The Pink Smoke podcast

John Cribbs & Christopher Funderburg return to the Queen City for the 48th annual Toronto International Film Festival to watch all the best in the current world of le cinema. With a line-up seemingly handcrafted to get us excited, we talk our must-see films, wildcards, and the ones we’re dreading. Included in this year’s slate are new movies by Hayao Miyazaki, Errol Morris Victor Erice, Catherine Breillat, Richard Linklater, Shinya Tsukamoto and more …choosing which titles among the 300+ entries to see is going to be tough. Get psyched! Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com The Pink Smoke on X: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Christopher Funderburg on X: twitter.com/cfunderburg John Cribbs on X: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas”

Christopher Funderburg is joined by Martin Kessler to discuss Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Bundesrepublik Deutschland trilogy: Lola, The Marriage of Maria Braun and The Longing of Veronika Voss. Collectively one of the most incisive looks at post-war West Germany and the re-birth of a nation shattered by Nazism, Fassbinder’s uncompromising and tender BRD films represent, for many, the highpoint of his legendarily prolific career. All Pink Smoke Podcast episodes are made available a week early to our Patreon subscribers, the most sophisticated, urbane & hoity/toity of all audiences. Support our Patreon:
 www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site:
 www.thepinksmoke.com Movie Kessler on X:
 twitter.com/MovieKessler The Pink Smoke on X: 
twitter.com/thepinksmoke Christopher Funderburg on X:
 twitter.com/cfunderburg Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” 
Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"

All Pink Smoke Podcast episodes are made available one week before their general release to Patreon subscribers. Subscribe to get early access & so much more: https://www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke Reality is under attack! Chaos reigns in an unnamed capital city where unwholesome apparitions exist among the besieged citizens, projected by apparatuses invented by magician/mad scientist Dr. Hoffman which modify the nature of reality itself. The city's last hope is to send a Ministry of Determination clerk on a picaresque journey to assassinate the doctor and destroy his device, a mission that will involve river cannibals, Sadeian pilgrims, religious centaurs and anatomical acrobats. This is the world of The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, written by the inimitable Angela Carter. Joining hosts Martin Kessler and John Cribbs to travel Carter's mythological landscape of desire is Melanie Daniels, producer and co-host of the Cinema Parlor Podcast. Together they attempt to traverse this almost indefinable, orgiastic blend of romanticism, horror, fantasy, surrealism, magical realism, philosophy, science fiction, Gulliver, Kafka and Conrad from one of the most unique voices in English literature. Melanie Daniels on Twitter: twittter.com/plasticwerewolf Cinema Parlor Podcast: https://soundcloud.com/cinemaparlor The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com John Cribbs on Twitter: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Movie Kessler on Twitter: twitter.com/MovieKessler The Pink Smoke on Twitter: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"

A classic episode (utterly classic) episode released from behind the Patreon paywall. Savor it like some kind of a savory soup. Hosts John Cribbs & Christopher Funderburg are joined by Marcus Pinn of Pinnland Empire as well as Calgary's own Carly Schmidt to discuss the new film from Olivier Assayas, NON-FICTION.

What more can possibly be said about Dziga Vertov & Mikhail Kaufman's Man With a Movie Camera, one of the most studied, discussed and written-about films ever made? Is everybody sick of hearing how amazing it is? Perhaps it speaks to the film's timeless artistic energy and bold experimentation that there's always something to say about the camera techniques, radical editing and unique blending of avant-garde and documentary styles which come together using "no titles, no scenario, no actors, no sets" to create an "absolute language of cinema." To help get the best possible insight into this giant artwork, hosts Martin Kessler and John Cribbs welcome Jeremy Workman, a filmmaker who's taken inspiration from Vertov in everything from his award-winning film Lily Topples the World to his latest short documentary Deciding Vote. How has Workman trained his Kino-Eye to the subjects in front of his own movie camera? Is a one hour-long, nearly-100 year old Russian movie's impact so far-reaching that it continues to inspire modern art and filmmaking around the world? Jeremy Workman's website: www.jeremyworkman.com The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com John Cribbs on Twitter: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Movie Kessler on Twitter: twitter.com/MovieKessler The Pink Smoke on Twitter: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"

The Pink Smoke is coming in from the cold to debrief our listeners on 100 years worth of espionage thrillers. Starting in the 1920's, we chose one notable spy movie (as well as a few alternate picks) for each decade leading to our present day in order to decode how they reflect the history and pop culture of their respective epoch. From the years leading to World War II through the Cold War and up to the modern age of counterintelligence in the time of domestic terrorism and the internet, we recruited agents John Arminio (co-host of Popcorn Eschaton!) and Bill Scurry (co-host of I Don't Get It) to analyze these cloak-and-dagger tales and what they have to say about the excitement and morality of the spy profession. In Part Two, we deal with the 1980's, an era of glorified excess in which the spy movie survived by integrating itself within other popular subgenres, and make our way up to the 2020's, a much quieter and retrospective period for espionage thrillers. In between, we discuss the most charmingly repugnant spy of them all, a rip-roaring roller coaster ride about the CIA's greatest asset with amnesia (no - not that one!), betrayals and double crosses set in the corporate world and plots critical of counterintelligence agencies that can't detect deception among their own ranks. Popcorn Eschaton!: https://soundcloud.com/zebras-in-america/popcorn-eschaton-1 I Don't Get It Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i-dont-get-it-podcast/id1205228194 The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com John Cribbs on Twitter: twitter.com/TheLastMachine The Pink Smoke on Twitter: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"

Hosts John Cribbs & Christopher Funderburg discuss (possibly) their favorite film of the year, Hirokazu Kore-eda's Shoplifters. This episode, recorded in 2018, was released from behind our Patreon paywall. Enjoy it. Think about it. Perhaps someday... learn to love it.

The Pink Smoke is coming in from the cold to debrief our listeners on 100 years worth of espionage thrillers. Starting in the 1920's, we chose one notable spy movie (as well as a few alternate picks) for each decade leading to our present day in order to decode how they reflect the history and pop culture of their respective epoch. From the years leading to World War II through the Cold War and up to the modern age of counterintelligence in the time of domestic terrorism and the internet, we recruited agents John Arminio (co-host of Popcorn Eschaton!) and Bill Scurry (co-host of I Don't Get It) to analyze these cloak-and-dagger tales and what they have to say about the excitement and morality of the spy profession. In Part One, we cover the 1920's through the 1970's which includes one epic silent masterpiece, various adventures set behind enemy lines during the war of nations, intimate stories of British citizens who exploit governments for personal gain, human dramas about moral degradation behind the Iron Curtain and post-Watergate paranoid thrillers. Support our Patreon! All Pink Smoke Podcast episodes are made available a week early to our Patreon subscribers, the most open-minded and good-natured of all audiences: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke Popcorn Eschaton! https://soundcloud.com/zebras-in-america/popcorn-eschaton-1 I Don't Get It Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i-dont-get-it-podcast/id1205228194 The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com John Cribbs on Twitter: twitter.com/TheLastMachine The Pink Smoke on Twitter: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"

PSP: Pulp Fictions covers the "Bond Novel That Never Was" - crime writer Donald Westlake's FOREVER AND A DEATH! Westlake is a favorite author of hosts Christopher Funderburg & John Cribbs so they're at full force in discussing this curious posthumously published work that on the surface seems to have nothing to do with 007.

Over a decade after his high-octane cyber-punk metal mutilation fetishism monster debut Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), director-producer-writer-cinematographer-editor-star Shinya Tsukamoto truly discovered himself as an artist and filmmaker with the blue-tinted, rain-drenched fever nightmare A Snake of June (2002). His seventh feature film, it follows three characters: a sexually-repressed telephone counselor, her hygiene-obsessed husband and a mysterious, spying interloper who will disrupt and upend their domestic sterilization. Hosts Christopher Funderburg and John Cribbs revisit every monochromatic corner of this beautifully strange film, which is somehow persistently cruel yet deeply empathetic to the three characters who find themselves trapped within the oppressive confines of their urban surroundings. How much of this is a self-critique by Tsukamoto (who also plays the creepy, disembodied voyeur) on the exploitative nature of cinema itself? Is there a safe middleground between cultural subjugation and unrestrained liberation? There's a lot to discuss about this deceptively short masterwork. Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke All Pink Smoke Podcast episodes are made available a week early to our Patreon subscribers, the most open-minded and good-natured of all audiences. The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com John Cribbs on Twitter: twitter.com/TheLastMachine The Pink Smoke on Twitter: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Christopher Funderburg on Twitter: twitter.com/cfunderburg Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"