Trash, Art, And The Movies
The podcast that pits arthouse cinema against brainless entertainment—and then declares a victor.

Fellow Edmonton movie podcasters The Movie Jerks host TAATM stalwarts Erin Fraser and Paul Matwychuk for this discussion of two films about men with distinctive facial hair: the controversial German comedy MY FUHRER and FUR, director Steven Shainberg's offbeat "biopic" of photographer Diane Arbus.

Direct download: BONUSODE__Trash_Art_and_the_Movies_vs._The_Movie_Jerks.mp3
Category:TV and Film -- posted at: 12:57pm EDT

Paul and Erin examine two movies named after years—or possibly hotel rooms, fictional places, or just a lovelorn state of mind. First: 2046, Wong Kar-Wai's dreamlike 2004 romantic melodrama about a newspaper columnist and pulp author in 1960s Hong Kong who uses his tragic affairs with a series of beautiful women as fodder for an erotic science-fiction novel. Then: 1941, Steven Spielberg's epic 1979 farce in which seemingly every soldier and civilian in Southern California gets caught up in a wave of ultra-destructive panic following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. A love robot on a train, or a ventriloquist dummy on a Ferris wheel: which will prevail?

Direct download: TAATM_40__2046_vs._1941.mp3
Category:TV and Film -- posted at: 3:20am EDT

Heather and Paul take a look at two comedies about African-American men who find themselves vaulted into positions of corporate power. First: Robert Downey Sr.'s 1969 satire PUTNEY SWOPE, in which a lowly black ad man is accidentally elected CEO and reinvents his agency as a countercultural message factory; then, John Landis' 1983 comedy TRADING PLACES, in which a bet between a pair of millionaire brothers causes snooty commodities broker Dan Aykroyd and street hustler Eddie Murphy to assume each other's lives. Truth & Soul, or Duke & Duke: which will prevail?

Direct download: TAATM_39__Putney_Swope_vs._Trading_Places.mp3
Category:TV and Film -- posted at: 1:56am EDT

Cool beans! Paul and Erin go into critical first gear over two films about neon colours and very good drivers. First: Ryan Gosling is a Hollywood stuntman by day and a criminal getaway artist by night in Nicholas Winding Refn's cooler-than-cool 2011 action thriller DRIVE; then, Emile Hirsch is a pure-hearted race-car driver who hopes to triumph over the corrupt corporate forces who control the sport in Lana and Andy Wachowski's visually overwhelming 2008 confection SPEED RACER. Bryan Cranston with a limp or a monkey named Chim-Chim: which will prevail?

Direct download: TAATM_38__Drive_vs._Speed_Racer.mp3
Category:TV and Film -- posted at: 10:03pm EDT

Heather and Paul pay tribute to the many moods of mainstream cinema's strangest leading man, Nicolas Cage. First: 1995's LEAVING LAS VEGAS, featuring Cage's Oscar-winning performance as an alcoholic movie executive who decides to drink himself to death during an epic bender in a Sin City motel; then, CON AIR, in which Cage plays an unjustly imprisoned former U.S. Ranger whose release from jail is complicated when he winds up in the middle of an insanely complicated hijacking caper masterminded by criminal genius John Malkovich. Leaving Las Vegas, or crashing into the middle of Las Vegas in a jet airplane: which will prevail?

Direct download: TAATM_37__Leaving_Las_Vegas_vs._Con_Air.mp3
Category:TV and Film -- posted at: 10:32pm EDT