Gartbage Film Gartbage Film

Welcome to the finale of our petit français mini-series, and we're going out with a bang! It's one of the biggest blueprint movies out there that firmly established the idea of the "cool" assassin, it's Jean-Pierre Melville's 1967 crime masterpiece: LE SAMOURAI

We've seen it all before: the taciturn, lone wolf assassin who is a perfect precision instrument has a hit go bad, his employer betrays him, and the police are on his tail. But this is the one that set the template! We're talking all parts of Melville's style, from the trenchcoat uniform and the quiet protagonist, to the otherworldly qualities that push it into the the sligthly surreal.

Plus, it's a grand opportunity to finally delve into one of Nick's favourite topics: Jean-Pierre Melville's insane personal history.

We're continuing our exploration of some French-language favs with Ariane Louis-Seize's feature-length debut, 2023's HUMANIST VAMPIRE SEEKING CONSENTING SUICIDAL PERSON! If you dig any modern vampire story, from Let the Right One In to What We Do in the Shadows, you owe it to yourself to check this film out!

Major trigger warning if the title doesn't give it away: we discuss suicide in this episode! Also, full spoilers.

This is a film of major firsts, from directing through starring and writing, and we're here to track how it does such a great job trading in vampiric mysticism in favour of its thematic material. We're talking poutine, anti-chemistry, Canadian Film & TV regulations, our favourite Québec swears, and the screaming interiority of teen angst. Plus: welcome to swag corner!

Next week we're heading back to France for Jean-Pierre Melville's LE SAMOURAI!

Bonjour and bienvenue au Garbage Film's first installment in a short series on French films, and what better place to start than the film that defined the heist movie, Jules Dassin's 1955 classic RIFIFI! (If you've never seen it, you can check it out on the Internet Archive!)

We're talking Parisian slang, awful crime novels, connections with Jean-Pierre Melville, how you adapt something you hate, pistol-toting authors, and the interpersonal dynamics of France's underworld

More than anything else, we're getting into the clockwork mechanism of Jules Dassin's films, the beauty of the silent 30-minute heist, and how those elements took the world by storm. And a Hooray for Hollywood segment for a French film? It's more likely than you think!

Next week we head to Québec for Ariane Louis-Seize's debut film, the 2023 vampire romcom, HUMANIST VAMPIRE SEEKING CONSENTING SUICIDAL PERSON.

It's a St Patrick's Day spectacular on Gartbage Film with the most Irish movie around: Andrew Davis' THE FUGITIVE!

It's easy to forget now, but THE FUGITIVE was a craze in 1993 and had an outsized impact -- so easy in fact that we forgot about it! So we're reliving Andrew Davis' action heyday, praising the artistry of montage, running down its amazing accolades, and briefly getting into Roy Huggins' original 60's TV series and the real-life fugitive inspiration.

It's an episode about spectacular train crashes, both the literal one and the behind-the-scenes chaos like not having a "script", relying on Tommy Lee Jones' writing chops, and securing the cooperation of the Chicago Plumbers' Union.

The spring showers have begun their annual process of bringing May flowers, and thus we bid goodbye to Carp-winter on this final episode in the series. We're going back to the very beginning with what Carpenter refers to as his first "real" movie, the germ from which his career grew: it's 1976's ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13!

We're discussing Carpenter's humble-yet-cynical beginnings, his love of sieges, and his inspirations to create this movie before we dive into the ASSAULT's path from period western to modern day, how this movie took a village to make, and just how much of it is lovingly lifted from other sources. (Featuring one of Erin's sickest remixes to date.) We go deep on the operations of the multicultural gang Street Thunder, the notorious ice cream scene, and our love for Napoleon Wilson.

And finally, as we wrap up Carp-winter we're taking the opportunity to show how ASSAULT paved the path to Carpenter's future career, and talk about our John Carpenter favourites.

Next time, we leave Carpenter behind for some other genre fare as we revisit the 1993 wrong man classic, THE FUGITIVE.

Carp-winter continues with the final chapter in John Carpenter's Apocalpyse Trilogy: IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS from 1994! We're sorry about the balls!

Reality is on trial as we explore the obvious and not-so-obvious meta layers of Carpenter's Lovecraftian universe, aided and abetted by Sam Neill's villainous energy (complimentary) and Carpenter's propensity for Wet Evil. We're getting super deep into how the heavy lifting of the narrative's unreality is accomplished through Carpenter's critical reputation, the way Sutter Cane writes, the casting, music, location shooting, budget cuts, and of course, Reaganomics.

We're also taking time to talk about our feelings on pre, current, and post-apocalyptic storytelling as we wrap up discussions on the Apocalypse Trilogy on the whole.