It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.

Do you believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being?

We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Welcome back to the next picture show, a movie of the week podcast devoted to a classic film and the way it shaped our thoughts on a recent release.

I'm Keith Phipps, here again with Jennifer Koski and Tasha Robinson.

Also joining us is our special guest slash Scott Tobias Substitute, Joshua Rothkoff.

Hello, Josh.

Hello, everyone.

On last week's show, we talked about Francis Ford Coppola's One from the Heart, a self-consciously artificial musical set on the

realer-than-real streets of Las Vegas. The setting and the tone are quite different, but many of the

same impulses can be found in a net, a new musical by Laos Carax. Like Coppola, Carax is not a director fond of playing it safe, whether that means

shades of one from the heart, recreating Paris's Pontnooth Bridge for lovers on the bridge,

or creating a rock opera starring Adam Driver as a self-flacerating stand of comic who,

and there's no way to discuss this film without spoilers, so keep that in mind, who murders his opera singer-wife, played by Marianne Cotillard,

midway through the film, and exploits the musical talents of his young daughter, the eponymous,

Annette. Annette is played through most of the film by a puppet, seemingly designed to invoke

pathos by its very look.

Karekz shoots the film in long, elaborate shots that are as impressive as they are disorienting.

The songs, written by Ronald and Russell Mayo, are both very much an extension of the work they

created as part of the band Sparks, while also confirming why Sparks has a fervent cult following

that seldom expanded into

the mainstream. It's a film sure to provoke a powerful reaction. We'll get into our own

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