** "I'd like to say this. People know that I've been screaming like a maniac, and saying what I have been saying - that people in this country think they live in a luxury liner, but they don't, they live in a pirate ship..."

Pacifica host Garland Nixon on why he's hard on the US Empire - but he can back it up...

** "It was a sadness I felt for the predicament of all these lost and isolated, and fractured people that exist in society - and it was just a very hard journey for me..."

Adrien Brody Talks Masculine Identity In Crisis - And his latest film touching on male toxicity in this country, Manodrome. In which he portrays a strange cult leader presiding over a sanctuary of men fleeing society's male expectations - whether economic, social or sexual.

The youngest actor to ever win an Oscar, for The Pianist, Brody is no stranger to male identity challenged portrayals - including recently as Marilyn Monroe spouse Arthur Miller in the testosterone drenched Blonde, and as Houdini in that dramatic miniseries.

** "History is not going to treat us kindly..."

Israelism: A conversation with the filmmakers of a brutally candid investigative documentary into brainwashing and the weaponization of language - and how Jewish youth are indoctrinated 'to conflate their Jewish identity as synonymous with Zionism."

** "I first realized I was starting to fall into homelessness, when standing in the streets...I tried ringing Jack - 'pick up, pick up, pick up!...'

The Homeless Crisis Gets Personal. A pressing topic we regularly cover on this show, is the immense economic tragedy of poverty and homelessness under capitalism. Now this crisis has hit us personally as one of our crew, filmmaker Brett Gregory of our UK Desk, has found himself homeless on the streets of Manchester.

And ironically, the coincidental title of one of his films - 'Nobody Love You And You Don't Deserve To Exist: A Personal Journey Through Broken Britain.' Brett presents his plight on the show...

The Taste Of Things Review: Class, Cuisine And Labor As Aphrodisiac

An astonishingly conceived drama in large part touching on the sumptuous, visceral preparation of the enticing bordering on decadent aphrodisiac dishes in the kitchen of elaborate French cuisine, The Taste Of Things has film critics falling all over themselves reaching for witty gastronomic metaphors on repeat, ad nauseum. While bypassing any greater subliminal intent on the part of French-Vietnamese filmmaker and acclaimed 'cinema poet' Tran Anh Hung and his own cultural roots, as to more theoretical and ideological considerations - namely food for thought.

Loosely based on Marcel Rouffe's 1924 novel 'The Passionate Empire' and like Hung's first award winning film 'The Scent Of Green Papaya' - the first Vietnamese production ever nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar - 'The Taste Of Things' is a narrative as well from the point of view of servants, rather than the typically bourgeois protagonists.

And surely a reflection of Hung's own life experience - spirited out of South Vietnam by his family during the Vietnam conflict and the fall of Saigon while in the midst of his likewise traumatic burgeoning adolescence, he returned to his native country from France as an adult, to decipher the mystery of his radically transforming roots back then, from aristocratic dominance to socialism.

Undeniably the best foreign film this year, The Taste Of Things stars Benoit Magimel as Dodin, a prosperous 19th century French country farmer venturing into cuisine preparation as an eminently recognized gourmet chef, and ingredients gleaned from his bountiful homestead. But more significantly and unrecognized as the immense source of his celebrated dishes, is the self-effacing cook Eugenie (Juliette Binoche) he hired several decades ago, after discovering her recipe and experiencing her 'magic' in the kitchen. 

And over the years, Eugenie now comes to live with Dodin in his manor, and as his lover as well. Though she rejects his repeated wishes to marry her, proclaiming that the mutually intense and profound love of their shared work is a far greater emotional attachment than a marriage - which she points out would end their equality as workers. And solely her decision apparently every night, whether she chooses to allow him into her room for their romantic encounters - or not.

And this is where Hung has stunningly shifted the point of view, not only from the lyrical art of food coursing through this magnificent masterpiece to the symbolic ideological essence of the transformative socialist collective derived seemingly from his rediscovery of his roots in communist Vietnam. But a rarely represented proletarian perspective in a film - in which the bourgeois male is not only humbled before the majesty of his worker, but in a poignant role reversal begins to cook for her out of the enormous bond of a combined devoted admiration and adoration. While discovering through his difficult class journey, a destination imbued with an enormously profound and poignant personal and political transformation. 

Prairie Miller

Review At Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/critics/prairie-miller/movies?critic=self