Tag Archives: Seth Rogen

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 388 – The Fabelmans

February 8, 2023Eavesdropping at the Movies, Uncategorizedautobiographical, drama, Gabriel LaBelle, Judd Hirsch, Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Seth Rogen, Steven Spielberg, The FabelmansNotesonFilm1

Listen on the players above, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

Steven Spielberg’s long-awaited semi-autobiographical reminiscence of his childhood is here, and it’s perfect. Too perfect. José swoons over the way The Fabelmans transports him to its place and time and shows love and understanding to everybody it depicts, but has to admit that a few rougher edges here and there would have done it a favour. There’s only so much drama in the life of Spielberg’s young avatar, Sammy Fabelman, and that which there is is on the tame side. But Spielberg’s love for his parents is obvious and appealing, as is his love for cinema, which he’s unafraid to get specific about – the sequences that show Sammy making and screening films convey an interest in the aesthetics, technicalities, and effects of film, rather than giving it the far vaguer “magic of the movies” treatment such “love letters to cinema” often offer.

The Fabelmans is as unwilling to explore the dark side of humanity as we’re used to Spielberg being, but it avoids his proclivity for schmaltz, and José loved it. So there.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies 24 – The Disaster Artist

December 14, 2017

A disaster of a film about a disaster of a film that nonetheless made us laugh; a film that tells more than it shows; an in-joke dramatised in James Franco’s fan project about the worst film ever made. We discuss the mean-spirited nature of finding films so bad they’re good, the lack of direction in The Disaster Artist, the quality of Franco’s central performance, and why we find the film so self-indulgent. I contradict myself by saying he’s only ever good with other directors and then talking about how great he here.

The podcast can be listened to in the player above or at this link.

José Arroyo and and Michael Glass of Writing About Film

Neighbors (Nicholas Stoller, USA, 2014)

May 18, 2014UncategorizedDave Franco, Nicholas Stoller, Nieghbors, Rose Byrne, Seth Rogen, Zac AffronNotesonFilm1

Coarse, vulgar, cheap, low: Neighbors is a very big hit and a very depressing sight. It’s as if the terrain mined by Porky’s in the early 80’s has now become the only vein American comedy excels at: tit jokes, pissing contests, cock measurements, passing out with drink, getting high on anything. You can’t blame the very attractive cast. Most of them are comedians; and who could blame a comedian for stooping to a laugh? Moreover it’s funny: the audience reaction is proof of it. It is in fact also very intelligent and has some good lines (‘He looks like something a gay guy designed’, say Seth Rogen’s character of Zac Affron’s). But there’s the rub for me: all that intelligence, all that comedic talent… for what? Tit jokes? Even ‘with a twist’? In the words of Jonathon Gatehouse, ‘Everywhere you look these days, America is in a race to embrace the stupid’. Neighbors is just one more example. A sad commentary on American Comedy and on America itself.

José Arroyo