Goodbye, Dragon Inn. Hello, Golden Movie Retriever! with Nick Pinkerton and Sean Price Williams
Critic Nick Pinkerton and cinematographer Sean Price Williams roam far and wide in the land of movies on the latest episode
Critic Nick Pinkerton and cinematographer Sean Price Williams joined me on the podcast this week, and it was a sheer delight. The occasion was Nick’s new book about the very fine film Goodbye, Dragon Inn, which everyone should see, but we talked about everything from Beverly Hills Cop to Peter Greenaway to cinematographers who direct.
That last topic relates to an upcoming film in the works, written by Pinkerton and directed by Williams, whose dazzling camerawork I have long admired in films such as Good Time and Heaven Knows What (directed by Josh and Benny Safdie), Tesla (directed by Michael Almereyda), and Her Smell and The Color Wheel (directed by Alex Ross Perry). So I learned a bit about that project (perhaps breaking some news?). As movie-watchers, Nick and Sean’s curiosity is voracious, which makes for good conversation in my book. Also, fun fact, I learned that I had crossed paths with Williams in my past life as a Kim’s Video addict.
Have you subscribed to The Last Thing I Saw yet? Try it, I think you’ll like it. You’ll hear more episodes like this one, part of the “Bring a Friend” series, and learn about upcoming installments of The Last Movie Club. But also, you know, these weekly podcasts and detailed posts take more time and effort to put together than you might be aware of. The Last Thing I Saw accepts paid subscriptions, available by clicking below, all working out to something like a dollar a week, surely a bargain for high-quality yammering with my movie-lovin’ colleagues.
Thank you to everyone who has supported the podcast—a regular space for the spirited discussion of movies including the apparent current location of Ethan Edwards’s hat from The Searchers.
NEW PODCAST NOTES
Episode 35: Movie Fun with Nick Pinkerton and Sean Price Williams
All episodes also available on iTunes.
Titles/topics discussed: Beverly Hills Cop, Videohound's Golden Movie Retriever: The Complete Guide to Movies on VHS, DVD, and Hi-Def Formats (2017 edition), AMC Private Theatre Rentals, Gordon Willis’s Windows, William Fraker’s A Reflection of Fear, Ted Tetzlaff’s The Window, Karl Freund’s Mad Love, Untitled Sean Price Williams and Nick Pinkerton Project, books by Billy Bitzer and Henri Alekan, Kim’s Video, Back to the Future 3, The Little Richard Story, Eugene Green, Peter Greenaway’s Drowning by Numbers and A TV Dante, JLG/JLG, Louis Valray’s Escale and La Belle du nuit, Camille Billops and James Hatch’s The KKK Boutique Ain’t Just Rednecks, Nick Pinkerton’s book on Goodbye, Dragon Inn, Boris Barnet, Tomato’s Another Day
Nick Pinkerton is a Cincinnati-born, Brooklyn-based writer focused on moving-image-based art. His writing has appeared in Sight & Sound, Artforum,frieze, Reverse Shot, 4Columns, Harper’s, the Baffler,Film Comment, and the Village Voice, among other publications. His new monograph on Goodbye, Dragon Inn is available now from Fireflies Press.
Sean Price Williams is an acclaimed cinematographer who has shot movies for Josh and Benny Safdie, Alex Ross Perry, Abel Ferrara, Sean Baker, Michael Almereyda, Jessica Oreck, and Albert Maysles.
Episode 34: Berlin Film Festival – The Thrilling Conclusion - with Jessica Kiang
Titles discussed: The Scary of 61st, directed by Red Scare podcast co-host Dasha Nekrasova; the Georgian small-scale epic What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?; fresh readings of Alice Diop’s We, the imaginative Vietnamese film Taste, and Alonso Ruizpalacios’s meta-docufiction A Cop Movie; and Petite Maman, Céline Sciamma’s follow-up to Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Also included: A Man Vanishes, Queen of Earth.
Jessica Kiang is a Berlin-based film critic for Variety and has freelance bylines in Sight & Sound, BBC Culture, The New York Times, and the Playlist.
For more information on the intro music by The Minarets (gratefully used with permission):
Instagram: @theminaretsmusic
https://www.facebook.com/TheMinaretsMusic
https://soundcloud.com/theminaretsmusic
THIS CRITIC’S PICKS
Defending Your Life (Criterion)
Lost Book Found (Light Industry)
The Brood (Criterion) Last week I was invited to join a roundtable at Museum of the Moving Image that was moderated by David Schwartz. David edited a new book of Cronenberg interviews that features my interview with the director for Stop Smiling (where I am over-pleased with coining the headline too).
An Oversimplification of Her Beauty (Criterion)
My New York Times review from the film’s release
THE END
Here I might end with a song.
ABOUT ME
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw newsletter and podcast (one of Sight & Sound’s Top Ten Film Podcasts). This is my way of staying in touch and sharing what I’ve been up to.
By way of introduction, I’m a writer and an editor. I’ve worked as the editor-in-chief of Film Comment, where I assigned and edited both web and print, hosted its podcast and talks and screenings, learned from brilliant writers, curated Film Comment Selects, and wrote a lot myself. Film Comment was subsequently awarded the Film Heritage Award by the National Society of Film Critics (an honor historically awarded to the Museum of Modern Art and other institutions). Besides Film Comment, my features, interviews, and reviews have been published in The New York Times, Artforum, Sight & Sound, and dearly departed publications such as The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine.
I miss going out to the movies, especially repertory cinemas, and milling about and chatting, and so the natural response is to inflict a podcast on friends and strangers alike.
As always, feel free to contact me re: writing, editing, moderating, podcasting, etc.
nicolas.rapold@gmail.com