After 114 conversations here on the cozy FilmCouch, we’ve decided to say goodbye. We’ve had a good run, and we’re eternally grateful to all our listeners. We’ll miss you guys.
For the final show, we talk about why we did this podcast in the first place. What is it about movies that makes them better when they are the subject of a good conversation? We talk with Karina and Adam, and revisit some of our favorite moments. Paul still thinks longingly about Australian auteur Rolf DeHeer. Kevin remembers some sage words from Brad Neely. Adam recalls a spirited argument about Dear Pillow. And finally, Karina brings us back to late summer 2008, when gymnast Nastia Liukin’s sultry Olympic performance got us dreaming of possible gymnastic exploitation flicks.
Also, we give a few tips to you, dear listener, about how you can carry on the podcasting torch. It’s really not that hard to do. E-mail us if you want any other tips.
The epic battle between McCain and Obama will shape America’s future. To prepare, we look at an eerily similar battle from America’s past, the 1960 primaries between JFK and Hubert Humphry, as portrayed in Robert Drew’s verité classic, Primary.
Karina stays in for the weekend watching back-to-back movie marathons to settle an age-old debate: Who’s better, Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire? Also, she shares her fantasy of seeing Olympic gymnastic ass-kicker Nastia Liukin star in a prison-break exploitation flick. It never hurts to dream…
On a more serious note, we talk to director Richard Berge about his documentary The Rape of Europa. The film recounts the heroism of WWII monument men, soldiers tasked with protecting the most priceless artifacts of Western Civilization. Berge tells the story of two veteran monument men debating the film’s central question: can a work of art be more valuable than a human life?
Last night, like everyone else, I stayed up late to watch the All-Around Finals in Olympic Women’s Gymnastics. The thrill of cheering for our good, wholesome, corn syrup-fed girls to take their massive muscled thighs and (metaphorically, of course) break the necks of foreign competitors who are apparently ten years under the minimum age can’t be denied. But where even my beloved Bela Karolyi said from the start that Shawn Johnson was probably the American girl to beat, I had my money on Nastia Liukin.
There’s just something about Nastia. She’s like part ballerina, and part assassin. From the moment I saw her, I had visions of her dressed up like Marlon Brando inThe Wild One. Then, as last night’s competition went on, I kind of revised the fantasy: I imagined all of the competing gymnasts in a reform school exploitation flick, with Shawn as the good girl who doesn’t really belong there, and Nastia as the leader of the pack who teaches her it’s better to be bad.
(It should maybe be here noted that last night, for purely non-recreational reasons, I was under the influence of vicodin).
Anyway, after Nastia won the gold and my sympathy for the bad ass proved prescient, I checked it out, and it turns out Nastia does have an IMDb profile and a bit of acting experience! Well, sort of: she played herself in that cheesy tween-targeted gymnastics flick, Stick It! Apparently, I’m not the only one obsessed with seeing Nastia on screen: last night, this clip from the movie had less than 4,000 views on YouTube; about eight hours later, that count has tripled. Somebody get this girl an agent! But a really, really terrible agent, who will only cast her in schlock, please.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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