Speaking in 2008 of what was then his most recent feature, 2006’s I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone, Tsai Ming-liang said: “I did not want to make a political film. I only wanted to film the body — its suffering, sickness, loneliness, fatigue, longing,…
The first striking thing about 2006’s Woman Is the Future of Man is its blunt exhibition of various cruel and brutal sexual behaviors, which range from more typical, regretful encounters to acts which can be described as criminal. Though Hong isn’t often thought of…
#32: Beyond the Masked Tortilla: Musicians Making Movies Download episode here. Episode Description: “This is where we came in…” Like guilty men returning to the scene of a crime, Simon and Steve decide to revisit an idea they’ve had before — in fact, the idea behind the very…
If there’s one word that beats at the heart of the violent, restless Hazard, Sion Sono’s 11th film, it’s “transcendence.” Nominally a crime story about a Japanese college student named Shinichi (Jo Odagiri) who falls in with the wrong crowd on the mean streets of New…
#12: One Whole Year of Bad Ideas: A.K.A. The Happy Madison Productions Episode Download episode here. Episode Description: This month, for their twelfth (TWELFTH!!!) Bad Idea Podcast, Simon & Steve forgo their usual obscurities for a series of films people might have actually heard of. Oddly enough,…
#10: The Bad Idea Podcast Holiday Special: A Very Belated Renny Harlin Christmas Download episode here. Episode Description: This time on Bad Idea Podcast, Simon & Steve tackle Finnish enigma Renny Harlin. The idea: figure out what makes him tick—why some of his films are exemplary, incomparably…
#7: Canadian Like Me: The Worst of the Toronto International Film Festival Download episode here. Episode Description: This September, I was lucky enough to attend the Toronto International Film Festival, which gave me a fun idea for this month’s podcast: Watch some of the most notorious,…
#6: O Captain, Not My Captain: Cinema’s Anti-American Captain Americas Download episode here. Episode Description: What’s on tap for this month? Anti-Americanism! Or at least a version therein, as Simon & Steve discover that an iconic superhero on the page has invariably seemed a lot less iconic when…
Few genres lend themselves as well to a specific holiday as horror does to Halloween. Not every film of the genre directly connects with the holiday (though there’s about 90 Halloween sequels to compensate), but the vibe of Halloween night, the tradition of dressing up like so…