April 2013
5 posts
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Movie Homework Ep.52 - Die Hard Sequels & Beyond...
It’s a jam-packed episode this week. We kick things off by talking about an explosive development in Ari’s life, Mariam finally watching Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill and Ari catching up with Richard Linklater’s film from last year Bernie.
This week Mariam had to watch two movies! More specifically the two worthwhile follow-ups to Die Hard: 1990’s Die Hard...
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Movie Homework Ep.51 - Crumb & Summer of Sam
We’re back from our week-long hiatus, with a discussion of one of the most beloved documentaries ever made and a relatively little discussed joint in the oeuvre of Spike Lee. But before we get into that we discuss going to see Poltergeist exhibited in 70mm and Mariam watching Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye.
This week Ari had to watch Terry Zwigoff’s 1994...
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Movie Homework Ep.50 - Top 5 Homework
This week we’re celebrating our fiftieth episode by counting down our top five favorite films the other host has made us watch. But before we get into the countdown we discuss the passing of Roger Ebert and some of the films we’ve been watching in the last days.
The countdown includes some films we knew for sure the other would pick, some surprises and some upsets.
As always you...
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Movie Homework Ep.49 - Either Way & The Craft
Welcome to the 49th instalment of The Movie Homework Podcast! As always be begin the show by discussing the films we’ve watched recently, with Mariam discussing the 1978 comedy Girlfriends by Claudia Weill, which mostly makes Ari curious about whether or not Bob Balaban was cute in it (SPOILER ALERT Bob Balaban is always cute.) Ari caught up with a classic Hollywood horror film, by...
March 2013
6 posts
6 tags
Movie Homework Ep.48 - Cure & The Crying Game
Welcome to the 48th installment of Movie Homework. We kick things off this week by talking about some of the films we’ve seen this week, with Mariam catching the classic The Wild Bunch and Ari examining the little-discussed Roman Polanski film Frantic.
This week Ari had to watch the 1997 Japanese thriller Cure. A detective is examining a series of identical murders, all performed by...
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Movie Homework Ep.47 - The Ladies Man & Bad...
Welcome to the 47th installment of Movie Homework. Both Mariam and Ari are working on their thesis’ but in between writing they’ve managed to watch some movies. Mariam watched the Japanese horror film Pulse, which actually ended up being quite a confounding experience. Meanwhile Ari was also quite confounded by a films cult-status, the monster film Tremors.
Ari’s homework...
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Movie Homework Ep.46 - Babe: Pig in the City &...
Welcome to a disturbing installment of the Movie Homework Podcast. This week we discuss a film you can enjoy with the entire family and also Babe: Pig in the City! But before we get into that there’s a whole lot to discuss. Mariam watched the documentary Point of Order about Joseph McCarthy, or more specifically the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings. Meanwhile Ari watched one of the...
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Movie Homework Ep.45 - Eyes Without a Face & Moon
It’s once again time for the Movie Homework Podcast. Before getting into this week’s homework we discuss Woody Allen’s Manhattan, which Mariam just rewatched, War Horse, Steven Spielberg’s part-schmaltzfest part-harrowing war film and Roy Andersson’s first feature A Swedish Love Story.
This week Ari had to watch 1958 classic horror film Eyes Without a Face. A...
February 2013
4 posts
6 tags
Movie Homework Ep.44 - Overnight & Melancholia
Welcome to the 44th installment of Movie Homework! Looking for an antidote for Oscar-season, we’ve got you covered, since we didn’t watch them and don’t really have an opinion! But we did watch two films we didn’t like! Mariam watched Peter Bogdonavich’s The Thing Called Love, a drama set in the country-music world in Nashville starring Samatha Mathis, River...
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Movie Homework Ep.43 - Bugsy Malone & Cría cuervos
In a weird coincidence this week we both picked films from 1976 starring kids, although the probably couldn’t be more different. But before we get into the homework Mariam discusses seeing Otto Preminger’s Angel Face and Ari talks about Martin McDonaugh’s new film Seven Psychopaths. Then we bond over Jerry Lewis, having both recently scene two of his films.
Ari’s...
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Movie Homework Ep.42 - Zodiac & Death in Venice
This week we went to the movies! Together! And saw Django Unchained. We kick this week’s episode off by discussing our thoughts about Quentin Tarantino’s latest film and our thoughts on the man in general.
Ari’s pick this week is David Fincher’s 2007 film Zodiac, about the search for the serial killer who terrorized San Francisco in the sixties. Ari heard Mariam dismiss...
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Movie Homework Ep.41 - Ju-On & Tinker Tailor...
We kick things off this week by discussing two films we watched this week, both of which feature David Bowie (or at least his music, it’s not like Labyrinth) Mariam watched Christiane F, the 1981 German film about a group of heroin addicted teens in Berlin. This leads us to talk about drug-movies more generally and specifically about how terrible Requiem for a Dream is. Meanwhile Ari saw The...
January 2013
2 posts
5 tags
Movie Homework Ep. 40 - Double Suicide & Die Hard
Oh hey, welcome to our fortieth episode! Up top Mariam talks about seeing the Swedish film Den enfaldige mördaren with Stellan Skarsgård as a simple-minded farmhand who’s lead to murder. Meanwhile Ari went to see the Oscarbaity musical Les Miserables…
Mariam’s pick this week is the 1969 film Double Suicide from director Masahiro Shinoda. It starts of being showing people...
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Movie Homework Ep.39 - Bronson & Darkman
We’re finally back from our elongated Christmas break, and we have a lot to talk about before we get to our picks, including: Get to Know Your Rabbit, Taken 2, The Dark Knight Rises and the Dutch killer-St.Nick movie Saint.
Mariam’s pick this week is Nicolas Winding Refn’s film Bronson, about Mickey “Charles Bronson” Petersen, the most dangerous prisoner in the...
December 2012
6 posts
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Movie Homework Ep.38 - Christmas Spectacular!
Welcome to the Christmas installment of the Movie Ho-Ho-Homework Podcast! It’s been longer than usual since we last recorded and in the meantime Mariam watched all four-and-a-half seasons of Parks and Recreation, which is one of Ari’s favorite shows, Ari got Tom Cruise’s autograph and revisited a film mentioned in last week’s episode…
Mariam picked two things for...
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Movie Homework Ep.37 - The Limey & Belle De Jour
It’s once again time for the Movie Homework Podcast! We’ve both been busy watching movies this week! Mariam talks about the 1951 Russian film The Cranes are Flying and the Louise Brooks classic The Diary of a Lost Girl. Meanwhile Ari’s been slumming it, both in good and bad ways, with the musical Rent and the recent Guy Pearce action movie Lock Out. He also caught up with...
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Movie Homework Ep.36 - Glengarry Glen Ross & Lola
We’re in winter-hibernation mode, in our 36th episode, what with it being freezing in both the Fahrenheit and Celsius scale in Stockholm. But that hasn’t stopped us from watching movies! Mariam rewatched the Eric Rohmer film Full Moon in Paris and Ari watched the recent comedy The Five Year Engagement and rewatched a Christmas classic!
Ari’s pick this week is Glengarry Glen...
November 2012
6 posts
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Movie Homework Ep.35 - To Be or Not To Be & Holy...
Welcome to the 35th installment of the Movie Homework Podcast! We start this episode by recounting our visit to the Stockholm Twin Peaks Festival. Find out which characters we dressed up as! Mariam discusses reading about Visconti’s planned Proust adaptation and Ari catches up with a cult film, but ends up not being a member of that particular cult.
Mariam’s pick this week’s...
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Movie Homework Ep.34 - Stockholm Film Festival #2
Welcome to the second Stockholm Film Festival episode of the Movie Homework Podcast! This week we discuss some more of the films we saw at the festival, which include Killing Them Softly, The Queen of Versailles and the Icelandic crime thriller Svartur á Leik or Black’s Game. Ari also discusses screenings which he moderated Q&A’s for, including Antonio Campos’ follow up to...
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Movie Homework Ep.33 - Stockholm Film Festival #1
There’s no homework this week, and instead we look at the films we’ve seen so far at the Stockholm Film Festival. We discuss Sang-so Im’s follow-up to The Housemaid; The Taste of Money, the Hong Kong sex-comedy Vulgaria and the documentary Vito, about Vito Russo the gay activist, film historian and author of the groundbreaking book The Celluloid Closet.
We then look at Paul...
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Movie Homework Ep.32 - Eyes Wide Shut & Teorema
Welcome to the 32nd installment of the Movie Homework Podcast. Before we get into this week’s pick we talk about Tony Scott’s underrated vampire film, The Hunger. Ari went to see Skyfall, the new Bond movie and reports his experiences, which were somewhat conflicted. We also watched the recently released director’s cut of the cult musical Little Shop of Horrors.
Ari’s...
October 2012
5 posts
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Movie Homework Ep.31 - Ginger Snaps & Trick 'R...
Hellcome to the Boovie Homework Spookcast Halloween Special! We’ve got Halloween fever this week, as we discuss two horror films set on the Holiday. In the spirit of the holiday Ari’s been watching all of the Nightmare on Elm Street-movies, which leads Ari and Mariam to discuss who their favorite slashers are.
Mariam’s choice this week was the Canadian teen-girl werewolf...
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Movie Homework Ep.30 - Something Wild & Last Days...
We don’t let the fact that one of the hosts is feeling under the weather stop us from podcasting! We begin this week’s episode by discussing the new Swedish film Eat Sleep Die, which premiered at this year’s Toronto film festival where it was warmly received We also revisit a childhood favorite of Mariam’s, the somewhat shocking Charlie Chan at the Opera.
Ari’s...
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Movie Homework Ep.29 - Swann in Love & In Bruges
This week’s episode starts with a weird tangent about Adam Sandler movies, and things get weirder from there. Mariam went to see a screening of Jerzy Skolimowski’s film The Lightship, starring Robert Duvall playing an incredibly camp leader of a gang of criminals that take a crew of a lightship hostage. Ari caught up with Tony Scott’s film Man on Fire and decided to see Moneyball, to find out if...
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Movie Homework Ep.28 - In the Realm of the Senses...
Welcome to the 28th installment of the Movie Homework Podcast! Things have been tough for our two hosts, what with a class ending, and one of the hosts being robbed! Before we head into this week’s homework we discuss seeing the brand new Looper from director Rian Johnson.
Mariam’s pick this week is the controversial Japanese film In the Realm of the Senses, which tells the story of...
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Movie Homework Ep. 27 - Alice Doesn't Live Here...
Welcome to a special guest episode of the Movie Homework Podcast. Joining us this week is Ashley Smith, a fellow film studies student from Stockholm University. After telling us that she’s a listener, we thought it would be perfect to invite her on to the podcast as a guest! We discuss some of the movies she’s been watching again, for the first time in fifteen years.
Ashley’s...
September 2012
8 posts
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Movie Homework Ep.26 - All That Jazz & Fat Girl
Welcome to the twenty-sixth installment of the Movie Homework Podcast! Although school has started, we’re still in the magical phase before any real responsibilities start, so we’re both watching some movies we need to discuss. Mariam went to the cinematheque and saw the epic almost three hour Marketa Lazarova, meanwhile Ari watched an Icelandic viking film from the eighties and...
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“What I like about Gummo are the details that one might not notice at first....”
– Werner Herzog on Harmony Korine’s Gummo. (This is seriously the funniest thing I’ve ever read.)
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Movie Homework Ep.25 - L'Enfant & Gummo
Welcome to the twenty-fifth installment of the Movie Homework Podcast! This week’s homework features some very troubled youths, but before we get into that we discuss some of the things we’ve seen in the Stockholm Cinematheque. Both Ari and Mariam caught up with Catherine Breillat’s controversial 1999 film Romance and Mariam went even further, seeing her debut film A Real Young...
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Movie Homework Ep.24 - Behind the Mask & The Bad...
It’s a Movie Homework spooktacular this week! Before we delve into our two horror movie picks this week we discuss two movie outings we’ve had in the previous week. Firstly we discuss Seth MacFarlane’s debut feature film Ted. We both have a serious distaste for his television programs, and Mariam has stated her dislike for Mark Wahlberg in the past. So did the film win us over...
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Movie Homework Ep.23 - Loves of a Blonde & Amadeus
Welcome to a director specific installment of the Movie Homework Podcast. Before we get into the two Milos Forman picks of the week we discuss the latest Woody Allen eurotrip To Rome With Love, which Ari and Mariam saw together this week. Ari also revisited a classic that totally holds up…
Mariam as the first pick of the episode, Milos Forman’s first feature film Loves of a Blonde....
August 2012
8 posts
4 tags
Movie Homework Ep.22 - The Night of the Hunter &...
In this week’s episode we tackle the canon of film history with two picks from the BFI Sight and Sound top 100 list. But to kick things off Mariam discusses seeing two films from François Truffaut Mississippi Mermaid and The Man Who Loved Women. Ari caught up with two films, the recent horror comedy The Cabin in the Woods and the eighties teen classic Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
Ari’s pick...
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Movie Homework Bonus Ep.02 - Craig Zobel
Welcome to another bonus episode recorded at the Locarno Film Festival. This time it’s an interview with writer-director Craig Zobel, whose latest film Compliance screened in competition at the festival. The film tells the story of a fast-food restaurant manager who receives a phone call from someone claiming to be a police officer. The caller tells her that one of her employees had stolen money...
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Movie Homework Ep.21 - Drive Angry & Alphaville
We’re back! Ari is back from the Locarno Film Festival and he’s got a very special gift for Mariam. While Ari was away Mariam read two books by the actress Anne Wiazemsky. Wiazemsky was discovered by Robert Bresson for his film Au hasard Balthasar and married Jean Luc Godard, and the books feature some details which seem to verify our theory that all directors are pervs.
Our picks...
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Bonus Ep.01 - Locarno Film Festival Wrap-up
Welcome to a bonus episode of the Movie Homework Podcast. Recorded on the last day of the Locarno Film Festival, this episode is a panel discussion about both the films shown at Locarno and the festival in general.
The episode’s panel consists of your regular Movie Homework Podcast host Ari Gunnar Thorsteinsson, Zeba Blay, Beatrice Behn, Adam Cook, Michael Nordine, Celluloid Liberation...
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More dispatches from Locarno Critics Academy
The Critics Academy has been in full force for the past few days. Here’s a round up of some of the cool stuff that’s been posted so far.
Zeba Blay has written two pieces on representations of the sexes in this years festival. One deals with the representation of women in two of the festival’s American comedies and the other with masculinity in two very different films.
The...
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A few Locarno links
So the first few days of the Locarno film festival have been an incredible experience. I wanted to share with you some of the links from the Critics Academy so far.
Eugene Hernandez’ piece about the Critics Academy
My take on the some of the first films at the festival
Beatrice Behn’s look at Nazi guilt in the film Lore
Michael Nordine’s piece on opening night films
...
