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Hang on. That poster for Berberian Sound Studio. Is that an intentional homage to Argento?

(Posted on Monday, February 4, 2013 at 8:23 PM)

Michael - if you enjoyed 'Killer Joe' watch 'Bug'. You wouldn't have been as surprised that Friedkin directed 'KJ', if you'd seen 'Bug' first. Same vein. 'Bug' is better, imo.

(Posted on Tuesday, February 5, 2013 at 4:18 PM)

Also, Friedkin's 'Cruising' is excellent.

(Posted on Tuesday, February 5, 2013 at 4:22 PM)

I can sort you out CRUISING if need be. Originally supposed to be directed by De Palma.

(Posted on Tuesday, February 5, 2013 at 8:51 PM)

Rock on! Still making my way through the first ep. :)

(Posted on Wednesday, February 6, 2013 at 3:58 AM)

I'm with Lee on 'The Avengers' - FUN!
I'm not into "realistic" comic-book movies - it's why the Burton Batmans are my fave. 'Batman Returns' rules!

(Posted on Thursday, February 7, 2013 at 3:47 PM)

I can say bad things about 'Cruising', if you like. It's a bit of a shambles.

(Posted on Friday, February 8, 2013 at 6:49 AM)

Whatever Matthew says is a lie, I assure you. (I kid, I kid! But I do love me some CRUISING.) Without a doubt, my favorite Pachino performance.

A shame Willie went nuts on the restored version's color pallette, but I'm still holding out hope a Blu-ray will correct that eventually - or at least provide both as an option. The stuff he did during the drug sequences was actually kind of cool. The cold, dull coloration that permeates the rest of the movie... not as much.

(Posted on Tuesday, February 12, 2013 at 4:26 AM)

We'll have to Agree To Differ on "Cruising", then. But every time I come back to it, I'm disappointed and angry. I think it's ramshackle, mean spirited and exploitative. And the ending is a) ridiculous, b) ineptly and clumsily handled, and c) offensive.

On the subject of colour-timing, is it still blasphemy to say that I actually liked what Friedkin did on the first French Connection blu-ray release? It was interesting and pretty. I'm glad there's an un-tampered version out there now, obviously, and that should have been in the package to begin with. But I like the pointillist look of the Friedkin version.

(Posted on Friday, February 15, 2013 at 6:10 PM)

"I think it's ramshackle, mean spirited and exploitative."
Well, now I'm confused - you say that like it's a bad thing!

Sure, I can see the film rubbing people the wrong way. I think that was kind of the whole point, though, and I'd more readily compare the grim, brutal exploration of murky sexual identity to movies like THE NEW YORK RIPPER and TETSUO: THE IRON MAN before I went to anything resembling a more conventional "undercover cops" narrative. Maybe there are better films that deal with those anxieties, and if you've got some examples of what you think is a better example than this, I'm all ears.

For me, anyway, those few almost subliminal frames of [you-know-what spliced] into the opening murder set the whole nihilistic, offensive and unpredictable tone for the film as a whole, and the final reel seems like an appropriately offensive and bombastic finale to what is - admittedly - an ugly, sleazy film that can't definitively say what it wants, because even the narrative doesn't seem to know anymore.

(I've never seen Friedkin's THE BOYS IN THE BAND myself, but from the sound of it that'd certainly be an interesting film to watch in tandem with Cruising...)

It's fair to say that the Friedkenized version of THE FRENCH CONNECTION is "interesting". So are the Comic Bookified version of THE WARRIORS, the CG enhanced version of GHOST IN THE SHELL, and that... thing, they did to create SHOGUN ASSASSINS. None of these examples are so offensive that they shouldn't exist, I suppose, but they also shouldn't be the de-facto version made available to the public.

(Posted on Thursday, February 21, 2013 at 4:15 AM)

I think we sort of agree on what "Cruising" is, but just react differently to it.
I've always found Friedkin a bit of a tabloid filmmaker, and as much as I like a couple of his films, I don't take him very seriously.

By that I mean that he's more eager to get a reaction, is more sensationalist than thoughtful. So in the case of "Cruising", I don't see him making this sleazy, exaggerated muck-raking film with anything more in mind than a kind of gloating "wait til they see this!" kind of mentality. The way he rapturously describes what was cut, as well, kind of adds to this impression.

Re: the "French Connection" transfer. I totally agree. I was as angry as everyone else that the original wasn't made available. But now it is, I'm willing to admit to liking the look of the new grade as an interesting experiment.

(Posted on Friday, February 22, 2013 at 5:29 PM)

This podcast was almost as long as Sergei Bondarchuk's War and Peace. And like that film you think it's going to be too long but then find yourself so engrossed that you emerge six hours later wondering why you didn't take it in sections. A great job. How many breaks did you take in the recording? I'd have had to get through about nineteen packets of throat lozenges and about 76 cups of tea and my voiee would have still been shot by the half way mark. Well done!

(Posted on Monday, March 4, 2013 at 9:42 AM)