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 and Google Podcasts.

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Dr Safelight 19 September 2026

I got a pretty fair idea that something doggone important is goin' on back there. Nick and Roger take three looks at nuclear war averted, or not, with 1964's Dr Strangelove and Fail Safe, then 1990's TV movie By Dawn's Early Light.

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Tags: war

  1. Posted by J Michael Cule at 03:54pm on 19 September 2026

    I do wish that people would learn to keep their feelings about the artist away from their feelings about the art.

    Oddly, I don't feel that way about philosophers. Especially Immanuel Kant with Plato coming up a close second.

  2. Posted by RogerBW at 06:22pm on 19 September 2026

    To appreciate a performance, especially a sympathetic or comedic one, I have to accept this performer as someone sympathetic. Which, if I know they were a horrible person who would take advantage of anyone stupid enough to try to befriend them, feels like deliberately ignoring the warning signs I'm getting.

    I find it much easier with composers or writers. (Let's face it, if you take out the fears of miscegenation, women, seafood, and the Theory of Relativity, there isn't a whole lot of Lovecraft left.)

  3. Posted by J Michael Cule at 01:57pm on 26 September 2026

    There is the sheer horror of being a mortal, sapient being in a univerae without meaning or mercy.

    Lovecraft wasn't a good writer (in any sense of the word 'good') but he could turn a phrase and depict a situation to make yer flesh creep. The reason the narrator dislikes air conditioning in COOL AIR is just one example of the things that Lovecraft has left in my brain. Curse him.

    And, you know, if the world knew the full truth about me, I'd probably have to go and live on a remote Scottish island. Not sure how serious I am? Good.

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