Hit Factory

We close out 2020 with the cult favorite 'Dark City' - a film that definitely didn't influence The Wachowski's 'Matrix' films in any way whatsoever. Aaron & Carlee break down the film's genre-bending aesthetic charms, its relation to the late-90s trend of augmented reality narratives, and discuss the necessity of imagination in developing an alternative political project to neoliberal nostalgia.

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Into the jungle we both wade // Another film from a bygone decade // First - Dr. discourse of a sort // is granted some undue import // For movie talk you'll have to wait // Until we cover the M4A debate // On to Jumanji. The Game. The status quo // And what our next roll will bestowAlso, Aaron was sort of right about The Thief & The Cobbler. Subscribe to Hit Factory on Patreon.

Evan MacDonald from the Kino Lefter Podcast joins Aaron in the Hit Factory to discuss Whit Stillman's 1990 directorial debut 'Metropolitan'. We discuss the recent death knell for the movie theater experience, the utopian socialism of Charles Fourier, and the profound inferiority complex plaguing the elite class. Check out and subscribe to Kino Lefter for more awesome socialist movie content.

It's the summer of 1998, and a celestial rock is on a collision course for planet Earth. Our first ever double-feature episode explores the right-wing, explosive preposterousness of Michael Bay's 'Armageddon' alongside the competent, neoliberal eulogy that is Mimi Leder's 'Deep Impact'. Aaron & Carlee sing some Aerosmith and become Ben Affleck apologists along the way.

Thanksgiving. 1973. Or 1997. Or 2020. We revisit one of the unsung masterpieces of the decade: Ang Lee's "The Ice Storm". Aaron & Carlee discuss the film's once-in-a-generation cast, Mychael Danna's hauntingly evocative score, and the cyclical nature of our political and social malaise.

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Meagan Day is a staff writer at Jacobin and the coauthor of 'Bigger than Bernie: How We Go from the Sanders Campaign to Democratic Socialism'. Meagan joins Aaron & Carlee in the Hit Factory to discuss the anti-politics of Nora Ephron's 1998 romantic-comedy 'You've Got Mail' and recast Clintonite Third Way centrism as political defeatism. Read Meagan's piece, "The Romance of American Clintonism" here: https://jacobinmag.com/2020/10/youve-got-mail-nineties-films-rom-coms-capitalism. Learn more about Labor Notes at: www.labornotes.org

Election Day is nigh. To commiserate, we revisit Warren Beatty's overlooked, all-too-salient political comedy 'Bulworth'. Aaron & Carlee discuss the necrotic 2020 Presidential race, Jay Billington Bulworth's IRL political counterpart, and survey the 90's subsumption into Third Way Clintonian centrism. Warren Beatty's Op-Ed "Why Not Now?": https://archive.commondreams.org/warrenbeatty.htm "Hail to the Chief Remix" by Yoe Mase www.soundcloud.com/yoemase

We kept all the lights on and watched the scariest film of the 1990's, "The Blair Witch Project". Aaron & Carlee discuss the film's legacy as a vanguard of viral marketing and found-footage cinema, its appeal to a greater sense of pre-millennium malaise, and the role of supernatural evil in the age of misinformation. Special thanks to the brilliant and hilarious Nick Lutsko for providing this week's outro song. Follow Nick on Twitter @NickLustko https://twitter.com/NickLutsko and check out his latest album 'Swords' on Spotify at https://open.spotify.com/album/2oTWDmzqeri1WOvpSH5J4g?si=omPnVDlCTqa2ZDvtrR1OhQ