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.

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.

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.

In 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 I didn't get to this in the podcast but here's an unpublished essay John wrote to the NY Times reviewing the film. 1978 Washington Post profile of John, freshly out of prison.

[the week's collected thoughts] Climbing Docs I recommend: The Dark Wizard (HBO) Assault on El Capitan (Prime) Fine Lines (Prime) The Alpinist (Prime) Valley Uprising (Prime) The Summit (Prime) Meru (Prime) The White Mountain (Prime)

'Night of the Juggler' is either one of the best 70's film titles or one of the worst. Honestly I enjoy it, for it's uniqueness and complete (well...near complete) relevence to the film's plot. It's certainly memorable, if not directly speaking to the film's setting...which is mostly in the daytime of a VERY 1978 NYC. 'Night of the Juggler' had long been sort of like that Jerry Lewis Holocaust film; never-seen, long-rumored to be secretly great...elusive. But KinoLorber has finally rescued the film from obscurity with a new 4K transfer, available now on YouTube and other streaming platforms for purchase. It's well worth the trip. And it IS a trip, of the best, cinematic kind. NY Times Article on the Film's Re-Release & Backstory Link to buy the new DVD release with special bonus features.

Choosing 'Hooper' out of a combination of desperation and momentary podcast apathy, and seeking a distraction and light entertainment, I discover instead a beautifully realized love letter to Hollywood stunt performers inside an impressive movie-about-making-movies.

The sequel to Denis Villeneuve's 'Sicaro' is an impressive off-ramp from the first film's focus on drug cartels trafficking narcotics and stacking bodies. Italian director Stefano Sollima (Gomorra, ZeroZeroZero) focuses more intently on Josh Brolin's Matt Graver and Benicio Del Toro's Alejandro Gillick characters, as they face a (final?) confrontation with the outer limit of their own moral codes. For me, Day of the Soldado is the rare sequel that gets better the more I watch it, and that doean't merely rehash the best-known sequences from the original (although it does that, too) but instead deepens our understanding of two key characters and tantalizingly points in the direction of a much-discussed but yet-to-be-confirmed third film in the series. Follow the Show on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fullcastandcrew/