Podcasts about los angeles plays itself

Ellis and Corbs talk about "Los Angeles Plays Itself," Thom Anderson's lengthy video essay about Movie City's place in the Movies, and the Movies place in Movie City. Topics include: Modernist Architecture: is it evil? The germ of the other American cinema we see in the end of this movie, and filming driving in Los Angeles and in Portland.  Corbin's reccomendation is an album, you can find it on a streaming service. Matt's is a video game he only kind of enjoyed.  Watch the movie here. Next week's episode is about "The Rocketeer," which you can watch over on Disney+. 

Corbin, Matt, and SPECIAL GUEST MATEA (Check out her ROBUST Letterboxd here) talk about CRUEL INTENTIONS, a truly wild erotic thriller/black comedy from the precise moment when the Americans were most sick and tired of their own bullshit. Topics include a lengthy diatribe about Clinton and Bush, the gauzy-TV look of the movie, and the movie's depiction of Step-sisters as well as the culture's. Check out a cool intertextual essay about the movie here.  Matt reccomends the podcast "Fall of Civilizations." Corbin reccomends Pauline Kael aggregregator accounts. Matea reccomends a book by the 40 Laws of Power guy, but she swears you shouldn't take advice from it.  When I said Hunter Thompson is hard to read, I didn't mean as literature, just that it's kind of tedious. Next week's episode is about "LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF" which you can watch here. 

Original Release Date: Monday 19 August 2024    Description:     This weekend, your friends in podcasting got together on the pool deck of a certain “historic building in downtown Los Angeles” and boy did they have a lot to discuss! The status of downtown, Dean's travels AND his official “wedding engagement” get covered. The Olympics closing ceremony and Tom Cruise's role in it get revisited. The “Live Event of the Week” is “Duo it Again” a brilliant and psychedelic game of telephone that is the hottest party you can find on a Tuesday night in Los Angeles. There is movie news involving Joaquin Phoenix doing one of our greatest filmmakers and a maverick indie producer “dirty” and Phil and Dean both have more thoughts about Wolfs losing its wide theatrical release. Casablanca on 4K and Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F on Netflix both get reviewed. A whole lot of reference to the great documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself gets made throughout the show. Finally, a groundbreaking comedy radio producer-turned television writer and the peerless Gena Rowlands both get remembered in “Celebrity Deaths”.

In anticipation of the soon-to-be-released sequel, Anne and Ryan take a look back at 1996's original TWISTER starring Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, Jami Gertz, Cary Elwes, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Lois Smith, Jeremy Davies, Todd Field and Alan Ruck. Director Jan de Bont's disaster spectacular follows a group of amateur storm chasers across Oklahoma, flirting dangerously close with tornados as old flames Jo (Hunt) and Bill (Paxton) flirt with each other. Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin co-wrote TWISTER, which turned out to be the second highest grossing movie of 1996, stirring up $242 million at the box office. As Lee Isaac Chung's remake touches down this week, we look back at the original that started it all, along with diversions off path into The Bear, Jurassic Park, Outbreak, Nightcrawler, Los Angeles Plays Itself, Longlegs, Daddy Longlegs, and much much more!

Neglecting our loved ones, smart phones are making us dumber and meaner, a classic thriller, the Belushi baffle, my dad meeting Arnold Schwarzenegger, don't lie about air conditioning, seeing Judge Ito, some brutal and amazing fighters, the all around cool guy Kelly Pavlik, the tragedy of Arturo Gatti, the despicable but ferocious Edwin Valero, a Taxi Driver ripoff in Los Angeles, an unmissable documentary about movies and Los Angeles, the bad ass Burt Lancaster, and a quote or two. Stuff mentioned: Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans "Why Are More Americans Dying Alone?" (Los Angeles Times, March 24, 2024), Jonathan Haidt The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (2024), Misery (1990), This Is Spinal Tap (1984), Animal House (1978), The Blues Brothers (1980), Saturday Night Live (1975-present), Red Heat (1988), Twins (1988), Pumping Iron (1977), Tim Tszyu vs. Sebastian Fundora (2024), Kelly Pavlik vs. Jermaine Taylor (2007), George Foreman vs. Michael Moorer (1994), Arturo Gatti vs. Micky Ward I (2002), Arturo Gatti vs. Micky Ward II (2002), Arturo Gatti vs. Micky Ward III (2003), Red Nights (1988), Taxi Driver (1976), Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003), David Kipen (editor) Dear Los Angeles: The City in Diaries and Letters, 1542 to 2018 (2018), Sinclair Lewis Elmer Gantry (1926), Elmer Gantry (1960), Unwound "Lady Elect" (1996), and Atlantic City (1980).

Au sommaire de cette spéciale documentaire : Retour sur Los Angeles Plays Itself de Thom Andersen édité par Carlotta Films ainsi que Les âmes perdues de Stéphane Malterre et Garance Le Caisne disponible chez Blaq Out ; Évocation de l'ouvrage Dominique Marchais, le temps du regard signé Quentin Mével et Stratis Vouyoucas, paru chez Playlist Society ; Débat sur le métier de documentariste en compagnie d'Eric Bodoulé Sosso, réalisateur, entre autres, de Djambar, Sembène l'insoumis, et d'Olivier Fély-Biolet, metteur en scène, récemment, de Le Gars des Callouins. Bonne écoute à toutes et tous !

This week's theme is Showbiz. Bob & Robb choose six movies that go behind the scenes of the entertainment industry. Bob:  One Cut Of The Dead (15:11), Showgirls (33:41), Los Angeles Plays Itself (53:37) Robb:  Hearts Of Darkness (4:32), Tropic Thunder (24:48), Singin' In The Rain (46:45) Follow —>  Rewind Video: http://linktr.ee/rewindvideopodcast  Bob: https://letterboxd.com/rgdjr/  Robb: http://linktr.ee/robinzonchavez

At Night and From a Distance: Thom Andersen's Los Angeles Plays Itself We're starting the month of December (and ending 2023) with a dive into Los Angeles in a month of programming curated by our own Ibrahim Chavez. Our first episode of December is a look at film critic and teacher, Thom Andersen's "video essay" Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003). A legend in the world of documentary filmmaking, Andersen's film was seen sporadically in screenings set up by Andersen, showings at the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles (Hollywood), and filesharings through film lovers. In 2014 the film film was finally released on DVD through Cinema Guild and can also be seen (for free) on YouTube.  Examining the city of Los Angeles in three distinctive categories (Background/Character/Subject), Andersen's film is a love letter to the city and cinema itself. Questions are asked and Answers are forwarded. Take a listen and see if you agree with our thoughts on this wonderfully entertaining look at one of the world's great cities. You can reach us at gondoramos@yahoo.com to give us your thoughts. As always, we continue to look to you good and loyal listeners for support. If you have listened and enjoyed our bantering over these nearly eight years please feel free to support us with a monetary contribution. We're not asking for a whole lot. Whatever you can give is appreciated. The holidays are coming an we could use the help. Stop being cheap bastards and give what you can. Follow the link below to contribute.  Our Continued Thanks. https://www.buymeacoffee.com/watchrickramos 

Editor and critic of ScreenCrush.com and writer of a brand new book on Siskel & Ebert, Matt Singer joins slim and Brian to talk Los Angeles Plays Itself, Gymkata, his new book Opposable Thumbs, Classic Albums: Steely Dan - AJA, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. They also discuss their connections to LA through film, memories of reading their favorite film critics, learning to love bad films, what the heck a mixing board even does, and grappling with emotional films later in life. Chapters: Annual Letterboxd Sale (00:00:00) Opening credits (00:02:00) Los Angeles Plays Itself (00:05:55) Gymkata (00:17:44) Opposable Thumbs (00:30:03) Steely Dan (00:45:11) The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (00:53:15) Closing credits (01:04:07) Credits: Recorded in Los Angeles, Brooklyn, and Philadelphia. Edited by Slim. Theme music: “Vampiros Danceoteque” by Moniker. Production manager: Sophie Shin. The Letterboxd Show is a TAPEDECK production. Email us!

durée : 00:58:27 - Los Angeles au cinéma (1/2) : Les mystères d'une ville - par : Thierry Jousse - À l'occasion de la sortie en Blu-ray du film essai "Los Angeles Plays Itself" de Thom Andersen, Ciné Tempo explore les liens musicaux entre Los Angeles et le cinéma. Voici une première ballade dans la ville des mystères.

John Wilson is the host and creator of the HBO series How To with John Wilson. Each episode of the show makes a simple, straightforward promise to the viewer: to teach them how to do something. Then, each episode inevitably veers off course when interviews and found footage take him in different directions. When we asked John about the thing he wishes he'd made, he picked a classic documentary: 2003's Los Angeles Plays Itself.

On this episode, your intrepid host falls down a rabbit hole while doing research for one thing, and ends up discovering something "new" that must be investigated further, the 1987 action/comedy Oklahoma Smugglers. ----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.   You were probably expecting the third part of the Miramax Films in the 1980s series, and we will get to that one the next episode. But as often happens while I'm researching, I'll fall down a rabbit hole that piques my interest, and this time, it was not only discovering a film I had never heard of, but it fits within a larger discussion about disappearing media.   But before we get started, I need to send out a thank you to Matthew Martin, who contacted me via email after our previous episode. I had mentioned I couldn't find any American playdates for the Brian Trenchard-Smith movie The Quest around the time of its supposed release date of May 1st, 1986. Matthew sent me an ad from the local Spokane newspaper The Spokesman-Review dated July 18th, 1986, which shows the movie playing on two screens in Spokane, including a drive-in where it shared a screen with “co-hit” Young Sherlock Holmes. With that help, I was also able to find The Quest playing on five screens in the Seattle/Tacoma area and two in Spokane on July 11th, where it grossed a not very impressive $14,200. In its second week in the region, it would drop down to just three screens, and the gross would fall to just $2800, before disappearing at the end of that second week. Thank you to Matthew for that find, which gave me an idea.   On a lark, I tried searching for the movie again, this time using the director's last name and any day in 1986, and ended up finding 35 playdates for The Quest in Los Angeles, matinees only on Saturday, October 25th and Sunday, October 26th, one to three shows each day on just those two days.   Miramax did not report grosses.   And this is probably the most anyone has talked about The Quest and its lack of American box office. And with that, we're done with it. For now.   On this episode, we're going to talk about one of the many movies from the 1980s that has literally disappeared from the landscape. What I mean by that is that it was an independently made film that was given a Southern regional release in the South in 1987, has never been released on video since its sole VHS release in 1988, and isn't available on any currently widely used video platform, physical or streaming.   I'll try to talk about this movie, Oklahoma Smugglers, as much as I can in a moment, but this problem of disappearing movies has been a problem for nearly a century. I highlight this as there has been a number of announcements recently about streaming-only shows and movies being removed from their exclusive streaming platform, some just seven weeks after their premieres.   This is a problem.   Let me throw some statistics at you.   Film Foundation, a non-profit organization co-founded by Martin Scorsese in 1990 that is dedicated to film preservation and the exhibition of restored and classic cinema, has estimated that half of all the films ever made before 1950 no longer exist in any form, and that only 10% of the films produced before the dawn of the sound era of films are gone forever. The Deutsche Kinemathek, a major film archive founded in Berlin in 1963, also estimates that 80-90% of all silent films ever have been lost, a number that's a bit higher than the US Library of Congress's estimation that 75% of all silent film are gone. That includes more than 300 of Georges Méliès' 500 movies, a 1926 film, The Mountain Eagle, that was the second film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and London After Midnight, considered by many film historians to be “the holy grail” of lost films. A number of films from directors like Michael Curtiz, Allan Dwan, and Leo McCarey are gone. And The Betrayal, the final film from pioneering Black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, is no longer with us.    There are a number of reasons why many of these early movies are gone. Until the early 1950s, movies were often shot and printed on nitrate film, a highly flammable substance that can continue to burn even if completely submersed in water. During the earlier years of Hollywood, there were a number of fires on studio lots and in film vaults were original negatives of films were stored. Sometimes, studios would purposely incinerate old prints of films to salvage the silver particles within the nitrate film. Occasionally, a studio would destroy an older film when they remade that film with a new cast and director. And sometimes films, like Orson Welles' original cut of The Magnificent Ambersons, would be dumped into the ocean off the Southern California coast, when studios no longer wanted to pay to store these elements.   Except Oklahoma Smugglers does not fit into any of those scenarios. It's less than forty years old, in color, with a synchronized soundtrack. It's crime was being a small budgeted independently distributed movie from an independent production company that was only released in a small section of the United States, and never got any traction outside of that region.   Not that this alone is why it disappeared.   You may recall hearing about David Zaslav, the head of the mega entertainment conglomerate Warner Brothers Discovery, cancelling the release of two completed films, a Batgirl movie that would have featured Michael Keaton's return as Batman a full year before The Flash, and a sequel to a fairly successful Scooby Doo animated movie. Warner Brothers had spent more than $200m between the two films. They were shot, edited and scored, and ready for release. Then Zaslav decided these were of the quality he expected for Warner Brothers movies, and wrote them off for the tax break. Unless someone at Warners somewhere down the line decides to pay back the tax incentive to the Fed, these two movies will never legally be allowed to be shown, effectively making them lost films.   Again, there are many ways for a film to become lost.   In our case, it seems that Oklahoma Smugglers is an unfortunate victim of being the one and only film to be produced by Cambridge Entertainment Corporation, based in Needham MA. The company was founded on September 10th, 1986 and went into involuntary dissolution on December 31st, 1990, so it's very likely that the company went bankrupt and no company was interested in picking up the assets of a small independent production company with only one tangible asset, this movie.   So here is what I could find about Oklahoma Smugglers.   The film was produced and directed by Ota Richter, whose only previous film work was writing, producing a directing a horror comedy called Skullduggery in 1982. The film has its fans, but they are few and far between. Three years later, in 1985, Richter would work with a first time screenwriter named Sven Simon to come up with the story for Oklahoma Smugglers. When the script was completed, Richter would raise the money he would need to shoot the movie in Toronto with a no-name cast lead by George Buzz and John Novak, and a four week production schedule between February 24th and March 21st, 1986. One can presume the film was locked before September 10th, 1986, when Cambridge Entertainment Corporation was founded, with Ota Rickter as its treasurer. The other two members of the Cambridge board, company President Neil T. Evans, and company Secretary Robert G. Parks, appear to have not had any involvement with the making of the movie, and according to the Open Corporates database, the men had never worked together before and never worked together again after this company.   But what Neil Evans did have, amongst the six companies he was operating in and around the Boston area at the time, was a independent distribution company called Sharp Features, which he had founded in April of 1981, and had already distributed five other movies, including the Dick Shawn comedy Good-bye Cruel World, which apparently only played in Nashville TN in September 1982, and a 1985 documentary about The Beach Boys.   So after a year of shopping the film around the major studios and bigger independent distributors, the Cambridge team decided to just release it themselves through Sharp Features. They would place an ad in the September 16th, 1987 issue of Variety, announcing the film, quote unquote, opens the Southeast on September 18th, just two days later.   Now, you'll notice I was able to find a lot of information about the people behind the film. About the companies they created or had already created to push the film out into the market. The dates it filmed, and where it filmed. I have a lot of sources both online and in my office with more data about almost every film ever released. But what I can't tell you is if the film actually did open on September 18th, 1987. Or how many theatres it played in. Or how much it grossed that first weekend. Or if any theatres retained it for a second week. Or any reviews of the movie from any contemporary newspaper or magazine. Outside of the same one single sentence synopsis of the movie, I had to turn to a Finnish VHS release of the film for a more detailed synopsis, which roughly translates back into English as such:   “Former Marines Hugo and Skip are living the best days of their lives. Hugo is a real country boy and Skip again from a "better family." Together they are a perfect pair: where Skip throws, Hugo hurls his fists. Mr. Milk, who offers security services, takes them on. Mr. Milk's biggest dream is to get hold of his nemesis "Oklahoma Smuggler" Taip's most cherished asset - a lucrative casino. Mr. Taip is not only a casino owner, but he handles everything possible, from arms smuggling to drugs. The fight for the ownership of the Oklahoma Smuggler casino is a humorous mix of fistfights, intrigues and dynamite where Hugo and Skip get the hero's part. What happens to the casino is another matter.”   Okay, that sounds like absolute crap.   But here's the thing.   I actually enjoy checking out low budget movies that might not be very good but are at least trying to be something.   I would be very interested in seeing a movie like Oklahoma Smugglers. But I can't the darn thing anywhere. It's not posted to YouTube or Vimeo or any video sharing service I know of. It's not on The Internet Archive. It's not on any of the Russian video sites that I occasionally find otherwise hard to find movies.   There's no entry for the film on Wikipedia or on Rotten Tomatoes. There is an IMDb page for the film, with a grand total of one user rating and one user review, both from the same person. There's also only one rating and mini-review of it on Letterboxd, also from the same person. There is a page for the film on the Plex website, but no one has the actual film.   This film has, for all intents and purposes, vanished.   Is that a good thing?   Absolutely not.   While it's highly likely Oklahoma Smugglers is not a very good movie, there's also a chance it might actually be stupid, goofy fun, and even if its a low quality dupe off a VHS tape, it should be available for viewing. There should be some kind of movie repository that has every movie still around that is in the public domain be available for viewing. Or if the owners of a movie with a still enforceable copyright have basically abandoned said copyright by not making the film available for consumption after a certain amount of time or for a certain amount of time, it also become available. This would not only help films like Oklahoma Smugglers be discovered, but it would also give film lovers the chance to see many movies they've heard about but have never had the opportunity to see. Even the original theatrical version of the first three Star Wars movies are no longer available commercially. Outside of a transfer of the early 1990s laserdisc to DVD in 2004, no one has been able to see the original versions in nearly twenty years. The closest one can get now are fan created “Despecialized” editions on the internet.   Film fans tend to think of film as a forever medium, but it's becoming ever increasingly clear that it far from that. And we're not just talking about American movies either. When I said it is estimated that half the films ever made are considered lost, that includes movies from all corners of the globe, across several generations. From Angola and Australia to the former Yugoslavia and Zambia. Gone forever.   But every once in a while, a forgotten film can come back to life. Case in point, The Exiles, a 1958 film written, produced and directed by Kent Mackenzie, about a group of Native Americans who have left their reservation in search of a new life in Los Angeles' Bunker Hill neighborhood. After premiering at the 1961 Venice Film Festival, the film was never picked up for theatrical distribution, and for many years, the only way to see it was the occasional screening of the film as some college film society screening of the one 16mm print of the film that was still around. Cinephiles were aware of the film, but it wouldn't be until the exceptional 2004 video essay Los Angeles Plays Itself by Thom Anderson that many, including myself, even learned of the film's existence. It would take another four years of legal maneuvering for Milestone Films to finally give The Exiles a proper theatrical and home video release. The following year, in 2009, with new public exposure to the film, the Library of Congress included The Exiles on their National Film Registry, for being of culturally, historically or aesthetically" significance. In the case of The Exiles, much of Bunker Hill was torn down shortly after the making of the film, so in many ways, The Exiles is a living visual history of an area of Los Angeles that no longer exists in that way. It's a good film regardless, but as a native Angelino, I find The Exiles to be fascinating for all these places that disappeared in just a few short years before my own birth.   So, that's the episode for this week.   Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again next week, when we continue our miniseries on Miramax Films in the 1980s.   Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about Oklahoma Smugglers.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.  

On this episode, your intrepid host falls down a rabbit hole while doing research for one thing, and ends up discovering something "new" that must be investigated further, the 1987 action/comedy Oklahoma Smugglers. ----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.   You were probably expecting the third part of the Miramax Films in the 1980s series, and we will get to that one the next episode. But as often happens while I'm researching, I'll fall down a rabbit hole that piques my interest, and this time, it was not only discovering a film I had never heard of, but it fits within a larger discussion about disappearing media.   But before we get started, I need to send out a thank you to Matthew Martin, who contacted me via email after our previous episode. I had mentioned I couldn't find any American playdates for the Brian Trenchard-Smith movie The Quest around the time of its supposed release date of May 1st, 1986. Matthew sent me an ad from the local Spokane newspaper The Spokesman-Review dated July 18th, 1986, which shows the movie playing on two screens in Spokane, including a drive-in where it shared a screen with “co-hit” Young Sherlock Holmes. With that help, I was also able to find The Quest playing on five screens in the Seattle/Tacoma area and two in Spokane on July 11th, where it grossed a not very impressive $14,200. In its second week in the region, it would drop down to just three screens, and the gross would fall to just $2800, before disappearing at the end of that second week. Thank you to Matthew for that find, which gave me an idea.   On a lark, I tried searching for the movie again, this time using the director's last name and any day in 1986, and ended up finding 35 playdates for The Quest in Los Angeles, matinees only on Saturday, October 25th and Sunday, October 26th, one to three shows each day on just those two days.   Miramax did not report grosses.   And this is probably the most anyone has talked about The Quest and its lack of American box office. And with that, we're done with it. For now.   On this episode, we're going to talk about one of the many movies from the 1980s that has literally disappeared from the landscape. What I mean by that is that it was an independently made film that was given a Southern regional release in the South in 1987, has never been released on video since its sole VHS release in 1988, and isn't available on any currently widely used video platform, physical or streaming.   I'll try to talk about this movie, Oklahoma Smugglers, as much as I can in a moment, but this problem of disappearing movies has been a problem for nearly a century. I highlight this as there has been a number of announcements recently about streaming-only shows and movies being removed from their exclusive streaming platform, some just seven weeks after their premieres.   This is a problem.   Let me throw some statistics at you.   Film Foundation, a non-profit organization co-founded by Martin Scorsese in 1990 that is dedicated to film preservation and the exhibition of restored and classic cinema, has estimated that half of all the films ever made before 1950 no longer exist in any form, and that only 10% of the films produced before the dawn of the sound era of films are gone forever. The Deutsche Kinemathek, a major film archive founded in Berlin in 1963, also estimates that 80-90% of all silent films ever have been lost, a number that's a bit higher than the US Library of Congress's estimation that 75% of all silent film are gone. That includes more than 300 of Georges Méliès' 500 movies, a 1926 film, The Mountain Eagle, that was the second film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and London After Midnight, considered by many film historians to be “the holy grail” of lost films. A number of films from directors like Michael Curtiz, Allan Dwan, and Leo McCarey are gone. And The Betrayal, the final film from pioneering Black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, is no longer with us.    There are a number of reasons why many of these early movies are gone. Until the early 1950s, movies were often shot and printed on nitrate film, a highly flammable substance that can continue to burn even if completely submersed in water. During the earlier years of Hollywood, there were a number of fires on studio lots and in film vaults were original negatives of films were stored. Sometimes, studios would purposely incinerate old prints of films to salvage the silver particles within the nitrate film. Occasionally, a studio would destroy an older film when they remade that film with a new cast and director. And sometimes films, like Orson Welles' original cut of The Magnificent Ambersons, would be dumped into the ocean off the Southern California coast, when studios no longer wanted to pay to store these elements.   Except Oklahoma Smugglers does not fit into any of those scenarios. It's less than forty years old, in color, with a synchronized soundtrack. It's crime was being a small budgeted independently distributed movie from an independent production company that was only released in a small section of the United States, and never got any traction outside of that region.   Not that this alone is why it disappeared.   You may recall hearing about David Zaslav, the head of the mega entertainment conglomerate Warner Brothers Discovery, cancelling the release of two completed films, a Batgirl movie that would have featured Michael Keaton's return as Batman a full year before The Flash, and a sequel to a fairly successful Scooby Doo animated movie. Warner Brothers had spent more than $200m between the two films. They were shot, edited and scored, and ready for release. Then Zaslav decided these were of the quality he expected for Warner Brothers movies, and wrote them off for the tax break. Unless someone at Warners somewhere down the line decides to pay back the tax incentive to the Fed, these two movies will never legally be allowed to be shown, effectively making them lost films.   Again, there are many ways for a film to become lost.   In our case, it seems that Oklahoma Smugglers is an unfortunate victim of being the one and only film to be produced by Cambridge Entertainment Corporation, based in Needham MA. The company was founded on September 10th, 1986 and went into involuntary dissolution on December 31st, 1990, so it's very likely that the company went bankrupt and no company was interested in picking up the assets of a small independent production company with only one tangible asset, this movie.   So here is what I could find about Oklahoma Smugglers.   The film was produced and directed by Ota Richter, whose only previous film work was writing, producing a directing a horror comedy called Skullduggery in 1982. The film has its fans, but they are few and far between. Three years later, in 1985, Richter would work with a first time screenwriter named Sven Simon to come up with the story for Oklahoma Smugglers. When the script was completed, Richter would raise the money he would need to shoot the movie in Toronto with a no-name cast lead by George Buzz and John Novak, and a four week production schedule between February 24th and March 21st, 1986. One can presume the film was locked before September 10th, 1986, when Cambridge Entertainment Corporation was founded, with Ota Rickter as its treasurer. The other two members of the Cambridge board, company President Neil T. Evans, and company Secretary Robert G. Parks, appear to have not had any involvement with the making of the movie, and according to the Open Corporates database, the men had never worked together before and never worked together again after this company.   But what Neil Evans did have, amongst the six companies he was operating in and around the Boston area at the time, was a independent distribution company called Sharp Features, which he had founded in April of 1981, and had already distributed five other movies, including the Dick Shawn comedy Good-bye Cruel World, which apparently only played in Nashville TN in September 1982, and a 1985 documentary about The Beach Boys.   So after a year of shopping the film around the major studios and bigger independent distributors, the Cambridge team decided to just release it themselves through Sharp Features. They would place an ad in the September 16th, 1987 issue of Variety, announcing the film, quote unquote, opens the Southeast on September 18th, just two days later.   Now, you'll notice I was able to find a lot of information about the people behind the film. About the companies they created or had already created to push the film out into the market. The dates it filmed, and where it filmed. I have a lot of sources both online and in my office with more data about almost every film ever released. But what I can't tell you is if the film actually did open on September 18th, 1987. Or how many theatres it played in. Or how much it grossed that first weekend. Or if any theatres retained it for a second week. Or any reviews of the movie from any contemporary newspaper or magazine. Outside of the same one single sentence synopsis of the movie, I had to turn to a Finnish VHS release of the film for a more detailed synopsis, which roughly translates back into English as such:   “Former Marines Hugo and Skip are living the best days of their lives. Hugo is a real country boy and Skip again from a "better family." Together they are a perfect pair: where Skip throws, Hugo hurls his fists. Mr. Milk, who offers security services, takes them on. Mr. Milk's biggest dream is to get hold of his nemesis "Oklahoma Smuggler" Taip's most cherished asset - a lucrative casino. Mr. Taip is not only a casino owner, but he handles everything possible, from arms smuggling to drugs. The fight for the ownership of the Oklahoma Smuggler casino is a humorous mix of fistfights, intrigues and dynamite where Hugo and Skip get the hero's part. What happens to the casino is another matter.”   Okay, that sounds like absolute crap.   But here's the thing.   I actually enjoy checking out low budget movies that might not be very good but are at least trying to be something.   I would be very interested in seeing a movie like Oklahoma Smugglers. But I can't the darn thing anywhere. It's not posted to YouTube or Vimeo or any video sharing service I know of. It's not on The Internet Archive. It's not on any of the Russian video sites that I occasionally find otherwise hard to find movies.   There's no entry for the film on Wikipedia or on Rotten Tomatoes. There is an IMDb page for the film, with a grand total of one user rating and one user review, both from the same person. There's also only one rating and mini-review of it on Letterboxd, also from the same person. There is a page for the film on the Plex website, but no one has the actual film.   This film has, for all intents and purposes, vanished.   Is that a good thing?   Absolutely not.   While it's highly likely Oklahoma Smugglers is not a very good movie, there's also a chance it might actually be stupid, goofy fun, and even if its a low quality dupe off a VHS tape, it should be available for viewing. There should be some kind of movie repository that has every movie still around that is in the public domain be available for viewing. Or if the owners of a movie with a still enforceable copyright have basically abandoned said copyright by not making the film available for consumption after a certain amount of time or for a certain amount of time, it also become available. This would not only help films like Oklahoma Smugglers be discovered, but it would also give film lovers the chance to see many movies they've heard about but have never had the opportunity to see. Even the original theatrical version of the first three Star Wars movies are no longer available commercially. Outside of a transfer of the early 1990s laserdisc to DVD in 2004, no one has been able to see the original versions in nearly twenty years. The closest one can get now are fan created “Despecialized” editions on the internet.   Film fans tend to think of film as a forever medium, but it's becoming ever increasingly clear that it far from that. And we're not just talking about American movies either. When I said it is estimated that half the films ever made are considered lost, that includes movies from all corners of the globe, across several generations. From Angola and Australia to the former Yugoslavia and Zambia. Gone forever.   But every once in a while, a forgotten film can come back to life. Case in point, The Exiles, a 1958 film written, produced and directed by Kent Mackenzie, about a group of Native Americans who have left their reservation in search of a new life in Los Angeles' Bunker Hill neighborhood. After premiering at the 1961 Venice Film Festival, the film was never picked up for theatrical distribution, and for many years, the only way to see it was the occasional screening of the film as some college film society screening of the one 16mm print of the film that was still around. Cinephiles were aware of the film, but it wouldn't be until the exceptional 2004 video essay Los Angeles Plays Itself by Thom Anderson that many, including myself, even learned of the film's existence. It would take another four years of legal maneuvering for Milestone Films to finally give The Exiles a proper theatrical and home video release. The following year, in 2009, with new public exposure to the film, the Library of Congress included The Exiles on their National Film Registry, for being of culturally, historically or aesthetically" significance. In the case of The Exiles, much of Bunker Hill was torn down shortly after the making of the film, so in many ways, The Exiles is a living visual history of an area of Los Angeles that no longer exists in that way. It's a good film regardless, but as a native Angelino, I find The Exiles to be fascinating for all these places that disappeared in just a few short years before my own birth.   So, that's the episode for this week.   Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again next week, when we continue our miniseries on Miramax Films in the 1980s.   Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about Oklahoma Smugglers.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.  

In episode 1.8 of What a Year! Ethan Warren and Ryan Pollie discuss Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz, MGMT's Oracular Spectacular, and Tracy Letts' play August: Osage County with their guest correspondent, MJ Halberstadt.00:01:25 - Hot Fuzz00:31:33 - Pop Quiz!00:43:45 - Oracular Spectacular01:08:01 - August: Osage County (with MJ Halberstadt)Try MUBI free for 30 days by visiting www.MUBI.com/whatayear, where users in America you can watch this week's recommendations Entertainment, The General, Los Angeles Plays Itself, and Burning.

On this episode of Cyberpunk Summer, we're welcoming special guest, writer, critic, and podcaster Inkoo Kang to talk about Blade Runner, Ridley Scott's 1982 film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Set in the dystopian Los Angeles of 2019, Harrison Ford plays a cop hunting down bio-engineered androids known as replicants, who have returned to Earth from the space colonies where they were sent to work as slave labor.Note: Enjoy this episode of the podcast as a video at patreon.com/femfreq or on Youtube here: https://youtu.be/OBZNlKhygx8Time Stamps:46:19 - What's your Freq Out?Inkoo on the Peacock series Angelyne and the Starz series P-ValleyAnita on the novella The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi VoKat on Thom Andersen's 2003 video essay Los Angeles Plays ItselfLinks Mentioned:Inkoo's Criterion Collection essay on Parasite: https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/7158-parasite-notes-from-the-undergroundKat's Freq Out, Los Angeles Plays Itself: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/losangelesplaysitselfFREQ Show episode about Blade Runner - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYRsDi4fGOANicole He's cyberpunk, yelling-at-computer-game, ENHANCE.COMPUTER - https://nicole.pizza/enhance-homeFind Inkoo:https://twitter.com/inkookangat the Washington Post - https://t.co/Rxm1rf972bAll About Almódovar podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/all-about-almod%C3%B3var/id1533092827All About Campion podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/all-about-campion/id1589998212Find Us:Join our PatreonOur WebsiteSubscribe to FFR on Apple PodcastsSubscribe to our Star Trek PodcastTwitterInstagramtwitch.tv/femfreq (every Thursday at 6:30pm PT)

In 2021 Daniel Clarkson Fisher inaugurated an online Tumblr site with the goal of documenting instances of actual libraries appearing in film (https://costarringyourlocallibrary.tumblr.com). Inspired by Thom Andersen's Los Angeles Plays Itself (2004), it is a mix of public scholarship, architectural appreciation, and audiovisual essayism. Show notes at: https://sowhat.fims.uwo.ca/3-3-co-starring-your-local-library/

We're back, girlies!! This week, Martha & Kait discuss the folklore surrounding the LA legend, icon, and enigma Angelyne. They also talk about past life astrology, supplements, Los Angeles Plays Itself, bimbo vs. It Girl vs. blonde bombshell, and getting accidentally roofied.

Licorice Pizza (2021), Respect (2021), Drive My Car (2021), The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021), and Billie Eilish: The World's a Little Blurry (2021). Plus: Inherent Vice (2014), Nothing But Trouble (1991), Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003), Boogie Nights (1997), Bringing Up Baby (1938), Flag Day (2021), and Cinderella (2021). This episode is sponsored by FNX Fitness (Use the Discount Code: fourseasonsoffilm and receive 15% off your order). Podcast App: https://playpodca.st/fourseasons Spotify: http://bit.ly/4SOFspotify Check out our latest episodes, digital shorts, movie reviews and more: fourseasonsoffilm.com  Where to Find Nathan and Andy:  @fourseasonspod on Twitter  @fourseasonsoffilm on Instagram @NateRBlackburn on Instagram & Twitter  @AJPesa on IG & Twitter  Facebook: http://facebook.com/fourseasonsoffilm YouTube: http://youtube.com/fourseasonsoffilm Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/fourseasonsoffilm @fnx_fit Keep Film Alive!

Listen as Miles and I discuss Them Andersen's Los Angeles Plays Itself and David Lynch's Mulholland Drive in the first installment of our recurring "Los Angeles and Cinema" series. 

This episode kicks off our mini-series on Los Angeles in film. We start with the ultimate doc about Los Angeles representation, ‘Los Angeles Plays Itself.' And joining us this week to talk about LA in film is the fabulous film critic Carlos Aguilar. The gang discusses their own relationship with the city they live in, the city of angels. Plus, they cover which films most accurately represent the city. And, as always, we've got ‘Staff Picks.'Go to Soylent.com/maxfilm and use code MAXFILM to get 20% OFF your first order.Staff Picks:Alonso – Postcards from the EdgeDrea – No Sudden MoveCarlos – SummertimeWith Alonso Duralde, Drea Clark, and Carlos Aguilar

FATALE ATTRACTION “Wrapped up in tissue paper with pink ribbons on it”. Valentine’s Day is here. What better way to celebrate the holiday that with films that explore everything that makes Valentine’s great…murder, greed, corruption, adultery, and, yes, most important of all, femme fatales. Sounds like it’s time for Episode 42 of Pop Art, the podcast where my guest chooses a movie from popular culture and I’ll select a film from the more art/classic side of cinema with a connection to it. For my listeners, please like, follow or comment. This time, I am happy to welcome two fellow podcasters, Richard and Amanda Kirkham, a father/daughter team, who have chosen the Curtis Hanson neo-noir about 1950s Los Angeles, LA Confidential and I have chosen the Billy Wilder/Raymond Chandler film noir classic about 1940s Los Angeles, Double Indemnity, films that tell us that, yes, Valentine’s Day can be the most fatale day of the year. And in this episode, we answer such questions as: What building code makes a scene in Double Indemnity unrealistic? How did James Elroy describe Curtis Hanson? Why did Stanwyk, Robinson and MacMurray not want to do Double Indemnity? What does Los Angeles Plays Itself have to say about these films? Where are the Spanish style homes located that are used in both films? Why is the character in Double Indemnity called Walter Neff instead of Walter Ness? Check out Richard’s blog and podcast The Lamb at http://www.largeassmovieblogs.com/ And Amanda’s blog at https://hollywoodconsumer.wordpress.com/ Check out my blog at https://howardcasner.wordpress.com/ My books, More Rantings and Ravings of a Screenplay Reader, The Starving Artists and Other Stories and The Five Corporations and One True Religion can be found at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=howard+casner&ref=nb_sb_noss --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/howard-casner/support

This week we're looking into the legendary video essay Los Angeles Plays Itself!

On the one hundred and forty-seventh episode of THE THIRD ACT PODCAST the crew is waffling. Our new release review is for Quentin Tarantino's Golden Age would-be epic, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD. We pair that with a sprawling documentary on the capitol of movies, LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF. Finally, we conclude our Auteurography series on Oscar Micheaux and dig into his crime film, LYING LIPS. We also discuss lizard men, feet, and Bernie Sanders. Keep in touch with us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheThirdActPodcast and Twitter: @TheThirdActPod and email us anytime at: TheThirdActPodcast@gmail.com

Max & Nicky are joined by Kevin Crooks for an in depth discussion on the documentary, Los Angeles Plays Itself. Plus, some Phantom of the Opera talk. Intro and Outro Music Written, mixed, and produced by Nicky Weinbach

Slow Writing: Thom Andersen on Cinema (Visible Press) Slow Writing is a collection of articles by Thom Andersen that reflect on the avant-garde, Hollywood feature films, and contemporary cinema. His critiques of artists and filmmakers as diverse as Yasujirō Ozu, Nicholas Ray, Andy Warhol, and Christian Marclay locate their work within the broader spheres of popular culture, politics, history, architecture, and the urban landscape. The city of Los Angeles and its relationship to film is a recurrent theme. These writings, which span a period of five decades, demonstrate Andersen’s social consciousness, humour and his genuine appreciation of cinema in its many forms. Thom Andersen’s films include the celebrated documentary essays Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer (1975), Red Hollywood (1996), Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003), and The Thoughts That Once We Had (2015). Of the thirty-four texts included in the book, six are hitherto unpublished; others have been revised or appear in different versions to those previously available. Praise for Slow Writing “There are few writers and few filmmakers who make me rethink what cinema is more than Thom Andersen. Sometimes this is a matter of introducing fresh perspectives, such as making cinema and architecture more mutually interactive. It’s always a political matter of figuring out just who and where we are, and why.”----- Jonathan Rosenbaum “In his disarmingly plainspoken introduction, Thom Andersen more or less apologizes for not becoming a film critic, and for not delivering a manifesto. Slow Writing shows us just how terrific a critic he hasn’t (mostly) bothered to be. This book belongs on a very small and special shelf of the most incisive and ungrandiose books by artists.”----- Jonathan Lethem Thom Andersen has lived in Los Angeles for most of his life. His knowledge of and enthusiasm for the city has deeply informed his work, not least his widely praised study of its representation in movies, Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003), which was voted one of the 50 Best Documentaries of All Time in a Sight & Sound critics’ poll. Andersen made his first short films and entered into the city’s film scene as a student of USC and UCLA in the 1960s. His hour-long documentary Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer (1974) was realised under an AFI scholarship and has lately been restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. His research into the victims of the Hollywood Blacklist, done in collaboration with film theorist Noël Burch, produced the video essay Red Hollywood (1996) and book Les Communistes de Hollywood: Autre chose que des martyrs (1994). Andersen’s recent films include Reconversão (2012) on the work of Portuguese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura, and The Thoughts That Once We Had (2015), a personal history of cinema loosely inspired by Gilles Deleuze. A published writer since 1966, Andersen has contributed to journals such as Film Comment, Artforum, Sight and Sound and Cinema Scope. He has taught at the California Institute of the Arts since 1987, and was previously on faculty at SUNY Buffalo and Ohio State University. Also a respected film curator, he has acted as programmer for Los Angeles Filmforum and curated thematic retrospectives for the Viennale. Slow Writing: Thom Andersen on Cinema is the first collection of his essays.  Tosh Berman is a writer and poet.  His two books are Sparks-Tastic (Rare Bird) and a book of poems, The Plum in Mr. Blum's Pudding (Penny-Ante Editions).  He is also the publisher and editor of his press, TamTam Books, which published the works of Boris Vian, Serge Gainsbourg, Guy Debord, Jacques Mesrine, Ron Mael & Russell Mael (Sparks) Gilles Verlant, and Lun*na Menoh. 

This week we’re looking at a pair of classic documentary films. First up is seminal true crime drama The Thin Blue Line, which examines the politics and personalities that put a man on death row for killing a Dallas police officer -- and asks whether it might have all been a horrible mistake. Then we’re diving into Los Angeles Plays Itself, a simultaneously cantankerous and swoony look at the history of Los Angeles as it appears on film. One grumpy film professor and native Angeleno sets out to make the definitive case for what’s wrong with the movies’ take on LA, permissions be damned, and 200+ clips later, a cult classic was born. Pull up a chair and google “fair use laws”— it’s time for Après Culture. Important Note: We don’t want to risk spoiling anything for our listeners, so outlined below are the time-stamps of when we talk about each documentary - listen at your risk or feel free to skip around! 02:22-19:16 - The Thin Blue Line 19:36-39:35 - Los Angeles Plays Itself NEXT WEEK: Our special Pop Culture Gift Guide, with suggestions for every age range and most of the personalities (seriously, we got you covered) TIPPLE OF THE WEEK: Mulled Wine

This week we’re helping you plot your ideal Thanksgiving TV and movie marathon. We’ll look at all the best Turkey Day episodes available to stream for free (because we’re all poor until after Christmas). Turkey abuse! American football! All the family feeling you can stand, and some really ill-advised orange/green color combos! It’s all happening in the Après Culture Lounge this week. Pull up a chair and try to suppress your sympathetic gravy belches—it’s time for Après Culture. Important Note: We don’t want to risk spoiling anything for our listeners, so outlined below are the time-stamps of when we talk about certain shows/movies - listen at your risk or feel free to skip around! COMEDY 07:06-18:20 Friends 18:20-23:05 Bob’s Burgers 23:08-27:38 How I Met Your Mother 27:39-31:36 Everybody Loves Raymond 31:52-36:34 WKRP in Cincinnati 36:36-40:07 Cheers 40:10-45:55 Planes, Trains and Automobiles 45:04-45:22 Brooklyn 99 45:34-47:02 Don’t Trust the B in Apt 23 47:03-48:40 Bob Newhart Show 48:41-49:48 The Cosby Show DRAMA 50:15-57:46 Gilmore Girls 57:50-1:05:27 West Wing 1:06:07-1:06:47 Felicity 1:06:49-1:08:05 The Wonder Years 1:08:06-1:10:12 Grey’s Anatomy NEXT WEEK: Documentaries! The Thin Blue Line (1988) Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003) TIPPLE OF THE WEEK: Grown Up Milkshakes

Who's doing the good writing about film these days and how do you find it? 2:42 - Box Office: Lee Daniels gets in on Tyler Perry's marketing tactics. 24:30 - Feature Segment: What kind of writing about film is exciting us these days? What do we look for in good film writing? 40:25 - Overlooked Gems: Kev's pick makes Dave nostalgic for Fametracker, Dave's pick casts new light on a tired genre. Also, here's the Spielberg Face video essay we mention at the end as well as Los Angeles Plays Itself. Talking Pictures is hosted by Kevin Smokler (@weegee) and David Dylan Thomas (@movie_pundit).

Colin Marshall sits down in Silver Lake with Thom Andersen, professor at the California Institute of the Arts' School of Film/Video and director of films including Red Hollywood, the new Reconversion, and the well-known documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself, on the truth and falsity of the city's representation in motion pictures. They discuss The Fast and the Furious shooting on his street; the end of the current era of impressive car chases crafted by Nicolas Winding Refn and Quentin Tarantino; H.B. Halicki's original Gone in 60 Seconds, and the importance of its literalism regarding greater Los Angeles' South Bay; how rarely mainstream cinematic interest looks beyond white people of "immodest means," and what the films that do go beyond them achieve (such as the creation of detective films that actually involve detecting); Killer of Sheep, Boyz n the Hood, and the differences between garden-variety "gang movies" and those that truthfully deal with survival; the questions to do with the black population, bank bailouts, and the destruction of the working class he believes movies could address but rarely do; how much more interesting reality is than our imaginations, which by now have long since filled up with junk; Los Angeles as a representational battleground, and the way filmmakers have an alibi here not to do important work; the native's lack of advantage in understanding this city, and the outsider's advantage in making it strange again, as seen in Zabriskie Point, The Outside Man, Model Shop, and Point Blank; the changes in Los Angeles, how they vanish in comparison to the changes in major Asian cities, and how they have for the most part taken place among the people rather than in the infrastructure; the racism of Crash versus the naïveté of Falling Down; his continuing fascination with the Los Angeles wherein people struggle to make a living; and what fillms and books can to do change minds, given that they so often make minds in the first place.