294. 'Crossing Delancey' (1988)
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Joan Micklin Silver's 1988 NYC love-letter/romantic comedy Crossing Delancey is one of the superlative NYC films of all time. And watching it today, it's hard not to mourn the loss of the sense of collective experience as New Yorkers she puts onscreen, given our current situation in the City of so much divisive rhetoric and violence. And this film righteously upends the conventions of its genre and allows a fantastic collage of actors to shine in roles as notable for their refusal to stereotype as they are for their humor and depth of feeling.
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293. Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey' (2026)
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Go and see 'The Odyssey' in the biggest and best theater you can. You won't regret it. A rollicking great epic cinematic event. Historian Tom Holland interviews Actor Tom Holland on The Rest Is History does (the poem).
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292. Robert Redford in 'The Candidate' (1972)
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Michael Ritchie and Redford's still-searingly satiric and spot-on takedown of political operatives and image crafting, peddling, and pandering in the modern campaign-industrial complex speaks louder than ever, given recent events in our body politic.
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291. Listening to The Beatles in Ireland
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On a recent trip through Ireland with my daughter, I unexpectedly got back into The Beatles...this is the story.
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290. 'Dogfight' (1991)
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Nancy Savoca & Bob Comfort's wonderful jewel-box gem of an American independent film from 1991.
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289. 'Running On Empty' (1988)
Full Cast And Crew
Sidney Lumet and Naomi Foner (and Executive Producers Griffin Dunne and Lisa Robinson) took what in lesser hands would be a family melodrama and allowed it to become an incredibly mature, layered, complicated story resting entirely on the capable shoulders of its cast of wonderful actors...not least 17-year-olds Martha Plimpton and River Phoenix, a couple off-screen and on.
info_outline![288. [indistinct chatter] 6/19 show art](https://assets.libsyn.com/content/203114790?height=50&width=50)
288. [indistinct chatter] 6/19
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In this weeks [indistinct chatter] episode: Disclosure Day The Social Reckoning Clarkson's Farm Season 5 Next Week's Episode of Movies I I Haven't Seen. Musings, anecdotes, recriminations.
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287. 'Billy Jack' (1971)
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GO AHEAD AND HATE YOUR NEIGHBOR/GO AHEAD AND CHEAT A FRIEND..... The dramatic and soaring vocals of Coven's Jinx Dawson are forever associated with Tom Laughlin's oddball, enduring, sometimes muddled statement on non-violence and the ways of the White Man and the Natives, 'Billy Jack'. How and why this film struck a nerve upon its director-assisted wide release in 1971 is the stuff of Hollywood legend. Upon rewatch, I found the more improvised scenes featuring non-actors surprisingly effective and the film as a whole curiously immune from cynicism.
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286. 'The Times of Harvey Milk' (1984)
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Rob Epstein and Richard Schmiechen's 1984 documentary about the life and shocking 1978 killing of San Francisco gay activist and Board of Supervisors member Harvey Milk is one of the great American documentaries and a still-vital example of the power of straightforward documentary filmmaking. on the film.
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285. 'Misery' Commentary Track
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Watch-along by pressing play when I say, or simply enjoy the auditory delights of listening to me comment along with 'Misery' and fill in the anecdotes, line readings, thoughts and questions that arise.
info_outlineIn the second of my two-parter on Dog Day Afternoon, we get out of the fictional universe of the film and explore the real people behind the characters shown onscreen.
John Wojtowicz' life proved truly stranger and more depressingly pedestrian than fiction. So much so that he preferred the fictional version of himself and performed that role for the rest of his life after being released from prison in 1978 until his death in 2006.
The LIFE Magazine article that caught the attention of Pacino's producer and manager.
A very good jailhouse interview with John Wojtowicz from the Village Voice's Cliff Jahr.
The excellent documentary Based on a True Story: Dog Day Afternoon by the Dutch filmmaker Walter Stokman.
The documentary that covers more of the end of John's life, The Dog.
Pierre Huyghe's installation video art piece Third Memory, an indispensable part of understanding memory, film, and the roles we perform.
I didn't get to this in the podcast but here's an unpublished essay John wrote to the NY Times reviewing the film.
1978 Washington Post profile of John, freshly out of prison.