The Factual Opinion

Woodshed: I Hear You Paint Horses

This week, Sean and I did the movie podcast despite the fact that I had only watched one movie. But the next day I realized that wasn't true: I had watched The Last Emperor, which is a really long and expensive looking movie. It's fine, the same kind of bland majesty that all those sorts of award winning films seem to always have. I liked John Lone a little more in Cronenberg's M. Butterfly, and I loved him in that terrible 90's movie where he was a ninja and an old man killed a sword. 

There's a delightful shortage of me on this week's episode of Comic Books Are Burning In Hell; unfortunately, there's so unavoidable technical problems as well. Chris assures me that it's all my fault.

Over at The Comics Journal, Abhay Khosla wrote about the actual and comics news, while I dicked around about Batman Incorporated, Justice League and that Jupiter's Legacy comic.

I hung out and spotted a peenie man who was grabbing a full run of Freak Force. I didn't give him any shit, because I can understand the raw hankering for something specific and maybe not-so-good. Vic Bridges!

Matt Maxwell and Abhay Khosla found this little image, it reminds me of the covers to the Hardy Boys Casefiles that I remember thinking of as the ultimate form of literature up until the point when I read The Stand. Brother Against Brother. Running On Empty. Blood Relations! Too Many Traitors.

The Act of Killing seems like its a movie designed to decimate those who watch it, it's already claimed Errol Morris and Werner Herzog as emotional victims. Here's the super brutal hard to watch trailer. 

This week's crop of Burning Love episodes were excellent, but special mention has to go to Ken Marino, who is delivering an all-time best shithead-you-can't-help-pulling-for character. I'm already getting selfishly irritated that there aren't new episodes, and there still are new episodes.

Miss Nina released her new CD last week, and she set up a little store through which to sell it. (It's also available on Amazon, iTunes and about a hundred other places.) It's doing well!

A cartoonist that I particularly like, Ben Urkowitz, is doing one of those crowdfunding things along with Mia Schwartz. The more comics Ben makes, the happier I get. Read between the lines!

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WHAT'S THE BIG COMIC OF THE WEEK? Gilbert Hernandez's Marble Season. WE GOT IT HERE. PLUS, the world-famous DECADENCE COMICS from the British Isles and BEYOND. A PODCAST SO HOT IT BURNED DOWN ITS VERY MEDIUM OF EXPRESSION. That means the recording just breaks at the end! WE DROPPED THE MIC.

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The Talking Movie Podcast

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00:00 - 10:07 - INTROS. This week on TRAVIS BICKLE ON THE RIVIERA, a movie podcast about movies and movies, Tucker read David Denby's Do The Movies Have A Future?, and we talk about Denby, his other book Snark, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Judd Apatow, and comic book movies. Sean tried to read The Evil Dead Companion by Bill Warren. But couldn't. Which leads to...

10:08 - 16:28 - Sean watched the Evil Dead remake (2013), directed by Fede Alvarez, starring the five available people nearest to the casting director at the time they went to shoot the movie. In this section we talk about how you can't copy someone else's fetishes.

16:29 - 23:15 - Tucker has been marathoning, and finished, the entire series of The Shield.
Also in this section we talk about Alan Sepinwall's The Revolution Was Televised, and Shawn Ryan's other shows, specifically Terriers.

23:16 - 29:11 - Tucker has also been catching up on Delocated, which Sean loves like crazy. In this section we talk about Todd Barry's twitter and PFFFR! tv shows.

29:12 - 38:56 - HOMEWORK - Tucker watched Cul De Sac (1966), directed by Roman Polanski, starring Francoise Dorleac, Donald Pleasance, Lionel Stander, and Jack Magowran.  In this section we talk about Beckett, Polanski's other films, and his attempt to adapt Waiting For Godot, and Straw Dogs. We also talk about the Parker adaptations, including Slayground and The Split. Rare corrections - when Sean says "Brecht" he means "Beckett", and when Tucker says "The Apartment" he means "The Tenant".

38:57 - 46:36 - HOMEWORK (sorta) Sean watched The Small Back Room (1949), directed by Powell and Pressburger/ the Archers, starring David Farrar, Kathleen Byron, and Michael Gough. In this section we also talk The Hurt Locker, The Spy In Black, Fritz Lang, and then we detour in a great sidebar about how Tucker fucking loves Carl Theodore Dreyer.

46:37 - 55:44 - Sean has been watching every single Brian De Palma movie (and slapping screencaps on tumblr because going outside is for suckers), because of reasons, he's about halfway done with it and we kind of briefly talk about it without going full geek. Don't worry, this will probably happen the next time. Also in this section we talk about Die Hard 4, Ghost Protocol, Kirk Douglas, Altman's Buffalo Bill and the Indians, the 6 hour cut of All the Pretty Horses, and how every movie would be better with Dune voiceovers.

Our homework movies this week are Mean Streets and Moonraker, and our outro music is Norma Jean's "Sorcerer".

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NEXT WEEK: A PEOPLE TALKING SOUND THING

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Hair Shirts 4 Everyone, Blutch For The Select Few

On this episode, Chris Mautner, Matt Seneca, Joe McCulloch and Tucker Stone talk about Hair Shirt by Patrick McEwon, the work of Kazuo Umezu, and Blutch's So Long Silver Screen. There's something else too, but I can't remember what it was right now.

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Jon He Does It

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0:00:00 - 0:01:10 - INTROS - This week we have itinerant (and first returnings?) panel guest Jared Lewis. The audio on this one is a pretty rough at the beginning, our apologies for that. Recording without Skype is difficult and we're still figuring it out. This was actually recorded the day following Delocated's cancellation and I've been messing around with editing and levels since, and it's still very rough. Deal with it.

0:01:11 - 0:13:35 - To start off this week we both watched Out Of Sight (1998), directed by Steven Soderbergh, and starring George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, Don Cheadle, Ving Rhames, Michael Keaton, Albert Brooks, Steve Zahn, and Dennis Farina. We spend a lot of time in this section discussing Soderbergh's career.

0:13:36 - 0:21:31 - Jared watched Django Unchained (2012), directed by Quentin Tarantino, starring all the people we listed the last time we talked about this movie on here.

0:21:32 - 0:30:33 - Both of us watched No More Excuses (1968), directed by Robert Downey Sr. We also talk about Louie and this video of Paul Thomas Anderson / Downey Sr talking about No More Excuses. 

0:30:34 - 0:42:14 - Jared watched Safety Not Guaranteed (2012), directed by Colin Trevorow, starring Mark Duplass, Aubrey Plaza, Jake Johnson, Karan Sorni, Jeff Garlin, and Mary Lynn Rajskub. In this section we also discuss Mark Duplass on WTF, The Puffy Chair, and Mystery Team.

0:42:15 - 46:25 - Sean watched Murder A La Mod (1968) directed by Brian De Palma, starring William Finley, Andra Akers, Margo Norton, Jared Martin. In this section we talk about young De Palma, Wes Anderson, and Takeshi Koike.

0:46:26 - 1:12:29 - We spend the longest amount of time this episode talking about Delocated, a tv show created, written by and starring Jon Glaser, which we were both very big fans of. Like the way Tucker loves The Shield, I love Delocated. The show recently had it's standalone finale and went kind of unheralded, so we felt the need to spend the time and actually memorialize it. 

I do have to correct myself that 30 Rock is a rare recent sitcom that had an amazing final episode, and if I was forced, East Bound And Down did too (though I think it's finale was weak compared to season 2's), but I think Delocated would stack up pound for pound better than both of those finales.

And this week our intro and outro clips are from Delocated, and are stupid in-jokes that will likely turn people off who don't already love the series. Sorryz, had to be done.

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NEXT WEEK: SOME OTHER THING SOMEPLACE.

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Ich Bin Ein Moccaner

Joe and Chris didn't go to this year's MoCCA Fest in New York, but Matt Seneca did! Not only that he was an exhibitor, selling his own darn comics at the show! So the Pennsylvania pair decide to use this opportunity to grill Matt like a swordfish and find out what it's like being on the other side of the table for once. Sadly, we had to cut this one a tad short, as we were having really awful technical difficulties. Truly it was redonkulous. 

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Watch A Bunch of Idiots Get Married

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0:00:00 - 0:04:31 - INTROS - This week on Travis Bickle on the Riviera we start off by talking about knitting, plastic cups and Brooklyn.

0:04:32 - 0:11:18 - HOMEWORK - Sean was assigned Andrei Rublev (1966), directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, starring some Russian people. Also in this section we talk about other Tarkovsky movies, again, and translation.

0:11:19 - 0:22:27 - HOMEWORK - Tucker was assigned Sisters (1973), directed by Brian De Palma, starring Margot Kidder, Charles Durning, Jennifer Salt, William Finley. Also discussed in this section - Hitchcock (specifically later Hitchcock), Robert Deniro, Al Pacino working with David Mamet, and Charles Durning's life and career. 

0:22:28 - 0:29:25 - Sean watched GI JOE Retaliation (2013) directed by John M Chu, starring Walton Goggins, Channing Tatum, The Rock, Jonathan Pryce, Ray Stevenson, Bruce Willy, Tyra from Friday Night Lights, and bunch of white stuntmen with rags over their heads to pretend like a warehouse in California is Iran. Also discussed in this section - The Shield, Olympus Has Fallen, and The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.

0:29:26 - 0:37:06 - Tucker watched Dirty Work (1998) directed by Bob Saget, starring Norm McDonald, Artie Lang, Traylor Howard, Chris McDonald, Chevy Chase, David Koechner, and Chris Farley. Also discussed in this section Monk, Major League, Hot Shots, Police Academy 2, Airplane 2, and rape jokes in The Mighty Boosh and The Long Kiss Goodnight.

0:37:07 - 0:44:51 - Sean watched Fudoh: A New Generation (1997), directed by Takashi Miike. Also discussed in this section the Iron Man 3 trailer, the Death Note film series, The Dark Knight, Aaron Eckhart, Richard Gere, World War Z, and White House Down.

0:44:52 -0:55:27 - Stealing the TRIPLE BANGER LIGHTNING ROUND from Cashing in With TJ MILLER, Tucker watched Insignificance (1985) directed by Nic Roeg; Picnic At Hanging Rock (1975) directed by Peter Weir; and Le Doulos (1962) directed by Jean Pierre Melville. Also discussed in this section - Watchmen, NBC's Smash (because it is hilarious to call it NBC possesive apostrophe s Smash), The Hit, The Virgin Suicides (Josh Hartnett and not Ashton Kutcher but who the fuck cares), THE TWO MARILYNS, Mad Max.

0:55:27 - 1:13:37 - Sean watched Getting To Know Your Rabbit (1972) directed by Brian De Palma and Room 237 (2013) directed by Rodney Ascher. 

We kind of use Room 237 to talk about the nature of criticism, obsession, close reading, textual analysis,modern non-talking head documentaries, Tucker on a Gary Groth editorial in The Comics Journal #100, Blow Out, online video essays, Stanley Kubrick's Boxes, A Life In Pictures, Alien, Going Clear, journalism, entertainment, genre for genre's sake, the corporate co-opting of the idea of genre for genre's sake, and self-justification.

Our outro music this week is David McCallum and David Axelrod's "Smile".

Download A Bunch Of Idiots Getting Married

NEXT WEEK:

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This week, Joe McCulloch, Matt Seneca and Chris Mautner talk about Black Paths, the new book from David B., which leads to a discussion of the French artist's major work Epileptic and its influence (and Marjane Satrapi), which in turn leads to Matt complaining about the plethora of memoir comics that are cluttering up bookshelves these days. Then that leads to the gang talking about cartoonists that know how to get in and get out quickly, like Tom Gauld, Lisa Hanawalt and Simon Hanselmann. Then Matt talks about The Adventures of Jodelle, which has nothing to do with anything what we had been talking about beforehand, but sounds like a really boss book. Bad segue on our part! 

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