Trylove

• Episode 329: THE BURMESE HARP (1956)

  Kon Ichikawa’s postwar drama looks wistfully at the Japan that WAS before World War II, suspiciously at the Japan that would be rebuilt, and begs consideration of the legitimacy of either. Retreating through Burma during World War II, Private Mizushima (Shoji Yasui) discovers his gift for the harp (saung) just before Japan surrenders. Captain Inouye (Rentarō Mikuni) tasks the young soldier with delivering the news to Japanese soldiers still fighting in the mountains. Unsuccessful, Mizushima comes back down the mountain changed, living as a monk among the Burmese while his countrymen await departure in a POW camp in the same village. Mizushima pledges to bury the Japanese littering the countryside, unable to move past the horrible evidence of senseless death. His company pledges to bring him back home, unable to imagine the new Japan without all of their countrymen in tow. This episode features more discussion of the THE LORD OF THE RINGS series (2001–2003) than you might imagine. It’s not much, but it’s more than you’d think. References: “The Burmese Harp: Unknown Soldiers” by Tony Rayns for the Criterion Current The Karen Organization of Minnesota The Hmong Cultural Center The Hmong American Partnership Give to the Trylon’s Film Forever Fund so they never have to increase ticket prices! Check the calendar, preview upcoming series, and buy tickets Contribute to Perisphere, the Trylon blog #KonIchikawaUndertheFlagoftheRisingSun #DCP Follow us on Twitter at @trylovepodcast, Bluesky at @trylovepodca.st, and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Show art by Emily Csuy. Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Outro from THE BURMESE HARP. Timestamps 0:00 - Episode 329: THE BURMESE HARP (1956) 2:11 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary 3:54 - Our top-level thoughts of THE BURMESE HARP 14:23 - Triangle Mountain and what it does for Mizushima 29:03 - Why Mizushima as the mediator here? 48:26 - The Japan that was and the Japan that will never be 51:58 - Cinematography 1:06:10 - The Junk Drawer 1:11:46 - To All the Loves We’ve Tried Before: 1956 1:14:11 - Cody’s Noteys: Harp-e Diem (harp trivia)

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• Episode 328: DEMOLITION MAN (1993) with Dan Nagan

  With Dan Nagan (@aDapperDanMan)! Mellow greetings! DEMOLITION MAN, Marco Brambilla’s only major motion picture credit is a bit of a chimera, both a fun action movie and a sort of sardonic parody of the genre. Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes are literal relics in a world gone soft: Snipes is there to terrorize it with old-fashioned chaos, and Stallone is there to rein him in with… old-fashioned machismo. It’s kind of Verhoeven-lite (or maybe even post-Verhoeven) in its jeering disdain for politics, its attempt at centrist polemics, and who it blames for the decline of American civilization. On this episode, we talk about the soupy politics of DEMOLITION MAN, Snipes’s progression from unwitting hero to one of the better The Jokers out there, the woke mind virus, and who actually made this movie. Then, Dan takes us through almost an entire Jeopardy board of Trylove-related trivia. (Seriously, what’s his boggle?) References: “Demolishing Technocratic Fascism” by Lucas Vonasek for Perisphere, the Trylon blog “In Praise of Demolition Man’s Wackadoo Libertarianism” by Abraham Josephine Riesman for Vulture Demolition Man (1993) and Hundreds Of Beavers (2022) on Film Stories by Simon Brew Give to the Trylon’s Film Forever Fund so they never have to increase ticket prices! Check the calendar, preview upcoming series, and buy tickets Contribute to Perisphere, the Trylon blog #DontMessWithWesleySnipes #35mm Follow us on Twitter at @trylovepodcast, Bluesky at @trylovepodca.st, and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Show art by Emily Csuy. Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Outro: “Museum Dis Duel” by Elliot Goldenthal from the DEMOLITION MAN soundtrack. Timestamps 0:00 - Episode 328: DEMOLITION MAN (1993) with Dan Nagan 05:57 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary 07:59 - Dan’s thoughts 12:01 - The camp and political nose-thumbing of DEMOLITION MAN 22:30 - The signifiers of this future 33:29 - Stallone, Spartan, and self-awareness 41:56 - The world building 45:21 - Wesley Snipes as Simon Phoenix 58:24 - Favorite writing and bits 1:03:19 - The Junk Drawer 1:11:24 - Dan’s Detour: Trypardy (Trylove-themed Jeopardy)

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• Episode 327: PASSENGER 57 (1992)

  Wesley Snipes got his big action break in Kevin Hooks’ PASSENGER 57, an airplane heist movie about a security specialist and recent widower pulled back into the job to thwart an international terrorist’s airborne escape plan. Snipes seems really comfortable as not-Bruce Willis, punching and kicking his way through bad guys in the clouds and on the ground alike. In this episode, we chat about Snipes’s performance, the blackness of his unwilling hero John Cutter, the cast (including Michael Horse, Elizabeth Hurley, and Bruce Payne) and how nice it is when a movie clearly knows its lane. References: “Snipes gets his Wings: PASSENGER 57” by Jake Rudegair for Perisphere, the Trylon blog “Terrorists in Tight Spots” by Hannah Baxter for Perisphere, the Trylon blog Wesley Snipes @ Making Of Passenger 57 ONBLAST DVD "Bruce Payne(Passenger 57)" Interview BET AWARDS @ Ludacris After Party Wesley Snipes didn't get "always bet on black" Give to the Trylon’s Film Forever Fund so they never have to increase ticket prices! Check the calendar, preview upcoming series, and buy tickets Contribute to Perisphere, the Trylon blog #DontMessWithWesleySnipes #35mm Follow us on Twitter at @trylovepodcast, Bluesky at @trylovepodca.st, and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Show art by Emily Csuy. Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Timestamps 0:00 - Episode 327: PASSENGER 57 (1992) 2:40 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary (under exclusive license from AG Enterprises, Ltd.) 5:49 - The virtues of being a DIE HARD (1988)-lite 13:52 - Wesley Snipes’s performance and the “blackness” of John Cutter 33:57 - The pacing 46:05 - The Junk Drawer 54:38 - To All the Loves We’ve Tried Before: 1992 56:12 - Cody's Noteys: The Trylove Movie Draft: 1992

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• Episode 326: TO WONG FOO, THANKS FOR EVERYTHING! JULIE NEWMAR (1995) with Matt Yost

  TO WONG FOO, THANKS FOR EVERYTHING! JULIE NEWMAR is remembered as the first depiction of drag queens as non-gag main characters in a major Hollywood production. Vida Boheme (Patrick Swayze), Noxeema Jackson (Wesley Snipes), and Chi Chi Rodriguez (John Leguizamo) are California-bound New York drag queens who find themselves sidetracked in a rural Midwestern(?) town. They find some of the locals intolerant, some just ignorant, and some in desperate need of a makeover. It’s not really what movies from the 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s have led you to expect: While there’s some friction, it’s not a movie about the knock-down drag-out social struggles of drag queens. In fact, it’s a bit of a refutation of that archetype: A narrative near-weightlessness gives the leads the freedom to heighten the reality around the subject matter and, put simply, camp it the hell up. In this episode, we welcome longtime friend of the pod Matt Yost to explore how TO WONG FOO exists inside and outside the queer struggle of its time, reflect on its provenance today, discuss its metatextual layers, and call out some of our favorite lines in this astonishingly funny script. Plus, Cody reverse-engineers a super solid trivia segment from one of his strongest puns yet. Find Matt… On Bluesky at @mattyost.bsky.social On Letterboxd at @mattyost_ On Trylove episodes about BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974), a table read of A GOOFY MOVIE (1995), and CABARET (1972) References: “The Shift from Straight to Queer – To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar” by Nicole Rojas-Oltmanns for Perisphere, the Trylon blog John Leguizamo "To Wong Foo" 6/19/95 - Bobbie Wygant Archive Patrick Swayze "To Wong Foo" 1995 - Bobbie Wygant Archive Patrick Swayze, Wesley Snipes And John Leguizamo Talk 'To Wong Foo' In 1995 | TODAY Originals “The Amazing Story Behind To Wong Foo” by Mitch Kohn for Advocate Give to the Trylon’s Film Forever Fund so they never have to increase ticket prices! Check the calendar, preview upcoming series, and buy tickets Contribute to Perisphere, the Trylon blog #DontMessWithWesleySnipes #35mm Follow us on Twitter at @trylovepodcast, Bluesky at @trylovepodca.st, and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Show art by Emily Csuy. Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Timestamps 0:00 - Episode 326: TO WONG FOO, THANKS FOR EVERYTHING! JULIE NEWMAR (1995) 3:47 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary (under exclusive license from AG Enterprises, Ltd.) 6:18 - A “camp fantasy” 17:29 - The dynamics between the leads and how the actors approached their roles 29:26 - How the structure of the movie responds to the fantastic lifestyles of its main characters 37:54 - Julie Newmar herself and the flawed pursuit of “perfect femininity” 51:15 - The ending 1:01:21 - Our favorite bits 1:08:29 - The Junk Drawer 1:14:37 - To All the Loves We’ve Tried Before: 1995 1:20:53 - Cody’s Noteys: Nestlé Snipes (Nestlé food product name trivia)

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• Episode 325: BEAU TRAVAIL (1999)

  Claire Denis’s moving, poetic portrait of repression in the armed forces might be one of the best movies of all time. In the French Foreign Legion, there are beautiful, elegant young men; there’s their goblinish commander; and there’s nowhere else to go for any of them. The group’s leader, Galoup (Denis Lavant), is hopelessly in thrall to his own superior, Forestier (Michel Subor) — so when young newcomer Sentain (Grégoire Colin) starts to court attention from Forestier, Galoup resorts to subterfuge and abuse of authority to keep Sentain in line with the rest of his section. A masterpiece of visual storytelling and queer cinema, BEAU TRAVAIL is a sordid story of jealousy, externalized repression, and the struggle to find oneself beneath layers of oneself. References: “All Our Trashcans Within: Tears and Other Feelings in Claire Denis’s Beau Travail” by Ben Tuthill for Perisphere, the Trylon blog “Solar Citalopram: Beau Travail, Ken, and Burning Isolation” by Finn Odum for Perisphere, the Trylon blog Claire Denis and Barry Jenkins on Beau Travail “Desire is violence”: Claire Denis on Beau Travail | Sight and Sound Denis Lavant on BEAU TRAVAIL - The Criterion Channel Reebok or Nike : r/funny Give to the Trylon’s Film Forever Fund so they never have to increase ticket prices! Check the calendar, preview upcoming series, and buy tickets Contribute to Perisphere, the Trylon blog #LaSauvagerieetBeautédeClaireDenis #DCP Follow us on Twitter at @trylovepodcast, Bluesky at @trylovepodca.st, and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Show art by Emily Csuy. Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Timestamps 0:00 - Episode 325: BEAU TRAVAIL (1999) 2:29 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary 4:02 - People who are what (or are in places where) they shouldn’t be 18:47 - Counterpoint of image and story, visual and narrative 27:54 - Beautiful boys, colonialism, homoeroticism, and heteronormativity 35:07 - Galoup’s attempt to externalize his hatred of expression 47:48 - The all-timer ending scene 56:20 - The Junk Drawer 1:01:33 - To All the Loves We’ve Tried Before: 1999 1:03:29 - Cody’s Noteys: The House of Champions: 1999 (deciding the best movie from 1999)

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