Top Chef Season 21

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Last month I exported all of my tweets from my rewatch of seasons 1-18 of Top Chef between 2020-21 and the ones I posted following each episode of seasons 19 and 20. To complete this project here are my tweets from season 21, which just ended last Wednesday. Because this installment is more or less current, I’m not going to bury it after a jump. Without further ado:

Episode One:

  • I’m counting down the hours to @BravoTopChef S211E2, which means it’s time for impressions of E1! This season is all about Kristen, obvs, and the initial returns = positive! We’ll see how much we miss Padma’s puckishness, but experience as a competitor is an interesting tradeoff.
  • I’m down with the new rules. No feel for this year’s TC kitchen yet because they didn’t spend any time in it. I love Milwaukee + it looked good here! Great transition from a bridge at night to the same one in the morning. Thumbs up to the JUDICIOUS use of split screens.
  • The Tom’s “hat game” montage could have been twice as long IMO! I think soup is the task you wanted for the elimination challenge, followed by filled pasta–if you didn’t bring a surefire dough recipe, what are you doing here? Roast chicken = last because there’s nowhere to hide.
  • I watched E1 twice, once live w/ @mepkat, then again w/ our girls. My youngest was super bummed out that David went home, but my oldest shouted out “stop saying ‘sexy,’ it’s annoying!” Watching him pour salt into his poaching liquid during the climactic cook made me wince.
  • Speaking of which: it was basically a bonus episode of LAST CHANCE KITCHEN, yeah? Hopefully these three chefs now know exactly what to expect if they end up competing in it. It’s too early to actually know anything, but FWIW here’s how I have the chefs ranked as we head into E2:
  • 1) Manny (natch), 2) Danny, 3) Michelle, 4) Dan, 5) Rasika, 6) Kévin, 7) Alisha, 8) Charly, 9) Savannah, 10), Laura, 11) Amanda, 12) Valentine, 13) Kaleena, 14) Kenny. If you read this far, you’re clearly also a TC fan. Here’s to a second episode even better than the first!

Episode Two:

  • I’m counting down the hours to #TopChef S211E3, which means it’s time for tweets about E2! Good challenges this week! I like that the Quickfire, Elimination Challenge, and LCK had a through-line, but didn’t beat you over the head with it. To start at the very beginning:
  • Hops are an ingredient I’d expect anyone cast in TC: WISCONSIN to have practiced w/. Laura learned exactly the right lesson from Manny’s E1 win. That said, Michelle’s flank steak is the dish I’d most want to try. Elevated beer snacks progressive menu = great team elim challenge!
  • 10 minutes didn’t seem like nearly enough time for menu planning, but the chefs coped just fine. Whenever the judges describe a dish as “too salty,” I think “I’d probably like that!” Kévin’s trio of olive canapés = no exception.
  • The exchange w/ Joe Flamm about “traps” vs. “opportunities” + @tomcolicchio‘s enthusiasm for Rasika’s dessert tells you everything you need to know about why he’s still doing this after 21 seasons: he clearly believes the format yields dishes which might never otherwise exist!
  • Danny didn’t shine this week, but he thinks about food the way the judges want him to, which makes him a contender. Manny’s mixed nut mole = dish I’d most like to try. Kenny’s pave looked good, too, but how much credit goes to his teammates? Unclear, so his stock holds steady.
  • Dan was brave to disclose his Kennedy’s disease diagnosis so early, and probably strategically wise. His is one of the most compelling story lines of the past few seasons. But my favorite thing about E2 was the sequence at ~25:00 where Kenny + Rasika narrate Team Yellow’s menu:
  • Go back + rewatch! I maybe only noticed because I recently saw DAYBREAK EXPRESS, but it’s color-coordinated: they found the yellowest part of everyone’s dish! Finally, not addressing David’s absence from LCK = an unforced error. Tom’s contradictory explanations here don’t count.
  • Anyway, two good dishes there, too! I’d have gone PA Dutch: pot pie w/ the saffron + one of the proteins, probably lobster. Rankings: 1) Rasika, 2) Manny, 3) Michelle, 4) Danny, 5) Dan, 6) Kévin, 7) Laura, 8) Amanda, 9) Savannah, 10) Alisha, 11) Charly, 12) Kaleena, 13) Kenny.

Episode Three:

  • I’m counting down the hours to #TopChef S21E4, which means it’s time for thoughts on E3! Nothing much to say about the Quickfire–cherries + a “mystery door” ingredient is a solid idea for a challenge and all the food looked good, even if nothing stood out.
  • A cheese-based Elimination challenge was inevitable + I wonder if that’s the reason for the impromptu fritter fest? Everyone came prepared w/ the dish they would make + didn’t want to deviate too far from it even when they realized eight other people were doing something similar.
  • I see why the judges would be annoyed by this, but as a guest I think I would have enjoyed comparing all of them! This is a perilously easy challenge to “Monday morning QB” since what exactly you make depends on WHICH cheese you get, hence fritters: they work w/ nearly anything!
  • But I felt validated by LCK since the first places my mind went were buldak + eggplant parm. Also blue cheese and watermelon. Anyway: Michelle’s dish was far + away the best sounding/looking one! Danny’s also struck me as a smart use of aged cheddar in a (croquette) vacuum.
  • I wasn’t surprised that Kenny went home because it sounds like the judges tasted a flawed (not enough relish) version of an unsuccessful (bottom three for the guests) dish vs. two variations on boring (use of cheese curds and bland).
  • As my favorite (for Vulture) recapper @roxana_hadadi observed last week, S21 has hit its stride + is very much what we’ve come to expect from TC. Kristen isn’t just an ersatz Padma (yay!), but nor has she significantly altered the dynamic of the Quickfire or Judges’ Table.
  • The rule changes haven’t upended things either. In fact, to bring back my “eras of TC” from 2021, I see very little which distinguishes S21 from S16-19 Modern/”Nice” TC. Exempting S20 (all-stars), this makes the era five seasons old, which is as long as any other one lasted.
  • This is both good + bad: on the one hand, I’m definitely down for 11 more episodes of the same! On the other, as I said after S19, this will *eventually* start to get boring, right? But maybe a double elimination is just what the doctor ordered!
  • Here are my “power rankings” as we head into E4: 1) Michelle, 2) Rasika, 3) Danny, 4) Manny, 5) Dan, 6) Savannah, 7) Laura, 8) Amanda, 9) Kévin, 10) Alisha, 11) Charly, 12) Kaleena. Have fun watching it, y’all!

Episode Four:

  • I’m counting down the hours to #TopChef S21E5, which means it’s time for thoughts on E4! Awarding immunity to people who Elimination challenges instead of Quickfires makes sense to me, but the latter remain important + I’m disappointed there wasn’t one again this week.
  • They provide insight into how the chefs think about food + more than double the number of dishes we get to see most weeks, which is why many of us watch! Oh well. No issues here w/ extending Michelle’s immunity to Charly–volunteering to be her teammate was risky, after all.
  • But @roxana_hadadi is right that it = a missed opportunity to reward someone. Partnering the winner of the absent Quickfire w/ Michelle = one way to do it. Immunity for Dan/Kaleena as last week’s runner-up = another. There’s also precedent for giving Michelle the challenge off.
  • Otherwise, good challenge! I was surprised there wasn’t more talk about local/”site-specific” ingredients. Cutting room floor, maybe? Rasika + Danny’s dish looked great and sounded delicious–I’m intrigued by the use of green Chartreuse! Alisha + Kaleena had a very bad day.
  • I liked shortening Judges’ Table better than manufactured drama: I suspect there was no way to tell this story honestly where it wasn’t obvious who was going to win/who was going home. But they also could have called EVERYONE back, which I’d have preferred to Kristen’s pep talk.
  • My “power rankings” have been spot on so far this year–I’m winning the TC Pick’Em game I run! Of course I just jinxed myself, so handle w/ care! Here they are for E5: 1) Rasika, 2) Michelle, 3) Danny, 4) Dan, 5) Manny, 6) Laura, 7) Savannah, 8) Amanda, 9) Kévin, 10) Charly

Episode Five:

  • I’m counting down the hours to #TopChef S21E6, which means it’s time for thoughts on episode five! Both challenges had everything I’m looking for: strong connections to the host city, hard but not impossible, conducive to food being created that looks + sounds delicious.
  • I liked the “shop before you know what you’re cooking” Quickfire twist because it seems like it would be fun to get $100 to spend strategically at a great farmer’s market. Providing all the ingredients for a Carson Gulley sauce to go w/ what the chefs bought = eminently fair.
  • W. Kamau Bell + Tory Miller were excellent guest judges–fun + fair–and the Harvey House was a beautiful venue for the Elimination Challenge. I like it when the chefs are served a meal to draw inspiration from because it’s a whole set of bonus dishes to ogle. In this case . . .
  • The prime rib that Joe + Shaina Papach = what I’d eat if I could have *anything* from this episode. If restricted to just competition dishes, I’d probably go w/ Savannah’s chicken because even though it didn’t win, the judges did like it, and I love the idea of tonkatsu + caviar.
  • Both relish trays looked terrific, too! I love chicken liver mousse + well-executed crudités, so cheers to Dan! I coincidentally made black garlic tahini last weekend + it was delicious, so Danny’s intrigued me, too. As previously noted this season, “too salty” ≠ a problem here.
  • I really have just one complaint: the chefs should have had more than $1000 to shop w/ considering that they each had to feed almost 50 people w/ their share–$1500 would have been better. But looking at how much more successful Team Purple was than Green, I concede the point.
  • It will be fun to see how everyone reacts when Soo joins the competition this week. W/out further ado, here are my power rankings: 1) Michelle, 2) Rasika, 3) Danny, 4) Dan, 5) Manny, 6) Savannah, 7) Soo, 8) Laura, 9) Amanda, 10) Kaleena, 11) Kévin. Enjoy tonight’s episode, y’all!

Episode Six:

  • I’m counting down the hours to #TopChef S21E7, so it’s time for thoughts on episode six! This one was a shocker. I had Michelle + Rasika pegged as top contenders, so it was jarring to see them stare down a double elimination together. Michelle was clearly stumped by the brief.
  • This isn’t a *great* sign for her, but it wasn’t clear to me what the judges were looking for either, so it may not be predictive of future struggles. Meanwhile, Rasika will be a tough out in LCK, so I absolutely wouldn’t assume that this is the last we’ve heard from her.
  • ating okonomiyaki in Kyoto was one of the great culinary experiences of my life and funnel cake was my go-to fair food in my youth, so Dan’s elimination challenge dish is the one I’d most like to try. Danny’s = more evidence that he’s on the same wavelength as the judges.
  • I worried that Soo’s LCK success wouldn’t translate, but the initial returns couldn’t be much more positive! I thought last week’s preview tipped Savannah’s success + this week’s editing foreshadowed Danny’s win, but these things can go either way, so it’s probably nothing.
  • Despite having Rasika at number two last week, I’m still winning my TCS21 Pick’Em game! Without further ado, here are my new power rankings: 1) Danny, 2) Michelle, 3) Dan, 4) Soo, 5) Manny, 6) Amanda, 7) Laura, 8) Savannah, 9) Kaleena, 10) Kévin. Enjoy tonight’s episode, y’all!

Episode Seven:

  • I’m counting down the hours to #TopChef S21E8, so it’s time for thoughts on episode seven! The flambé Quickfire was fine + it’s always nice to see Bryan Voltaggio! The team Elimination challenge was a solid rendition of the standard tie-in to the local sports franchise.
  • None of the food really stood out: if I could pick one dish to try, I’d be tempted by Soo’s corn dog, but would probably go w/ Michelle’s winning étouffée + creamy grits on the recommendation of the judges. Where things really got interesting this week was in LAST CHANCE KITCHEN!
  • I love “cook as many dishes as you want” formats + this one reminded me of an evolved version TCS2 winner Ilan Hall’s old Esquire Network cooking show KNIFE FIGHT, which I liked more than any of the *actual* TOP CHEF spinoffs. The outcome was a surprise, but seemed fair.
  • Next up = Restaurant Wars! Springing this on everyone when there are an odd number of chefs left was a nice touch. Hopefully it will otherwise be as old school as the preview suggests, though–if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! Speaking of the preview, I don’t usually watch them…
  • But I do before RW because that one contains valuable clues for the TC Pick’Em game I run. My strategy assumes that this will be a double elimination + that Channel will win because losing Danny (exec chef) + Michelle (front of house) now would be the biggest shock in TC history.
  • Without further ado, here are my power rankings as we head into this pivotal episode: 1) Danny, 2) Michelle, 3) Dan, 4) Amanda, 5) Savannah, 6) Soo, 7) Manny, 8) Laura, 9) Kaleena. Enjoy Restaurant Wars, y’all!

Episode Eight:

  • I’m counting down the hours to #TopChef S21E9, so it’s time for thoughts on episode eight! Another Restaurant Wars is in the books! True to their word, the judges + producers refrained from additional twists after they let Michelle pick her own team. Speaking of which:
  • This was an extra set of hands for Channel, but also meant each chef got $2k less for winning, so you can literally put a dollar figure on how valuable it was. I say Dos by Deul came out ahead! Anyway, if the episode lacked drama, that’s a testament to how well both teams did:
  • Either could have won many previous editions of RW, although I think some past winners also would have beat Channel. The pivotal moments seemed to be: 1) Dan redesigning his dish to better fit his team’s theme, and 2) too many crispy components that sat too long for Dos by Deul.
  • Both teams’ service issues canceled each other out, and Michelle was hardly a front-of-house disaster, plus she seemed to adjust her approach between the first + judges seatings. I always want to try the winning dish, but I’m even more intrigued by Danny’s carrot-clam chowder:
  • Dishes that feature carrots are some of my favorites to order out because you can do so much with them, but many techniques represent a time/equipment stretch for home cooks, especially those of us who have to feed children! I’m bummed that both teams’ cocktails got short shrift.
  • Tonight’s episode has enormous potential + many previous seasons of TC only really took off after RW: here’s hoping that’s the case here! “Power rankings”: 1) Danny, 2) Michelle, 3) Dan, 4) Soo, 5) Laura, 6) Manny, 7) Savannah, 8) Amanda. Have fun, y’all!

Episode Nine:

  • I’m counting down the hours to #TopChef S21E10, so it’s time for thoughts on episode nine! Best one of the season so far. @roxana_hadadi points out in her Vulture recap that it repeats both the Quickfire *and* Elimination from S12E6, but I find this interesting, not problematic:
  • Those challenges were kinda gimmicky: the latter not only limited the chefs’ pantry, but also restricted them to just cookware available during the Plymouth Colony’s “First Thanksgiving.” Here the point seems to be more purely honoring indigenous foodways, not tripping people up.
  • So you could say, look how far we’ve come in ten years! Anyway, if I could conjure up a Michelin-starred restaurant in Ithaca, it would serve food like what we saw on this episode. I do agree with Hadadi that S21 is having an identity crisis. We’re clearly in a new “era” . . .
  • But at this point I doubt we’ll know what to call it even after the finale. Which: I think I dig it? Uncertainty > stagnation! Most intriguing food = Savannah’s squash + maple jelly, natch, but also Dan’s sunflower chokes. I want to see those in the freezer aisle at Wegman’s!
  • Speaking of Savannah: I’m kicking myself for ranking her as low as seventh, my first big misstep of the season. Lesson = learned! I’m also still in first place in my TC Pick’Em game. We are now officially in “anyone can win it territory,” which is always an exciting moment.
  • Here are my new “power rankings”: 1) Danny, 2) Michelle, 3) Dan, 4) Savannah, 5) Soo, 6) Manny. I would consider most of these folks to be either the favorite to win LAST CHANCE KITCHEN or second to Laura, although that too is anybody’s game really. Enjoy episode 10, y’all!

Episode 10:

  • I’m counting down the hours to #TopChef S21E11, so it’s time for thoughts on E10! I don’t have a ton to say about this one, but not because there was anything wrong w/ it: challenges w/ strong ties to the host city/state have always been my favorite + the chefs did well overall!
  • That said, none of the food jumped off the screen. Danny made another great carrot (side) dish, and that’s what I would try if I was watching via Wonka Vision. My favorite moment was the close-up of a lonely ear of corn lying in the sand at around the 30 minute mark.
  • The Elimination Challenge verdicts seemed just, and for the first time in awhile there was some genuine suspense: it seemed like the win might have almost gone to Michelle, and that either Manny or Savannah could legitimately have been told to pack their knives and go to LCK.
  • Speaking of which: this wasn’t my favorite season! Too wonky, what with the mystery surrounding David’s non-participation + the weirdly unscripted pivot after Kaleena declined to try her luck a second time. Aside from some cool techniques by Soo, the food wasn’t memorable either.
  • But it’s over now + S21 is entering the home stretch. Laura is a true contender, so it remains anyone’s game, but Danny has clearly established himself as the favorite. Don’t sleep on Dan, though! “Power rankings”: 1) Danny, 2) Dan, 3) Michelle, 4) Savannah, 5) Laura, 6) Manny.

Episode 11:

  • I’m counting down the hours to #TopChef S21E12, so it’s time for thoughts on E11! Just as not all movies need to be thrillers, it’s 100% fine if there’s very little suspense heading into Judges’ Table. The most important question is always: was the story of the episode told well?
  • I loved how this one cut back + forth between Laura serenely listening to her muse + Savannah desperately trying to get food on the plate (er, table) before time expired. I also thought the complicated Quickfire came across crystal clear, which couldn’t have been easy to achieve!
  • I was impressed by how well *all* the chefs did in the latter, which proves my point that we have truly entered the point of the season where anyone can win. @mepkat
    and I both wanted more details about how Laura made her baklava rings + hers is the dish we would try if we could.
  • I don’t have much else to say about E11 except: poor Michelle! This = a classic “bad day in the kitchen” elimination. Looking forward to saying “Goodbye Wisconsin”–it was a better host than I expected! Power rankings: 1) Danny, 2) Dan, 3) Savannah, 4) Laura, 5) Manny. Enjoy E12!

Episode 12:

  • I’m counting down the hours to #TopChef S21E13, so it’s time for thoughts on E12! This week featured two great achievements in TC history: first, Manny getting 23/26 in the blind taste test is right up there w/ Hung’s prep relay exploits. It’s too bad he couldn’t capitalize!
  • Second, I was blown away by Savannah’s storytelling in the Elimination Challenge. Ask @mepkat: every rave comment by the judges was something I had just said while Savannah presented her dish! Then ask her how she feels about me always talking while she’s trying to watch. Anyway:
  • Savannah’s pave looked delicious, but if I had Wonkavision I’d use it for the Quickfire: I love a good Caesar, so I’m very intrigued by version w/ cheddar, and I also wish I could experience Dan’s “train wreck” steak + eggs for myself, because how could anything be THAT bad?
  • As we head into the final two episodes, let’s take a look at the stats! Danny has three Elimination Challenge + two Quickfire wins, Savannah has two of the former + three of the latter, Laura has one of each, and Dan has won two Elimination Challenges but no Quickfires.
  • Meanwhile, Danny was on top in six Elimination Challenges total but only on the bottom once, for Savannah it was five and two, for Laura it was two and two, and for Dan it was seven and two. Add it all up and I think I’m ranking everyone in the same order I had them last week:
  • 1. Danny, 2. Dan, 3. Savannah, 4. Laura. But as I’ve been saying every since Laura returned to the competition from LCK, this anybody’s game and there’s no outcome that would surprise or disappoint me! Enjoy E13, y’all, and see you next week w/ my penultimate set of tweets!

Episode 13:

  • Happy Juneteenth! No work today, so here are early thoughts on #TopChef S21E13 as we count down the hours to the finale. That was disappointing, huh? It wasn’t the fault of the challenges: kissing up to sponsors (a TC tradition) aside, I loved the fish-centric Elimination.
  • The Quickfire was good, too: the idea surely was that everyone would come ready to put their own spin on keshi yena since it’s only, you know, the national dish of Curaçao. Only Savannah really did this but she still lost, proving that better food > nailing the brief every time.
  • Anyway, none of the chefs’ food jumped off the screen, which is too bad. If I had Wonkavision I would have used it on Masaharu Morimoto’s dinner for them: I’ve had the pleasure of ordering omakase @ his Philly restaurant twice, but wasn’t served his famous tuna pizza either time!
  • The judges blamed stress, but @mepkat
    + I couldn’t help but wonder if swimming with stingrays maybe wasn’t the best way to get yourself ready to cook, but hopefully everyone just needed to shake off some rust after six weeks off and is now ready to cook some killer finale food!
  • I’m in first place in my TC Pick’Em game by 46 points, which means I’ve already won since the finale is only worth 20. I could therefore indulge myself by ranking the chefs according to my rooting interests, but I’ve had them in the same order all season so why mix things up now?
  • 1. Danny, 2. Dan, 3. Savannah. But it really is anyone’s game! I’ll be back next week w/ a final set of tweets + I do mean ever: now that I’ve migrated all of my thoughts on previous seasons of TC over to ye olde blog, that’s where I’ll post anything I write about S22. Till then!

Episode 14:

  • #TopChef S21 is in the books, so it’s time for one last set of tweets about the finale! I was absolutely convinced that Dan was the winner after Judges’ Table, so @tomcolicchio‘s pique that the edit doesn’t support the outcome is very much justified–I’d be miffed, too!
  • That said, @mepkat *wasn’t* surprised, so I was eager to watch it again. IMO they definitely do make it seem like Dan has it, but on closer inspection it at least has the looks of a razor-thin margin that could go either way. Per Tom on X, Dan’s first dish was a bit of a clunker.
  • The evidence is kinda there, but it’s implied that Danny under seasoning his scallops is nearly as bad as the weird texture of Dan’s tuna. Still: Danny’s dish *looked* stunning. So whether by a wide margin or not, he clearly took that course. Nos. 2 + 3 on the other hand . . .
  • Both appear to go to Dan, correctly or not. There’s no criticism of his snapper at all, so case closed there. Meanwhile the raw pumpkin + cook of the lobster in Danny’s third course get a *lot* more attention than Dan’s oxtail being maybe too sweet + rustic. On to dessert:
  • Danny clearly is the winner, but the comments selected for the episode suggest that it was very close. So it’s 2-2 with Dan appearing to win on goal differential. This is what I think must have been inaccurate–if it’s clear Danny dominated courses one + four we feel differently!
  • Ditto if Danny’s sauce work in course three was enough to make up for its flaws + the judges were in agreement that his degree of difficulty was higher. Oh well! I actually thought Savannah’s menu *sounded* the best, but she was out after less than flawless pasta + “mofong-no!”
  • Back to the edit: I think there are just a few key shots missing, so it’s not a disaster. I also liked the cut from Danny troubleshooting running out of melon to Dan saying “we have a fire on deck four!” Other nice moments = chefs losing their partners in the grocery store . . .
  • And Tom razzing Savannah about Duke/UNC (@mepkat
    is a Dukie). I was impressed w/ how Danny conducted himself in the kitchen: he PUSHES Manny w/out seeming PUSHY. The dishes I most want to try are, in order: 1) Danny’s dessert, 2) Danny’s scallops, 3) Savannah’s saltfish fritters.
  • Finally, the fact that I’m talking about the edit + not Kristen is a huge compliment to her! She had big shoes to fill but made the host role her own. While that handoff was impressively smooth, this was still a transition year + I hope S22 has a better sense what it wants to be.
  • I’ll definitely be watching + will no doubt have thoughts! But I’m planning to share them on ye olde blog, not here–maybe a post at the start of the season, another around Restaurant Wars, and a third after the finale? And perhaps one more just before it? We’ll see. Till then!

Links to previous posts about Top Chef can be found here.

2024: The Mixtape, Vol. 1

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Although about a week remains in the first six months of 2024, I’ve already found 80 minutes worth of new music that I like enough to finalize my 2024: The Mixtape, Vol. 1 Spotify mix. Here’s the track listing with brief notes on why I picked each of these songs:

1. Vampire Weekend – “Connect“

As I mentioned on X a couple of months ago, this song reminds me of Michel Legrand’s score for my February Drink & a Movie selection The Young Girls of Rochefort.

2. Future Islands – “Give Me the Ghost Back“

Baltimore 4 life!

3. Beyoncé – “TEXAS HOLD’EM”

Automatic addition to my 54 (it include two “jokers”) track poker mix, so how could I leave it off this one?

4. Lyrical Lemonade feat. Juice WRLD and Cordae – “Doomsday”
5. A.G. Cook – “Britpop”

I’m a child of the 90s, what can I say?

6. Norah Jones – “Staring at the Wall”

This songs sounds like something you might hear at the Roadhouse!

7. Elyanna – “Ganeni”

Something with a beat you can dance to.

8. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross – “Yeah x10”

From the original score for Challengers, the clubhouse leader for my favorite sports film of Movie Year 2024.

9. Iron & Wine feat. Fiona Apple – “All in Good Time”

A song for the middle aged.

10. Myriam Gendron feat. Zoh Amba – “Berceuse”

Brechtian distancing works best when you want to be swept away!

11. Pissed Jeans – “Everywhere Is Bad”
12. Bladee feat. Yung Lean – “I DON’T LIKE PEOPLE”

Because it’s an election year.

13. Chappell Roan – “Good Luck, Babe!”

This one reminds me of the movie Aftersun.

14. Sloppy Jane feat. Phoebe Bridgers – “Claw Machine”

I have no idea what the eligibility requirements are for the Best Original Song Oscar, but if this one can win an award for I Saw the TV Glow, I’ll be rooting for it.

15. The Decemberists – “Don’t Go to the Woods”
16. Eiko Ishibashi – “Evil Does Not Exist”

Those of you who have seen Evil Does Not Exist: see what I did there?

17. Kelly Moran – “Butterfly Phase”

I think of this as the end to a song cycle which begins with track 13 and ends with this one–it’s something like the story of “Little Red Riding Hood.”

18. Cloud Nothings – “Final Summer”

Cloud Nothings might be my favorite band, because I’m in awe of the way they keep reinventing themselves without ever losing touch with who they are. . . .

19. Waxahathcee – “365”

. . . but this is my favorite song of the year so far.

20. Heems feat. Lapgan – “Bukayo Saka”

Name drops Slavoj Žižek and the Mahabarata and includes multiple food references. Yes please!

21. Shaboozey – “Highway”
22. Kacey Musgraves – “Cardinal”

I was worried that this mix didn’t have a proper ending, but I think these two songs together do just fine, yeah?

Links to previous mixes I’ve posted about can be found here.

Ithaca Film Journal: 6/20/24

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What I’m Seeing This Week: We’re celebrating the end of the school year on Tuesday with hibachi at Sumo and Inside Out 2 at the Regal Ithaca Mall!

Also in Theaters: The best film now playing in Ithaca (at the Regal) that I’ve already seen is Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which is a worthy prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road and quite possibly the best action movie we’re going to get this whole year. Of the new titles opening this week which I haven’t yet seen, the one I’m most interested in on the strength of the previews I’ve been watching at Cinemapolis this month and director Jeff Nichols’ previous work is The Bikeriders, which is both there and the Regal. Thelma, Fancy Dance, and Ghostlight (all of which open at Cinemapolis tonight or tomorrow) don’t necessarily *look* like my bag, but they each attracted positive reviews out of Sundance by critics I like, so I’d be happy to give all of them a chance, probably in that order. There’s not much happening locally on the repertory front, but South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut might scratch an itch for you that nothing from this year can.

Home Video: All this month I’ve been highlighting films by 2024 Cannes award winners in this space. I made up my mind to focus on Best Director honorees and am going to stick with this plan despite the fact that the pickings are lamentably slim for Miguel Gomes, who took home the top prize for Grand Tour. You can, however, watch his 2012 film Tabu on Mubi. Meanwhile, you can watch I Am Not a Witch, the first feature by co-winner (for On Becoming a Guinea Fowl) of the Un Certain Regard section’s Best Director award Rungano Nyoni, free with ads on Prime Video. Movies by The Damned director Roberto Minervini, who she shared this award with, are unfortunately as hard to come by as Gomes’s, but The Other Side is at least available on ad-supported free streaming video platform Tubi.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.

Ithaca Film Journal: 6/13/24

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What I’m Seeing This Week: My Loving Wife and I are shipping our kids off to a sleepover and indulging ourselves in a date night! The agenda includes dinner at Gola Osteria, drinks at Bar Argos, and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga at Cinemapolis. I don’t usually read reviews of movies I’ve already made up my mind to see, but I did hear a few critics say good things about this one on podcasts following its premiere at Cannes and we loved Mad Max: Fury Road, so I’m confident we’re in for a good time!

Also in Theaters: There’s quite a bit of turnover at Cinemapolis this week, but my favorite film of Movie Year 2024 so far remains. I Saw the TV Glow is a groundbreaking representation of the trans experience which doubles as a exploration of the disorienting feeling that any cinephile can relate to of not always confidently knowing where in the mélange of movies you’ve seen and imagined, half-remembered dreams, and things you’re pretty sure you remember actually experiencing the “real world” lies. The only other new movie on Ithaca screens that I’ve already seen is The Fall Guy, a crowd-pleaser like they supposedly don’t make any more which continues its run at the Regal Ithaca Mall. If I was selecting what to see this week only from the titles arriving in town today, my top choices would probably be The People’s Joker (Cinemapolis) and Inside Out 2 (Regal) in that order, since I anticipate that the latter will stick around for awhile. I’m also intrigued by Flipside, which is at Cinemapolis–descriptions of it remind me of the concept of “golden handcuffs,” which I learned about from the director of a commercial I interned on while I was in college. On the repertory front your best bet is the special screening of the horror film X at Cinemapolis on Wednesday which includes a sneak preview of its sequel MaXXXine, which opens next month next month.

Home Video: Last week I highlighted films directed by newly-minted Palme d’Or laureate Sean Baker which are available on streaming video platforms. I definitely am excited to see Anora, but I’m looking forward to another 2024 Cannes award winner even more: Grand Prix recipient All We Imagine as Light, a sophomore feature-length effort by director Payal Kapadia which was the first Indian film to be selected for the main competition in thirty years. While we wait for it to debut stateside, subscribers can watch Kapadia’s previous film A Night of Knowing Nothing, which won the L’Oeil d’or award for best documentary at the 2021 edition of Cannes, on The Criterion Channel.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.

June, 2024 Drink & a Movie: Triumph of Pompeii + Damsels in Distress

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My number one source of new cocktails to try is Frederic Yarm’s Cocktail Virgin Slut blog. One thing I like about it is that he tends to work with spirits he already has in his bar, to the point where you can get enough of a sense for what’s there to pick up a few of those bottles yourself and follow along at home. Because the recipes he posts show up in my RSS feed every day, it took me longer than it should have to buy his Drink & Tell: A Boston Cocktail Book and Boston Cocktails: Drunk & Told books, but I’m glad I finally did because they’re great volumes to flip through in search of inspiration. While doing so with the latter awhile back, the Triumph of Pompei cocktail created by Tyler Wang of No. 9 Park jumped out at me as a great drink to pair with Damsels in Distress, one of my favorite movies of the 2010s, first because it’s name evokes Seven Oaks University’s Roman letter fraternities, but also because it’s similarly light and effervescent on the surface with a deeper, more complex core. Here’s how you make it:

1 1/4 ozs. Cocchi Americano
3/4 oz. Fernet Branca
1 oz. Grapefruit juice
1/2 oz. Simple syrup

Shake with ice and strain into a glass containing 1 1/2 ozs. club soda. Fill glass with ice, add a pinch of salt to the cube on top, and garnish with a grapefruit twist.

Triumph of Pompeii

Yarm uses one “i” in the name of this drink in both the book and on his blog, but per Wikipedia that refers to the modern Italian city, whereas I’m interested in the ancient Roman one, so I’m going with two. However you spell it, the Triumph of Pompeii greets you with citrus on the nose and sweetness on the tongue. You get the Fernet right away along with the wine flavors of the Cocchi Americano, but the former stands out on the finish, which is where the grapefruit starts to assert itself as well. Diffords Guide recommends using grapefruit soda in place of club soda, but I think this disrupts the progression I just described: as is it’s a perfect accompaniment to grilling up dinner on an early June evening or settling in to enjoy the chaos of the Roman Holidays like these young ladies are doing:

Rose, Violet, and Heather observe the Roman Holidays

Speaking of whom, Rose (Megalyn Echikunwoke), Violet (Greta Gerwig), and Heather (Carrie MacLemore) are three of the titular damsels in distress in director Whit Stillman’s first film of the 21st century after a thirteen year pause. Here’s a picture of my Sony Pictures Classic DVD release:

Damsels in Distress DVD case

It can also be streamed via Apple TV+ and Prime Video for a rental fee, and current Cornell University faculty, staff, and students have access to it via Academic Video Online as well.

Damsels begins during registration for Seven Oaks’s fall semester with Rose saying “there” and Violet responding, “yes, I think so.”

Heather, Violet, and Rose spot Lily

The person they are talking about is Lio Tipton’s Lily, a transfer student who they offer to “help.”

First appearance of Lily

Lily doesn’t actually seem wildly enthusiastic about this idea, which is understandable considering that their first conversation starts out with Violet pointedly observing that “clothes can be critical for
confidence — and an overall sense of well-being,” then pivots to an explanation of what “nasal shock syndrome” is after Rose violently reacts to the body odor of some passing male students:

Rose suffers a bout of nasal shock syndrome

Lily has lost her housing assignment, though, and when her three new friends offer to let her room with them, she gratefully accepts. We follow the new quartet to the suicide prevention center they run through which they meet the temporary fifth member of the their group pictured on the DVD case, Caitlin Fitzgerald’s Priss, along with Nick Blaemire and Aubrey Plaza in memorable cameo roles as Freak Astaire and Depressed Debbie respectively, all three of whom can be seen in the screengrab below rehearsing a show that the center is putting on for therapeutic reasons:

Depressed Debbie talks to Violet while Freak Astaire, Priss, and the other dancers wait for them to finish
Debbie is the person talking to Violet, Freak is to their left, and Priss is reflected in the mirror to Violet’s right.

The five leads, who are shot more than once to look like they are literally glowing, next crash the first meeting of the Daily Complainer, the school newspaper.

Radiant young women, part one
Radiant young women, part two

There they meet editor Rick De Wolfe, who is played by another stalwart of American comedies of the era, Zach Woods, seen here condescendingly explaining that the publication’s name derives from the fact that it comes out every day even though the questioner was obviously referring to the “Complainer” part:

Medium shot of Rick De Wolfe looking unimpressed with the quality of questions he is receiving

The group has a falling out with Priss after she steals Violet’s boyfriend Frank (Ryan Metcalf), who doesn’t realize that his eyes are blue. “I’m not going to go around checking what color my eyes are!” he says:

Frank explains to Priss why he doesn't know what color his eyes are

At least he knows what blue is–moments later we discover that his roommate Thor (Billy Magnussen) has not yet learned the colors. He’s not embarrassed, though: “What’s embarrassing is pretending to know what you don’t,” he explains, “or putting other people down just because you think they don’t know as much as you.”

The situation with Frank sends Violet into a “tailspin,” and her roommates are worried when she disappears, especially after Rose, who has known her since seventh grade, explains that Violet isn’t even her real name–she was born Emily Tweeter (“like a bird”), suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, and lost both of her parents. Luckily, whatever Violet’s original intentions were, she is saved by a bar of soap:

Violet discovers the "wonder bar" while taking a shower in the Motel 4 she has escaped to

As she explains to the waitresses (Carolyn Farina, who portrayed Audrey Roget in Stillman’s films Metropolitan and The Last Days of Disco, and Shinnerrie Jackson) and some fellow customers (Gerron Atkinson and Jonnie Brown, who per IMDb is a fellow Pitt alum) at a diner she breakfasts at afterward who express concern that she’s one of “those depressed students down from the university” intent on killing herself, she’s not as crazy as she was yesterday “due to the salutary effect of scent on the human psyche”:

Smelling soap, part one
Smelling soap, part two

Meanwhile Lily gets involved first with two young men, a cinephilic graduate student from France named Xavier (Hugo Becker) who practices Catharism:

Xavier tells Lily that he's "trying to follow the path the Cathars marked out"

And Adam Brody’s Charlie Walker, whose real name is Fred Packenstacker and who has my favorite line in entire movie during a later scene in which Violet challenges his belief that decadence has declined. “How?” she asks. “How?” he replies, “or in what ways?”

Charlie aka Fred tells Violet about his final paper on "The Decline of Decadence"

Anyway, Alia Shawkat makes an appearance:

Medium shot of Alia Shawkat's character Mad Madge:

Violet ends up with Charlie/Fred, Lily confesses that all she really wants is to be “normal,” and the whole thing ends with first a musical number set to the song “Things Are Looking Up” from the 1937 Fred Astaire film A Damsel in Distress, then Violet fulfilling her dream of starting an international dance craze, the Sambola!

The cast of Damsels in Distress performs the Sambola!
“Thor can do the Sambola! So can you!”

As you likely gathered, Damsels in Distress isn’t set in the “real” world. It is, instead, a stylized distillation of the essence of the college experience. In an Indiewire article containing highlights from a Q&A which followed a sneak preview screening, Stillman (who also wrote the film’s screenplay) explained that Lio Tipton “subverted [his] intentions” with their performance as Lily:

Lily was clearly the nemesis character, this person you think is going to be a friend, and you think is going to be wonderful, but they let you down. And Analeigh, by being really natural and likeable in scene after scene, had created this problem where audiences like and identify so much with Lily, that they dislike [Greta Gerwig’s] Violet character. And it subverts our purposes. That’s a negative commercially, but it somehow enriches the film. My cliches were unintentionally subverted by a superior actress.

Lily’s essential goodness comes through most clearly for me in the way she sort of hops when she talks:

Lily hops, part one
Lily hops, part two

The key to understanding what’s going on here is the same thing I love most about the film: it celebrates college as a safe space for reinvention. Compare, for instance, the diner conversation referenced above about people who actually kill themselves by jumping in front of cars on the highway with the “suicidal Ed School” students who keep throwing themselves off the top of their two-story building, which I assume was inspired by Leonard’s Leap from A Damsel in Distress:

An Ed School student at the end of his rope, part one
An Ed School student at the end of his rope, part two
An Ed School student at the end of his rope, part three

Going off to college is one of the best opportunities many of us ever get to actually become the individuals we aspire to be, which is much easier when you aren’t surrounded by people who have known you for your entire life and think they already know who you are, and for as long as you’re there you have access to a support system dedicated to helping you do so. Violet is the purest embodiment of this theme, which is why she’s the hero of the story, and which also explains why there’s nothing incidental about her dance craze aspiration. As Miriam Bale put it in her Damsels in Distress review for Slant, “‘Sambola!’ might be shorthand for a message that, if you follow certain steps, even sloppily, as long as you’re a pain-in-the neck about never compromising, as long as you keep at it, you too can be a better person.”

Rick DeWolfe is the closest thing the film actually has to a villain in large part because he clearly thinks he’s already his best self; Lily doesn’t really want to change, either, but because of the humanity that Tipton brings to the role, we don’t accept her rejection of Violet’s “doufi orientation” as the final word on who she is. After all she has learned a few things from her roommates, even if only in spite of herself, as shown by her reaction to the smell of Doar Dorm:

Lily experiences a nasal shock

And so it is that she comes to represent a reminder that eccentrics like Violet aren’t ultimately defined just by the number of lost souls who they save, but also the regular people they transform in much subtler ways, which is much more interesting than just serving as a foil to her.

Along similar lines, Damsels is also one of the purest celebrations of the joy of learning you’ll ever find in the movies. Stillman notes on the commentary track included with the DVD that “color stands for all kinds of things you don’t know about,” and superficially ridiculous though it may be, it’s hard to imagine a better depiction of the thrill of finally getting to apply hard-earned knowledge in a practical setting than Thor, who has been “hitting the books,” shouting out the colors of the rainbow:

Thor correctly identifies the colors of the rainbow, part one
Thor correctly identifies the colors of the rainbow, part two
Thor correctly identifies the colors of the rainbow, part three

To be clear, though, the best thing about Damsels is Greta Gerwig, and I’m hard pressed to think of a role I enjoyed her in more. In a Q&A included on the DVD as an extra titled “An Evening with Damsels in Distress,” she explained what attracted her to the film: “I think my idea of what actors did at some point was: you’re in a musical, you have to be able to dance, and sing, and tap dance, specifically, so being able to be in this movie felt like the pinnacle of achievement of my acting career.”

The climactic musical number at the end of Damsels features steps, dresses, and a fountain that Peter Tonguette notes are reminiscent of my February Drink & a Movie selection The Young Girls of Rochefort:

Image from the climactic "Things Are Looking Up" musical number
Another image from the climactic "Things Are Looking Up" musical number

And ends with another benediction from the sun that any actor from any era would be lucky to include in their highlight reel:

Violet and Charlie/Fred kiss during the "Things Are Looking Up" musical number

Looking at this and the hot pink Sony Pictures Classic logo that the movie begins with, I wonder if it’s too much to suggest that without Damsels, we might not have “I’m Just Ken”?

Pink SPC logo

Probably yes, but this does bring us back to this month’s pairing, I think. The “triumph” of Pompeii is of course that we remember it to this day, and the message of Barbie is not that the eponymous doll was significant in any particular way, but rather that it’s meaningful in and of itself that she was part of the lives of millions of children. This sounds an awful lot like the answer Violet gives to Professor Black (Taylor Nichols, also of Metropolitan, in which he plays a character with the same last name) when he asks why she considers starting a dance craze so important. So here’s to the Sambola! Long may it “enhance and elevate the human experience” and continue “bringing together millions of people in a joyous celebration of our God-given faculties”!

Cheers!

All original photographs in this post are by Marion Penning, aka My Loving Wife. Links to all of the entries in this series can be found here.

Dispatch from the 2024 Nitrate Picture Show

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Image from Intolerance

How you watch a film inarguably impacts the way you respond to it. The Nitrate Picture Show is a unique viewing experience in a very obvious way: every screening features specific nitrate prints that people in the audience worked on, projected by individuals who, far from remaining anonymous as they typically would, are instead introduced each time as the stars of the show. Because nitrate was phased out in the early 1950s, it also consists exclusively of titles made before then. Lately I’ve been thinking about some proclivities of mine which I believe matter to my personal brand of cinephilia. For instance, even though movies are a hugely important part of how I make sense of the world, they’re something that I fit into my life around my family and job. The way I accomplish this is by favoring sparsely attended late afternoon and early evening showtimes. I also prefer to be near the screen–not necessarily as close as possible to “receive the images first” like Matthew from The Dreamers, but ideally in the middle of the third or fourth row–which in practice means I don’t always even know whether or not I’m the only person in the theater (I frequently am) because anyone else who arrives is likely to sit behind me.

NPS screenings are all packed, and not just anyone is willing to travel to Rochester, New York for an event like this, so in addition to being the biggest crowds I’m likely to be part of this year, they were also probably the most intelligent and opinionated. All of this absolutely affects my reactions. As does the weather! This year we were blessed with sunny days great for walking that introductory speaker Bryony Dixon described as perfect conditions for experiencing A Day in the Country, which played as the second half of a double featurette with The Plow That Broke the Plains. The two served as a study in how captivating black-and-white skies can be on nitrate: the ones in the latter showcased about 50,000 different shades of gray, while the former was distinguished by a mesmerizingly deep, dark color that my brain keeps insisting must actually have been blue. The low-angle shots of Sylvia Bataille‘s Henrietta standing up on a swing set were not at all ruined for me by Dixon’s tongue-in-cheek description of them as “upskirting” and were probably the most joyous images I saw all weekend.

The closest competitor for this honor would probably be the lavish Babylon sequences from opener Intolerance, which can be glimpsed in the image at the top of this post that I grabbed off the NPS website. This film is also connected to Plow via World War I, which ties it to the first feature that screened the next day as well. De Mayerling à Sarajevo portrays Archduke Franz Ferdinand (John Lodge) as a would-be reformer cut down too early by the enemies of tolerance and love; in fact, I kept wanting to identify war as a throughline for the whole festival, but its appearance in so many movies may be attributable to nothing more than the entirety of the nitrate era being within a decade of a global conflict. Anyway: I’ve always respected Intolerance, but now appreciate it more than ever as a full-fledged masterpiece made barely twenty years after the Lumière brothers introduced the world to moving pictures. I particularly enjoyed the hallucinatory Temple of Love scenes and emotional close-ups of the stellar female leads Mae Marsh, Margery Wilson, and Constance Talmadge, which are another link to Sarajevo: there’s a shot of Edwige Feuillère in a pearl-studded veil that would have fit perfectly alongside them.

Per introductory speaker Peter Bagrov, director Max Ophüls rushed to finish that film in the early days of World War II, which is perhaps most evident in a handful of still images used in place of actual establishing shots which felt extremely out of place in a work otherwise characterized by a lively camera. A still image of ambiguous intentionality also appears in the first movie that screened in the “Nitrate Shorts Program” that kicked off day two of the festival, The Flute of Krishna, which like Intolerance was accompanied by the legendary Philip Carli on piano. This dance film attributed to Martha Graham and an uncredited Rouben Mamoulian was shot at Rochester’s Eastman Theatre and features beautiful, strong colors produced by an experimental Kodachrome two-color process. Unlike last year, the majority of the rest of the movies in the program were black-and-white or tinted, such as the five burlesque films compiled into a single program and given the name Juke-Box Follies. The exceptions were a Terrytoons cartoon starring Gandy Goose and Sourpuss the Cat called Lights Out and two “advertising snipes” which would have played in between movies during the nitrate era, a Chevrolet ad called A Wise Choice and a promo for a “Halloween Fun Fest.” Like Know for Sure, a film about the dangers of syphilis and how to avoid it that Lewis Milestone directed for the United States Public Health Services, all of these titles served as welcome reminders that that the moviegoing experience has always encompassed more than just features. NPS’s didactic impulses were also on display in the decision to screen Disney’s The Skeleton Dance twice in a row: we were told that we’d see safety diacetate and nitrate prints back to back, but not in what order, and then asked to guess which was which. Most everyone (again: this is a smart crowd!) realized that the one with inkier blacks was actually the safety print, which looked “better” because it was in superior condition–the unique properties of nitrate are worth celebrating, but it isn’t magic.

The shorts were rounded out by Le Vieux Chateau, an animated film with cubist influences set to a lighthearted song about a haunted and rat-infested medieval mansion by the French duo Pills and Tabet that is now on our Halloween mix, a delightfully absurd amateur/experimental film by native Rochesterian James Sibley Watson Jr. called It Never Happened, and the highlight of the program Zarozhdenie Zhizni, which uses a variety of frame rates to create what director Vsevelod Pudovkin called a “close-up in time.” It also contains a shirtless reaper whose body glistens with sweat that rhymes with the glint of sunlight on the blade of his scythe and the sparkling dew on the grass he’s mowing who I won’t soon forget.

My most noteworthy discovery was The Good Fairy. It opens with children being led in song by a woman who exhorts them to sing with “more freedom,” then the camera pulls back to reveal the bars of the fence that surrounds the orphanage they all live in. Real and metaphorical jails figured in many of this year’s NPS selections, but here it’s just the first of an avalanche of jokes, which is hardly surprising considering that the screenplay is adapted from Ferenc Molnár’s Hungarian play by Preston Sturges, who must have loved the fact that the main character’s name is Luisa Ginglebusher. She’s played by an utterly charming Margaret Sullavan, who gets to swing from a light fixture and admire herself in an infinity mirror wearing “genuine foxine.” This movie got bigger laughs than any other, and when Herbert Marshall’s Dr. Max Sporum finally kisses Luisa, everyone applauded. But my favorite part was the fairy tale ending at the end, unless it was the scene in which Sporum waxes poetic about a new pencil sharpener, or maybe it was Frank Marshall’s business tycoon pretending to be a “wizard” in a film made four full years before that actor was cast the titular role of a certain Judy Garland vehicle that played NPS last year. In other words, it was a blast! The print we saw came from director William Wyler’s personal collection, which was also cool.

The Good Fairy was one of three movies that Alan Hale appeared in, along with Stella Dallas and The Strawberry Blonde. He plays a carousing gambler who falls on hard times in the former, which had quite a few people in tears. The one moment that almost got me was Barbara O’Neil’s Helen leaving the blinds open so that Barbara Stanwyck‘s Stella Dallas can watch her daughter Laurel (a radiant Anne Shirley) get married without attending the wedding, but I was too distracted by doubts that this noble “sacrifice” was either necessary or even good for Laurel to really lose myself in it. Hale’s best performance of all, though, is as the quick-tempered father to James Cagney’s Biff Grimes in The Strawberry Blonde, a love letter to the Gay Nineties which I had somehow never gotten around to seeing before. I’ll definitely be coming back to it for Olivia de Havilland perfecting the art of the suggestive wink, Rita Hayworth stealing a kiss from Cagney in silhouette, and the dinner scene in which a bunch of perplexed Americans square off against an unfamiliar foreign delicacy called “spaghetti” for the first time.

A very different attitude toward the past is on display in Kikyō, a somber and ultimately angry elegy for the soul of post-war Japan directed by Hideo Ōba, a filmmaker I confess I wasn’t previously familiar with who intro speaker Jo Osawa described as a mentor to Japanese New Wave icon Nagisa Ōshima. Per Peter Bagrov this was the first known U.S. screening of this movie since 1978, which explains why it isn’t better known in this country. Kikyō ends with an image of a man smoking a cigarette in front of his own grave, but this is exponentially less bitter than the conclusion of Germany Year Zero, a chronicle of life in another defeated Axis power which is right up there with Intolerance as my most memorable screening of NPS 2024. Protagonist Edmund Köhler (Edmund Moeschke) is almost exactly the same age as Willing Mandible, the hero of Lionel Shriver’s novel The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047; both are only slightly older than my children, and my fear that there’s no good reason to think this can’t happen here are further exacerbated by my having seen The Natural History of Destruction, which shows how prosperous Germany Year Zero‘s bombed-out Berlin settings looked just a few years earlier, at last year’s Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival. This movie’s subject is something that pretty much no one wanted to see when it was made in 1948: Ken Fox’s program notes describe it as “a bitter pill for either victor or vanquished to swallow” which temporarily (thankfully!) destroyed director Roberto Rossellini’s reputation. That’s exactly what makes it essential, though. “We saw disaster coming and did nothing to prevent it,” says Edmund’s father (Ernst Pittschau)–if we lack the conviction to ask whether or not this describes us, too, we’re begging to suffer the same fate.

Germany Year Zero is a devastating and brilliant film, never more so than during its one moment of transcendence, a man playing an organ in the ruins of a church, which is abruptly cut short; the Finnish release print we watched, which featured both Finnish and Swedish printed-in subtitles, also taught me a lesson itself. My local arthouse theater Cinemapolis has a great practice that they call “Captioned Wednesday” whereby all screenings between 5-6pm on that day are presented with English subtitles. Although I think this is a terrific initiative, I’ve been avoiding these screenings myself, but I now see that this is silly: neither the subtitles on this movie nor the German ones on De Mayerling à Sarajevo distracted me at all! This isn’t all I learned. I mentioned earlier that we were quizzed after The Skeleton Dance. I did not raise my hand even though I thought I knew which print was which because I wasn’t sure, but last year I probably wouldn’t have had any idea, and maybe next year I’ll have the confidence to venture a guess. The point is that NPS isn’t just a lot of fun, it’s also making me a more educated and perceptive viewer. Throw in Rochester’s great food and drink options (Swillburger and Rohrbach Brewing Company‘s Space Kitty Double IPA were my favorite new experiences on this trip) and the fact that I can get there quickly and cheaply via OurBus, and I’m starting to believe that I’d be crazy not to make this an annual excursion. Certainly I’m going to return next year, schedule permitting. Till then!

Previous film festival dispatches can be found here.

Ithaca Film Journal: 6/6/24

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What I’m Seeing This Week: My gamble paid off! Evil Does Not Exist, which I passed on two weeks ago in favor of The Fall Guy knowing I would have to wait until after the Nitrate Picture Show to see it, is still at Cinemapolis, so that’s my pick this week because director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s last film Drive My Car was one of my favorite films of Movie Year 2021.

Also in Theaters: My Loving Wife and I have a date night outing to see Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which is at both Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall, planned for next week, so that’s very much on my radar. The best new movie now playing in Ithaca which I’ve already seen is I Saw the TV Glow, which continues its run at Cinemapolis. Here’s a good piece about it by Emily St. James. I can also recommend the stylish and entertaining Challengers and The Fall Guy, which is a good, old-fashioned romantic comedy. With explosions. The former is at Cinemapolis and the latter is at the Regal. Babes (Cinemapolis), The Dead Don’t Hurt (Regal), and In a Violent Nature (both) have all garnered solid reviews, so if they sound interesting to you, they may be worth checking out as well. On the repertory front the highlight is Run Lola Run, which is at Cinemapolis. I originally saw it at the Point of View Cinema in Millersville, Pennsylvania (RIP) during high school, and I thought it was just about the coolest thing I’d ever seen. Finally, a 70-minute shorts program will screen at Cinemapolis on Saturday as part of the sixth annual Quiet on the Set! Film Festival sponsored by the Wharton Studio Museum.

Home Video: If you’re like me the announcement of this year’s Cannes Film Festival award winners was a prompt to start adding previous work by the people who made them to your watchlist in anticipation of everything arriving in stateside theaters come fall. I’ll be using this space over the course of the next few weeks to highlight titles available on streaming video platforms beginning with films directed by Sean Baker, who took home the Palme d’Or for Anora. I first became aware of Baker about ten years ago, but somehow never got around to seeing a single one of his films. Well, unless you count his Taco Bell commercial, I guess. That’s all about to change, though! Here’s what I’ll be watching in the coming weeks and where:

Red Rocket is also available for rental on a number of platforms.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.

Ithaca Film Journal: 5/30/24

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What I’m Seeing This Week: I am heading to Rochester, NY for the Nitrate Picture Show in a few hours and will spend the majority of the next three days watching movies! The opening night selection is Intolerance, and the rest of the schedule will be announced at a press conference later this morning. I’m hoping to post initial reactions on Letterboxd within ~24 hours of each screening and publish a dispatch on this blog like the one I wrote last year sometime during the next week or two–stay tuned!

Also in Theaters: I Saw the TV Glow is my favorite film of Movie Year 2024 so far and it continues its run at Cinemapolis this week, so that’s obviously my top recommendation! I also enjoyed Challengers, which is there and at the Regal Ithaca Mall, and The Fall Guy, which is just at the Regal. I played with fire a bit when I decided to see the latter earlier this week instead of Evil Does Not Exist, since I am hoping to catch that film before it closes at Cinemapolis–hopefully it will stick around awhile longer! My Loving Wife and I are also making plans for a date night outing to Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga either there or at the Regal. My number one repertory pick for this week is The Muppet Movie, which is screening at the Regal on Sunday and Monday to commemorate its 45th anniversary.

Home Video: Intolerance star Lillian Gish’s last silent film appearance was in the The Wind, which entered the public domain in the United States this past New Year’s Day. I finally caught up with it the other day and was impressed by both her performance and the stunningly expressionistic final scene. Although the ostensibly “happy” ending is one of the more notorious examples of studio interference in Hollywood history, numerous people I follow on Letterboxd suggest that it leaves an even more bitter taste in your mouth than the original one would have, and I’m inclined to agree. This is now fair game for screenings, and if that’s the kind of thing you organize, you should consider programming this one–I think contemporary audiences would dig it! The Wind is available on DVD and the ad supported free streaming video platform Tubi.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.