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Our 2026 Valentine’s Day episode explores the romantic appeal of Adam Sandler through his first rom com pairing with Drew Barrymore, The Wedding Singer (1998), and his celebrated collaboration with Paul Thomas Anderson, Punch-Drunk Love (2002). While The Wedding Singer pursues a sweetness and sincerity alien to the studio-era romantic comedies it in some ways emulates, Anderson’s enigmatic fairy tale riffs on the combination of terrifying vulnerability and terrifying rage in Sandler’s persona, positioning him between the grace of romantic salvation and the gravity of a punitive superego (who owns a mattress store). May you say: “That’s that!” to your superego this Valentine’s Day.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s:    THE WEDDING SINGER (1998) [dir. Frank Coraci]

0h 34m 05s:    PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE (2002) [dir. Paul Thomas Anderson] 

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

Check out this episode!

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This 1933 RKO Studios Year by Year episode takes us from the sweepings on the floor of a palatial early 20th century department store to celestial shenanigans high above Rio de Janeiro. Lester Cohen’s adaptation of his Dreiseresque novel Sweepings (directed by John Cromwell), another failson saga strongly anticipating HBO’s Succession, struggles to translate generational saga into a coherent 80 minutes, but Gregory Ratoff’s performance as a hired man trying to get his dues in spite of anti-Semitism is one of the things that make it worth watching; and while a climactic bevy of aerial showgirls can’t make Flying Down to Rio the equal of either the 1933 Warner Bros. Busby Berkeley musicals or the Fred and Ginger musicals at RKO to come, the Astaire and Rogers team film debut does offer a curious glimpse of an alternate universe in which they were comic buddies instead of love interests at odds. But already setting the world on fire when they put their heads together as a dance team. 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s:      1933 and RKO

0h 04m 02s:      SWEEPINGS (1933) [dir. John Cromwell]

0h 26m 14s:      FLYING DOWN TO RIO (1933) [dir. Thornton Freeland]

0h 45m 16s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto: Final Screening of the Naruse Retrospective at TIFF Lightbox – Untamed (1955)

Studio Film Capsules provided by The RKO Story by Richard B. Jewell & Vernon Harbin

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler

1933 Information from Forgotten Films to Remember by John Springer                                

+++

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

Check out this episode!

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For the second part of our Delphine Seyrig Acteurist Spotlight we disregarded chronology to discuss two intensely experimental Marguerite Duras films, India Song (1975) and Baxter, Vera Baxter (1977). We enumerate Duras’ peculiarities as a writer and filmmaker and their effects in these studies of sexual and existential crisis, set against the backdrop of European colonialism and the second-wave feminist movement, respectively; and consider the range of qualities Seyrig brings to them, from ghoulish abstraction to salutary warmth. Then in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, the TIFF Lightbox Naruse continues with two starkly different family melodramas, the raw and electric Older Brother, Younger Sister (1953) and the lush and star-studded Daughters, Wives and a Mother (1960), in which a vacuum cleaner brings out a new side of Setsuko Hara; and Elise realizes she was wrong about Bill Murray in Lost in Translation.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s:    INDIA SONG (1975) [dir. Marguerite Duras]

0h 32m 39s:    BAXTER, VERA BAXTER (1977) [dir. Marguerite Duras]

0h 51m 04s:    Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Mikio Naruse’s Older Brother, Younger Sister (1953) and Daughters, Wives and a Mother (1960) at TIFF Lightbox; Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (2003) at The Carleton Cinema  

+++

* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

Check out this episode!

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In this episode we revisit three Technicolor melodramas made by British cinema’s great auteur duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, bursting with vibrant emotions and sensuality that exercise a dangerous allure over their protagonists: Clive Candy, the upper-class colonialist twerp played by Roger Livesey in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) who discovers the poetry in his soul thanks to the influence of three in-Kerr-nations of Deborah Kerr and the friendship of Anton Walbrook; Sister Clodagh (Kerr again) in Black Narcissus (1947), futilely pitting the Protestant work ethic against the infinite; and Victoria Page (Moira Shearer) in The Red Shoes (1948), torn between the demands of art and mere humanity. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, more Naruse: Flowing (1956), a study of a declining geisha house through the perspective of Kinuyo Tanaka’s kindly but powerless servant, and The Stranger Within a Woman (1966), a film noir about being consumed by guilt while the world just wants you to move on. 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s:    Brief Intro – Powell and Pressburger

0h 07m 11s:    THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP (1943) [dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger]

0h 29m 14s:    BLACK NARCISSSUS (1947) [dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger]

0h 46m 41s:    THE RED SHOES (1948) [dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger]

1h 06m 35s:    Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Mikio Naruse’s Flowing (1956) and The Stranger Within a Woman (1966) at TIFF Lightbox

+++

* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

Check out this episode!

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This week’s 1933 Fox Film Studios Year by Year episode paradoxically digs into the Hollywood beginnings of a couple of Paramount powerhouses via William Dieterle’s Adorable, a musical based on a German operetta co-written by Billy Wilder (who’d be writing for Fox directly by 1934), and William K. Howard’s The Power and the Glory, with an innovative screenplay by Hollywood newcomer Preston Sturges. Important early 30s Fox stars Janet Gaynor (permitted to play against type as a saucy princess who wants to play with the plebs) and Spencer Tracy (as a self-made – with a little help from his wife – tycoon) supply the charisma for the respective proceedings. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, the TIFF Lightbox Naruse retrospective continues with Hideko the Bus Conductress, The Whole Family Works, and Sudden Rain (starring Setsuko Hara), and we see a new restoration of Erich von Stroheim’s famously unfinished, visually lavish, absolutely unhinged censor-baiting silent melodrama Queen Kelly. Join us as we bat the ball around – but try to keep your knickers on!

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s:      1933 and Fox

0h 06m 00s:      ADORABLE (1933) [dir. William Dieterle]

0h 19m 39s:      THE POWER AND THE GLORY (1933) [dir. William K. Howard]

0h 39m 17s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto: Naruse Retrospective at TIFF Lightbox (3 films) The Whole Family Works (1939), Hideko the Bus Conductress (1941) and Sudden Rain (1956) and Reconstruction of Queen Kelly, directed by Erich von Stroheim

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Fox Film Corporation: 1915-1935 by Aubrey Solomon

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler

1933 Information from Forgotten Films to Remember by John Springer                                

+++

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

Check out this episode!

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Our Acteur Spotlight kicks off with six movies starring Delphine Seyrig, beginning this episode with Alain Resnais’ Muriel (1963) and Marguerite Duras’ debut as a feature film director, La Musica (1967) (co-directed with Paul Seban). We find that these two films about former couples discussing, debating, and negotiating how to live with their past make a good pairing for their existential contrasts as well as their thematic and structural similarities. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, a New Year’s Eve viewing of Trading Places (1983), the Eddie Murphy/Dan Aykroyd comedy, is a reminder of a time when unabashed criticism of capitalism and white supremacy was the concern of mainstream Hollywood (coinciding with maybe the all-time historical nadir of representation of women in film); and two more Mikio Naruse films, Lightning (1952) and A Wanderer’s Notebook (1962), both starring the versatile Hideko Takamine and based on works by Fumiko Hayashi, give the hopeful and despairing sides of the search for meaning in the midst of economic hardship and disappointing relationships. 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s:    MURIEL (1963) [dir. Alain Resnais]

0h 34m 08s:    LA MUSICA (1967) [dir. Marguerite Duras]

0h 57m 00s:    Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – John Landis’ Trading Places (1983) at The Carlton Cinema + Mikio Naruse’s Lightning (1952) and A Wanderer’s Notebook (1962) at TIFF Lightbox

+++

* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

Check out this episode!

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This week’s Warner Brothers 1933 Studios Year by Year episode brings the studio-as-auteur question back into focus with two highly distinctive Pre-Code musicals with a similarity of style and social outlook that can’t be attributed to the directors, screenwriters, source material, or the presence of Hollywood’s most idiosyncratic choreographer and stager of musical numbers, Busby Berkeley. We argue for the dramatic and comedic merits of 42nd Street (directed by Lloyd Bacon) and Gold Diggers of 1933 (directed by Mervyn LeRoy), without failing to grapple with the more deranged elements of the musical sequences. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, the focus on sex, gender, and harsh economic realities continues with further screenings from TIFF Cinematheque’s ongoing Mikio Naruse retrospective: Late Chrysanthemums, Scattered Clouds, and When a Woman Ascends the Stairs. We also briefly mention our TIFF Lightbox viewing of Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, which allowed us to see Cary Grant narrowly escape multiple elaborately complicated and indirect murder attempts in 70 mm. 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s:      1933 and Warner Brothers

0h 05m 13s:      42^nd STREET [dir. Lloyd Bacon with Busby Berkeley]

0h 50m 20s:      GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 [dir. Mervyn Leroy with Busby Berkeley]

1h 30m 40s:      Fear & Moviegoing in Toronto: Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest (1959) and Mikio Naruse’s Late Chrysanthemums (1954), Scattered Clouds (1967) & When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960) – all at TIFF Lightbox 

1h 40m 16s:      Listener Jason’s Top Gloria Grahame films

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Studio Film Capsules provided by The Warner Brothers Story by Clive Hirchhorn

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler

1933 Information from Forgotten Films to Remember by John Springer                                

+++

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

Check out this episode!

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Our S&xMas episode looks at two provocative, controversial, and not very sex-positive works made by aging auteurs after a long hiatus, Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999) and Paul Verhoeven’s Elle (2016). Join us as we trace Tom Cruise’s all-American odyssey of sexual paranoia and Isabelle Huppert’s very European journey away from sex with men, asking such important questions as “Is Paul Verhoeven the most masochistic male feminist director?” and “Is there a significance to Christmas in these movies beyond irony?” And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, just one Naruse, Wife (1953), another uninspiring look at marriage that extends a surprising amount of sympathy toward Ken Uehara, the Japanese George Brent. Is there a significance to covering these movies in our Christmas episode beyond irony? Listen and find out!

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s:    EYES WIDE SHUT (1999) [dir. Stanley Kubrick]

0h 25m 30s:    ELLE (2016) [dir. Paul Verhoeven]

0h 47m 34s:    Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Mikio Naruse’s Wife (1953)

0h 51m 36s:    ELLE (2016) returns! 

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

Check out this episode!

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It’s our final Gloria Grahame Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, with which we also say goodbye to our comprehensive approach toward attaining a privileged vantage point on an actor’s entire oeuvre. Of course, we cheated a little on this one and stopped short of Gloria’s exploitation film era. Our oeuvre-view ends with two Westerns, Ride Out for Revenge (1957) and Ride Beyond Vengeance (1966), entirely unrelated despite their similar titles, which we liked for very different reasons, and a last Gloria Grahame left-wing film noir appearance in Robert Wise’s Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), produced by Harry Belafonte’s production company with a screenplay secretly written by blacklistee Abraham Polonsky at Belafonte’s behest. After we reveal our Top 10 Gloria Grahame movies, Fear and Moviegoing returns with a vengeance (in keeping with the episode’s themes) with three by Mikio Naruse from the TIFF Lightbox retrospective (Floating Clouds, Repast, and Mother) and two Carlton 90s retro screenings, Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects and Greg Mottola’s The Daytrippers. 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s:    RIDE OUT FOR REVENGE (1957) [dir. Bernard Girard]

0h 22m 08s:    ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW (1959) [dir. Robert Wise].

0h 32m 36s:    RIDE BEYOND VENGEANCE (1966) [dir. Bernard McEveety]

0h 45m 32s:    Gloria Grahame Top 10s  

0h 49m 44s:    Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects (1995) & Greg Mottola’s The Daytrippers (1997) at The Carlton Cinema; Part I of TIFF Cinematheque’s Mikio Naruse Retrospective – Floating Clouds (1955); Repast (1951) & Mother (1952)

+++

* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

Check out this episode!

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For this 1933 MGM episode we focus on rehabilitating John Gilbert’s sound-era reputation with a double feature of underrated gem Fast Workers, a construction worker love triangle melodrama directed by Tod Browning, and Gilbert’s most famous sound movie, Rouben Mamoulian and Greta Garbo’s very serious (but also very sensual) costume drama Queen Christina, about a woman whose ideals clash with her society. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we discuss one of Dave’s faves, Paul Thomas Anderson’s morally enigmatic first feature, Hard Eight. 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s:      1933 and MGM

0h 07m 46s:      FAST WORKERS (dir. Tod Browning]

0h 33m 11s:      QUEEN CHRISTINA [dir. Rouben Mamoulian]

0h 54m 22s:      Fear & Moviegoing in Toronto: Paul Thomas Anderson’s Hard Eight (1996) at The Paradise Cinema

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Studio Film Capsules provided by The MGM Story by John Douglas Eames

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler

1933 Information from Forgotten Films to Remember by John Springer                                

+++

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

Check out this episode!