Episode 11: Manohla Dargis (Chief Film Critic at the New York Times) and Matt Zoller Seitz (Ed at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine)
In the penultimate episode of the series I join - in my opinion - the world's greatest living film critic, The New York Times co-chief film critic, Manohla Dargis. Manohla confesses that she fell in love with Michael Mann's work watching The Last of the Mohicans.
And to close, I join co-author of THE SOPRANOS SESSIONS, TV and film critic for Vulture and Editor-at-Large of RogerEbert.com - the equally legendary - Matt Zoller Seitz. Matt tells me that Magua is one of his favourite characters in the history of movies, and so much more.
About the show:
THE LAST (12 minutes) OF THE MOHICANS is a twelve-episode limited podcast series focusing on the climax of the Michael Mann’s 1992 epic The Last of the Mohicans. The format of the podcast, which slightly differs from ONE HEAT MINUTE, utilises the entire final twelve-minute climax of Mohicans as a portal to explore the themes of the movie, the cross-section of political apparatuses, colonial superpower wrangling, and Mr Mann’s riff on the “great American hero.” With an Academy Award-winning score from Randy Edelman and Trevor Jones, iconic performances, stunning cinematography from Dante Spinotti, a relentlessly paced script from Mann and co-writer Christopher Crowe and masterful orchestration from Mann; the film’s extended finale - triggered by the delivery of tribal justice until the credits roll - is arguably one of the greatest endings to almost any movie ever.
About the movie:
The Last of the Mohicansis adapted (and significantly altered from) James Fenimore Cooper novel, set in 1757, Mohicans follows three trappers who are inadvertently drawn into the French and Indian War when they rescue the daughters of British Colonel and their British Captain escort from an ambush. It stars Academy Award Winner Daniel Day-Lewis, Madeleine Stowe, Academy Award Winner* Wes Studi, Russell Means, Eric Schweig, Jodhi May and Steven Waddington.
ABOUT MANOHLA DARGIS
Manohla Dargis grew up in the East Village in New York, where she attended public school and was a frequent attendee at both St. Mark's Cinema and Theater 80. She started writing about movies professionally in 1987 while earning her M.A. in cinema studies at New York University. A class with the longtime Village Voice critic J. Hoberman led to her being hired to write about avant-garde cinema for the Voice. She has been the co-chief film critic for The New York Times since 2004. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband. (Bio via The New York Times).
To read her great work go here
Twitter:@ManohlaDargis
ABOUT MATT ZOLLER SEITZ
Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine, the creator of many video essays about film history and style, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism, and the author of The Wes Anderson Collection. His writing on film and TV has appeared in The New York Times, Salon, New York Press, The Star-Ledger and Dallas Observer.
Twitter: @mattzollerseitz