Aaron Hunter
@aaronhunter
Movie doctor: Trinity College Dublin Women and New Hollywood, Polly Platt, Hal Ashby he/him, dad, drummer
I've got two tickets to Robyn at 3Arena (Dublin) tomorrow night (24 June) that I'm trying to sell. Would love to get face value (@81.50 each), but open to offers! You can buy direct through TM, or hit me up! secure.ticketmaster.ie/rs/18006434B...
Anthony Head had so many great "big" moments in Buffy, but also tons of brilliant "little" moments - like this short scene from Dead Man's Party (S03E02) when he's just discovered that Buffy's back in town and safe.
Incredibly bummed to hear about Tony Head (RIP) - I know he played a lot of brilliant roles, but Rupert Giles is an absolute TV legend - lover, fighter, sage, ripper, dad, librarian ... killer of gods, singer of Who songs.
If you’ve been seeing all the ‘Marcia Lucas saved Star Wars’ posts and wondering … what? I highly recommend Karen Pearlman’s chapter on women editors of the 70s (including Lucas). Not only great on these editors, but one of the best scholarly discussions of how editing works you’re likely to read!
Sugar were magnificent - loud, fast, with a bit of jangle and a ton of heart! When they kicked into Hoover Dam (pictured) I was flattened by a wave of euphoria - ‘I’m on the centerline, right between two states of mind!’
RIP Sonny Rollins. The Bridge is one of my favourite albums of all time!
I'm such a small fish that I've no idea how I got on this list, but if it means an invite to Zoë's party, then I'm totally down with it!
What has two thumbs and just signed on to write the BFI Classic for Harold and Maude?
In 1980, Murphy would become the first female cinematographer on a Hollywood film - 1980! - btw, the film's title (Fatso) and marketing are off putting, but it's actually a really sweet early 80s NYC romcom, directed by Anne Bancroft.
The first two women to join a camera operators union were Jessie Maple (east coast) and Brianne Murphy (west coast) - both in 1973. In 1980, Murphy would become the first woman to join the American Society of Cinematographers.
Congratulations to Autumn Durald Arkapaw on her Oscar for Cinematography. She's the first woman to win the award (in 97 years!) - and also the first person, male or female, of Black or Filipino descent. The film looks amazing and certainly should've won in its own right ... but a bit of context ->
Somehow I'm just finding out that the same guy, Gerard Huerta, designed AC/DC's logo and the HBO logo. And now you know, too!
Happy Woman's Day! Didn't plan it this way, but tomorrow I'm teaching Born in Flames and Away from Her - two fantastic (and very different!) films directed by women that you should see if you haven't.
What’s the first record you remember buying with your own money? I think I was 10. A friend at school told me that KISS was so out and this 'new' group AC/DC were in. Bought this with a mix of Christmas money and saved allowance. Changed everything!
The film's title is great, too: during the Famine, the Choctaw nation raised relief funds for Ireland, even though they were still reeling from the Trail of Tears. The commemorative sculpture in County Cork is called 'Kindred Spirits'.
RIP Robert Carradine - just hearing about his passing now. He was absolutely fantastic in a small but intense (and sadly prescient) roll in Coming Home.
Teaching Decline of Western Civilization for a few years now - the gigs are still thrilling, but I increasingly find the film's framing of the punk scene very middle class-y reactionary. Titillation around violence, very little on the scene as community, or even why so many women were drawn to it.
In this version of the film, Jesse Jackson is one of the central figures expressing the film's political consciousness. Along with Peggy Terry.
The idea seems to have been that while Robert Forster's reporter is trying to piece together the connections between Chicago's various poverty situations and prejudices from the outside (and doing a lot of dillydallying), Eileen is getting directly involved.
Peggy Terry was a member of the Communist Party, and a social and civil rights organiser, originally from Oklahoma and Kentucky. In Chicago she was a member of JOIN and worked with Jackson's Rainbow Coalition. In unused footage, she takes Eileen to a Jackson rally.
In the finished film, Eileen (Verna Bloom) is an economic migrant from Appalachia, who lives in a Chicago tenement with her son and whose politics are alluded to. But there was originally a subplot in which she starts organising with Peggy Terry, the socialist anti-poverty campaigner. ->
A brief shot of Jesse Jackson at the Poor People's Campaign march on Washington, spring '68 - from the film Medium Cool. Jackson figured much more significantly in Wexler's original vision for the film ->
RIP Bud Cort It can be hard to see him beyond Harold - an indelible role in a once-in-a-lifetime film. But I loved him every time he popped up in something.