Junk Filter

Jesse Hawken
Junk Filter

Junk Filter: a podcast about strange and overlooked artifacts from the worlds of film, music and popular culture with a generous side order of jokes and politics. Hosted by Jesse Hawken with guests from the worlds of Politics Twitter and Film Twitter. Original music for the program by Marker Starling. Follow us now on Twitter: @junkfilterpod

  1. HÁ 2 DIAS

    203: Central Station / I’m Still Here (with Gus Lanzetta)

    Gus Lanzetta returns to the podcast from São Paulo to discuss two films by the Brazilian director Walter Salles: 1998’s Central Station, starring Fernanda Montenegro, and his latest, Ainda Estou Aqui (I’m Still Here) starring Montenegro’s daughter Fernanda Torres, both Academy Award-nominated for their respective performances. In Central Station Fernanda Montenegro gave one of the greatest screen performances of the 20th Century as Dora, a retired schoolteacher running a scam writing letters for illiterate people at Rio’s train station who winds up rescuing an orphaned boy and transporting him to the far reaches of the country to try and reunite him with his long-lost father, in a film that reaches an overwhelming emotional power. Fernanda Torres received universal acclaim in Salles’ latest film as Eunice Palva, the wife of a former leftist congressman in Rio before the coup d'état. When he is disappeared by the secret police and she is also interrogated for weeks by the state, their happy domestic life is shattered and Eunice devotes the rest of her life to social justice work and getting the state to finally admit what they did to her husband, refusing to give in to the fear, in a film that Torres has described as a “national therapy session” for a country that would wish to ignore this period in their history. Gus and I talk about these two acting dynamos, the Tropicalia movement, Burt Lancaster, Bugs Bunny, MF DOOM, crying at the movies, and our hopes that Brazil finally wins the first Oscar for their cinema. Is it coming home? Over 30% of all Junk Filter episodes are only available to patrons of the podcast. To support this show directly and to receive access to the entire back catalogue, consider becoming a patron for only $5.00 a month (U.S.) at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/junkfilter Follow Gus Lanzetta on Bluesky. Listen to Gus’ podcast project that is relevant to the topic of the Brazilian dictatorship, Um Espião Silenciado (A Silenced Spy, in Portuguese) “Fernanda Torres Has Already Won” by Seth Abramovitch, for The Hollywood Reporter, February 15, 2025 French trailer for Central Station (Walter Salles, 1998) Brazilian trailer for Ainda Estou Aqui (Walter Salles, 2024) International trailer for I’m Still Here (Walter Salles, 2024) “Minha Gente” (My People), Erasmo Carlos, 1972

    1h56min
  2. HÁ 6 DIAS

    202: David Cronenberg: Clinical Trials and Naked Lunch (with Violet Lucca)

    CW: This episode discusses cinematic sexual violence. Violet Lucca, the author of the new monograph David Cronenberg: Clinical Trials, returns to the podcast from Brooklyn to discuss the book and his controversial 1991 adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch starring Peter Weller and Judy Davis, filmed in Toronto standing in for 50s New York and Morocco, recreated by Cronenberg’s longtime production designer Carol Spier in a former General Electric plant in Toronto’s west end. We discuss Cronenberg’s lifelong connection to Canadian cinema and the city of Toronto with digressions on Videodrome, The Dead Zone and The Fly before grappling with Naked Lunch, which is less of a literal film version of the novel and more a meditation about the life of Burroughs and what it is to be an artist in general. We also discuss Cronenberg’s cinematic explorations of paranoia and conspiracy theories, and his relationship to the queer artistic community in Canada reflected across his career, even if he’s always identified himself as a heterosexual man. And we (briefly) contrast Naked Lunch with the new Burroughs cinematic adaptation, Luca Guadagnino’s Queer starring Daniel Craig, which we feel misses the boat on how to adapt Burroughs for the screen. Over 30% of all Junk Filter episodes are only available to patrons of the podcast. To support this show directly and to receive access to the entire back catalogue, consider becoming a patron for only $5.00 a month (U.S.) at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/junkfilter Follow Violet Lucca on Bluesky. David Cronenberg: Clinical Trials, by Violet Lucca (Abrams Books) is now available! City TV commercial for their public service program “Toronto the Good” (1975) Universal Pictures' studio trailer for Videodrome (Cronenberg, 1983) Trailer for The Dead Zone (Cronenberg, 1983) Trailer for Naked Lunch (Cronenberg, 1991) Trailer for Queer (Guadagnino, 2024)

    1h36min
  3. 21 DE FEV.

    TEASER - 201: Michael Mann: Blackhat (with James Slaymaker)

    Access this entire 70-minute episode (and additional monthly bonus shows) by becoming a Junk Filter patron for only $5.00 (US) a month! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.patreon.com/posts/201-michael-mann-122785625 James Slaymaker, the author of Time is Luck: The Cinema of Michael Mann, returns to the podcast for a show about Mann’s much-maligned 2015 techno-thriller starring Chris Hemsworth as a blackhat hacker named Hathaway, granted release from prison by the FBI in a secret mission between American and Chinese police to track down the leader of an international cybercrime terror organization that is remotely manipulating the stock market to cause global chaos. Blackhat was a financial failure upon release that resulted in an eight year break between Mann’s feature film works. James and I discuss the director’s cut of the film (recently released on video) which addresses some of the theatrical cut’s issues and James makes a case for the film as a misunderstood work that anticipated some of the next decade’s concerns with technology and the real world consequences of living in a surveillance state, as Mann continues to explore the possibilities of digital cinema. Follow James Slaymaker on Twitter. James’ book Time is Luck: The Cinema of Michael Mann, is now available in paperback and Kindle. Trailer #1 for Blackhat (Michael Mann, 2015)

    5min
  4. 10 DE FEV.

    200: Proof of Life (with Roxana Hadadi)

    Roxana Hadadi, film and tv critic for Vulture and New York magazine returns to the pod for another episode about Tony Gilroy, this time looking at his screenplay for Taylor Hackford’s kidnapping thriller from the year 2000,Proof of Life, starring top-billed Meg Ryan and the ascendant superstar Russell Crowe. Crowe plays Terry Thorne, an Australian K&R (Kidnap & Ransom) consultant sent down to the fictional South American Republic of Tecala to negotiate the release of an American oil company engineer (David Morse) held hostage by anti-government forces in the Andes mountains, who finds himself falling for Morse’s distraught wife Meg Ryan.Proof of Life is best remembered today as the movie where Crowe and Ryan had an affair on location which doomed the movie to tabloid gossip; she was blamed for the end of her marriage to Dennis Quaid, and then for the financial failure of the film, leading to her decline as an A-list star. Proof of Life feels like a laboratory for some of Tony Gilroy’s future works (for instance Crowe’s character is based on a real life Australian hostage negotiator named Thomas Clayton!); viewing it through aMichael Clayton lens reveals a film that might have been better were it not for the nervousness of the studio that led them to play down the chemistry between the leads and the film’s critique of co-operation between unethical corporations and corrupt governments in the Global South. It’s a great example of the “Five-Star Three-Star Movie” which time sometimes helps to reveal. Over 30% of all Junk Filter episodes are only available to patrons of the podcast. To support this show directly and to receive access to the entire back catalogue, consider becoming a patron for only $5.00 a month (U.S.) at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/junkfilter Junk Filter is on Bluesky now! Follow Roxana Hadadi on Twitter and Bluesky. Trailer forProof of Life (Taylor Hackford, 2000) “Adventures in the Ransom Trade”, by William Prochnau, for Vanity Fair, the main source material for Tony Gilroy’s screenplay, April 1998

    1h12min
  5. 6 DE FEV.

    198: The MCU: Munich Cinematic Universe, Part 1 (with Corey Atad)

    CW: This episode discusses cinematic sexual violence. The film writer Corey Atad returns to the pod for a two-parter on Steven Spielberg’s 2005 masterpiece Munich, which turns 20 years old this year and yet has barely aged a day. Spielberg starts the film with Black September’s terror attack on the Israeli team at the 1972 Munich Olympics and then follows a secret team of Israelis dispatched by their government to hunt down and kill 11 Palestinians around Europe said to have played a role in the massacre. But as their violent mission continues, Avner (Eric Bana) and his team start to doubt the nobility of their task as the compounding violence they commit corrodes their souls. In this first episode, Corey and I discuss Spielberg as a master filmmaker at the height of his powers, the brilliant, clear-eyed screenplay by Tony Kushner and how a film understood to be a comment on the 9/11 attacks when first released can be seen better now as a film about the harsh truths of the Israel/Palestine conflict and the futility of fighting terrorism with counter-terrorism. We contrast this look at Munich with another adaptation of the source material, the forgotten 1986 Canadian TV movie Sword of Gideon based on George Jonas’ 1984 non-fiction book Vengeance, a more openly Zionist interpretation of the text. And we discuss some of our favourite parts of Munich including the notorious sex scene! Part two of this discussion is available on the Patreon feed: more about Munich and Sword of Gideon, the documentary One Day In September and an extended discussion of the new film about the Munich Olympics massacre, September 5. Consider becoming a patron of the podcast to access this and dozens of exclusive bonus episodes for only $5 (US) a month! patreon.com/junkfilter Follow Corey Atad on Twitter and visit coreyatad.com Extended international trailer for Munich (Spielberg, 2005)  Commercial for Sword of Gideon (Michael Anderson, 1986) A breakdown of one of the complex camera movements in Munich.

    1h39min
  6. 29 DE JAN.

    197: Big Nick (with Jake Serwin & Ian Rhine from Pod Casty For Me)

    The hosts of the left politics and film podcast Pod Casty For Me, Jake Serwin and Ian Rhine, return to Junk Filter for a supersized episode about Christian Gudegast’s Den of Thieves films, starring the new King of January movies Gerard Butler in his greatest role as debauched cop Big Nick O’Brien of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The first Den of Thieves features a cat and mouse plot where Big Nick leads his team of dirty cops against a heist crew planning to rob the Federal Reserve in LA, using their informant Donnie played by O’Shea Jackson Jr., a film that had ardent defenders including the German director Christian Petzold who raised eyebrows when he placed it on his list of the best films of the decade. Coming seven years later, the sequel Pantera takes the story to Europe, where Big Nick tracks Donnie down in the French Riviera as he and his new European gang are planning a complex heist of the World Diamond Center, forcing his way into the crew. We discuss the evolution of the series, how the sequel doubles down on the Dudes Rock qualities of the first film, and reveals how smart this dumb guy series actually is, with all the things it has to say about gang culture in the LA Police, toxic masculinity, and the healing powers of a summer in Europe with your boys as Den of Thieves evolves into an actual action franchise. If the first one feels like a variation on Michael Mann, the second one evokes Rififi, Ronin, Tenet, Clint Eastwood’s The 15:17 to Paris and most unexpectedly Richard Linklater’s Before series. Plus: we discovered there are two cuts of Pantera in circulation and we discuss their differences. Over 30% of all Junk Filter episodes are only available to patrons of the podcast. To support this show directly and to receive access to the entire back catalogue, consider becoming a patron for only $5.00 a month (U.S.) at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/junkfilter Follow Pod Casty For Me on Twitter, and you can find out more about the show and subscribe to their Patreon feed at their website. “A Tradition of Violence: The History of Deputy Gangs in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department” reported by Cerise Castle for Knock LA, March 2021 Final trailer for Den of Thieves (Gudegast, 2018) First trailer for Den of Thieves 2: Pantera (Gudegast, 2025)

    2h7min
  7. 13 DE JAN.

    TEASER - 196: A Complete Unknown (with Jared Bailey)

    Access this entire 87-minute episode (and additional monthly bonus shows) by becoming a Junk Filter patron for only $5.00 (US) a month! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠https://www.patreon.com/posts/196-complete-119875574 Jared Bailey (aka Twitter’s @Stolendans) returns to the podcast from Columbia South Carolina for a show about James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown, starring Timothée Chalamet as the young Bob Dylan, and Edward Norton as Pete Seeger. Choosing to portray the rise of Bob Dylan as a mainstream Music 101 period piece may have been a commercial choice that has rubbed some true Dylan Heads the wrong way, but the director has at least made an entertaining prestige picture that looks and feels right with Chalamet up to the challenge of playing a difficult part. We discuss how this film retools the actual history for the sake of Hollywood conventions, how Mangold chooses to portray the women in Dylan’s life and the film’s cautious treatment of any political content, keeping things vague enough that it’s been left open to interpretation; in some conservative circles they think the film is really about Dylan the individual artist taking on the Marxist folk music scene, portrayed here as The Establishment. Plus: Jared and I discuss Bob Dylan, the pioneer of singing with a funny voice (a big influence on Paul McCartney, we think) and dreamcast some future Dylan biopics! Follow Jared Bailey on Twitter and Bluesky. Trailer for A Complete Unknown (James Mangold, 2024) The Highwaymen on the New Zealand talk show Holmes, 1991

    5min
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Sobre

Junk Filter: a podcast about strange and overlooked artifacts from the worlds of film, music and popular culture with a generous side order of jokes and politics. Hosted by Jesse Hawken with guests from the worlds of Politics Twitter and Film Twitter. Original music for the program by Marker Starling. Follow us now on Twitter: @junkfilterpod

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