This week, we're discussing Andy Griffith's first big screen role in A Face in the Crowd, the 1957 film from Elia Kazan. Griffith stars as Lonesome Rhodes, a wandering musician who is discovered in a small county jail and goes on to become an influential television star. It is a fascinating and timely examination of fame, influence, and the cult of personality.

Additional Reading:

Vulture Article: "There Is No Safe Word: How the Best-Selling Fantasy Author Neil Gaiman hid the darkest parts of himself for decades."

The Dames delve into the darkness and despair with Robert Eggers's Nosferatu, a Dracula adaptation, remake of Murnau's 1922 film, and work of art all its own.

Welcome to 2025! As we gear up for a new year of exciting episodes and so many movies to talk about, we take a little look back at some of the films we have been watching lately, from Lauren's Hitchcock Year to Will & Harper and Wallace & Gromit, this wide-ranging conversation covers a lot of recent and upcoming releases as well as some of our favorite rewatches.

End clip: Demi Moore wins the Best Female Actor - Motion Picture Musical/Comedy award for The Substance at the 82nd Annual Golden Globes. Courtesy of the Golden Globes.

Check out Karen's interview with Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl directors Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham.

Happy New Year from Citizen Dame! For our final episode of 2024, we talk about the hilarious and melancholic The Apartment, directed and written by Billy Wilder, starring Jack Lemmon as an office worker who lets executives use his apartment for extramarital affairs, and Shirley Maclaine as the elevator girl he develops feelings for (without knowing she's having an affair of her own). Come for the Billy Wilder dialogue, stay for Fred MacMurray being The Worst.

(Available to stream for free on Prime and Tubi. TW for discussion/depiction of attempted suicide.)

We hope you have a wonderful New Year and we'll talk to y'all in 2025!

This week, we celebrate the season with Todd Haynes' 2015 holiday romance, Carol. Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara star in this adaptation of the 1952 Patricia Highsmith novel.

The Dames do a double-feature this week with The Bishop's Wife and The Preacher's Wife, in which we try to determine whether Cary or Denzel is the hottest angel committed to film.

Jury's still out.

The Dames are kicking off a month of holiday movies, beginning with the 1941 French production, L'assassinat du Père Noël/Who Killed Santa Claus?

Directed by: Christian-Jaque
Written by: Charles Spaak; based on the novel by Pierre Véry
Starring: Harry Baur, Renée Faure, Raymond Rouleau, Robert Le Vigan, Jean Brochard

Produced by Continental Films

The Dames close out Noirvember in pulpy style with Samuel Fuller's still shocking The Naked Kiss, starring Constance Towers as a prostitute who moves to a small town and upends its social and sexual hierarchy by actually being a kind, ethical person.

(TW for discussions of sexual abuse.)

This week, we discuss Orson Welles' noir classic, Touch of Evil. Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh star as a Mexican official and his wife who find themselves embroiled in a drug trafficking scandal that also involves an American detective (Welles) and his questionable methods of bringing people to justice.

We kick off Noirvember 2024 in style with Charles Laughton's exceptional directorial effort: The Night of the Hunter, starring Robert Mitchum as a fire and brimstone "preacher" who preys on widows in Depression-era West Virginia, but meets his match in two small children hiding an expensive secret. The Night of the Hunter was Laughton's only film as a director, in which he employed a blend of silent film and stage techniques that make it one of the most unique and effective noirs in cinematic history.

For our 300th episode, we finally discuss Jennifer Kent's brilliant 2014 horror film, The Babadook.