Murmur Digital Radio The Modern School of Film

We continue to talk about the movies that bother us. World-building has been strangely silent since The Matrix (1999), a concept originally left for dead, pushed forward into standard by will, belief, and a corps of indelible artists. Geof Darrow and Steve Skroce - two craftspeople first to join the legion - assemble here to add their DNA to our dish. Filmmaking with vision is a winnable war-of-art; to wit, the great irony of a film is can’t know we need one until it’s been made.

Oh, f'it, let’s actually talk about the film FIGHT CLUB @ Twenty - still the smartest delinquent in the room - with the man whose book-as-rolling-ball-of-art-and-confusion began a movie birthed by an apropos society of full-throated artists: Chuck Palahniuk. The film still can’t drink, but it’s no less a danger to society. Its meta and mythos are more than meets the eye, and its fever-pitch lives in Chuck’s own agnostic baptisms. Write what you know, perhaps; film what’s to remain, please. Oh, and, slide.

Henry Rollins — Professor Emeritus, The Modern School of Film — joins us in lovely, lovely Lima, Peru to triptych his life in three acts (i.e. three films) and continue our journey In:Pictures. His selections are as raw and ready-made as Henry; one indie, one Epic, one film family-photo one would sooner forget, but cannot. Blissfully, Robert Duvall came up a few times (read three) to boot. Henry never forgets, and his cinema, unsurprisingly, unforgiving. Welcome back, Professor. Thank you, Peru.

Once upon an art-form, the term "classically trained" meant something. For better and for worse. Wesley Snipes is the former, and we're the former for it. Dr. Snipes joined us in Monaco to look back and ahead at his range, his craftsmanship and, most importantly, to teach us how to take a punch. And a kick. All in a dance move or two.

Like the man sang, "It's never over". More than an 80's-lyric, though, while function is transient, what form's us, eternal. And gift-able. Singer/writer Ingrid Michaelson tiles the walls of both her home and her art with love and legacies that neither date, nor diminish. What transports her is the photo of the photo; the time of the time. Perhaps, in a world where the future is far less sexy, and less inconceivable, than ever, what's past is Epilogue. All those moments not lost in time. Rather held. Imperishable.

Though rings of hell vary, we all travel through as a form of learning. There is very little understanding gained if we aren’t faced with uncertainty or with loss or with decay; or, frankly, with death. Thom Sonny Green of Alt-J is in touch with his heights because he’s faced-off with his depths. Amongst his antagonisms, his own physical well-being — diagnosed with Alport Syndrome at the age of 12, by then having lost a majority of his hearing and signaling the need for a kidney transplant — a cause for many to question their very journey, let alone architect a purpose. Thom cannot teach you what he’s learned, yet, as is the case with best of teachers, he chooses to candidly reviews his times, his trials and his continual triumphs. Most things, we can’t truly know ‘til we get there; however, getting a firm dose of relativity never hurts.