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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The Pianist (2002) 13 August 2022

Roger and Nick discuss The Pianist (2002).

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For this episode Roger used Chopin's Nocturne No. 20 in C♯ minor as the theme music; this recording from Musopen is in the public domain.

Tags: drama

  1. Posted by J Michael Cule at 12:23pm on 15 August 2022

    Chamberlain, not Churchill, was British PM on September 3rd 1939.

    If they had said enough about the Good Nazi then the film would have become about him: another SCHINDLER'S LIST. (And it would be the story of a Schindler who didn't successfully flee to South America. Probably a great tragedy waiting to be written.)

  2. Posted by RogerBW at 12:59pm on 15 August 2022

    Yes, sorry, I was going by voice recognition. But it's still that 3/9/39 broadcast, which is somehow happening after the attacks on Warsaw (23/9/39).

    Oh, sure, I can see the point of not making the story about Hosenfeld – but as it is he's a magical being who drops out of nowhere to do his thing and vanishes again, not someone who'd have been well known among the Polish community.

  3. Posted by Robert at 08:25pm on 19 August 2022

    Many observations on survival amongst the events here that remind me of reading Primo Levi. Having seen Schindler’s List and not this one it seems this needs to make it onto my watch list at some point when I have the reserves to get through it.

  4. Posted by RogerBW at 08:39pm on 19 August 2022

    It assumes you've seen Schindler, maybe because approximately everyone had, but I honestly think this is a much better film.

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