Ribbon of Memes

It's been over a century and a quarter since the first moving picture was committed to celluloid - the "ribbon of dreams", as Orson Welles mellifluously intoned.

And so, welcome, one and all, to Ribbon of Memes, a new podcast in which Roger Bell_West and Nick Marsh supply grateful listeners hot takes about films considered masterpieces by critics or filmgoers in general.

The rules: we choose one "masterpiece" from every year from the earliest days of cinema to our dreadful modern dystopia. Do we agree these films are classics? Are we entertained? Did we even understand what the film was trying to say? The questions are endless!*

We start in 1973 (for reasons explained in the first podcast) and progress vaguely chronologically (unless we think of another film that makes an interesting comparison to the one we have just seen, or are otherwise distracted by shiny new things).

Yes, that's right, we decided that what the world really needed was two more uninformed middle-aged white guys telling the world about media largely produced by similar people. Find out whether we were right or not herein!

*Actually, no, that's most of them.

We're also on iTunes, Spotify and Google Podcasts.

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L.A. Confidential (1997) 28 May 2022

Noir of a kind, and incompetent criminals galore, as Nick and Roger discuss L.A. Confidential (1997).

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Tags: crime noir

  1. Posted by Robert at 12:58am on 29 May 2022

    I have read the LA Quartet and Clandestine at least twice and Underworld USA twice so I probably qualify as a James Ellroy fan.

    Listening to the episode I think what you are responding to is the underlying novels and what is leaving the weak feeling is the Hollywood ending.

    As adapted from the third part of a quartet, the opening is very different and the ending is very different and the middle is most similar to the novel.

    Ellroy’s writing is very harsh and telegraphic and occasionally revels in the unsavory parts of the past. I’ve been able to take it similarly to Lovecraft as mentioned.

    In re: Danny DeVito, I think Get Shorty is one of his best performances in which he basically plays a parody of Danny DeVito.

  2. Posted by RogerBW at 08:52am on 29 May 2022

    I am unlikely to read Ellroy but I do take your points.

    And I should probably add Get Shorty to our "we missed this, but maybe in season 2" list…

  3. Posted by Nick Marsh at 08:22pm on 01 June 2022

    That makes sense to me, the ending is a real total shift to me although I agree with Roger to some extent that the whole film feels as if it’s building up to it. Either way it spoiled the rest of the film somewhat for me.

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