Pather Panchali and the Sound of Rain on a Tin Roof
Marama and projectionist Hemi Tāne watch the restored print of Satyajit Ray's 1955 debut and talk about Ravi Shankar's score, the train scene and how a film with almost no plot holds you.
Speed, Thirty Years On: Is It Actually a Perfect Film
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Show notes
Speed, thirty years on
After weeks of arthouse, Marama picks a film she will defend to anyone. Speed is 116 minutes of problem solving with a ticking clock, and critic Ngaire Pohatu argues it is the most tightly built American action film of its decade.
- The three-act structure as three separate set pieces
- Why Keanu Reeves' flatness works and Dennis Hopper's theatricality works beside it
- The bus jump, the practical stunts and the one obvious cheat
- Graham Yost's script and the Joss Whedon rewrite that is credited nowhere
- Spoilers begin at 15 minutes
Voice notes this week argue about whether the subway ending is one act too many.
Transcript
Kia ora, welcome back to Third Row Centre. I am Marama Whitcombe. Last week we were in a Bengali village in the 1950s watching rain on a tin roof. This week there is a bomb on a bus and it cannot drop below fifty miles an hour. I am joined by Ngaire Pohatu, who reviews films for the radio and who once told me, with a straight face, that Speed is a perfect film. Today she has to prove it. We will go through the elevator, the bus and the subway, talk about why Keanu Reeves barely blinking is the right choice, and ask whether a film can be great without a single memorable line of dialogue that was not written in a rewrite. Spoilers from 15 minutes in, but honestly, it has been thirty years. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts. Buckle up.
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