Tag: Playtime

Episode 163: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 / Playtime

Episode 163Dearest listeners, we bring you our glimmers of joy this week, complete with space raccoons and bad French accents!

Movies discussed:
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
Playtime

Other things discussed:
Clutch (band)
Bake Off: The Professionals (TV)
The Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

Episode 71: Live Chicken Melee Weapon

0071 Marathon 2Oh my, dear listeners, it’s time for our second XanaCineWeekend Movie Marathon! For this episode, Windy and Melissa ensconced themselves for an entire weekend, trading off watching movies that one or both of them had never seen before. This episode compiles their thoughts and comments about fifteen films, with each segment recorded immediately after the completion of each film.

If you would like to drink along, dears, grab the vodka. (It was a long weekend.)

(And it’s a long episode.)

(I mean, seriously, it’s a long episode. Buckle up, kids!)

Show notes behind the cut!

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Episode 66: Ah Yes, Nicely Put, Evoreeny

0066 Favorite Feel-Good FilmsFor this week’s episode, dear listeners, we sit back with some wine (a lot of wine) and talk about our favorite feel-good films: movies that we watch over and over and never seem to tire of.

And if you want to drink a lot of wine, too, we recommend a bottle of Wrongo Dongo Red, because we sure did enjoy our bottle.

Show notes behind the cut!

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This Week’s Underappreciated Movies

Every Monday, each of us will suggest a film that we feel too few people have seen.

playtime

Melissa’s Pick of the Week: Playtime

Playtime is one of those movies that seems to only have been seen by a few art film nerds, and nobody else. That’s a shame, because there is truly no film quite like it. Director and star Jacques Tati only made a few films during his life; all were great, and this was his best. It is the third film in a quadrilogy, but don’t worry about that, because the four films share a character, but not plot. That character is Monsieur Hulot (played by Tati), a tall, gawky man who bumbles from scene to scene with the charm of your favorite clueless uncle. Playtime takes Hulot and drops him into an ultra-modern 1960s glass canyon of a city. Playtime is somewhere between a sprawling epic and a Charlie Chaplin short. It’s the sort of a movie that literally built five blocks of a city as a set, but plays out almost entirely with dialogue-free character bits. It’s a comedy that doesn’t make you guffaw as much as it lifts you with charm. It’s the sort of film that makes a shot magical simply by angling a window at the right moment. It’s one of my favorite films of all time. Every time I see it, I want to cuddle it like a puppy.

I recommend seeing Playtime in the highest-definition format you can obtain. It’s gorgeous and worth the effort.

modernmillie

Windy’s Pick of the Week: Thoroughly Modern Millie

This has been mentioned on the podcast, so here I am reminding you and recommending to you. This is a true WTF movie – delightful in many respects, and then absolutely horrifying in its racial insensitivities. Made in 1967, the movie has a slight bite of satire in the idea that a woman needs to be dependent on a man – Millie is determined to be “modern” – but reassuringly ends with everybody happily married. Set in the Roaring 20s, Millie moves to the big city to find her future – and the movie even apes the dialog cards of the silent movies of the period. (The racial problems come from the Chinese helpers and the mock Chinese language used by them and the hotel manager Mrs. Meers, as well as the white slavery sub-plot, which have to be seen to be believed.) The humor is broad, the musical numbers are stylish, and Carol Channing is delightfully over-the-top. Julie Andrews shows her formidable comedic talents (we often forget just how funny she is underneath all that British respectability), and Mary Tyler Moore displays her rarely used dance talents.

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