two writers talk movies & culture
We review Succession through the second season. We didn’t mean to. It just happened. I’m hoping oligarchs won’t be relevant in two years so we don’t have to review it again. Who knows!
Thanks to slfhlp for providing us some SICK BEATS for our intro and outro.
As always, send us yr mail at twoforspacejamplease @ gmail.com and subscribe on iTunes or Google Play.
The one where we talk about J.Lo looking phenomenal at 50, the honesty of a lap dance, and how the whole world’s a strip club.
After our discussion our comrade Chanelle recommended some reading–a piece by Kate Zen that adds some crucial context and insight into the film’s representation of Destiny: “Constance Wu’s real-life ‘Hustlers’ inspiration and the problem with model minority redemption narratives.”
Thanks to slfhlp for providing us some SICK BEATS for our intro and outro.
As always, send us yr mail at twoforspacejamplease @ gmail.com and subscribe on iTunes or Google Play.
We dip into the vault to watch John Sayles 1987 labor classic, Matewan, the based-on-fact story (and here’s a hilariously biased company version of the story for kicks) in which Mingo County coalminers enter a deadly struggle with their bosses and their thugs for improved conditions. We talk labor in cinema, dramatizing solidarity and organizing, what the labor films of the future might look like, and Cheryl-super-crush Will Oldham and his gorgeous kissable lips. Solidarity forever! And thanks to slfhlp for providing us some SICK BEATS for our intro and outro.
As always, send us yr mail at twoforspacejamplease @ gmail.com and subscribe on iTunes or Google Play.
Dearest listeners, we have returned from a short break to get freaked out by this summer’s horror-pastoral freakout, Midsommer. We discuss literary precedents, communitarian-phobia in cinema, grad students as villains (I hate that I’m linking to Slate but C pointed out that our point had been made), and more. Also, stay tuned for our first episode featuring an interview with a writer-activist who is doing rad, necessary things. We’re freaking out about this, but in a different way. SkÃ¥l! <drinks mushroom tea>
We streamed Frant Gwo’s mega-blockbuster The Wandering Earth after a long weekend of find a place to live seeking, flat tires, and dead batteries. Our initial take: it’s a fun asplode fest! Is there more to this movie as we talk it out? Find out, dear reader, by listening.
Also, here’s some context that we dug up after our talk: There’s a lot of buzz about this movie representing a landmark in Chinese cinema–it’s first Sci-Fi blockbuster. Here’s a Vice piece by Muqing Zhang on Western techno-orientalist reception of the movie.
Also, errata: the movie does explain something we think it doesn’t explain–an unexpected spike in Jupiter’s gravity. Maybe our batteries were dead.
We’re reading Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, written and gathered by adrienne maree brown. There was so much here to talk about but, for now, we’re turning to one essay in particular: Chanelle Gallant’s tremendous “Fuck You, Pay Me,” a myth-shattering case for the right of sex workers to use their sexuality to get the life they want. You can learn more about adrienne maree brown’s work here and Chanelle Gallant’s work here. And listen to our interview of Chanelle in Episode 19.
The responsible pop culture thing for us to do would have been for us to watch the Avengers. We were going to watch Us but then a lot of life stuff got in the way. We had one last chance this weekend but by that point every showing after 1:00 PM at our semi-rural theatre had been Avengered. And guess what? We don’t give a fuck about the Avengers! Or the related demi-plane of superhero content. Instead, we’ve been zoning out to seven to thirty-five minute videos of Bon Appétit’s test kitchen ppl making food, so we talked about that and somehow the gig economy. Enjoy!
Some episodes: Claire makes Peeps, the gang makes pizza, Brad fries baloney, Andy makes halva, Brad and Gabby make empanadas.
This week’s movie is a book. That’s how things go down here sometimes. Cheryl just read adrienne maree brown’s visionary self/society/galactic help book 2017 Emergent Strategy. Joe read it a year ago. We both are thinking about how to be in this f-ed up world, so we hit record and started talking. brown’s 2019 Pleasure Activism is at the top of our pile. Watch out for our conversation about it in 2021. Also, we will watch a movie soon, we promise.
After Green Book won an Oscar, we toyed w/hate-watching it since Feb cinema is a dumping ground for lame movies. We decided instead to return to Boots Riley’s powerhouse directorial debut Sorry to Bother You. We talk it over in an end-of-work-week fugue state, get wildly off topic, and work our way back to the point: we loved this movie real hard.
Full disclaimer: we recorded this early-days episode at a McDonald’s after watching Gravity. There are some eating noises. Forgive us Apple o god don’t drop us. Also, we’ll fix our metadata we swear.
Anyway, we wanted to keep all the Cuarón episodes in somewhat close proximity. As for the movie itself: meh.
We watched 20,000 hours of GBBO material and definitely covered it all in under an hour.
We talked about this movie shortly after its release in 2012. 2019 internet tells me history hasn’t treated this one well, and I don’t think we would either. And we shouldn’t! Fortunately, there have been no shoot-and-cry flicks by American directors since. Right? –J
The snow is melting and we’re thinking about the warmth of American Honey.
When Joe asked me to choose an episode from the archive to kick off our special “From the Archives” series, One Direction: This is Us immediately sprung to mind. Our conversation about this little piece of cinema really cemented, for me at least, the tone and tenor and caliber of all our film conversations that followed. Meaning: some sharp cultural analysis, on-point haircut critiques, and exactly one fight.
And for the curious, the description from the original episode below:
Joe and I felt that we had been reviewing too much fluff, so we watched the One Direction movie to lend some gravitas to this blog. The conversation got a little heated. It turns out we both feel strongly about this topic. Now we know.
Two For Space Jam, Please 
