ACFmovie podcast

Titus & Armond White discuss the Better Than list summarizing 2017 in movies, in counter-cultural terms. We talk about Lady Bird & A quiet passion (the Emily Dickinson biopic), Valerian (the Luc Besson galactic blockbuster), & finally about Theo & Hugo & Call me by your name. The Better Than list is the only counter-cultural idea for awards season! Listen & share!

Titus & John Presnall conclude their discussion of the Godfather trilogy with the moral grandeur of tragedy. We see a third Corleone generation & we think about the similarities of character & the different fates that Americanization produces. We compare the Corleone with the Adams family, America's first political dynasty! We discuss the importance of Sicily, Rome, & Europe the Old World-New World conflict at the core of the Godfather. & we explain the Shakespearean sets of characters!

Titus & John Presnall complete their discussion of the Godfather--they look at how Part II reverses the structure of the original & completes the portrayals of Vito & Michael Corleone. They discuss the all-American story of an immigrant family, of making it in New York, moving out West, & going international (Cuba). The Corleones rehearse American history & this changes the non-American Sicilian principle of true friendship Vito tries to adapt to the New World.

Titus & Paul Rahe, Professor of political science, discuss assigning the Godfather to college students so that they understand the fundamental modern & ancient political alternatives, the transformation of concepts of justice, & the diversity of cultures contained within America, as well as their transformations. Then the discussion moves to Scorsese's Silence & its magisterial description of the conflict between Caesar & Christ in the case of late-medieval Japan. The Prof. explains the importance of learning about fundamental political alternatives for the student of foreign affairs, for diplomacy & for the press, as well as the delusion that globalization has annihilated great differences between regimes, countries, & ways of organizing life & faith.

Titus & Armond White talk about the collapse of criticism & cultural journalism. The triumph of a shallow liberal ideology in several, maybe most, mass media has made both art & ideology invisible in ways that cause them to deteriorate.

Titus & Eric Cook offer a brief history of American Christmas. We talk about the great tradition of the war on Christmas, starting with the Puritans, who made Christmas illegal! We talk about how all the parts of the American Christmas came together: Santa Claus, gifts, the feast, the Christmas tree, toys, shopping, and everything else!

Titus & John Presnall talk about the Godfather. What's new to be said about the most admired tragedy to come out of Hollywood? Two things: 1. How the story reflects on changes in American society & the twisting relationship between power & legitimacy. 2. How we see, starting with Sollozzo, the arrival of Machiavelli as political philosopher, which of course also has to do with politics & economics in America.

Titus & Eric Cook discuss the lovely, hilarious Christmas movie Elf! The humor turns out to conceal a sophisticated, realistic look at the collapse of the American civil religion seen from the point of view of the family Christmas & it deals well with how to deal with this situation.

Titus & James Lileks discuss the experience of seeing Star Wars, again & again, in the summer of '77 & how a generation took that childhood love & ran with it well into the Social Security years. The future of Star Wars in an age where it's a movie a year plus tv on the internet plus, inevitably, VR, is also in discussion. The imagination is not what it used to be.

Titus & James Lileks discuss the cultural mark left by movies & how they affect generations. From Casablanca to Star Trek to Aliens to Radio Days to Last action hero, we talk about the personal & social impact of movies & how we try to share these passions, as movie lovers & as family members.

Titus & James Lileks are back with ruminations on middlebrow, this time going through post-war Christmas movies/animations/TV specials. Varieties of A Christmas Carol--old comedies like Christmas in Connecticut--fantasies like The bishop's wife--the 60s animations--A Christmas story--&, a recent one, Arthur Christmas.

Titus & James Lileks talk about middlebrow & mid-century America. We've got lots to offer: 1. Cultural archaeology & commercial archaeology--our fascination with what life was like in America before. 2. Hitchcock & the movies as inadvertent documentaries. 3. The great fracturing in the 50s: Freudianism--youthful alienation--smarmy rebels you want to slap the cool out of--The heiress (1949)--Monty Clift--Henry James. 4. The collapse of the culture, as work of the most successful classes, who most should have defended their taste & habits. 5. Middlebrow is inescapable, but inherently unstable. Technology pulls us in the direction of progress, but a sense of taste makes us want to bring back some formalities, mores, & pleasures that depend on us all doing the same thing... We cannot tolerate too much imposition on our freedom, but so soon as we make small concessions to comfort or whim, a deluge follows.

Titus & Pete Spiliakos complete their discussion of Blade Runner with the new Blade Runner 2049. The question of soul shifts here to the question of birth. Self-knowledge shifts to our self-understanding as relational beings (we start from family relations & end with citizenship). Similarly, tyranny completely shifts from the state to corporations & we discuss the possibility that getting what we want, imposing our wills as consumers, might lead us to a libertarian nightmare.

Titus & Pete Spiliakos discuss Blade Runner from the point of view of political philosophy. Pete's big insights are political: The story recalls the slavery question in the Americas & adumbrates a new threat to humanity, inasmuch as being the persons we are seems harder & harder. I bring up the possibility that the fantasies & philosophies of the Old World are taking over the New World, with inequalities more horrifying than any previously known to man.

Titus & Pete Spiliakos (First Things online columnist) discuss the GOP as a budding oligarchy. We talk about the failed presidential ambitions of Senators & Governors; the principled constitutionalist conservatives who cannot seem to grapple with the big political questions of the day; the party's oligarchic turn and the threat of collapse following on the greatest electoral successes its had in more than 160 years.