Episodes
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Corbin and Matt talk about 'MIRACLE ON 34th STREET, a Sentimental Christmas Classic about Department Stores and the supremac y of the suburban lifestyle. We recorded it a few weeks ago so Corbin forgot specific topics but he suspects they talk about the emergence of consumer culture in America, the eternal American Christmas Disconnection, and the movie's oddly cynical edge.
Watch the movie here. Check out Land of Desire, a book about the history of the department store, here.
Corbin reccomends "THE JOY OF CHRISTMAS," a Bob Dylan album. Matt reccomends his own website. Next week's episode is about "Miracle on 34th Street," but the 1997 version. Watch it here.
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Matt and Corbin are joing by CAM CROWELL (Inaction) to talk about VOLCANO, a Los Angeles Disaster Movie. Topics include: Anne Heche, sweet as pie, Mike Davis, man's craving to see LA Doomed, the percise geography at work in this bad boy, and, of course, Don Cheadle.
Watch Volcano here. Read "The Literary Destruction of Los Angeles" by Mike Davis here.
Matt reccomends the director's cut of Ridley Scott's Napolean. Cam reccomends Christmas Evil. Corbin reccomends Corbin reccomends "The Duelists."
Next week's episode is about "Miracle on 34th Street," the 1947 version. (I do not know why I said it was Unrest, which will come out around the beginning of ng of next year). You can find it everywhere.
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Missing episodes?
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Ellis and Smith talk about 'RAP WORLD,' Connor O'Malley's lo-fi fantasia about America after the 2008 Crash and also three dunces trying and failing to make a rap song. Topics: handmade culture's pre-social lack of gloss, melllenial trash culture, just how terribly sad the project is, O'Malley's early appearences in Corbin's consiousness and the dog he is watching.
Matt reccomends a mexican resturaunt. Corbin reccomends Bob's Burgers.
Next week's episode is about "VOLCANO," a movie about a Volcano. Watch it here.
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Noirvember goes to FRANCE, where Corbin and Matt talk about 'Le jour se lève,' known as Daybreak in America, a sorta-noir/sorta-crime movie/sort of allegory for the annhilation of Europe as Hitler prepared to invade everyone. Does it resonate in the present political climate? Unfortunately, yes!
Corbin reccomends Elliott Smith and Quasi on the Live Music Archive. Matt reccomends this song, I think? hard to say.
Our next episode is about THIEF. Special guest! Rent it or watch it on MGM+, I guess.
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Listen to Corbin and, lesser degree, Matt, get all swoony over STRAY DOG, a police procedural by THE MASTER Akira Kurosawa. Topics include: soup, noir-and-not-noir elements at work, Kurosawa's enduring influence, and the heroic impulse vs. the rational impulse.
Corbin reccomends a movie currently in theaters. Matt reccomends "Tokyo Vice" on HBOMAX.
Next week's episode is about Le Jour Se Leve/Daybreak, which you will have to rent.
Matt: "Song at end: Himiko Kikuchi- Don't Be Stupid. Famous Japanese Jazz album apparently"
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Matt and Corbin talk about "Kiss Me Deadly," a film noir about a Nietzschean superman lost in an existential world... right up until the point when it turns out he's actually in a science fiction disasterpiece.
Our analysis of the election: wrong. Sorry!
Corbin reccomends "BALATRO," a video game. Matt reccomends e-readers.
Next week's NOIRVEMBER selection is "STRAY DOG," which you can watch here.
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Corbin and Ellis are joined by MATEA, Portland's Elvira (Letterboxd here, subscribe today!), for a conversaion about the early indie horror touchstone "Let Scare Jessica to Death." Topics include: the shifting uses of mental health care as a literary device, the bitter end of the sixties playing out on screen, the thin line between madness and a vampire invading your mind, and the movie's wild sound design.
Corbin reccomends a movie. Matt reccomends another movie. Matea reccomends yet another movie.
Next week's episode, which i neglected to mention, will be the first in a series of NOIRVEMBER selections: Kiss Me Deadly! Watch it here.
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Corbin and Matt talk about "The Apprentice," a movie that persues an impossible goal and comes out Interesting. Topics: Sebastian Stan, who is incredible, where orbin was when Trump won, Fred Trump, and how "Humanization" is actually like, the only honest way of telling this story.
Corbin reccomends "Persona 5," he guesses. Available wherever you buy games. Matt reccomends "It Happened One Night," watch it here.
Next week: "Let's Scare Jessica to Death." Watch here. After that: NOIRVEMBER
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Ellis and Da Corb talk about "The Breaking Ice," a lil' character drama about three people in a chilly city on China's border with North Korea. Topics: America in the 50's and China in the now's, capital's universal qualities, China's particular qualities, and a depressing story that happens in a Safeway. Watch the movie here.
Ellis's reccomendation can be heard here. He totally reccomended it last week, despite what he claims. Check out some of Mike Watson's music here. Our outro music this week is "Violet Gibson" by Lisa O'Neill.
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Cory Atad (The Baffler) Joins Dr. Movies and The Corb to talk about "MEGALOPOLIS," a movie about Francis Ford Coppola getting extremely baked and creating a drastically less efficent method of public transit.
Corbin writing this right now just wants to say: my opinion on this movie has curdled into something meaner and less forgiving after recording this episode. I have come to think of it as a monument to one man's narcissim, a canker sore on the art of cinema, a pile of garbage for precisely no one. I will concede that it is not boring, though, and John Voight does say "Gargatua is here!"
Also, this week, Musk announced the Robotaxi thing. The cars have two seats in them, just like the crummy cars in this movie.
Corbin reccomends Diamond Jubilee, an album by Cindy Lee you can acquire here. Matt reccomends the new Blood Incantation record. Cory reccomends High Potential, a new TV show.
Next week's episode is about "The Breaking Ice," which you can see here.
Matt said this: "Can you note the song at the end? It's Cult of Luna on a Metropolis themed record called "Vertikal."
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Matt and Corbs talk about the recently departed Frederic Jameson and his thoughts on VIDEODROME, David Cronenberg's 1983 masterpiece about the terrifying merger of man and machine occuring en masse in front of your very eyes and also the pleasures and perils of having a gigantic hole in your abdomen that someone can stick living videotapes inside, compelling you to murder people on behalf of a shadowy right wing technoconspiracy.
Read 'Totality as Conspiracy' here. Matt told me to link this piece about Jameson by Jeet Heer. If it's bad, I didn't read it, blame Matt.
Matt reccomends I Love Lucy and The Outer Limits on PlutoTV. Corbin reccomends "Charlie Hustle" by Keith O'Brien. He wrote about the book a while back here. Next week's episode is about Megalopolis, which is maybe the self absorbed movie of all time, currently in theaters.
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Big Matt and Lil' Corbs talk about 'CHRIST STOPPED AT EBOLI,' a movie about a dissident who get sent to the world's cruddiest village by Benito Mussolini. He learns lessons. Topics include: Pringles, anarchism, its similarities and differences to "The Tree of Wooden Clogs," another movie about pesants, and which came first: Christianity or History?
Matt reccomends Roger Waters' new Dark Side of the Moon remake. Corbin reccomends a video game. Next week's episode is about "The Young Master," available at Criterion. RIP Fredric Jameson.
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Ellis and the Corbot talk about "DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD," Radu Jude's recent bang bang exploration of the feeling of being alive under late capitalism. Subjects include: terrible Romanian techno, exploitated people observing other exploited people for the purpose of exploitation, and international business's wholesale domination of our lives.
Corbin reccomends concerts by Ted Leo, Matt reccomends ASASSINS CREED. Next week's episode is about "Christ Stopped At Eboli," which you can watch here.
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Ellis and Corbin talk about "The Rocketeer," a Walt Disney Live Action Classic™ about a guy who acquires a Rocketpack and becomes... not like, a superhero but like... a guy with a jetpack and good intentions? Topics include: Fredric Jameson, the nexus of technological emergence in turn of the century California, and the deep and profound tragedy at the center of this movie: lazy casting.
Corbin reccomends "Red Mars," a book available at your local library. Ellis reccomends "Promethus" and "Alien: Covenent."
Next week's episode is about "Do Not Expect too Much from the End of the World," which you can watch on mubi if you're that degree of art-film-sicko.
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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+.
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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.
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Big Corbs and the El Train talk about "All That Heaven Allows," Douglas Sirk's MASTERFUL melodrama about conformity, love, and how your daughter likes Freud too much. Topics: Digital Restoration: Not Actually That Bad, justice for the daughter, television, and the relationship between beaknikism and nostalgia.
Good essay about the movie here.
Matt's reccomendation is in theaters. Corbin's is Tetris, I guess? Next week's episode is about CRUEL INTENTIONS, which you can watch on FreeVee with ads, which is, in truth, the best way to watch it.
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Corbin and Ellis talk about NORTH BY NORTHWEST, a movie about Cary Grant, world class charmer, getting chased around America by a faint idea about the Cold War. Topics: Grant, who is charming and handsome, the movie as a of proto-action thriller and how it succeeds and doesn't in that capacity, and style Hitch vs. Neurosis Hitch.
Matt's reccomendation may or may not be in theaters. Corbin reccomends the Portland Pickles Baseball Club in Portland's beautiful Lents Neightborhood.
Our next episode is about Douglas Sirk's "All that Heaven Allows." It's not streming anywhere for free at the moment but I'm sure you can shell out a few bucks on iTunes or your local DVD rentery to check it out.
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