The Letterboxd Show 3.35: Aaron Yap
GEMMA Before we chat with Aaron today we have to mention that this episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures and their new film, Empire of Light, written and directed by Academy Award-Winner Sam Mendes and starring Olivia Colman, Micheal Ward, Toby Jones, and Colin Firth.
SLIM Named one of Vanity Fair’s 10 Best Films of the Year, Mendes’ drama features cinematography from Oscar winner Roger Deakins and an original score by Oscar winners Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Now playing in select theaters, so get your tickets today. And now, on with the show...
[clip from Z Channel plays]
GEMMA Hello and welcome to The Letterboxd Show, the podcast about movies people love watching from Letterboxd, the social network for people who love watching movies. I’m Gemma, he is Slim, and each episode we are ed by a special guest to discuss their four favorite films. This week on the show, someone we’ve been chasing for a while, but he’s been a hard man to pin down. It’s not like we don’t have a for him, because he is right here in the office... Our colleague, Letterboxd’s one and only, Aaron Yap.
AARON Hello Gemma and Slim!
SLIM If you follow any of our social s, Aaron is the genius who runs the team who do the tweets and the grams and the unboxings. He’s a longtime film writer and movie marketing man and for the longest time he worked for the New Zealand version of Netflix, (Fatso, RIP). Now, he’s ours. Aaron has a legendary physical media collection, and a mind like a trap when it comes to movies. His four favorites reflect his eclectic taste and they are: The Brainiac, Footprints, Local Hero and Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession. Aaron, welcome to the Letterboxd Show…
AARON Hey Gemma, hey Slim. I’m glad I got this timing right this time. Sorry for speaking a bit early.
GEMMA It’s not weird at all doing this, is it?
AARON No, no. I think the only sort of disconnect is actually having listened to the show for a long time, it’s just being within the space of you know, in the podcast. So kind of an out of body kind of feeling for me. So I’m very happy to be here. And yeah, interesting process of being able to talk about your favorite movies in this way.
SLIM I it was we were in a meeting together maybe like a month ago. And it was I think maybe it was at the end of the week. And Aaron had said as like a sign off. Yeah, I need to go get ready for the letter, my letterbox show appearance and in my head. I was like, Oh my God, that’s like a month away. Aaron please. prep work started so far in advance. It was impressive. Maybe the most of any of our guests in history.
AARON Yeah, I’m hoping to deliver on that and I’m taking this seriously. So my memory recall isn’t that great as well. So a prep is definitely helpful and thanks for all the notes
GEMMA hosts memory recall is great three years into a pandemic.
AARON Honestly, that’s true. Scotland doesn’t exist brain fog.
GEMMA Speaking of exhaustive so my understand as preparation for this show you did exhaustive research into our guest
SLIM I did you know I have a team I have a team Bureau and in Philadelphia that does that that helps me with this research team. And I had no idea Aaron that you were in New Zealand critic. So I think it’s it’s it’s a learning experience not just for me but our audience as well. So Aaron obviously heads up the social team, but I had no idea that in addition to the various hats that you were at letterbox, you know, writing social team and so many other things. But you were also like a legit New Zealand film critic. And is there anything you missed from that? Or do you appreciate now the kind of grassroots is Gemma has called it? Over the years, the grassroots letterbox style of watching writing and loving movies.
AARON Yeah, so I guess writing about movies professionally, was the first almost my first proper job. So I always have the work element of writing attached to it and that’s a double edged sword as Gemma, you probably know that. Combining your love for film and and having to pump out words for work is sometimes quite challenging. And doing it all in like a consistent way and delivering is difficult but can be rewarding as well. But yeah, I do appreciate letterboxes looser style. I don’t write as much as I used to now and precisely because it sort of does have a kind of work stigma attached to it. I prefer just to like enjoy things in log my movies and and when I get time, a little bit of writing is great. I like I still like to do it. But it’s a really great training ground for anyone who wants to write professionally Do it kind of see both sides of the industry as a fan and also someone like the behind the scenes stuff as well.
GEMMA I think I did film criticism for a major magazine in New Zealand for about a year and a half. And then I was done. I was out, I couldn’t handle the pressure. The thing is, is Erin well knows New Zealand as a really small country. And in fact, you once wrote about the dangers of being a film critic in a small country about how we’re all related or at least very, very likely to bump into the filmmaker whose movie we’ve just reviewed, is decidedly average. And that happened, right?
AARON Yeah, it’s it’s quite difficult in that sense that you have everyone knows someone that’s not you know, you don’t have too many degrees of separation before you hit someone who’s read the review. And I’ve had instances over the years where it’s become slightly personal you know, I know I’ve learned one of Gemma Mutual’s have had a, you know, I don’t know if I want to bring it up at this stage. But it’s, it was an interesting day.
GEMMA We’ll put that link in the notes. You can read about it. You don’t have to re traumatize yourself.
AARON Yeah. It’s funny, the first film I’m gonna we’re gonna talk about well, I’ll bring some of that and because it’s all related I mean, as you know, it’s it’s a small country being a film writer. Talking about movies and writing them as not everyone’s going to be happy with what you write.
SLIM The good news is the rock can’t blacklist me from letterbox my two star Black Adam or my one star read review he can’t can’t hurt me on letterbox. He can’t do it.
GEMMA Yeah, you can’t be black listed on letterbox for your opinions unless they contravene our community policy. Oh, yes. Your deck anyway.
SLIM got bigger things to worry about than what the rock will think.
GEMMA I love your writing. Aaron, I’m sad that you’re so busy that you don’t write enough for us. You wrote a brilliant piece on LM Clem loves comm and see when it when it elevated itself up into the top three. And it’s now the highest rated film on letterbox. I highly recommend people read that. But in the piece he wrote about bumping into the filmmaker whose film you reviewed, not well, you wrote to read a critic who’s able to provide discourse provide context and inspire new new perspective with as an intrinsic, vital part of living in breathing the culture to their voice.
AARON
As for memory recall, I can’t believe I wrote that. But that’s that’s that’s a good reminder. I mean, yeah, letterbox is a kind of a positive platform for having that sort of connection with a filmmaker who can just reach out and and read about their work. I think that’s a that’s a good thing. I hope it inspires more of those kind of new perspectives, especially at that grassroot level.
GEMMA Hey, hey, chuck you to your first movie in a cinema.
AARON Probably my dad. I’ve always he was the one that always took me my brother to movies. I don’t what I can’t what the earliest film I saw. But stuff on definitely viewings like quite memorable dislike. Going to the video store. And this was back in Malaysia where we don’t have video stores in the sense of like Blockbuster or, you know, video easy when it used to be around in New Zealand. I’ll just come in and say the essentially pirate of stores. I think Isabelle Sandoval posted a great picture of just I think it was yesterday, there’s this great picture of the stall which pirated DVDs and that’s essentially Southeast Asia as kind of like that. That’s the way people consume movies in that time. And yeah, so lots of crazy shit. And they weren’t, they weren’t censored. I think one of my favorite memories was watching like The Beast Within it’s like the early 80s horror film that kind of traumatized me for quite a long time when I was probably 10. I sort of was watching peeking over my dad’s shoulder and there’s one scene where the monster in the film as the character is transforming slowly into the monster. And it was done in that sort of graphic detail were could I could actually feel that happening to me as well. So I thought I thought for a while something was changing within my body that was similar to the way the character was transforming. But that’s kind of a memory that always stays with me.
SLIM We were talking earlier about physical collections in the introductions and I’ve been known to poke fun at your physical media collection along with Mitchell’s and recently I was asked what a movie was that solidified my love of film or just movie watching? And to me it was my earliest memories of buying a DVD player and a DVD. So when I first bought a DVD player, it was like a GE and I guess it was around the timeframe of and Austin Powers. Those were my formative have memories. And like plugging in this to the TV and showing my dad that like, look at picture quality as DVD likes his bone, your VHS is away. And I also plugging in the cables to the VCR, which was connected to the TV and they had like this auto piracy protection enabled, so would like fade the picture in, in and out because I thought I was trying to record the DVDs. But do you have that memory with a physical purchase? You know, and or one of your earliest physical purchases that maybe you wish you still had or maybe still do have that created that relationship for you?
AARON Yes, definitely I do. I still ship the way I organize from the first DVDs I bought, they’re in chronological order. And after I think maybe the last few years, this has spiraled out of control. But the first maybe 50 to 100 There’s still stacked in the order that I bought them. Wow. First DVD I ever bought was Night of the Living Dead. The Elite entertainment version, it’s got an awful cover. And it’s still it’s still the first DVD on the shelf that I first used to put on my DVDs and and that was probably the earliest memory of buying something a disk anyway physically. And then I think might have been a criterion DVD after that. Maybe like, High and Low which Jim I picked up a Blu ray upgrade for me from the closet. Thank you. So yeah, those those couple of films, criterion was definitely an early kind of awareness. Okay, there’s a Canon here that I need to you know, dig into and just watch everything they have.
SLIM Jim Do you your earliest physical purchase memory?
GEMMA Earliest physical pictures
SLIM of a movie?
GEMMA Oh, yeah. Would have been. There would have been like a five pack of blank VHS is so that I could take movies off the TV and pause every time the ad break came on. My siblings and I would Yeah, we’d have to Rock Paper Scissors for who was gonna sit up late with their finger on the pause record button. Mike to block out the commercial so that we could all then sit down and watch this movie later. This physical DVD purchase that The Departed Martin Scorsese that The Departed I love that movie so much that I knew I was gonna buy it the instant it became available. Never watched it since
SLIM does that make your top 250 Still the department that’s selling your top 250 or now?
AARON Yeah, I don’t know if you the cases for the DVDs used to have like snapper like LEDs. And one of the first ones I bought in that style was Taxi Driver. Scorsese one and I’ve never upgraded it, but I do miss those plastic sound. It’s one of those obsolete sounds you’ll never hear again. When you open the snapper.
GEMMA Yeah, speaking of crazy shit, and men transforming into strange beasts, shall we dive into your first favorite elberon del Terra? Or in English The Brainiac 1962 channel automata. This has a whopping 2.7 average out of five stars on litterbugs. So we’re coming in hard. We’re coming in hard the 2.7 horror. I have to say watching this I was like, Ah, thank you, Aaron. In 1661, Mexico, the Baron Vitellius of Estera is sentenced to be burned alive by the Holy Inquisition for witchcraft, necromancy and various other crimes. And as he dies, he swears vengeance against the descendants of his Inquisitors cat two 300 years later, and a comment lands in Mexico, bringing with it, the Baron in the form of a horrible brain eating monster who was about to terrorize the Inquisitors descendants. What a gift a gift to cinema and what a gift to the leader.
AARON But so, yeah, just having you read out the synopsis. Thanks, by the way, because I was just telling slim that snap sizing a movie is not my strongest points and having that read out to me, which I’ve never heard before makes it sound even more insane. It actually probably is insane. In that sense. I thought I’d throw a curveball for the first pick and start off with something that I don’t know if anyone has anyone pick is this the strangest movie but I didn’t know I might be.
GEMMA It might be three three other people have this on their favorites. On letterbox we have had a movie that nobody had in their favorites. So it’s still not the most obscure film. Sorry, Iran you have to try.
SLIM But it might be the strangest it might be one of the strangest we’ve ever had for sure.
AARON I actually rewatched this about a year ago. I had a DVD of bid which had the original Spanish language soundtrack to it, and I thought I’d rewatch it but because I’d never seen it in the original language and the place I mean, it’s still crazy movie, but it’s you know, it’s quite nice to hear the Spanish speaking soundtrack. And when I logged in a letterbox I was really surprised to see how long it was for some reason I thought maybe it was a film that people would have embraced for how absurd and like crazy off the wall it is, but it seems like a very kind of evil love it totally hated.
GEMMA Anyone who’s who’s hesitating this guy. Well, first of all, the Inquisition is seen as long and quite insane. And he has this epic line. If my body is to be burned, it will be without chains. And he disappears, the chains just disappear. And this was like 1962. I’m freaking out about the practical effects. And then he comes back as this aforementioned The Brainiac and he’s got I don’t know if I can describe the tongue front.
AARON One of the funniest things about film is that the cut from the Inquisition scene straight to the present day. It’s like the swanky Jazz Club right after this long Yes. Inquisition and he’s like tortured and being burned and stuff. And it is the swing scene right after it. I love that transition. But yeah, the monster How do you even I was trying to describe it the minor it’s like, how do you even describe this thing to someone who’s never seen it? Like what does it look like?
SLIM And it’s like, it looks like a pulsating rat face like it also is it is pulsating for some reason he like can warp into this monster with a gigantic tongue looks like a fruit roll up that’s frozen in an extended form and put his shoe probably like two pugs. Yeah, but His cheeks are going like in and out in and out. Oh my God, it was very unsettling. And we should point out to the related to the lower rating Jack did put some facts together. It’s the second lowest rated film we’ve covered behind Ang Lee’s the Hulk. Oh, wow. Ang Lee the Hulk was rated lower. What? Oh, my God, I couldn’t believe it.
AARON That’s interesting.
SLIM Yeah, no, it’s a I feel like history should be kinder danglies the hawk,
GEMMA it turns up on a lot of letterbox lists about psycho Tronic cinema and I’d love you to take a moment to explain psychotronic to the listeners, ie me, who aren’t quite across this genre.
AARON Maybe not a specific genre as such, because I guess like my training might cover a lot of different genres within that sort of umbrella. Whether it’s sci fi, or, you know, just thrillers and stuff. But yeah, just crazy. Out of norm, you know, when I first started The Brainiac, it was at a 24 hour movie marathon that was in a sort of this cinema, one string cinema called the Chinatown. I, Jim, I don’t know, have you ever been there, but they used to have the incredibly strange film festival there. And one because the 24 hour movie marathon is an annual thing. But for this, whatever reason this year, they just had a 12 hour one. And they played The Brainiac on 16mm. And it came at probably 4am in the morning. And you know, everyone’s this, you know, during that stage, even though it’s 12 hours, not 24 hours, but it was kind of the perfect time to see that movie. And the print was kind of muddy, and you can’t you bleary eyed and trying to take everything and then you see this monster and I think that has that it’s kind of a perfect kind of psychotronic time to consume this kind of stuff. So I think about that. Just very strange and out of the ordinary off the wall, kind of sensibilities.
SLIM First of all, I can’t even think about watching live at 4am in a theater, I would be dead I would be crawling out of there into my car to get into my into my bed even for a 12 hour movie marathon. I don’t know how people do it. I was thinking to Gemma’s earlier comment about how he didn’t want to be burned in the chains. So the chains disappear. But he still goes to get burned. He’s like you just made chains disappear off your body maybe just like fly out the window so that you can continue to live? Yeah, I thought that was hilarious. And then he gets burned for the next 10 or 15 minutes while he curses the family of descendants. So the main thing the main things that jumped out at me were like this entire movie is this witch wizard enacting revenge on the descendants of those you know the Inquisitors but they could be nice people you know how many generations have gone down the line? He’s still gonna annihilate them and that’s the movie and by
GEMMA the way, he was banned because he was evil. The litter box reviews of this are hilarious. I mean, I think you’ve you know, definitely found your people here, Aaron. Amy Vorhees writes, I find a little breaks average star rating for this movie just stupidly low. The Baron seduces women in its brains. What more Are you people want anyone who rates this movie lower than three stars has abdicated Joy
AARON Slim was just mentioning all these little moments that just kind of, I don’t know, logically, they just don’t make sense at all. And as you know, the flames are like he, he he walked through people he’s like, he goes through walls and stuff and by the flame thrower will just stop him. spoilers but right, it doesn’t take away for how, how big. It is. So huge.
GEMMA There’s this moment where he’s like, in, in his castle, or men or whatever was some some people and he just casually decides that he needs a little bit more of a snack. So he walks over to this locked cabinet and opens it up and is a silver bowl full of brains. He gets paid, God puts the spoon in the brains and kind of like tastes the brains like he’s just checking the students see if there’s enough salt or if it needs more salt. Like he’s just so casual about it.
AARON Love that. It’s those scenes. I think that what the thing that makes this movie work so well. So it’s quite it’s play quite straight. Like other than the there’s a little bit of comic relief from the detectives that are they seem to be so far ahead of the escape. And this is always playing catch up. There’s some complex stuff happening there that is kind of, you know, you can see they’re trying to get lost, but for the most of it like the Baron and the monster, they’re just kind of it’s just, you know, it is what it is. It’s quite straight. It’s not like the, you know, quite sincere about the how they present the monster and what he’s doing and everything.
GEMMA There is a lot that the horror writers of today could learn about how to instill fear in a scene though, because even though it’s, it’s sort of comically bad. One of the things that The Brainiac does is he’ll be in a room with a man and a woman and he will stare at them and like basically to hypnotize the man till he’s frozen on the spot. He can’t move but he’s can see exactly what’s going on. And then he pulls out that double pronged tongue and starts like making out with the lady and then the tongue comes around and steps are in the back of the neck while there’s poor hypnotized man is watching out. I mean, this is just terrifying to describe.
SLIM It’s disturbing.
AARON When you think when you drill it down like that it does seem so unsettling. One of the things I wanted to mention was the kind of the cheat the cheapness of it. Like, I find that really endearing. I feel like it’s the I described in my review is like kind of the detour of monster movies. The way you know, the only kind of kind of threadbare impoverish optical effects, they still have a lot of charm for me. I mean, even if you see like a shitty matte painting, or just wallpaper of the like the I think it was the observatory or like the backdrop to the city, it just looks super tacked on a flat. I feel like this, there’s so much room for being able to, like, make that real for yourself for this film. For me anyway, like, it’s, it’s not, I don’t think it’s well, that’s the shitty effect. And I’m just, I’m just totally charmed by the fact that they pull this off, you know, of what they had. When it was funny.
SLIM I loved this movie, and in the discord that I’m in. Someone had noted that it had just seen this movie at like one of those thrift like bins, you know, like the $5 movies. And it made like such a connection for me that I have seen probably the same kinds of movies for years in those bins, and I never thought to actually watch them. Because you you see them and you just gloss over them like oh, The Brainiac with that, because I’d never heard of this 60s. But I I’m just so glad that I actually sat to watch one of those movies because you can get a different vibe, you get a completely different vibe from a 60s movies that maybe you’re used to, you know, you’re watching like Hitchcock or whatever, but you’re, you’re opening up your mind a little bit with maybe with a two prong tongue. And that’s all takes.
GEMMA Exactly I was trying to work out if if there was anything that connected all four of your faves. And I landed on something that connects to them specifically, if I may elegantly segue to another film here. The Brainiac is not the only film with your four faves to to feature a man who has an observatory in his office and is obsessed with finding a comet. Did you notice that?
AARON Actually I did after doing rewatching all the four films I did find the spot certain trends that percent maybe subconsciously I’m kind of fascinated by or I don’t know what it is. But you’re definitely in the process of doing this. I did pick up some of those connections.
GEMMA Oh, what did you learn about your psyche in the process?
AARON If we want to segue into Footprints, there’s a clear and then Local Hero as well. For me, The Brainiac and Footprints has a sort of connection to my formative years of discovering The sort of cinema, there’s a real mystique about these movies, because they were quite difficult to see at one stage like you’d have to hunt them down very, you got to know where to look for them. And Footprints is one that I first read on a forum called Mobius. Home Video forum. I don’t know if anyone out there still re that little dingy forum. But someone wrote a review of it. And it was like a cut of the US version of movie on VHS called Primal impulse. Whoa, that will come out as well. I love the artwork of the Footprints of like, the eyes, looking at peering out and the guy being stabbed in the bottom of the Yeah, the poster. But that reviews stuck with me so much that I did go out of my way to look for the film, which wasn’t available in any sort of real estate at that time. And I don’t know if the VHS trading period is familiar with you. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it. But they used to be like, these outfits were which were they called gray market outfits, and you would just like they would just send you copies of tapes that weren’t off movies that weren’t available in the US. And they kind of circumvented the kind of the copyright loopholes under this thing called the Berne Convention. So if something was sort of in the public domain, or supposedly in that sort of space, they could make copies of it and sell them. Actually, Kala janiece posted something on her Instagram yesterday about European trash cinema. And that was one of the outfits that I did I did sort of seek out and might have even even be where I got the first my first copy of Footprints actually. But there were a lot of those outfits around which that was the only way you could watch these movies. And when I first read about them, it was like instantly got the need to see this and you pay like 30 to 30 bucks for like a VHS copy of these films, you know, and they would look like shit.
SLIM 1975 Directed by Luigi Betts, oni and Marielle Fanelli 3.5 average, a woman called Alice finds the real world slowly merging with her recurring nightmares as she tries to solve the puzzle of her recent memory loss. And whether her dream of an astronaut abandoned on the moon has anything to do with her identity confusion. Kayla did talk about this I think this was it was included in her box set.
AARON Yes. The seven films Spock sort of House of psychotic women. Yes. And which I still I ordered it like in October. I was hoping to have it in my hands to watch it for this short and then it’s the package is lost somewhere.
SLIM New Zealand New Zealand parcel UPS truck probably it’s we had to uncover our own Footprints on the moon to figure out where this package is probably. This this movie, I just had to say what a very strange and dreamy movie. I saw a note from Gemma about how she’s still working to figure out the meaning of the film and maybe even the ending. But this is the first time I saw this. I thought it was gorgeous. This movie is stunning. I feel like in all the cityscapes the cinematography. But I can’t a recent movie that I’ve watched that has left me wondering what the hell I just saw at the end of the movie. And I do have to quietly mentioned that the version on Tubi ends, maybe 20 minutes too soon. And I ended I was like, wait a minute, is that the real ending? So then I had to go on Wikipedia and then I accidentally read the next paragraph and I read my own ending. But I eventually did find it and watch it. It’s on YouTube, by the way for anyone. I watched it. So what did you What did you think of this? Maybe Gemma?
GEMMA I write down as this one long, sexy commercial for sunglasses. It is definitely one of those movies and I would put Mulholland Drive in the same care films that I my eyeballs loved watching, but that my brain just has a this is not a criticism. My brain has no way to access. What What the hell I’ve just seen and I always often wonder is that because the filmmakers themselves didn’t know they were just like making a movie with some friends over 10 days and didn’t have time to finish the script. Or is it because they know something I don’t and maybe I need mushrooms or some other way to access a higher plane within which to watch this film. So Aaron I’m really interested to hear that you’ve been dreaming about a film that itself is like a fever dream that also has nightmares within it.
AARON Yes, I think I’m very predisposed to loving dream like movies. I love movies that play out like dream names and aren’t very plot focus and mood tone atmosphere. That’s all kind of my catnip for me. And I think footprints is one of the most elegantly constructed puzzles I’ve ever seen. It is, I think the first time you see it, it is quite chilly and kind of cold and you can’t, like you say it’s quite difficult to access it in the emotional way. But over the years, I’ve seen it a few times over the years now it’s gotten way more, I feel like there’s a lot of melancholy and there’s a lot of yearning in the film, like for a little lost time, or a memory that you’re trying to get back to, but you can’t, you can’t for whatever reason. And the first, the first scene in the film, which are the first shot, actually, the you see the moon and the titles come up and the Nikola Pavani this composer is one of the stunning score. And when the music comes up, and you see that movie, and for some reason, that shot is just so it’s like one of the most the loneliest shots I’ve I’ve ever felt watching a movie, this is kind of like you just, you don’t know where you are. And like, you know, you don’t know how to get back to where you’re supposed to be, or whatever. And I think the film plays with their dynamic really well with the way our flooring, the Balcones character can’t what she’s done. And you know, and but she re when she goes back to this place, it’s hold some sort of significance to her past or, you know, something she’s done, and actually not processing and that sort of sense of displacement is this related to the next one as well that you’re not feeling at home is might be kind of a way to describe it. And you sort of caught between kind of two worlds to kind of psyches you know, you don’t know where your brain is that. But yeah, and I love the obviously the locations in Turkey are just stunning. And I love travelogue kind of movies where someone’s just like walking around and just absorbing everything around them. The architecture is very otherworldly. So anything that stuff just kind of gets under my skin because I I, I would love to go to, like, do the same thing. Alice does, you know, just kind of walking around and it’s about volatility coming here. I think that’s the location in Turkey, super haunting and a portrait of someone struggling with a breakdown or something as well. I mean, it’s got so many layers. You know, this depends how you want to read a.
GEMMA What I love about Letterboxd is that you can find you can have this experience with a movie, because someone like Aaron made you watch it, and go, I don’t know what I think, but I know that I saw something special and then find your people find the people who, who saw something similar, if not the same. Sylvie J writes that Footprints as a nonprofessional mystery, by which I mean a mystery where the protagonist doesn’t do the snooping for a living. There’s no emotional detachment and every clue is treated like a holy object, a figurative rosary, a tattered fragment, a wooden cross, all leading into your personal God reveals barely mean anything to me these days, the clues in the practice hold the true value.
AARON That’s that’s a beautiful review. I couldn’t have even like, Yeah, put that into words. But I think that captures a lot of what the film feels like to me and what it means like to me, but yeah, the meaning may not be as important. And I should mention that it’s also it’s, it’s considered like a GI low adjacent movie where it contains some of those jelly themes, but it doesn’t have the, like the black glove killer that’s chasing someone. And it’s marketed like, you know, that the poster and everything. But the kind of glimpses of trauma, you know, the kind of the repressed memories and all of that kind of stuff always plays into Jiali.
GEMMA And that was, that was the one other thing I noticed and all the litter box reviews everyone’s basically arguing about, you know, Matt Winfield, right it’s definitely not the jello I was expecting. A lot of people talked about that. But race ape reckons Footprints on the moon is NIDA edge yellow Nora horror, not even a thriller, really, more a kind of vaguely surreal mystery comes psychodrama, which unpacks at Streamlight context at a glacial pace, the washed out police and occasional lapses into an subtitled Italian dialogue seeming to intensify the mood of uneasy somnolence you see what I mean are people are on litterbugs.
AARON Those reviews like right, I think they definitely get into that. That zone of Footprints is for people Love it.
SLIM I’m just glad Gemma read that review. So I don’t have to say somnolence and sound that out because I’ve never said that word out loud before my life.
AARON I’m here thinking I do know what somnolence means, but I don’t actually
GEMMA much like Footprints itself for me.
SLIM It was a planted review to get us in a dream like psycho state trip.
GEMMA Speaking of dream like psycho states. I have. Have either of you ever seen the Northern Lights?
SLIM No, no, no, no, no, I want
GEMMA to I so want to and especially after Local Hero, I’m jonesing for some of that northern Scottish sky. I just want to be there today. Shall we dive in, shall we dive into into because we’re gonna dive in because I I’m gonna dive in with my own review. Five stars, a heart and the woods. Aaron knew I would love this.
AARON Oh, wow. led a connection between Footprints and Local Hero as after seeing him. There’s this kind of very close, it could be kind of superficial. But there is something there. But being in that place in time and not being in the like you’re where you should be. But it’s also a place that resonates so much.
GEMMA So this is from the great bill Forsyth, Scottish director, written and directed by 1983 3.8 average slim, I’m going to ask you to read the very slim synopsis.
SLIM An American oil company sends a man to Scotland to buy up an entire village where they want to build a refinery. But things don’t go as expected. I love that but things don’t go as expected. You could put that behind 80% of movies and offices. And it would make sense. I feel like did you put that there Gemma was that already there? Oh, maybe
GEMMA I did. I don’t know. Jack
SLIM Jack calls out the jack’s fax. This is the last one my watch before locked down and 2020 So it was a nice breath of fresh air. And I to be perfectly frank, I had not heard of this movie. But in researching the film, this is a beloved movie. I feel like among the letterbox faithful there this is there’s something about this movie that connects them.
GEMMA Yeah, I was surprised this was this is more beloved than Gregory’s Girl, which was one of the great Scottish movies. It’s the Scottish coming of age film for any any young Scottish man that Local Hero sets head and shoulders above and as you say slim, it’s not just on a lot of letterbox favorites. It’s it’s an Edgar Wright’s 1000 favorite movies. It’s in the safty brothers favorite films Taika Waititi mentions that which I actually when I was watching it, I was like, Huh, I wonder if he got the idea for the bit in his film boy where the Rachel houses character has all the jobs in the village from Local Hero and then found out that this is one of his favorite films. So there it is. So this is a huge, massive, massive favorite. And ah, just an almost wasn’t made almost wasn’t made David Puttnam, who’s who is a legendary producer, approached his regular Becker’s Warner Brothers and colcrys films to fund it. They were like, no, then he won a BAFTA for Chariots of Fire in 1982. And they agreed,
AARON I’m so happy that you love this film. I think as slim mentioned, that it’s, it’s one of those is a strange film in the sense that, like, still, a lot of people don’t know it exists, but it carries so much weight with the people who love it. And it’s obviously in the Criterion Collection now. So it’s, you know, it’s got that stature. But it’s the same thing when I first discovered it. Like bargain bin DVDs, stalls, like I see this kind of looks like a generic film when you look titled Local Hero, and then you see like, Burt Lancaster and Peter ragged on the cover just two guys, and like, you know, the pants rolled up and standing and what it doesn’t jump out at you is like, a movie you want to see immediately. And so like, if you recommend that someone to watch this DVD, they will probably not watch it immediately. They will just leave it on the shelves for like months. Right?
GEMMA And the thing is that, you know, films, films change as life changes, and my pitch to someone listening would be if you love Peter Capaldi, as is any any one of the following Malcolm Chakor from the thick of it. Doctor Who are Mr. Curry from the Pennington movies. Then watch Local Hero for a very, very, very young Peter Capaldi, falling in love with an extremely hot Genie Seagrove who has webbed feet. None of that is on the poster.
AARON criterion poster that cover for the album at the start of the blu ray. It’s it takes them over kind of magic realist approach. But I still feel like it’s not at the end of that. Scale that that spectrum. It’s got that very A very kind of sublime balance of a little bit of magic, but it’s also quite, super low key, just, I just love the, how relaxed so there’s about everything it does. In the performances. Anyone who’s like looking at this and going, this is not a movie. It’s definitely give it a give it a go. Local Hero. It’s one of the most, it’s a lot of people say it’s really special. It’s got that special feeling about it. And yeah, very restorative I, every time I watch it that just like it puts me into another kind of a state where you’re like, you know, you feeling at peace, so wistful, might not for scores just heavenly. In the comedy, I’m not not a huge comedy kind of person, but I just love for size. Gentle nuttin. It’s not laugh out loud, it’s got just little moments that, you know, is just kind of, like, smiling. And that’s enough of me. I think that’s, that’s, you know, like, the scene where the, in the restaurant, they’re having breakfast or something, and they take out the trash, squeeze a lemon, and it’s like, pops in the Mac does that as well. That sort of stuff is so funny, even though it’s not like, cripplingly you know, laugh out loud.
GEMMA One of the reasons I think that that works, so cinema is full of movies about Americans going to small towns and other people’s countries, and the the wacky culture clash that plays out as a result of that. This could have been that, and for so many reasons, it’s not and I think one of the reasons is because Peter Capaldi is with the pickle man, our friend Peter ragged from Crossing Delancey. So the two Peters, one of them is from Aberdeen. So he’s, he’s also from the big city, but he’s Scottish. And then the other is American. And it’s that it’s that it’s that pairing of the two of them. I think that works if it had just been Peter Reagan’s character, McIntyre. It, it would have potentially fallen into that. cheesy, corny, let’s see how an American does and a little Scottish seaside village.
SLIM It could have been Michael Douglas, in that role. It could have been Michael Douglas, I read that it was almost Michael Douglas. Can you imagine him in a suit? On in this movie, coming to grips with working as an oil company? Man,
AARON I imagined Michael Douglas in that role.
SLIM I know right? What an amazing yeah, no.
GEMMA No, it’s slim. I’m sorry. Yeah.
SLIM From Michael Douglas in this role in a suit. Everyone needs to know.
GEMMA Thanks. I love that. It’s Peter Reichert. And I love that, you know, he’s, he’s, he’s a Jewish man who’s just seen it. So from a hungry, whose parents as he explains, chose the name McIntyre. Because they sort of thought it sounded American. And so you get mistaken for Scottish, so Burt Lancaster since him, because he’s got a Scottish sounding surname to try and buy up the speech. And the thing about the thing about Mack is back in Houston, Texas, where the you know, the KNOX gas company is based, he’s kind of a loser. You know, he calls up as a workmate to see if she’ll go for drinks for them, because he’s leaving the next day. She’s like, No, he calls up an ex to tell her to come pick up his stuff. And he’s not trying to get into a fight, they get into a fight. He’s just, he’s, I like how it sort of set up not as if he’s a, you know, he’s a busy man who just needs to escape to the beach to kind of reconnect with what’s real. He’s actually a little bit of a sad, Dick.
AARON You have a title here, it’s sort of like the title is almost like a misnomer in the sense that who is the hero or the villain? What is you know, like, obviously, Max, not, like, traditional kind of hero or a fetus at all. And I like the fact that, you know, just the, the townfolk townsfolk are very, they want the money. They just kind of like, yeah, people like to haggle and just kind of get the most out of the oil company. And there’s no like, there’s so little conflict in the film. And I think these are the sort of film makes me realize that conflict can be a little bit overrated, you don’t need like, confrontations at every angle, like these massive plot baits to reach and I think foresights does that so well in this film, just let it just let it flow. It’s kind of just an easy it’s like a string,
SLIM West left a review cinema for the soul. You can smell the sea, taste the whiskey, feel the breeze on your face, approach this with a clear mind and let it gently wash over you like the tides lapping against the shore and you’ll realize there’s a quiet charming comfort to be found. Once you find it. You’ll never want to leave. Ah,
GEMMA can we talk about the cinematography because the sky, the sunsets the sunrises are so much a part of this film in to the extent that Mac has to stand in a phone booth the only phone in the village and Colbert Lancaster back in Houston, Texas to describe the skate.And while he’s describing it, we were seeing it and it’s capturing the Northern Lights capturing a meteor shower capturing any any kind of planetary landscape on film is tricky. Because this is these are not special effects. This is just time and a lens.
AARON Yes, beautiful. Chris Mangus just shut the hell out of this film and not not flashy at all just painting with the light that he has in that sort of region. I think it’s hit so something soft about the whole it’s not it’s not harsh. Look at the phone booth. The you know the red, you know the red phone numbers against the sky at night. I don’t know all that stuff is out of this world.
SLIM Yeah, your next movie on your list, I think probably would have helped the circulation of this movie Z Channel. Magnificent Obsession. 2004 Directed by Zan Cass avetta is 3.7 average. So this is a documentary on the Z Channel one of the first pay cable stations in the US and its programming chief Jerry Harvey. Debuting in 1974, the LA based channels, eclectic slate of movies become a prime example on the untapped power of cable television. In this kind of catalogues the history of this channel which brought to light so many movies that I know of now as kind of like classics, but at the time, were not so and this channel started playing these movies. He worked with the directors to get you know, the Director’s Cut of films to play them like McCabe & Mrs. Miller was one Heaven’s Gate. So how did you come to find this documentary? And did you know about this channel earlier before seeing it?
AARON No, absolutely not. I never heard of Z Channel until I saw this documentary. I think I first saw this maybe on DVD or screen I played at a local film festival but I don’t ever recall seeing the documentary in a theater setting so I must have been home and in some way this is the only film on my full face that I hadn’t seen in probably over 10 years so it’s very fresh and like sort of fresh rewatch the first time I watched it I was completely blown away just by the by what Jerry did with the channel and film programming has always been like a dream job of mine and the whole curatorial you know his his genius and programming these films together and in this way as it was really inspiring to watch and and and also especially as I feel like it’s a great letterbox talk movie you know it’s a so the so many movies in there he’s as you watch it and God I need to make less I gotta go through all these movies and watch them because
GEMMA it’s exactly what I wrote in my review of the film was imagined seeing this film when it came out in 2004. And not having that box to pound that Watch List button with every film mentioned. You just be sitting there with a notebook with a pencil and paper going oh my god, oh my god. Yeah.
SLIM I mean, he had to have had such an encyclopedic knowledge even program and network. By that point, I was like trying to do the math in my head it was like when is he watching these movies to discover them and then add them to the like the the listing of the channel there’s a few screenshots of like, the T almost like the TV Guide aspect of the movies that we’re playing that week on the channel I saw it Creepshow in there at one point so I’m fascinated as to like the the programming nature of that because a lot of work to have so many winners and then fill out the channel,
AARON something that film does leave out is that sort of the actual nitty gritty of how you actually go about programming. That’s a great shot of the wall, the calendar, I was looking at that and go this is so exciting. From January or February, you know, these are the movies we’re gonna fight in, you’re gonna play but yeah, just the wealth of men and watching this and discovering to so many, so much out there that beyond the norm and being able to share that with such a wide audience, you know, just and that’s everyone trusts your tastes almost. And it’s not, you know, these days, you get, you know, the algorithm chooses for you and there’s there’s very little Well, I wouldn’t say that there’s very little but, you know, outfits like criterion channel or movie, or even you know, physical media Then it goes on zero. Yeah,
GEMMA there’s a review that speaks to that somewhat six respects, rights unlike many talking head Doc’s that are glorified string of unlike many talking head Doc’s that are a glorified string of reaction videos and ask hissing, Z Channel offered actual insight into a subject. For example, one director describing the importance of what a film hides from its audience, or the appeal and social importance of softcore programming. And in some ways, it helped me imagine a kind of retro future for streaming if it was targeted toward the smartest fans rather than the lowest common denominator. Yeah, that
SLIM was an interesting aspect of the documentary were one of those closely involved in the process. Like later in the film, they’re like, oh, yeah, and at night, or late night programming was like one of our most popular softcore porn movies. And that was so cool to see them, like really get like, I would love another documentary from them to just to get into the business nitty gritty, they said they had 100,000 subscribers for this channel at the time, like, oh my god, that’s so many subscribers for this, like, you know, film, they even called it one of them called it like a film festival in your house every night, which I hear people and even movie like, describe their service that way. And I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot over the last couple of months. My friend Chuck bought one of those like Gameboy, not like an emulator, but it’s like the hardware of a Gameboy. And you could play the actual gameboy games in the back. And there are so many products out today that have like 1000s of games on them, or even 1000s of movies. And like, you can’t decide what to do because you play a game for five minutes. You like, oh, well, I’ll try something else. I got like 1000 other to try. But when it’s just that one thing, you’re almost like forced to focus and enjoy it. And this channel like reminded me of that, like they had so much programming on there. Like Once Upon a Time in America, they had that long dive on, but how it ended up, you know, floundering and in the Edit, and they’re showing the uncut version. And man, what a time we have to go back and we have to go back to just this one channel, and they force you to sit down and watch these things.
AARON We definitely have to wait.
GEMMA We should note, we should note for the audience that with obsession comes trouble and that Jerry’s life and the life of his partner did not end well. And that is raised right at the start of the film so that it’s not like dropped on you like a bomb near the end. And all I would say about that as call your friends normalize therapy must be not must be noted. But you’re so right Imagine, imagine living in a time when you’re screening a legendary film in the filmmaker Sam Peckinpah shows up with the real you know, it’s not you’re not just kind of ing a file from some anonymous, anonymous Google Drive. Yeah. Filmmaker at the door with the reels.
AARON Yes. It’s fascinating that he was you know, he was rubbing shoulders with Peckinpah and then also Michael Cimino you know just hanging out at this bar and getting first in China 9, Liberty 37 he co wrote that Monte Hellman Western. So this was the guy who was you know, he was like living and breathing movies, you know whether he was like programming them or just kind of Yeah, yeah, I mean, Zan got Robert Altman for the sound like That’s enough for me like Robert Altman speak and in this documentary was wonderful to see.
SLIM The last thing I’ll say before we wrap and that could be the ending. But how about that scene where he the scene where they’re going to see the premiere of The Sicilian with Michael Cimino, and they’re at the premiere and they had this amazing look like an amazing Italian poster for The Sicilian, which made it look like the coolest movie ever. Because I’ve only ever seen the DVD poster. I just changed mine on letterbox to the one that I saw. And then how will they even say like, it wasn’t that great. But then he showed us the uncut director’s version like the director’s cut version privately. And it was an amazing experience like Man Can you imagine being in that situation of running a channel hanging out with the director and then he shows you the uncut Director’s Cut and you’ll love it What a life
AARON it’s a so casually I just saw this near me and Michael.
GEMMA That was a good place to end but I’d love to quickly ask. Just a very very, very quick to finish Aaron a quick deep dive into your stats. I’m looking at your rated higher than average and it’s it’s it’s just a brilliant crash of five stars for wild genre films, versus the one to two stars everyone else gives bet. Slim and Aaron Halloween to 2.37 average on letterboxed. It’s four stars from Aaron. How’s it set with you Islam?
SLIM You know, believe it or not, I have not seen any of the Rob Zombie Halloweens. I have been scared off of them from the Halloween stands that I have never seen them but this errand rating is making me one Got a question thing
AARON So yeah Halloween to buy Rob Zombie there you know I’m not I wouldn’t go out myself go out of the way say I’m a Rob Zombie fan and such but you know stuff he does I do this it’s interesting the stuff that I can latch on to there and I felt Halloween to swing for the franchise or maybe not not so much as Halloween three we’re helping three is not probably not a swing as such but I mean just the stuff that he poured into it was felt like a came from a real place and not just kind of another franchise entry.
SLIM What’s your rating for Halloween ends? What’s your writing for Halloween and I have no feeling no writing no heart on Halloween ends I see how it is I can
AARON take away something from Halloween and so is trying something but it just didn’t work. Great for me in the way that maybe Halloween to cut the
SLIM mics cut the mics on this episode.
GEMMA I’m ready to end the show because I gotta go and have another Local Hero rewatch. It’s my gentle cinema happy place now.
[theme song ramps up, plays alone, fades out]
SLIM Our guest today was our colleague Aaron Yap, and you can enjoy the fruits of his labors on our social media s. Thanks to our crew: Jack for the facts, Brian Formo for booking and looking after our guests, Sophie Shin for the episode transcript, Samm for the art and to Moniker for the theme music
GEMMA And to you, Slim, for editing the show. We also have another podcast, Weekend Watchlist, featuring Slim, Mitchell and Mia Vicino. They explore the latest releases in theaters and on streaming and shuffle their watchlists for randomized movie fun. Please consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts. It really helps us to keep the show going. You can always drop us a line at We love mail. The Letterboxd Show is a Tapedeck production. Calm down, Slim, it’s just a meteor shower.
SLIM Never seen one in my life.
GEMMA Oh my god, me neither.
[clip of Local Hero plays]
[Tapedeck bumper plays] This is a Tapedeck podcast.