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The Projector: Flickering Back to Life (Patreon)

Published:
2022-12-16 18:51:33
Imported:
2022-12

Content

Hi everyone,

It's Keith Phipps, your regular newsletter writer. Sorry it's been so long. At the risk of repeating myself, it's been kind of a rough year dealing with some parental health issues and this newsletter has been neglected because of it. And, for that, my apologies. But things seem to have settled down and I don't want to neglect it any longer.

To start things off again, here are a couple of behind-the-scenes items related to future episodes. And, with both, we'd love to hear from you.

• We ran out of time when we recorded last night but we'd originally planned to use some of the space usually reserved for feedback to talk about Dan Kois's recent Slate piece on TÁR, which suggests it's a mistake to take anything that happens in the film at face value at a certain point. It's a smart, provocative, big-swing bit of theorizing that reads like an especially good piece of Next Picture Show feedback. So, instead of talking about it there, let's talk about it in the comments.

• We're making plans for a Best of 2022 episode, either in the main feed or as a bonus episode. What's a movie we might have missed that we must check out?

Let us know in the comments below or by writing to feedback@nextpictureshow.net. And we'll be back here again soon, I promise.

Files

Comments

Kymm Zuckert

Did you see the Leonard Cohen doc, Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song? It was spectacular.

Daniel Hensel

I read Kois's piece and found it interesting, maybe even convincing, but then I thought - does it make a difference? The movie is already a bit arch and uncanny from the start. Like Eyes Wide Shut (hi Todd!), the touch of surrealism is part of the movie's fabric. The ending is already a fabrication - it's a movie. I guess what I mean to say is, even if Todd Field were to come out and say explicitly that Kois's reading is correct, it wouldn't change my understanding of what happens in the movie at all because it already felt like a nightmare from Tar's point of view.

Elizabeth Kite

SPOILERS FOR TAR, since there's no way to discuss the Slate article without them Loved that read on Tar. I've seen it twice and completely missed the ghosts in the margins. It's a great catch and adds yet another layer to a very layered movie. That said, I don't completely buy his argument that it means we've left reality and gone into some kind of dream space or into Lydia's anxious consciousness. It's just as easy to read all these appearances as manifestations of Lydia's guilty conscience. Krista is hovering over Lydia + Sharon's bed while they sleep because the things she represents (Lydia's predatory actions and the imminent consequences of those actions) are haunting their marriage and their family life. There ARE ghosts in every room with Lydia: her not-so-secret reputation, the lies she tells herself, the compromises that the people around her have to make, her comeuppance getting closer every second. I also read Lydia's weird adventures in the basement with the dog in a much more mundane way: Olga knows Lydia's reputation and has decided to exploit it without giving Lydia what she wants. So she lets Lydia flirt with her but doesn't tell Lydia where she really lives- she has Lydia drop her at an abandoned building where she can slip out the back. From there, it's a straightforward metaphor of Lydia taking careless risks, leaving her sleek luxury car to be chased by a feral dog through a basement in pursuit of sex and dominance. There are a few other things he cites as mysterious that are similarly straightforward, IMO. He claims that we don't see anyone film her Julliard class, but we do: Francesca, in the back, out of focus. Which makes total sense- it's her job to film this as Lydia's assistant, and when Lydia sabotages her, she releases an unflattering cut to make Lydia look bad. There's also no mystery of who woman #5 is in Thailand and why it makes Lydia vomit. As Genevieve noted, she's sitting in Olga's spot.

Neil Comfort

Two dark comedy dramas, recommended on The Filmcast but strangely under-reviewed elsewhere, which start light but hit hard at the end, with some tricksy tonal tightrope-walking in between. I rewatched both last weekend and they held up well the second time round. And both have a much bigger heart than the flippantly brief plot descriptions below might suggest! Emergency (dir : Carey Williams) After an epic night of partying, three college students return home to find an unconscious woman in their apartment. Worried the police will suspect them of wrongdoing, they try to get the woman to safety without drawing suspicion. Not Okay (dir: Quinn Shephard) A young woman who desperately wants to be famous and beloved on the Internet, succeeds when she pretends to be a survivor of a bombing.

Zef Wagner

Did you all see RRR? I can't remember if you ever talked about it on the show, but I think it should definitely be part of the conversation for best films of the year. I really wish I had seen it in the theater, but even watching it at home with my friends was probably the most fun I had watching a movie all year.

Zef Wagner

Nice! Well-deserved #1, and fits well with Polygon's sensibilities.

Zef Wagner

The Tar article is well-written and interesting, but while I agree that certain scenes and events are happening inside her own mind (the metronome, the pattern she keeps seeing, the basement of the squatter block, etc), I really disagree that the end of the movie is all one big fantasy. There's really not much spooky or supernatural or "in her own mind" about those later sequences. They aren't shot or staged the same way, and nothing all that "weird" happens despite some of it being unexpected. The brothel scene seemed pretty straightforward case of a tourist not realizing that a massage parlor might not mean what she thinks it means. The performance for the cos-players, while a suprise, is not all that strange. The local symphony in my town does those kinds of video game tie-ins all the time.

John Donovan

I don’t know that it’s quite top-10 material, but God’s Country seems pretty slept on. Great Thandiwe Newton performance and some beautiful cinematography.

Ken Hobart

You guys seem to have caught most of the movies I thought were the best this year, but surprised there has been no mention of “The Fablemans,” yet another excellent Spielberg movie. I thought “Tar” was astonishing but I respected it more than loved it. But of all I’ve seen this year, it’s “Everything, Everwhere…” that I’ll remember forever!

Michelle M

I think you should check out “Nanny” which is a gorgeously shot and directed film (that is not gonna be too scary for Genevieve).