Films at First Sight

How do you like your coffee? Black as midnight on a moonless night? A bit sweet, with a dollop of cream? Well you're in luck, we're sitting down to discuss that wonderful elixer of life with our latest entry of Short Ends — the industrial film "This is Coffee!" written and directed by the not one and not only Alan Smithee.

This week we find ourselves in the jungles of Columbia thanks to the action/adventure film Let's Get Harry as our journey into the filmography of Alan Smithee marches on. Will the star-studded cast be enough to convince us to join this ragtag band of wannabe mercenaries or will things fall apart before the action even gets going?

We have a brand new theme for the month and are kicking things off with a bang! Our dive into the filmography of the ever-notorious Alan Smithee starts at the very beginning with the Richard Widmark led western, Death of a Gunfighter. Will this tense and dusty standoff mark the beginning of a new era or will it serve as a warning to all who see the name Smithee etched across the screen?

We are wrapping up our month of power and control with Boots Riley's feature debut, Sorry to Bother You, a wildly imaginative comedy about telemarketing, labor rights, and finding one's place in the world. Will the maximalist satire woo us with its wicked sense of humor or will it all just fall on deaf horses' ears?

In this episode of Short Ends, we chat about Nancy Savoca's student film, "Bad Timing", a story of two adolescents with dreams of bigger and better lives, that learn some tough lessons while trying to make it on their own. Tune in to find out if Graham and Joe buy into their Hollywood aspirations or if it was all a bust from the start!

The sounds of power and control are still being broadcast to the masses as we dive into the world of exploitative dance marathons with Sydney Pollack's They Shoot Horses, Don't They?. Will Joe & Graham have enough stamina to make it to the final round or will they collapse under the weight of stiff competition that has nothing to lose?

Join Joe and Anya in the real back room where they talk about the grief & kink symposium that is J-P Valkeapää's Dogs Don't Wear Pants. Will the Finnish black comedy stand up on its own two feet in the corridors of power & control or will it all just be a kinky facade?

This week we are joined by director, David Dylan Thomas to discuss Maya Annik Bedward's new documentary Black Zombie, a formative look at how Haitian Vodou as well as the Haitian Revolution helped create one of the most iconic monsters in cinema history, the zombie. So, tune in as we discuss the documentary at large, the importance of understanding and recontextualizing the past, and we check in on David's work-in-progress feature film, White Meat.

Joe is joined by Steve and new guest to the show, Sarah Beck from the West Chester Film Festival, to kick off a series of four films intertwined in various themes of power & control. First up is Elio Petri's masterful blend of suspense and black comedy, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion. Will the gang fall under the spell of Gian Maria Volonté's self-assured police inspector, or will the rampant corruption just hit too close to home?

Joe is joined by Steve to go on one last journey in our trek through post-apocalyptic cinema with La Jetée, a French experimental short film that tells the tale of a man sent back through time to help find a solution to the end of mankind as we know it, all through a singularly narrated series of still-frame images. Will the fellas survive the experimental exploration of time?