Special Report: Sudden Flicker (2026)

Film history may be heading toward its own ending, and David Thomson wants to look at the whole thing while there is still something to see. The critic and historian behind Rosebud joins Mike White for a Projection Booth Special Report on his new book, A Sudden Flicker of Light, a revisionist history of the movies that took about three years to write.Thomson traces his obsession to a childhood screening of Henry V (1944), where a dissolve from sleeping page boys to flames lodged in his head for good. He explains why he gave up a place at Oxford for film school in 1960, remembers the time Citizen Kane (1941) played to an empty house and Orson Welles had almost no scholarship behind him, and weighs Pauline Kael's attack on the film.Then the talk turns to where the medium is headed: photography giving way to electronic images and AI, editing as film's most decisive tool, and why Thomson calls Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey (2026) a hollow sham that may age like The Sound of Music (1965). He also makes the case that The Godfather (1972) still shapes how power looks on camera, and previews his next book, on Mickey Mouse.What happens to movies when the picture stops being a photograph?Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth--5513239/support.Become a supporter of The Projection Booth at http://www.patreon.com/projectionbooth The Projection Booth is part of the Weirding Way Media podcast network. Explore more of our shows at http://weirdingwaymedia.com.