Vintage Sand

As we are preparing for our first attempt at a genre episode (that would be Episode 37, our brief guide to the Hollywood musical coming in February) we could not let go the passing of some major and minor figures of film history since our last recording session in early December. Therefore, our shorter-than-usual Episode 36 will function as an extended necrology, a (hopefully) cathartic exploration and celebration of the life and work of both towering figures like Sidney Poitier and Peter Bogdanovich and lesser figures as well. (After all, we did lose Truly Scrumptious this month) As the title of the episode suggests, in a straight steal from "Hamlet", we shall not look upon their like again.

In Episode 35, Team Vintage Sand returns to the source of some of our most popular episodes: Danny Peary’s hard-to-find 1993 classic "Alternate Oscars". In the past, we have approached the Academy Awards from the 1950’s, 1970’s, 1980’s and the 2000’s. For this episode, we use the Way-Back Machine to explore the first full decade in which the awards were given: the 1930’s. In exploring a period that featured some truly abysmal Best Picture choices ("Cimarron", anyone? Not to mention what is possibly the worst film ever chosen, 1933’s "Cavalcade"?), we learned a couple of things. The least surprising of these is that Jean Renoir completely owned the decade; his films might have won Best Picture nearly every year. Another is that there really are two 1930’s for film: the period before the imposition of the Production Code in 1934 and the years that followed. What made this episode fun for us is that, perhaps more so that any of our other Alternate Oscar shows, this one features a ton of movies that our listener

As promised, we finish this round of our study of great screen performances with this two-part episode that highlights what are, in our opinion, the best overlooked and underloved performances by supporting actresses over the years. Recall that in our last episode, we put down our usual auteurist lens in favor of a focus on actors, perhaps a filmmaker's most crucial collaborators. This is a natural move for us, considering that both Michael and John are trained actors and bring a wealth of experience and knowledge to our enterprise. So join us, Vintage Sand fans, as we follow a slightly different path and focus on our favorite underloved and overlooked performances in film by supporting actresses. And as we learned last time out, when you get John and Mike talking about acting, there’s no stopping them; thus another two-parter (Episode 34 B will be appearing in a couple of weeks). As for me, the non-actor in the group, I would say that I learned more from these episode than any one we’ve ever done; our hope

As promised, we finish this round of our study of great screen performances with this two-part episode that highlights what are, in our opinion, the best overlooked and underloved performances by supporting actresses over the years. Recall that in our last episode, we put down our usual auteurist lens in favor of a focus on actors, perhaps a filmmaker's most crucial collaborators. This is a natural move for us, considering that both Michael and John are trained actors and bring a wealth of experience and knowledge to our enterprise. So join us, Vintage Sand fans, as we follow a slightly different path and focus on our favorite underloved and overlooked performances in film by supporting actresses. And as we learned last time out, when you get John and Mike talking about acting, there’s no stopping them; thus another two-parter (Episode 34 B will be appearing in a couple of weeks). As for me, the non-actor in the group, I would say that I learned more from these episode than any one we’ve ever done; our ho

Our promised conclusion to Episode 33, No Small Parts: Our Favorite Overlooked and Underloved Performances by Supporting Actors.

In the past, Team Vintage Sand has focused primarily on specific directors and movements in the history of film. Of course, we understand the fundamental paradox of the auteur theory (in that film is by its nature the most collaborative medium). But if we are making the case for film as art, then there needs to be an artist, and organizing the podcast around the auteurist ideas of critics like Truffaut and Andrew Sarris makes a great deal of sense. In Episode 33, however, we finally put that idea on the shelf for a moment and use another lens to focus on some of the movies we love: the importance of acting. This is a natural move for us, considering that both Michael and John are trained actors and bring a wealth of experience and knowledge to our enterprise. So join us, Vintage Sand fans, as we follow a slightly different path and focus on our favorite underloved and overlooked performances in film by supporting actors. And when you get John and Mike talking about acting, there’s no stopping them, so we ha

We know what you’re thinking. How can those Vintage Sand guys be so durned knowledgeable about film and yet still maintain their humility? Well, of course the three of us have seen way too many films over the years, but the truth is that so much of what has shaped our lives as filmgoers has come from reading some of the great books written about film by filmmakers, great critics, and film historians. At Vintage Sand, we’ve never claimed any expertise in film as such. We have tried simply to share our enthusiasm in the hope of opening doors for our listeners regarding our favorite films and perhaps some different and useful ways to watch them. So, instead of trying to take you to school this time, we’re taking you to the library. The titles we discuss in this episode, as mentioned above, do what film studies does best – open new doors. You’ll find that the books on our list are pretty much free of jargon (the use of the word “liminality” is expressly forbidden), as well as tell-all gossip. For the sake of t

"7 Women". "Rio Lobo". "The Other Side of the Wind". "Family Plot". "Buddy Buddy". "Pocketful of Miracles". "A Countess from Hong Kong". Have you even heard of these films, let alone seen them? Yet they stand as the final works, respectively, of John Ford, Howard Hawks, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Frank Capra and Charlie Chaplin. In Episode 31 of the podcast, Team Vintage Sand explores the question of why so many, if not most, of our greatest directors conclude their careers with middling, occasionally atrocious, and almost universally forgettable films. But do not despair, dear listener; we also travel to France, Sweden, Japan and back home, and across the years from the mid-1930’s to the early years of this century, to give our favorite examples of great directors who ended their careers on a high note. These latter fall into two distinct categories: the majority, where directors were unaware that their most recent effort would serve as their final statement, and those rare cases where t

Back in the Before Time, we did a long-ago episode (#11, if you're playing along at home) where we each chose one film to discuss that we thought had been unjustly overlooked by time and the madding crowd. At the time, we promised/threatened to go down this path again and take you, loyal listeners, into some more dark and obscure corners of film history. So enjoy Episode 30, Hidden Gems Volume II, where John, Michael and Josh take a closer look at three very different films: a broad satire from the early 70's by a first-time director about to become a small-screen legend; a sweet, low-key, oddball comedy by a brilliant director who never could find his place in Hollywood; and a comedy-drama by a skilled craftsman of a director based on a book by one of our greatest modern novelists. And by the way, how do you get ice cream out of velour upholstery?

It was a year, and an Oscars ceremony, unlike any other in memory. That being said, there were definitely many films, both big and small, that we think will stand the test of time and which folks may still be watching 50 years from now. So join us for the ride as we explore some of 2020’s most memorable films, from Nomadland to Palm Springs and from Da 5 Bloods to Minari; it’s our Journal of the Plague year. Whatever our feelings about the films of 2020, though, Episode 29 is a cause for celebration for us. It is the first time in 14 months that John, Michael and I were able to record the episode live and together in the same room. All due respect and love to the makers of Zoom, which allowed us to continue the podcast through this miserable year, but this was a reminder of why we started Vintage Sand in the first place and why we so enjoy creating it. We hope that the joy we felt in really working together again will be contagious for our fans, and that you will all stay safe and take care. As Fern says, we

Welcome to Episode 28 of Vintage Sand, your Film History podcast. In this episode, Everybody Knows the Score, we explore some of the best soundtracks in the history of film. For our purposes this time out, we are focusing strictly on non-diagetic (“background”) music written for instruments and/or voice for a particular film. So we are not focusing on… • …songs written for a soundtrack. This rules out both musicals and collections ranging from Isaac Hayes’ music for Shaft to Aimee Mann’s original songs for Magnolia. • …curated collections of songs by various artists. We call this the T-Bone Burnett Rule. Choosing songs for a film is an art in itself, and such directors as Scorsese, Tarantino, both our favorite Andersons and the Coen Brothers are among the masters. A worthy endeavor if done well, but another art form entirely. • …collections of classical pieces by one composer (Manhattan, for example) or multiple composers (think 2001 and The Tree of Life) So we range from Golden Age Hollywood masters like M

Team Vintage Sand returns with Bong Jun-ho: Director’s Cut, our study of the director who, following last year’s Oscars, may now properly be called one of the world’s most important filmmakers. While "Parasite" brought him Oscars, a Palme d’Or and international fame, Bong has been making his brilliant, iconoclastic films for nearly two decades. As we examine all seven of Bong’s feature films, several things become clear. The first is that he is a true poet of dislocation. South Korea has transformed from a relatively sleepy backwater to late-capitalist tech powerhouse in only a couple of decades. While the nation appears prosperous from the outside, Bong’s films directly and implicitly tell the story of what the sudden change has meant in terms of economic insecurity, fracturing family relationships and a general mistrust and lack of respect for those in authority. But what makes Bong truly unique is that he may be the most adept director in history at making sudden and frequent tonal shifts feel organic to h

Once again, Team Vintage Sand returns to pay tribute to Danny Peary’s wonderful 1993 book "Alternate Oscars"; this time, our focus is the 1970’s, which many call the greatest decade in the history of American film. If this is so, it’s because for a brief shining moment, from "Easy Rider" to the birth of the tyranny of opening weekend grosses engendered by films like "Jaws" and "Star Wars", the most powerful figure in Hollywood was the director. The studios had collapsed under their own weight at the end of the ’60’s, and the Film School Generation of directors, inspired by American mavericks and the French New Wave alike, were handed the keys. This was the generation of Scorsese, Coppola, De Palma, Spielberg, Lucas, Bogdanovich, Friedkin, Rafelson and some kindred spirit Hollywood vets like Altman and Ashby. Can you imagine a system that was able to produce "Godfather, Part II" and "Chinatown" in the same year? As Peter Biskind relates in his essential "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls". it was all over by the middl

With the most important election of our lifetimes upon us, Team Vintage Sand celebrates its Silver episode by exploring our favorite political films Made in the USA. “Political film” is a very difficult term to define, and we try to examine the idea through a number of different lenses. After all, one might argue that in a sense, all films are political. There are films that deal with specific historical figures, from Lincoln to Huey Long to W. There are films that focus on the political process, from "Mr. Smith" to "Advise and Consent" to "The Candidate". You have more conventional comedies and dramas that use politics as a background, from "State of the Union" and "Born Yesterday" to "Dave", "The American President" and Eastwood’s "Absolute Power". Occasionally, the “political film” takes the form of satire, in works ranging from "Duck Soup" to "Dr. Strangelove" to "Idiocracy". Politics also frequently appears under the umbrella of genre, particularly horror and science fiction, as exemplified by films like

In this episode, the second part of our exploration of African Americans in film, Team Vintage Sand shifts its focus to the people behind the camera. Remember that it was not until Gordon Parks directed his autobiographical "The Learning Tree" in 1969 that Hollywood released a major film by a black director. What followed in its wake was the mixed blessing of “Blaxploitation” in the early 1970’s, which in turn inspired the first major wave of black directors, led by Spike Lee and John Singleton in the late 80’s and early 90’s. Now, at the turn of a new decade, we are witnessing a golden era for Black filmmakers, led by the commercial and artistic successes of artists like Ryan Coogler, Ava Duvernay, Barry Jenkins, Jordan Peele and many others. And we are also beginning to see, especially through the efforts of Tyler Perry, the first major studios created and owned by African-American artists and financiers. Our goal in this episode is twofold. On one hand, we talk about some of the lesser-known and forgotten

Team Vintage Sand is composed of three middle-aged cisgender White males who happen to be old friends and happen to have a passion for Film. In spite of these boundaries of perspective, however, we could not let this moment of social activism and (hopefully)progress go unnoted. Because perhaps more than any other cultural institution, Hollywood's treatment of Black people both in front of and behind the camera has shaped the nation's perception of race relations over the past century. We have no claim of expertise on this history based on lived experience. Our goal in creating this episode (the first of two parts; in Episode 24, we will examine the work of Black filmmakers over the last 100 years)was to simply and briefly trace the changing history of the Black experience in American film. Our aim is to open some doors to artists, trends and films that even film fans may not know well. In doing so, we are hoping that our listeners will have the same experience we had in creating this episode; to re-examine o

For Episode 22, Team Vintage Sand returns to the work of Alfred Hitchcock, for the first time since Episode 5. In that one, we promised (or threatened) to devote a whole episode just to Hitchcock's villains, characters who often end up stealing the films they're in and are often more compelling than his heroes. Reaching all the way back to "The 39 Steps" (1935) and continuing through his penultimate film, 1972's "Frenzy", our intrepid team discusses what makes a great Hitchcock villain and which actors best fit the mold and which succeed by breaking it entirely. So listen in, and we know you'll say about us, "Why, they wouldn't even harm a fly."

Third time's the charm, as we turn once again to Danny Peary's peerless 1993 book, "Alternate Oscars". This go-round, Team Vintage Sand focuses on the 1950's, a decade with some questionable Best Picture choices (to put it politely). Still can't believe that "The Greatest Show on Earth" beat the unnominated "Singin' in the Rain"? Stunned that "Around the World in 80 Days" topped "The Searchers", which was also not nominated? Then join us on our alternate history as we set things right, start laughin' at clouds, and mete out justice in our usual cruel-but-fair Vintage Sand style. Our only ground rule? No foreign-language films, because otherwise this would be a four-hour episode. And if you disagree with our choices, well, as the irrepressible Osgood Fielding famously put it, nobody's perfect. Zowie!

In the midst of the pandemic, many have turned to the art of the past, finding understandable comfort in nostalgia. Team Vintage Sand, in its usual charming and curmudgeonly way, has decided instead to look to the decade to come. In this episode, we discuss the directors that we think will become the next great voices in Film. Some obvious candidates are here, including Ryan Coogler, Damien Chazelle, Greta Gerwig, Barry Jenkins and genre folks like Ari Aster and Denis Villeneuve. But there are some surprises as well. So we hope you'll join Josh, Michael and John as, via Zoom, they buck the general trend by seeking comfort in the future.

Well, Vintage Sand listeners, we've reached the summit. Join us at the summit, where the air is thin and the trees are stubby, as John, Michael and Josh take you through their five favorite films of the decade recently ended. Some real surprises, some total non-surprises, and an overall sense that the early reports of the death of Film-with-a-capital-"F" were a bit premature. Seize the moments, or let the moments seize you!