Podcasts about Atom Egoyan

In this episode, we continue our Year of the Nineties picks for the month of May, with the 1994 drama from writer and director Atom Egoyan; "Exotica", starring Bruce Greenwood, Elias Koteas and Mia Kirshner! Listen now!

Hi everyone, I'm thrilled to welcome a very special guest to this episode of The Talk Music Podcast—the twice GRAMMY-nominated flautist, RON KORB. Ron's extraordinary music transcends genres, weaving together elements of Instrumental, World, Crossover, Classical, Latin, Soundtrack, and New Age. Deeply rooted in the cultural richness of his Asian-Canadian heritage, his compositions reflect a global journey—both musically and literally—as he's traveled the world collecting indigenous flutes from Europe, Asia, and South America.With 30 albums to his name, Ron has also made his mark in film, contributing to the score of The Eight Hundred, the highest-grossing international box office hit of 2020, as well as working with celebrated directors like Ang Lee, Atom Egoyan, Mira Nair, and John Woo. His music has been featured in Being Julia, The White Countess, and two IMAX films narrated by Tom Cruise and Jennifer Lawrence.I recently had the pleasure of seeing Ron perform live with an exceptional ensemble at the Sakura celebration at the Japanese Cultural Centre. It was an unforgettable evening filled with magical moments and mesmerizing music.In our conversation, we dive into Ron's incredible music journey, and I'm excited to share song clips from across his entire career. Enjoy! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Paul and Erin review two films set primarily around strip clubs. Our art pick is Atom Egoyan's 1994 web-of-life drama EXOTICA, and our trash pick is Andrew Bergman's 1996 Demi Moore comedy STRIPTEASE.

This week on End Credits, we're hitting the high notes! We know that this show is not necessarily high brow, but this week we're going to the opera with the new Atom Egoyan film Seven Veils. Along with that, we're going to look at the film's star, who's enjoyed a successful and varied career, and talk about all the times she's made an impression.  This Wednesday, April 2, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Candice Lepage will discuss: Mandy! This week's movie stars Amanda Seyfried, who is an actress that's been around for nearly 20 years now after her first big screen appearance as one of the titular Mean Girls. Since then she's done drama, she's done action, she's done scary, and she even got an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, but before digging into her new role in Seven Veils, we're going to talk the best of Amanda Seyfried. Seven Veils (2025). In Atom Egoyan's latest movie, a theatre director is called back to the opera company where she go her start at the request of her former mentor and lover, it was his final wish that she stage a revival of the opera Salome. Egoyan revisits some of his old themes about unhappy families and sexual power, but it's also done through a #MeToo lens and against the background of Egoyan's own production of Salome at the Canadian Opera Company. So there's a lot going on, and we will try and sort it all out! End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

Now that Oscar season has come and gone, it is finally time to put a bow on the films from 2024. We rank our top 10 films of the year. Joining the show is CZP's former co-host Rachel Ho. We also feature voicemails from friends of the show who name their favourite film of the year.Dakota's List10. The Seed of the Sacred Fig9. Dune: Part Two8. The King Tide7. Kneecap6. Challengers5. Dìdi4. Saturday Night3. Civil War2. Sing Sing1. ConclaveRachel's List10. The Bikeriders9. Sing Sing8. A Different Man7. All The Long Nights6. Dune: Part Two5. Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story4. I'm Still Here3. Better Man2. September 51. Mars ExpressThank you our special guests for sending in voicemails of their favourite films: Jeff Bulmer from Classic Movies Live (Paying For It), Bryan Loomis from What A Picture (Evil Does Not Exist), Pedro Lima from ContraZoomPod.com (exergue - on documenta 14) and Marta Djordjevic from Rewind and Revive (All We Imagine As Light).Check out Dakota and Rachel's blog post If We Were Oscar Voters.Check out Dakota's full list of 2024 Films Ranked on Letterboxd.Follow Rachel on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, bookmark ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Asian Cut⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and check out her ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for more great reviews.Read her interview with Seven Veils director Atom Egoyan. Read Dakota's recent reviews on Shepherds and Can I Get A Witness.Follow Contra Zoom on⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Threads⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.Check out more great Contra Zoom content on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠That Shelf⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!Listen to Contra Zoom on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Anchor⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Google Play⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Overcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Breaker⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and more!Please ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠rate and review⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. For more information, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠contrazoompod.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.Create your ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ today! #madeonzencastr

On the March 15, 2025 edition of The Richard Crouse Show we meet Atom Egoyan and Amanda Seyfried of the new film “Seven Veils.” In this a new psychological thriller, now playing in theatres, Seyfried is Jeanine, a director dealing with repressed trauma as she mounts a production of her mentor’s most famous work, the opera “Salome.” Rich with metaphor and suspense “Seven Veils” is an intellectual thriller about art imitating life. We also meet Sonequa Martin-Green. You know her from “Star Trek: Discovery,” “New Girl” and “The Good Wife.” She also played Sasha Williams, a main character and a survivor of the outbreak in “The Walking Dead.” Today we’ll talk about her new film, the dark comedy “My Dead Friend Zoe,” now playing in theatres. In it she plays an Afghanistan veteran haunted by her late best friend Zoe. Now in civilian life, she searches for a way forward as she suffers from PTSD and tends to her retired Lieutenant-Colonel grandfather played by Ed Harris. Then we meet Keira Jang, star of Can I Get A Witness?” a new Canadian eco-sci fi/coming-of-age film now playing in theaters. It’s set in a future where climate change and world poverty have been eradicated. To mitigate these modern-day issues, travel and technology are banned and every citizen must end life at 50. Documenting the process are artists as witnesses, like the character Kiera plays, a teenager on her first day on the job.

In this episode of the VIFF Podcast, Year Round Programmer Tom Charity sits down with iconic Canadian filmmaker and (sometimes) opera director Atom Egoyan to discuss his latest film, Seven Veils, starring Amanda Seyfried. The film premiered during VIFF 2023 and was inspired by his remount of the opera Salome. Touching on trauma, abuse, and the artistic interpretation thereof, Adam talks about his experience directing opera and the controversies surrounding the original production.This episode was recorded during the 2023 Vancouver International Film Festival. This podcast is brought to you by the Vancouver International Film Festival.Presented on the traditional and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) nations.

We've always loved Atom Egoyan's films, but after this discussion, he is one of our favorite people! Atom came to discuss his new film, Seven Veils. And while we are talking about The Sweet Hereafter as well as his Overdue Rental, we also get a lot of The West Memphis Three and Devil's Knot in there, too.

Filmmaker Atom Egoyan ("Exotica", "The Sweet Hereafter") returns after 9 years for his third appearance on the podcast. He has a new movie that is currently in theaters called "Seven Veils" starring Academy Award® nominee Amanda Seyfried ("Mean Girls", "Mama Mia"). The film follows theater director Jeanine (Seyfried) who, after years away, re-enters the opera world to stage her former mentor's most famous work. Haunted by dark and disturbing memories from her past, Jeanine allows her repressed trauma to color the present as her personal and professional lives begin to unravel. Renowned director Atom Egoyan sees "Seven Veils" as operating within a trilogy alongside his other critically acclaimed works "Exotica" and "The Sweet Hereafter". In "Seven Veils", he also reunites with Seyfried, who he worked with on the 2009 film "Chloe", in this visually stunning, propulsive work, filmed on location during the staging of his acclaimed production of "Salome". Egoyan directed the opera "Salome" in 1996, the first opera in what would be many to come over his career. Best known as a prominent film director since the 1980s, Egoyan has proven he is a master of both mediums, and "Seven Veils" is his way of bringing both together. Also on this episode the Canadian filmmaker Jeffrey St. Jules ("Bang Bang Baby") discusses his new film "The Silent Planet". The film stars the great actor Elias Koteas ("Exotica", "Crash") who joins us in this conversation. Serving a life sentence alone on a distant planet, an aging convict must confront his past when a new prisoner arrives and forces him to remember his life on Earth.

We go from one end of the spectrum to the other this week on BEHIND THE LENS as we take a look at writer/director Atom Egoyan's dramatic new thriller SEVEN VEILS and everyone's favorite (and looney) pig and duck, Porky and Daffy, in writer/director Peter Browngardt's feature animated directorial debut LOONEY TUNES: THE DAY THE EARTH BLEW UP. First up today is my exclusive interview with one of my longtime favorite directors – ATOM EGOYAN. Written &mps; Directed by Atom, SEVEN VEILS stars Amanda Seyfried who reunites with Atom after their 2015 film Chloe, as well as Rebecca Liddiard, Douglas Smith, Mark O'Brien, Vinessa Antoine, Ambur Braid, Michael Kupfer-Radecky. Premised on the biblical tale of Salome, which has been told in countless ways over the years, most notably as a 19th-century opera by Richard Strauss and written by Oscar Wilde, Atom has taken his love for the tale which he has directed on the stage numerous times since 1996 and now explores what a production of Salome would mean in our current culture. This led him to write SEVEN VEILS about a remount of Salome that he filmed at the same time the opera was being performed on stage by the Canadian Opera Company in 2023, using the opera singers from Salome in the film. Switching gears now, we go from the seductive and sensual to sarcasm, satire, slapstick, and pure unadulterated joy with Porky Pig and Daffy Duck in LOONEY TUNES: THE DAY THE EARTH BLEW UP and my exclusive conversation with writer/director/animator PETER BROWNGARDT. Listen as Peter talks about animation and dialogue going hand in hand aka what came first the pig or the duck egg and working with 11 writers/animators to develop the emotion through drawing, dialogue and voicing, the classic hand-drawn visuals, paying homage to the past – including many classic films – while adding some contemporary notes, melding genres, music and score, getting a greenlight from Warners to make the film, and of course Peter's own learning curve with his first feature after hundreds of Looney Tunes shorts. http://eliasentertainmentnetwork.com

On this special episode, Eric sits down with Atom Egoyan & Amanda Seyfried to discuss their new film Seven Veils.

This week's episode is packed! We chat with Marvel's Executive Producer, Brad Winderbaum, about the MCU, including ‘Daredevil: Born Again' and ‘Avengers: Secret Wars.' We break down the shocking John Cena heel turn at WWE Elimination Chamber, recap the biggest winners of the 2025 Oscars (spoiler: it's Anora!), and review Bong Joon-ho's ‘Mickey 17' starring Robert Pattinson. Plus, we have an insightful interview with ‘Seven Veils' director Atom Egoyan. Enjoy the show!The all-new series, Daredevil: Born Again, premieres on March 4, 2025, exclusively on Disney+.Seven Veils starring Amanda Seyfried is in theaters now!Time stamps:00:53 Intro01:05 Interview with Marvel Exec Producer Brad Winderbaum (Daredevil: Born Again/Avengers: Secret Wars)05:54 WWE Elimination Chamber 2025 discussion (including John Cena's shocking heel turn) 21:32 2025 Oscars discussion29:52 “Mickey 17” (2025) Review53:57 Interview with 'Seven Veils' director Atom Egoyan01:08:06 Watch Recommendations for the Week

Written and directed by Atom Egoyan, Seven Veils tells the story of Jeanine (Amanda Seyfried), a theatre director who has finally re-entered the world of opera. Tasked with staging her former mentor's most famous work, Salome, Jeanine finds herself increasingly haunted by her past experiences. Battling repressed trauma, Jeanine's world begins to unravel, threatening both her professional and personal lives in ways that she could have never imagines. In this 1on1, we speak to Egoyan about whether or not stories are live and his attraction to SALOME.

Amanda Seyfried was 17 when she landed her breakthrough role as Karen Smith in “Mean Girls.” But as fun as the movie was, she didn't want to get pigeonholed as “the ditzy blonde” forever. Amanda says her first true departure was her starring role in Atom Egoyan's erotic thriller “Chloe,” which established her as a serious actor who was willing to take a risk. Now, she's teamed up with the Canadian director once again on his new film, “Seven Veils.” Tom Power caught up with Amanda to talk about her latest role and how she looks back on the trajectory of her career.

On the March 15, 2025 edition of The Richard Crouse Show we meet Atom Egoyan and Amanda Seyfried of the new film “Seven Veils.” In this a new psychological thriller, now playing in theatres, Seyfried is Jeanine, a director dealing with repressed trauma as she mounts a production of her mentor's most famous work, the opera “Salome.” Rich with metaphor and suspense “Seven Veils” is an intellectual thriller about art imitating life. We also meet Sonequa Martin-Green. You know her from “Star Trek: Discovery,” “New Girl” and “The Good Wife.” She also played Sasha Williams, a main character and a survivor of the outbreak in “The Walking Dead.” Today we'll talk about her new film, the dark comedy “My Dead Friend Zoe,” now playing in theatres. In it she plays an Afghanistan veteran haunted by her late best friend Zoe. Now in civilian life, she searches for a way forward as she suffers from PTSD and tends to her retired Lieutenant-Colonel grandfather played by Ed Harris. Then we meet Keira Jang, star of Can I Get A Witness?” a new Canadian eco-sci fi/coming-of-age film now playing in theaters. It's set in a future where climate change and world poverty have been eradicated. To mitigate these modern-day issues, travel and technology are banned and every citizen must end life at 50. Documenting the process are artists as witnesses, like the character Kiera plays, a teenager on her first day on the job.

This week, Oscar-nominated writer and director Atom Egoyan – whose latest drama Seven Veils opens in theatres across Canada this Friday – joins the chorus for Norman Jewison's 1973 screen adaptation of Jesus Christ Superstar … a film, and a musical, with which Atom has a very personal connection. Your genial host Norm Wilner is more of a Little Shop guy, honestly.

In this episode, we continue our Year of the Nineties with the heartbreaking small-town drama from director Atom Egoyan, "The Sweet Hereafter", starring Ian Holm, Bruce Greenwood and Sarah Polley! Listen now!

Hey, you like jailbait? Come on down to the exotica club for some rumps and stay for shattered souls and the waking nightmare of destroyed lives. Don Mckellar's fifth film finds him back with Atom Egoyan, mining more specific tragedy for another top notch film. The cast is amazing, and McKellar kinda looks like a penis dressed like a real dork. Tune into yet another odyssey into Canadian film, filled with people that just keep on popping up in this run. Head over to Linktr.ee/wedoingfilmographies for all the socials and platforms.

Don Mckellar's second movie is a bit of a masterpiece. Hold onto your hats, its time for The Adjuster! Atom Egoyan tells a story of an insurance adjuster who bones down all the people he's helping file claims and they all stay at a hotel run by some religious people who just love the adjuster. Who is the adjuster? ELIAS KOTEAS! I bet you thought I was gonna say Don McKellar, but you were wrong... Don McKellar plays a real dork who works with the adjusters wife at a censorship center? This movie is gorgeous to look at. It's got that specialized Egoyan tragedy/trauma party cookin. Everyone acts their butts off. You should watch this. Don't believe me? Well I guess you should listen to this episode for more proof.

In this episode, host Marriska Fernandes uncovers the story of Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan, celebrated for his diverse contributions to cinema. With internationally acclaimed films like "Exotica," "The Sweet Hereafter," and the upcoming film, "Seven Veils," Egoyan has consistently pushed cinematic boundaries, focusing on themes such as memory, isolation, identity, and more. His work has earned accolades at Cannes, TIFF, and the Oscars, solidifying his reputation as a master storyteller.    Beyond filmmaking, Egoyan has also directed several operas, including Salome, Così fan tutte, and Jenůfa, for the Canadian Opera, Vancouver Opera, Pacific Opera Victoria, and elsewhere.    Join Marriska in conversation with Atom Egoyan, where they discuss his creative process and recall when Atom and Bruce McDonald screened their short films on a wall during TIFF. They also talk about the best ending he's ever written, and more insights into his incredible journey.   ***TW: Atom Egoyan's films often explore the universality of trauma, and in discussing his work, there are mentions of sexual assault, child abuse and violence. Listener discretion is advised.   A podcast hosted by Marriska Fernandes, produced by The Brand is Female and powered by Telefilm Canada. Follow Telefilm Canada on Instagram Follow The Brand is Female on Instagram Watch the video of this episode

This episode explores Atom Egoyan's 1997 film, The Sweet Hereafter, which describes the impact of a tragic school bus accident that caused the death of 14 children on a small Canadian town. The film is based on Russell Banks' 1991 novel of the same name (which in turn was based on a real-life bus crash in Texas). The film centers on personal injury lawyer Mitchell Stephens (Ian Holm), who travels to the town after the accident in an attempt to persuade the parents of the children to bring a negligence lawsuit. The controversy generated by the lawsuit ripples through the community and is explored through several characters in the town, including Nicole (Sarah Polley), a teenage girl who is left paralyzed from the waist down by the accident; Dolores Driscoll (Gabrielle Rose), the bus driver on the fateful, day; and various parents who have sharply conflicting views on the lawsuit. The Sweet Hereafter, however, is much more than a story about tort litigation; it explores larger philosophical questions around justice, community norms, and the role of law in addressing life's most painful tragedies. I am joined by Seán Patrick Donlan, a Professor of Law at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia, Canada.Timestamps:0:00     Introduction3:18     Recruiting plaintiffs for a class action lawsuit9:58     Judith Shklar's distinction between misfortune and injustice14:20   Law and defense of community21:45   The loss of children28:52   The deposition that unravels the case39:13   Assigning blame and scapegoating47:02   More on Atom Egoyan           49:13   The role of the Pied PiperFurther reading:Banks, Russell, The Sweet Hereafter (1991)Fried, Margaret J. & Frolik, Lawrence A. “The Limits of Law: Litigation, Lawyers, and the Search for Justice in Russell Banks' ‘The Sweet Hereafter,'” 7 Cardozo Stud. Law & Lit. 1 (1995)Menkel-Meadow, Carrie, “Can They Do That? Legal Ethics in Popular Culture: Of Characters and Acts,” 48 U.C.L.A. L. Rev. 1305 (2001)O'Neill, Timothy P., “There Will Be Blame: Misfortune and Injustice in ‘The Sweet Hereafter,'” 5 U. Denv. Sports & Ent. L.J. 19 (2008)Sarat, Austin, “Exploring the Hidden Domains of Civil Justice: ‘Naming, Blaming, and Claiming' in Popular Culture,” 50 DePaul L. Rev. 425 (2000)Scherr, Alexander & Farber, Hillary, “Popular Culture as a Lens on Legal Professionalism,” 55 S.C. L. Rev. (2003)Shklar, Judith, The Facts of Justice (1990)Weisberg, Richard H., “‘The Verdict' Is In: The Civic Implications of Civil Trials,” 50 DePaul L. Rev. 525 (2000) Law on Film is created and produced by Jonathan Hafetz. Jonathan is a professor at Seton Hall Law School. He has written many books and articles about the law. He has litigated important cases to protect civil liberties and human rights while working at the ACLU and other organizations. Jonathan is a huge film buff and has been watching, studying, and talking about movies for as long as he can remember. For more information about Jonathan, here's a link to his bio: https://law.shu.edu/faculty/full-time/jonathan-hafetz.cfmYou can contact him at jonathanhafetz@gmail.comYou can follow him on X (Twitter) @jonathanhafetz You can follow the podcast on X (Twitter) @LawOnFilmYou can follow the podcast on Instagram @lawonfilmpodcast

Pat Kelman, born in Essex but raised in Cornwall, has been an actor, filmmaker, theatre-maker and programmer. Presently, he finds himself releasing independent and arthouse cinema that other distributors deem too niche or challenging via his inspirational 606 Distribution company, as well as programming a wild collection of formative films and beloved double bills through his Pat's Film Club screenings that are hosted at Truro's wonderful WTW Plaza Cinema.  Neil has been a regular at the film club and has known Pat for a numhers of years and he wanted to sit down with Pat to talk about his life in cinema and the current state of independent film releasing as well as what informs the decisions he makes regarding what to screen at his film club. The conversation covers his formative years and the early film experiences that shaped him as a person - horror cinema and seeing certain films so/too young, the influence of filmmakers including Mike Leigh and Atom Egoyan, his time visiting London's infamous Scala cinema, the power of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (Forman, 1975), his experiences making improvised feature films and BFI funded shorts, by committee.  What defines Pat's career is how he invests in people, and trusts people, loves cinema and is a true cinephile. Towards the end he talks about his move into horror programming and re-releasing cult films as part of 606's evolution. It was a joy to spend time talking to cinema whose work is underpinned by perpetual enthusiasm for and belief in filmmakers and audiences, and cinema as an art form. — You can listen to The Cinematologists for free wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow. We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2. We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it), and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show. — Music Credits: ‘Theme from The Cinematologists' Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing. 

The first part of our 1994 retrospective. Listen as John and Miles deep dive into Peter Jackson's "Heavenly Creatures," Tim Burton's "Ed Wood," Atom Egoyan's "Exotica," and Frank  Darabont's The Shawshank Redemption. 

Ian Kowalski Ian (he/him) is a graduate of the Performing Arts program at O'Neill Collegiate and Vocational Institute and the Media Production Program at Toronto Met University (fka Ryerson). As a lifelong performer and lover of the arts, he is passionate about creating a platform for artists to express themselves as authentically as possible in telling impactful stories that change our perception of what is possible with theatre. Select acting credits include Peter in Peter Pan the Musical (The LOT), Tobias in Sweeney Todd (Ember Island Players), Lumiere in Beauty and the Beast (O'Neill CVI) and Will Bloom in Big Fish (RMTC). Behind the scenes, he has directed Cumulus (UBC Brave New Play Rites Festival), Fun Home (Bowtie Productions), directed and produced several short films and has worked in the art department for multiple films on the Hallmark Channel. Taylor Long Hi, my name is Taylor. I'm a Toronto-based photographer, videographer, editor, and director of photography. Originally from Halifax, NS, I have a background in opera and musical theatre and performed on the east coast before discovering a passion for photography and videography. ​ Recent highlights include a three-week intensive at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, working with Academy-award nominated director Atom Egoyan on the Canadian Opera Company's digital production of Bluebeard's Castle, and working as DOP on the COC/Against the Grain Theatre co-production of Mozart's Requiem.   Randy (Lei) Chang is a Toronto based performer who's credits include: Merrily We Roll Along, Ordinary Days and A Perfect Bowl of Pho

00:00 - 35:02 - Exotica 35:02 - 1:11:45 - Malcolm in the Middle Join us, on a strange erotic journey from Philadelphia to Toronto. We're talking about Atom Egoyan's 1994 film Exotica on today's episode. We get into the lurid approach, the society of desire, and general Canadian excellence. Then, on MiTM, Malcolm and JT talk about a couple of titillating and exploitative films, The Big Dollhouse and Immaculate, before Eddie recounts his visit to New York and a classic Brisseau screening.

Amerikatsi: Michael Goorjian's Odyssey | Ep 307 - Feb 6, 2024Conversations on GroongTopics:Amerikatsi: Motifs, Aspects and Character of the FilmGoorjian's Style, Influences, and InterestsThe Oscar Shortlisting journeyBedros & Asbed Afterthoughts on the ConversationGuest:Michael A. GoorjianHosts:Bedros Afeyan - FB/@bafeyanAsbed Bedrossian - TW/@qubriqEpisode 307 | Recorded: February 5, 2024Subscribe and follow us everywhere you are: linktr.ee/groong

On the Saturday December 9, 2023 edition of the Richard Crouse Show we meet Salah Bachir, author of a new memoir, “First to the Leave the Party: My Life with Ordinary People Who Happen to Be Famous,” available now wherever fine books are sold.   Salah is a Canadian business executive, entrepreneur, publisher, art collector, fundraiser, and philanthropist, who has raised millions of dollars for charity… and says the only autograph worth having is on a cheque. He is a pioneer in consumer video, the founding president and chair of Famous Players Media, and later the president of Cineplex Media and creator of the Scene program, which I know you've all used… It is a storied career, which he covers in the book in 54 short chapters about the people he has met and befriended over the years… chapters like: Elizabeth Taylor Tries on My Pearls; Eartha Kitt is Not For Sale; Wooing Gregory Peck; Harvey Milk Sets Me Free and Keith Haring Does New York. Then we meet Academy Award-winning filmmaker Errol Morris. “The Pigeon Tunnel,” his latest film, now streaming on Apple TV+, is a look at the extraordinary life of David Cornwell a.k.a. prolific author John le Carré. Through a retelling of his life, Cornwell examines the very essence of truth, and how memory and manipulation play a part in how we shape our world and our perceptions. It is a greart movie and Morris is an interesting man, you'll want to stick around for that one. We'll also meet actor and author R.H. Thomson. You know him from his film and television work as Matthew Cuthbert in Anne With An E, in the movie Chloe directed by Atom Egoyan and as Marshall McLuhan in The Message by Jason Sherman. Today we'll talk about his new book, In "By the Ghost Light," he looks at his family history and relatives who fought in World War I and World War II, as a starting point to examine war and its aftermath.

On the Saturday December 9, 2023 edition of the Richard Crouse Show we meet Salah Bachir, author of a new memoir, “First to the Leave the Party: My Life with Ordinary People Who Happen to Be Famous,” available now wherever fine books are sold. Salah is a Canadian business executive, entrepreneur, publisher, art collector, fundraiser, and philanthropist, who has raised millions of dollars for charity… and says the only autograph worth having is on a cheque. He is a pioneer in consumer video, the founding president and chair of Famous Players Media, and later the president of Cineplex Media and creator of the Scene program, which I know you've all used… It is a storied career, which he covers in the book in 54 short chapters about the people he has met and befriended over the years… chapters like: Elizabeth Taylor Tries on My Pearls; Eartha Kitt is Not For Sale; Wooing Gregory Peck; Harvey Milk Sets Me Free and Keith Haring Does New York. Then we meet Academy Award-winning filmmaker Errol Morris. “The Pigeon Tunnel,” his latest film, now streaming on Apple TV+, is a look at the extraordinary life of David Cornwell a.k.a. prolific author John le Carré. Through a retelling of his life, Cornwell examines the very essence of truth, and how memory and manipulation play a part in how we shape our world and our perceptions. It is a greart movie and Morris is an interesting man, you'll want to stick around for that one… We'll also meet actor and author R.H. Thomson. You know him from his film and television work as Matthew Cuthbert in Anne With An E, in the movie Chloe directed by Atom Egoyan and as Marshall McLuhan in The Message by Jason Sherman. Today we'll talk about his new book, In "By the Ghost Light," he looks at his family history and relatives who fought in World War I and World War II, as a starting point to examine war and its aftermath.

Mary Kouyoumdjian. Mary is a composer and documentarian with projects ranging from concert works to multimedia collaborations and film scores. Her music covers thematic material that often relates to her family's experiences during the Lebanese Civil War and the Armenian Genocide, exploring themes of displacement and exile through the use of documentary materials. Topics include working with documentary materials, composing from a diaspora perspective, and Kouyoumdjian's monumental work They Will Take My Island, a string octet about Armenian-American abstract expressionist painter Arshile Gorky with video by Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan. Music: Paper Pianos: "You are not a kid" by Mary Kouyoumdjian, performed by Alarm Will Sound; They Will Take My Island by Mary Kouyoumdjian, performed by JACK Quartet and Silvana Quartet Follow Mary on Instagram and Twitter. marykouyoumdjian.com Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. otherminds.org Contact us at otherminds@otherminds.org. The Other Minds Podcast is hosted and edited by Joseph Bohigian. Outro music is “Kings: Atahualpa” by Brian Baumbusch (Other Minds Records).

Welcome to another episode of our podcast, where we delve into the fascinating world of filmmaking.Today, we have the pleasure of hosting Christopher Donaldson, a seasoned video editor whose work spans an extensive variety of dramatic and documentary features and television.Christopher's impressive credits include Sarah Polley's “Women Talking” and “Take This Waltz”, David Cronenberg's “Crimes of the Future”, "Reacher" for Amazon Prime, "The Handmaid's Tale" for Hulu, Atom Egoyan's "Remember", and "Penny Dreadful" for Showtime/SkyAtlantic. His work for television includes "Vikings" for History/Shaw, “Flashpoint” for CBS/CTV, "The Kids in the Hall: Death Comes To Town" for CBC, and "Slings & Arrows" for TMN/Showcase/Sundance Channel.Born and raised in Toronto, Canada and Seoul, South Korea, Christopher began his journey in filmmaking with short videos in high school before attending Queen's University, where he received his BAH in Film in 1994.Upon graduating, he embarked on his editing apprenticeship in Toronto, working under noted Canadian film editors Ronald Sanders, Susan Maggi, and Reginald Harkema.Christopher's editing career took off with director Alan Zweig, with whom he shared a passion project/obsession - the film "Vinyl". Over the years, he continued to pursue a personal and passionate approach to editing and collaboration, making films with directors Kevin McMahon, Peter Wellington, and two more "Mirror" documentaries with Alan Zweig.It was with Peter Wellington that Christopher moved into dramatic television, editing all 18 episodes of the acclaimed "Slings & Arrows".His exceptional work has earned him two Director's Guild of Canada awards for "Slings & Arrows", a Gemini Award for "The Border", and a Canadian Cinema Editors award for "Penny Dreadful".Apart from editing, Christopher is also the writer and director of the film "2:14pm", part of a compilation entitled "Little Films About Big Moments".In this episode, we delve into Christopher's journey, his approach to editing, his collaborations, and his transition from documentaries to dramatic television. Stay tuned for an insightful conversation about the art and craft of storytelling through editing.Also, you can check out my documentary The People of Brixton, on Kwelitv here: https://www.kweli.tv/programs/the-people-of-brixtonDamien Swaby Social Media Links:Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/filmmaker_damien_swaby/Twitterhttps://twitter.com/DamienSwaby?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5EauthorWebsitehttp://filmmakingconversations.com/If you enjoy listening to Filmmaking Conversations with Damien Swaby, I would love a coffee. Podcasting is thirsty work https://ko-fi.com/damienswabyThis show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/4532542/advertisement

We finally complete our mini-series on the 1980s movies released by Miramax Films in 1989, a year that included sex, lies, and videotape, and My Left Foot. ----more---- TRANSCRIPT   From Los Angeles, California, the Entertainment Capital of the World, it's The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today.   On this episode, we complete our look back at the 1980s theatrical releases for Miramax Films. And, for the final time, a reminder that we are not celebrating Bob and Harvey Weinstein, but reminiscing about the movies they had no involvement in making. We cannot talk about cinema in the 1980s without talking about Miramax, and I really wanted to get it out of the way, once and for all.   As we left Part 4, Miramax was on its way to winning its first Academy Award, Billie August's Pelle the Conquerer, the Scandinavian film that would be second film in a row from Denmark that would win for Best Foreign Language Film.   In fact, the first two films Miramax would release in 1989, the Australian film Warm Night on a Slow Moving Train and the Anthony Perkins slasher film Edge of Sanity, would not arrive in theatres until the Friday after the Academy Awards ceremony that year, which was being held on the last Wednesday in March.   Warm Nights on a Slow Moving Train stars Wendy Hughes, the talented Australian actress who, sadly, is best remembered today as Lt. Commander Nella Daren, one of Captain Jean-Luc Picard's few love interests, on a 1993 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, as Jenny, a prostitute working a weekend train to Sydney, who is seduced by a man on the train, unaware that he plans on tricking her to kill someone for him. Colin Friels, another great Aussie actor who unfortunately is best known for playing the corrupt head of Strack Industries in Sam Raimi's Darkman, plays the unnamed man who will do anything to get what he wants.   Director Bob Ellis and his co-screenwriter Denny Lawrence came up with the idea for the film while they themselves were traveling on a weekend train to Sydney, with the idea that each client the call girl met on the train would represent some part of the Australian male.   Funding the $2.5m film was really simple… provided they cast Hughes in the lead role. Ellis and Lawrence weren't against Hughes as an actress. Any film would be lucky to have her in the lead. They just felt she she didn't have the right kind of sex appeal for this specific character.   Miramax would open the film in six theatres, including the Cineplex Beverly Center in Los Angeles and the Fashion Village 8 in Orlando, on March 31st. There were two versions of the movie prepared, one that ran 130 minutes and the other just 91. Miramax would go with the 91 minute version of the film for the American release, and most of the critics would note how clunky and confusing the film felt, although one critic for the Village Voice would have some kind words for Ms. Hughes' performance.   Whether it was because moviegoers were too busy seeing the winners of the just announced Academy Awards, including Best Picture winner Rain Man, or because this weekend was also the opening weekend of the new Major League Baseball season, or just turned off by the reviews, attendance at the theatres playing Warm Nights on a Slow Moving Train was as empty as a train dining car at three in the morning. The Beverly Center alone would account for a third of the movie's opening weekend gross of $19,268. After a second weekend at the same six theatres pocketing just $14,382, this train stalled out, never to arrive at another station.   Their other March 31st release, Edge of Sanity, is notable for two things and only two things: it would be the first film Miramax would release under their genre specialty label, Millimeter Films, which would eventually evolve into Dimension Films in the next decade, and it would be the final feature film to star Anthony Perkins before his passing in 1992.   The film is yet another retelling of the classic 1886 Robert Louis Stevenson story The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, with the bonus story twist that Hyde was actually Jack the Ripper. As Jekyll, Perkins looks exactly as you'd expect a mid-fifties Norman Bates to look. As Hyde, Perkins is made to look like he's a backup keyboardist for the first Nine Inch Nails tour. Head Like a Hole would have been an appropriate song for the end credits, had the song or Pretty Hate Machine been released by that time, with its lyrics about bowing down before the one you serve and getting what you deserve.   Edge of Sanity would open in Atlanta and Indianapolis on March 31st. And like so many other Miramax releases in the 1980s, they did not initially announce any grosses for the film. That is, until its fourth weekend of release, when the film's theatre count had fallen to just six, down from the previous week's previously unannounced 35, grossing just $9,832. Miramax would not release grosses for the film again, with a final total of just $102,219.   Now when I started this series, I said that none of the films Miramax released in the 1980s were made by Miramax, but this next film would become the closest they would get during the decade.   In July 1961, John Profumo was the Secretary of State for War in the conservative government of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, when the married Profumo began a sexual relationship with a nineteen-year-old model named Christine Keeler. The affair was very short-lived, either ending, depending on the source, in August 1961 or December 1961. Unbeknownst to Profumo, Keeler was also having an affair with Yevgeny Ivanov, a senior naval attache at the Soviet Embassy at the same time.   No one was the wiser on any of this until December 1962, when a shooting incident involving two other men Keeler had been involved with led the press to start looking into Keeler's life. While it was never proven that his affair with Keeler was responsible for any breaches of national security, John Profumo was forced to resign from his position in June 1963, and the scandal would take down most of the Torie government with him. Prime Minister Macmillan would resign due to “health reasons” in October 1963, and the Labour Party would take control of the British government when the next elections were held in October 1964.   Scandal was originally planned in the mid-1980s as a three-part, five-hour miniseries by Australian screenwriter Michael Thomas and American music producer turned movie producer Joe Boyd. The BBC would commit to finance a two-part, three-hour miniseries,  until someone at the network found an old memo from the time of the Profumo scandal that forbade them from making any productions about it. Channel 4, which had been producing quality shows and movies for several years since their start in 1982, was approached, but rejected the series on the grounds of taste.   Palace Pictures, a British production company who had already produced three films for Neil Jordan including Mona Lisa, was willing to finance the script, provided it could be whittled down to a two hour movie. Originally budgeted at 3.2m British pounds, the costs would rise as they started the casting process.  John Hurt, twice Oscar-nominated for his roles in Midnight Express and The Elephant Man, would sign on to play Stephen Ward, a British osteopath who acted as Christine Keeler's… well… pimp, for lack of a better word. Ian McKellen, a respected actor on British stages and screens but still years away from finding mainstream global success in the X-Men movies, would sign on to play John Profumo. Joanne Whaley, who had filmed the yet to be released at that time Willow with her soon to be husband Val Kilmer, would get her first starring role as Keeler, and Bridget Fonda, who was quickly making a name for herself in the film world after being featured in Aria, would play Mandy Rice-Davies, the best friend and co-worker of Keeler's.   To save money, Palace Pictures would sign thirty-year-old Scottish filmmaker Michael Caton-Jones to direct, after seeing a short film he had made called The Riveter. But even with the neophyte feature filmmaker, Palace still needed about $2.35m to be able to fully finance the film. And they knew exactly who to go to.   Stephen Woolley, the co-founder of Palace Pictures and the main producer on the film, would fly from London to New York City to personally pitch Harvey and Bob Weinstein. Woolley felt that of all the independent distributors in America, they would be the ones most attracted to the sexual and controversial nature of the story. A day later, Woolley was back on a plane to London. The Weinsteins had agreed to purchase the American distribution rights to Scandal for $2.35m.   The film would spend two months shooting in the London area through the summer of 1988. Christine Keeler had no interest in the film, and refused to meet the now Joanne Whaley-Kilmer to talk about the affair, but Mandy Rice-Davies was more than happy to Bridget Fonda about her life, although the meetings between the two women were so secret, they would not come out until Woolley eulogized Rice-Davies after her 2014 death.   Although Harvey and Bob would be given co-executive producers on the film, Miramax was not a production company on the film. This, however, did not stop Harvey from flying to London multiple times, usually when he was made aware of some sexy scene that was going to shoot the following day, and try to insinuate himself into the film's making. At one point, Woolley decided to take a weekend off from the production, and actually did put Harvey in charge. That weekend's shoot would include a skinny-dipping scene featuring the Christine Keeler character, but when Whaley-Kilmer learned Harvey was going to be there, she told the director that she could not do the nudity in the scene. Her new husband was objecting to it, she told them. Harvey, not skipping a beat, found a lookalike for the actress who would be willing to bare all as a body double, and the scene would begin shooting a few hours later. Whaley-Kilmer watched the shoot from just behind the camera, and stopped the shoot a few minutes later. She was not happy that the body double's posterior was notably larger than her own, and didn't want audiences to think she had that much junk in her trunk. The body double was paid for her day, and Whaley-Kilmer finished the rest of the scene herself.   Caton-Jones and his editing team worked on shaping the film through the fall, and would screen his first edit of the film for Palace Pictures and the Weinsteins in November 1988. And while Harvey was very happy with the cut, he still asked the production team for a different edit for American audiences, noting that most Americans had no idea who Profumo or Keeler or Rice-Davies were, and that Americans would need to understand the story more right out of the first frame. Caton-Jones didn't want to cut a single frame, but he would work with Harvey to build an American-friendly cut.   While he was in London in November 1988, he would meet with the producers of another British film that was in pre-production at the time that would become another important film to the growth of the company, but we're not quite at that part of the story yet. We'll circle around to that film soon.   One of the things Harvey was most looking forward to going in to 1989 was the expected battle with the MPAA ratings board over Scandal. Ever since he had seen the brouhaha over Angel Heart's X rating two years earlier, he had been looking for a similar battle. He thought he had it with Aria in 1988, but he knew he definitely had it now.   And he'd be right.   In early March, just a few weeks before the film's planned April 21st opening day, the MPAA slapped an X rating on Scandal. The MPAA usually does not tell filmmakers or distributors what needs to be cut, in order to avoid accusations of actual censorship, but according to Harvey, they told him exactly what needed to be cut to get an R: a two second shot during an orgy scene, where it appears two background characters are having unsimulated sex.   So what did Harvey do?   He spent weeks complaining to the press about MPAA censorship, generating millions in free publicity for the film, all the while already having a close-up shot of Joanne Whaley-Kilmer's Christine Keeler watching the orgy but not participating in it, ready to replace the objectionable shot.   A few weeks later, Miramax screened the “edited” film to the MPAA and secured the R rating, and the film would open on 94 screens, including 28 each in the New York City and Los Angeles metro regions, on April 28th.   And while the reviews for the film were mostly great, audiences were drawn to the film for the Miramax-manufactured controversy as well as the key art for the film, a picture of a potentially naked Joanne Whaley-Kilmer sitting backwards in a chair, a mimic of a very famous photo Christine Keeler herself took to promote a movie about the Profumo affair she appeared in a few years after the events. I'll have a picture of both the Scandal poster and the Christine Keeler photo on this episode's page at The80sMoviePodcast.com   Five other movies would open that weekend, including the James Belushi comedy K-9 and the Kevin Bacon drama Criminal Law, and Scandal, with $658k worth of ticket sales, would have the second best per screen average of the five new openers, just a few hundred dollars below the new Holly Hunter movie Miss Firecracker, which only opened on six screens.   In its second weekend, Scandal would expand its run to 214 playdates, and make its debut in the national top ten, coming in tenth place with $981k. That would be more than the second week of the Patrick Dempsey rom-com Loverboy, even though Loverboy was playing on 5x as many screens.   In weekend number three, Scandal would have its best overall gross and top ten placement, coming in seventh with $1.22m from 346 screens. Scandal would start to slowly fade after that, falling back out of the top ten in its sixth week, but Miramax would wisely keep the screen count under 375, because Scandal wasn't going to play well in all areas of the country. After nearly five months in theatres, Miramax would have its biggest film to date. Scandal would gross $8.8m.   The second release from Millimeter Films was The Return of the Swamp Thing. And if you needed a reason why the 1980s was not a good time for comic book movies, here you are. The Return of the Swamp Thing took most of what made the character interesting in his comic series, and most of what was good from the 1982 Wes Craven adaptation, and decided “Hey, you know what would bring the kids in? Camp! Camp unseen in a comic book adaptation since the 1960s Batman series. They loved it then, they'll love it now!”   They did not love it now.   Heather Locklear, between her stints on T.J. Hooker and Melrose Place, plays the step-daughter of Louis Jourdan's evil Dr. Arcane from the first film, who heads down to the Florida swaps to confront dear old once presumed dead stepdad. He in turns kidnaps his stepdaughter and decides to do some of his genetic experiments on her, until she is rescued by Swamp Thing, one of Dr. Arcane's former co-workers who got turned into the gooey anti-hero in the first movie.   The film co-stars Sarah Douglas from Superman 1 and 2 as Dr. Arcane's assistant, Dick Durock reprising his role as Swamp Thing from the first film, and 1980s B-movie goddess Monique Gabrielle as Miss Poinsettia.   For director Jim Wynorski, this was his sixth movie as a director, and at $3m, one of the highest budgeted movies he would ever make. He's directed 107 movies since 1984, most of them low budget direct to video movies with titles like The Bare Wench Project and Alabama Jones and the Busty Crusade, although he does have one genuine horror classic under his belt, the 1986 sci-fi tinged Chopping Maul with Kelli Maroney and Barbara Crampton.   Wynorski suggested in a late 1990s DVD commentary for the film that he didn't particularly enjoy making the film, and had a difficult time directing Louis Jourdan, to the point that outside of calling “action” and “cut,” the two didn't speak to each other by the end of the shoot.   The Return of Swamp Thing would open in 123 theatres in the United States on May 12th, including 28 in the New York City metro region, 26 in the Los Angeles area, 15 in Detroit, and a handful of theatres in Phoenix, San Francisco. And, strangely, the newspaper ads would include an actual positive quote from none other than Roger Ebert, who said on Siskel & Ebert that he enjoyed himself, and that it was good to have Swamp Thing back. Siskel would not reciprocate his balcony partner's thumb up. But Siskel was about the only person who was positive on the return of Swamp Thing, and that box office would suffer. In its first three days, the film would gross just $119,200. After a couple more dismal weeks in theatres, The Return of Swamp Thing would be pulled from distribution, with a final gross of just $275k.   Fun fact: The Return of Swamp Thing was produced by Michael E. Uslan, whose next production, another adaptation of a DC Comics character, would arrive in theatres not six weeks later and become the biggest film of the summer. In fact, Uslan has been a producer or executive producer on every Batman-related movie and television show since 1989, from Tim Burton to Christopher Nolan to Zack Snyder to Matt Reeves, and from LEGO movies to Joker. He also, because of his ownership of the movie rights to Swamp Thing, got the movie screen rights, but not the television screen rights, to John Constantine.   Miramax didn't have too much time to worry about The Return of Swamp Thing's release, as it was happening while the Brothers Weinstein were at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival. They had two primary goals at Cannes that year:   To buy American distribution rights to any movie that would increase their standing in the cinematic worldview, which they would achieve by picking up an Italian dramedy called, at the time, New Paradise Cinema, which was competing for the Palme D'Or with a Miramax pickup from Sundance back in January. Promote that very film, which did end up winning the Palme D'Or.   Ever since he was a kid, Steven Soderbergh wanted to be a filmmaker. Growing up in Baton Rouge, LA in the late 1970s, he would enroll in the LSU film animation class, even though he was only 15 and not yet a high school graduate. After graduating high school, he decided to move to Hollywood to break into the film industry, renting an above-garage room from Stephen Gyllenhaal, the filmmaker best known as the father of Jake and Maggie, but after a few freelance editing jobs, Soderbergh packed up his things and headed home to Baton Rouge.   Someone at Atco Records saw one of Soderbergh's short films, and hired him to direct a concert movie for one of their biggest bands at the time, Yes, who was enjoying a major comeback thanks to their 1983 triple platinum selling album, 90125. The concert film, called 9012Live, would premiere on MTV in late 1985, and it would be nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Long Form Music Video.   Soderbergh would use the money he earned from that project, $7,500, to make Winston, a 12 minute black and white short about sexual deception that he would, over the course of an eight day driving trip from Baton Rouge to Los Angeles, expand to a full length screen that he would call sex, lies and videotape. In later years, Soderbergh would admit that part of the story is autobiographical, but not the part you might think. Instead of the lead, Graham, an impotent but still sexually perverse late twentysomething who likes to tape women talking about their sexual fantasies for his own pleasure later, Soderbergh based the husband John, the unsophisticated lawyer who cheats on his wife with her sister, on himself, although there would be a bit of Graham that borrows from the filmmaker. Like his lead character, Soderbergh did sell off most of his possessions and hit the road to live a different life.   When he finished the script, he sent it out into the wilds of Hollywood. Morgan Mason, the son of actor James Mason and husband of Go-Go's lead singer Belinda Carlisle, would read it and sign on as an executive producer. Soderbergh had wanted to shoot the film in black and white, like he had with the Winston short that lead to the creation of this screenplay, but he and Mason had trouble getting anyone to commit to the project, even with only a projected budget of $200,000. For a hot moment, it looked like Universal might sign on to make the film, but they would eventually pass.   Robert Newmyer, who had left his job as a vice president of production and acquisitions at Columbia Pictures to start his own production company, signed on as a producer, and helped to convince Soderbergh to shoot the film in color, and cast some name actors in the leading roles. Once he acquiesced, Richard Branson's Virgin Vision agreed to put up $540k of the newly budgeted $1.2m film, while RCA/Columbia Home Video would put up the remaining $660k.   Soderbergh and his casting director, Deborah Aquila, would begin their casting search in New York, where they would meet with, amongst others, Andie MacDowell, who had already starred in two major Hollywood pictures, 1984's Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, and 1985's St. Elmo's Fire, but was still considered more of a top model than an actress, and Laura San Giacomo, who had recently graduated from the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama in Pittsburgh and would be making her feature debut. Moving on to Los Angeles, Soderbergh and Aquila would cast James Spader, who had made a name for himself as a mostly bad guy in 80s teen movies like Pretty in Pink and Less Than Zero, but had never been the lead in a drama like this. At Spader's suggestion, the pair met with Peter Gallagher, who was supposed to become a star nearly a decade earlier from his starring role in Taylor Hackford's The Idolmaker, but had mostly been playing supporting roles in television shows and movies for most of the decade.   In order to keep the budget down, Soderbergh, the producers, cinematographer Walt Lloyd and the four main cast members agreed to get paid their guild minimums in exchange for a 50/50 profit participation split with RCA/Columbia once the film recouped its costs.   The production would spend a week in rehearsals in Baton Rouge, before the thirty day shoot began on August 1st, 1988. On most days, the shoot was unbearable for many, as temperatures would reach as high as 110 degrees outside, but there were a couple days lost to what cinematographer Lloyd said was “biblical rains.” But the shoot completed as scheduled, and Soderbergh got to the task of editing right away. He knew he only had about eight weeks to get a cut ready if the film was going to be submitted to the 1989 U.S. Film Festival, now better known as Sundance. He did get a temporary cut of the film ready for submission, with a not quite final sound mix, and the film was accepted to the festival. It would make its world premiere on January 25th, 1989, in Park City UT, and as soon as the first screening was completed, the bids from distributors came rolling in. Larry Estes, the head of RCA/Columbia Home Video, would field more than a dozen submissions before the end of the night, but only one distributor was ready to make a deal right then and there.   Bob Weinstein wasn't totally sold on the film, but he loved the ending, and he loved that the word “sex” not only was in the title but lead the title. He knew that title alone would sell the movie. Harvey, who was still in New York the next morning, called Estes to make an appointment to meet in 24 hours. When he and Estes met, he brought with him three poster mockups the marketing department had prepared, and told Estes he wasn't going to go back to New York until he had a contract signed, and vowed to beat any other deal offered by $100,000. Island Pictures, who had made their name releasing movies like Stop Making Sense, Kiss of the Spider-Woman, The Trip to Bountiful and She's Gotta Have It, offered $1m for the distribution rights, plus a 30% distribution fee and a guaranteed $1m prints and advertising budget. Estes called Harvey up and told him what it would take to make the deal. $1.1m for the distribution rights, which needed to paid up front, a $1m P&A budget, to be put in escrow upon the signing of the contract until the film was released, a 30% distribution fee, no cutting of the film whatsoever once Soderbergh turns in his final cut, they would need to provide financial information for the films costs and returns once a month because of the profit participation contracts, and the Weinsteins would have to hire Ira Deutchman, who had spent nearly 15 years in the independent film world, doing marketing for Cinema 5, co-founding United Artists Classics, and co-founding Cinecom Pictures before opening his own company to act as a producers rep and marketer. And the Weinsteins would not only have to do exactly what Deutchman wanted, they'd have to pay for his services too.   The contract was signed a few weeks later.   The first move Miramax would make was to get Soderbergh's final cut of the film entered into the Cannes Film Festival, where it would be accepted to compete in the main competition. Which you kind of already know what happened, because that's what I lead with. The film would win the Palme D'Or, and Spader would be awarded the festival's award for Best Actor. It was very rare at the time, and really still is, for any film to be awarded more than one prize, so winning two was really a coup for the film and for Miramax, especially when many critics attending the festival felt Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing was the better film.   In March, Miramax expected the film to make around $5-10m, which would net the company a small profit on the film. After Cannes, they were hopeful for a $15m gross.   They never expected what would happen next.   On August 4th, sex, lies, and videotape would open on four screens, at the Cinema Studio in New York City, and at the AMC Century 14, the Cineplex Beverly Center 13 and the Mann Westwood 4 in Los Angeles. Three prime theatres and the best they could do in one of the then most competitive zones in all America. Remember, it's still the Summer 1989 movie season, filled with hits like Batman, Dead Poets Society, Ghostbusters 2, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Lethal Weapon 2, Parenthood, Turner & Hooch, and When Harry Met Sally. An independent distributor even getting one screen at the least attractive theatre in Westwood was a major get. And despite the fact that this movie wasn't really a summertime movie per se, the film would gross an incredible $156k in its first weekend from just these four theatres. Its nearly $40k per screen average would be 5x higher than the next closest film, Parenthood.   In its second weekend, the film would expand to 28 theatres, and would bring in over $600k in ticket sales, its per screen average of $21,527 nearly triple its closest competitor, Parenthood again. The company would keep spending small, as it slowly expanded the film each successive week. Forty theatres in its third week, and 101 in its fourth. The numbers held strong, and in its fifth week, Labor Day weekend, the film would have its first big expansion, playing in 347 theatres. The film would enter the top ten for the first time, despite playing in 500 to 1500 fewer theatres than the other films in the top ten. In its ninth weekend, the film would expand to its biggest screen count, 534, before slowly drawing down as the other major Oscar contenders started their theatrical runs. The film would continue to play through the Oscar season of 1989, and when it finally left theatres in May 1989, its final gross would be an astounding $24.7m.   Now, remember a few moments ago when I said that Miramax needed to provide financial statements every month for the profit participation contracts of Soderbergh, the producers, the cinematographer and the four lead actors? The film was so profitable for everyone so quickly that RCA/Columbia made its first profit participation payouts on October 17th, barely ten weeks after the film's opening.   That same week, Soderbergh also made what was at the time the largest deal with a book publisher for the writer/director's annotated version of the screenplay, which would also include his notes created during the creation of the film. That $75,000 deal would be more than he got paid to make the movie as the writer and the director and the editor, not counting the profit participation checks.   During the awards season, sex, lies, and videotape was considered to be one of the Oscars front runners for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay and at least two acting nominations. The film would be nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress by the Golden Globes, and it would win the Spirit Awards for Best Picture, Soderbergh for Best Director, McDowell for Best Actress, and San Giacomo for Best Supporting Actress. But when the Academy Award nominations were announced, the film would only receive one nomination, for Best Original Screenplay. The same total and category as Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, which many people also felt had a chance for a Best Picture and Best Director nomination. Both films would lose out to Tom Shulman's screenplay for Dead Poet's Society.   The success of sex, lies, and videotape would launch Steven Soderbergh into one of the quirkiest Hollywood careers ever seen, including becoming the first and only director ever to be nominated twice for Best Director in the same year by the Motion Picture Academy, the Golden Globes and the Directors Guild of America, in 2001 for directing Erin Brockovich and Traffic. He would win the Oscar for directing Traffic.   Lost in the excitement of sex, lies, and videotape was The Little Thief, a French movie that had an unfortunate start as the screenplay François Truffaut was working on when he passed away in 1984 at the age of just 52.   Directed by Claude Miller, whose principal mentor was Truffaut, The Little Thief starred seventeen year old Charlotte Gainsbourg as Janine, a young woman in post-World War II France who commits a series of larcenies to support her dreams of becoming wealthy.   The film was a modest success in France when it opened in December 1988, but its American release date of August 25th, 1989, was set months in advance. So when it was obvious sex, lies, and videotape was going to be a bigger hit than they originally anticipated, it was too late for Miramax to pause the release of The Little Thief.   Opening at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas in New York City, and buoyed by favorable reviews from every major critic in town, The Little Thief would see $39,931 worth of ticket sales in its first seven days, setting a new house record at the theatre for the year. In its second week, the gross would only drop $47. For the entire week. And when it opened at the Royal Theatre in West Los Angeles, its opening week gross of $30,654 would also set a new house record for the year.   The film would expand slowly but surely over the next several weeks, often in single screen playdates in major markets, but it would never play on more than twenty-four screens in any given week. And after four months in theatres, The Little Thief, the last movie created one of the greatest film writers the world had ever seen, would only gross $1.056m in the United States.   The next three releases from Miramax were all sent out under the Millimeter Films banner.   The first, a supernatural erotic drama called The Girl in a Swing, was about an English antiques dealer who travels to Copenhagen where he meets and falls in love with a mysterious German-born secretary, whom he marries, only to discover a darker side to his new bride. Rupert Frazer, who played Christian Bale's dad in Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun, plays the antique dealer, while Meg Tilly the mysterious new bride.   Filmed over a five week schedule in London and Copenhagen during May and June 1988, some online sources say the film first opened somewhere in California in December 1988, but I cannot find a single theatre not only in California but anywhere in the United States that played the film before its September 29th, 1989 opening date.   Roger Ebert didn't like the film, and wished Meg Tilly's “genuinely original performance” was in a better movie. Opening in 26 theatres, including six theatres each in New York City and Los Angeles, and spurred on by an intriguing key art for the film that featured a presumed naked Tilly on a swing looking seductively at the camera while a notice underneath her warns that No One Under 18 Will Be Admitted To The Theatre, The Girl in a Swing would gross $102k, good enough for 35th place nationally that week. And that's about the best it would do. The film would limp along, moving from market to market over the course of the next three months, and when its theatrical run was complete, it could only manage about $747k in ticket sales.   We'll quickly burn through the next two Millimeter Films releases, which came out a week apart from each other and didn't amount to much.   Animal Behavior was a rather unfunny comedy featuring some very good actors who probably signed on for a very different movie than the one that came to be. Karen Allen, Miss Marion Ravenwood herself, stars as Alex, a biologist who, like Dr. Jane Goodall, develops a “new” way to communicate with chimpanzees via sign language. Armand Assante plays a cellist who pursues the good doctor, and Holly Hunter plays the cellist's neighbor, who Alex mistakes for his wife.   Animal Behavior was filmed in 1984, and 1985, and 1987, and 1988. The initial production was directed by Jenny Bowen with the assistance of Robert Redford and The Sundance Institute, thanks to her debut film, 1981's Street Music featuring Elizabeth Daily. It's unknown why Bowen and her cinematographer husband Richard Bowen left the project, but when filming resumed again and again and again, those scenes were directed by the film's producer, Kjehl Rasmussen.   Because Bowen was not a member of the DGA at the time, she was not able to petition the guild for the use of the Alan Smithee pseudonym, a process that is automatically triggered whenever a director is let go of a project and filming continues with its producer taking the reigns as director. But she was able to get the production to use a pseudonym anyway for the director's credit, H. Anne Riley, while also giving Richard Bowen a pseudonym of his own for his work on the film, David Spellvin.   Opening on 24 screens on October 27th, Animal Behavior would come in 50th place in its opening weekend, grossing just $20,361. The New York film critics ripped the film apart, and there wouldn't be a second weekend for the film.   The following Friday, November 3rd, saw the release of The Stepfather II, a rushed together sequel to 1987's The Stepfather, which itself wasn't a big hit in theatres but found a very quick and receptive audience on cable.   Despite dying at the end of the first film, Terry O'Quinn's Jerry is somehow still alive, and institutionalized in Northern Washington state. He escapes and heads down to Los Angeles, where he assumes the identity of a recently deceased publisher, Gene Clifford, but instead passes himself off as a psychiatrist. Jerry, now Gene, begins to court his neighbor Carol, and the whole crazy story plays out again. Meg Foster plays the neighbor Carol, and Jonathan Brandis is her son.    Director Jeff Burr had made a name for himself with his 1987 horror anthology film From a Whisper to a Scream, featuring Vincent Price, Clu Gulager and Terry Kiser, and from all accounts, had a very smooth shooting process with this film. The trouble began when he turned in his cut to the producers. The producers were happy with the film, but when they sent it to Miramax, the American distributors, they were rather unhappy with the almost bloodless slasher film. They demanded reshoots, which Burr and O'Quinn refused to participate in. They brought in a new director, Doug Campbell, to handle the reshoots, which are easy to spot in the final film because they look and feel completely different from the scenes they're spliced into.   When it opened, The Stepfather II actually grossed slightly more than the first film did, earning $279k from 100 screens, compared to $260k for The Stepfather from 105 screens. But unlike the first film, which had some decent reviews when it opened, the sequel was a complete mess. To this day, it's still one of the few films to have a 0% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and The Stepfather II would limp its way through theatres during the Christmas holiday season, ending its run with a $1.5m gross.   But it would be their final film of the decade that would dictate their course for at least the first part of the 1990s.   Remember when I said earlier in the episode that Harvey Weinstein meant with the producers of another British film while in London for Scandal? We're at that film now, a film you probably know.   My Left Foot.   By November 1988, actor Daniel Day-Lewis had starred in several movies including James Ivory's A Room With a View and Philip Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. He had even been the lead in a major Hollywood studio film, Pat O'Connor's Stars and Bars, a very good film that unfortunately got caught up in the brouhaha over the exit of the studio head who greenlit the film, David Puttnam.   The film's director, Jim Sheridan, had never directed a movie before. He had become involved in stage production during his time at the University College in Dublin in the late 1960s, where he worked with future filmmaker Neil Jordan, and had spent nearly a decade after graduation doing stage work in Ireland and Canada, before settling in New York City in the early 1980s. Sheridan would go to New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where one of his classmates was Spike Lee, and return to Ireland after graduating. He was nearly forty, married with two pre-teen daughters, and he needed to make a statement with his first film.   He would find that story in the autobiography of Irish writer and painter Christy Brown, whose spirit and creativity could not be contained by his severe cerebral palsy. Along with Irish actor and writer Shane Connaughton, Sheridan wrote a screenplay that could be a powerhouse film made on a very tight budget of less than a million dollars.   Daniel Day-Lewis was sent a copy of the script, in the hopes he would be intrigued enough to take almost no money to play a physically demanding role. He read the opening pages, which had the adult Christy Brown putting a record on a record player and dropping the needle on to the record with his left foot, and thought to himself it would be impossible to film. That intrigued him, and he signed on. But during filming in January and February of 1989, most of the scenes were shot using mirrors, as Day-Lewis couldn't do the scenes with his left foot. He could do them with his right foot, hence the mirrors.   As a method actor, Day-Lewis remained in character as Christy Brown for the entire two month shoot. From costume fittings and makeup in the morning, to getting the actor on set, to moving him around between shots, there were crew members assigned to assist the actor as if they were Christy Brown's caretakers themselves, including feeding him during breaks in shooting. A rumor debunked by the actor years later said Day-Lewis had broken two ribs during production because of how hunched down he needed to be in his crude prop wheelchair to properly play the character.   The actor had done a lot of prep work to play the role, including spending time at the Sandymount School Clinic where the young Christy Brown got his education, and much of his performance was molded on those young people.   While Miramax had acquired the American distribution rights to the film before it went into production, and those funds went into the production of the film, the film was not produced by Miramax, nor were the Weinsteins given any kind of executive producer credit, as they were able to get themselves on Scandal.   My Left Foot would make its world premiere at the Montreal World Film Festival on September 4th, 1989, followed soon thereafter by screening at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 13th and the New York Film Festival on September 23rd. Across the board, critics and audiences were in love with the movie, and with Daniel Day-Lewis's performance. Jim Sheridan would receive a special prize at the Montreal World Film Festival for his direction, and Day-Lewis would win the festival's award for Best Actor. However, as the film played the festival circuit, another name would start to pop up. Brenda Fricker, a little known Irish actress who played Christy Brown's supportive but long-suffering mother Bridget, would pile up as many positive notices and awards as Day-Lewis. Although there was no Best Supporting Actress Award at the Montreal Film Festival, the judges felt her performance was deserving of some kind of attention, so they would create a Special Mention of the Jury Award to honor her.   Now, some sources online will tell you the film made its world premiere in Dublin on February 24th, 1989, based on a passage in a biography about Daniel Day-Lewis, but that would be impossible as the film would still be in production for two more days, and wasn't fully edited or scored by then.   I'm not sure when it first opened in the United Kingdom other than sometime in early 1990, but My Left Foot would have its commercial theatre debut in America on November 10th, when opened at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas in New York City and the Century City 14 in Los Angeles. Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times would, in the very opening paragraph of her review, note that one shouldn't see My Left Foot for some kind of moral uplift or spiritual merit badge, but because of your pure love of great moviemaking. Vincent Canby's review in the New York Times spends most of his words praising Day-Lewis and Sheridan for making a film that is polite and non-judgmental.    Interestingly, Miramax went with an ad campaign that completely excluded any explanation of who Christy Brown was or why the film is titled the way it is. 70% of the ad space is taken from pull quotes from many of the top critics of the day, 20% with the title of the film, and 10% with a picture of Daniel Day-Lewis, clean shaven and full tooth smile, which I don't recall happening once in the movie, next to an obviously added-in picture of one of his co-stars that is more camera-friendly than Brenda Fricker or Fiona Shaw.   Whatever reasons people went to see the film, they flocked to the two theatres playing the film that weekend. It's $20,582 per screen average would be second only to Kenneth Branagh's Henry V, which had opened two days earlier, earning slightly more than $1,000 per screen than My Left Foot.   In week two, My Left Foot would gross another $35,133 from those two theatres, and it would overtake Henry V for the highest per screen average. In week three, Thanksgiving weekend, both Henry V and My Left Foot saw a a double digit increase in grosses despite not adding any theatres, and the latter film would hold on to the highest per screen average again, although the difference would only be $302. And this would continue for weeks. In the film's sixth week of release, it would get a boost in attention by being awarded Best Film of the Year by the New York Film Critics Circle. Daniel Day-Lewis would be named Best Actor that week by both the New York critics and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, while Fricker would win the Best Supporting Actress award from the latter group.   But even then, Miramax refused to budge on expanding the film until its seventh week of release, Christmas weekend, when My Left Foot finally moved into cities like Chicago and San Francisco. Its $135k gross that weekend was good, but it was starting to lose ground to other Oscar hopefuls like Born on the Fourth of July, Driving Miss Daisy, Enemies: A Love Story, and Glory.   And even though the film continued to rack up award win after award win, nomination after nomination, from the Golden Globes and the Writers Guild and the National Society of Film Critics and the National Board of Review, Miramax still held firm on not expanding the film into more than 100 theatres nationwide until its 16th week in theatres, February 16th, 1990, two days after the announcement of the nominees for the 62nd Annual Academy Awards. While Daniel Day-Lewis's nomination for Best Actor was virtually assured and Brenda Fricker was practically a given, the film would pick up three other nominations, including surprise nominations for Best Picture and Best Director. Jim Sheridan and co-writer Shane Connaughton would also get picked for Best Adapted Screenplay.   Miramax also picked up a nomination for Best Original Screenplay for sex, lies, and videotape, and a Best Foreign Language Film nod for the Italian movie Cinema Paradiso, which, thanks to the specific rules for that category, a film could get a nomination before actually opening in theatres in America, which Miramax would rush to do with Paradiso the week after its nomination was announced.   The 62nd Academy Awards ceremony would be best remembered today as being the first Oscar show to be hosted by Billy Crystal, and for being considerably better than the previous year's ceremony, a mess of a show best remembered as being the one with a 12 minute opening musical segment that included Rob Lowe singing Proud Mary to an actress playing Snow White and another nine minute musical segment featuring a slew of expected future Oscar winners that, to date, feature exact zero Oscar nominees, both which rank as amongst the worst things to ever happen to the Oscars awards show.   The ceremony, held on March 26th, would see My Left Foot win two awards, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress, as well as Cinema Paradiso for Best Foreign Film. The following weekend, March 30th, would see Miramax expand My Left Foot to 510 theatres, its widest point of release, and see the film made the national top ten and earn more than a million dollars for its one and only time during its eight month run.   The film would lose steam pretty quickly after its post-win bump, but it would eek out a modest run that ended with $14.75m in ticket sales just in the United States. Not bad for a little Irish movie with no major stars that cost less than a million dollars to make.   Of course, the early 90s would see Miramax fly to unimagined heights. In all of the 80s, Miramax would release 39 movies. They would release 30 films alone in 1991. They would release the first movies from Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith. They'd release some of the best films from some of the best filmmakers in the world, including Woody Allen, Pedro Almadovar, Robert Altman, Bernardo Bertolucci, Atom Egoyan, Steven Frears, Peter Greenaway, Peter Jackson, Neil Jordan, Chen Kaige, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Lars von Trier, and Zhang Yimou. In 1993, the Mexican dramedy Like Water for Chocolate would become the highest grossing foreign language film ever released in America, and it would play in some theatres, including my theatre, the NuWilshire in Santa Monica, continuously for more than a year.   If you've listened to the whole series on the 1980s movies of Miramax Films, there are two things I hope you take away. First, I hope you discovered at least one film you hadn't heard of before and you might be interested in searching out. The second is the reminder that neither Bob nor Harvey Weinstein will profit in any way if you give any of the movies talked about in this series a chance. They sold Miramax to Disney in June 1993. They left Miramax in September 2005. Many of the contracts for the movies the company released in the 80s and 90s expired decades ago, with the rights reverting back to their original producers, none of whom made any deals with the Weinsteins once they got their rights back.   Harvey Weinstein is currently serving a 23 year prison sentence in upstate New York after being found guilty in 2020 of two sexual assaults. Once he completes that sentence, he'll be spending another 16 years in prison in California, after he was convicted of three sexual assaults that happened in Los Angeles between 2004 and 2013. And if the 71 year old makes it to 107 years old, he may have to serve time in England for two sexual assaults that happened in August 1996. That case is still working its way through the British legal system.   Bob Weinstein has kept a low profile since his brother's proclivities first became public knowledge in October 2017, although he would also be accused of sexual harassment by a show runner for the brothers' Spike TV-aired adaptation of the Stephen King novel The Mist, several days after the bombshell articles came out about his brother. However, Bob's lawyer, the powerful attorney to the stars Bert Fields, deny the allegations, and it appears nothing has occurred legally since the accusations were made.   A few weeks after the start of the MeToo movement that sparked up in the aftermath of the accusations of his brother's actions, Bob Weinstein denied having any knowledge of the nearly thirty years of documented sexual abuse at the hands of his brother, but did allow to an interviewer for The Hollywood Reporter that he had barely spoken to Harvey over the previous five years, saying he could no longer take Harvey's cheating, lying and general attitude towards everyone.   And with that, we conclude our journey with Miramax Films. While I am sure Bob and Harvey will likely pop up again in future episodes, they'll be minor characters at best, and we'll never have to focus on anything they did ever again.   Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again soon, when Episode 119 is released.   Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about the movies we covered this episode.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.

Musician and film writer Soraya Sebghati joins from Los Angeles to venture into the lurid, strange world of...Toronto, ON, Canada and its mesmerizing underbelly of desire, longing, and grief in Atom Egoyan's 1994 breakout feature, 'Exotica'.We discuss Atom Egoyan as director - his keen sense for the uncanny amongst the mundane, and the ways 'Exotica' plays with artificiality, performance, and facade. Then, we discuss the film's musings on routine and the rippling effects of grief, and praise Egoyan's (relatively) non-judgemental curiosity with regard to the habits we all adopt as a means of coping with loss and alienation. Finally, we consider the film's much-mulled over ending and how it offers both a quietly devastating moment of catharsis and a hopeful message of emotional solidarity. Follow Soraya Sebghati on Twitter.Read and subscribe to Soraya's Substack.Listen to and support Night Talks on Bandcamp. Get access to all of our premium episodes and bonus content by becoming a Hit Factory Patron for just $5/month.....Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish. 

We're reporting this week from one of the major film events of the fall: the Toronto International Film Festival, which runs from September 7 to 17. Throughout this year's festival, we'll be on the ground, covering all the highlights (and lowlights) from the lineup with a rotating crew of critics and special guests. For our second podcast dispatch from Toronto, Film Comment Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish is joined by local critics Adam Nayman (The Ringer, Cinema Scope, and elswhere) and Saffron Maeve (Cinema Scope and elsewhere). They kick things if with a focus on Canadian films, including Atom Egoyan's Seven Veils, Chloé Robichaud's Days of Happiness, and Michael Snow's Standard Time, before expanding their scope to encompass Cord Jefferson's American Fiction, Pedro Almódovar's Strange Way of Life, and Bertrand Bonello's The Beast. Watch this space for more podcasts from TIFF 2023.

Q&A on the film Seven Veils with writer & director Atom Egoyan. Moderated by Mara Webster, In Creative Company. An earnest theater director has the task of remounting her former mentor's most famous work, the opera Salome. Some disturbing memories from her past will allow her repressed trauma to color the present.

Team Deakins sits down with writer, director, and actor Sarah Polley (WOMEN TALKING, STORIES WE TELL, AWAY FROM HER) on this episode of the Team Deakins Podcast. In the beginning, Sarah discusses her early career in acting and how she stepped away to focus on political activism. We later ask Sarah about the challenges transitioning from acting to directing, and she describes realizing that even if she didn't consider herself an expert in the role, she recognized that she was the expert in the stories she was deciding to tell. At one point, Sarah credits director Atom Egoyan with setting the template for creating meaningful experiences making meaningful films which she applies to her own projects. Also revealed: which Sidney Lumet film Sarah found the most helpful to study while working on WOMEN TALKING. - This episode is sponsored by TrueCut Motion & Falca Instagram: @truecutmotion & @falcagram - Recommended Viewing: WOMEN TALKING

On this episode, we are continuing our miniseries on the movies released by Miramax Films in the 1980s, specifically looking at the films they released between 1984 and 1986. ----more---- TRANSCRIPT   From Los Angeles, California. The Entertainment Capital of the World. It's the 80s Movie Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today.   On this episode, we are continuing our miniseries on the movies released by Miramax Films in the 1980s.   And, in case you did not listen to Part 1 yet, let me reiterate that the focus here will be on the films and the creatives, not the Weinsteins. The Weinsteins did not have a hand in the production of any of the movies Miramax released in the 1980s, and that Miramax logo and the names associated with it should not stop anyone from enjoying some very well made movies because they now have an unfortunate association with two spineless chucklenuts who proclivities would not be known by the outside world for decades to come.   Well, there is one movie this episode where we must talk about the Weinsteins as the creatives, but when talking about that film, “creatives” is a derisive pejorative.    We ended our previous episode at the end of 1983. Miramax had one minor hit film in The Secret Policeman's Other Ball, thanks in large part to the film's association with members of the still beloved Monty Python comedy troupe, who hadn't released any material since The Life of Brian in 1979.   1984 would be the start of year five of the company, and they were still in need of something to make their name. Being a truly independent film company in 1984 was not easy. There were fewer than 20,000 movie screens in the entire country back then, compared to nearly 40,000 today. National video store chains like Blockbuster did not exist, and the few cable channels that did exist played mostly Hollywood films. There was no social media for images and clips to go viral.   For comparison's sake, in A24's first five years, from its founding in August 2012 to July 2017, the company would have a number of hit films, including The Bling Ring, The Lobster, Spring Breakers, and The Witch, release movies from some of indie cinema's most respected names, including Andrea Arnold, Robert Eggers, Atom Egoyan, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Lynn Shelton, Trey Edward Shults, Gus Van Sant, and Denis Villeneuve, and released several Academy Award winning movies, including the Amy Winehouse documentary Amy, Alex Garland's Ex Machina, Lenny Abrahamson's Room and Barry Jenkins' Moonlight, which would upset front runner La La Land for the Best Picture of 2016.   But instead of leaning into the American independent cinema world the way Cinecom and Island were doing with the likes of Jonathan Demme and John Sayles, Miramax would dip their toes further into the world of international cinema.   Their first release for 1984 would be Ruy Guerra's Eréndira. The screenplay by Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez was based on his 1972 novella The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Eréndira and Her Heartless Grandmother, which itself was based off a screenplay Márquez had written in the early 1960s, which, when he couldn't get it made at the time, he reduced down to a page and a half for a sequence in his 1967 magnum opus One Hundred Years of Solitude. Between the early 1960s and the early 1980s, Márquez would lose the original draft of Eréndira, and would write a new script based off what he remembered writing twenty years earlier.    In the story, a young woman named Eréndira lives in a near mansion situation in an otherwise empty desert with her grandmother, who had collected a number of paper flowers and assorted tchotchkes over the years. One night, Eréndira forgets to put out some candles used to illuminate the house, and the house and all of its contents burn to the ground. With everything lost, Eréndira's grandmother forces her into a life of prostitution. The young woman quickly becomes the courtesan of choice in the region. With every new journey, an ever growing caravan starts to follow them, until it becomes for all intents and purposes a carnival, with food vendors, snake charmers, musicians and games of chance.   Márquez's writing style, known as “magic realism,” was very cinematic on the page, and it's little wonder that many of his stories have been made into movies and television miniseries around the globe for more than a half century. Yet no movie came as close to capturing that Marquezian prose quite the way Guerra did with Eréndira. Featuring Greek goddess Irene Papas as the Grandmother, Brazilian actress Cláudia Ohana, who happened to be married to Guerra at the time, as the titular character, and former Bond villain Michael Lonsdale in a small but important role as a Senator who tries to help Eréndira get out of her life as a slave, the movie would be Mexico's entry into the 1983 Academy Award race for Best Foreign Language Film.   After acquiring the film for American distribution, Miramax would score a coup by getting the film accepted to that year's New York Film Festival, alongside such films as Robert Altman's Streamers, Jean Lucy Godard's Passion, Lawrence Kasdan's The Big Chill, Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish, and Andrzej Wajda's Danton.   But despite some stellar reviews from many of the New York City film critics, Eréndira would not get nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, and Miramax would wait until April 27th, 1984, to open the film at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, one of the most important theatres in New York City at the time to launch a foreign film. A quarter page ad in the New York Times included quotes from the Village Voice, New York Magazine, Vincent Canby of the Times and Roger Ebert, the movie would gross an impressive $25,500 in its first three days. Word of mouth in the city would be strong, with its second weekend gross actually increasing nearly 20% to $30,500. Its third weekend would fall slightly, but with $27k in the till would still be better than its first weekend.   It wouldn't be until Week 5 that Eréndira would expand into Los Angeles and Chicago, where it would continue to gross nearly $20k per screen for several more weeks. The film would continue to play across the nation for more than half a year, and despite never making more than four prints of the film, Eréndira would gross more than $600k in America, one of the best non-English language releases for all of 1984.   In their quickest turnaround from one film to another to date, Miramax would release Claude Lelouch's Edith and Marcel not five weeks after Eréndira.   If you're not familiar with the name Claude Chabrol, I would highly suggest becoming so. Chabrol was a part of the French New Wave filmmakers alongside Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Éric Rohmer, and François Truffaut who came up as film critics for the influential French magazine Cahiers [ka-yay] du Cinéma in the 1950s, who would go on to change the direction of French Cinema and how film fans appreciated films and filmmakers through the concept of The Auteur Theory, although the theory itself would be given a name by American film critic Andrew Sarris in 1962.   Of these five critics turned filmmakers, Chabrol would be considered the most prolific and commercial. Chabrol would be the first of them to make a film, Le Beau Serge, and between 1957 and his death in 2010, he would make 58 movies. That's more than one new movie every year on average, not counting shorts and television projects he also made on the side.   American audiences knew him best for his 1966 global hit A Man and a Woman, which would sell more than $14m in tickets in the US and would be one of the few foreign language films to earn Academy Award nominations outside of the Best Foreign Language Film race. Lead actress Anouk Aimee would get a nod, and Chabrol would earn two on the film, for Best Director, which he would lose to Fred Zimmerman and A Man for All Seasons, and Best Original Screenplay, which he would win alongside his co-writer Pierre Uytterhoeven.   Edith and Marcel would tell the story of the love affair between the iconic French singer Edith Piaf and Marcel Cerdan, the French boxer who was the Middleweight Champion of the World during their affair in 1948 and 1949. Both were famous in their own right, but together, they were the Brangelina of post-World War II France. Despite the fact that Cerdan was married with three kids, their affair helped lift the spirits of the French people, until his death in October 1949, while he was flying from Paris to New York to see Piaf.   Fans of Raging Bull are somewhat familiar with Marcel Cerdan already, as Cerdan's last fight before his death would find Cerdan losing his middleweight title to Jake LaMotta.   In a weird twist of fate, Patrick Dewaere, the actor Chabrol cast as Cerdan, committed suicide just after the start of production, and while Chabrol considered shutting down the film in respect, it would be none other than Marcel Cerdan, Jr. who would step in to the role of his own father, despite never having acted before, and being six years older than his father was when he died.   When it was released in France in April 1983, it was an immediate hit, become the second highest French film of the year, and the sixth highest grosser of all films released in the country that year. However, it would not be the film France submitted to that year's Academy Award race. That would be Diane Kurys' Entre Nous, which wasn't as big a hit in France but was considered a stronger contender for the nomination, in part because of Isabelle Hupert's amazing performance but also because Entre Nous, as 110 minutes, was 50 minutes shorter than Edith and Marcel.   Harvey Weinstein would cut twenty minutes out of the film without Chabrol's consent or assistance, and when the film was released at the 57th Street Playhouse in New York City on Sunday, June 3rd, the gushing reviews in the New York Times ad would actually be for Chabrol's original cut, and they would help the film gross $15,300 in its first five days. But once the other New York critics who didn't get to see the original cut of the film saw this new cut, the critical consensus started to fall. Things felt off to them, and they would be, as a number of short trims made by Weinstein would remove important context for the film for the sake of streamlining the film. Audiences would pick up on the changes, and in its first full weekend of release, the film would only gross $12k. After two more weeks of grosses of under $4k each week, the film would close in New York City. Edith and Marcel would never play in another theatre in the United States.   And then there would be another year plus long gap before their next release, but we'll get into the reason why in a few moments.   Many people today know Rubén Blades as Daniel Salazar in Fear the Walking Dead, or from his appearances in The Milagro Beanfield War, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, or Predator 2, amongst his 40 plus acting appearances over the years, but in the early 1980s, he was a salsa and Latin Jazz musician and singer who had yet to break out of the New Yorican market. With an idea for a movie about a singer and musician not unlike himself trying to attempt a crossover success into mainstream music, he would approach his friend, director Leon Icasho, about teaming up to get the idea fleshed out into a real movie. Although Blades was at best a cult music star, and Icasho had only made one movie before, they were able to raise $6m from a series of local investors including Jack Rollins, who produced every Woody Allen movie from 1969's Take the Money and Run to 2015's Irrational Man, to make their movie, which they would start shooting in the Spanish Harlem section of New York City in December 1982.   Despite the luxury of a large budget for an independent Latino production, the shooting schedule was very tight, less than five weeks. There would be a number of large musical segments to show Blades' character Rudy's talents as a musician and singer, with hundreds of extras on hand in each scene. Icasho would stick to his 28 day schedule, and the film would wrap up shortly after the New Year.   Even though the director would have his final cut of the movie ready by the start of summer 1983, it would take nearly a year and a half for any distributor to nibble. It wasn't that the film was tedious. Quite the opposite. Many distributors enjoyed the film, but worried about, ironically, the ability of the film to crossover out of the Latino market into the mainstream. So when Miramax came along with a lower than hoped for offer to release the film, the filmmakers took the deal, because they just wanted the film out there.   Things would start to pick up for the film when Miramax submitted the film to be entered into the 1985 Cannes Film Festival, and it would be submitted to run in the prestigious Directors Fortnight program, alongside Mike Newell's breakthrough film, Dance with a Stranger, Victor Nunez's breakthrough film, A Flash of Green, and Wayne Wang's breakthrough film Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart. While they were waiting for Cannes to get back to them, they would also learn the film had been selected to be a part of The Lincoln Center's New Directors/New Films program, where the film would earn raves from local critics and audiences, especially for Blades, who many felt was a screen natural. After more praise from critics and audiences on the French Riviera, Miramax would open Crossover Dreams at the Cinema Studio theatre in midtown Manhattan on August 23rd, 1985. Originally booked into the smaller 180 seat auditorium, since John Huston's Prizzi's Honor was still doing good business in the 300 seat house in its fourth week, the theatre would swap houses for the films when it became clear early on Crossover Dreams' first day that it would be the more popular title that weekend. And it would. While Prizzi would gross a still solid $10k that weekend, Crossover Dreams would gross $35k. In its second weekend, the film would again gross $35k. And in its third weekend, another $35k. They were basically selling out every seat at every show those first three weeks. Clearly, the film was indeed doing some crossover business.   But, strangely, Miramax would wait seven weeks after opening the film in New York to open it in Los Angeles. With a new ad campaign that de-emphasized Blades and played up the dreamer dreaming big aspect of the film, Miramax would open the movie at two of the more upscale theatres in the area, the Cineplex Beverly Center on the outskirts of Beverly Hills, and the Cineplex Brentwood Twin, on the west side where many of Hollywood's tastemakers called home. Even with a plethora of good reviews from the local press, and playing at two theatres with a capacity of more than double the one theatre playing the film in New York, Crossover Dreams could only manage a neat $13k opening weekend.   Slowly but surely, Miramax would add a few more prints in additional major markets, but never really gave the film the chance to score with Latino audiences who may have been craving a salsa-infused musical/drama, even if it was entirely in English. Looking back, thirty-eight years later, that seems to have been a mistake, but it seems that the film's final gross of just $250k after just ten weeks of release was leaving a lot of money on the table. At awards time, Blades would be nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Actor, but otherwise, the film would be shut out of any further consideration.   But for all intents and purposes, the film did kinda complete its mission of turning Blades into a star. He continues to be one of the busiest Latino actors in Hollywood over the last forty years, and it would help get one of his co-stars, Elizabeth Peña, a major job in a major Hollywood film the following year, as the live-in maid at Richard Dreyfuss and Bette Midler's house in Paul Mazursky's Down and Out in Beverly Hills, which would give her a steady career until her passing in 2014. And Icasho himself would have a successful directing career both on movie screens and on television, working on such projects as Miami Vice, Crime Story, The Equalizer, Criminal Minds, and Queen of the South, until his passing this past May.   I'm going to briefly mention a Canadian drama called The Dog Who Stopped the War that Miramax released on three screens in their home town of Buffalo on October 25th, 1985. A children's film about two groups of children in a small town in Quebec during their winter break who get involved in an ever-escalating snowball fight. It would be the highest grossing local film in Canada in 1984, and would become the first in a series of 25 family films under a Tales For All banner made by a company called Party Productions, which will be releasing their newest film in the series later this year. The film may have huge in Canada, but in Buffalo in the late fall, the film would only gross $15k in its first, and only, week in theatres. The film would eventually develop a cult following thanks to repeated cable screenings during the holidays every year.   We'll also give a brief mention to an Australian action movie called Cool Change, directed by George Miller. No, not the George Miller who created the Mad Max series, but the other Australian director named George Miller, who had to start going by George T. Miller to differentiate himself from the other George Miller, even though this George Miller was directing before the other George Miller, and even had a bigger local and global hit in 1982 with The Man From Snowy River than the other George Miller had with Mad Max II, aka The Road Warrior. It would also be the second movie released by Miramax in a year starring a young Australian ingenue named Deborra-Lee Furness, who was also featured in Crossover Dreams. Today, most people know her as Mrs. Hugh Jackman.   The internet and several book sources say the movie opened in America on March 14th, 1986, but damn if I can find any playdate anywhere in the country, period. Not even in the Weinsteins' home territory of Buffalo. A critic from the Sydney Morning Herald would call the film, which opened in Australia four weeks after it allegedly opened in America, a spectacularly simplistic propaganda piece for the cattle farmers of the Victorian high plains,” and in its home country, it would barely gross 2% of its $3.5m budget.   And sticking with brief mentions of Australian movies Miramax allegedly released in American in the spring of 1986, we move over to one of three movies directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith that would be released during that year. In Australia, it was titled Frog Dreaming, but for America, the title was changed to The Quest. The film stars Henry Thomas from E.T. as an American boy who has moved to Australia to be with his guardian after his parents die, who finds himself caught up in the magic of a local Aboriginal myth that might be more real than anyone realizes.   And like Cool Change, I cannot find any American playdates for the film anywhere near its alleged May 1st, 1986 release date. I even contacted Mr. Trenchard-Smith asking him if he remembers anything about the American release of his film, knowing full well it's 37 years later, but while being very polite in his response, he was unable to help.       Finally, we get back to the movies we actually can talk about with some certainty. I know our next movie was actually released in American theatres, because I saw it in America at a cinema.   Twist and Shout tells the story of two best friends, Bjørn and Erik, growing up in suburbs of Copenhagen, Denmark in 1963. The music of The Beatles, who are just exploding in Europe, help provide a welcome respite from the harsh realities of their lives.   Directed by Billie August, Twist and Shout would become the first of several August films to be released by Miramax over the next decade, including his follow-up, which would end up become Miramax's first Oscar-winning release, but we'll be talking about that movie on our next episode.   August was often seen as a spiritual successor to Ingmar Bergman within Scandinavian cinema, so much so that Bergman would handpick August to direct a semi-autobiographical screenplay of his, The Best Intentions, in the early 1990s, when it became clear to Bergman that he would not be able to make it himself. Bergman's only stipulation was that August would need to cast one of his actresses from Fanny and Alexander, Pernilla Wallgren, as his stand-in character's mother. August and Wallgren had never met until they started filming. By the end of shooting, Pernilla Wallgren would be Pernilla August, but that's another story for another time.   In a rare twist, Twist and Shout would open in Los Angeles before New York City, at the Cineplex Beverly Center August 22nd, 1986, more than two years after it opened across Denmark. Loaded with accolades including a Best Picture Award from the European Film Festival and positive reviews from the likes of Gene Siskel and Michael Wilmington, the movie would gross, according to Variety, a “crisp” $14k in its first three days. In its second weekend, the Beverly Center would add a second screen for the film, and the gross would increase to $17k. And by week four, one of those prints at the Beverly Center would move to the Laemmle Monica 4, so those on the West Side who didn't want to go east of the 405 could watch it. But the combined $13k gross would not be as good as the previous week's $14k from the two screens at the Beverly Center.   It wouldn't be until Twist and Shout's sixth week of release they would finally add a screen in New York City, the 68th Street Playhouse, where it would gross $25k in its first weekend there. But after nine weeks, never playing in more than five theatres in any given weekend, Twist and Shout was down and out, with only $204k in ticket sales. But it was good enough for Miramax to acquire August's next movie, and actually get it into American theatres within a year of its release in Denmark and Sweden. Join us next episode for that story.   Earlier, I teased about why Miramax took more than a year off from releasing movies in 1984 and 1985. And we've reached that point in the timeline to tell that story.   After writing and producing The Burning in 1981, Bob and Harvey had decided what they really wanted to do was direct. But it would take years for them to come up with an idea and flesh that story out to a full length screenplay. They'd return to their roots as rock show promoters, borrowing heavily from one of Harvey's first forays into that field, when he and a partner, Corky Burger, purchased an aging movie theatre in Buffalo in 1974 and turned it into a rock and roll hall for a few years, until they gutted and demolished the theatre, so they could sell the land, with Harvey's half of the proceeds becoming much of the seed money to start Miramax up.   After graduating high school, three best friends from New York get the opportunity of a lifetime when they inherit an old run down hotel upstate, with dreams of turning it into a rock and roll hotel. But when they get to the hotel, they realize the place is going to need a lot more work than they initially realized, and they realize they are not going to get any help from any of the locals, who don't want them or their silly rock and roll hotel in their quaint and quiet town.   With a budget of only $5m, and a story that would need to be filmed entirely on location, the cast would not include very many well known actors.   For the lead role of Danny, the young man who inherits the hotel, they would cast Daniel Jordano, whose previous acting work had been nameless characters in movies like Death Wish 3 and Streetwalkin'. This would be his first leading role.   Danny's two best friends, Silk and Spikes, would be played by Leon W. Grant and Matthew Penn, respectively. Like Jordano, both Grant and Penn had also worked in small supporting roles, although Grant would actually play characters with actual names like Boo Boo and Chollie. Penn, the son of Bonnie and Clyde director Arthur Penn, would ironically have his first acting role in a 1983 musical called Rock and Roll Hotel, about a young trio of musicians who enter a Battle of the Bands at an old hotel called The Rock and Roll Hotel. This would also be their first leading roles.   Today, there are two reasons to watch Playing For Keeps.   One of them is to see just how truly awful Bob and Harvey Weinstein were as directors. 80% of the movie is master shots without any kind of coverage, 15% is wannabe MTV music video if those videos were directed by space aliens handed video cameras and not told what to do with them, and 5% Jordano mimicking Kevin Bacon in Footloose but with the heaviest New Yawk accent this side of Bensonhurst.   The other reason is to watch a young actress in her first major screen role, who is still mesmerizing and hypnotic despite the crapfest she is surrounded by. Nineteen year old Marisa Tomei wouldn't become a star because of this movie, but it was clear very early on she was going to become one, someday.   Mostly shot in and around the grounds of the Bethany Colony Resort in Bethany PA, the film would spend six weeks in production during June and July of 1984, and they would spend more than a year and a half putting the film together. As music men, they knew a movie about a rock and roll hotel for younger people who need to have a lot of hip, cool, teen-friendly music on the soundtrack. So, naturally, the Weinsteins would recruit such hip, cool, teen-friendly musicians like Pete Townshend of The Who, Phil Collins, Peter Frampton, Sister Sledge, already defunct Duran Duran side project Arcadia, and Hinton Battle, who had originated the role of The Scarecrow in the Broadway production of The Wiz. They would spend nearly $500k to acquire B-sides and tossed away songs that weren't good enough to appear on the artists' regular albums.   Once again light on money, Miramax would sent the completed film out to the major studios to see if they'd be willing to release the movie. A sale would bring some much needed capital back into the company immediately, and creating a working relationship with a major studio could be advantageous in the long run. Universal Pictures would buy the movie from Miramax for an undisclosed sum, and set an October 3rd release.   Playing For Keeps would open on 1148 screens that day, including 56 screens in the greater Los Angeles region and 80 in the New York City metropolitan area. But it wasn't the best week to open this film. Crocodile Dundee had opened the week before and was a surprise hit, spending a second week firmly atop the box office charts with $8.2m in ticket sales. Its nearest competitor, the Burt Lancaster/Kirk Douglas comedy Tough Guys, would be the week's highest grossing new film, with $4.6m. Number three was Top Gun, earning $2.405m in its 21st week in theatres, and Stand By Me was in fourth in its ninth week with $2.396m. In fifth place, playing in only 215 theatres, would be another new opener, Children of a Lesser God, with $1.9m. And all the way down in sixth place, with only $1.4m in ticket sales, was Playing for Keeps.   The reviews were fairly brutal, and by that, I mean they were fair in their brutality, although you'll have to do some work to find those reviews. No one has ever bothered to link their reviews for Playing For Keeps at Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic. After a second weekend, where the film would lose a quarter of its screens and 61% of its opening weekend business, Universal would cut its losses and dump the film into dollar houses. The final reported box office gross on the film would be $2.67m.   Bob Weinstein would never write or direct another film, and Harvey Weinstein would only have one other directing credit to his name, an animated movie called The Gnomes' Great Adventure, which wasn't really a directing effort so much as buying the American rights to a 1985 Spanish animated series called The World of David the Gnome, creating new English language dubs with actors like Tom Bosley, Frank Gorshin, Christopher Plummer, and Tony Randall, and selling the new versions to Nickelodeon.   Sadly, we would learn in October 2017 that one of the earliest known episodes of sexual harassment by Harvey Weinstein happened during the pre-production of Playing for Keeps.   In 1984, a twenty year old college junior Tomi-Ann Roberts was waiting tables in New York City, hoping to start an acting career. Weinstein, who one of her customers at this restaurant, urged Ms. Roberts to audition for a movie that he and his brother were planning to direct. He sent her the script and asked her to meet him where he was staying so they could discuss the film. When she arrived at his hotel room, the door was left slightly ajar, and he called on her to come in and close the door behind her.  She would find Weinstein nude in the bathtub,  where he told her she would give a much better audition if she were comfortable getting naked in front of him too, because the character she might play would have a topless scene. If she could not bare her breasts in private, she would not be able to do it on film. She was horrified and rushed out of the room, after telling Weinstein that she was too prudish to go along. She felt he had manipulated her by feigning professional interest in her, and doubted she had ever been under serious consideration. That incident would send her life in a different direction. In 2017, Roberts was a psychology professor at Colorado College, researching sexual objectification, an interest she traces back in part to that long-ago encounter.   And on that sad note, we're going to take our leave.   Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again next week, when we continue with story of Miramax Films, from 1987.   Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about the movies we covered this episode.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.

This week we're focusing on a pair of films that feature many missed connections, giving our title a touch of irony. In this first half we're featuring Exotica, from 1994, directed by Atom Egoyan. It's a film where two parallel storylines are tied together by a third one which, oddly enough, isn't concurrent with the other two. Egoyan plays fair, though: he leaves the clues there for you; it's up to you to pick them up and put the pieces together. In Part Two, we'll travel from Canada to Turkey, to review 2007's The Edge of Heaven. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/wordsandmovies/support

In this episode of "Here, There, and Everywhere," Jack Lawless sits down with the incredibly talented actress, Ella Ballentine, for an enlightening conversation about the enduring influence of The Beatles. Acting for over 10 years, Ella has been the lead of several films including “the Black Conflux” which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and the A24 film, “the Monster”. She's worked alongside of the notable actors such as Martin Sheen, Laurence Fishburne, Susana Sarandon, and more. She is also a winner of the Canadian Screen Award.    In this interview, Jack and Ella discuss their favorite Beatles songs, talk about why the Beatles are still relevant in the 21st century, and Ella chooses three Beatles songs that would be the best introductory songs to the band.    Follow Ella on Instagram: Instagram.com/EllaBallentine Check out Ella's website: EllaBallentine.com   If you like this episode, be sure to subscribe to this podcast! Follow us on Twitter and Instagram. Or click here for more information: Linktr.ee/BeatlesEarth   --- The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the most influential band of all timeand were integral to the development of 1960s counterculture and popular music's recognition as an art form. Rooted in skiffle, beat and 1950s rock 'n' roll, their sound incorporated elements of classical music and traditional pop in innovative ways; the band later explored music styles ranging from ballads and Indian music to psychedelia and hard rock. As pioneers in recording, songwriting and artistic presentation, the Beatles revolutionised many aspects of the music industry and were often publicised as leaders of the era's youth and sociocultural movements. Led by primary songwriters Lennon and McCartney, the Beatles evolved from Lennon's previous group, the Quarrymen, and built their reputation playing clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg over three years from 1960, initially with Stuart Sutcliffe playing bass. The core trio of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison, together since 1958, went through a succession of drummers, including Pete Best, before asking Starr to join them in 1962. Manager Brian Epstein moulded them into a professional act, and producer George Martin guided and developed their recordings, greatly expanding their domestic success after signing to EMI Records and achieving their first hit, "Love Me Do", in late 1962.   Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr all released solo albums in 1970. Their solo records sometimes involved one or more of the others; Starr's Ringo (1973) was the only album to include compositions and performances by all four ex-Beatles, albeit on separate songs. With Starr's participation, Harrison staged the Concert for Bangladesh in New York City in August 1971. Other than an unreleased jam session in 1974, later bootlegged as A Toot and a Snore in '74, Lennon and McCartney never recorded together again. Two double-LP sets of the Beatles' greatest hits, compiled by Klein, 1962–1966 and 1967–1970, were released in 1973, at first under the Apple Records imprint. Commonly known as the "Red Album" and "Blue Album", respectively, each has earned a Multi-Platinum certification in the US and a Platinum certification in the UK. Between 1976 and 1982, EMI/Capitol released a wave of compilation albums without input from the ex-Beatles, starting with the double-disc compilation Rock 'n' Roll Music. The only one to feature previously unreleased material was The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl (1977); the first officially issued concert recordings by the group, it contained selections from two shows they played during their 1964 and 1965 US tours. The music and enduring fame of the Beatles were commercially exploited in various other ways, again often outside their creative control. In April 1974, the musical John, Paul, George, Ringo ... and Bert, written by Willy Russell and featuring singer Barbara Dickson, opened in London. It included, with permission from Northern Songs, eleven Lennon-McCartney compositions and one by Harrison, "Here Comes the Sun". Displeased with the production's use of his song, Harrison withdrew his permission to use it.Later that year, the off-Broadway musical Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on the Road opened. All This and World War II (1976) was an unorthodox nonfiction film that combined newsreel footage with covers of Beatles songs by performers ranging from Elton John and Keith Moon to the London Symphony Orchestra. The Broadway musical Beatlemania, an unauthorised nostalgia revue, opened in early 1977 and proved popular, spinning off five separate touring productions. In 1979, the band sued the producers, settling for several million dollars in damages. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978), a musical film starring the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton, was a commercial failure and an "artistic fiasco", according to Ingham. Accompanying the wave of Beatles nostalgia and persistent reunion rumours in the US during the 1970s, several entrepreneurs made public offers to the Beatles for a reunion concert.Promoter Bill Sargent first offered the Beatles $10 million for a reunion concert in 1974. He raised his offer to $30 million in January 1976 and then to $50 million the following month. On 24 April 1976, during a broadcast of Saturday Night Live, producer Lorne Michaels jokingly offered the Beatles $3,000 to reunite on the show. Lennon and McCartney were watching the live broadcast at Lennon's apartment at the Dakota in New York, which was within driving distance of the NBC studio where the show was being broadcast. The former bandmates briefly entertained the idea of going to the studio and surprising Michaels by accepting his offer, but decided not to. Ballentine was born in Toronto, Canada to parents Eva and Blake Ballentine. She is a graduate of the Etobicoke School of the Arts in Toronto.[5] She began her acting career as a child actor on the Toronto stage production of The Railway Children, directed by Damian Cruden (2011) for Mirvish Productions.[6] She went on to appear in other stage performances, including the lead role in Numbers, at the Toronto Fringe Festival(2013),[7][8] and as Little Cosette / Young Eponine[9] in the 25th Anniversary production of Les Misérables(2013), directed by Laurence Connor and James Powell for Mirvish Productions. Also in 2013, she was invited to the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction Gala as one of the performers to read from one of the five prize-nominated titles.[10] Her first TV role came in a Hallmark Channel movie, Baby's First Christmas (2012), in which she played Karen, a primary character with Casper Van Dienin a lead role.[11] She took on her first film role in Atom Egoyan's feature, The Captive (2013), an official selection for the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.[12]She went on to share the screen with Susan Sarandon, Gil Bellows and Christopher Heyerdahl, in The Calling. In her next larger TV movie role for Lifetime's Clara's Deadly Secret[13] (2013), she played Kate[13] alongside co-stars Emmanuelle Vaugier and Richard Ruccolo. In the 2015 feature film Standoff, Ballentine portrays one of the lead characters, Bird, a young girl who finds protection with an ex-soldier (played by Thomas Jane) from a hit-man (played by Laurence Fishburne). Although the movie received mixed reviews,[14] Rene S. Garcia, Jr. of Workingauthor.com wrote "And let's not forget Ella Ballentine. I typically have no faith in child actors, but Ella strikes the perfect tone with her burgeoning independence, but emotional and physical dependency." Eoin Friel from ActionElite felt that "Ella Ballentine almost steals the movie as Bird, the girl being pursued by Sade. The poor thing goes through an absolute nightmare and manages to never be the "annoying kid" in the film; she brings genuine heart to proceedings and is essential for Carter's redemption." In an interview on Collider, Jane stated "[Ella] was pretty wonderful. She was fun, too." Ballentine's next big role cast her as co-lead in writer/director Bryan Bertino's horror film, The Monster (2016) with co-stars Zoe Kazan, and Scott Speedman. The Monster became an independent success and Ella received Fangoria magazine's 2017 Fangoria Chainsaw Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. "If horror movie performances were given Oscars, [Kazan] would be a shoo-in. Same with Ballentine. These two are so believable," wrote Staci Layne Wilson in Dread Central.[18]Bloody Disgusting, an American horror genre website, called Ballentine "The Most Badass Horror Hero of 2016".[20] According to critics, in the horror movie, The Monster "the spooky-good Ella Ballentine"[21] came up as "a minor revelation." According to the Los Angeles Times' Justin Chang "Ballentine gives a fine, fierce performance as a child wise beyond her years and unafraid of confrontation",[23] and Matt Donato from We Got This Covered writes "Ballentine rolls with the punches well for an actress her age, and this shouldn't be understated". In 2016 Ballentine began her role as Anne Shirley in the three-part TV movie adaptation of the classic Canadian novel, Anne of Green Gables. L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables (2016) was the first instalment, followed by The Good Stars (2017),then Fire & Dew (2017). The other main characters were portrayed by Martin Sheen as Matthew Cuthbert and Sara Botsford as Marilla Cuthbert. Ballentine's performance again received critical success and landed her a Canadian Screen Award (2018). "Ballentine is charming as Anne," wrote Francesca Rudkin in the New Zealand Herald. Louise Keller in Urbancinefile states "[Ballentine] is outstanding. Wide-eyed and innocent, she proffers just the right amount of worldliness as the orphan who asks for just two things as she prays for the first time. That is a lovely scene." "I was absolutely delighted by actress Ella Ballentine's portrayal of Anne Shirley. She was a worthy Anne." wrote Sarah M. Miduski. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Sheen says "I adore [Ella]...She's an extraordinary talent...She's remarkable. And she's very funny as well. We have great fun on the set and she's got a great sense of humor. She's a joy to work with." In 2019 Ballentine plays the lead, Jackie in Nicole Dorsey's Black Conflux (2019) with Ryan McDonald as her co-lead. Stephan Dalton of The Hollywood Reporter praised Ballentine's "luminous acting".

As noted previously, this half of the episode focuses on 2008's The Baader-Meinhof Complex, directed by Uli Edel. It's a true-story thriller that depicts the activities of a terrorist group in West Germany over a ten-year period beginning in the late 1960s. There are times when you're drawn into the story enough that you find yourself leaning toward rooting for the bad guys, but ultimately you'll come to your senses and see that there's no other way this story could end. COMING ATTRACTIONS: As Sean notes, for the next few episodes the films will be from different nations. The theme of next week's episode is "Only Connect" and once you see these films you'll realize why. We'll begin with Exotica, from 1994, written and directed by Atom Egoyan. It's a Canadian film but it could take place anywhere in North America. And from there we go to 1997's The Edge of Heaven, a Turkish-German drama written and directed by Fatih Akın. It's a film whose near-misses you may find frustrating, but again there's no other way for this story to go. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/wordsandmovies/support

In May 1983, Sony released the first camcorder for domestic consumers, the Betamovie. This milestone in amateur filmmaking, 40 years on, prompts Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode to explore how home movies are depicted and used in feature film. Ellen meets academic Liz Czach to find out about the history of home movies, amateur filmmaking and and how its role has shifted in today's world of the internet and Tik Tok. John Wilson, creator of the hit docufiction show How To... With John Wilson, also joins Ellen to discuss how his early experiences with found footage, and the documentaries of Bruce Brown, impacted his approach to film. Mark talks to Canadian auteur, Atom Egoyan, about how the advent of the digital camcorder and our changing relationship to video technology influenced his early films. This week's viewing note is from the director of Skate Kitchen and The Wolfpack, Crystal Moselle, who recommends a film that utilises home movie footage. Producer: Mae-Li Evans A Prospect Street production for BBC Radio 4

In an appearance that is long overdue, Jerry Nadarajah joins us for a discussion about director Atom Egoyan's best films from the Nineties ('The Adjuster', 'Exotica' & 'The Sweet Hereafter'). Follow Jerry Nadarajah: https://twitter.com/JerAtTheMovies Follow James Hancock on Twitter: https://twitter.com/WrongReel Wrong Reel Merchandise: https://teespring.com/stores/wrong-reel

OH GOOD LORD!!!  What a week it has been!  My sweet dog passed away on Tuesday and then I got sicker than I don't know what.  So y'all are getting this final Bonus Oscar Episode a tad bit late and definitely after you already know who won what this year. The ceremony itself?  Jimmy Kimmel was, okay, I guess...and maybe the jokes were naughty enough, but I felt like he held his own.  The grouping of all the presenters was...strange, I guess?  Is there another word for it?  Idris Elba and Nicole Kidman....I mean, they're both hot, but then what??? My favorite win of the night actually was Sarah Polley, getting the Best Adapted Screenplay for WOMEN TALKING.  I still remember watching her "come of age" in the 90's in all those Atom Egoyan films and loved that she became a writer/director.  And all the horror movie fans out there were swooning to see Jamie Lee Curtis get her first Oscar. anyway - we loved doing these bonus shows for y'all and I hope you enjoyed them.  What should my co-hosts and I take on next?  We'd LOVE to hear your thoughts - hello@thetopfivepodcast.com 

"Remember" is a 2016 A24 suspense-thriller starring Christopher Plummer and Martin Landau about a Holocaust survivor with dementia on a mission to seek vengeance before he can no longer remember his life. Directed by Atom Egoyan and written by Benjamin August, we follow Zev Guttman throughout the U.S. and Canada as he rereads a letter to remind himself exactly who he must lay his vengeance upon. Does this film reach the heights of such amnesia thrillers as Memento or The Bourne Identity? Will these acclaimed actors be enough for these A24-fanatics to look upon this film favorably or will this be similar to Egoyan's last film that they reviewed? Tune in to find out. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/a24otr/support

Sarah Polley and Face2Face host David Peck talk about her new film Women Talking, curiosity, imagination, the patriarchy, trauma and grief, de and re-construction, the power of community, what it means to heal, inspiration and the greater Good.Blurb:Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, and Judith Ivey, with Ben Whishaw and Frances McDormand, star in Sarah Polley's fearless adaptation of Miriam Toews'acclaimed novel about a cloistered world where women struggle with an epidemic of abuse.Oscar-nominated writer-director Sarah Polley's fearless adaptation of Miriam Toews' acclaimed novel grants us access to a tight-knit, cloistered religious colony inwhich women struggle to recover from an epidemic of abuse. Featuring riveting, emotionally complex performances from a stunning ensemble that includes Oscarnominees Rooney Mara and Jessie Buckley and Oscar winner Frances McDormand, Women Talking is a drama of harrowing revelations, fraught alliances, and thesearch for grace.Reeling from multiple counts of sexual abuse, newly uncovered within their Mennonite colony, a group of women gather in a hayloft to discuss how to respond. Whilethe men are away, the women narrow their options down to three: do nothing, stay and fight, or leave. Some fear that any act of defiance will jeopardize their entry intoheaven, while others believe they cannot survive without husbands and sons. Some are willing to take any measures to escape the terror of their domestic lives andinsist that “the truth is stronger than the rules.”With her first feature in almost a decade, Polley showcases her unmatched skills as both a screenwriter and a director. The film is at once ferocious in its critique ofpatriarchal oppression — a critique that clearly extends to our broader, secular culture — while respectful of the beliefs and traditions in which its characters wereraised. Though it is suffused with the pain of trauma, a stubborn sense of wonder and quiet joy in community permeate the film. Women Talking ushers us through ajourney of rage, grief, wisdom, and hope through to a triumphant, most gratifying conclusion.Adapted from Jane Schoettle's Synopsis, TIFFAbout Sarah:Sarah Polley, actor, director, writer, producer, she is one of Canada's most talented and well-known actors. Sarah is also an acclaimed director and a committed political activist. As a child actor, her natural and unaffected performances on television series such as CBC's Road to Avonlea, and in films such as Atom Egoyan's Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter.After choosing to pursue a career in Canadian and independent films, she embarked on a highly successful second career as a writer-director with such award-winning films as Away from Her, Take This Waltz and Stories We Tell. Her latest film is Women Talking. She has won multiple Genie and Gemini Awards, and numerous international honours.Sarah is the first woman to receive a Genie Award for best director, and is an Officer of the Order of Canada and a member of Canada's Walk of Fame.Image Copyright and Credit: Universal Studios.F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.For more information about David Peck's podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sarah Polley has been acting in film and television since the age of five. She appeared in films like The Adventures of Baron Munchasuen was dubbed “Canada's Sweetheart” for her starring role in the hit television series The Road To Avonlea. Though she continued acting through her teens, starring in acclaimed films like The Sweet Hereafter, she's made her career as a writer and director. Her 2006 debut feature, Away From Her, garnered an Best Actress Oscar nomination for star Julie Christie and a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination for Polley. Her other films include Take This Waltz and the 2012 documentary Stories We Tell. Polley's latest film, Women Talking, is her first American studio release and features an almost all-female cast, including Rooney Mara and Frances McDormand. In this interview, Sarah talks about her entire body of film work as well as Run Towards The Danger, a collection of essays she published earlier this year. A longtime political activist with a particular commitment to emotional and physical safeguarding of the casts and crews on her movie sets, she also discusses the complexities of some of the current conversations around #MeToo movement and other social justice movements.      Guest Bio: Sarah Polley received an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for her first film as director- Away From Her, based on the short story The Bear Came Over the Mountain by Alice Munro. This film also garnered an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for star Julie Christie. Her next film Take This Waltz starred Michelle Williams, Seth Rogen, and Sarah Silverman. Stories We Tell, her documentary which examines secrets and memory in her own family, won Best Documentary Film awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, National Board of Review, and the New York Film Critics Circle, as well as a Writer's Guild of America award for its screenplay. As an actor, Polley starred in a wide variety of films including Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter (Best Supporting Actress award from the Boston Society of Film Critics), Doug Liman's Go  (Independent Spirit Award nomination), Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead, Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody opposite Jared Leto, Kathryn Bigelow's The Weight of Water opposite Ciaran Hinds, David Cronenberg's Existenz, Isabel Coixet's The Secret Life of Words and My Life Without Me (Canadian Screen Award, Best Actress), Audrey Wells' Guinevere, Wim Wenders' Don't Come Knocking, Michael Winterbottom's The Claim, and Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.    In 2022, Polley released Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory, an autobiographical collection of essays detailing her relationship with her body and how her memory of past and present experiences has contributed to her evolving understanding of self.

Watch With Jen started 2022 with an episode featuring fan favorite S.A. Cosby, so as we begin wrapping up our third season, it's only fitting that we bring Shawn back to discuss more movies he loves. As kind and genuine as he is knowledgeable and gifted, the first time I ever chatted with Shawn was one week before he released the book that would become a smash success and put him on the map.The remarkable Blacktop Wasteland won an avalanche of well-deserved praise and awards, including the Anthony and the International Thriller Writers Award for Best Hardcover Fiction Novel. Impressively, his follow-up title Razorblade Tears met and/or exceeded all expectations, becoming a runaway New York Times bestseller, earning Shawn another boatload of accolades, including repeat honors from organizations that celebrated Blacktop Wasteland the previous year. Perhaps the most staggeringly awesome achievement for Razorblade Tears, however, was when it was included as one of the titles on former President Obama's list of summer reads! Yet still as gracious as ever and well-loved among his colleagues, we're all so very proud of Shawn, and, considering that he was working intensely on the final edits of his next novel All the Sinners Bleed (out June 2023), I appreciated all the more his taking the time to tackle a filmmaker that fascinates him in this roughly one hundred minute conversation.While the first part of our chat is devoted to his own work because fans always want to know what's going on with the screen adaptations of his books and all other news (including my attempts to make him blush with questions from his best friend Nikki Dolson), we then venture north to Toronto to look at the weird, wild, kinky, yet morose filled world of Armenian-Egyptian-Canadian writer-director Atom Egoyan.Drawn to stories of tragedy, regret, alienation, isolation in modern society, and our struggles to connect with one another, in this episode, we look at his two career high-water marks of the 1990s with Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter, as well as his biggest box office hit from 2009 in Chloe. Analyzing the films' rich characterization, performances, and our impressions of what Egoyan is trying to say, while we do get deep, we also entertain, whether it's in the tale I share about this time in college when this woman in the quad tried to recruit me to join her escort agency (she had the wrong girl!) or Shawn talking about the beauty of ambiguous endings while touching on his own work. Cinephiles will dig this episode.Logo: KateGabrielle.comTheme Music: Solo Acoustic Guitar by Jason Shaw, Free Music ArchiveOriginally Posted on Patreon (11/14/22) here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/74615939

Johnny Kalangis (he/him) is a multi-award-winning film director, installation artist, and digital media creative from Toronto/T'karonto, Canada. He is a first-generation white settler of Greek descent. His first feature film, the anti-romantic micro-budget comedy Jack & Jill, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (1999) and was executive produced by Atom Egoyan. His second film, Love Is Work, won the People's Choice Award at the Whistler International Film Festival (2005) and was the closing gala at the Canadian Film Festival in Toronto. His horror-comedy, The Mad (2007), starring Billy Zane, opened the Canadian Film Festival (Toronto) and enjoys cult classic status. Johnny has done interactive, narrative film art installations at Toronto's Nuit Blanche on three occasions. The pieces Road Trips, Road Trips (1984), and, Airwaves allowed visitors to interact with their physical space to create and collaborate on their narrative experiences. Johnny is currently the VP of Digital at Toronto's Cream Productions. He executive produced CNN's Behind The Desk, The Story of Late Night (WINNER! 2022 Webby Award) podcast, and the A Ghost Ruined My Life with Eli Roth (Discovery) podcasts. He also creates interactive digital media projects in augmented and virtual reality. He has designed games and game narratives and, this year, is also the executive producer on an album release. In the past, he was a producer and executive at CBC Digital/TV and VP, Creative Director, Digital, and the multi-award-winning company, marblemedia. He studied English, film theory and criticism, filmmaking, and interactive digital media at Western University, New York University, and the Canadian Film Centre. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/experimentalfilmpodcast/support

Welcome to the return of Intermission, a spin-off podcast from The Film Stage Show. Led by yours truly, Michael Snydel, I invite a guest to discuss an arthouse, foreign, or experimental film of their choice. For the fourteenth episode, I talked to the editor-in-chief/co-founder of The Film Stage, Jordan Raup, about Canadian auteur Atom Egoyan's 1994 erotic melodrama Exotica (available on a new Criterion Collection disc and alongside Calendar, The Sweet Hereafter, and The Adjustor on the Criterion Channel). At first blush, Egoyan's film defies easy categorization with its recursive structure, multiple central characters, and the director's own penchant for throwing viewers into previously defined relationships. Exotica's dizzying construction only amplifies those sensations with the characters' winding stream-of-consciousness monologues, DP Paul Sarossy's furtive camerawork, and Mychael Danna's Egyptian-influenced score. The plot isn't easily described, but it can be distilled down to the intersection of initially undefinable relationships of clientele and employees at the namesake's strip club. These oddballs range from lovelorn MCs to closeted bird egg collectors and Freudian father figures. Nearly every one of these characters meshes into a diagrammatic arc to reach the mosaic-esque climax, but those intricacies are a means to an end. Exotica (and arguably, Egoyan's body of work) traffic in the claustrophobically intimate, introducing dynamics that act as conduits for hard emotional truths. To remove the film from its obtuse contexts, consider instead that Egoyan's two primary influences for writing Exotica were being audited in real life and learning about the no-touch rule at strip clubs. Alike, today's podcast could be seen as an attempt to find a middle ground between these two perceptions of Exotica––one as a psychosexual nesting doll and the other as an emotionally linear inquiry into personal trauma and its ensuing repercussions. Along the way, we discuss the film's unexpected reception (one of two films to ever win awards at both the AVN Awards and Cannes), the shortcomings of its contemporary parallels, and Elias Koteas. Enter our giveaways, get access to our private Slack channel, and support new episodes by becoming a Patreon contributor. For a limited time, all new Patreon supporters will receive a free Blu-ray/DVD. After becoming a contributor, e-mail podcast@thefilmstage.com for an up-to-date list of available films. Intermission is supported by MUBI, a curated streaming service showcasing exceptional films from around the globe. Every day, MUBI premieres a new film. Whether it's a timeless classic, a cult favorite, or an acclaimed masterpiece — it's guaranteed to be either a movie you've been dying to see or one you've never heard of before and there will always be something new to discover. Try it for free for 30 days at mubi.com/filmstage.

Baz Luhrmann returns with an Elvis biopic, and the guys don't agree on the results. Joe recommends a new Netflix series. Jared dives into the work of Atom Egoyan. Michael anticipates the latest Robert McKee book.

The gang discuss the use of language in erotic thrillers, different perspectives on when a character looks at the audience, and the finer points of using a bicycle in cold weather in Atom Egoyan's Chloe.     Night on the Docks - Sax Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/