Honoured to have been invited to guest on the superb ‘How Would Lubitsch Do It’ podcast to speak on Carmen. The podcast can be listened to here:
https://www.movingimageagency.com/ernstcast/s1e06
José Arroyo
Tag Archives: podcast
Thinking Aloud About Film: Pedro Almodóvar 4 – What Have I Done to Deserve This?
The greatest work of the first phase of Almodóvar’s career; the first to be released in the US; the second for the Tesauro S.A. Production Company. In this podcast we discuss the film in relation to his three previous features, to Eloy de la Iglesias’ ‘quinqui’ films dealing with working class kids encountering the wave of drugs then flooding into Spain, to Italian neo-realism, and to camp. We praise Carmen Maura, note the first of appearance of Almodóvar’s mother in his work; and remark on the many reasons why it would be extremely difficult to make this film today. We discuss the continuing send-up of advertisements, the sophistication of the camera placement, the ways the film might be considered post-modern, the mixture of genres, the citations of a history of cinema, though style but also through explicit referencing (Kazan’s SPLENDOUR IN THE GRASS) ….and much more.
The podcast may be listened to here:
The podcast can also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT
and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546
José Arroyo
Trailer for podcast on Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Time to Live and The Time to Die (1985)
Our next podcast will be on THE TIME TO LIVE AND THE TIME TO DIE. The trailer below will hopefully give a taster of the film for those who might not yet have seen it:
<iframe src=”https://player.vimeo.com/video/549874059″ width=”640″ height=”346″ frameborder=”0″ allow=”autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture” allowfullscreen></iframe>
Trailer for Cute Girl
Trailer for podcast on Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Cute Girl:
Eavesdropping at the Movies: 231 – Burt Lancaster
Listen on the players above, on Apple Podcasts, or on Spotify.
On a very special Eavesdropping at the Movies requested by our listeners, José takes us through the career of Burt Lancaster, every one of whose films he has been watching during the lockdown. Lancaster is a star through whose career a whole history of movements and evolutions in Hollywood can be tracked, from the studio noirs of the 1940s right through to the anti-war allegories of the 1970s, taking in all of the social, political, stylistic, industrial and aesthetic shifts that would take place in a constantly changing America.
On screen, Lancaster was capable of moving fluidly between genres and styles, including noir, action-adventure and Westerns, won the 1960 Oscar for Best Actor for Elmer Gantry, was regularly amongst the top box-office stars from 1950-1965, and worked with some of the great screenwriters and playwrights, including Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. Off screen, he was one of the foremost independent producers of his day. He fought against McCarthyism during the height of the Red Scare, employing blacklisted screenwriters when nobody else would, later made a number of anti-racist revisionist Westerns, and championed progressive causes throughout his life. José argues that Lancaster conceived of the cinema as a national theatre of ideas, a place in which conversations could be had and arguments advanced, a conception that ties his entire, varied career together.
Mike, on the other hand, has barely seen anything of Burt Lancaster’s, and José has put him on a crash course of five or six films in order to get a sense of his work, style and persona. He’s left with questions to throw at José: Why Lancaster hasn’t lingered culturally as strongly as some of his contemporaries? Is it his politics? His acting ability? His style? Is his reputation for muscles, teeth, and little else, justified?
Burt Lancaster, José concludes, represents the best of America. His work is ripe for rediscovery, and offers rich insight on a constantly changing culture and industry.
With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.
MUBI and Cinephilia
There are broadly two large cinephiliac discourses on cinema currently, each with a multitude of sub-divisions: a global, festival-based one, with internationally shared points of reference, largely inaccessible in the UK outside London. And the other, a more populist but also more insular one, also with many sub-divisions, which surrounds Hollywood, commercial British cinema, and the odd Indie or foreign film that gets nationwide distribution in the UK. In this very interesting podcast the discussion focusses on how MUBI might help bridge that divide.
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/cinema-mondial-podcast/id1437047056?mt=2
José Arroyo
Eavesdropping at the Movies 34 – Jumanji – Welcome To The Jungle
Boy oh boy, there’s a lot to talk about, and the word of the day is denial. Specifically, Mike’s unspoken, subcutaneous, existential denial that 1995’s Jumanji is crucially meaningful to him, because how else can you explain the tension in the air as he grapples with the simple question, “Do you recommend the new Jumanji?” Ironic, really. The new Jumanji depicts characters who are forced to confront harsh truths about themselves, and in doing so forces Mike to confront the fact that he can talk about Jumanji for an hour with very little prompting.
And that new Jumanji provides a surprising amount of food for thought. We discuss how the film uses and satirises videogames, how much it made us laugh, the Jonas Brothers, Mike being a sucker for a happy ending as usual and Jose rolling his eyes, the stereotypes from which the central characters are built, how the film has its sexist cake and eats it, the ways the stars play off each other and suit their roles, aspects of performance, the muddled nature of the world and fundamental change in the characters’ relationship to it, how much harder it is to play videogames than it is to watch films, moviegoers’ over-investment in films from decades past, and last year’s Power Rangers movie.
And it’s a name-heavy edition of the podcast, with Jose getting names wrong left, right, and centre, and a final, authoritative correction of our pronunciation of Jia Zhangke’s name. (Thanks to Sam and Jessy Stafford for their contributions.)
Recorded on 16th January 2018.
he podcast can be listened to in the player above or at this link
You can download it from i-tunes here.
We also now have a dedicated website.
José Arroyo and Michael Glass of Writing About Film
The Hitman’s Bodyguard – Eavesdropping at the Movies – Ep 2 – 23rd August 2017
The second instalment of the Eavesdropping at the Movies podcast with Michael Glass of Writing About Film, where we hope to offer the experience of eavesdropping on friends chatting informally about a movie after just watching it.
This week the focus is on The Hitman’s Bodyguard and the topics under discussion include: Can an action film that goes through Coventry be any good? Is it important that action scenes are funny? Is Gary Oldman a whore? All valuable questions. All answered in our chat about The Hitman’s Bodyguard. I think.
José Arroyo and Michael Glass.
José Arroyo on Almodóvar’s Broken Embraces in The Cinematologists
Dario Llinares and I discuss Pedro Almodóvar’s Broken Embraces during the mini-retrospective hosted by Curzon Cinemas in August here: http://www.cinematologists.com/podcastarchive/2016/8/24/episode-29b-broken-embraces.
Josė Arroyo