Bayhem

If you're not already listening to Rudie Obias and West Anthony's AuteurCast, well, you ought to do that. Every few weeks, they pick a filmmaker, discuss all of their films chronologically, with an episode dedicated to each film (they release two or three episodes a week, typically), in the hopes of analyzing, in Rudie's words that open each episodes, "what makes them an auteur, or at the very least, what makes them worth watching."

They've been gracious enough to let me blab about on their show before, but they really went insane by inviting me onto four episodes in their series on Michael Bay. If you want to find those specifically, just check out Armageddon, Bad Boys II, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and Pain & Gain, but again, highly recommend checking out all the films in the series, and any other episodes they've released in general. It's good stuff.

It is fortuitous that this series should conclude right around the time the discussion surrounding the whole practice of "Vulgar Auteurism" has reached its fever pitch, although for I know it may rage on for years to come (this is the Internet; it will not). It's a movement which I could be said to be a part of, but, chiefly because it has a separatist tendency to which I object (by saying Tony Scott is a "vulgar auteur," it's at least saying he's different, if not outright inferior to, someone like Wes Anderson, to which I would strongly object). Anyway, if you're not familiar with that whole thing, head on over to Peter Labuza's excellent blog, where a discussion is raging on about this very topic, to which I contributed the bulk of my concerns in the comments section.