The Pink Smoke podcast

A classic episode (utterly classic) episode released from behind the Patreon paywall. Savor it like some kind of a savory soup. Hosts John Cribbs & Christopher Funderburg are joined by Marcus Pinn of Pinnland Empire as well as Calgary's own Carly Schmidt to discuss the new film from Olivier Assayas, NON-FICTION.

What more can possibly be said about Dziga Vertov & Mikhail Kaufman's Man With a Movie Camera, one of the most studied, discussed and written-about films ever made? Is everybody sick of hearing how amazing it is? Perhaps it speaks to the film's timeless artistic energy and bold experimentation that there's always something to say about the camera techniques, radical editing and unique blending of avant-garde and documentary styles which come together using "no titles, no scenario, no actors, no sets" to create an "absolute language of cinema." To help get the best possible insight into this giant artwork, hosts Martin Kessler and John Cribbs welcome Jeremy Workman, a filmmaker who's taken inspiration from Vertov in everything from his award-winning film Lily Topples the World to his latest short documentary Deciding Vote. How has Workman trained his Kino-Eye to the subjects in front of his own movie camera? Is a one hour-long, nearly-100 year old Russian movie's impact so far-reaching that it continues to inspire modern art and filmmaking around the world? Jeremy Workman's website: www.jeremyworkman.com The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com John Cribbs on Twitter: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Movie Kessler on Twitter: twitter.com/MovieKessler The Pink Smoke on Twitter: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"

The Pink Smoke is coming in from the cold to debrief our listeners on 100 years worth of espionage thrillers. Starting in the 1920's, we chose one notable spy movie (as well as a few alternate picks) for each decade leading to our present day in order to decode how they reflect the history and pop culture of their respective epoch. From the years leading to World War II through the Cold War and up to the modern age of counterintelligence in the time of domestic terrorism and the internet, we recruited agents John Arminio (co-host of Popcorn Eschaton!) and Bill Scurry (co-host of I Don't Get It) to analyze these cloak-and-dagger tales and what they have to say about the excitement and morality of the spy profession. In Part Two, we deal with the 1980's, an era of glorified excess in which the spy movie survived by integrating itself within other popular subgenres, and make our way up to the 2020's, a much quieter and retrospective period for espionage thrillers. In between, we discuss the most charmingly repugnant spy of them all, a rip-roaring roller coaster ride about the CIA's greatest asset with amnesia (no - not that one!), betrayals and double crosses set in the corporate world and plots critical of counterintelligence agencies that can't detect deception among their own ranks. Popcorn Eschaton!: https://soundcloud.com/zebras-in-america/popcorn-eschaton-1 I Don't Get It Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i-dont-get-it-podcast/id1205228194 The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com John Cribbs on Twitter: twitter.com/TheLastMachine The Pink Smoke on Twitter: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"

Hosts John Cribbs & Christopher Funderburg discuss (possibly) their favorite film of the year, Hirokazu Kore-eda's Shoplifters. This episode, recorded in 2018, was released from behind our Patreon paywall. Enjoy it. Think about it. Perhaps someday... learn to love it.

The Pink Smoke is coming in from the cold to debrief our listeners on 100 years worth of espionage thrillers. Starting in the 1920's, we chose one notable spy movie (as well as a few alternate picks) for each decade leading to our present day in order to decode how they reflect the history and pop culture of their respective epoch. From the years leading to World War II through the Cold War and up to the modern age of counterintelligence in the time of domestic terrorism and the internet, we recruited agents John Arminio (co-host of Popcorn Eschaton!) and Bill Scurry (co-host of I Don't Get It) to analyze these cloak-and-dagger tales and what they have to say about the excitement and morality of the spy profession. In Part One, we cover the 1920's through the 1970's which includes one epic silent masterpiece, various adventures set behind enemy lines during the war of nations, intimate stories of British citizens who exploit governments for personal gain, human dramas about moral degradation behind the Iron Curtain and post-Watergate paranoid thrillers. Support our Patreon! All Pink Smoke Podcast episodes are made available a week early to our Patreon subscribers, the most open-minded and good-natured of all audiences: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke Popcorn Eschaton! https://soundcloud.com/zebras-in-america/popcorn-eschaton-1 I Don't Get It Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i-dont-get-it-podcast/id1205228194 The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com John Cribbs on Twitter: twitter.com/TheLastMachine The Pink Smoke on Twitter: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"

PSP: Pulp Fictions covers the "Bond Novel That Never Was" - crime writer Donald Westlake's FOREVER AND A DEATH! Westlake is a favorite author of hosts Christopher Funderburg & John Cribbs so they're at full force in discussing this curious posthumously published work that on the surface seems to have nothing to do with 007.

Over a decade after his high-octane cyber-punk metal mutilation fetishism monster debut Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), director-producer-writer-cinematographer-editor-star Shinya Tsukamoto truly discovered himself as an artist and filmmaker with the blue-tinted, rain-drenched fever nightmare A Snake of June (2002). His seventh feature film, it follows three characters: a sexually-repressed telephone counselor, her hygiene-obsessed husband and a mysterious, spying interloper who will disrupt and upend their domestic sterilization. Hosts Christopher Funderburg and John Cribbs revisit every monochromatic corner of this beautifully strange film, which is somehow persistently cruel yet deeply empathetic to the three characters who find themselves trapped within the oppressive confines of their urban surroundings. How much of this is a self-critique by Tsukamoto (who also plays the creepy, disembodied voyeur) on the exploitative nature of cinema itself? Is there a safe middleground between cultural subjugation and unrestrained liberation? There's a lot to discuss about this deceptively short masterwork. Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke All Pink Smoke Podcast episodes are made available a week early to our Patreon subscribers, the most open-minded and good-natured of all audiences. The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com John Cribbs on Twitter: twitter.com/TheLastMachine The Pink Smoke on Twitter: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Christopher Funderburg on Twitter: twitter.com/cfunderburg Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"

"There's no such thing as an unfashionable hero or an unsuitable heiress." Hot off their five-hour excursion into Swishbuckler Cinema, hosts John Cribbs and Christopher Funderburg trace the sordid subgenre's origins to George MacDonald Fraser's expansive series of novels featuring Harry Paget Flashman, a self-described "scoundrel with no proper feelings" who often finds himself cowering miserably in the middle of some of the 19th century's greatest military disasters. For this episode, our hosts randomly selected Flashman's Lady (1977), the sixth book of the 12-part "Flashman Papers," to see how successful the author was at mixing rousing adventure with rakish humor. From performing the first hat trick in a cricket match to crossing swords with East Indies pirates and being enslaved in Madagascar, unscrupulous cad and insatiable lecher Flashman never misses an opportunity to represent all the worst elements of colonial Victorian England...yet somehow comes off as delightfully roguish? The discussion digs into the series' multi-layered parody of historical texts, MacDonald Fraser's irreverent razing of cultural myth and how a morally repugnant character can still be appealing as a narrator and leading character within the framework of picaresque fiction. Support our Patreon! All Pink Smoke Podcast episodes are made available a week early to our Patreon subscribers, the most sophisticated and noble of all listeners: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com John Cribbs on Twitter: twitter.com/TheLastMachine The Pink Smoke on Twitter: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Christopher Funderburg on Twitter: twitter.com/cfunderburg Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"

Host Christopher Funderburg is joined by Martin Kessler to finally settle the debate of "what is art?" and "what is trash?" in cinema! Using the similarities between a Tales from the Crypt episode and a Patricia Highsmith short story as a jumping off point, the duo digs into the differences between artists and artisans, art and entertainment, high and low, product and artwork - not as a value judgement distinction but as a way of exploring the meaning of the categories into which films and literature are shifted. Superhero movies, John Carpenter, Thomas Mann, Robocop, Jaws, and Godard - what does it mean to differentiate between Art and Trash? Who's to say if Tarkovsky is better than William Castle? And why would you react negatively to drawing (or not drawing) a distinction between them? Join us for this open-minded, good-natured discussion of a highly fraught subject! Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke All Pink Smoke Podcast episodes are made available a week early to our Patreon subscribers, the most open-minded and good-natured of all audiences. The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com Movie Kessler on Twitter: twitter.com/MovieKessler The Pink Smoke on Twitter: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Christopher Funderburg on Twitter: twitter.com/cfunderburg Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"

On this episode, we're joined by filmmaker Bill Teck to discuss some of his favorite moments of bittersweet love in the movies. Having made One Day Since Yesterday, a documentary about Peter Bogdanovich's unsung sleeper They All Laughed, Teck knows something about cinema's most achingly romantic, heart-wrenchingly complicated relationships and crafted a list of some of the most unforgettable. We follow Teck through his picks, which include fairy tale connections and acrimonious separations set in New York, Los Angeles and an idyllic Greek Island, in the worlds of art, business and sports - even the dangerous and freewheeling streets of scenic New Jersey! Whether it's new love, love in pieces, or love in retrospect, the 24 films covered in this episode are a testament to how susceptible we are to the pitfalls and upturns of love on the big screen. Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com Bill Teck on Twitter: twitter.com/billteck The Pink Smoke on Twitter: twitter.com/thepinksmoke John Cribbs on Twitter: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Christopher Funderburg on Twitter: twitter.com/cfunderburg Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"