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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Escape from New York (1981) 05 July 2025

Roger and Nick return to the John Carpenter well, with the low-budget action piece Escape from New York (1981).

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Tags: action

  1. Posted by Robert at 03:17pm on 05 July 2025

    Agree on pretty much all counts for this movie. Only a couple additional thoughts,

    I’ve always read tough guy Snake Plissken as a bit taking the piss with the ‘70s Dirty Harry mode. Something about Russell’s portrayal comes off tongue-in-cheek. Like throughout Snake kind of can’t believe all this nonsense happening to him and just wants to have a beer and a nap and be left alone. I observe very little of the Deathwish and later ‘80s action movie thing of thirsting for revenge and more of a “if I have to shoot this guy to not be here and not have to listen to any more nonsense I’ll shoot the guy.” It’s like Plissken mocks the trope from the opposite direction of Jack Burton. One is competent and hates it and wants to be left alone, the other is desperate to be competent and can’t survive without an audience.

    Structurally this film has a moment that haunts me and I can’t tell if Carpenter intended it or put it there specifically so I’d overthink it or if I’m overthinking it all on my own. At about the 34 minutes mark as Cabbje is hollering at Snake to be safe most of the frame of the shot is occupied by a wall and on that wall is a huge graffiti and that graffiti just says “COLON”. I’ve spent way more time than I should wondering if that is intended as a grammatical : to show a key break in the film or if someone on the crew had just been to the proctologist or if it was just there in St Louis and the crew said “we have to have that right here.”

    I do recommend Escape from LA but with the caveat that it is an homage much more than a sequel and that the key part is the beginning and ending rhyming with Escape from NY and seems to be to view all that happened after Escape from NY in action dystopias with a kind of tired, wry, disdain. Also Bruce Campbell chews some serious scenery.

  2. Posted by RogerBW at 03:05pm on 07 July 2025

    Carpenter said he was inspired more by Death Wish, but I think he comes up with a more more interesting scenario in which to place his lone tough guy.

    And Bronson's Paul Kersey, or Eastwood's Harry Callahan, can't laugh at themselves. Snake Plissken can. (So, to be fair, can many of Schwarzenegger's tough guys; see our episode on Commando.) As a guy who has no time for deadly serious macho posturing, that sense of humour and an acceptance of the innate ridiculousness of the situation is essential for me to enjoy a character.

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