92 min listen
#27: Mad City/City of Angels (with Fiona Underhill)
FromTravolta/Cage
ratings:
Length:
70 minutes
Released:
Feb 10, 2021
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
This week, we (along with special guest, JumpCut Online’s Fiona Underhill) begin our post-Face/Off slide into the latter years of Travolta and Cage with two ‘90s artifacts, Mad City and City of Angels! In City of Angels, Nic Cage takes the ‘fallen angel’ baton from Travolta’s Michael, as a dewey-eyed angel who falls in love with a heart surgeon (a radiant Meg Ryan) and decides to become human to explore that. It’s a remake of Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire that bumps the political dimension for romantic fantasy (romantasy?), but it somehow works?
And on the other side of the coin, French-Greek auteur Costa-Gavras stumbles into one of his rare English-language films with Mad City, a sleepy, facile Ace in the Hole riff involving a craven TV journalist (Dustin Hoffman) who finds himself in the middle of an erstwhile hostage situation with a disgruntled museum security guard (John Travolta, playing deeply dumb). It’s got a lot to say about the fickle attention of the public and how the media can manipulate it — or at least it thinks it does.
Pledge to our Patreon at patreon.com/travoltacage
Follow us on Twitter @travoltacage
Email us questions at travoltacagepod@gmail.com
Podcast theme by Jon Biegen
Podcast logo by Felipe Sobreiro
And on the other side of the coin, French-Greek auteur Costa-Gavras stumbles into one of his rare English-language films with Mad City, a sleepy, facile Ace in the Hole riff involving a craven TV journalist (Dustin Hoffman) who finds himself in the middle of an erstwhile hostage situation with a disgruntled museum security guard (John Travolta, playing deeply dumb). It’s got a lot to say about the fickle attention of the public and how the media can manipulate it — or at least it thinks it does.
Pledge to our Patreon at patreon.com/travoltacage
Follow us on Twitter @travoltacage
Email us questions at travoltacagepod@gmail.com
Podcast theme by Jon Biegen
Podcast logo by Felipe Sobreiro
Released:
Feb 10, 2021
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
#1: This Might Totally Suck: Nathan Rabin's Happy Place enters the exciting world of podcasting with an opening extravaganza featuring the following segments: 00:45 - Introductions 06:30 - The Juggalo March on Washington 28:34 - Scalding Hot Takes: Thor Ragnarok 47:22 - Harvey... by Travolta/Cage