x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

PODCAST

There"s Sometimes a Buggy

Elise Moore and Dave

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

01:33:51

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – RKO – 1940: VIGIL IN...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2022/08/26

This week's studio is RKO, 1940, and we have two great movies: Vigil in the Night, starring Carole Lombard as a saintly nurse and Anne Shirley as her flawed sister in George Stevens' noirish medical drama; and Abe Lincoln in Illinois, based on Robert E. Sherwood's play, with Raymond Massey reprising his stage role of Abraham Lincoln. We discuss the latter as an anti-fascist film and argue for both films as examples of RKO's particular brand of progressivism, which continues even after the departure

en

01:01:47

August Special Subject – German Sirk Sampler – Part 1...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2022/08/19

Our Special Subject for August is also our first look at German filmmaking under the Nazis, with two mid-1930s films by left-wing director and future Hollywood auteur Douglas Sirk: The Girl from the Marsh Croft, based on the novel by Selma Lagerlöf, and Pillars of Society, based on the play by Henrik Ibsen. We consider the question of how it was possible to make liberal films under these circumstances and find early evidence of Sirk's interest in "split characters" and unconventional protagonists.

en

01:23:37

Acteurist oeuvre-view – Jean Arthur – Part 4: THE...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2022/08/12

In this week's Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, we look at 3 Jean Arthur movies: The Defense Rests (1934), an excellent corrupt lawyer drama that we were previously unable to find; and from 1935, two very different romantic comedies featuring real or pretend marriages of convenience, The Public Menace and If You Could Only Cook. The simultaneously idealistic and pragmatic young lawyer, screwball liar, and Depression comedy heroine she plays in each of these films respectively give us several aspects

en

01:04:38

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

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2022/08/05

For this Fox 1940 episode, we look at a couple of films with the same director (Henry Hathaway), same cinematographer (Arthur Miller), and same nominal star (Tyrone Power), but radically different stories. Brigham Young tells the story of the persecution of the Mormons and their journey westward from Illinois to the Great Salt Lake, recasting this American epic as an implicit anti-Nazi tale with progressive values. Then we shift from Fox's traditional sophisticated "rural" storytelling to their new

en

01:00:45

Acteurist oeuvre-view – Jean Arthur – Part 3: PUBLIC...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2022/07/29

In this week's Jean Arthur Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, we look at two more movies from 1935, Public Hero No. 1 (directed by J. Walter Ruben for MGM) and Diamond Jim (directed by A. Edward Sutherland for Universal, with a screenplay by Preston Sturges). In the first, Arthur injects some screwball swagger into a Code-era gangster drama with an FBI agent hero; in the second, she has a dual role as the love(s) of Edward Arnold's life. We consider the qualities Arthur brings to these films, for which

en

01:25:52

July Special Subject – Duels in Max Ophüls – LIEBELEI...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2022/07/22

Our Special Subject for this month, Duels in Max Ophüls, covers films from all three decades of the itinerant filmmaker's career: Liebelei (1933), made in Germany; Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), made in Hollywood; and Madame de... (1953), made in France. We consider the proposition that Ophüls' films are about superficially superficial people, and examine the evolution of a certain set of characters and scenarios in these three films dealing with the subject of tragic love and its (futile?)

en

01:16:04

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

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2022/07/15

Our Warner Bros. 1940 episode this time is a Bette Davis double feature in which Bette plays the Other Woman in two melodramas based on real-life sex-and-murder scandals, but the Wronged Woman in only one. We discuss the combination of sexual repression and critique of colonialism in William Wyler's The Letter and Anatole Litvak's study of societal constraints and thwarted romance with the very different setting of the last years of the Orléans monarchy in mid-19th century Paris, All This, and

en

01:06:29

Acteurist oeuvre-view – Jean Arthur – Part 2: THE...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2022/07/08

In our second Jean Arthur Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, Arthur moves into her A-picture period at Columbia with John Ford's curious comedy/crime melodrama, The Whole Town's Talking, starring Edward G. Robinson in a dual role, and Erle C. Kenton's Children's Hour-reminiscent Party Wire. While we see more of the familiar Arthur comedy persona emerge in The Whole Town's Talking, she gets to show off her quiet moral authority and perspicacity in Party Wire, playing a woman who becomes the victim of

en

01:23:33

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – MGM – 1940:...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2022/07/01

An odd pairing for this MGM 1940 episode: King Vidor's Northwest Passage, which is not about finding the Northwest Passage at all but about an attack on an Abenaki village by an independent ranger company attached to the British Army; and Frank Borzage's mystical prison break movie, Strange Cargo. We make the argument for a Starship Troopers reading of Northwest Passage before grappling with the many issues of Strange Cargo, from Borzage's use of Crawford and Gable's star personas, to the movie's

en

01:01:30

June Special Subject – Silent Dreyer Sampler –...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2022/06/24

This Week's Special Subject is a look at the early silent cinema of Danish master Carl Theodor Dreyer, during the years preceding The Passion of Joan of Arc. We discuss Michael (1924), about the relationship between a famous painter and his male model, and Master of the House (1925), a comedy about the taming of a tyrannical patriarch. Subjects include Dreyer's unique take on the visionary possibilities of love, which can allow you to transcend ordinary human experience in one way or another; and

en

01:40:19

Acteurist oeuvre-view – Jean Arthur – Part 1 –...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2022/06/17

In our inaugural Jean Arthur Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, we join Gladys Georgianna Greene as she signs on at Columbia Pictures, two years before her star-making team-up with Frank Capra. Her first two films for Columbia, Whirlpool and The Most Precious Thing in Life, are a couple of curious weepies with missing-parent plots that allow Arthur to play first the daughter, then the mother, but never the love interest. First, Dave gives us an account of why Jean Arthur is so important to him, and

en

01:19:52

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Paramount – 1940:...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2022/06/10

For this 1940 Paramount episode, an Akim Tamiroff (and Muriel Angelus) double feature in which we unlock the secrets of Preston Sturges' inspiration. First, we look at The Way of All Flesh (directed by Louis King), a little-known proto-noir Christmas movie that seems to have taken its inspiration from Nathaniel Hawthorne, as filtered through the sensibilities of top screenwriters Lenore Coffee and Jules Furthman. Then we move on to the first movie directed by dynamo screenwriter-turned-sui

en

01:15:35

Acteurist oeuvre-view – Daniel Day-Lewis – Part 8:...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2022/06/03

In our final Daniel Day-Lewis Acteurist Oeuvreview episode, we look at a commercial and critical flop, Rob Marshall's Nine (2009), a musical based on Fellini's celebrated semi-autobiographical film 8 1/2, and a commercial and critical triumph, Steven Spielberg's Lincoln (2012), covering the final four months of Abraham Lincoln's life and especially the process of passing the Thirteenth Amendment. We consider how these roles relate to Day-Lewis's screen persona, then launch into a discussion of his

en

01:36:08

May Special Subject – Jacques Becker Sampler -...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2022/05/27

Join your hosts as they race the clock to adumbrate the myriad merits of French Golden Age Master, Jacques Becker! We key in on the director’s ingenious use of diverse genres to drop diegetic depth charges into the abyss of gendered subjectivity at midcentury. From the nerve-wracking rom-complications of Antoine et Antoinette to the Bert n’ Ernie gangster pyjama party of Touchez pas au grisbi, no four films have ever done a better (or more rapturously entertaining) job of laying bare the unbecoming

en

01:10:36

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Universal – 1939:...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2022/05/20

Universal, 1939: we continue the saga of John Stahl's final years with the banker regime with When Tomorrow Comes, a frankly pro-labour romance, full of eccentric charm, that rewrites the fate of Irene Dunne's Back Street character while reuniting the actress with Charles Boyer after their success in Love Affair. Then we turn to the studio's B mode with Joe May's intermittently audacious, but consistently funny, murder/haunting mystery The House of Fear, about an ill-fated stage production. Time

en

01:43:26

Acteurist oeuvre-view – Daniel Day-Lewis – Part 7:...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2022/05/13

At last we come to the Daniel Day-Lewis perhaps best known to cinephiles: the over-the-top monstrous patriarchs of Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York (2002) and Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (2007). Working from a couple of the best viewings we've personally had of these movies, we discuss how Bill the Butcher and Daniel Plainview build upon the Day-Lewis persona, how they radically depart from it, and how they set the stage for future developments. If you've ever been embarrassed by

en

01:46:42

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – RKO – 1939: BACHELOR...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2022/05/06

For our RKO 1939 episode, a Directed by Garson Kanin double feature: Bachelor Mother, starring Ginger Rogers as an unwed department store clerk accused of motherhood; and The Great Man Votes, starring John Barrymore as an alcoholic intellectual struggling to raise two children, including the most precocious child actor of them all, Virginia Weidler (of Philadelphia Story fame). We discuss the "plausible deniability" structure of Bachelor Mother and the kind of social commentary it permits, and the

en

01:19:37

Acteurist oeuvre-view – Daniel Day-Lewis – Part 6:...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2022/04/29

We return to our Daniel Day-Lewis Acteurist Oeuvre-view with 1996's The Crucible (directed by Nicholas Hytner with a screenplay by Arthur Miller, based on his 1953 play) and 1997's The Boxer, reuniting Day-Lewis with writer-director Jim Sheridan and writer Terry George from In the Name of the Father and returning to the subject of Northern Ireland and the Troubles. We discuss the ways in which The Crucible serves as a liberal allegory for McCarthyism and its depiction of the jouissance of hysteria

en

01:28:58

April Special Subject – Sex, Satire and American...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2022/04/22

This week's Special Subject takes a look at Sex, Satire, and American Culture in Frank Tashlin's Artists and Models (1955), starring Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin, Shirley MacLaine, and Dorothy Malone, and in Billy Wilder's Kiss Me, Stupid (1964), starring Dean Martin, Kim Novak, Ray Walston, and Felicia Farr. Tashlin uses comic books to portray American culture as a strangely sexless-yet-sex-obsessed idiot savant with an exuberantly violent imagination, while Wilder turns smut in a small town into an

en

54:53

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

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2022/04/15

Fox, 1939: the Greater and the Lesser John Ford Fox movies of 1939, Young Mr. Lincoln, and Drums Along the Mohawk, both starring Henry Fonda. We argue with Cahiers du Cinéma about the politics of Young Mr. Lincoln and find continuities between Ford's work with Will Rogers and his presentation of Lincoln, and discuss Edna May Oliver's comic theft of an otherwise pretty standard, racist settler narrative. Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s: YOUNG MR. LINCOLN [dir. John Ford] 0h 35m 00s:

en

388 results

Similar Podcasts

BEHIND THE VELVET ROPE

David Yontef

Nerd Culture - A Gamekings Podcast

Blammo Media

UPodcast

UPodcast

The Writers Hangout

Sandy Adomaitis

The Sarah Fraser Show

Sarah Fraser