We continue our request month with one from Patreon Donor Ludo Round. We’re discussing Hiroshi Teshigahara's Woman in the Dunes (1964). Based on a novel by, and adapted by the author Kōbō Abe, the film stars Eiji Okada as teacher and amateur entomologist Niki Jumpei. On a sea-side vacation, he spends the night with the titular Woman played by Kyoko Kishida . In the morning he finds that he is trapped in the pit that holds her home. He’s now expected to help her shovel sand every night in a Sisyphean nightmare.
Beth Accomando and Cullen Gallagher join Mike to discuss another Patreon request, Sonatine. Released in 1993, the film stars Takeshi Kitano as Murakawa, an aging gangster with no real sense of purpose. He's sent to Okinawa on yakuza business where things don’t go as well as they should.
Beth Accomando and John Atom on our month of requests with one from John Atom himself! It’s Kim Ki-Duk's Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring from 2003.
It’s a meditative film about a young man and his master as they pass through different stages of life represented by the different seasons of the title. The film stars writer/director Kim Ki-Duk as the adult version of the young monk and Oh Yeong-su as the older version of his master.
Spaghetti Western Month continues with a look at Sergio Sollima’s 1966 film The Big Gundown. It’s the story of Jonathan Corbett (Lee Van Cleef), a bounty hunter who is being wooed to run for the US Senate. To cement his law & order image, he’s asked to pursue the criminal Cuchillo (Tomas Milian).
Special Guests: Karen Fang, Kenneth E. Hall, Barna William Donovan Guest Co-Hosts: Beth Accomando
After a brief hiatus, The Projection Booth returns with a discussion of John Woo's A Better Tomorrow (1986). The film, a hallmark of the “heroic bloodshed” subgenre of action films, did for gunplay what a generation of Hong Kong films had done with swords.
The film tells the tale of Ho (Ti Lung), a criminal whose younger brother, Kit (Leslie Cheung), is a police officer. He's betrayed by a fellow gangster (Waise Lee) and sent up the river. When he returns to Hong Kong he wants to stay on the right side of the law which is more difficult than it should be.
The film speaks to loyalty, brotherhood, and put Chow Yun-Fat on the map as a bankable action star.
Cinema Junkie's Beth Accomando and Mike wax fondly about the glory days of HK Cinema, twin brothers, strange sequels, and the true colors of a hero.
Special Guests:
Susan Seidelman, Ann Magnuson, Glenne Headly, Laurie Frank, Floyd Byars Guest Co-Hosts: Beth Accomando, Miguel Rodriguez
In Susan Seidelman's Making Mr. Right (1987), Frankie Stone (Ann Magnuson) is an ad executive whose new client, ChemTec, needs a major PR campaign in order to make the Ulysses robot (John Malkovich) palatable to the American public.
Laurie Frank and Floyd Byars penned this sci-fi romantic comedy.
The episode features the second of the three-part interview with actress Glenne Headly. Hear the first part on the Dick Tracy episode.
Music:
"Another World" - Richard Hell & The Voidoids
"Blank Generation" - Richard Hell & The Voidoids
"I Met An Astronaut" - Ann Magnuson
"Too Many Fish in the Sea" - The Marvelettes
"Happy Together" - The Turtles
Special Guests: Dean Defino, Jimmy McDonough Guest Co-Hosts: Beth Accomando, Miguel Rodriguez
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to violence, the word and the act.
A trio of busty go-go dancers (Tura Satana, Haji, Lori Williams) kill a man in the desert and kidnap his girlfriend before attempting to rob a lascivious old man and his two sons in the heated melodrama Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) from auteur Russ Meyer.
Beth Accomando and Miguel Rodriguez of the Horrible Imaginings Film Festival join Mike to discuss this paean to female power and fast cars. Guest Dean Defino is the author of the Cultography on Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, while Jimmy McDonough penned Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film.
Guest Co-Hosts: Samm Deighan, Beth Accomando
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