Podcasts about frank capra's it

This week's movie review episode is all about Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946, Paramount Pictures) starring Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed. A beautifully told story about life, choices, what we think we want, and what we sometimes forget we already have.

Merry Christmas everyone! On this episode of The Movies Made Us Do It, Durs and Matt discuss Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946) Find links to all of our shows here: Linktr.ee/DursProductions #itsawonderfullife # FrankCapra #JamesStewart #DonnaReed #christmasfilm #christmasmovies #dursproductions #dursproductionspodcasts #filmpodcast #moviepodcast #moviereview #filmreview

On this day in 1946, Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life" premiered at the Globe Theatre in New York City.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Happy holidays from all of us here at SYG! The winter solstice is upon and it's one of the darkest times of the year. So as you're enjoying the lights on your Christmas tree and lighting your Christmas candles, just remember that though the holidays are a time for joy and cheer, it has a much darker history than that. This, our annual Christmas special, will be our final episode for the holidays but we'll be back in a few weeks with more discussions with some of the luminaries of darkness. Everyone has their favorite Christmas movie classics but perhaps the gold standard is Frank Capra's “It's a Wonderful Life”. Featuring Jimmy Stewart learning that every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings, it was only a matter of time before some master of the macabre took a stab at the setup for a horror film. And boy are we lucky that that particular filmmaker happened to by our guest today, Tyler MacIntyre with his new film “It's a Wonderful Knife”. If you don't love the title already you deserve to be boiled in your own Christmas pudding. With a genre cast to die for, a razor-sharp script by Michael Kennedy (who wrote the genre hit “Freaky”) and a Christmas killer sure to join the ranks of the great Christmas slashers, “It's a Wonderful Knife” has all the ingredients to become a Christmas horror fans tradition. Tyler and I sat down to discuss the importance of inclusivity in modern horror, some tips of the trade for pursuing a career in filmmaking that are sure to be of great help for our aspiring filmmaker listeners, what he took from Hallmark when creating his own Christmas tale and how the film nods to “It's a Wonderful Life” in some very sly ways. We also discuss the creation of Justin Long's insane and wonderfully bizarre villain. “It's a Wonderful Knife” is available on Shudder, AMC+ and anywhere you rent your movies. Okay, let's sharpen our candy canes and get our wings with Tyler MacIntyre! ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life is one of the best-loved films of Classical Hollywood cinema, a story of despair and redemption in the aftermath of war that is one of the central movies of the 1940s, and a key text in America's understanding of itself. This is a film that remains relevant to our own anxieties and yearnings, to all the contradictions of ordinary life, while also enacting for us the quintessence of the classic Hollywood aesthetic. Nostalgia, humour, and a tough resilience weave themselves through this movie, intertwining it with the fraught cultural moment of the end of World War II that saw its birth. It offers a still compelling merging of fantasy and realism that was utterly unique when it was first released, and has rarely been matched since. Michael Newton's study of the film, It's a Wonderful Life (British Film Institute, 2023), investigates the source of its extraordinary power and its long-lasting impact. He begins by introducing the key figures in the movie's production - notably director Frank Capra and star James Stewart - and traces the making of the film, and then provides a brief synopsis of the film, considering its aesthetic processes and procedures, touching on all those things that make it such an astonishing film. Newton's careful analysis explores all those aspects of the film that are fundamental to our understanding of it, particularly the way in which the film brings tragedy and comedy together. Finally, Newton tells the story of the film's reception and afterlife, accounting for its initial relative failure and its subsequent immense popularity. Michael Newton is Lecturer in English at Leiden University, Netherlands. He is the author of Savage Girls and Wild Boys: A History of Feral Children (2002), Age of Assassins: A History of Conspiracy and Political Violence, 1865-1981 (2012), and of Kind Hearts and Coronets (2003) and Rosemary's Baby (2020) in the BFI Film Classics series. Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O'Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers and articles on G. K. Chesterton and John Ford, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found here on the New Books Network and on X. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life is one of the best-loved films of Classical Hollywood cinema, a story of despair and redemption in the aftermath of war that is one of the central movies of the 1940s, and a key text in America's understanding of itself. This is a film that remains relevant to our own anxieties and yearnings, to all the contradictions of ordinary life, while also enacting for us the quintessence of the classic Hollywood aesthetic. Nostalgia, humour, and a tough resilience weave themselves through this movie, intertwining it with the fraught cultural moment of the end of World War II that saw its birth. It offers a still compelling merging of fantasy and realism that was utterly unique when it was first released, and has rarely been matched since. Michael Newton's study of the film, It's a Wonderful Life (British Film Institute, 2023), investigates the source of its extraordinary power and its long-lasting impact. He begins by introducing the key figures in the movie's production - notably director Frank Capra and star James Stewart - and traces the making of the film, and then provides a brief synopsis of the film, considering its aesthetic processes and procedures, touching on all those things that make it such an astonishing film. Newton's careful analysis explores all those aspects of the film that are fundamental to our understanding of it, particularly the way in which the film brings tragedy and comedy together. Finally, Newton tells the story of the film's reception and afterlife, accounting for its initial relative failure and its subsequent immense popularity. Michael Newton is Lecturer in English at Leiden University, Netherlands. He is the author of Savage Girls and Wild Boys: A History of Feral Children (2002), Age of Assassins: A History of Conspiracy and Political Violence, 1865-1981 (2012), and of Kind Hearts and Coronets (2003) and Rosemary's Baby (2020) in the BFI Film Classics series. Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O'Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers and articles on G. K. Chesterton and John Ford, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found here on the New Books Network and on X. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life is one of the best-loved films of Classical Hollywood cinema, a story of despair and redemption in the aftermath of war that is one of the central movies of the 1940s, and a key text in America's understanding of itself. This is a film that remains relevant to our own anxieties and yearnings, to all the contradictions of ordinary life, while also enacting for us the quintessence of the classic Hollywood aesthetic. Nostalgia, humour, and a tough resilience weave themselves through this movie, intertwining it with the fraught cultural moment of the end of World War II that saw its birth. It offers a still compelling merging of fantasy and realism that was utterly unique when it was first released, and has rarely been matched since. Michael Newton's study of the film, It's a Wonderful Life (British Film Institute, 2023), investigates the source of its extraordinary power and its long-lasting impact. He begins by introducing the key figures in the movie's production - notably director Frank Capra and star James Stewart - and traces the making of the film, and then provides a brief synopsis of the film, considering its aesthetic processes and procedures, touching on all those things that make it such an astonishing film. Newton's careful analysis explores all those aspects of the film that are fundamental to our understanding of it, particularly the way in which the film brings tragedy and comedy together. Finally, Newton tells the story of the film's reception and afterlife, accounting for its initial relative failure and its subsequent immense popularity. Michael Newton is Lecturer in English at Leiden University, Netherlands. He is the author of Savage Girls and Wild Boys: A History of Feral Children (2002), Age of Assassins: A History of Conspiracy and Political Violence, 1865-1981 (2012), and of Kind Hearts and Coronets (2003) and Rosemary's Baby (2020) in the BFI Film Classics series. Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O'Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers and articles on G. K. Chesterton and John Ford, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found here on the New Books Network and on X. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life is one of the best-loved films of Classical Hollywood cinema, a story of despair and redemption in the aftermath of war that is one of the central movies of the 1940s, and a key text in America's understanding of itself. This is a film that remains relevant to our own anxieties and yearnings, to all the contradictions of ordinary life, while also enacting for us the quintessence of the classic Hollywood aesthetic. Nostalgia, humour, and a tough resilience weave themselves through this movie, intertwining it with the fraught cultural moment of the end of World War II that saw its birth. It offers a still compelling merging of fantasy and realism that was utterly unique when it was first released, and has rarely been matched since. Michael Newton's study of the film, It's a Wonderful Life (British Film Institute, 2023), investigates the source of its extraordinary power and its long-lasting impact. He begins by introducing the key figures in the movie's production - notably director Frank Capra and star James Stewart - and traces the making of the film, and then provides a brief synopsis of the film, considering its aesthetic processes and procedures, touching on all those things that make it such an astonishing film. Newton's careful analysis explores all those aspects of the film that are fundamental to our understanding of it, particularly the way in which the film brings tragedy and comedy together. Finally, Newton tells the story of the film's reception and afterlife, accounting for its initial relative failure and its subsequent immense popularity. Michael Newton is Lecturer in English at Leiden University, Netherlands. He is the author of Savage Girls and Wild Boys: A History of Feral Children (2002), Age of Assassins: A History of Conspiracy and Political Violence, 1865-1981 (2012), and of Kind Hearts and Coronets (2003) and Rosemary's Baby (2020) in the BFI Film Classics series. Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O'Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers and articles on G. K. Chesterton and John Ford, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found here on the New Books Network and on X. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life is one of the best-loved films of Classical Hollywood cinema, a story of despair and redemption in the aftermath of war that is one of the central movies of the 1940s, and a key text in America's understanding of itself. This is a film that remains relevant to our own anxieties and yearnings, to all the contradictions of ordinary life, while also enacting for us the quintessence of the classic Hollywood aesthetic. Nostalgia, humour, and a tough resilience weave themselves through this movie, intertwining it with the fraught cultural moment of the end of World War II that saw its birth. It offers a still compelling merging of fantasy and realism that was utterly unique when it was first released, and has rarely been matched since. Michael Newton's study of the film, It's a Wonderful Life (British Film Institute, 2023), investigates the source of its extraordinary power and its long-lasting impact. He begins by introducing the key figures in the movie's production - notably director Frank Capra and star James Stewart - and traces the making of the film, and then provides a brief synopsis of the film, considering its aesthetic processes and procedures, touching on all those things that make it such an astonishing film. Newton's careful analysis explores all those aspects of the film that are fundamental to our understanding of it, particularly the way in which the film brings tragedy and comedy together. Finally, Newton tells the story of the film's reception and afterlife, accounting for its initial relative failure and its subsequent immense popularity. Michael Newton is Lecturer in English at Leiden University, Netherlands. He is the author of Savage Girls and Wild Boys: A History of Feral Children (2002), Age of Assassins: A History of Conspiracy and Political Violence, 1865-1981 (2012), and of Kind Hearts and Coronets (2003) and Rosemary's Baby (2020) in the BFI Film Classics series. Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O'Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers and articles on G. K. Chesterton and John Ford, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found here on the New Books Network and on X. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life is one of the best-loved films of Classical Hollywood cinema, a story of despair and redemption in the aftermath of war that is one of the central movies of the 1940s, and a key text in America's understanding of itself. This is a film that remains relevant to our own anxieties and yearnings, to all the contradictions of ordinary life, while also enacting for us the quintessence of the classic Hollywood aesthetic. Nostalgia, humour, and a tough resilience weave themselves through this movie, intertwining it with the fraught cultural moment of the end of World War II that saw its birth. It offers a still compelling merging of fantasy and realism that was utterly unique when it was first released, and has rarely been matched since. Michael Newton's study of the film, It's a Wonderful Life (British Film Institute, 2023), investigates the source of its extraordinary power and its long-lasting impact. He begins by introducing the key figures in the movie's production - notably director Frank Capra and star James Stewart - and traces the making of the film, and then provides a brief synopsis of the film, considering its aesthetic processes and procedures, touching on all those things that make it such an astonishing film. Newton's careful analysis explores all those aspects of the film that are fundamental to our understanding of it, particularly the way in which the film brings tragedy and comedy together. Finally, Newton tells the story of the film's reception and afterlife, accounting for its initial relative failure and its subsequent immense popularity. Michael Newton is Lecturer in English at Leiden University, Netherlands. He is the author of Savage Girls and Wild Boys: A History of Feral Children (2002), Age of Assassins: A History of Conspiracy and Political Violence, 1865-1981 (2012), and of Kind Hearts and Coronets (2003) and Rosemary's Baby (2020) in the BFI Film Classics series. Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O'Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers and articles on G. K. Chesterton and John Ford, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found here on the New Books Network and on X. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

The last episode of 2022 is now available and joining @ready2retro for the occasion is Max's wife, Jasmine! Together Max and Jasmine talk about one of their favorite movies of all-time, Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946)! This film is a classic for a reason! The sentimental and realitic storytelling of the joy and pain of life sparks so many conversation in this episode. Join in the conversation and get Ready 2 Retro!

The trio close out the year and the season with a Christmas classic, Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life.

For this year's Holiday film, John and Steve have decided to revisit one of their absolute favorites. Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. At #20 on the AFI 100, It's a Wonderful life isn't just a great Christmas movie, it's a great movie period. With incredible performances from Jimmy Steward, Donna Reed and Thomas Mitchell, a brilliant script, fantastic filmmaking top to bottom and a story that never fails, this movie has as much or even more to say today than it did when it came out almost 75 years ago. If you haven't seen this incredible film you can buy or stream it right here. https://amzn.to/3UoQHKk Don't forget to support The Cine-Files at https://www.patreon.com/TheCineFiles and purchase any film we feature at https://www.cine-files.net Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheCineFilesPod/?ref=bookmarks John @therochasays Steve @srmorris The Cine-Files Twitter @cine_files Instagram thecinefilespodcast --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thecine-files/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thecine-files/support

Donny and Maura dive into a classic for another holiday celebration! Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life is a classic today but it was a box office disappointment when it was released. The film  earned a lasting legacy over the years! It starred Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed and was based on a short story, The Greatest Gift by Phillip Van Doren Stern.Connect with A Reel Page Turner: https://www.facebook.com/groups/352221223264794https://www.areelpageturner.com/Twitter: @AReelPageTurnerInstagram: @AReelPageTurnerTikTok:@areelpageturner

Friends,A while back, I shared with you my love of Frank Capra's “It's a Wonderful Life” — the essential American fable about the generosity and goodness of Americans toward one another, as opposed to the greedy oligarchs at the top (such as Mr. Potter) who care only about building their own wealth and power. In light of Putin's war and the rise of authoritarianism around the world, including the United States, I've been thinking about another favorite of mine — Michael Kurtiz's fabulous 1942 classic, “Casablanca.” Even now, 70 years after its release, it feels relevant and poignant.In the first six decades after World War II, the number of countries considered democratic grew. But researchers have found that, starting five or six years ago, the number of democracies in the world began to shrink, and existing democracies have become less democratic. Consider the rise of strongman rule in Hungary, the Philippines, and Russia, attacks on the courts in Poland, Hindu extremism in India, fears of a power grab in Brazil, and, of course, Trump's continuing attempted coup. Which brings me back to Casablanca. Few movies have ever produced as many quotes — “Here's looking at you, kid,” and “We'll always have Paris,” and the song “As Time Goes By.” And can you think of any more enduring characters than those played by Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart? But the core of Casablanca is a defense of democracy in the face of the rising specter of fascism. One of the most moving scenes to me is the dueling anthems — when the German occupants sing “Die Wacht am Rhein,” only to be drowned out by the French refugees singing “La Marseillaise.” I'm told that the tears in the eyes of several of the French actors and singers in this scene were unplanned and unrehearsed. Remember, this was filmed in 1942.I'm curious about your take: What is it that makes this scene so powerful? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

My post yesterday on the real lesson of January 6 provoked a great discussion (many thanks to those of you who participated). It also prompted me to rewatch a movie that provides a hint of an answer — Frank Capra's “It's a Wonderful Life,” which was released 75 years ago this month. When I first saw the movie in the late 1960s, I thought it pure hokum. America was coming apart over Vietnam and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, and I remember thinking the movie could have been produced by some propaganda bureau of the government that had been told to create a white-washed (and white) version of the United States. But in more recent years I've come around. As America has moved closer to being an oligarchy — with staggering inequalities of income, wealth, and power not seen in over a century — and closer to Trumpian neofascism (the two moves are connected), “It's a Wonderful Life” speaks to what's gone wrong and what must be done to make it right. As you probably know (and if you don't, this weekend would be a good time to watch it), the movie's central conflict is between Mr. Potter (played by Lionel Barrymore) and George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart). Potter is a greedy and cruel banker. George is the generous and honorable head of Bedford Fall's building-and-loan — the one entity standing in the way of Potter's total domination of the town. When George accidentally loses some deposits that fall into the hands of Potter, Potter sees an opportunity to ruin George. This brings George to the bridge where he contemplates suicide, thinking his life has been worthless — before a guardian angel's counsel turns him homeward.It's two radically opposed versions of America. In Potter's social-Darwinist view, people compete with one another for resources. Those who succeed deserve to win because they've outrun everyone else in that competitive race. After the death of George's father, who founded the building-and-loan, Potter moves to dissolve it — claiming George's father “was not a businessman. He was a man of high ideals, so-called, but ideals without common sense can ruin a town.” For Potter, common sense is not coddling the “discontented rabble.” In George's view, Bedford Falls is a community whose members help each other. He tells Potter that the so-called “rabble … do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community.” His father helped them build homes on credit so they could afford a decent life. “People were human beings to him,” George tells Potter, “but to you, they're cattle.”When George contemplates ending it all, his guardian angel shows him how bleak Bedford Falls would be had George never lived — poor, fearful, and dependent on Potter. The movie ends when everyone George has helped (virtually the entire town) pitch in to bail out George and his building-and-loan. It's a cartoon, of course — but a cartoon that's fast becoming a reality in America. Do we join together or let the Potters of America own and run everything? Soon after “It's a Wonderful Life” was released, the FBI considered it evidence of Communist Party infiltration of the film industry. The FBI's Los Angeles field office — using a report by an ad-hoc group that included Fountainhead writer and future Trump pin-up girl Ayn Rand — warned that the movie represented “rather obvious attempts to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a ‘scrooge-type' so that he would be the most hated man in the picture.” The movie “deliberately maligned the upper class, attempting to show the people who had money were mean and despicable characters. This … is a common trick used by Communists.” The FBI report compared “It's a Wonderful Life” to a Soviet film, and alleged that Frank Capra was “associated with left-wing groups” and that screenwriters Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett were “very close to known Communists.”This was all rubbish, of course — and a prelude to the Red Scare led by Republican Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, who launched a series of highly publicized probes into alleged Communist penetration of Hollywood, the State Department, and even the US Army. The movie was also prelude to modern Republican ideology. Since Ronald Reagan, Republicans have used Potter-like social Darwinism to justify everything tax cuts for the wealthy, union-busting, and cutbacks in social safety nets. Rand herself became a hero to many in the Trump administration. Above all, Reagan Republicans, CEOs, and Trumpers have used the strategy of “divide-and-conquer” to generate division among Americans (a kind of political social-Darwinism). That way, Americans stay angry and suspicious of one another, and don't look upward to see where all the money and power have gone. And won't join together to claim it back. What would Republicans say about “It's a Wonderful Life” if it were released today? They'd probably call it socialist rather than communist, but it would make them squirm all the same — especially given the eery similarity between Lionel Barrymore's Mr. Potter and you know who. Thanks for subscribing to my newsletter on power, politics, and the real economy. If you'd like to support this work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or offering a gift subscription. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

Merry Christmas, everyone! We hope you're having a lovely holiday. On that note, we're continuing our series on holiday movies with arguably the biggest one of all, Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. George Bailey (James Stewart) is a would-be adventurer and entrepreneur who has, throughout his life, continually postponed and sacrificed his ambitions for the betterment of the people around him. He has suffered for years from bitterness over those sacrifices, as well as insecurity over his perceived failure to make an impact on the world. Then, one night he's driven to suicidal thoughts over misplaced company funds and the prospect of scandal, financial ruin, and prison. But through the prayers and intervention of the people whose lives he has touched over the years, an angel comes to Earth to show him just how big of an impact he has in fact made on the world, and what it would actually look like without him. But, of course, you already knew all of that. It's a Wonderful Life is one of the most beloved and iconic films in the history of Hollywood cinema, a staple on television every Christmas season. Capra's trademark brand of hard-earned sentimentality and wholesome Americana finds its purest distillation here, and in George Bailey, the film gives us one of the most interesting and complex characters of Classic Hollywood - a flawed and at times unattractive protagonist who is nevertheless a Great Man, despite the modesty of his position, and one whose greatness is directly tied to the sacrifices he thinks have made him a failure. The film's emotional impact becomes overwhelming by the film's end, when the audience is invited to see themselves in George, and to perhaps reassess how success in life is actually determined. It's a monumental film, a classic in every sense of the word, and the only possible choice for our official Christmas episode.

It is a yuletide classic this week as we discuss Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. Will Jimmy Stewart's inspirational box office bomb leave Bryce moved or wishing it never existed?

This episode debuted exactly four years ago, and I could think of no better show this year to honor my all-time favorite movie, Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1947)  through the eyes of two women with close ties to its creation. If Mr. Capra didn't write it, why do I call it “Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life? It's because that's how the movie was marketed, which helps explain why the film got only a so-so reception when it was first released. Most of Mr. Capra's pre-World War II movies were so sweet-hearted that they later earned the moniker “Capracorn,” not meant as a compliment. It's a Wonderful Life is one of the most critically acclaimed films ever made. Nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture, recognized by the American Film Institute as one of the 100 best American films ever made, and placed number 11 on its initial 1998 greatest movie list, it also ranked number one on its list of the most inspirational American films of all time. Think about that. In light of the fact that hundreds of thousands of movies have been made, this is a jaw-dropping achievement. By the end of the Second World War, though, the mood of the movie-going public had shifted, as I wrote about the making of the movie in National Review a few years ago HERE. The next day after it was published, an appreciative email from a woman named Mary Owen arrived in my inbox. Turns out, Mary is the daughter of actress Donna Reed, who played Mary Bailey, the wife of James Stewart's George Bailey. I thanked her for the lovely email and we had a few back-and-forths. After my podcast was up on two feet and spreading around the world (110 countries and counting), I thought it would be fun to have her on the show to talk about her mother's role in this now-international favorite Christmas movie and to learn some back story to her mother's career and her commitment to writing back to the G.I's who wrote to her from the trenches and the gun turrets of World War II. The interview segues nicely into the next one, a rich conversation with actress Karolyn Grimes who played Zuzu, one of the four Bailey kids. Remember Zuzu's petals? This was a real treat for me who loves the movie so well, and I know it will be for you as well. I learned, among other things, how much Mrs. Grimes suffered as a teen when her mother died and then the next year her father was killed and she became a ward of the state—then “rescued” by an aunt and uncle in Missouri, which was an unhappy home situation. Karolyn also played Debbie, the daughter of David Niven and Loretta Young in another Christmas favorite, The Bishop's Wife. For those of us who can't gobble up enough trivia and true stories about It's a Wonderful Life, Mrs. Grimes is a treasure trove of first-hand memories and insights! Yes, I was star-struck, okay? Is that so wrong? Merry Christmas! If you would like to send us an of year donation please go to: paypal.me/patrickcoffin  

S03-E22 We feature the voices of Orson Wells, Lionel Barrymore, and the rest of the and for the dramatization of Charles Dicken's classic, A Christmas Carol. We hear several distinguished actors of radio, film, and television: Orson Wells who is acclaimed to be one of the greatest and most influential actors, writers, and directors in radio, film, and television. He will serve as the narrator. Lionel Barrymore will serve the role of Scourge. To many of you, he played the role of Mr. Potter in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. Mr. Barrymore is also a heralded actor of radio, film, and television. I include a biography of Charles Dickens who is the author of A Christmas Carol and so many other influential stories. If you want to dig deeper into the social commentary of Mr. Dickens about the disparity of life in England at the time when the story was first published, read the article that is provided. A Christmas Carol has been a popular story for a variety of Hollywood films. Too many of the recent ones overlook the gritty critique of inequality for the masses who toiled during the industrial revolution. I could say more, but that is best explored in other podcast episodes I have produced. In addition to this audio episode, I also provide several PDF documents: first, a biography of Orson Wells, second, a biography of Lionel Barrymore, third, a biography of Charles Dickens, and finally, an overview of “A Christmas Carol”, one of the best known of Mr. Dicken's publications. This audio recordings comes from the Internet Archive online database. It is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, audio recordings, software, music, and more. Its purpose is to offer permanent access to historical digital collections. Checkout the website at http://archive.org The following links allow you to subscribe: iTunes and Apple Podcast, Amazon Music/Audible, Castbox.fm, Deezer, Facebook, Gaana, Google Podcast, iHeartRadio, Player.fm, Radio Public, Samsung Listen, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, Twitter. and Vurbl. Automatically available through these podcast apps: Castamatic, iCatcher, Overcast, Pocket Casts, RSSRadio, and more. Please post comments to the individual episodes at http://historicvoices.org, podcast review and rating section within iTunes and other apps, or email to me, arendale@umn.edu You can also check out my other four podcasts and other social media at www.davidmedia.org

This week on S&A Lindsay is joined by Action for Everyone Host - The Action Professor Mike Scott.  And for this week's Double it's a really Capra-Feast with Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946) & Sam Raimi's Spider Man 2 (2004).  Both movies capture a specific slice of life:  what it is and what it can be.  You know Capra-esque.   Listen to Action for Everyone Here   Follow Action for Everyone on Twitter @A4EPodcast Follow Mike on Twitter @hibachijustice   Follow Schlock & Awe on Twitter @schlockandawe1 Follow Schlock & Awe on Instagram @schlockandawe1/ Follow Lindsay on Twitter @readandgeek   Say Hi.  schlockandawemovies@gmail.com   Please Rate and Review Schlock & Awe on Apple Podcasts    Original Music Composed and Performed by Anthony King

Come to think of it, we actually did watch an unofficial “snowy mining trilogy” with last week's McCabe & Mrs. Millerand Gold Rush. Because we ended up watching both the original 1925 version of Charles Chaplin's groundbreaking silent adventure AND the 1942 talkie re-release. Thank goodness.   If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946).

This episode is dedicated to Domenico DeFazio (1948-2021) To close out the year, we are proud to look back on our archives and present once again, our radio adaptation of Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life". We apologize for being absent for the past couple of months. We had a death in our immediate family. My stepdad, Domenico DeFazio passed away unexpectedly while on a business trip in Italy. We thought that it would be fitting to dedicate this episode to him. Mimmo played the character of Martini the bartender in this radio play of "It's a Wonderful Life". We originally released this exactly 10 years ago back on episode 66. This is perhaps one of our most elaborate radio plays we ever made for SmorgShow Theater. Listening back to this now warms our hearts, particularly given the number of friends and family members who came together to make this production possible. Mimmo, you certainly had a wonderful life. We love you. Chris Bockay – George Bailey Ally Bockay –  Narrator, The Bailey Kids, Tilly, Mrs. Hatch Kim Bockay – Mary Hatch-Bailey Geoff Wells – Clarence Dave Jackson – Joseph, Burt the Cop, Nick the Bartender, Bridgekeeper Jerry Malauskas – Mr. Potter Daryl Woltman – Mr. Gower, Uncle Billy Chase Woltman – Young George Bailey Peet McCain – Harry Bailey Baba Gonesh – Ernie the Cab Driver Domenico DeFazio – Martini Terrylynn DeFazio – Ma Bailey Larry Coon – Peter Bailey Joe Personality – Sam Wainwright

LEAVE THE SPOOKY SIDE OF DEATH BEHIND THIS MONTH AND JOIN US ON A JOURNEY INTO THE ROMANCE, COMEDY, AND BUREAUCRACY OF THE AFTERLIFE.   We'll get back to scary things next month, because this month is all about the wholesome possibilities of death stories. Gabe and returning guest Tyler Foster explore a surprisingly prevalent subgenre of romantic comedies concerning the processes of the afterlife. Avoiding movies that focused too much on haunting or possession, we still ended up with a list of seven movies that share a curious number of concepts and tropes in common – Alexander Hall's Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), Victor Fleming's A Guy Named Joe (1943), Vincente Minnelli's Cabin in the Sky (1943), Ernst Lubitsch's Heaven Can Wait (1943), Powell & Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death (aka: Stairway to Heaven, 1946), Warren Beatty & Buck Henry's Here Comes Mr. Jordan remake, Heaven Can Wait (not otherwise related to the Lubitsch movie, 1978), and Albert Brooks' Defending Your Life (1991). In the process of breaking these films down, we also talk briefly about Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1947), Steven Spielberg's A Guy Named Joe remake (Always [1989]), and Paul & Chris Weitz' Here Comes Mr. Jordan remake (Down to Earth [2001]).   00:00 – Intro 7:13 – Here Comes Mr. Jordan 19:36 – A Guy Named Joe 36:01 – Cabin in the Sky 47:12 – Heaven Can Wait (1943) 56:36 – A Matter of Life and Death 1:14:06 – Heaven Can Wait (1978) 1:31:15 – Defending Your Life 1:46:03 – Outro   Please consider donating to the following charities/fundraisers if you have any spare cash: Abortion Access Fund, Inc:​​ https://abortionaccessfund.org/ UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) Gaza Crisis Appeal: https://donate.unrwa.org/gaza/ Lilith Fund (Texas abortion access): https://www.lilithfund.org/ National Center for Transgender Equality: https://transequality.org/

For every Star Wars, there's a hundred middling films and outright flops. Plus, hear about movie so unlucky, they may actually have been cursed, in a sample of the Your Brain On Facts audiobook. Read the full script.   Support the show. It's been quite a while since we got a review for the YBOF book.  Can you take a sec and let us know what you thought? Reach out and touch Moxie on FB, Twit, the 'Gram or email.  Music by David Fesliyan and Kevin McLeod   Making a movie is a difficult, time-consuming, and expensive propositions.  While some projects come together naturally, others seem to have tragedy, misfortune, and just plain bad luck heaped upon them.  Horror films are fertile ground for apparent curses and it a movie would be hard-pressed to seem more cursed than 1976's The Omen, the tale of an American diplomat who adopts a baby boy, ostensibly the Antichrist, and people around him begin dying.  Even Robert Munger, who came up with the concept for the film, began to feel uneasy during pre-production, telling producer Harvey Bernhard, “The devil's greatest single weapon is to be invisible, and you're going to take off his cloak of invisibility to millions of people.”  Releasing the movie on June 6, 1976, or as close as they could get to 666, probably did not help matters.   Gregory Peck has only recently agreed to take the role of the ambassador when his son shot and killed himself, leaving no suicide note.   Undeterred, or perhaps therapeutically focusing on his work, Peck flew to England to begin filming.  While flying through a storm over the Atlantic, Peck's plane was struck by lightning, causing an engine to catch fire and nearly causing them to crash into the ocean.  The film's other producer, Mace Neufeld, also had his plane struck by lightning.  Even after those long odds, that was not the end of their aerial adversity.  One of the first shots planned for the film was an aerial shot of London, to be shot from a rented plane. At the last minute, the rental company instead gave the original plane to a group of Japanese businessmen.  The curse did not seem to get that update, because that plane crashed, killing everyone on board.   One scene called for Peck to be attacked by “devil dogs,” in the form of a pack of Rottweilers.  The dogs were supposed to attack a heavily padded stuntman.  For reasons unknown, the dogs began to attack the stuntman in earnest, biting through the padding and ignoring their trainer's orders to stop.  Another animal-based scene saw the big cat wrangler mauled to death by a tiger.   As if being in a plane struck by lightning was not harrowing enough, the Hilton hotel Neufeld was staying at exploded.  Luckily, Neufeld was not there at the time.  Not to be deterred, the curse turned its sights to the restaurant were the producers and other film executives were going and it blew up, too.  Neufeld missed the explosion by minutes.  The actual perpetrator would turn out to be the Irish Republican Army and it was only Neufeld's dodgy luck that he was meant to be in both places.   Special effects consultant John Richardson created The Omen's unforgettable death scenes, including one in which a man is beheaded by a sheet of glass sailing off the top of a car.  Two weeks before the film was released, Richardson and his assistant, Liz Moore, were involved in a head-on collision.  Moore was killed, cut in half by the other vehicle's wheel.  Richardson opened his eyes after the collision a kilometer marker reading “Ommen 6,66,”  The closest town was Ommen, Netherlands, and the accident happened at kilometer 66.6.    The highest-grossing horror movie of all time (when adjusted for inflation) and the only horror movie to ever be nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture is 1973's The Exorcist.  In it, a young girl named Reagan, played by Linda Blair, is possessed by a demon and forced to commit horrible acts as two priests fight to save her.  The trouble started before filming even began, when the set caught fire, destroying everything except Regan's room.  The malefactor had talons, and black, beady eyes, and was a harbinger of disease--a pigeon had somehow gotten into a circuit box, which caused a short that caused the fire.  Reverend Thomas Bermingham, the technical advisor, was asked to exorcise the set, but he refused.   Both Blair and Ellen Burstyn, who played her mother, were badly injured during the shoot.  One scene has the demon violently throwing Reagan around on her bed.  The rig to do this broke during one take, injuring Blair's back.  Another scene called for the demon to throw Burstyn across the room and into a wall, which the crew achieved with a wire rig.  Director William Friedkin was unhappy with the first take and told the crewman operating the rig to use more force.  He did not warn Burstyn.  Her cry of alarm and pain in the film is genuine.  Colliding with the wall at speed injured her lower spine, leaving her in permanent pain.     They were comparatively lucky.  Actors Jack MacGowran and Vasiliki Maliaros, whose characters die in the movie, both died while it was in post-production.  At least four other people, including a night watchmen, died during filming.  Max Von Sydow's brother died on Sydow's first day on set.  Actress Mercedes McCambridge, who provided the voice of the demon Pazuzu, had to face her son murdering his wife and children before committing suicide.   Many believed that the physical copies of the film were cursed and that showing it was an open invitation to evil.  A church across the street from an Italian theater was struck by lightning during a showing.  One movie-goer was so frightened they passed out in the theater and broke their jaw falling into the seat in front of them.  They sued the filmmakers, claiming that subliminal messages in the film had caused them to faint.  Warner Brothers settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.  Not everything bad can be blamed on demons, though.  Regular old people sent thirteen year old Blair so many death threats that the studio had to provide her with bodyguards for six months after the movie came out.   Speaking of demonic possession, the 2012 movie The Possession centers on a young girl who falls under the control of a malevolent spirit that lives inside a cursed antique box. The story is based on an account of an allegedly haunted dybbuk box.  Even though director Sam Raimi would not let the dybbuk box's owner bring it anywhere near the set, strange and frightening things happened on set.  Lights exploded directly over people's heads, strange smells and cold air blew in from nowhere, and immediately after filming wrapped, all of the props were destroyed in a fire for which the first department could not determine the cause. Sometimes a movie's bad karma takes time to manifest and the misfortunes only crop up after the film had been released.   Horror classic Rosemary's Baby, released in the summer of 1968, was based on the premise that God is dead, but the Devil is alive and returning to earth with the aid of a cult.  The film's composer, 37 year old Krzysztof Komeda, fell off a rock ledge at a party that fall.  He lingered in a coma for four months before finally dying.  His death was quite similar to the way the witches rid themselves of a suspicious friend of the titular Rosemary.  The producer, William Castle, already suffering considerable stress from the amount of hate mail he had received about the film, was incapacitated with severe kidney stones.  While delirious in the hospital, he cried out, “Rosemary, for God's sake, drop the knife!”  Castle recovered his health, but never made a successful movie again.  Director Roman Polanski suffered no physical harm after the film.  The same could not be said for his heavily-pregnant wife, Sharon Tate.  She and four friends were brutally murdered by members of the cult known as the Manson Family, while Rosemary's Baby was still in theaters.  In his autobiography, Polanksi recalled he had had a “grotesque thought” the last time he saw his wife: “You will never see her again.” Conspiracy theorists and other non-traditional thinkers believe these events were set in motion by an elaborate Satanic plot, at the behest of the Beatles. Their White Album was written at an Indian meditation retreat, which the movie's star, Mia Farrow, attended.  The song title Helter Skelter was written in blood on a wall at the Tate murder, albeit misspelled.  A decade later, John Lennon was shot and killed across the street from the Dakota, where Rosemary's Baby had been filmed. 1982's Poltergeist tells the story of a family that is tormented by vengeful spirits because their new house was built over a graveyard with the bodies left in the ground.  When it came time for the prop department to source skeletons for the infamous scene with JoBeth Williams in the muddy pool, contrary to what one might expect, it was actually cheaper to buy real human skeletons than realistic plastic ones.  (They only told Williams about that afterwards.)  In a case of ‘life imitating art,' specifically with regards to disrespectful treatment of dead bodies, the cast seemed to be plagued by bad fortune.  The curse extended not only the original film, but to its sequels as well.  Shortly after Poltergeist was released, Dominique Dunne, who played the older sister, was strangled to death by her abusive ex-boyfriend, ending her career before it began. Heather O'Rourke, the adorable blonde girl who uttered the iconic line “They're heeere,” died during bowel obstruction surgery after suffering cardiac arrest and septic shock due to being misdiagnosed by her doctor.  She was only twelve years old.  Julian Beck of Poltergeist II: The Other Side died of stomach cancer before the film was released.  Will Sampson, also known for playing Chief in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, died the following year from complications of a heart-lung transplant.     Bonus fact: Some fans claim Poltergeist foretold O'Rourke's death.  There was a poster in the 1982 movie for Super Bowl XXII in 1988.  Heather O'Rourke was hospitalized the day of Super Bowl XXII and died the following day.  The game was played in San Diego, the city in which O'Rourke passed away.   Choosing the right location to shoot a film is a pivotal decision.  You have to take into account things like lighting conditions, availability of utilities, and proximity to noisy things such as airports.  What you should not have to consider is the radiation level, but you should not ignore it either.  The producers of the film 1956 movie The Conqueror chose an area of Utah desert a hundred miles away from the Nevada Test Site.  (They also chose to cast John Wayne as Genghis Khan.)   Throughout the 1950's, approximately 100 nuclear bombs of varying intensities were detonated at the Nevada Test Site.  The mushroom clouds could reach tens of thousands of feet high; desert winds would carry radioactive particles all the way to Utah.  The area in which The Conqueror filmed was likely blanketed in this dust.   The Conqueror, co-starring Susan Hayward, Agnes Moorehead, and Pedro Armendáriz, was a moderate box office success, but a critical failure and soon found itself on ‘worst films of all time' lists.  The true legacy of the film had yet to be revealed.  Of the 220 people who worked on the production, 92 developed some form of cancer, with 46 dying of it, including Wayne, Hayward, Moorehead, and Armendáriz.  The director, Dick Powell, died of lymphoma in 1963.  Wayne developed lung cancer and then the stomach cancer that would ultimately kill him in 1979.  Wayne would remain convinced that his chain-smoking was to blame for the cancers, even as friends tried to convince him it was from exposure to radiation.  Wayne's sons, who visited the set during filming and actually played with Geiger counters among the contaminated rocks, both developed tumors.  Susan Hayward died from brain cancer in 1975 at 57.   The authorities in 1954 had declared the area to be safe from radioactive fallout, even though abnormal levels of radiation were detected.  However, modern research has shown that the soil in some areas near the filming site would have remained radioactive for sixty years.  Howard Hughes, producer of The Conqueror, came to realize in the early 1970's that people who have been involved with the production were dying.   As the person who approved the filming location, Hughes felt culpable and paid $12 million to buy all existing copies of the film.  Though the link between the location and the cancers that cannot be definitely proven, experts argue that the preponderance of cases goes beyond mere coincidence.   MIDROLL   My grandmother had a lovely cross-stitched sampler above her fireplace with a quote that I really took to heart and have carried with me through my life, “Everything happens for a reason.  Sometimes the reason is you're stupid and make bad decisions.”  … I wish my grandma had a sense of humor like that.  Every movie that fails does so for a reason.  Several, usually, a veritable swarm of failure bees, ready to sting the audience right in the brain and the studio right in its wallet.  And sometimes, that sting is fatal.  For the studio, I mean.  I don't know of any cases where someone died because the movie they were watching was so bad it killed them.  At least that gives Tommy Wiseau something to reach for.   Like we saw with the banking crisis, there is no such thing as ‘too big to fail' in Hollywood, either.  Take Eddie Murphy, for example.  He was already established for his roles in 48 Hrs and Trading places before 1984's Beverly Hills Cop.  [sfx axel f]  I'll risk the copyright strike, I don't care.  If Hollywood were a lady, she was throwing her panties at Murphy until around, let's call it 1995's Vampire in Brooklyn.  Since then, for every Shrek, there are three Norberts, or one Pluto Nash.  Did you see this fart bomb of a movie when it came out in 2002?  Yeah, neither did anyone else.  His first foray into live-action family comedies stank like a pair of armored trousers after the Hundred Years war.  The sci-fi comedy (and we use the term loosely) didn't receive one breath of praise, with everyone lambasting the script, humour, acting and visual effects.  And they dragged poor Rasario Dawson into it.  Its 4% rating on Rotten Tomatoes says it all, though the audience gave it 19%.  One of the biggest box-office flops ever, the movie had a $100 million production budget but earned only $7.1 million at theaters worldwide, meaning it lost a whopping $92.9 million.   Sometimes the likely cause for a movie's failure is staring us all right in the face, but it feels like no one talked about, even though we *alllll talked about it, the casting of Johnny Depp in the ‘are you sure there's nothing else in the bottom of this barrel' elephant in the room, 2013's The Lone Ranger.  Depp was joined by fellow Pirates of the Caribbean alums Gore Verbinski, Jerry Bruckheimer and the House of Mouse must have felt confident this wonder trio could bring home the gold.  Yeah, no.  The production ran into trouble, costs escalated and the whole thing was nearly shut down before it was completed.  When it finally hit cinema screens, The Lone Ranger was slammed by critics and shunned by audiences. [sfx it stinks]  But it did still manage to garner two Oscar nominations, for 'Visual Effects' and 'Makeup and Hairstyling.'  Must have been a light year.  The Lone Ranger lost almost Pluto Nash's production budget, being in the red by $98 million.   If you look at film losses as the ratio of budget to loss, you've got to tip your hat to  2016's Monster Trucks.  Paramount hoped to launch a franchise, because there is literally no other way to run a movie studio, but kids can be as fickle with their entertainment options as they are with the sides on their dinner plate.  The $125m CGI romp's opening barely scraped over $10 million at the box office, meaning a loss of $115 million.  If it needed to be said, this section is about films with wide releases and big ad budgets.  Projects from smaller producers have a riskier time with it.  When my (GRRM doc, five tickets at Byrd).   If you look up the lowest-grossing film of all time, you'll find a film that was mentioned in the scam health retreat episode To Your Health (Spa) (ep. 101), but it happened on purpose, from a certain point of view.  2006's Zyzzyx Road was shown once a day, at noon, for six days at Highland Park Village Theater in Dallas, Texas, in a movie theater rented by the producers for $1,000.  The filmmakers wanted a limited release.  They didn't want to release the film domestically until it underwent foreign distribution, buuut they had to do the domestic release to fulfill the U.S. release obligation required by the Screen Actors Guild for low-budget films.  Low-budget is actually quantified as those with budgets less than $2.5 million that are not meant to be direct-to-video.  That strategy made Zyzzyx Road the lowest-grossing film in history; officially, it earned a whopping box office tally of $30, from six patrons.  Unofficially, its opening weekend netted $20, after the leading man refunded two tickets to the movie's makeup artist and the friend she brought. Lots of films fail, happens every day, but some films fail so spectacularly, they take the whole studio down with them, sometimes nearly and sometimes very actually..  Students of movie history with a penchant for disasters know all about 1963's Cleopatra, starring disserviacably diva-ish Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. The period epic had such a disjointed production that actors sometimes didn't know which scenes were being shot until they arrived on set that day.  With a budget swelling uncontrollably to $44 million, the largest at the time, equivalent to $392mil today, the movie faced a real uphill battle to break even, let alone turn a profit.  Movie tickets cost $.85 then and there was no home video market, so 20th Century Fox would have needed to have sold 56 million tickets to stay in the black.  Quick google, the population of the US was 190 million at the time, so...yeah, ain't gonna happen, Cap'n.  They were pretty much screwed.  Cleopatra holds the unique distinction of being the highest-grossing film that year that lost money.  Although the studio didn't fold, Fox was forced to sell off 300 acres of its lot and postpone other productions to avoid permanently closing its doors.  Cleopatra did eventually recoup its budget with foreign distribution, but 1964's historical epic The Fall of the Roman Empire wasn't so lucky.  Samuel Bronston Productions spent a fortune re-creating the 92,000-square meter Roman Forum that once served as the heart of the ancient city, in turn building Hollywood's largest ever outdoor set.  It had Sophia Loren in it, for gods sake.  Do you know what she looked like in 1964?!  Sadly, Fall of the Roman Empire only managed to earn back a quarter of its $19 million budget.  Just three months after its release, Bronston's own empire fell, into bankruptcy.   Speaking of big decisions at Fox, one of the people who greenlit Star Wars was Alan Ladd Jr, who left to form his own studio, Ladd Company.  For my British listeners, feel free to pause and imagine an all-lad movie studio, oi-oi, we'll wait.  The Ladd Company pursued ambitious projects like The Right Stuff, based on Tom Wolfe's book about the early days of the space program.  That was a big hit, wasn't it?  I never saw it, but it has good name recognition.  While critics sang its praises and it won four Oscars, The Right Stuff failed to find an audience at the box office.  The same thing happened with Twice Upon a Time, an animated feature executive produced by George Lucas, which did *not have good name recognition and when I do a Google image search, it doesn't look even 1% familiar.  Even though they still had Police Academy in the chute, the Ladd Company was forced to sell its assets to Warner Bros.   Speaking of name recognition, even films that are iconic these days bombed big time when they came out.  Try to imagine TV in December without every single channel running Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life at least twice.  Trivia fans, which should be every one here, already know that IAWL did not do well on release --a release in January, it's worth mentioning, which may have been part of the problem-- before lapsing into the public domain and being shown by every tv station needing content on the cheap.  Hell, there was a local station where I grew up in north-east PA that used a jingle of the phrase “IAWL” as their tagline.  The same thing ‘why would you even do that' release date misstep happened with Hocus Pocus, actually.  It was released originally in July, well before social media made loving Halloween a major personality trait, then Disney sat on the movie for over a year before putting it out on home video the next September.  Back to 1946, It's a Wonderful Life's disappointing performance was devastating for Capra, who had actually opened his own production studio, Liberty Films.  Capra and fellow filmmakers George Stevens and William Wyler were trying to free themselves from meddling from studio executives' meddling, but their professional freedom was short-lived.  With no track record, Liberty Films needed the film to get them to live up to Capra's usual standards of success.  It didn't, as we've established, and Capra was forced to sell Liberty to Paramount and work for someone else.   If you've been saying, I haven't heard of half of these people, how about Francis Ford Coppola?  Coppola shapes the landscape of 1970s cinema.  Ever hear of The Godfather, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now?  Yeah, thought so.  The '80s, however, not so much.  His first movie of the decade, One From the Heart, spent the majority of its high budget on pioneering visual techniques and a faithful recreation of Nevada's McCarran International Airport.  He's a details guy.  But fans of his earlier, dark, gritty, hyper-masculine work were left completely baffled when they sat down for a Coppola movie and found themselves in a candy-colored Vegas musical rom-com.   The film failed to pull in even a million dollars against its budget of $27mil.  Coppola's own studio, Zoetrope, never recovered from the financial loss.   Speaking of film legends who stumble headlong into bankruptcy, we present  for the consideration of several readers, Don Bluth.  Bluth left his job as an animator at Disney in 1979 to create the animation department for 20th Century Fox.  We're talking The Secret of N.I.M.H, An American Tail, The Land Before Time, and Bluth and crew at Fox Animation put those out while Disney delivered disappointing efforts like The Great Mouse Detective and Oliver and Company.   But Disney found its footing again with The Little Mermaid in 1989 and they've been unquestionably unstoppable ever since.  In 1997, Bluth released the critically acclaimed Anastasia; less than three years later, the studio was done.  In June 2000, Titan A.E. hit theaters, a lush, traditionally-animated movie with great character designs and solid casting and acting that flew through space and braved alien worlds.  It wasn't a bad movie.  For some reason, despite having a hysterically bad memory, I can still remember the chorus of the song from the big ‘let's do cool things with the ship' sequence.  Titan AE hit theaters, but not, ya know, hard.  Fox Animation spent $85 million on the film targeted at a teen audience, who are not a big enough segment of the broader animation-viewing market.  It earned $9 million on its opening weekend and the following *week, Fox announced it was closing the studio.  The writing had already been on the wall.  In December 1999, executives forced Bluth to lay off 80% of his animators after the box office bonanza that was the CGI Toy Story 2 led Fox execs to conclude that hand-drawn animation was on the way out.   Prior performance is no predictor of future success.  The Land Before Time didn't help Bluth with Titan AE, and not even the freaking Lord of the Rings trilogy, with its many Oscars, could save New Line Cinema.  From its creation in the 1970s and even after Warner Bros. bought a controlling stake, New Line Cinema was a mid-major movie studio that acted like an indie, taking chances on edgy, quirky movies like Pink Flamingos, Boogie Nights, and Mortal Kombat.  If you don't think MK belongs in those examples, the only video game movies had been Street Fighter, blargh, Double Dragon, yawn, and Super Mario Brothers, a veritable kick in the nards to be gamers and moviegoers.   Four years after The Return of the King ended the LOTR trilogy...eventually... New Line wanted another fantasy series cash cow, and it looked to The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman's first entry in the His Dark Materials trilogy.  New Line pumped $200 million on the project, more than it had spent on The Lord of the Rings.  To offset production costs, the company pre-sold the overseas rights, essentially getting an advance, meaning that when the film hit theaters outside of North America, they wouldn't see any more money.  That made profit virtually impossible... as did the film's relatively small $70 million domestic take.  Thus Warner Bros. absorbed New Line into its existing film production divisions, well, 10% of the studio.  The other 90% got sacked.   Sources: get ones from book https://www.triviagenius.com/5-movies-that-lost-the-most-money/XtY_ghx5DQAG1g4j https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/643698/movies-that-bankrupted-studios https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/86201/6-movies-ruined-their-studios https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a843659/expensive-movie-flops-bombs-box-office-failure-justice-league/ https://chillopedia.com/15-movies-that-killed-careers/  

The Chronic Canon Presents... A Special Holiday Episode... It's a Wonderful Life (1946) The Sassy Safdie-Sese Stans come together this holiday season to discuss one of their all-time favorites, Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life! As always, there will be spoilers, and yes, the boys are very high.

Anyone who is anyone knows something about Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946), even if it's just having seen a memorable scene or two.  Capra was fresh off of making propaganda films for the Armed Forces when he created yet another production and made the film, and it's likely the apex of his career. Although it's cherished nowadays as a holiday classic, It's a Wonderful Life came to be so popular seemingly by mistake, and deserves to be seen occasionally on its own merits rather than an annual holiday treat. Have a question or a comment for the host?  Email Sean at 1001moviespodcast@gmail.com, follow him on Twitter via @1001MoviesPC, or look for the podcast's Facebook page.

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, The 250 is a weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. This time, a Christmas treat. Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. The iconic American fable about George Bailey and his time in Bedford Falls, It's a Wonderful Life is a heartwarming Christmas classic about how no man is poor who has friends. At time of recording, it was ranked the 24th best movie of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

This week, we tackle a classic neither of us had seen: Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. Sure, but is the movie wonderful? Tune in to find out. We also discuss Rapture Palooza (boo!), Beware My Lovely, Room 237 and The Way, Way Back. Why not chat about the show on our Facebook group? Or chat about anything there? 206-350-9002 marriedwithclickers@gmail.com