Episode 12: No Other Choice

Charlene and Jackie kick off 2026 with No Other Choice, perennial festival darling Park Chan-wook’s latest meditation on capitalism, violence, paper, and snakes which premiered at the Venice Film Festival.

Listen in for crazy theater mice stories, best movies about getting fired, what it means to be on an actor’s ‘team’, and more!

COMPLETE SHOW NOTES:

5:55 Incredible Stoker hair to grass transition 

7:05 The Alamo is transitioning into QR Code ordering

12:00 The Landfill Filled History of The Battery

17:00 ““No Other Choice” has drawn comparisons to Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite” (2019), another bleakly funny, socially conscious Korean thriller in which desperate financial straits precipitate a whirlwind of carnage”

21:00 Alison Stewart interviews Park Chan-wook on WNYC’s All of It

23:23 Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

25:53 How to Make a Killing: Glen Powell does crazy stuff for an inheritance 

26:17 Best Offer Wins: A woman does crazy stuff to buy a house 

27:10 Would You Kill For a Job? Jenny Odell on what No Other Choice reveals about the humiliation of work 

38:49 China’s Dark Factories: So Automated, They Don’t Need Lights

39:15 The house and greenhouse in No Other Choice: “the true object of the film: more than a site of memory, it is a promise of self-determination”

42:22 Ryan Coogler on why the vampires in Sinners are Irish

44:18 The Ax by Donald Westlake: written in 1997!

49:18 EFT Tapping Affirmations: An American Thing

52:48 Little details in No Other Choice: Snakes, Shoes, Wood!

55:30 Elizabethtown’s Opening Scene: Orlando’s Blooms firing set to a cover of ‘Jesus was a Crossmaker’

1:03:38 They Will Kill You trailer - 90 minutes of traps and fighting

1:05:35 Frownland and Ronald Bronstein’s ‘Cinema of Anxiety’

1:09:07 The Soundtrack of Aftersun DOES include the Macarena as well as Chumbawamba and Under Pressure 

1:10:54 Vine featuring girl dancing with a live chicken to Stacey Q’s ‘Two of Hearts’

1:14:05 The Tilda Swinton genie movie is: Three Thousand Years of Longing

1:16:45 The cardboard chaise used to advertise Wuthering Heights 

Full List of Movies, TV Shows, and Plays Referenced in this episode:

• Snowpiercer

• Oldboy

• The Handmaiden

• Stoker

• Decision to Leave

• The Sympathizer

• Parasite

• Fargo

• Crash Landing on You

• How to Make a Killing

• The Taste of Things

• Sentimental Value

• Office Space

• The Office

• Jerry Maguire 

• Sinners

• Fight Club 

• Almost Famous

• Elizabethtown

• Up In The Air

• American Beauty

• Not Another Teen Movie

• 9 to 5

• The Devil Wears Prada

• Stripes

• Kokuho

• In the Mood for Love

• They Will Kill You

• Ready or Not

• Ready or Not 2: Here I Come

• Marty Supreme

• Frownland

• Uncut Gems

• Bugonia

• One Battle After Another

• Hamnet

• Aftersun

• Landline

• Frankenstein

• Three Thousand Years of Longing

• The Bride

• An Education

• Never Let Me Go

• Wildlife

• Wuthering Heights

• Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates

• Emily The Criminal 

• Megalopolis

• Megadoc

• On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

• Octopussy

Thank you for listening and supporting the pod on its first year!

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