Hola, Sneakers! Welcome to the podcast that travels through electricity!
This week: it’s alive; magic castle; witch direction; wonder garments; Oz rules; perennial movies; scary good times; no meddling; music fades; tin machine; witchy woman; worthy watches; Black comedy; medicinal rubbing; miniature world; Dave was happy to see Smile; how to scare; good direction through misdirection; film as TikTok challenge; Dave enjoyed The Substance; a Qualley-fied actress; too much; when the alternative to Yoga Hosers is worse; genre switching again; no expectations; Dave addresses In Fabric; secretly Australian; it’s pronounced “-er”; Ring wrath; Ian and Dave are shocked by Shocker; Craven opinions; murderous murderer murders; electric warrior; ghostly girlfriend; baby talk; Question of the Week – Sneakers respond; show notes; the invisible blockbuster; and, finally, task matter.
Question of the Week: What’s a film missing from the initial entries into the US National Film Registry?
Sub-question of the Week: What’s your favourite double album?
Thanks for listening.
It could be worse, it could be Clerks III
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Guys, I could have jumped right into last week’s episode with all the OZ talk, really good discussion. I pride myself on OZ lore, from both the books as well as the 1939 musical, I grew up with both. You talked about Baum using the characters and settings as analogues and symbolism for early 20th century America. I have a book titled “The Annotated Oz” and it describes Baum’s use of social commentary in the OZ stories. Some of the analogues were: The Emerald City is the U.S. capital and the yellow brick road is the gold that supports our economy. The Scarecrow represents the farmers and agriculture, the Tin Woodman represents the steel/iron workers and the Cowardly Lion is the politicians. Dorothy represents the common everyday U.S. citizen. I can’t remember who the Wizard or the Witch were supposed to be but later in the books there’s an army of women led by a Munchkin named General Jinjur. Jinjur and her army take over the Emerald City which was a parody of the Women’s Sufferagete Movement. Baum was a huge supporter of Women’s rights, so that also made it into his stories. I can do this all day….
I looked up the long line of films in our National Film Registry and even though “Duck Soup” and A Night at the Opera” (my first Marx Brothers film and still my favorite) made the list, there’s no “Animal Crackers”! I thought Captain Spaulding would be in there for sure. I was surprised by the absence of two other films from the Registry, Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglorious Bastards” and Sergio Leone’s”Once Upon a Time in America”, both masterpieces in my opinion and worthy of the Registry’s merit. I find it amusing that only “Once Upon the Time in the West” is the only Leone film in the Registry and “Pulp Fiction”, which I despise, is Tarantino’s only entry. You’d think they’d have more.
Be nice to see more of John Carpenter’s films inducted too, “Halloween” is in the Registry but “The Thing” is not. Get more of John’s work in there.
My very first album I ever owned was a double album, I bought it for five dollars from a close friend who didn’t want it. That double album was the “Star Wars” score by John Williams. That was followed three years later by my absolute favorite album, also a double and by Williams, “The Empire Strikes Back”. Sadly, “Return of the Jedi” was reduced to a single album and I waited years to collect all that music from the entire trilogy. My very first Beatles album I ever owned, was “The White Album”, also a double. So I have quite a few important double albums as music milestones in my life.
We’re all finally cooling off down here in Texas, I hope there’s nice enjoyable weather for all my fellow Sneakers too.
Get out and enjoy the Fall and groove on down the road…
James Cameron’s “The Abyss” and “Avatar” are missing from the Registry too, I guess they’re as dumbfounded about “Avatar” as the rest of us are….
Dear Ian and David
Thank you thank you thank you for another fab show and for being a beacon of sanity in a world that has truly gone bonkers.
Your chat about the Wizard of Oz brought back a memory. One Christmas – must be at least 25 years ago – my wife Diane took our three young children to see a stage version of the Wizard of Oz at Dundee Repertory Theatre. Our daughter Hannah would have been 4 at the time – it may even have been her first trip to live theatre.
Anyway, the wicked witch of the west was – as is only right – wildly scary in this production, provoking much screaming from the really young ones in the audience and booing from their siblings and parents. She was also way too frightening for Hannah. After a minute or so turning her face away and cuddling into Diane, she began to cry and couldn’t stop. So, once the witch left the stage, Diane quietly took Hannah out of the auditorium and into the foyer where she could explain what was happening and calm her down.
Only problem was, when she opened the door, who should be sitting immediately outside, smoking a cigarette while waiting to make a big entrance through the audience in full green makeup?
I can tell you’re way ahead of me…
I spoke to both my wife and daughter today and neither one remembers whether this incident settled Hannah down as she realised the witch was just an actress and really quite nice – or scared the living shit out of her in an even more visceral way. We feel it’s probably the latter. The movie remains a family favourite however.
Favourite double album? Well, apart from THAT one, obviously, it’s Manassas, the first outing of the amazing band put together by Stephen Stills in the early 1970s. Just glorious from first to last. To me, Stills is the most perplexing musician of his era – pretty much everything he turned his hand to from 1968 to 1972, when Manassas came out, was wonderfully inventive and soulful – maybe not every single song, but overall. Everything since, however, has been a pale shadow of former glories. Even his acoustic guitar playing, which once was jaw-droppingly good – is nothing like it used to be, although he can still soar on electric.
I went to see Stills in concert in Glasgow around 2012, mainly for old time’s sake and it was a 50:50 gig with some great moments, some dross. At one point, after playing the Buffalo Springfield song Bluebird, he posed the question, ‘The sixties, man, where did they go?’ To my lasting regret, I had a terrible cold that night and had lost my voice, so was unable to call back, ‘Up your nose!’
And now I’m off to listen again to Forever Changes and see if I can finally tell what all the fuss is about.
Sneaky Dragon forever!
I don’t see “A Few Good Men” or “The American President” on the National Registry list. I’d also nominate “Working Girl” and “Jerry Maguire” which both have rom-com elements, but are really about personal growth and maintaining your values and integrity while trying to achieve your career ambitions. I didn’t think I had a favourite double album until Ed mentioned the Star Wars soundtrack. Yes, my siblings and I listened to those tracks over and over. Our (then) brand new stereo system had headphones you could plug in and just lie back and listen to those majestic and thrilling orchestrations. My sister and I still spontaneously break out humming those themes whenever a
moment presents itself.
Hello Ian, David, and fellow Draconophiles.
Enjoyed last week’s dissection of things Oz, especially given I’ve just finished reading the first book to my son. On rereading, the oddest part of the narrative remains (spoiler warning!) the abrupt setup of the Wicked Witch of the West’s weakness, and her accidental demise a paragraph later. We visited the cinema last week, and my son spent a good deal of time studying a large illuminated poster advertising Wicked, piecing together recognisable elements of the story. Now we’re a few chapters into book two, and I’m interested to see how his young mind responds to the big reveal at the end, which certainly blew my mind when I first read it. This year there’s an incredible Oz themed installation inside London’s St Pancras Station – a gigantic model of the Emerald City, its teeming pinnacles forming the conical shape of a Christmas Tree. At its base, a giant wooden head of Oz the Great and Powerful. I’ll check it out and report back.
On double albums – there’s the famous story of the kid who asks their parents to buy ‘Tommy’ for Christmas and receives a ‘Yes’ album instead. They work out that their dad forgot what they’d gone to get and asked for
“that rock double album – you know…”
“Who?”
“Yes!”
I’d like to nominate ’69 love songs’ by The Magnetic Fields as a favourite double album, and one that is a personal milestone of love affairs and breakups. As might be expected with such an expansive project, there are a number of duds, but these are far outweighed by the good, the great, and the absolute classics. The tunes are sweet, the styles varied, the lyrics witty, and the perspective joyfully shifts between different genders and sexual preferences.
I failed to recommend a horror story last week, so I’d like to suggest M.R. James’ ‘The Mezzotint’. In your discussion of horror films last week Ian asked what makes a story scary. One thought: relentlessness. A protagonist is marked for death… an antagonist cannot be stopped… evil is unleashed… the narrative propels us inexorably towards the worst thing in the world…
The Mezzotint is just such a story, beautiful in its construction: A museum curator receives an engraving with a strange property: every time he looks at it it changes subtly. Then one night, a stooped, skeletal figure appears in the picture…and gets closer… ever closer to the window… Whoof!