grahame left-wing film noir appearance in Robert Wise's Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), produced by Harry Belafonte's production company with a screenplay secretly written by blacklistee Abraham Polonsky at Belafonte's behest. After we reveal our Top 10 Gloria Grahame movies, Fear and Moviegoing returns with a vengeance (in keeping with the episode's themes) with three by Mikio Naruse from the TIFF Lightbox retrospective (Floating Clouds, Repast, and Mother) and two Carlton 90s retro screenings, Bryan Singer's The Usual Suspects and Greg Mottola's The Daytrippers.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:    RIDE OUT FOR REVENGE (1957) [dir. Bernard Girard] 0h 22m 08s:    ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW (1959) [dir. Robert Wise]. 0h 32m 36s:    RIDE BEYOND VENGEANCE (1966) [dir. Bernard McEveety] 0h 45m 32s:    Gloria Grahame Top 10s   0h 49m 44s:    Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Bryan Singer's The Usual Suspects (1995) & Greg Mottola's The Daytrippers (1997) at The Carlton Cinema; Part I of TIFF Cinematheque's Mikio Naruse Retrospective - Floating Clouds (1955); Repast (1951) & Mother (1952) +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again" * Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

For this 1933 MGM episode we focus on rehabilitating John Gilbert's sound-era reputation with a double feature of underrated gem Fast Workers, a construction worker love triangle melodrama directed by Tod Browning, and Gilbert's most famous sound movie, Rouben Mamoulian and Greta Garbo's very serious (but also very sensual) costume drama Queen Christina, about a woman whose ideals clash with her society. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we discuss one of Dave's faves, Paul Thomas Anderson's morally enigmatic first feature, Hard Eight.    Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:      1933 and MGM 0h 07m 46s:      FAST WORKERS (dir. Tod Browning] 0h 33m 11s:      QUEEN CHRISTINA [dir. Rouben Mamoulian] 0h 54m 22s:      Fear & Moviegoing in Toronto: Paul Thomas Anderson's Hard Eight (1996) at The Paradise Cinema +++ Studio Film Capsules provided by The MGM Story by John Douglas Eames Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler 1933 Information from Forgotten Films to Remember by John Springer                                 +++ * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise's latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating. * Check out Dave's new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com   We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

In this week's episode of our Gloria Grahame Acteurist Oeuvre-view, we explore the unique casting of unmusical Gloria in Fred Zinnemann's film version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! (1955) and follow the thread that leads (through Jud Fry) from the supposedly "wholesome" musical to Charlie Kaufman's dark, experimental I'm Thinking of Ending Things. Then we switch over to British espionage curiosity The Man Who Never Was (1956), starring Gloria and Clifton Webb... although they never share a scene. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, another curious pairing: Cameron Crowe's quintessential 90s romantic comedy Singles (1992) and Luc Moullet's weirdo Western A Girl Is a Gun/Une aventure de Billy le Kidd (1971) offer wildly divergent perspectives on the problem of love. Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:    OKLAHOMA! (1955) [dir. Fred Zinnemann] 0h 32m 04s:    THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS (1956) [dir. Ronald Neame] 0h 40m 38s:    Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Cameron Crowe's Singles (1992) at The Revue Cinema and Luc Moullet's A Girl is a Gun /Une aventure de Billy le Kid (1971) at TIFF Lightbox +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again" * Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

This Paramount 1933 Studios Year by Year episode features two of the studio's defining stars of the era: the Marx Brothers, in their final, most famous, and (maybe) most nihilistic Paramount film, Duck Soup, directed by Leo McCarey, and Gary Cooper, miscast (or maybe not) in One Sunday Afternoon in the role that would go to James Cagney in the Warner Bros. remake, The Strawberry Blonde. We zero in on Groucho's authoritarian anti-authoritarianism and Cooper's embodiment of a charismatic man's class resentment. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we share our first experience with the cinema of Nouvelle Vague primitivist Luc Moullet, his quirky and candid examination of second-wave feminism's effect on his relationship (and anatomy), Anatomie d'un rapport (1976)   Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:      1933 and Paramount 0h 06m 53s:      ONE SUNDAY AFTERNOON (1933) [dir. Stephen Roberts] 0h 27m 01s:      DUCK SOUP (1933) [dir. Leo McCarey]              1h 01m 22s:      Fear & Moviegoing in Toronto – Luc Moullet and Antonietta Pizzorno's Anatomie d'un rapport (1976) +++ Studio Film Capsules provided by The Paramount Story by John Douglas Eames Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler 1933 Information from Forgotten Films to Remember by John Springer                                 +++ * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise's latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating. * Check out Dave's new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com   We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!