Deep Focus on WNHH-LP

On today's episode of Deep Focus, host Tom Breen is joined by Allan Appel and Sam Hadelman for a review of Quentin Tarantino's latest, ONCE UPON A TIME ... IN HOLLYWOOD.

On today's episode of Deep Focus, host Tom Breen talks with local producer Trish Clark and New York-based filmmaker Frank Fasano about the 48 Hour Film Project New Haven, the ninth annual competition in which teams rush to write, shoot, edit, and deliver a short movie all over the course of a single weekend at the end of July.

On today's episode of Deep Focus, host Tom Breen talks with producer Bill Kraus and director Gorman Bechard about their new documentary: "Factory – 150,000 sq feet of Sex, Vice, Music, Art & Clocks," about the New Haven Clock Factory's rich and strange history.

On today's episode of Deep Focus, host Tom Breen talks with New Haven filmmaker Steve Hamm about SHIFT CHANGE, his new documentary about the past, present, and future of community policing in the Elm City. SHIFT CHANGE will be playing June 4 at 6:30 p.m. at the Whitney Humanities Center as part of the 6th annual New Haven Documentary Film Festival.

On today's episode of Deep Focus on WNHH Community Radio, host Tom Breen talks with filmmaker Eric Michael Schrader and Butte, Montana-based community radio host Dark Sevier about ZULU SUMMER, Schrader's new documentary about the unique cross-cultural exchange that takes place when three Zulu men from South Africa visit Butte for the summer with the sole purpose of learning about what makes Americans happy and unhappy.

On today's episode of Deep Focus, host Tom Breen talks with NHDocs co-founder and co-director Gorman Bechard about the 2019 festival lineup.

On today's episode of Deep Focus, host Tom Breen talks with Brian Meacham, the archive and special collections manager of the Yale Film Study Center, about Yale's new eight-film retrospective on legendary Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman.

Host Tom Breen and local filmmaker Stephen Dest talk about Dest's new movie, GRACE.

On today's episode of Deep Focus, host Tom Breen and Madison Art Cinemas owner Arnold Gorlick recap their favorite films from the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival.

On today's episode of Deep Focus on WNHH Community Radio, host Tom Breen and New Haven Independent staff reporter Allan Appel review MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT, the sixth entry in the Tom Cruise-helmed action franchise.

On today's episode of Deep Focus, host Tom Breen talks with 48 Hour Film Project New Haven Producer Trish Clark and with Ryan Licwinko and Haley Copes, two local filmmakers who participated in the 2018 competition during the final weekend of July. Licwinko's team, everyoneleavesnewhaven, made the martial arts movie, "The Warrior, The Guardian, and The Liar. Copes's team, Bounce Lounge Productions, made the comedy, "A Slice of Chaos."

On today's episode of Deep Focus, host Tom Breen and New Haven Independent staff reporter Allan Appel review two new releases: Debra Granik's LEAVE NO TRACE and Chris Wardle's THREE IDENTIFICAL STRANGERS.

On today's episode of Deep Focus, host Tom Breen talks with Trish Clark about this summer's 48 Hour Film Project New Haven, the eighth annual Elm City competition to make a 4 to 7 minute movie that follows an assortment of randomly assigned criteria over the course of one weekend. Breen and Clark also talk about the Nutmeg Institute, which Clark co-founded to help connect and inspire local filmmakers.

On today's episode, host Tom Breen and New Haven Independent reporter Allan Appel review two movies: THE CATCHER WAS A SPY, Ben Lewin's new biopic of professional baseball player-turned-WWII spy Moe Berg, and WON'T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?, about the Fred Rogers and the legendary PBS children's program, Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.

On today's episode of Deep Focus, host Tom Breen and New Haven Independent reporter Allan Appel review FIRST REFORMED, Paul Schrader's new movie about the minister of a small, historic church in upstate New York as he works through in the midst of a physical, emotional and spiritual crisis.

On today's episode, host Tom Breen talks with Jim Barone, a Hamden native who stars in the new Adam Sandler Netflix comedy, THE WEEK OF. Barone lost both of his legs due to complications with diabetes a few years ago, but is now embarking on an acting career, and is calling one of the most famous comedians in the world a new friend and mentor.

On today's episode, host Tom Breen talks with Steve Hamm, the director of THE VILLAGE, a new documentary and oral history of the Wooster Square neighborhood, which has served for over a century as the city's Little Italy.

On today's episode, host Tom Breen talks with local filmmaker Gorman Bechard about the fifith annual New Haven Documentary Film Festival, aka NHDocs.

On today's episode of Deep Focus, host Tom Breen and New Haven Independent reporter Allan Appel review CHAPPAQUIDDICK, a new dramatization of the night of and week after U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy (played here by Jason Clarke) drove his car off of a narrow bridge on Martha's Island, resulting in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, a former RFK campaign aide who was riding along with him.

On today's episode, host Tom Breen and New Haven Independent Arts Editor Brian Slattery talk about A QUIET PLACE, John Krasinski's new horror movie about a family in upstate New York that has crafted a wordless survivalist way of life amidst an alien invasion of creatures that are hyper-attuned to noise.

On today's episode, host Tom Breen and New Haven Independent staff writer Allan Appel review THE DEATH OF STALIN, the new political satire from writer-director Armando Ianucci that is set in Moscow in 1953 and follows the days before and after the death of Joseph Stalin, the three-decade dictator of the Soviet Union, as his closest cohort of advisers plan the unplannable: how to replace a cult of personality.

On today's episode, host Tom Breen and guest reviewer Bruce Ditman talk about ANNIHILATION, a new sci-fi / action movie from writer-director Alex Garland that follows five female scientists on an expedition into the heart of a mysterious radioactive zone called The Shimmer.

On the first segment of today's show, host Tom Breen talks with Yale film archivist Brian Meacham and documentary filmmaker Norman Weissman about an upcoming screening of Weissman's eclectic industrial and educational films from the 1950s through 1970s.On the second segment of the show, Breen and Meacham talk about the 50-year anniversary of Yale's acquisition of the John Griggs Collection, which marked the beginning of the Yale Film Archive as we know it today.

On today's episode, host Tom Breen talks with Joe Ugly in the Morning Producer Preston Wilson, New Haven Arts Paper Editor Lucy Gellman, and Fantasy Filmball Host Shawn Murray about BLACK PANTHER, Ryan Coogler's much-anticipated Marvel movie set in the African techno-utopia of Wakanda. Breen, Wilson, Gellman, and Murray talk through BLACK PANTHER as a Marvel movie, a Black movie, and a movie about isolationist vs. interventionist politics. On the second segment of the show, the four play a BLACK PANTHER-themed version of Fantasy Filmball, where they recast classic and contemporary movies with the filmmaking team behind BLACK PANTHER.

Today’s show is all about PIZZA, A LOVE STORY, a new documentary from local filmmaker Gorman Bechard and producers Colin Caplan and Dean Falcone that is all about just why, oh why, the small New England city we call home has three of the best pizza places in the world, all within a few blocks of one another. Host Tom Breen talks with them about about their research into Pepe’s, Sally’s and Modern, and about how America’s century-long love affair with pizza has been influenced by a small group of family-owned, Italian-American restaurants based out of New Haven.

On Wednesday, Jan. 31, host Tom Breen introduced a screening of Fritz Lang's 1931 crime thriller M at the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale as part of the Treasures from the Yale Film Archives series. Today's episode features a recording of that introduction, as well as a few thoughts on the enduring appeal of this masterpiece of world cinema.

On Wednesday, September 20, 2017, a Category 4 hurricane made landfall on the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico. Hurricane Maria completely destroyed the island’s power grid, leveled homes and schools, and was and continues to be a source of great humanitarian concern both for the 3.4 million people who live on Puerto Rico as well as for the upwards of 300,000 Puerto Ricans who live in the state of Connecticut.On the first segment of today’s show, host Tom Breen talks with WNPR journalist and photographer Ryan Caron King about the Island Next Door, a reporting project undertaken by King and WNPR news director Jeff Cohen that documents the months-long fallout of Hurricane Maria, both on the island and in the Nutmeg State. They focus in on the videos and photographs that Ryan made over the course of several reporting trips to Puerto Rico in late 2017.On the second segment of the show, Breen is joined by New Haven Independent staff writer Allan Appel for a review of PHANTOM THREAD, a new movie from director Paul Thomas Anderson that offers a biting critique of the myth of the domineering male artistic genius and his docile female muse, all set in the world of high fashion in post-World War II London, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Vicky Krieps, and Lesley Manville.

On the first segment of today’s show, host Tom Breen is joined by New Haven film critic and lecturer Steve Fortes to talk about the history of African American cinema.In the early 1990s, Steve taught two seminars at Yale University about the history of African American film and television. On today’s show we’ll talk with Steve about the films that he covered in those two seminars, what he saw as some of the prevailing themes and trends of in the first century of African American cinema, and about which movies and filmmakers he would include today if he were teaching the same course in 2018.On the second segment of the show, Breen is joined by New Haven Independent staff writer Allan Appel for a review of THE POST, Steven Spielberg’s new movie about the 1971 debate within the editorial ranks of The Washington Post about whether or not to publish Daniel Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers, classified documents that revealed decades of executive branch deceit and cynicism that prolonged America’s disastrous involvement in the Vietnam War. We’ll talk about how this movie resonates in 2018 as a celebration of the free press, and as an indictment of the hypermasculine industries of newspapers and politics in the early 1970s.

On today's episode, host Tom Breen is joined by New Haven movie blogger Dan Heaton and Madison Art Cinemas owner Arnold Gorlick to talk through their top 10 movies of 2017. The episode also features over a dozen voicemails from friends, listeners, and former guests on the show with their picks for the best of the year.

On the first segment of today’s episode, host Tom Breen is joined by Bridgeport-based filmmaker Francesca Andre to talk about her new movie “Charcoal,” a short film about colorism and prejudices within and without the black community against dark skin. They talk about the origins of this movie, Andre’s background as a fashion and news photographer, and her own experiences with colorism in her native Haiti and here in the States.On the second segment of the show, Breen joined by New Haven Independent reporter Allan Appel for a review of The Shape of Water, director Guillermo del Toro’s new sci-fi-horror-romance about a mute cleaning woman in early 60s Baltimore who falls in love with an amphibious man held captive at the secret US army research facility where she works.

On the first segment of today’s show, host Tom Breen is joined by Connecticut poet Kate Rushin to talk about two movies that have had a profound influence on her understanding and love of cinema: DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST, a landmark 1991 drama from director Julie Dash about three generations of African American Gullah women from the Sea Islands of South Carolina, a movie often celebrated as the first feature film directed by an African American woman to get a wide theatrical release in the United States; and we’ll also talk about BLACK ORPHEUS, a 1959 musical from French director Marcel Camus that adapts the classical Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to the vibrant, samba-suffused streets of Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro during Carnival.On the second segment of the show, Breen and the New Haven Independent’s Allan Appel review THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI, a new ensemble dramedy from director Martin McDonagh that follows a grieving, defiant mother seeking justice for her murdered child in a small town in the Ozark mountains of southern Missouri.

This marks the 20th anniversary of Steven Spielberg’s AMISTAD, a 1997 historical drama about a successful revolt among enslaved Africans aboard a Cuban slave ship in 1839, those Africans’ subsequent recapture and detention in, among other places, New Haven, Connecticut, and the subsequent landmark United States court cases that resulted in the Africans’ freedom. On today’s episode, host Tom Breen talks with Yale Film Studies Center director Michael Kerbel, Gilder Lehrman Center postdoctoral associate Joseph Yannielli and local film critic and lecturer Steve Fortes about Spielberg’s take on the Amistad uprising and trials, how themovie holds up two decades after its initial release, and how it resonates for audiences in New Haven where this story is so widely celebrated as one of this city’s primary connections to an international history of anti-slavery and civil rights.

Today’s West Coast, High School, Romantic Comedy edition of the show all about a few movies that explore the highs, lows and confused in-betweens of teenage life, mostly told from the perspective of young female protagonists.On the first segment of the show, host Tom Breen is joined by New Haven-based author, journalist and podcaster Mark Oppenheimer to talk about two movies that have had a profound influence on his understanding and love of cinema: Amy Heckerling’s 1982 directorial debut FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH, an ensemble high school sex comedy set in southern california and written by Cameron Crowe, and Crowe’s own 1989 directorial debut SAY ANYTHING, which brings the teenage romantic yearning up the coast to Seattle and follows one unlikely couple in the tumultuous summer after their high school graduation.On the second segment of the show, Breen is joined by New Haven Arts Paper editor Lucy Gellman and New Haven Independent staff writer Allan Appel to talk about LADY BIRD, Greta Gerwig’s new movie (also a directorial debut) about a 17-year-old in Sacramento, California trying to figure out who she is in relation to her mom, school, friends and city, all of which she desperately longs to escape from in order to start a new life as an independent adult on the East Coast.

On today's episode, host Tom Breen talks with prolific New Haven filmmaker Gorman Bechard about his latest rock documentary, Who Is Lydia Loveless?

This week is the Latino and Iberian Film Festival at Yale (LIFFY), an annual celebration of contemporary Spanish and Portueguese-language cinema that takes place in downtown New Haven at the Whitney Humanities Center at 53 Wall St.In this week's episode, host Tom Breen talks with a handful of filmmakers who have movies screenings at this year's festival, including Cuban filmmaker Carlos Barba Salva, Haitian/Dominican filmmaker Jean Jean, Cuban filmmaker Deyma D’Atri, Cuban actor Luis Alberto García, and Colombian filmmaker Claudia Fischer.

Next week is Transgender Awareness Week, an annual grassroots celebration of trans culture and concerns that takes place in different communities throughout the country, including in New Haven.The first segment of this episode is all about a trans film series that the New Haven Pride Center has organized to help celebrate Trans Awareness Week in the Elm City. Host Tom Breen is joined in the studio by two of the series’ programmers, Patrick Dunn and IV Staklo, to talk about the movies that will be playing, the different ways that trans people and issues are represented on screen, and the current state of the New Haven’s trans rights community.On the second segment of the show, Breen joined by the Yale Film Study Center’s Archer Neilson to talk about Un prophete, a 2009 French film by Jacques Audiard that stars Tahar Rahim as a French Arab man learning to navigate the different languages, economies, cultures, and politics of a central French prison in the early 2000s. Un prophete is playing this Sunday at the Whitney Humanities Center on Wall Street as part of the Treasures from the Yale Film Archives series.

On the first segment of today’s show, host Tom Breen talks with Allan Appel and Lucy Gellman about LOVING VINCENT, a new animated film from directors Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman that gives the Citizen Kane treatment to the life of Dutch post-impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh: through a series of flashbacks and second-hand stories, we see the rise and fall of the troubled and inspired life of this eccentric painter, focusing in on the final days of his life in the rural French town of Auvers. Unlike most animated movies, this story is composed of tens of thousands of hand-drawn oil paintings by over one hundred contributing artists, all simulating the heavy brushstrokes and ebullient style of the movie’s namesake. On the second segment of the show, Breen is joined by Lucy McClure, Debbie Hesse, and Trish Clark to talk about the Nasty Women Film Event, a screening night of locally made feminist films that will be taking place at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art on Election day, next Tuesday, in honor of, or in defiance of, the anniversary of Donald Trump’s election as president.

Halloween is just around the corner, and so, on today’s episode, host Tom Breen bis joined by horror-flick aficionado Joe Fay to talk about the movies, styles, and legacies of two seminal horror filmmakers who both died in 2017: George A. Romero and Tobe Hooper. But instead of retreading the familiar territory of these two directors’ best known and most influential works, Romero’s 1968 Night of the Living Dead and Hooper’s 1974 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Joe and Tom focus on two slightly deeper cuts, Romero’s 1981 Arthurian biker drama Knightriders and Hooper’s 1985 alien vampire flick Lifeforce.

It’s mid-October, which means that it’s just about time for Home Movie Day, an annual celebration of amateur films and filmmakers that takes place at the New Haven Museum this Saturday, October 21st, from noon to 4 p.m. On today’s show, host Tom Breen is joined by Yale film archivists Brian Meacham and Molly Wheeler, who are the organizers of the New Haven instance of this international event, as well as by Yale University Art Gallery museum staffer Rachel Mihalko. The four dive into the actual work itself that film and media archivists do: what are the tools and materials they work with, what are the challenges they encounter and the solutions they provide, and what is the broader social value of film and media preservation in the 21st century.

On today’s review only episode of the show, host Tom Breen is joined by New Haven Independent reporter Allan Appel to talk about Blade Runner 2049, the new sci-fi-film-noir from director Denis Villeneuve that offers another look at the dystopian American future of uncanny androids and commercialized urban decay originally envisioned by Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade Runner.

On today's review only episode of the show, host Tom Breen is joined by New Haven Independent reporter Allan Appel to talk about two new movies about young women torn between social expectation and personal ambition, who find both distraction and clarity in the art that consumes their lives. THE BATTLE OF THE SEXES, the latest feature from directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Ferris, tells the story of a 1973 tennis match between 29-year-old tennis star Billie Jean King (played by Emma Stone) and aging tennis veteran and self-proclaimed 'chauvinist pig' Bobby Riggs (played by Steve Carrell). And COLUMBUS, the directorial debut of filmmaker Kogonada, is an indie romance featuring a recent high school grad (played by Haley Lu Richardson) who is trying to understand just what exactly moves her so much about the many examples of high modernist architecture that exist in her otherwise unassuming, small Midwestern hometown of Columbus, Indiana.

On today’s episode of the show, host Tom Breen is joined by Madison Art Cinemas’ founder and owner Arnold Gorlick to talk about their experiences at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, which ran from September 7th to September 17th and featured almost 340 movies, many of which were making their world premieres.

In today's episode, host Tom Breen is joined by New Haven Review publisher Bennett Graff for a conversation about movie adaptations of graphic novels. In particular, they focus on AMERICAN SPLENDOR, a 2003 film from directors Shari Springer Brown and Robert Pulcini that brings to life Cleveland author Harvey Pekar’s decades-spanning autobiographical underground comic series of the same name.

On today's review only episode of the show, host Tom Breen and New Haven Independent reporter Allan Appel talk about WIND RIVER, a new murder mystery from writer-director Taylor Sheridan, whose previous screenwriting credits include SICARIO and HELL OR HIGH WATER, that takes place in a desolate, unforgiving stretch of the Wind River Northern Arapaho Reservation in western Wyoming.

On today’s review-only episode of the show, host Tom Breen is joined by New Haven Independent reporter Allan Appel for a discussion of Lady Macbeth, a new British film from director William Oldroyd about a young bride in 19th century northern England who chafes against the oppressive boredom, disrespect, and objectification of being a kept woman in a patriarchal society. As the movie’s title indicates, though, our young protagonist is not one to be content with a life of humiliation and immobility, and, once she finds an object of her own desire, she is willing to go to some pretty extreme lengths to attain it.

On today's review-only episode of the show, I'll be joined by New Haven Independent staff reporter Allan Appel to talk about DUNKIRK, Christopher Nolan's new WWII action movie about the mass evacuation of hundreds of thousands of British troops from the beaches of a besieged French coastal city in the early summer of 1940. We'll talk about this movie's vision of courage, despair, and victory in defeat, as well as about how it compares to other landmark works in the WWII movie genre.

On today’s review-only episode of the show, host Tom Breen is joined by WNHH intern Sam Hadelman to talk about two new summer releases that follow eager young men who are cocky, talented, good-natured, and naive, destined for great professional success if they can only survive the immense personal danger that comes with their work. Edgar Wright’s BABY DRIVER and Jon Watts’ SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING are two summer action movies replete with car chases, explosions, supervillains and extended fight sequences. One follows a youthful Atlanta getaway driver immersed in pop music, the other a frenetic Queens high school student eager to impress his superhero role models.

On today’s very special interview-only episode of the show, host Tom Breen is joined by Filmspotting co-host and Chicago-based film critic Josh Larsen to talk about Movies Are Prayers, Larsen’s new book about how movies can function as expressions of joy, lament, anger, and praise in ways that are strikingly similar to what is heard and felt during prayerful worship. As a practicing Christian and a seasoned film critic, Larsen brings a theological perspective to his understanding of movies that articulates the religious potential of cinema, not as an instrument for indoctrination, but as an artful expression of mankind’s deepest joys, pains, and uncertainties, directed towards God.

Today's interview-only episode of the show is all about TONY CONRAD: COMPLETELY IN THE PRESENT, a new documentary about an influential, often overlooked New York artist who was a pioneer in musical minimalism in the late 1950s, in experimental underground filmmaking in the 1960s, in pushing the democratic bounds of public access television in the 1990s and 2000s, and in many other areas of anti-authority creativity besides. Host Tom Breen is joined by director Tyler Hubby and local filmmaker Brendan Toller to talk about Hubby’s new movie, which Toller will be screening at Lyric Hall in Westville on Thursday, June 29th, at 7 p.m. as part of a new documentary series he’s putting together for that venue.

In anticipation of Father’s Day this Sunday, the first segment of today’s show is all about movies and dads. Host Tom Breen is joined by certified dad and movie lover Nick Schupach to talk about movie recommendations for Father’s Day, the different ways that dads and father-child relationships are portrayed on screen, and the experience of being a dad and sharing movies with your kids. On the second segment of the show, Breen talks with composer Kyle Vegter and artistic director Julia Miller about Manual Cinema, a Chicago-based troupe of artists who create live performances that blend aspects of theater, cinema, and shadow puppetry. Manual Cinema is one of the featured artists at this year’s International Festival of Arts & Ideas, and we’ll talk all about their unique approach to creating “live cinema.”

On today’s review-only episode of the show, host Tom Breen is joined by New Haven Independent staff writer Allan Appel for a discussion of two new releases starring Israeli women whose characters brush aside the fatuous hindrances of patriarchy to realize miracles of female strength and ingenuity: the latest blockbuster comic book adaptation WONDER WOMAN and the Israeli romantic comedy THE WEDDING PLAN.