The SAVAGE BEAST podcast no.12
March 23rd, 2021
The cult film podcast with Mat Colegate (aka Lord Nuneaton Savage) & Dan White (aka The Beast Must Die).
The Savage Beast No.12: Moviedrome
In this Very Special Episode episode, we take a slightly different approach and discuss the idea of curation in cinema, focusing on the beloved British cult film show Moviedrome. Films discussed include:
- Terminator (James Cameron, 1984)
- Jabberwocky (Terry Gilliam, 1977)
- Assault On Precinct 13 (John Carpenter, 1976)
- Vanishing Point (Richard C. Sarafian, 1971)
- Manhunter (Michael Mann, 1986)
A great Moviedrome resource can be found here
Martin Scorsese interview here
Check out The Savage Beast tumblr, for some visual accompaniment to the discussion: https://savagebeastpodcast.tumblr.com/
Follow us on Twitter @SavBeastPod
6 Responses to “The SAVAGE BEAST podcast no.12”
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March 24th, 2021 at 5:15 pm
Interesting stuff here. My thoughts, if you don’t mind:
Kurosawa is just better than any Marvel movie. In fact, I remember coming across a video piece comparing The Seven Samurai with the first Avengers movie, arguing that Kurosawa is a more skilful director of action than is Joss Whedon.
So there are ways to compare these ‘canonical’ films with a modern day film which aren’t simply about saying something is good just because it’s old and ‘our’ kind of critic has already said it’s good.
At one point you seem to be eliding criticism and curatorship, and there is a way in which they are very similar activities. Both are, or can be, about an individual point of view of the art being discussed.
Scorsese, Kurosawa and Sam Fuller are or were all commercial filmmakers for the particular times and places in which they worked. It’s been very interesting to me to realise how the post war movement of art cinema was constructed out of films which functioned as commercial popular cinema of the countries or regions from which they came. Fellini was a popular success both in Italy and abroad with La Dolce Vita. Bergman made nearly all of his films before his mid 70s tax exile with Sweden’s biggest film studio. Satyajit Ray’s films all circulated in the local commercial film circuits in Bengal where they were genuinely popular successes. While at the same time he ridiculed popular Hindi cinema (of course, he was happy to work with actors from that cinema the one time he made a film in Hindi!)
The divide between art and commerce is often a lot less clear once you focus on the specific conditions under which which films are made. As you note, Scorsese is as much in love with trash as he is with art. Really, is that not what the 70s movie brats were all doing: taking the lessons of the French New Wave and European art cinema and applying them to American trash?
Sorry, I’ve gone on a bit here!
April 6th, 2021 at 4:09 pm
Also, thanks, you’ve sent me down the rabbit hole of watching old Moviedrome introductions on YouTube! I’d forgotten how much I love the sound of Mark Cousins’ voice (distinct from anything he might actually be saying).
Speaking of Cousins, have either of you come across his Story of Film? At several points Lord Nuneaton Savage mentions issues of how canonisation tends to focus on the work of white men. What impressed me about Cousins’ approach to film history was that it really worked against that approach, decentering American cinema as just one country among many. I can’t imagine any other white man including Hindi cinema from the 50s in their cinema history!
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