Back in the Before Time, we did a long-ago episode (#11, if you're playing along at home) where we each chose one film to discuss that we thought had been unjustly overlooked by time and the madding crowd. At the time, we promised/threatened to go down this path again and take you, loyal listeners, into some more dark and obscure corners of film history. So enjoy Episode 30, Hidden Gems Volume II, where John, Michael and Josh take a closer look at three very different films: a broad satire from the early 70's by a first-time director about to become a small-screen legend; a sweet, low-key, oddball comedy by a brilliant director who never could find his place in Hollywood; and a comedy-drama by a skilled craftsman of a director based on a book by one of our greatest modern novelists. And by the way, how do you get ice cream out of velour upholstery?

Vintage Sand Episode 30: Hidden Gems, Volume II

"7 Women". "Rio Lobo". "The Other Side of the Wind". "Family Plot". "Buddy Buddy". "Pocketful of Miracles". "A Countess from Hong Kong". Have you even heard of these films, let alone seen them? Yet they stand as the final works, respectively, of John Ford, Howard Hawks, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Frank Capra and Charlie Chaplin. In Episode 31 of the podcast, Team Vintage Sand explores the question of why so many, if not most, of our greatest directors conclude their careers with middling, occasionally atrocious, and almost universally forgettable films. 

But do not despair, dear listener; we also travel to France, Sweden, Japan and back home, and across the years from the mid-1930’s to the early years of this century, to give our favorite examples of great directors who ended their careers on a high note. These latter fall into two distinct categories: the majority, where directors were unaware that their most recent effort would serve as their final statement, and those rare cases where the artists involved knew that it would be their last word as an artist and acted accordingly. It’s a great mix of films, so come along for the ride and hope with us that "Inland Empire" will not be David Lynch’s final feature, that "An Officer and a Spy" will not be Roman Polanski’s last word, and that if Tarantino stops at ten, as he has promised, that the next one will be better than the last few.

Vintage Sand Episode 31: The Final Countdown: Our Favorite Last Films by Great Directors

As promised, we finish this round of our study of great screen performances with this two-part episode that highlights what are, in our opinion, the best overlooked and underloved performances by supporting actresses over the years. 

Recall that in our last episode, we put down our usual auteurist lens in favor of a focus on actors, perhaps a filmmaker's most crucial collaborators. This is a natural move for us, considering that both Michael and John are trained actors and bring a wealth of experience and knowledge to our enterprise. 

So join us, Vintage Sand fans, as we follow a slightly different path and focus on our favorite underloved and overlooked performances in film by supporting actresses. And as we learned last time out, when you get John and Mike talking about acting, there’s no stopping them; thus another two-parter (Episode 34 B will be appearing in a couple of weeks). As for me, the non-actor in the group, I would say that I learned more from these episode than any one we’ve ever done; our hope is that this will open the same kind of doors for you as well.

Vintage Sand Episode 34A - No Small Parts II

As promised, we finish this round of our study of great screen performances with this two-part episode that highlights what are, in our opinion, the best overlooked and underloved performances by supporting actresses over the years.

Recall that in our last episode, we put down our usual auteurist lens in favor of a focus on actors, perhaps a filmmaker's most crucial collaborators. This is a natural move for us, considering that both Michael and John are trained actors and bring a wealth of experience and knowledge to our enterprise.

So join us, Vintage Sand fans, as we follow a slightly different path and focus on our favorite underloved and overlooked performances in film by supporting actresses. And as we learned last time out, when you get John and Mike talking about acting, there’s no stopping them; thus another two-parter (Episode 34 B will be appearing in a couple of weeks). As for me, the non-actor in the group, I would say that I learned more from these episode than any one we’ve ever done; our hope is that this will open the same kind of doors for you as well.

Vintage Sand Episode 34B: No Small Parts II

Episode 39 finds your intrepid Team Vintage Sand doing a deep dive into the work of one of our most promising young filmmakers, 2020 Best Director Oscar-winner Chloe Zhao. Although she has only done four feature films to this point, she has already established a distinctive painterly and brilliant visual style, and, as no less an authority than Frances McDormand put it, has shown herself able to successfully walk the line between sentiment and sentimentality. 

We take an auteurist approach to Zhao’s work by dividing her young career into two distinct parts. She began with two very low-budget films, Songs My Brother Taught Me and The Rider, using non-actors essentially playing themselves. Notably, both were set in the unique and wonderful landscape of the Pine Ridge Reservation in the Black Hills of South Dakota, a location that is becoming to Zhao what Monument Valley was to John Ford. Her Oscar winner, Nomadland, was a transitional work, featuring old pros McDormand and David Strathairn mixed in with non-actors. This unexpected success then led to her chance to be part of the MCU with Eternals, a huge-budget film that many connoisseurs of the genre consider to be the worst of the Marvel films. 

So our fundamental question is simple: how do the visual and thematic elements that made her first two films so uniquely personal and intimate carry over into the second pair of films, done on a much different scale? As frequently happens, there is some dissent within Team Vintage Sand. Michael, and to a lesser extent John argue, as do many, that Zhao’s films suffer from her insistence on non-actors, and that Songs and The Rider would have been better had Zhao populated her film with professional actors. I’m not bothered as much by it, but I see where they’re coming from, especially since they are both trained actors. That being said, there is no doubt that Zhao has a phenomenal eye and that she is an artist to be closely watched; for us, she is one of the few young directors who has earned a lifetime ticket, which simply means that if she’s directing a film, we’ll be there opening weekend. So sit back, enjoy, and we’ll see you all down the road.

Vintage Sand Episode 39: Director's Cut: Chloe Zhao

Don’t call it a comeback! After a long (for us)summer break estivating in all the world’s glamour spots, Team Vintage Sand returns with Episode 40, the third in our Hidden Gems series.  Those of you playing along at home will recall that in Episodes 11 and 30, we each chose one film to discuss that we thought had been unjustly overlooked by time and the madding crowd. We promised/threatened to go down this path yet again and take you, loyal listeners, into some more dark and obscure corners of film history. So enjoy Episode 40, Hidden Gems Volume III, where John, Michael and Josh take a closer look at three very different films: a broad screwball heist film from the early 70's that should have been a huge hit; a quietly powerful and engrossing tale of a year in the life of a group of middle-aged friends, created by the man who is perhaps the greatest living director of actors; and a one-of-a kind, zero-budget film created by blacklisted creatives at the height of McCarthyism that is not only the greatest film ever made about the labor movement, but is also decades ahead of its time in its approach to both feminist issues and immigrant rights. And remember, the code phrase is Afghanistan Banana Stand…

Vintage Sand Episode 40: Hidden Gems, Volume III`

Team Vintage Sand returns to the airwaves with our October episode, a neat bookend to Episode 31 wherein we explored our favorite final films by great directors. Here we present Episode 41--Gala Premieres: Our Favorite First Films by Great Directors. To begin, we decided to establish some parameters to spare you, our tenacious audience, any pointless discussion.. The first is that we tried to avoid directors about whom we have already discoursed at great length in these pages. The second, what we termed the Julie Dash Rule, is that we would only focus on first films by directors who went on to long and predominantly successful careers in feature films. That’s why you won’t find movies like "Boys Don’t Cry"(Kim Pierce), "One False Move" (Carl Franklin), "Beasts of the Southern Wild" (Benh Zeitlin) or one-hit-wonders like Laughton’s "Night of the Hunter" or Loden’s "Wanda" here. Plus, we already did a full episode on one-hit wonders—that would be Episode 10. (The fact that the brilliant Dash has only been able to make one film in three decades is a mystery to be explored in another episode or two—utterly inexplicable). Our last rule is the Rosebud Rule; we tried to exclude any first films that were too obvious to spend time on. That would include "Citizen Kane", "The Maltese Falcon", "The 400 Blows", "Breathless", "Badlands", "Boyz ‘n’ the Hood", "Reservoir Dogs" and similar fare all the way through "Get Out". So join us as we bring back those wonderful moments where you wandered into a film by a new director and left the theater realizing that you had just witnessed the birth of a new voice to be reckoned with.

Vintage Sand Episode 41: Gala Premieres--Our Favorite First Films by Great Directors

It is indeed the episode a decade in the making! Here, in Episode 43, Team Vintage Sand puts in its collective two cents on the newly released Sight and Sound decennial poll of the greatest films of all time. It is a list referred to by no less an authority than Roger Ebert as “the best damned film list of them all.” But this time, was it a “woke” poll, reflecting more our need for political correctness than a genuine and deep understanding of film history, as old-timers like Paul Schrader proclaimed? Or was it about damn time that the old white men gave up at least some of the strangle hold they’ve had on the poll since its inception in 1952, as many younger critics proclaimed? Does this new list signify that the battle lines have been drawn irrevocably between older and younger film people?

As always, the truth is never that simple. Team Vintage Sand tries to approach the poll by avoiding either extreme, oversimplified position, reaching, as ever, for the complex and embracing the gray. Does Akerman’s "Jeanne Dielman" deserve its new place atop the rankings? Probably not, but it surely is a much better film than its position in the mid-30’s for the 2012 edition of the poll suggested. And if the poll is so politically correct, why are there no films by the Mexican New Wavers here? Along these same lines, 16 of the 22 directors who have multiple entries on the list are white men; four of the remaining six are Asian men. Yes, there are no films by Howard Hawks or Roman Polanski. No Buñuel. No Lean. No Altman. No Demy, or Melville, or Resnais. No Sternberg or Stroheim. No Huston. No Malick. No Tarantino. No Anderson, be it Wes or P.T. No Coen Brothers. No Linklater. No Spielberg, for goodness’ sake! No silent films in the Top 10, and all the silent films that are still there from 2012, with the exception of "City Lights", plummeted to the nether reaches of the list. (If anyone tells me that there are 20 films greater than "The Passion of Joan of Arc", it’s ON!) And yet…

…there’s "Do The Right Thing" entering the list at #24. FINALLY. And there’s Burnett’s brilliant "Killer of Sheep". And Dash’s "Daughters of the Dust". Maybe now someone will give her some money to make a second film, three full decades after she released a Top 100 masterpiece. And there, brand spanking new, are Jordan Peele and Barry Jenkins. And there's Agnes Varda’s extraordinary "Cleo from 5 to 7" entering the list in the top 15. And my historical experimental film crush Maya Deren is finally here as well for her extraordinary and endlessly influential "Meshes of the Afternoon". And Claire Denis in the Top 10. And Jane Campion, Barbara Loden(!), Celine Sciamma and the aforementioned Julie Dash. If it took some “woke” (whatever that means) younger critics to put these artists in their rightful places in the pantheon, we’ll take it.

Ultimately, we recognize the silly waste of energy in trying to compare, say, "Jeanne Dielman" with "Tokyo Story" with "In the Mood for Love" with "Man with a Movie Camera". For us, this poll has one purpose only, and it’s the same purpose that guides what we do at Vintage Sand: it opens doors. It takes us out of our comfort zone as viewers, and reminds us that there are vast aspects of film history about which we know little or nothing. So look carefully at Sight and Sound 2022 through this lens, check off the films you haven’t seen yet or not in a long time anyway, and track them down. We’ll bring the popcorn!

Vintage Sand Episode 43: Thoughts on the "Sight and Sound" 2022 Poll

2022 was definitely the everything bagel of movie years. No less an authority than Stephen Spielberg anointed Tom Cruise as the savior of movies this summer, which made sense given the success of "Top Gun: Maverick". Then came the fall, and excellent movies were released…and no one showed up. And even when they did, as with the $2.2 billion dollar gross accumulated by James Cameron’s "Dances with Smurfs Part Deux", the movies barely seemed to make a dent in the cultural landscape. It didn’t help that so many of our beloved directors released crappy movies: Aronofsky with the odious "The Whale", Russell with his how-could-it possibly-go-wrong-with-that-cast disaster "Amsterdam", Alex Garland with the puzzling (and not in an interesting way) "Men", Iñarritú inadvertently reminding us how brilliant both "Roma" and "8 ½"  are with "Bardo", and the literal crapfest (elephant, in this case) that was "Babylon". Sometimes, it felt like 2022 was a living, breathing argument against the auteur theory. 

Yet there were some very good spots too, including not one but two really interesting portrait-of-the-filmmaker-as-a-young-man movies with "Fabelmans" and "Armageddon Time". The scene of the year? Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tar (née Linda Tarr of Staten Island!) arguing with one of her students about the pointlessness of cancelling Bach in Todd Fields’ most welcome return. "Everything Everywhere" became the only film in history to win three acting Oscars and Best Picture. Underappreciated gems like "The Menu" and (sorry, John and Michael) "Don’t Worry Darling", and even appreciated ones like "Aftersun" wormed their way into our brains and didn’t let go, though I will never look at s’mores the same way again. And we even had a solid Oscars ceremony, with powerhouse performances by Rihanna and Lady Gaga and nearly an epic battle between Malala and Cocaine Bear. Plus, we got perhaps the most sublime moment in American film this century: David Lynch playing John Ford in a Spielberg film. That glorious scene almost took away the sour taste of the “Look, I’m doing Bergman!” montage of film history that ended "Babylon" not nearly soon enough. And while we liked "EO" better when it was "Au Hasard Balthasar", and "Living" better when it was "Ikiru", and we thought that the Siegfried Sassoon biopic "Benediction" was a better World War I film than "All Quiet", there were definitely some tasty tidbits to be found on that everything bagel. An up and down year, but to paraphrase the wondrous Lashana Lynch as Miss Honey in Matilda, it wasn’t much, but it was enough for us.

Vintage Sand Episode 45: Mapping the Metaverse: 2022 in Film

When a director of  Martin Scorsese’s stature releases a new movie, it’s time to drop everything else and discuss. When last we did this, with "The irishman", our thoughts on that film were mixed; it was a summation of some of the themes and ideas that have characterized Scorsese’s work, and it also contained certain thematic elements of his “spiritual” trilogy of "Last Temptation of Christ", "Kundun" and "Silence". Michael summed it up best when he characterized "The Irishman", and not in a disparaging way, as the film of an old man, an elegy for a passing time. And here we are, once again, with the director in his early 80’s, releasing a very different kind of 3 ½ hour epic that, in our view, not only feels like it could have been made by someone in his 30’s, but encompasses an ambition (both emotional and temporal/spatial) that Scorsese has never attempted before. So we present Episode 49, "Killers of the Flower Moon: It’s Just the Way This Is Going.”

     As we did with our study of "The Irishman", we divide this episode into two parts. In the first, we discuss the film on its own terms. Here, we disagree somewhat (which always makes for an interesting discussion) on the overall impact of the film; Michael sees it as an unalloyed masterpiece, while John and I, while recognizing its brilliance, express some reservations. We all agreed, for example, that the film’s extended running time was actually insufficient to tell this story, and that it might have been better done as a mini-series or some longer format. Another thing we all agree on is the acting which, down to the smallest roles, is pitch-perfect. This is especially true of the three leads, and of the stunning performance by Lily Gladstone as Mollie in particular. And we all love the opening and the ending of the film, and how brilliantly Scorsese uses the music of Robbie Robertson (who acts as almost a presiding spirit over the film) to underscore the themes and the mood of the piece. We also appreciate how Scorsese, in adapting David Grann’s brilliant book for the screen, shifts Grann’s emphasis on how the Osage murders helped put the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover on the map and puts his focus up, until nearly the very end, on the human side of these horrific crimes, centered around the extraordinarily complex relationship between DiCaprio’s Ernest and Gladstone’s Mollie. 

     Then, as we did with "Irishman", we try to place the film in the context of Scorsese’s body of work, and this is where things get really interesting. While his films often focus on violence, and often depict this violence through elaborate set pieces, Scorsese’s approach is very different here. For one, with the possible exception of the misbegotten "Gangs of New York", Scorsese has never attempted to show organized violence perpetrated over such a long period of time and on such an epic scale. Paradoxically, though, while this film contains countless acts of brutal violence, Scorsese chooses to show them in the most blunt, matter-of-fact way. It’s as though he felt that calling attention to his own craft would only distract from the horrific story he is trying to tell. And this raises the stakes for the director in an unprecedented way. Rather than focusing on the violence between rival gangs, or internecine strife within a gang, Scorsese seems to be saying that the whole of American history is at least in part a kind of gang war, with profit and gain for some happening only with the suffering, exploitation and murder of "othered" peoples across the centuries. It is an exploration of the darkest corners of the American Dream, and we think you will find our conclusions about where it fits in the Scorsese canon to be interesting. "Killers of the Flower Moon" is a film of tremendous resonance, depth and contradiction as seen through the eyes of someone who, as an artist, has always been one of the sharpest observers of the complexities of who we are as a people.

Vintage Sand Episode 49: "Killers of the Flower Moon": It's Just the Way This Is Going

Our Alternate Oscars episodes, based on Danny Peary’s fantastic 1992 book of the same name, have always been among our most popular. Over the course of the podcast, we’ve covered the 1930’s, 1950’s, 1970’s, 1980’s, 1990’s, and the 2000’s. Comparing what films actually won Best Picture to what we believe should have won is always a fun challenge, and it has given us a chance over the years to open or reopen some doors for our listeners to movies that are overlooked and forgotten. When we came to the 1950’s episode, in an (eerily prophetic) split decision, we chose to include only English-language works, since the sheer volume of brilliant films from around the world in that decade would overwhelm both us and you, dear listeners. As we approached the 1960’s for this episode, however, we reasoned that the relative lack of great American films from the decade suggested that this time around, we should open our tent to the entire world. We could not stand idly by, for instance while A Man for All Seasons, lovely though it is, walked away with Best Picture in the year of films like Persona, Masculin/Feminin and Blow-Up. Our worries about the length of the episode, however, turned out to be justified and then some; therefore, we needed to split the episode into two parts. So with that, we are thrilled to present our first episode(s) since our triumphant, celebratory live recording of Episode 50 in March: thus Episodes 51A (1960-1964) and 51B (1965-1969), Alternate Oscars: The 1960’s Edition.

There were a couple of things that really hit us as we were creating this entry in the Vintage Sand catalogue. The first is that an unexpectedly high number of our choices were, in fact, American films, suggesting that while common wisdom avers that Hollywood suffered a creative decline in the 60’s, there were a lot of great things happening just below the surface that were, unwittingly perhaps, paving the way for the revolution of the American New Wave that would come in the early 1970’s. And the deeper we dove into the cinema of the 60’s, we came to really understand the fundamental difference between those works and film today. Simply put, it was a time when directors really seemed to trust their audience’s intelligence and imagination. This is most obvious in structurally elliptical puzzle films like Resnais’ Last Year in Marienbad, Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel, Antonioni’s L’Avventura and Blow-Up, Bergman’s Persona and even Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. But in ways big and small, and in terms both of performance and filmmaking technique, there is in 60’s film a refreshing absence of rat-on-the-balcony-rail-at-the-end-of-Departed heavy-handedness that seems to be a common thread in the work of even our greatest directors today. So with all this in mind, strap in and join us for our odyssey through 60’s cinema. It promises to be highly irregular, Dave…

Vintage Sand Episode 51A: Alternate Oscars: 1960's Edition, Volume I

Our Alternate Oscars episodes, based on Danny Peary’s fantastic 1992 book of the same name, have always been among our most popular. Over the course of the podcast, we’ve covered the 1930’s, 1950’s, 1970’s, 1980’s, 1990’s, and the 2000’s. Comparing what films actually won Best Picture to what we believe should have won is always a fun challenge, and it has given us a chance over the years to open or reopen some doors for our listeners to movies that are overlooked and forgotten. When we came to the 1950’s episode, in an (eerily prophetic) split decision, we chose to include only English-language works, since the sheer volume of brilliant films from around the world in that decade would overwhelm both us and you, dear listeners. As we approached the 1960’s for this episode, however, we reasoned that the relative lack of great American films from the decade suggested that this time around, we should open our tent to the entire world. We could not stand idly by, for instance while "A Man for All Seasons", lovely though it is, walked away with Best Picture in the year of films like "Persona", "Masculin/Feminin" and "Blow-Up". Our worries about the length of the episode, however, turned out to be justified and then some; therefore, we needed to split the episode into two parts. So with that, we are thrilled to present our first episode(s) since our triumphant, celebratory live recording of Episode 50 in March: thus Episodes 51A (1960-1964) and 51B (1965-1969), Alternate Oscars: The 1960’s Edition.

There were a couple of things that really hit us as we were creating this entry in the Vintage Sand catalogue. The first is that an unexpectedly high number of our choices were, in fact, American films, suggesting that while common wisdom avers that Hollywood suffered a creative decline in the 60’s, there were a lot of great things happening just below the surface that were, unwittingly perhaps, paving the way for the revolution of the American New Wave that would come in the early 1970’s. And the deeper we dove into the cinema of the 60’s, we came to really understand the fundamental difference between those works and film today. Simply put, it was a time when directors really seemed to trust their audience’s intelligence and imagination. This is most obvious in structurally elliptical puzzle films like Resnais’ "Last Year at Marienbad", Buñuel’s "The Exterminating Angel", Antonioni’s "L’Avventura" and "Blow-Up", Bergman’s "Persona" and even Kubrick’s "2001: A Space Odyssey". But in ways big and small, and in terms both of performance and filmmaking technique, there is in 60’s film a refreshing absence of rat-on-the-balcony-rail-at-the-end-of-"Departed" heavy-handedness that seems to be a common thread in the work of even our greatest directors today. So with all this in mind, strap in and join us for our odyssey through 60’s cinema. It promises to be highly irregular, Dave…

Vintage Sand Episode 51B: Alternate Oscars: The 1960's Edition

The end of 1974 saw the implosion of the Director’s Company, founded just a year earlier by three of Hollywood’s hottest directors: Francis Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, and William Friedkin. Funded by Paramount, the idea was that within a certain budget, these directors would make whatever they wanted, have final cut on their work, and split the profits on each other’s films. Its rapid collapse, amid artistic failure and hubris and egged on by corporate intrigue, signaled the beginning of the end of what later came to be known as the Hollywood New Wave. A year later, the phenomenon that was "Jaws" recentered the narrative so that blockbuster weekend box office was everyone’s sole and explicit goal. This in turn led to the return of the money people to power, and they have barely relinquished any of that power in the ensuing half-century.

It's not a coincidence that 1974 also saw "Hearts and Minds", one of the great antiwar films ever made in this country, win the Oscar for Best Feature-Length Documentary. The film was also a milestone in that it was the last film ever released by BBS, the renegade company founded by Bert Schneider, Bob Rafelson and Steve Blauner in 1969. Buoyed by the money they had made from the success of the Monkees, BBS disrupted an already-crumbling industry by releasing "Easy Rider", which grossed $60 million on a budget of $400K. The next few years saw releases from BBS like Rafelson’s "Five Easy Pieces" and "The King of Marvin Gardens", Jack Nicholson’s directorial debut in "Drive, He Said", Jaglom’s "A Safe Place" and Bogdanovich’s mainstream breakthrough, "The Last Picture Show". By the middle of the decade, however, BBS had been swallowed up by Columbia, and the writing was on the wall for the days of the creative freedom that came with this iteration of American independent film. 

So while few realized it at the time, 1974 would mark the end of something unique and the beginning of something else. Come, then, and join our intrepid Team Vintage Sand as we step into the Way-Back Machine to say goodbye to Tricky Dick Nixon, spend weekend days waiting on line for gasoline, and explore that sui generis year in film. It was, of course, the year of young Vito Corleone, Jake Gittes and Harry Caul, but also a time when even many low-budget genre films ended up as classics. In the end, you very well might end up agreeing with our own John Meyer, who back in Episode 5 called 1974 the greatest year in film history.

Vintage Sand Episode 52: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Films of 1974

For the fourth time in the history of the podcast, Team Vintage Sand returns to one of its most popular formats, the Hidden Gems episode. As we did previously in episodes 11, 30, and 40, Michael, John and I each choose one film to discuss that we feel has been unjustly neglected and overlooked by the huddled masses yearning to see anything besides a prequel, sequel, spinoff or reboot. So please enjoy Episode 53, which features three films that could not be more different from one another. Michael takes us back to the 70’s and to a John Cassavetes film that was ignored and even despised upon its (very limited) initial release but has only gained in reputation and influence across the years. I focus on a very imperfect genre film, Neill Blomkamp’s second feature, 2013’s "Elysium" that, perhaps even more powerfully and viscerally than acknowledged masterworks like "The Social Network" and "Her", predicted a desperate future that we appear to be headed for much sooner than the filmmaker anticipated. Finally, John shines the spotlight on Alice Wu, a unique filmmaker and storyteller. Her second film, The Half of It, a lovely variation on the "Cyrano de Bergerac" formula, had the misfortune of being premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival…that never took place, because it was 2020. It ended up in the undifferentiated mass of content that is Netflix, from which John will hopefully save it. Enjoy, stay cool in the heat, see great movies, and Thank You for Listening, Citizen!

Vintage Sand Episode 53: Hidden Gems, Volume IV

Elegant. That was the adjective used by Team Vintage Sand’s own Michael Edmund to describe why the films of Joseph Losey are so important to him, and why he has been such a huge fan of Losey’s for nearly all of his film-going life. Losey’s was a name that seemed to keep popping up in a wide variety of contexts over the course of the podcast, so, after many delays, we are proud to present Episode 54—Director’s Cut: Joseph Losey. Losey’s is a unique career in the sense that it really was two distinct careers. After growing up in a life of privilege in Wisconsin (where he was a high school classmate of another pretty good director, Nicholas Ray) and an education at Harvard and Dartmouth, Losey made his way to Hollywood and directed a couple of interesting, low-budget films. Among these were the stilted but prescient "The Boy with Green Hair" (1948), and the rather senseless remake of Lang’s "M" (1951), the latter replete with awful soundtrack music and LA sunshine. One possible reason that Losey might have gotten involved with this misguided effort might have been to give actors (Luther Adler, Martin Gabel) and other creatives (screenwriter Waldo Salt), who had been or were about to be blacklisted, a shot at getting some work. 

Losey himself, an unapologetic member of the Communist Party and an important creative associate of Bertolt Brecht, knew that when Brecht was called before HUAC, it was only a matter of time before he would meet the same fate. So before he could be summoned, he fled to London, and never again worked in the United States for the remaining three decades of his life. He began his English period with some low budget films, some of which, like 1954’s "The Sleeping Tiger", still hold some interest. It was during this period, however, that he met two men who were going to help him create the reputation that he still carries to this day, that of a director of great style whose films, not surprisingly given his own life experience, were always political without ever dealing directly with politics: the actor Dirk Bogarde, and the legendary playwright Harold Pinter.

Their first work together, 1963’s "The Servant", is generally regarded as Losey’s masterpiece. It is an absolute evisceration of a rotting class system that has yet to realize its time has passed and that the empire on which it was founded has disintegrated. The complex, ever-changing relationship between upper class twit Tony (the wonderful James Fox) and Barrett, the manservant Tony hires (Bogarde), is cold, chilling and surprising right to the very end. Losey continued his obsession with social class in the World War I drama "King and Country" (1964), a film with a setup similar to "Paths of Glory" that in some ways is an even more powerful anti-war statement than Kubrick’s film. Losey teamed up again, somewhat less successfully, with Pinter and Bogarde for 1967’s "Accident", and with Pinter for one more masterpiece, 1971’s "The Go-Between", a gorgeous period piece featuring pitch-perfect performances by Alan Bates, Margaret Leighton, newcomer Dominic Guard as the titular young man, and especially by the never-more-luminous Julie Christie.

There are no easy answers when it comes to Losey, but two things come to mind. As John notes in the episode, had Losey not fled persecution and stayed in America, he probably would have been nothing more than a more-talented-than-average studio hack. Exile turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to him, and it may be a direct result of his outsider status that Losey was able to cast an even sharper eye on the follies and perils of the dying English class system more effectively even than the great native British directors of the 1960’s. Whatever your thoughts on his work, in the end, it is that aforementioned elegance and intelligence that make Losey’s best films worth watching today.

Vintage Sand Episode 54: Director's Cut: Joseph Losey

Vintage Sand listeners this month will get something of a twofer, a BOGO episode. Since we really have not had the chance to do a full necrology since July, Michael takes the time to relate the accomplishments of some very bright lights in the film business that have gone out over the past four months. These include artists who leave behind a great legacy and holes that can never really be filled, including people like Dame Maggie Smith, James Earl Jones and Alain Delon.

Before we get to that point, though, we begin with a very different kind of eulogy: our reflections on Francis Ford Coppola’s summa, the egregious "Megalopolis". We felt, as we did for Scorsese in our episodes on both "The Irishman" and "Killers of the Flower Moon", that a sprawling work by one of our greatest filmmakers, in this case a film that had a gestation period of nearly fifty years, deserved to be examined both in its own right as a work of art and in context as part of its creator’s career. In hindsight, it’s risible to think that at the end of the 70’s, film fans were heatedly debating who among the heroes of the American New Wave would end up with the greater career: Scorsese or Coppola? (Let’s not even talk about some of the others around the periphery of that conversation at the time, like De Palma, Bogdanovich, Friedkin, Rafelson, Cimino, Lucas and yes, perhaps even Spielberg—although, surprisingly, Paul Schrader has been coming up with a few late-period masterpieces). Megalopolis ends that debate, and stands, as I referred to "Eyes Wide Shut" relative to Kubrick’s career in our episode devoted to that film, as a cardboard tombstone to the career of a gifted filmmaker. While the members of Team Vintage Sand, whose bottomless intrepidity was confirmed by each of us successfully wading through (a la Andy Dufresne) the 2 ½ hours of dreck that is "Megalopolis", did find the occasional positive to light on, for the most part it was an example of a work of incredible consistency, in that just about every choice Coppola makes as writer and director was the wrong one. 

Perhaps the comparison with Scorsese is unfair, and certainly nothing could ever erase the impact of Coppola’s four films of the 1970’s, or even the smaller delights of his later work (Mike’s a fan of "The Cotton Club", and I’ve always thought that "Tucker" was a much better film than its reputation dictates). But for us, the truth is that between the gratuitous literary and high culture references, the sophomoric philosophizing that would make any actual 10th grader cringe, the derivative film tributes sprinkled throughout (including, unbelievably, a moment where the film appears to physically burn up in the projector—a brilliant idea had Bergman not done it 60 years ago in "Persona"), and a script that even good actors like Adam Driver and Giancarlo Esposito can’t save, "Megalopolis" was, quite unintentionally, the funniest film of the year—and given how much we love and admire its creator, the most painful. Once can only hope that this is not Coppola’s final statement, and that in future efforts he will trust his audience, not try so hard to impress us with his erudition, and remember what made him so great in the first place 


Vintage Sand Episode 55: Megalopolis and Necropolis

No deep insight or analysis here, Vintage Sand fans. Just a list of our favorite Christmas and Christmas-adjacent films as the season approaches. (Not counting blazingly obvious choices like “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Christmas Story”). May your days be merry and bright, may your heart grow three sizes that day, as they say in Whoville, and, may your favorite holiday films always be streaming.

Vintage Sand Episode 56: "He's Making a List:" Team Vintage Sand's Favorite Christmas Movies

Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America and all ships at sea, and welcome to Episode 57 of Vintage Sand, our first of 2025. In this episode and the next one we return, for the penultimate time, to the source of some of our most popular episodes: Danny Peary’s hard-to-find 1993 classic "Alternative Oscars". In the past, we have used Peary’s model to approach every full decade in which the Academy has handed out Oscars except two: the 2010’s, and the topic for this two-part episode, Alternate Oscars: The 1940’s Edition. 

It's interesting that the 40’s are considered to be the peak of Hollywood’s Golden Age, yet many films that were beloved and honored back then have not well withstood the passage of time. The early part of the decade’s most important development was the rise of the writer/director in Hollywood. Preston Sturges was the first, with his incredible run of films from 1940-1945, and he was followed quickly by the Billy Wilder/Charles Brackett team and, of course, that clever young fellow from the Mercury Theater. The 40’s also marked the arrival of Hitchcock to these shores, and the rise to prominence of new directorial voices like Huston, Preminger, Zinnemann and Nicholas Ray. There were also many high points in the decade for well-established directors like Ford, Capra, Hawks, Lubitsch and Wyler. We have the incredible run of films between 1942 and 1946 made by Val Lewton’s brilliant B-movie unit at RKO, and, of course, the birth of film noir, overseen predominantly by expats like Wilder, Lang, Preminger, Ulmer, Lewis and Siodmak. 

The latter half of the decade, which we will cover in Episode 58 in February, saw two major developments. The end of the war saw the return to strength of many European film industries as well as studio filmmaking in Japan. In France, in the wake of 1945’s miraculous "Les Enfants du Paradis", directors as different as Cocteau, Clouzot and Bresson began or restarted their careers. This explosion of creativity was matched in the UK, with the arrival of Lean, Reed, and especially with the flowering of the Powell-Pressburger Archers team. Clearly, though, the most important such event was the rise of what today is called Italian Neo-Realism, as directors like Rossellini, De Sica, and to a lesser extent Visconti, created a brand new way to tell stories on film that is still influencing directors today. The second big change of the late 40’s was really two changes in one: the landmark Paramount court case in 1948 that ended the vertical monopoly the studios had long held as owners of theater chains as well, and the mass arrival of television. Between 1948 and 1952, Hollywood lost nearly half of its audience, bringing down the curtain on that so-called “Golden Age” of Hollywood.

In terms of the Oscars, the Academy made solid choices for Best Picture--they certainly picked better films than they did in the 1930’s! These included enduring works like "The Best Years of Our Lives", "All the King’s Men" and especially, "Casablanca". Who could argue with that? (Hint: us.) But there were plenty of head scratchers as well. Prestige choices like "How Green Was My Valley", "Mrs. Miniver" and Olivier’s "Hamlet" look a little creaky these days. Hell, we might argue that "Rebecca" was not even Hitchcock’s best film of 1940! And the less said about "Going My Way" and "Gentlemen’s Agreement", the better. So kick back, round up the usual suspects, and help us make this podcast more important than the gas in that light… 


Vintage Sand Episode 57: Alternative Oscars: 1940's Edition, Part I

Please see the description in Episode 57, our previous episode, as a guide for this, the latest in our Alternate Oscars series. This one focused on the films of the 1940's. Only decade left to cover is the 2010's so don't touch that dial!

Vintage Sand Episode 58: Alternative Oscars: The 1940's Edition Part 2

Now that Adrien Brody has finally wrapped up his acceptance speech, we can bring you Episode 59 of Vintage Sand. And since it’s March, and the Oscars just passed, we’re right on time with our annual year-end review, which we call 2024: The Year of the Brutal. 
As seems to be the case over the last few years, we came away from the year in film with mixed feelings. The interesting thing is that we did not seem to agree on any of the major films of the year. Mike and I liked "Anora" a lot, and John did not. We also both liked "Emilia Pérez", which John actively disliked. John and I liked Garland’s "Civil War", which Mike didn’t like at all. John liked "The Brutalist", and Mike and I were underwhelmed. I was alone in loving both "Nosferatu" and "The Substance". Mike and John liked "Conclave" and "A Complete Unknown", both of which I found kind of conventional despite outstanding performances. And so on. It makes it difficult to come to a consensus on the year, but it makes, as you will hear, for an excellent episode; after all, what could be more boring than when the three of us agree? 
As for the Oscars themselves, we were pleasantly surprised at how good Conan was, and pleasantly not surprised how good the opening number from "Wicked" was. We were relieved at the absence of Malala vs. Cocaine Bear audience schtick (minus Adam Sandler), surprised at the politics-free nature of the evening, appalled at the James Bond “tribute”, amazed at how young Mick Jagger looks, and, as ever, disappointed in the In Memoriam section. And while we appreciated the Gene Hackman and Quincy Jones tributes, we were shocked that nothing special was done for David Lynch (something we plan to remedy in our next episode). Good on Sean Baker for winning four statuettes for "Anora", yet continuing puzzlement as to why Denis Villeneuve, among the greatest world-builders currently directing, can’t seem to get nominated for films that all seem to get nominated for Best Picture. 
In considering our eternal question of which of these films will be watched by anyone in 25 years, let alone show up the Sight and Sound poll in 2032, I can only imagine that "Anora" and "Nosferatu", in the contexts of their respective directors’ careers, might make the cut. It seems slightly possible that the Dylan film, "Conclave" and "The Brutalist" might have some legs as well, but it’s less likely. For me, 2024 will always stand out as the year featuring women in films that were social commentaries in the context of the horror genre ("The Substance", "Maxxxine", and "Blink Twice" being among the best examples). It suggests that a kind of brutality, often directed at women though not exclusively, has crept into American film, as it seems to have done in American life itself. So we urge you, intrepid listeners, to support the arts and humanities, go to movies in theaters, and keep fighting the good fight. 


Vintage Sand Episode 59: 2024: The Year of the Brutal

I can tell you the exact date and place: October 16, 1986, at the Fine Arts Theater in downtown Chicago. I got to come of age as a moviegoer in the corporate dominated, era of the late 70’s and early 80’s. I was a child of "Jaws", "Star Wars", Indy and "Back to the Future". With occasional exceptions like "Stranger than Paradise" and "Blade Runner", American film in the early and mid 80’s felt corporate and soulless. And then I saw "Blue Velvet", and my moviegoing life was saved. Skip now to nearly four years later, to those glorious two months in the spring of 1990 when "Twin Peaks" changed everything that television was and could be. For these moments, and so many more, we use Episode 60 to pay a last tribute to Hollywood’s favorite Eagle Scout, the irreplaceable David Lynch. 

What separates Lynch from almost every other filmmaker, was that whereas most great directors were filmmakers who evolved into artists, Lynch was an artist (a celebrated painter, composer) who happened to choose filmmaking as his major means of expression. And when the filmmaking money dried up after "Inland Empire"’s failure, he simply turned to other art forms to express what he wanted to say. Lynch was most certainly a surrealist, every bit as much as Dali, Magritte or De Chirico were, but he was, as one critic termed him, a “populist surrealist”. In his films, the line between dream and reality (or between reality and film in his later works) is blurred. This makes sense, since surrealism is founded on dreams and dreamlike juxtapositions. Lynch, like those great painters he so admired and emulated, was an artist of the unconscious and the uncanny. But for all the serious artistic ambition, everything he created was leavened with that art-school sense of humor, off-center and dry as a bone.

For all of his unsettling imagery and the deep questions his work raised about the nature of identity, he seemed, at least from the outside, to have led the happiest of lives. Raised mainly in Missoula, Montana, Lynch often paid tribute to the simple quotidian beauties of life in small-town America (think Twin Peaks, Lumberton, the Iowa and Wisconsin towns we see in "The Straight Story") while also, as in the opening of "Blue Velvet", reminding us of the darkness that often lies just beneath those finely-manicured lawns. For all of his artistic sophistication, he never even came close to an artsy sense of condescending irony; it’s perfect that he spent the last years of his life sending in daily weather reports to the LA public radio station for broadcast. No winks, no air quotes—just the desire to share a genuine excitement about the miracles of nature. 

And for an artist who was such a unique stylist that he was one of the last to become an adjective (we all know “Lynchian” filmmaking when we see it), he was at the same time constantly paying tribute to film history; consider the endless "Wizard of Oz" references in "Wild at Heart", or casting just about all of the hot new movie stars of 1961 in the original "Twin Peaks" series. How perfectly fitting it was, then, to watch him, in his final and uncredited big screen appearance, playing a cranky John Ford in Spielberg’s "The Fablemans". 

For our tribute to Lynch (which is more than they did for him at this year’s Oscars), we eschewed our usual formula and chose not to do a chronological reckoning of Lynch’s work and its impact from "Eraserhead" to "Inland Empire". This episode, like the director’s work itself, is more associative and non-linear. In the end, we conclude that David Lynch, that Man from Another Place, is someone whose absence makes the world that much poorer a spot to live in. To quote the repeated incantation from "Blue Velvet", now it’s dark. 


Vintage Sand Episode 60: "Now It's Dark:" Reflections on David Lynch

And…we’re back! Did you miss us? You can say so—it’s OK. Yes, it’s the return of Vintage Sand, your film history podcast, with our first episode since May. It was a frantic and wonderful summer, but now the leaves are falling and it’s time for us to get back to what we love to do, with a double episode no less than 25 years in the making. That’s right, fellow film fanatics; it’s Vintage Sand’s Top Ten Films of the 21st Century (So Far). And once again, a major cultural institution has stolen our ideas! When last we three met in May, we had decided to do these episodes. But fate intervened and delayed us, and, sure enough, when we opened up the “New York Times” in mid-July, there was their best of the century list so far. This has happened to us far too often to be coincidence—anyone know any good intellectual property lawyers out there?

And that “Times” list was truly interesting in several ways. First of all, we much preferred the fan’s list of the Top 100 (to my great pleasure it included “La La Land”, “Blade Runner 2049”, “Sinners” and “Midsommar”). But, in what was perhaps a bit of quiet backlash to the 2022 “Sight & Sound” Poll, there were only a handful of directors of color, and fewer female directors than one might have expected. On the other hand, the clear “winner” of the Times poll was Christopher Nolan, the only director with five films on the list (the Coens, PTA, Alfonso Cuarón each had four). Nolan is the Hitchcock of our times, in the sense that he is one of those rare directors who both receives critical acclaim and puts asses in the seats. Now if he would only put those blaring soundtracks a little lower in the audio mix so that older, cranky audience members such as us have a shot at hearing the dialogue…

Ultimately, the work we put into creating these lists revealed a surprising and heartening result. From long before the time we started Vintage Sand back in 2018, all we’ve heard is doom and gloom about the state of cinema this century. “Film is dead” because folks are watching on their phones, or because of the algorithm, or because of streaming, or because of the emphasis on the global film marketplace over the domestic, or because our attention spans have vaporized, and on and on. Not that those are not real issues, but the death of film has been continuously reported since sound arrived roughly a century ago. And let me tell you, dear and faithful listeners: we had an incredibly difficult  time narrowing down our respective lists to 25, let alone 10. We were overwhelmed with the number of creative, innovative, and moving films we had to choose from, films that will stand the test of time as well as any you could mention from the imagined “Golden Ages” of film. So our message, in the end, is one of optimism. Film is still a vital and glorious art form, and while you may have to dig around a bit more than you used to to find the greatness, it is clearly there. Enjoy these two episodes, and join us in facing the future of film with anticipation, excitement and joy. 


Vintage Sand Episode 61: "Are You Not Entertained?" Vintage Sand's Top 10 Films of the 21st Century

Vintage Sand Episode 62: "Are You Not Entertained?": Vintage Sand's Top 10 Films of the 21st Century (So Far)

Happiest of Thanksgivings, Vintage Sand fans, and welcome to Episode 63, our tribute to the incomparable and quietly brilliant Robert Redford. Consider this. If all the Sundance Kid had given us was a series of memorable and subtly complex performances as an actor in a career spanning half a century, that would have been enough to make him a critically important figure in Hollywood, particularly in that mini-Golden Age of the American New Wave of the 1970’s. Had the only thing he given us was two masterpieces ("Ordinary People" and "Quiz Show") and his other often beautiful work as a director, that alone would make him a legend. Had the only thing he done was pave the way for the arrival of nearly every single great American film director of the last four decades through his work as the founder and inspiration behind the Sundance Film Festival, that would make him one of the towering figures in the history of American film. And had he focused his seemingly boundless energies exclusively on the best of social causes, such as climate issues and indigenous rights, in the quiet and unassuming way he did, that would be a cause for a celebration of his greatness. The fact that Robert Redford managed to do all of this and more during his lifetime, and with such an unerring sense of grace, cements his place as a foundational figure of modern American cinema. Team Vintage Sand takes the last line from one of his greatest performances, in 1972’s "The Candidate", and uses it as the title of our tribute to him as we ponder the what American film will look like without him: What do we do now? 

Vintage Sand Episode 63 - "What Do We Do Now?": A Tribute to Robert Redford

For the fifth time in the history of the podcast, Team Vintage Sand returns to one of its most popular formats: the Hidden Gems episode. As we did in episodes 11, 30, 40, and 53,  Michael, John and I each choose one film to discuss that we feel has been underappreciated and overlooked by the madding crowd yearning to see anything besides a prequel, sequel, spinoff, or reboot. And while the episode features three films that could not be more different from one another, the one thing that they do have in common is that they are definitely movies made for grown-up sensibilities. Michael kicks things off by taking us back three decades to Nobody’s Fool,  a film written and directed by the great Robert Benton and featuring one of Paul Newman’s best performances, which is saying something. Benton’s script, as well as a ridiculously good cast featuring Bruce Willis, Melanie Griffith, a young Philip Seymour Hoffman and, in her final performance, the matchless Jessica Tandy, remind us of how unfortunate it was that this film, while not exactly overlooked, got lost in the Oscar tsunami that was Forrest Gump. I once again focus on an imperfect but powerful and prescient film, in this case Cary Joji Fukunaga’s low-budget debut from 2009 Sin Nombre. Fukunaga tells the story of a young man from Chiapas and a young woman traveling with her uncle and father from Honduras who meet on the treacherous and often terrifying train ride through Mexico to the American border. A decade and a half before the dehumanization of people like Willy and Sayra became government policy, Fukunaga spares us nothing in showing us the humanity, resilience, strength, and decency of these people and why they feel compelled to make this almost suicidal journey just in the remote hope of finding a better life. Finally, John shines the spotlight on City Island, a sweet and gentle comedy from 2009 featuring Andy Garcia and Juliana Margulies as the parents of a family living in the titular unique and lovely section of the Bronx. The father, Vince, played by a charmingly understated Garcia, is a corrections officer with dreams of becoming the next Marlon Brando, and is taking an acting class (and eventually going to an audition) without telling anyone. But that is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the secrets this family is keeping from one another. Featuring supporting performances by old pros like Alan Arkin (as Vince’s acting teacher who hates pauses) and Emily Mortimer as a friend he makes in the class who may have secrets of her own, the film is a lovely slice of life that contrasts its uniquely placid setting with the universally complicated dynamics of family and of wrestling with both one’s past and one’s dreams. So please enjoy, go see the many great films that are playing in theaters as the year comes to a close, and have a peaceful and restful holiday! 

Vintage Sand Episode 64: Hidden Gems, Volume V

While “obscure Hitchcock” may be a contradiction in terms, there are some films by the master that the Vintage Sand crew feel do not get their just desserts from critics and fans. In our inaugural episode, we make the case for three of Hitchcock’s lesser-known works of the 1950’s.

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Episode 01: Hitchcock Obscura

Around the turn of the 21st Century, a group of directors emerged who seemed destined to take the place of the American New Wave directors of the 1970's. This new group, led by such filmmakers as P.T. Anderson, Wes Anderson, David Fincher, Chris Nolan, Darren Aronofsky, the Wachowskis, David O. Russell, Todd Haynes, the Jonze/Gondry/Kaufman nexus, Kim Pierce, Alexander Payne and Sofia Coppola, to name a few, were poised to stake their claim. And in the last two decades...well, it has not exactly worked out as hoped. Join our intrepid trio as we explore the careers of some of these gifted directors and discuss what went right and what went a bit awry.

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Vintage Sand Episode 03: Whatever Happened to the Class of '99?

It's August, when a middle aged-film lovers dreams turn to Hitchcock. For Episode 4 of Vintage Sand, Josh, John and Michael discuss their favorite moments in all of Hitchcock's work. Some will be exactly what our listeners might expect, but we promise a few surprises in there as well.

Vintage Sand Episode 04: Top 5 Hitchcock Moments

After four decades of anticipation, Orson Welles' final film, "The Other Side of the Wind", was finally released in a handful of theaters and for streaming on Netflix earlier this month. Was it worth such an epic wait? Team Vintage Sand discusses the film both as a work in and of itself and in the context of the rest of Welles' unique, brilliant and ultimately heartbreaking career. Was Welles a victim, the embodiment of what happens when art comes into conflict with commerce in Hollywood? Or was his troubled career due, at least in part, to his own immeasurable streak of self-destructiveness? You decide.

Vintage Sand Episode 07: The Other Side of the Windbags

In the midst of the pandemic, many have turned to the art of the past, finding understandable comfort in nostalgia. Team Vintage Sand, in its usual charming and curmudgeonly way, has decided instead to look to the decade to come. In this episode, we discuss the directors that we think will become the next great voices in Film. Some obvious candidates are here, including Ryan Coogler, Damien Chazelle, Greta Gerwig, Barry Jenkins and genre folks like Ari Aster and Denis Villeneuve. But there are some surprises as well. So we hope you'll join Josh, Michael and John as, via Zoom, they buck the general trend by seeking comfort in the future.

Vintage Sand Episode 20: The Next Auteurs

Third time's the charm, as we turn once again to Danny Peary's peerless 1993 book, "Alternate Oscars". This go-round, Team Vintage Sand focuses on the 1950's, a decade with some questionable Best Picture choices (to put it politely). Still can't believe that "The Greatest Show on Earth" beat the unnominated "Singin' in the Rain"? Stunned that "Around the World in 80 Days" topped "The Searchers", which was also not nominated? Then join us on our alternate history as we set things right, start laughin' at clouds, and mete out justice in our usual cruel-but-fair Vintage Sand style. Our only ground rule? No foreign-language films, because otherwise this would be a four-hour episode. And if you disagree with our choices, well, as the irrepressible Osgood Fielding famously put it, nobody's perfect.  Zowie!

Vintage Sand Episode 21: Alternate Oscars: The 1950's Edition

Join the intrepid trio of Josh, Michael and John as we explore the history of film from the silent era through today’s releases, and from Hollywood to the far reaches of world cinema. Through lively discussion and occasional argument, these three old friends will take the listener on a highly opinionated tour of some of the more obscure recesses of film studies. If, as Alfred Hitchcock was fond of saying, film is life with the boring bits left out, then Vintage Sand will be film study with the boring bits left out. The creators will always approach film from the point of view of the fan, which above anything else defines who we are. From the obscure to the classic and back again, come with us and recall and rejoice in the joys of the big screen.

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