The Frances Farmer Show

Sean and Evan and Melissa and Lawrence discuss some of the films they saw at the 2019 Vancouver International Film festival. Movies discussed include: Amanda (Mikhaël Hers), Wet Season (Anthony Chen), I Was at Home, But. . . (Angela Schanelec), Fourteen (Dan Sallitt), The Whistlers (Corneliu Porumboiu), Parasite (Bong Joonho), Young Ahmed (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne), and A Hidden Life (Terrence Malick).

Sean and Evan discuss some of the films they saw at this year's Seattle International Film Festival, including neo-giallos from Peter Strickland (In Fabric) and Yann Gonzalez (Knife+Heart), Joan Micklin Silver's shambolic newspaper picture Between the Lines, Radu Jude's I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians, James Mason supercut Invest in Failure (Notes on Film 06-C, Monologue 03), Chuck Smith's doc Barbara Rubin and the Exploding NY Underground, Makoto Tezuka's Legend of the Stardust Brothers and more.

Sean and Evan discuss some of the films they saw at this year's Vancouver International Film Festival, including Christian Petzold's Transit, a variety of Moody Asian Noirs (Manta Ray, Lush Reeds, A Land Imagined), Bi Gan's Long Day's Journey Into Night, Ulrich Köhler's In My Room, Derek Chiu's No. 1 Chung Ying Street and Jodie Mack's The Grand Bizarre.

Looking back at the just-concluded Seattle International Film Festival, Sean, Evan and Ryan discuss Paul Schrader's First Reformed, Claire Denis's Let the Sunshine In, Vivian Qu's Angels Wear White, and more festival highlights.

Sean, Evan and Ryan get together to talk about some of their favorite movies of 2017. Titles include: Baahubali: The Conclusion, The Work, On the Beach at Night Alone, Sleep Has Her House, Good Time, Mother!, Phantom Thread, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, and Lucky.

We tracked him down and thawed Mike out of his carbonite prison for this special episode all about Star Wars and The Last Jedi. Topics include but are not limited to: Porgs, galactic capitalism and the flaws inherent in the Republic, Ron Howard, wipes, and Mike's dog.

We talk about many of the movies we saw at the Vancouver International Film Festival. Films discussed include: Maison du bonheur, Milla, Caniba, 24 Frames, Claire's Camera, The Square, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, the Future//Present program (Fail to Appear, Mass for Shut-Ins, Still Night Still Light, Prototype, Black Cop, Scaffold, Forest Movie), Faces Places, Top of the Lake: China Girl, 120 Beats per Minute, Bad Genius, Wonderstruck, The Florida Project, and SPL: Paradox.

Fresh from Melissa introducing the film at the Pickford Film Center in Bellingham, we talk about three versions of True Grit: the 1968 novel by Charles Portis, the 1969 film version directed by Henry Hathaway and starring John Wayne, Kim Darby and Glen Campbell, and the 2010 adaptation by the Coen Brothers, with Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld and Matt Damon.

The 2017 Seattle International Film Festival has come to an end and Sean, Evan and Ryan get together to talk about what they saw, what they liked and didn't like among the festival's archival presentations and new releases. Film discussed include: The Dumb Girl of Portici, Taste of Cherry, Love and Duty, Brainstorm, A Ghost Story, Nocturama, Columbus, Godspeed, Gook and Mr. Long.

Halfway through the 2017 Seattle International Film Festival, Sean, Melissa, Evan and Ryan get together to talk about what they've seen, what they liked, didn't like and are looking forward to as the festival moves into its final two weeks. Film discussed include: Yourself and Yours, Person to Person, Sami Blood, Searchers, Dawson City: Frozen Time, Knife in the Clear Water, Beach Rats, Maurice, Vampire Cleanup department, Cook Up a Storm, God of War, By the Time it Gets Dark, The Unknown Girl, Finding Kukan, and Bad Black.

After a lengthy absence, The Frances Farmer Show returns as Melissa and Sean take a quick look at some films playing on Seattle Screens, including a preview of Terence Davies's Emily Dickinson biopic A Quiet Passion, which opens here on May 5th. They also discuss Wong Kar-wai's mid-90s masterpieces Chungking Express and Fallen Angels.

This week Mike and Sean, for the third time, trek out to downtown Seattle to catch the opening night of the new Johnnie To film, the hospital-set thriller Three, with Louis Koo, Zhao Wei and Wallace Chung. Paired with it is another thriller set in a hospital, Samuel Fuller's 1963 Shock Corridor, about a journalist who goes undercover in a mental institution and comes unglued.

On this special episode of The Frances Farmer Show, recorded last summer for another podcast which ended up not being published, Sean talks about director Hong Sangsoo with Thomas Prieto and Ty Landis, specifically focusing on Hong's 2010 film Oki's Movie.

As the Seattle International Film Festival draws to its close, we get together the low-points and high-points of the local juggernaut marathon. Movies discussed include: Dragon Gate Inn, Mountains May Depart, Trivisa, I am Belfast, Under the Sun, The Bacchus Lady, and Creepy.

Almost halfway through the marathon that is the Seattle International Film Festival, we take a break to talk about some of the films we've seen so far. Movies discussed include: Chimes at Midnight, Sunset Song, Love & Friendship, Long Way North, Our Little Sister, Alone, The Island Funeral, Concerto, A Bride for Rip Van Winkle, Cameraperson, Women He's Undressed, In a Valley of Violence, The Final Master, Lo and Behold, The Lure, Tiny, The Seasons in Quincy and A Scandal in Paris.

With the Seattle International Film Festival fast approaching, we discuss earlier films by two prominent directors whose films will be bookending this year's SIFF. Terence Davies will be kicking the festival off with his Sunset Song, while Kiyoshi Kurosawa will bring it to a close with Creepy, and so we talk about Davies's 1992 masterpiece of poetic memory The Long Day Closes and Kurosawa's 2008 surreal domestic melodrama Tokyo Sonata. We're joined as well by Melissa to preview this year's festival, running down some new obscurities, interesting documentaries, much-anticipated archival presentations and more. All that, plus cameo appearances from TS Eliot and Paul Verlaine.

With Mike on vacation his week Sean is joined by Seattle Screen Scene writer Melissa Tamminga to discuss Edward Yang's long sought after 1990 epic A Brighter Summer Day, which has just recently been released by the Criterion Collection, and Soi Cheang's action film SPL 2: A Time for Consequences, starring Tony Jaa and Wu Jing, which will be released here in the US as Kill Zone 2 in a couple of weeks. They also pick their essential Violent Youth films, take a look ahead to what's coming soon to Seattle (and Bellingham) Screens and talk about Prince's classic 1984 film Purple Rain.

This week, to mark the on-going Seijun Suzuki retrospective at the Grand Illusion and the Northwest Film Forum, we discuss the idiosyncratic Japanese director's career and one of his more famous and influential gangster films, 1963's Youth of the Beast. We also talk about the Yakuza film in general, and all the crazy things Suzuki did to it, and take a look at actor/director Takeshi Kitano's own take on the yakuza film in his 1993 film Sonatine. All that plus more goings on around town, including an upcoming tribute to a great director at the Film Forum and the novelty of the Cinema showing something on film.

With the First Folio in town at the Seattle Public Library, we take a look at a couple of unusual Shakespeare adaptations. First is Peter Greenaway's 1991 adaptation of The Tempest, Prospero's Books, with John Gielgud and Mark Rylance. Then we discuss Matías Piñeiro's 2014 riff on Love's Labour's Lost, The Princess of France. We also pick our Essential Shakespeare films, look around at what's coming soon to Seattle Screens, and discuss the 1946 film Dirty Gertie from Harlem USA, directed by Spencer Williams and playing as part of the Pioneers of African-American Cinema here in town and touring around the country.

With Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul's latest film Cemetery of Splendour making its debut on Seattle Screens this week, we take a look at his debut feature, from 2000, the experimental documentary-fiction hybrid Mysterious Object at Noon. The narrative of that film being based on the surrealist parlor game "the exquisite corpse", we also discuss a 1946 film that was written by one of the original participants in the exquisite corpse game, Gates of the Night, written by Jacques Prévert and directed by Marcel Carné. We also take a look ahead at what's coming soon to Seattle Screens, a look back at Terrence Malick's Knight of Cups, and a look all around the career of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the greatest director who made their feature debut in the 21st Century.

This is the debut episode of The Frances Farmer Show. Each episode we talk about an older movie and a newer movie and a bunch of other things besides, with a special, but by no means exclusive, look at cinematic goings-on in the Seattle area. This week, we discuss Howard Hawks's 1946 Humphrey Bogart-Lauren Bacall film noir The Big Sleep and David Lynch's prequel to his acclaimed early 90s television series Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. We also take a look back at last week's Oscars, a look ahead to what's coming to Seattle Screens and a look all around the career of David Lynch.

We interrupt your Oscar weekend with a Special Announcement. The show is changing names and changing homes. Nothing else major will change. The show will still be in the same format and be found on the same podcast feed. But we're moving the show over to Seattle Screen Scene in an attempt to streamline our endeavors. Hopefully this will cause very little disruption in all of our lives.

In anticipation of next week's Academy Awards, Mike and Sean run down their picks in the top categories, both who they think will win and who should win the awards, out of all the films and performances from 2015. They also start their year-long exploration of the films of 1946 with one of that year's Best Picture contenders, The Razor's Edge, with Gene Tierney and Tyrone Power, and Jacques Tourneur's Western Canyon Passage, starring Dana Andrews, in some circles now one of the highly regarded films of that year, but which then received only one Oscar nomination (for Best Song).

This week, Mike and Sean tackle two harrowing films about revenge and economics from master auteurs. First up is Akira Kurosawa's 1960 The Bad Sleep Well, starring Toshiro Mifune, Masayuki Mori and Takashi Shimura, that's followed by Claire Denis's 2013 film Bastards, with Vincent Lindon, Chiara Mastroianni and Michel Subor. They also pick their essential Capitalism is the Devil movies, discuss the career of Toshiro Mifune and check out What Mike's been Watching.

This week on The Donnie Yen Show, Mike and Sean discuss two of the star's collaborations with director Yuen Woo-ping: 1993's kung fu epic Iron Monkey and 1985's breakdancing comedy Mismatched Couples. They also take a look at Donnie's latest release, Ip Man 3 and pick their Essential Dance Fights. They'll also examine Donnie's career as a whole and this week's music comes from the man himself.

In anticipation of the local premiere of Jacques Rivette's monumental 1971 serial Out 1, this week Mike and Sean take a look at his 1976 pirate film Noroît, starring Geraldine Chaplin. Continuing the theme, they discuss Douglas Fairbanks's 1926 classic The Black Pirate, make their picks for Essential Pirate Film and talk about the career of the greatest swashbuckler of them all, Errol Flynn. And, we promise, nobody talks like a pirate.

It's time for the annual end of the year George Sanders Show, completing their year-long look at the best films of 1965. Sean and Mike discuss The Beatles in Richard Lester's Help! along with Duccio Tessari's spaghetti Western A Pistol for Ringo. They also name the best performances, screenplays, directors and films of 1965.

Unable to contain their excitement for the latest Star Wars film, Mike and Sean get together for a special bonus episode to discuss The Force Awakens. What was supposed to be a quick little episode stretched to over an hour (and could have gone for a lot longer) because it's Star Wars and they really could talk about it for hours and hours.

For their third annual Discoveries episode, Mike and Sean take a look back at some of the best older movies they watched for the first time in 2015. From Sean's list of first-time views, Mike chose to discuss Oliver Stone's 2004 historical epic Alexander, in its Ultimate Cut version. From Mike's list, Sean chose the Tyrone Power carny noir Nightmare Alley, directed by Edmund Goulding in 1947.

In anticipation of the upcoming The Force Awakens, Sean and Mike take a look back at the first film either of them ever saw, George Lucas's 1977 Star Wars. And in celebration of Thanksgiving, they also talk about Çetin İnanç's 1982 epic The Man Who Saves the World, also known as Turkish Star Wars. They also talk about the singular, wildly successful and somewhat disappointing career of George Lucas and make their picks for the essential Blockbuster Saga.

This week, on the annual Veteran's Day War Movie episode, Mike and Sean watch a pair of 1965 films from a pair of great directors, both of which just happen to star Richard Harris. First is Sam Peckinpah's Civil War-era Major Dundee, with Charlton Heston, then Anthony Mann's The Heroes of Telemark with Kirk Douglas leading a band of Norwegians against the Nazis. They also talk about Peckinpah's career in general and pick their Essential Resistance Films.

For the annual Halloween episode, Mike and Sean take a look at a couple low budget films from the mid 1960s, Maria Bava's AIP co-production Planet of the Vampires and Hajime Sato's Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell. Both films feature inventive special effects, zombification, questionable acting and a whole lot of dread. They also talk about the career of the late Maureen O'Hara, lament the demise of Grantland, pick their Essential Cinematic Vampires and see what's playing around the multiplexes.

This week Mike and Sean take a look at an early work by the late director Chantal Akerman, her feature debut Je tu il elle, along with a 1965 film by director Agnès Varda, Le bonheur. They also put a cap on their discussions of the 2015 Vancouver International Film festival, with some thoughts on Jia Zhangke's Mountains May Depart, Corneliu Porumboiu's The Treasure, Sylvia Chang's Murmur of the Hearts, Arnaud Desplechin's My Golden Days and, yet again, Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Assassin.

Mike and Sean are still at the Vancouver International Film Festival, and are joined for this second dispatch by fellow Seattle Screen Scene critic Melissa Tamminga. They discuss new films from Hong Sangsoo (Right Now, Wrong Then), Hou Hsiao-hsien (The Assassin), Miguel Gomes (Arabian Nights), Lee Kwangkuk (A Matter of Interpretation), Jafar Panahi (Taxi) and more.

Mike and Sean check-in with a first look at some of the films they've been seeing at this year's Vancouver International Film Festival. Discussed in this episode are new movies from star auteurs Guy Maddin, Thom Andersen, and Miguel Gomes, as well as ones from up-and-coming directors such as Lee Kwangkuk, Luo Li, Kim Gwangtae and Philip Yung.

In what is quickly becoming an annual tradition, Mike and Sean ventured out their local AMC theatre to record an episode on-location at the Seattle premiere of the new Johnnie To film. This year it's Office, a musical drama set in a financial firm in the midst of the 2008 collapse starring Chow Yun-fat, Tang Wei, Eason Chan and Sylvia Chang (who also adapted the screenplay from her own play, Design for Living). Chang as well has a film she's directed playing at this year's Vancouver International Film Festival, as does Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu, whose 2009 film Police, Adjective they also discuss this week. In addition they talk about the work of Johnnie To in general and pick some under-the-radar films they're looking forward to seeing during at next week's trip to VIFF.

On this very special episode, Sean and Mike make their fourth annual Top Ten Films of All-Time selections. Films noirs, Great Actresses, Silent Comedies, Hong Kong movies, terrible pronunciation of French words and much much more!

This week, for a long and unimportant series of reasons, Mike and Sean take a look at Robert Flaherty's 1934 film Man of Aran and the 1987 anime anthology Neo Tokyo, directed by Rintaro, Yoshiaki Kawajiri and Katsuhiro Ōtomo. They also talk about realism in documentaries and danger in children's cartoons, make their picks for Essential Pseudo-Documentary and discuss a Mystery Person of the Week.

This week Mike and Sean talk about The Look of Silence, the latest film from director Joshua Oppenheimer, a companion piece to his acclaimed 2012 documentary on Indonesian genocide The Act of Killing. And they continue their quest through the films of 1965 with that year's Oscar winner for Best Picture, The Sound of Music. They take a look at the career of that film's director, Robert Wise, and make their picks for the Essential 1960s Musical Blockbuster.

Sean and Mike celebrate the Seattle release of the restored version of Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy in the most natural way possible: with Eric Rohmer's 1986 film The Green Ray and Roger Corman's 1963 X: The Man with X-Ray Eyes. They also talk about Corman in general, pick their Essential Non-Noir B-Movies and check-in on What Mike's Watching (hint: there's a Ray involved).

With Roy Andersson's latest set to open in Seattle in a few days, Sean and Mike decided to spend a cinematic summer in Sweden with Ingmar Bergman's 1951 film Summer Interlude and Andersson's own 2000 film Songs from the Second Floor. They also pick their Essential Swedish Movies, celebrate the greatest Swede of all, Ingrid Bergman, and lament the losses this week of Omar Sharif and The Dissolve.

On the occasion of its single showing in Seattle this week, Mike and Sean talk about John Woo's A Better Tomorrow, with Chow Yun-fat, Ti Lung and Leslie Cheung. They also discuss Michael Mann's Blackhat, with Chris Hemsworth and Tang Wei, out now on video and one of the best films of the year so far. And they argue about Pixar's latest, Inside Out, celebrate Mel Brooks's birthday and make their picks for the Essential American Movie.

Mike and Sean take a look back at their month with the 2015 Seattle International Film Festival. Their discoveries, surprises, disappointments, the best, the worst and the most SIFF moments of this year in the world's longest film festival.

About midway through the marathon that is the Seattle International Film Festival, Sean and Mike take a moment to sit down and talk a bit about what's happened so far and what else there is to see. But mostly, this is the interview Mike did with Love & Mercy composer Atticus Ross.

In conjunction with the release this weekend of the movie event of the year, Pitch Perfect 2, Mike and Sean talk about a couple of other films about young people making music. Bae Doona stars in Linda Linda Linda, Nobuhiro Yamashita's 2005 film about a high school punk band and Don Weis's 1953 college musical comedy The Affairs of Dobie Gillis stars Debbie Reynolds, Bobby Van and Bob Fosse himself. They also discuss the career of Anna Kendrick, the greatest actress of her generation, the new Avengers movie and pick their essential College Movies.

This week Mike and Sean take a look at the latest blockbuster from Olivier Assayas, Clouds of Sils Maria, starring Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart. As well they look back at another film about acting, 1991's Centre Stage, directed by Stanley Kwan and starring Maggie Cheung. They'll also talk about the careers of Juliette Binoche and Maggie Cheung in general, the upcoming Seattle International Film Festival and the Rolling Stones.

This week Mike and Sean head down South American Way for Jauja, an unusual new Western starring Viggo Mortensen directed by Argentine auteur Lisandro Alonso, and Three Crowns of the Sailor, Chilean surrealist Raoul Ruiz's 1983 film about ghosts, storytelling and storytelling ghosts. They'll also talk about Harrison Ford, for some reason, and pick their essential Weird Westerns.

This week Mike and Sean gear up for a discussion of NASCAR classics Days of Thunder and Red Line 7000. The former is Tony Scott's 1990 blockbuster starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, the latter one of the last films directed by Howard Hawks. They'll also discuss the Fast and the Furious franchise, the career of Tom Cruise and pick their Essential Car Movies. And they'll also talk a lot about Beck, for some reason.

As Mike is embroiled in a month-long marathon of films noir, he drags Sean along this week to discuss a pair of Robert Mitchum's lesser-known efforts, 1950's Where Danger Lives, with Faith Domergue and Claude Rains and direction by John Farrow, and 1975's Raymond Chandler-adaptation Farewell, My Lovely, with Charlotte Rampling, John Ireland and Harry Dean Stanton. They also pick their Essential Noirs and talk about the long, great acting career of Robert Mitchum and appreciate his all-too-brief singing career.

This Oscar weekend, Mike and Sean count down their favorite films of 2014 and make their picks for the various Acting, Writing and Directing Awards. They also take a look back at two of the Best Picture nominees of 1965, both of which star Julie Christie: David Lean's epic romance Doctor Zhivago, with Omar Sharif, Alec Guiness and the always-menacing Rod Steiger and John Schlesinger's Swingin' 60s Darling, with Dirk Bogarde and Laurence Harvey.

This week, as the annual film festival is on-going in Berlin, Mike and Sean take a look at a pair of past winners of the prestigious Golden Bear award, Jean-Luc Godard's 1965 neo-noir Alphaville and Asghar Farhadi's highly acclaimed domestic/courtroom drama A Separation, from 2011. They also discuss Godard's career in general, pick their Essential Golden Bear Winners and complain about everything in the news, from Birth of a Nation to the Dissolve, the new Varsity Theatre and martial arts movies at the Cinerama.