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Season 12, Episode 2 continues TGTPTU’s paired exploration of the films of Sir Christopher Nolan with his most recent film OPPENHEIMER (2023).

Running the risk of being considered by critics a “bomb,” Sir Nolan boldly moves away from genre pictures for his first biopic of a man who’ll/’d (pardon the time-wimey-ness) get mention in Sir Nolan’s preceding film (and anteceding in our season of NOLAN VOID coverage), namely, TENT: Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy) who led the development of the atomic bomb in Los Alamos but also may have stolen a fellow professor’s alcoholic wife (Emily Blunt) and had an affair with a murdered Communist (Florence Pugh) all the while really getting caught in the craw (as they say in New Mexico) of Rear Admiral Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.). This cast is supported by a murderers’ row of actors, including Matt Damon, Benny Safdie, Jason Clarke, Kenneth Branagh, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, Gary Oldman, and over a dozen other familiar faces.

Having left Warner Brothers, his home since INSOMNIA, after its handling of the release of Tenet, Sir Nolan’s first and only subsequent feature was released in the Summer of 2023 during the cultural portmanteau phenomena of BARBENHEIMER. Continuing a tradition that has not yet started in the podcast’s coverage (due to the nature of its temporal pincer movement), the film was shot largely (in dual senses of the term) on Imax, which because of the noise associated with these massive cameras meant Nolan would pull again from his experiences of his first film FOLLOWING to record dialogue separately at the time of the shoot. For flashback scenes of Strauss, special black and white Imax film stock had to be created.

Listen as in real time host Ken finds effective storytelling tips, co-host Thomas discovers his new drag name, and provisional host Ryan learns how to engage the mute button.

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CHRISTOPHER NOLAN SZN!

FOLLOWING *SEASON PREMIERE*

For Season 12 *Nolan Void*, TGTPTU continues its iconic practice of pairing bookended movies from a director’s filmography, first and last until we pair the middlemost. This season we cover the twelve movies of the granddaddy/infant son of the temporal pincer movement himself Christopher Nolan, starting with his inaugural feature: the independently-made, London-shot B&W film FOLLOWING (1998)

Initiating a series of noir films leading to greater projects, the technically-minded Nolan leans into his budget limitations, writing a script whose three timelines will allow him to edit around missing or unusable footage filmed on weekends with novice actors (excepting his uncle and future Wayne Enterprises board member professional British actor John Nolan) and crew from University College, London where young Nolan studied English Literature (and met his future wife). Aside from working fulltime for a commercial film agency creating corporate videos, the other reason for weekend shoots was the self-financing pool of limited funds available after each paycheck to purchase and develop more 16mm B&W film with Nolan operating the camera and his wife Emma Thomas serving as an extra in addition to her professional role as producer. Sensitive to budget and realism, Nolan states in Criterion Collection commentary that the choice of a hammer instead of gun was due to fake guns when wielded in indie films often looked fake but a fake hammer has right weight.

Nolan would end up moving to the States to enter Following into festivals where it received much buzz but no distributors, leading Steven Soderbergh at the time to comment: “And I watched it and came out of there thinking ‘That’s it. When a movie this good can’t get released, the [the 1990’s independent movie wave is] over.”

Special thanks this week to Ryan for returning to the podcast to discuss this film (and less so for its paired OPPENHEIMER coming next week) as well as extra editing by co-host Ken for splicing back into linearity other co-host Thomas’s bit of jumbling up his commentary into three styles of slurred speech: his normal, as he’s increasingly intoxicated, and after biting (literally) his tongue while making a “Stop, Hammer time” joke.

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Our Darren Ssarfinale!

Season 11 of The Good, The Pod, and The Ugly concludes on an odd note, both mathematically and colloquially, as the boys wrap up their Darren Aronofsky season with Episode 9 covering PERFECT BLUE (1997), joined by frequent guest Ryan.

The debut film of famed anime and short-lived director Satoshi Kon released one year prior to Aronofsky’s debut (PI), Perfect Blue is an adaptation of an edgy YA thriller novel popular in Japan. Taking liberties with plot, Kon deepens the twists of the source material, adding in his own layers of the nascent internet anxieties and troubling the idea of identity visually and thematically, and in so doing turns what was meant as a Japanese OVA into a feature released worldwide.

TGTPTU takes on directly the movie scuttlebutt sites posting slander since Requiem for a Dream (with a resurgence after Black Swan) and claims Kon himself on occasion supported (although he would die at age 46 months prior to Black Swan’s release), that The Scarf lifted shots and scenarios directly from Kon’s first masterpiece, and the strident conclusions the hosts and guest reach are definitely not going to stun and probably won’t impress you, our listener.

But stay tuned afterward for Ken, Thomas, and Ryan’s rankings of Aronofsky’s eight-film filmography, a teaser for next season, and this season’s bestowal of the much-coveted Squeaky Chair Award.

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DARREN ARONOFSKY CH. 4 E2: THERE'S A LITTLE BLACK SWAN ON THE SUN TODAY

Season 11’s temporal pincer movement by The Good, The Pod, and The Ugly draws to a close with tricky reflections on BLACK SWAN (2010). Listen to our opinions double, pirouette, and morph during Chapter 4, Episode 2, covering our final Darren Aronofsky movie but not our season’s finale, with No-Longer-Special Guest Ryan and his squeaky chair understudy.

Long-time Aronofsky collaborator and pod-fav cinematographer Matthew Libatique returns to shoot this tale that’d be like if Dostoevsky’s “The Double” mated with Tchaikovsky's “Swan Lake” and their kid was kept in a Barbie-pink child’s room as her mother painted her portrait and put mittens on them to keep them from scratching at the feathers erupting from their skin when they won the part of Odette and Odile.

Reality fractures (as do opinions during the pod) for Natalie Portman’s Nina Sayers in her Oscar-winning performance, causing consternation for one host and glee for others. Ambiguities extend and multiple as Aronofsky claims the ending tragic while Portman believes it triumphant and Host Thomas in front of a car. Is this a story about womanhood and autonomy? The dangers of obsession? The need for a well-balanced meal?

Trigger warning for hangnails and those who have allergies to shattered glass.

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SCARF SEASON: ARONOFSKY 7

Alright, brother. It’s the smackdown, drag-out matchup you’ve been waiting for all season long as THE WRESTLER (2008) jumps into the ring with The Good, The Pod, and the Ugly for Chapter 4, Episode 1. In this final chapter, we watch with teeth and sphincters clenched tight on the edge of our folding chair seats as the subject of Season 11, director Darren Aronofsky, make his comeback with a comeback star.

For the first and only time in his professional career, Darren “The Scarf” Aronofsky tags in a new camera partner, cinéma vérité cinematographer Maryse Alberti. The Scarf also sets aside pen and paper, giving the writing credit to another while allowing for script punch-ups from his main star, the long thought retired leading man, the ex-professional boxer, the small dog aficionado, the one, the only, Mickey “Whiplash” Rourke.

But Aronofsky’s not done building his veteran team of newbies. For the wrestler’s love interest, he’ll recruit Marisa “My Cousin” Tomei, a former winner of the big belt (the Academy Award), garnering her a nom again as well as Rourke. And starring as Rourke’s estranged daughter, Evan “Once & Again” Rachel Wood.

And just you wait, all you wrestling fans, all you who appreciate watching performers go a little crazy, who want to see athletes going to the mat and love the choreography of the ring, for The Wrestler is only Part 1 of this final chapter. Next week, it’ll go head-to-head, round-after-round with pod fav: Black Goose.

Are you ready to rumble?!!!!!!


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ARONOFSKY SEASON! NOAH

Chapter 3, Episode 2: So the Voice of Kenneth spake unto The Good, The Pod, and the Ugly, and it sayeth: Let there be NOAH (2014); and all the peoples then of the world rejoiced for Darren Aronofsky for his blockbuster that bringeth forth He of the Scarf his firsteth and onlyeth picture to be No. 1 opening weekend at the box office.

As the temporal pincer movement winds down, guest Ryan returns with an extra squeaky chair to discuss this bold and big-budget entry into the Aronofsky canon. According to research by Thomas, Paramount’s marketing budget for Noah was over $100M, nearly as much as it cost to shoot the film, airing advertisements during commercial breaks in the Super Bowl and the 2014 Winter Olympics. This Easter weekend release would also have YA and graphic novel tie-ins.

Russell Crowe, who as offered the lead role of The Fountain, plays the titular Noah, Anthony Hopkins plays his grandfather Methuselah, and Logan Lerman is a joke to Ken’s begats for some reason.

Ari Handel returns to produce and puts quill to parchment with Aronofsky for their second corroborative writing credit (their first being Chapter 3, Episode from last week’s The Fountain), Matthew Libatique shoots, and Mark Margolis plays a Watcher (a stone angel fallen from Heaven during the Creation that lusted for Earthly women and would father the Nephilim because—you know what? not worth your time reading). And Jennifer Connelly returns (last seen in Requiem for a Dream).

Listen closely for the glee in Thomas’s voice as the hosts comb through repetitious verses of Genesis desperate for the dry ground of understanding after being flooded with Lord of the Rings-style imagery for 2 hours and 18 minutes. Stay awake for when his dogs reacting to Ken’s fond desire to adopt an armadillo dog. And hear Ryan suggest that Tubal-Cain had some good ideas.

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THE FOUNTAIN

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition, and no one expected Darren Aronofsky to follow up the success of Requiem for a Dream with a genre-breaking, scyfy-romantic-period-spiritual-medical drama (kinda? maybe?) entitled THE FOUNTAIN (2006). Join your hosts Ken and Thomas along with returning guest Ryan for Season 11, Chapter III, Part A as they drink from The Fountain, a movie garnering no award nominations and would, after wrapping, temporarily break up Aronofsky’s partnership with cinematographer Matthew Libatique.

Aronofsky’s biggest (and only) flop to date, The Fountain concerns three timelines. These intercut stories are populated by then-girlfriend Rachel Weisz and then-between-Wolverines-and-musicals Hugh Jackman (in three iterations of the name “Thomas”) where they play Spanish queen and her loyal conquistador servant, a terminally ill wife and super-science primate neurologist, and a tree (or apparition) and hairless yoga enthusiast in a bubble travelling to an exploding star. These past and future timelines may or may not exist, perhaps part of a pretentiously hand-written, leather-bound manuscript by the dying Weisz-wife character, who left the final chapter incomplete for Dr. Tommy to compose after her death.

Pod-favorite actors Mark Margolis returns as a priest and Ellen Burstyn returns as Dr. Tommy’s boss and tree/cemetery owner, while Clint Mansell returns to score the film. The movie also marks the beginning of Aronofsky’s ongoing writing partnership with Ari Handel.

Join the hate watch as our three cineastes yell in unison from across timelines: “Finish it!”

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SCARF SEASON #4: GARDEN OF EDITS: mother!

Rejoin Ken and Thomas along with guest Shannon in the rebirth of Season 11, Chapter II as they tackle (figuratively) Darren Aronofsky’s MOTHER! (the 2017 film, not the parent of Darren!).

After the big budget success of NOAH, and having not made a movie with a female lead with whom he was romantically involved in well over seven years (if rumors about Black Swan are true), Aronofsky returns to lower budget filmmaking with a bottle story about JudeoChristian terror or the inherent evils of humanity or perhaps a home improvement show gone terribly wrong, casting Jennifer Lawrence as the titular Mother.

SPOILER! ALERT! Mother defends the house she’s rebuilding for Him (not a pronoun but the name given in the credits to the unnamed Javier Bardem), her romantic partner in a tasteful callback to late-90s Eastwood film in age discrepancy! Him’s house was badly burned and Him is a poet. All is idyllic except Him can’t write. When “man” played by Ed Harris intrudes upon their remote home mistaking it for a B&B and then man’s wife “woman” played by Michelle Pfeiffer shows up looking for her smoking doctor husband and gives Mother a hard time for not being a mother and not being a drunk like her and Mother wants them out of the house.

SPOILER! ALERT! CONTINUES! Mother eventually gets her wish and, after being ignored, has angry staircase sex with Him, which results in a wanted pregnancy and his ability to complete the poem. Soon, visitors arrive, as it turns out that Him has quite the cult following, including his publicist played by Kristen Wiig in a very unfunny role. Eventually, Mother gives birth, her baby is ripped to shreds, and she is burned alive and harvested as a crystal before it all starts over again. Hey, we warned you there’d be spoilers!

So follow along as the three mortals recover from REQUIEM FOR A DREAM and unpack Aronofsky’s latest (but earliest discussed by Ken and Thomas as Season 11 matches the first with last films moving inward in a temporal pincer movement) allegory, Shannon gives a new title to BLACK SWAN, Thomas pointlessly cites passages from critical theory books, and Ken sings the 1988 Danzig classic.

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