Parker Posey Priorities
Parker Posey as Miami in the college comedy Kicking & Screaming (1995). She's got her priorities in order.
Guy: Do i have to start paying back student loans tomorrow?
Miami: I'm gonna go look for pot.
The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
Follow TFE on Substackd
We're looking for 500... no 390 Subscribers! If you read us daily, please be one.
THANKS IN ADVANCE
Parker Posey as Miami in the college comedy Kicking & Screaming (1995). She's got her priorities in order.
Guy: Do i have to start paying back student loans tomorrow?
Miami: I'm gonna go look for pot.
by Kyle Stevens
After teaching for years as a graduate student, then as a postdoc, and then as a Visiting Assistant Professor, I’ve finally started a proper position as Assistant Professor of Film Studies. As semesters begin all over the country, I turned to thinking about my favorite on-screen professors. High school movies tend to serve as microcosms of society; they’re all emotional peaks and valleys, in-groups and out-groups, and the goal is to get out. In college movies, from Animal House and Old School to Legally Blonde and The House Bunny, the goal is to stay on the rip-roaring ride of university life.
Not surprisingly, college teachers don’t feature heavily in these movies. And in other genres where professors pop up, they’re not exactly realistic. Think Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor, Natalie Portman in Thor, Hugh Grant in The Rewrite, and so on. (Propriety dictates that I not comment on the realism of Bruce Humberstone’s 1952 Virginia Mayo vehicle She’s Working Her Way Through College.) Television doesn’t fare much better, as the patently absurd characters in How to Get Away with Murder or Transparent attest.
But here are my personal favorites. The Top Five Professors in Film..
Katey is back! Our very pregnant team member returns to discuss a few new movies with Nathaniel, Nick, and Joe and catch up.
Index (43 minutes)
00:01 Katey is back!!!
02:36 Money Monster
11:30 X-Men Apocalypse
23:36 Love & Friendship
31:28 Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising
42:05 Goodbyes
You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes tomorrow. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you?
Nathaniel, Nick, and Joe kick off a whole new season of the podcast by hitting the road with Michael Shannon and family in Midnight Special and going back to college with Richard Linklater's baseball boys in Everybody Wants Some!! We believe its our 8th season, so we'll just go with that.
42:30 minutes
00:01 The Crucible Broadway & Film
02:12 The Slumdog Oscar Year
05:00 Everybody Wants Some!! delightful & sexy
15:00 Pro & Con on Midnight Special
32:00 Hello My Name is Doris, Zootopia
40:30 Favorite Prince songs
You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Please continue the conversation in the comments. Did you "want some!!" and where do you fall in the all-over-the-place reactions to Midnight Special.
Wednesday nights are now devoted to you. We'll alternate between a Q&A and a Reader's Choice Movie. So you are essentially picking the topics each week. We started with Gattaca but y'all kept asking for Cruel Intentions so here we are again.
Believe it or not, I've never seen Cruel Intentions (1999) so I gladly accept the multiple requests to discuss. This is written and directed by someone named Roger Kumble and the name did not ring a bell. It turns out he's still working, mostly on television and he's working on a TV sequel to this very movie. I missed this news somehow but Sarah Michelle Gellar is reprising her role so this post is more timely than I meant it to be.
The credits also inform us that it's only "suggested by" Dangerous Liaisons. That's a fancy word for adapted if you want to compete in Original Screenplay at the Oscars. (Not that this teen picture had any such designs.) I'm not sure if you know this but Dangerous Liaisons (1988) is one of my all time favorite movies. And Swoosie Kurtz is in this one, too! We begin with her as Sebastian Valmont's (Ryan Phillipe) therapist. Her broad gestures and funny notes remind us that this is a comedy. Of sorts.
In both movies Swoosie is the mother of someone who couldn't have possibly come from her womb: Uma Thurman in the 1988 movie and Tara Reid in this movie -- so, downgrade. Tara must have been left on the editing room floor because this photo is all we see of her
His therapist is immune to young Sebastian's charms but she learns as he's leaving that her daughter wasn't. She screams at her nasty patient as he leaves the building and he flashes her this baby devil grin. [More...]