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TALKING ABOUT FILMS THAT WILL LAST
If you’ve taken a look at our Web Exclusives section, you’ll see that we’ve just posted a new essay, “5 Things You Should Do If You Want Your Movie to Last.” It’s written by Gareth Higgins and Jett Loe of The Film Talk, which is, at the moment, my favorite film podcast. Each week Higgins and Loe review a new film that’s hitting the theaters, and occasionally riff on other topics such as director retrospectives (like the recent Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Ang Lee series) as well as interview directors themselves (recent guests have included Francis Ford Coppola and Ramin Bahrani). Full of passionate banter, humor and serious reflection, Higgins and Loe have an easy rapport with both themselves and the listener as they pinpoint the reasons why a particular film does or does not move them, often articulating things in surprisingly thoughtful ways. A show on Andrei Tarkovsky contained the best argument for why a secular viewer should revere this great director, and a recent review of Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story took note of the film’s failure to identify the community-oriented political actions that constitute a challenge to the system Moore decries.
After I posted a favorable notice of The Film Talk’s Lee piece over at FilmInFocus, Higgins and Loe got in touch with me and offered to write a piece for Filmmaker. So, at the link you can find their piece, which addresses a subject I think about a lot: what is it about a film that makes it one for the ages? What differentiates a date movie or a casual rental from a film that you want to think about and rewatch? It has nothing to do with box office. Critical acclaim is often a correlative but not always. Find out what Higgins and Loe think and then, after you take note that the’ve only listed four of the five reasons here, download the latest podcast to find out the fifth, and possibly most important, thing you can do to sidestep hackdom and be an important filmmaker.
