Episode 47 – F for Fake

“Do you think I should confess? To what? Committing masterpieces?”

In our latest Single Serving Selection, we’re joining librarian and artist, Kit Laika to turn our critical eyes to the final film directed by auteur Orson Welles, a conventions-defying documentary about frauds, fakers, and art forgery: F for Fake.

Welles delves into the world of two (or is it three?) spectacular liars. One is Elmyr de Hory, notorious art forger who paints replicas of masterpieces so convincing that they’re said be hanging in many prominent museums, and even the original artists claim to have created them. The other is Clifford Irving, the novelist and writer who exposed Elmyr’s forgeries in a tell-all book, before being revealed as a charlatan and fraud himself. It’s a deeply philosophical and nonlinear exploration of art, authorship, and who the real phonies might actually be.

Episode 44 – Fight Club

“We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won’t. We’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”

In the first Single Serving Selection in over a year, we are Jack’s complete lack of surprise. We’re stealing human fat from dumpsters and peeing into fancy soup with friend of the show Patrick Johnson. This month, we’re breaking the first two rules, because we’re talking about 1999’s Fight Club.

Is this David Fincher dark comedy a brilliant and scathing satirical deconstruction of toxic masculinity and how disaffected men can be drawn into extremism and violence? Or is it a shallow and pretentious edgelord glorification of the same thing? Or is it somewhere in between? We dig into the cult film we all adored as young twenty-somethings and dissect it under the harsh light of 2021.

Episode 14 – M. Night Shyamalan

mnight

What if there are no coincidences?

Mike and Casey count their sick days, stock up on hotdogs, and run from gently swaying trees with returning panelist and artist, Roslyn Townsend and Ask an Atheist‘s Rebecca Friedman! This month, we’re diving into the meteoric rise, and precipitious fall of a promising filmmaker whose career trajectory still confuses us, M. Night Shyamalan.

We discuss his brief absolute dominance of both Hollywood and the box office with the Sixth Sense and Unbreakable. We explore his current status as the cinematic butt of many jokes with the Happening and After Earth. And we look at how the writer-director’s legacy remains a subject of debate, speculation, schadenfreude and commiseration.

Music: 
Mr. Glass” from Unbreakable by James Newton Howard

Previously titled: “Swing Away, M. Night”