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PODCAST

There"s Sometimes a Buggy

Join Dave and Elise every week for a buggy-ride of cinematic exploration. A bilingual Montreal native and a Prairies hayseed gravitate to Toronto for the film culture, meet on OK Cupid, and spur on each other"s movie-love, culminating in this podcast. Expect in-depth discussion of their old favourites (mostly studio-era Hollywood) and their latest frontiers (courtesy of the TIFF Cinematheque and various Toronto rep houses and festivals). The podcast will be comprised of several potentially

tv & film philosophy

All Episodes

01:29:51

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – 20th Century Fox –...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2023/06/23

In this extra-special 20th Century Fox 1943 episode, we stare agog at a couple of dazzling musicals: Stormy Weather, whose all-Black cast is headlined by Bill Robinson and Lena Horne and boasts an embarrassment of geniuses; and Busby Berkeley's The Gang's All Here, a Technicolor psychedelic extravaganza that's the pinnacle of Fox's signature variety-style musical. We try to sketch out some of the complex representational issues attending Stormy Weather, and our reasons for thinking that the movie

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01:23:53

Special Subject – Silent Vidor Sampler – THE SKY...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2023/06/16

Our June Special Subject samples the surviving silent cinema of Dave's favorite director (now revealed!), King Vidor. We tease Vidor's auteur preoccupations out of these four early films—The Sky Pilot (1921), Peg o' My Heart (1922), Wild Oranges (1924), and La Bohème (1926)—and find a common focus on the successful, frustrated, or warped self-realization of his heroines. We explore the way Vidor articulates this theme through sometimes eccentric versions of a variety of genres: Western, comedy,

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52:35

Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Dorothy McGuire – Part 8:...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2023/06/09

We continue last week's theme of Hollywood's attitude toward the Soviet Union as our Dorothy McGuire Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode takes us beyond not only the Popular Front era but just a shade beyond the heyday of McCarthyism. We also find that we spoke too soon about McGuire entering her mom-roles era, as in this episode's movies she embodies an unmarried professional woman with a liberal attitude toward sex and a shady political past in Trial (1955, directed by Mark Robson, based on the novel

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01:15:09

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Warner Brothers –...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2023/06/02

Our Warner Brothers 1943 episode is a very special one, a Popular Front anti-Nazi double feature, the Stalinist propaganda film Mission to Moscow (directed by Michael Curtiz) and Lewis Milestone's drama about Norwegian resistance to the Nazi occupation, Edge of Darkness. We attempt (as complete non-experts!) to lay out the stakes involved in the case made by Mission to Moscow and discuss the circumstances of the film's production and the impact it made on Hollywood. Then we move on to Milestone and

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01:07:30

Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Dorothy McGuire – Part 7:...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2023/05/26

Our Dorothy McGuire movies this week occupy two ends of the mid-50s Hollywood spectrum: a low-budget black-and-white noirish crime thriller for Republic, Make Haste to Live (1954), and a vibrantly colorful Cinemascope travelogue romance for Fox, Three Coins in the Fountain (1954). We find plenty to recommend in both, from Make Haste to Live's stylish cinematography (by John L. Russell of Moonrise and Psycho fame) and palpable nastiness to McGuire's odd comedic chemistry with Clifton Webb in Three

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01:28:31

Special Subject – Jacqueline Audry Sampler – GIGI...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2023/05/19

Our Special Subject this month is the films of Jacqueline Audry, a fairly recently rediscovered postwar French director. We watched all of the films we could find with English subtitles: Gigi (1949), Olivia (1951), Huis clos/No Exit (1954), and Les petits matins/Hitch-Hike (1962). From literary adaptations of some strong and scandalous material to an unusually gentle New Wave comedy, these films reveal a director who tackles the erotic frankly but not uncritically. We also have a Fear and

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01:22:40

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – MGM – 1943: THE...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2023/05/12

For our MGM 1943 episode, we look at two films that are highly representative of the Mayer ethos, The Human Comedy (directed by Clarence Brown), a portrait of WWII-era American small-town life infused with the beatific sensibility of William Saroyan (who provided the story), with Mickey Rooney in a coming-of-age story that's equal parts Andy Hardy and David Lynch; and the children's classic Lassie Come Home (directed by Fred M. Wilcox), which we compare to Mizoguchi's Sansho the Bailiff as a

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01:19:51

Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Dorothy McGuire – Part 6: I...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2023/05/05

Our two Dorothy McGuire movies for this week are wildly different in tone: Samuel Goldwyn's I Want You (1951, directed by Mark Robson), about a family's reaction to the Korean War draft, and, for MGM, the Jamesian melodrama Invitation (1952, directed by Gottfried Reinhardt). Dave makes the case for I Want You as a complex leftist look at early Cold War America, and then we unpack the Jamesian tropes of Invitation, with its complicated flashback structure. And in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto

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01:17:44

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Paramount – 1943: ...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2023/04/28

For our Paramount 1943 episode, just a couple of typical comedies, as far as John Douglas Eames is concerned: Preston Sturges' The Palm Beach Story, starring Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrea, a comedy of remarriage in which the screwballs are no longer the central couple, and Mitchell Leisen's cross-class comedy with a number of twists, No Time For Love, with Colbert and Fred MacMurray. We try to figure out what these movies, coming at the end of the screwball comedy cycle, have to say about love,

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01:36:48

Special Subject – Produced by Joan Harrison, Part 2 -...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2023/04/21

In the second part of our Joan Harrison: Producer Special Subject, we look at Harrison's Robert Montgomery years and her final films made before turning to television. which include both known and overlooked gems: Ride the Pink Horse (1947), Once More, My Darling (1949), Your Witness (1950), and Circle of Danger (1951). We identify the various themes and concerns that unite films within this group, with particular attention to the way Harrison makes political progressivism serve dramatic ends. And

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01:20:21

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Universal – 1942:...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2023/04/14

For our Universal 1942 episode, a very odd pairing: The Mad Doctor of Market Street, a mad scientist/ocean liner comedy/island adventure movie directed by low-budget noir auteur Joseph H. Lewis, and Alfred Hitchcock's first fully American movie, Saboteur, a fugitive-on-the-run thriller. We dissect the depiction of the fictional islanders in The Mad Doctor of Market Street and the movie's deconstruction of the science/magic dichotomy, before moving on to Saboteur's leftist take on fascism in the

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51:00

Acteurist oeuvre-view – Dorothy McGuire – Part 5:...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2023/04/07

For this week's Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode we watched two romantic comedies (sort of), Mister 880 (1950) and Callaway Went Thataway (1951), in which Dorothy McGuire assumes a role we haven't seen from her before: the character through whom we register the pathos that the movies explore via the respective plights of Edmund Gwenn's elderly counterfeiter and Howard Keel's TV cowboy impersonator. We focus particularly on Mister 880, a very unusual comedic drama directed by the great Edmund Goulding,

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01:11:52

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – RKO – 1942: THE...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2023/03/31

Our 1942 RKO episode is a very special one, with films by two of the studio's outstanding auteurs, writer-producer-director Orson Welles, and B-horror unit producer Val Lewton. First, we look at Orson Welles' mutilated (some even say "emasculated"!) masterpiece, The Magnificent Ambersons, exploring the movie's extraordinary characters and performances and giving our opinion of the ending imposed by the studio. Then we turn to Val Lewton's first production for RKO's horror unit, Cat People,

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53:18

Acteurist oeuvre-view – Dorothy McGuire – Part 4:...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2023/03/24

In this Dorothy McGuire Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, a couple of disparate films: Elia Kazan's anti-semitism exposé drama, Gentleman's Agreement (1947), and a marital comedy about the hardships of being a doctor's wife, Mother Didn't Tell Me (1950). We discuss the qualities that McGuire brings to her most problematic character yet and that help make the character a possible audience identification figure for the audience. And then we discuss the "secret feminism" of Mother Didn't Tell Me's

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01:44:04

March Special Subject – March Minnelli Madness – THE...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2023/03/17

[[New Improved edition – with restored Home From the Hill content!]] It's March Minnelli Madness as we watch three melodramas directed by Vincente Minelli, plus one nightmarish comedy: The Long, Long Trailer (1954), starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz; The Cobweb (1955), starring Richard Widmark and Lauren Bacall (among other big names); Some Came Running (1958), based on the novel by James Jones and starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Shirley MacLaine; and Home from the Hill (1960),

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01:22:55

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – 20th Century Fox –...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2023/03/10

Our Fox 1942 episode explores two different modes of Betty Grable Fox musical (both choreographed by Astaire collaborator Hermes Pan) that draw on the Hollywood musical modes established in the 1930s:in black and white, the Warneresque backstager Footlight Serenade, shot by Lee Garmes; and the Technicolor farce Springtime in the Rockies, with comic support by Edward Everett Horton and Carmen Miranda, whose eccentric comedic styles confront one another and produce what might be chemistry. Elise

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01:23:19

Acteurist oeuvre-view – Dorothy McGuire – Part 3:...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2023/03/03

In this week's Acteurist Oeuvre-view, we look at two very different Dorothy McGuire movies from 1946 that share a striking adultness: Claudia and David (directed by Walter Lang), a marital comedy that's surprisingly frank about infidelity, and Till the End of Time (directed by Edward Dmytryk), a "post-war readjustment" movie that's surprisingly frank about sexuality in general, as well as American alienation and ennui. We make our first real stab at describing the essential qualities McGuire brings

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01:42:44

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Warner Brothers –...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2023/02/24

In this very special Warners 1942 episode we discuss two Dave faves, both starring (and romantically pairing) Ann Sheridan and Ronald Reagan, that push against the restrictions of the Production Code: Sam Wood's Peyton Place/Twin Peaks forerunner, Kings Row, and Curtis Bernhardt's noirish agrarian socialist drama, Juke Girl. We dive deep into Kings Rows' Freud-and-Emerson-steeped advocacy of a less repressed and hypocritical society and Juke GIrl's utopic/dystopic vision of humanity. And in Fear

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01:16:04

Acteurist oeuvre-view – Dorothy McGuire – Part 2: A...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2023/02/17

In this week’s Dorothy McGuire Acteurist Oeuvre-view, two very different roles for our subject: in Elia Kazan's first film, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), an imperfect mother in a difficult relationship with her protagonist-daughter; and in Robert Siodmak's Gothic noir, The Spiral Staircase, (1946) a mute girl targeted by a eugenicist killer. We discuss the unique qualities McGuire brings to what could be an unsympathetic role in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and the intricacies of that movie's

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01:00:49

Valentine’s Day 2023 – KISS ME GOODBYE (1982) and MY...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2023/02/10

Our Valentine's Day 2023 episode is all about loves from the past who have inconveniently returned. In My Favorite Wife (1940), Irene Dunne is newly remarried Cary Grant's presumed dead wife, while in Kiss Me Goodbye (1982), James Caan is Sally Field's actually dead, or undead, husband, interfering with her engagement to the (ostensibly) less charismatic Jeff Bridges. We apply Stanley Cavell's concept of the "comedy of remarriage" to these movies and conclude that the comedy of My Favorite

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