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 Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) 28 August 2021

Nick, Roger and Shawna discuss The Day the Earth Stood Still and Plan 9 From Outer Space.

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  1. Posted by J Michael Cule at 01:46pm on 29 August 2021

    Lots of echo.

    You can do only so much with pretending that the banana is a gun. Even the greatest actors have their limits.

    I suspect the guy who was testing Ed Wood to see if he would say a take wasn't acceptable didn't appreciate the expense of film stock.

    As to the time taken to write a script, Noel Coward wrote BLITHE SPIRIT in six days while staying at Portmerion.

  2. Posted by RogerBW at 01:58pm on 29 August 2021

    Thanks - I suspect a mechanical isolation problem between one of the headsets/microphones.

    I think that film/TV in particular brings an expectation of things looking "realistic" far more than a stage performance does. especially to a modern viewer; I found myself thinking "this is how the local am-dram group builds the aeroplane cockpit set in someone's living room".

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