Filmsuck

Two film scholars pondering the work of art in the age of crap cinema. Podcasting about screen crimes and triumphs of the past and present.

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In this week's essay, I celebrate the career of tap-dancer Eleanor Powell, who was so good she intimidated legendary dancer Fred Astaire. After THE BROADWAY MELODY OF 1940, he refused to be re-teamed with her because she "dances like a man" and "makes me work too hard."

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It's Film Fact Friday!

Todd Haynes' banned short Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987) portrays the singer’s tragic life using Barbie dolls. Its unlicensed use of Carpenter's songs led to a lawsuit by Karen’s brother Richard, pulling it from circulation in 1990.

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All about that time Dolores interviewed her favorite living director Todd Haynes (SAFE, FAR FROM HEAVEN, I'M NOT THERE, CAROL, MAY DECEMBER).

We exult in all things Haynes; his films, current political take, cocktail of choice, upcoming projects, and much, much more.

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Jean Renoir identified with the French coalition of socialist-communist parties: The Popular Front. He spoke at rallies and was commissioned by the French Communist Party to make LA VIE EST A NOUS(1936). His THE CRIME OF MONSIEUR LANGE(1936) was banned during WWII

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NEW ESSAY: In praise of Jean Renoir's THE CRIME OF MONSIEUR LANGE (1936), a socialist film celebrating workers taking over a publishing company, saving it from an evil capitalist boss who's been destroying the company, stealing profits to finance his sexually predatory vices.

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Quintessential French film star Jean Gabin, the face of Poetic Realist cinema in the 1930s, insisted on signing up with the Free French forces to fight the Nazis during WWII, though he was nearly forty and could easily have avoided active service.

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NEW ESSAY ANNOUNCEMENT

A celebration of the French Poetic Realism series currently on the Criterion Channel, notes its topicality. Made by socialist and communist filmmakers, French Poetic Realism was hated by Fascists, and that ought to be recommendation enough for anybody.

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No Other Land, a co-production between Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers about the violent occupation of the West Bank by Israeli military forces, is the first Palestinian film to win an Oscar. With no U.S. Distributor, it remains the year’s highest-grossing documentary.

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No, no one cared about The Oscars this year, but there was something reassuring about its very presence. We cheered for Anora and booed Adrien Brody, all in a nervous attempt to reclaim some feeling of normalcy.

New Episode Out Now!!

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Director Walter Sallas took pains to recreate the vibrant decor of the Paiva house. The film actors lived, cooked, and socialized there, to the point that when the son of the house, Marcelo Rubens Paiva, visited the "set," he said it even smelled like his old family home.

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Our co-hosts aren't in total agreement about I'M NOT HERE, the new Best Picture-nominated Walter Salles film about the fracturing of a leftist family during the right-wing military dictatorship in early 1970s Brazil. But both admire the film's harrowing topicality.

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In an interview for Vogue magazine, Renee Zellweger tells the story of researching her Bridget Jones role at Picador, a publishing house, where she read newspaper clippings about herself as the “crap American actor” about to play Helen Fielding’s beloved British heroine “Bridge.”

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There’s a new Bridget Jones movie: Mad About the Boy, the third sequel to the wildly popular 2001 romcom Bridget Jones’ Diary. It inspired Eileen to
write about this unlikely film franchise about the unkempt and widely beloved heroine.

Essay out now! https://t.co/1elx02V0pN

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Critic Andrew Sarris wrote, "[Director Preston] Sturges repeatedly suggested that the lowliest boob could rise to the top with the right degree of luck, bluff, and fraud."

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY, AMERICA!!!

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Eileen and Dolores work love out in the remix of Preston Sturges screwball comedies vs. Fassbinder for a wild-ass Valentine’s program bound to massacre all of our cliches about love!

Episode out now: https://t.co/1elx02UsAf

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Massacre your expectations and get ready for this week’s episode as our hosts talk films that dare to reshape the world through romance (or extravagantly lament the failure of that attempt at re-shaping!).
Love is MAD.

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David Lynch believed that a structured life enabled creative freedom. Every day, Lynch ate the same lunch at Bob's Big Boy diner in Toluca Lake. He also drank twenty cups of coffee per day and smoked almost incessantly, all as ways of fostering what he called "the Art Life.

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In this Very Special Episode of Filmsuck, open to the public, co-host Eileen Jones interviews writer and cinephile Alex Deley about his insightful JACOBIN magazine piece on the films of David Lynch. Check it out: https://t.co/xLToONAiK4

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Tune in tonight at 8 PM on Youtube and Twitch as Filmsuck co-host Eileen Jones joins Movie Night Extravaganza to discuss Best Picture nominee ANORA!
https://t.co/zwwDmLlQQL

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Co-writer/director and co-composer Gints Zilbalodis worked with his team of animators to create Flow entirely on Blender, a free open-source tool that anyone can use.