Tickets Secured – Details, episodes & analysis

Charlene and Jackie discuss Sentimental Value, the Cannes Grand Prix winning film from Therapized Norwegian King Joachim Trier. 

Is it as good as The Worst Person in the World? What does it take to repair inherited generational trauma? And have you seen SKÅM??? All this and more in this week's episode of Tickets Secured. 

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Time Stamped Show Notes: 

2:06 Richard Brody agrees with Jackie about The Worst Person in The World.

3:10 “Those people dancing on the freeway”

6:54 Paul Mescal’s Iconic Rugby Shorts 

8:36 Bad Dads - Justin Chang reviews Sentimental Value 

8:36 Bad Dads an art exhibition inspired by Wes Anderson's work

10:50 The Trauma Plot strikes again 

13:20 Joaquim Trier profile in the New Yorker 

17:45 Station Eleven’s Hamlet Scene

19:50 The production of Hamlet that we did not get to see 

31:00 “I’m an old guy now” monologue from The Worst Person in the World

34:10 The House in ‘Sentimental Value’ 

36:10 The SKÅM GOOGLE DRIVE!

38:50 The Taipei Film House was former US Ambassador residence

39:03 The “horror film” THELMA

42:35 Documentary about marathon running pediatric neurologist 

46:16 Catherine Martin on her creative partnership with Baz 

57:40 In The Hall of The Mountain King: Certified Norwegian Banger 

1:01:41 Ira Glass expounding on ‘The Gap’

1:04:38 Character transitions in Clouds of Sils Maria 

1:15:00 BAM’s remake of We Come to This Place for Magic 

For complete episode notes and more: ticketssecuredpodcast.com

A very special episode in which Charlene & Jackie fully commit to incorporating the themes of impermanence and incompetence in Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind, which premiered at Cannes, into their own podcast practice.

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In lieu of proper time stamped notes, please enjoy the sources of some ruminations on The Heist Genre and Kelly Reichardt that we arrived at in our (non recorded) conversation: 

• The Quiet Menace of Kelly Reichardt’s Feminist Westerns - touches on KR’s ability to maintain an outsiders point of view and ‘normal persons sense of money’.
• A piece on Showing Up that discusses the common thread of precarity among Reichardt's protagonists and also mentions her iconic early work on America’s Next Top Model
• Josh O’Connor and Kelly Reichardt discuss making The Mastermind
• Australian perspective on Kelly Reichardt’s movies and interview regarding The Mastermind
• Photographers that Kelly Reichardt mentioned inspired her and which informed the gorgeous production design and set decoration: William Eggelston and  Steven Shore’s parking lots
• The worst heist movie: The Goldfinch - Strictly for The Birds
• The best heist movie: The Great Muppet Caper - ‘they really toss em around like wet rags in this one’
• The Mastermind included sounds (and images) from the radio, TV, and outside the windows of the historical political context of the time setting even though the main character JB did not engage directly with the social movements unfolding around him. 
• This reminded Charlene a lot about the main characters studied personal absorption tuning out the historical political context around them despite a very clever use of sound to intrude in the main character’s story like in The Zone of Interest. 
• The art featured in the film is by Arthur Dove, and his work, in turn both jazz influenced and influential to much of the art featured on 60’s jazz album covers, neatly dovetails (pun intended) into the films jazz score 
• Kelly Reichardt discusses the pleasure she takes in documenting processes and the small details that are often left out of films

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Autumn has fallen in New York and Charlene and Jackie celebrate by tumbling down the stairs of the Angelika straight into Oliver Hermanus’s Palme D’Or nominated The History of Sound.

A WWI (?), gay, heart wrenching movie starring mischievous scamp Josh O’Connor and former Phantom of the Opera Paul Mescal. Listen in as they discuss period filmmaking on a budget, the possible litigious wrath of Hanya Yanagihara, and what all this had to do with the Stomp Clap Hey music of Barack Obama’s first term. 

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Time Stamped Notes:

0:47 Autumn in New York ….rated the #1 creepiest age gap film

3:00 Oliver Hermanus has had multiple films at Cannes

6:22 The jacket scene in Brokeback Mountain

12:52 The History Of Sound: a short story by Ben Shattuck 

18:22 Fat City: Both a film and a production company with a great logo 

20:00 The cover of the collection of stories is the same as the poster is the same as the cover of A Little Life

23:53 Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor Rationed Jolly Ranchers 

26:00 Paul Mescal can sing!!!

36:54 Malaga island conflict in movie actually happened in 1912

38:35 "Bury Your Gays" literary trope 

43:02 The film began pre production in 2020

44:36 Indiewires Top 100 Movies of the 2020s So Far

48:22 The Tragedy of Stomp Clap Hey 

48:45 Every song in The History of Sound sounds like this 

49:50 Trader Joe’s newsletter and Victorian art 

52:30 Chris Cooper on playing the older version of Paul Mescal

58:22 One of the many tv shows starring Julianne Moore

1:01 Daniel Day-Lewis ends 7-year retirement

1:05:12 The Baby Carriage in the Battleship Potemkin 

For complete episode notes and more: ticketssecuredpodcast.com

Charlene and Jackie see The Sparrow in The Chimney at BAM and there’s a lot to talk about: so many animals, so many kids, so many scenes where we had to cover our eyes.

Plus: Experiences with wild west Q&A Culture, why the English Patient actually rocks, and a harsh referendum on the New Yorker’s fall movie preview. 

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TIME STAMPED NOTES: 

3:30 We love BAM

3:45 “I saw both George Michael and Maebe…” 

4:20 New Directors/New Films 

5:00 Ramon Zurcher and His Identical Twin Brother Silvan Zurcher  

6:00 There’s Drama By The Pool 

10:30 Mark Wahlberg’s red headed sisters in The Fighter  

15:56 “It’s a film about destruction and rebirth” 

19:43 Like a Nicholas Winding Refn film or Run Lola Run  

23:40 Kaput 

26:22 The rat in The Departed 

34:30 Metaphoric settings in The Glass Menagerie and The House of Yes 

38:00 The famous words of Leo Tolstoy  

349:34 Amy Adam’s is Night Bitch  

44:09 The Duplass brothers talk peacetime vs wartime  

47:00 Michelle Williams on child acting

49:00 A Typical Morning as the Horse Assistant Director on The Gilded Age 

51:27 Sophie Fiennes and the film she directed in 2002 

52:34 Marc Maron and Lynn Shelton on improv in Sword of Trust  

56:43 Elaine Hates the English Patient  

59:30 Walter Murch won a best Editing Oscar for The English Patient  

1:02:28 The New Yorkers Fall Culture Preview  

1:05:20 Bruce Springsteen and Phish play Glory Days 

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Charlene and Jackie go in and go off on Sorry, Baby, Eva Victor’s Cannes playing, Sundance Award winning debut. 

This episode has everything: wild speculation about A24’s business decision making process, Emerald Fennell haterade, thoughtful reflections on the use of time and trauma in storytelling, and of course, strong opinions about the Alamo Drafthouse’s popcorn. 

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Time Stamped Notes: 

1:07 Sundance: A24 Takes ‘Sorry, Baby’ For $8M 

2:22 Obvious Child, a comedy about abortion

3:45 Me and Earl and The Dying Girl: Fox Searchlight bought it for $12 million 

5:20  Eva Victor discusses ‘film grad school’ and Barry Jenkins producing

6:30 Jane Schoenbrun on making a film about how something felt, not how it happened

12:04 Temporal discontinuities and nonlinear structure in the work of Toni Morrison – Charlene meant Beloved, not The Bluest Eye.

13:54 End of the End of the Line: Temporality in Infinite Jest Is a Broken Circle

15:38 Tennis Balls, Heads, Annular Defloration Cycles in Infinite Jest

25:00 Promising Young Woman: The College Dean Scene

27:00 Authenticity is Dangerous and Expensive

27:30 John Proctor is the Villain

34:50 Jeopardy! Bar League at BOTH Alamo’s in NYC

37:57 1/3 of New Bedfords Population Claims Portuguese Ancestry 

40:01 Mike Leigh discusses his improvisational process 

47:48 The Case Against the Trauma Plot by Parul Sehgal

51:06 IT IS THE TITULAR ROLE

53:03 Paradoxes of American Individualism

55:55 “I Don’t Watch Ted Lasso”

1:03:20 Splitsville: Dakota Johnson in a fancy house

1:04:00 Oh, Hi!: A gender flipped Gerald’s Game? 

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Charlene and Jackie dive into the JACU (Jane Austen Cinematic Universe) to discuss Laura Piani’s debut feature Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, which premiered at TIFF last fall.

Topics covered include writers writing about writing, the cinematic equivalent of click bait, best book stores in NYC, and what happens when a rom com lacks com.

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1:15 The fine Italian cashmere merchant Loro Piana

1:20 The Jacob Burns Film Center

6:10 The Jane Austen Cinematic Universe

7:40 The Lake Scene, if you need to watch it at this moment

9:45 Shakespeare and Company Shouting Out Jane Austen Wrecked My Life

13:00 The Ginger Man–it’s a real book!

15:50 As You Do A Gavotte

18:20 Prime Example of a Jonesian fall

20:00 Materialists: Kind of a Rom, not really a Com

22:43 “It’s not girl gets boy, girl gets book”–Greta Gerwig on Little Women

30:30 The Personal is Political by Carol Hanisch

37:00 “If I have one wish, is that people go out from the film and they feel a bit happy and they want to read more poetry.”

40:00 The Dish and the Spoon: Greta Gerwig Raging in Pajamas

44:27 “Breadcrumbing”

49:15 Set with great wallpaper and matching lampshade and matching bedding and wallpaper

55:16 Two of our favorite NYC book stores: Kitchen Arts and Letters and Unnameable Books

58:53 A history of Book Row, NYC’s historic haven for bibliophiles. The store Jackie references is Alabaster Bookshop.

1:01:28 ‘The Chronology of Water’ Review: Kristen Stewart’s Directorial Debut.

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Charlene and Jackie discuss Andrew Ahn’s The Wedding Banquet, a 2025 update of Ang Lee’s celebrated 1993 film starring Lily Gladstone and Bowen Yang. 

Topics discussed include our favorite book to movie adaptations, how to retell a 1990s gay love story in 2025, Ang Lee being a repressed king, fake movie jobs, and how well placed plants can make a film more believable. 

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Time Stamped Notes: 

1:30 Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet (1993) 

2:30 “I have a lot of repression. So repression is what I make movies about” - Ang Lee, maestro of unrequited desire 

5:45 Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx, published in the New Yorker in 1997 

10:00 James Schamus, co writer of both versions of The Wedding Banquet 

12:00 Lily Gladstone in Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women 

19:00 Andrew Ahn’s authentic, intimate directing style and redefining the romcom 

25:40 The twists and turns of Park Chan-Wook’s The Handmaiden 

27:15 Chaebol: a large industrial South Korean conglomerate run and controlled by an individual or family

36:06 Robin Williams teaches Nathan Lane to ‘Act Like a Man’ in The Birdcage 

38:33 The obligatory Romantic Comedy Grand Gesture 

43:17 Emma Thompson losing it in Sense and Sensibility 

50:34 Materialists Trailer featuring Pedro Pascals 12 Million Dollar Apartment 

51:25 Do I Look Like I Belong Here? Working Girl and the Secrets of Class Politics 

53:17 Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, Non Fiction, french people getting in the literary zone 

54:05 Romeo and Juliet, or Juliet and Romeo????

54:54 You Can’t Out Baz Baz

58:29 The Historical Realism of Ryan Coogler’s Sinners

1:00:23 Tony McNamara on The Great - ‘‘Historians have to know we’re making mistakes on purpose’

For complete episode notes and more: ticketssecuredpodcast.com

Charlene and Jackie debrief on Opus, the A24 pop star multi murder thriller/comedy (?) starring Ayo Adebiri and John Malkovich, a movie that shot straight from Sundance 2025 to the common multiplex in a mere two months. 

Topics discussed include tracing the trope of cults in 21st century indie film, unhinged behavior at Williamsburg Cinemas, celebrity profiles where the journalist gets lost in the sauce, would Lady Gaga ever commit serial murder?, and how a film can suffer from use of the wrong dining chairs. 

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Time Stamped Show Notes:

2:01 Community and Family: The Cult Indoctrination Techniques of ‘Midsommar’

4:53 “She will never stop huffing paint” scene from Bottoms

5:38 The Hustlers At Scores: the article Hustlers was based off of

12:00 BFI: 10 Great Films About Cults 

12:14 Oneida: The Peculiar Truth About The Sex Cult that Made Silverware 

25:00 The Unconvincing Music of Vox Lux 

34:00 Chris Evans: American Marvel 

38:00 A Brief History of Rihanna’s Party Plane 

40:45 Ayo Edebiri in Theater Camp as a counselor that lied on her resume

42:40 Would you expect to find these chairs in a New Mexican cult compound? 

47:40 Sick of Myself: When Main Character Syndrome Runs Amok

54:22 Sound of My Voice: A Movie About Cults and Journalists That Is Good 

59:50 Lady Gaga at Coachella: She Would Never Act In This Way 

1:02:12 The Celebrity Profiles of Taffy Brodesser-Akner

1:02:57 Molly Lambert and her interview with/profile of Charli XCX

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We discuss On Becoming a Guinea Fowl by Rungano Nyoni, a film that premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. 

Time Stamped Notes: 

1:22 I Am Not A Witch (Rungano Nyoni’s first film, premiered at Cannes 2017)

3:24 AMC Class Action Lawsuit of which Charlene was a benefitee 

5:30 Eileen (2023, dir. by William Oldroyd)

5:40 Mean Girls The Musical (2024, dir. by Samantha Jayne & Arturo Perez Jr.)

9:57 Joy Ride (2023, dir. by Adele Lim)

10:06 Brigsby Bear (2017, dir. by Dave McCary)

15:02 Shula dressed as Missy Elliot 

19:10 Jason Bateman's expressions of disbelief in Arrested Development

19:53 Sandra Oh and Awkwafina’s dynamic in Quiz Lady  

44:05 Zadie Smith: “​​ Can’t go home, can’t leave home: a subject close to my heart”

52:50 The Farewell (2019, dir. by Lulu Wang)

53:00 Minari (2020, dir. by Lee Isaac Chung)

54:35 The Joy Luck Club (1993, dir. by Wayne Wang)

58:48 A Discussion About Black Welsh Film 

1:06:20 The Bechdel Test 

1:07:24 Glengarry Glen Ross (1992, dir. by James Foley)

1:08:28 She Said and the Canon of #MeToo films 

1:13:13 Bob Trevino Likes It

1:13:22 Sister Midnight 

1:13:48 All We Imagine as Light (2024, dir. by Payal Kapadia)

1:14:12 Superhero movie where Florence Pugh (?) has a russian accent (??)

1:14:38 We Come to This Place for Magic 

1:15:44 La Chimera (2023, directed by Alice Rohrwacher)

1:16:00 The Florida Project (2017, directed by Sean Baker)

1:16:53 Girls Will Be Girls (2024, directed by Shuchi Talati)

For complete episode notes and more: ticketssecuredpodcast.com

The pod's maiden voyage discussing Universal Language by Matthew Rankin, Ila Firouzabadi, and Pirouz Nemati.

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Time Stamped Notes: 

3:22 - The Twentieth Century

5:13 - High Maintenance

7:00 - The Grand Budapest Hotel

8:00 - Asteroid City, The Royal Tenenbaums and the precocious children and signage of Wes Anderson

10:23 - Brechtian Theater and drawing attention to artifice

13:30 - Agnes Varda, Sean Baker and ‘Film at the Margins’

24:00 - Winnipeg's Iranian Community

26:00 - Taste of Cherry 

27:00 - Iranian coming of age films that influenced Universal Language 

28:40 - The 180 Degree Rule that Matthew Rankin intentionally breaks

30:43 - The connections of all the characters in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia

31:25 - Macguffin

38:34 - Tim Horton’s Donut Shop 

44:53 - Iranian tradition of directors appearing in their own films and blurring the lines between fiction and reality

47:08 - (Some Of) Matthew Rankins Short Films (1) (2) 

50:50 - Public Sector Office

52:39 - David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds and Crimes of The Future 

53:06 - Rungano Nyoni’s On Becoming a Guinea Fowl

1:09:05 Don’t Worry He Won’t Get Far on Foot (2018) Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again (Also 2018)

Matthew Rankin Interviews: Q With Tom Power &

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