School of Movies

10 Possible Futures

[School of Everything Else 2020]

This is a special episode deliberately timed to around the American Election and not far off the official Brexit from Europe. It's a time of great anxiety, so we wanted to give ourselves and our listeners a dose of perspective.

So I've collated ten different types of future seen in movies, and I've ranked them from the very worst to the very best. That way we can talk them all through in order, starting with horrendous scenarios that make what we're experiencing right now maybe not quite so utterly apocalyptic in our minds. And we finish on visions of unity, cooperation and progress that might give us something to hope for.

Guests:

Hollywoo Actress  Maya Santandrea @Mayasantandrea

Brendan Agnew of Cinapse  @BLCAgnew

Jesse Ferguson of Recorded Tomorrow @TheDapperDM

Neil Taylor of TheKidDogg

Deep Impact vs. Armageddon

[School of Movies 2020]

Duelling Comets!

In 1998, because of the way the movie industry works (or used to) we got not one but TWO films within months of each other, about the Earth facing an extinction-level event from the heavens. Both films largely concern themselves with the American response, both involve sending up a shuttle to blow the meteor apart, both feature lower-scale destruction as a fireworks show selling-point, and both are filled with bad performances from a cast that includes great actors. 

What we did here on their 22nd anniversary is tackle one and then the other, comparing and contrasting their differing approaches. By the time the credits roll you'll just be happy that it's not the end of the world.

Minority Report & War of the Worlds

[School of Movies 2020]

To date Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise have worked together twice in their careers. And since they were two dark future-shock movies that were released close together in the early 2000s we figured we'd cover them both as a double-bill. 

It's fairly extraordinary what a different world we are seeing here, than just a few years beforehand in the 90s. And in particular the age of terror paranoia of War of the Worlds now feels like a distant memory, what with everything happening at this moment. Like looking back on the cold war during the age of terror. 

So these are both pretty grim, and we decided to pep them up with some fun moments for you, including a look back over Cruises' family-averse portfolio, and rather more talk of penguins than I think *anyone* expected. 

A.I. Artificial Intelligence

[School of Movies 2020]

What existed for years as an ongoing project for Stanley Kubrick became one of the only treehouses he let his friend Steven in on. Eventually Stan decided his approach alone could not ideally shape A.I. for the screen, and that this story needed Spielberg to direct. Stan offered to play producer.

And then he died.

So Steven picked up the pre-production art, concepts and development, including the Robin Williams footage directed and recorded by Kubrick himself, abandoned what script existed and wrote one himself for only the second time. He then made a dark fairy-tale about humankind and our robotic children whom we both neglect and abuse. It ends up a requiem for a self-destructive civilization that could not overcome their fear and anger. And at the heart of it is a little robot boy who has been irresponsibly programmed to love one human mother forever. 

Of all of Spielberg's films to give a second chance at absorbing the depths and the shadows and the heartbreak, *this one* may top them all.  

Guests

Chris Chipman of The Chipman Bros Tangent @The Chippa

The Lost World: Jurassic Park

[Digital Drift 2015]

The second 2015 re-release from our dino season. You can go back to the separate School of Movies Archive podcast feed that a lot of people don't know about, but it has more than 200 of our pre-2017 shows. On there you'll find our episodes on Jurassic Park III and Jurassic World and at some point in the future we'll tackle Fallen Kingdom. 

This one is a weird and tonally dissonant path, relative to the original masterpiece. We uncover the movie of the book that Michael Crichton was pressured into writing after the success of the first movie, the content of which was largely scrapped for what Sharon magnificently dubs in this episode “Benny Hill with dinosaurs.”

Guests:

Neil Taylor of TheKidDogg

James Perkins of The Digital Fix

Schindler's List (Hook & Jurassic Park Revisited)

[School of Movies 2020]

A long time ago, around late 2013, Sharon and I recorded a shortish piece on Hook. It was just before Robin Williams passed, and so the file sat in our archive, unreleased, along with the one on Mrs Doubtfire. We just didn't want to be scornful of something he had done during that period of shock and mourning. Eventually in 2015 we combined that section with a new one on the 2003 Peter Pan to make a comparative show, and it did not compare favourably. I put that down to us really liking the Jason Isaacs version and nobody else seemingly giving a stuff. 

Anyway, we went back to Hook for our year of Spielberg, now with the blu ray in hand and a deeper appreciation of Steven's aims. And you know what? We really liked it this time. And this was again before I read up on the weird, staggered production woes this thing had. I can recommend a video called "Yesterworld: The Troubled History of Steven Spielberg's Hook: A Classic That Should Have Been."

We also went back to Jurassic Park to see if it holds up five years on from our Main Event show on it. Turns out not only is it still one of my favourite films of all time, but I found a way to watch it that makes it even better!

And all this is two spoons of sugar to help you prepare for what we have to say about Schindler's List. A film that in 2020 disturbed us to our very core, and left me so shaken that I noticed something in my voice during the edit that I've never heard before. We kept it short so that the heaviness would not overwhelm us or you. And we understand if you would like to skip this one. Hook and Jurassic Park run up to 43 minutes in.   

Jurassic Park

[Digital Drift 2015]

Way back when Jurassic World was released (and we were all excited for what might have been the first really good Jurassic sequel) Digital Drift as this show was known at the time, put out one of our best episodes ever, on the 1993 original. So this is both a re-release and an essential, restored component of the Spielberg season. 

Still as fresh and endlessly entertaining to us as it was decades ago, this film is rarely out of our re-watching rotation, and as such I know it frame by frame and word by word.  We take you through every scene and get to the bottom of why this is such an appealing, evergreen and effective movie. 

Guests:

Joshua Garrity of Cane and Rinse

James Perkins of The Digital Fix