The Complete Sundance 2024 Collection, including new Manohla Dargis and Amy Taubin episode
All the podcasts, and lots of writing, too
Dear Last Thing I Sawfolk,
January rushed in like a hasty lion with a trip to Sundance and a fresh batch of writing, still steaming from the desk-oven (a bad invention, frequent burns). I’ve collected my Sundance podcasts, ending with the grand finale duo of Manohla Dargis and Amy Taubin, who share their thoughts on ever-evolving Sundance generally and some fine films. An honor and a pleasure!
And some writing happened—ghost-cams, unions, Kubrick, Himalayan moths, the usual—and picks picks picks.
Thank you, dear supporters of The Last Thing I Saw! I would quite literally just be talking to myself without you.
Nic
THE PODCAST
Manohla Dargis and Amy Taubin on Sundance 2024 [#5]
Eric Hynes on Union, Sasquatch Sunset, Good One, Eno, Nocturnes [Sundance #4]
Jon Dieringer on Presence, Between the Temples, I Saw the TV Glow, A Different Man, It’s What’s Inside, Little Death [Sundance #3]
Alissa Wilkinson on Look Into My Eyes, Girls State, A.I. docs, Will & Harper, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat [Sundance #2]
Eric Hynes on Power, Black Box Diaries, Agent of Happiness + Preview [Sundance #1]
Manohla Dargis is chief film critic of The New York Times.
Jon Dieringer is founder and editor-in-chief of Screen Slate. He was previously the Technical Director of media art nonprofit Electronic Arts Intermix, overseeing preservation of video and film works by artists such as Nam June Paik, Barbara Hammer, Joan Jonas, Vito Acconci, and Tony Oursler.
Eric Hynes is curator of film at Museum of the Moving Image, and a critic and reporter. Since 2004 he has been a staff writer for Reverse Shot.
Amy Taubin interviewed Steven Soderbergh about Presence for Filmmaker and is writing about Sundance 2024 for Screen Slate.
Alissa Wilkinson is a movie critic at The New York Times. She’s the author of Salty: Lessons on Eating, Drinking, and Living from Revolutionary Women (Broadleaf, 2022) and We Tell Ourselves Stories (Liveright, forthcoming).
Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are also available at other podcast places such as Spotify.
THIS CRITIC’S PICKS
Streaming selections
Dishonored (Criterion) Dietrich and Sternberg do spy serial and stop time
Fallen Leaves (MUBI)
The Quiet Earth (Criterion)
Between the Lines (MUBI)
Return to Seoul (Amazon)
RECENT WORK
For Sight & Sound, I reviewed several films at Sundance but I’ll single out two: Presence, Steven Soderbergh’s first-person ghost story, and Look Into My Eyes, a wonderful documentary about New York City psychics, from Lana Wilson.
I wrote about Sundance for The Financial Times, including a final report and a stand-alone look at Union, the new documentary about the Amazon Labor Union’s pioneering (and successful) organization effort at a Staten Island facility.
For a change of pace, here’s an interview with two filmmakers who trekked to the Himalayan forest to make a lovely film about moths.
And last and maximally not least, Air Mail asked me to review an appropriately obsessive new book on Stanley Kubrick.
THE END
Here I may end with a song. As featured in Sexy Beast (Jonathan Glazer, 2000).
ABOUT ME
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. Feel free to get in touch re: writing, editing, moderating, programming, podcasting, etc. by writing me at nicolas.rapold[at]gmail.com
Besides hosting the podcast, I’m a writer and an editor. My features, interviews, festival reports, and reviews are published in The New York Times, Screen Slate, Sight & Sound, Filmmaker, Air Mail, The Los Angeles Times, and W Magazine. (Plus dearly departed publications such as The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine.) For notes on my superfun programming experience, drop me a line.
On the editorial side, I worked as editor-in-chief of Film Comment magazine, where I was for 15 years in all. I assigned and edited both web and print, hosted The Film Comment Podcast and Talks, curated and hosted Film Comment Selects screenings, learned from brilliant writers, and wrote a lot, including interviews with Spike Lee, Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Pedro Costa, and Frederick Wiseman. Film Comment received the Film Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics.