Twisted Sister/Brother/Father/Mother

twisted sister/brother/father/mother

After last week’s fatal mother/son relationship in Herzog’s “My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?” we’ll be discussing three more films that explore dysfunctional parent/child dynamics – “Mother”, from the genre blending mind of Bong Joon-ho, the Robin Williams starring “World’s Greatest Dad” and Ozark set hillbilly thriller, “Winter’s Bone”. The question is though: what is cinema’s most twisted filial relationship? The Screen Shrapnel team delve into their traumatised cinematic pasts to choose their favourite fucked-up family units.

Similar to a family bond is the director/actor unions that form through multiple film collaborations. These tight knit relationships have created some of finest films ever made – think of the trio of gangster films from Jean-Pierre Mellville and Alain Delon, the string of 80s masterpieces from Woody Allen and his muse Mia Farrow, or Hitchcock’s quartet of pictures with Jimmy Stewart, where the rotund englishman morphed cinema’s blue-eye boy into a dead-eyed old pervert. But who are today’s great director/actor team-ups? Forget your Burton and Depp love-ins, the Soderbergh and Clooney vanity projects or the shaky cam shenanigans of Greengrass and Damon, for our money the most consisted Hollywood director/actor team-up of late has been the nutty Dadaist insanity of Adam McKay and Will Ferrell (“Anchorman”, “Talladega Nights” and “Step Brothers”). Tune in to hear us delve into their riotous new collaboration, “The Other Guys”.

And finally, it falls to Graham to reveal a dirty little secret: he likes “Sleepless in Seattle”, the 1993 vomit-inducing snore fest from perennial purveyor of puke, Nora Ephron. But with Anthony Lane and Amy Brennan in his corner, can Jamie convince him of the error of his ways. Tune in to find out.

Posted at 18:34, 25th September 2010