Episodes
Friday Dec 09, 2022
The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
Friday Dec 09, 2022
Friday Dec 09, 2022
[School of Movies 2022]
We've been planning Narnia shows for many years. This was a very special book series to me as a child, informing on my worldview and writing. It was also the first long-form live action fantasy series I watched on television, as the BBC production which ran from November 1988 to December 1991 adapted four books over three 6-episode seasons. I always wondered why they stopped at The Silver Chair. Later I began to understand the kind of scope and budgets and potentially thorny territory that the remaining three stories would entail. The quaint, very British project was already more ambitious than anyone would have expected.
After that were many long years of waiting for a cinematic incarnation (not counting the insanely cheap and rushed 1979 animated version). The achievement and success of New Line's Lord of the Rings films at the same time as Warner's Harry Potter imbued Disney with a desire to seek out its own epic fantasy series to bring in all the dollars.
While compared unfavourably with Weta's perfectly magnificent Rings Trilogy it is frankly amazing that the director of the first two Shrek films was able to achieve something in this 2005 film which both surpassed my experience of reading the book, and even my loftily-soaring imagination of what the events could look, sound and feel like. We will be covering the duet of films that followed in 2008 and 2010 and lingering cancellation of the seven-part series next year.
Guest:
Nama Chibitty @namathenerd
Friday Nov 25, 2022
Riddick
Friday Nov 25, 2022
Friday Nov 25, 2022
[School of Movies 2022]
Nine years after his Chronicles, Richard B. Riddick is sat upon his iron throne, the crown hanging heavy, too many pie suppers since he was at his physical peak and too many wenches left in wordless ecstasy, sloughing around his greasy bedsheets.
This is the story of how he gets easily tricked, shot in the back, left for dead on a barren planet filled with beasties designed exclusively to kill you, and soon after making a four-legged friend, he becomes beset by not one, but two separate groups of rotten mercenaries.
Possibly the yellowest film you will ever witness, Riddick (2013) is what happens when one attempts to return to one's roots after an age of hubris. Does it succeed?
Next Week: Superman - The Animated Series.
Friday Nov 18, 2022
The Chronicles of Riddick
Friday Nov 18, 2022
Friday Nov 18, 2022
[School of Movies 2022]
After knocking it out of the park on the first try with Pitch Black, David Twohy and Vin Diesel limbered back up four years later with a complete change of pace, scale and even sci-fi sub-genre. If you look at Pitch Black as The Hobbit, then where they took the series next was their Lord of the Rings.
However, there is a world of difference between what went into the expansion and historical goings-on of Professor Tolkein and the Conan-the-Barbarian-in-space that Riddick metamorphosed into. Suddenly, rather than a dangerous prisoner he became the chosen one of a massacred world, destined to avenge his people against a rampaging horde of death-worshipping necromongers!
The results of these changes were frequently frustrating and marginally absurd!
Friday Nov 11, 2022
Pitch Black
Friday Nov 11, 2022
Friday Nov 11, 2022
[School of Movies 2022]
This one is really rather special and arguably the longest time coming of any of our shows. Pitch Black, released in February 2000 in the USA didn't make it to the UK until November of that year. There's even some confusion in this episode because I wasn't sure if Sharon and I were actually together as a couple when we saw it (turns out we were, just). But significantly, this was our first movie where we left the cinema together on fire with analysis that we were twanging back and forth like verbal badminton.
It's a tight, focused, visceral, planet-survival thriller, drawing from many inspirations but managing to combine them in a way that keeps it continuously gripping, even after all these years.
This is the first of a dedicated three-week series of episodes revolving around the transmedia franchise that sprang from this standalone movie; a handful of very savvy decisions mixed with a bucket of bad ones.
The chronological order goes...
1. Escape from Butcher Bay (Patreon Exclusive Episode)
2. Assault on Dark Athena (In a double-bill with Butcher Bay)
3. Pitch Black (Main Event)
4. Dark Fury (Patreon with the video games)
5. The Chronicles of Riddick (Main Event)
6. Riddick (Patreon)
See you in a few days for a delve into Vin Diesel's career and the Peter-Chung-animated 30-minute short, followed by the sprawling, pretentious Conan-the-Barbarian-in-Space of "The Chronicles of Riddick" next week.
Friday Oct 28, 2022
The Company of Wolves
Friday Oct 28, 2022
Friday Oct 28, 2022
[School of Movies 2022]
This is an obscure coming-of age fable from the director of Interview With the Vampire and The Crying Game. It was made on a very low budget in 1984 in Shepperton Studios, England, but it has some of the best werewolf fiction within its toothy confines.
The framing device is a young girl who has gone to bed with tummy cramps. In her restless dreams she ties together various cautionary tails about Red Riding Hood, the boy who cried wolf, visitations from the Devil himself, wedding-day curses and strange men with one eyebrow and shocking yellow irises. The teller of many of these stories is the great Angela Lansbury, who at the time of release for this show, only just closed the last page of her own book.
And the whole thing is an allegorical anthology about the girl's growing, changing body, her sense of identity and burning curiosity.
Stay tuned to the end for news about a brand new Gothic Anthology book we've helped to create.
Friday Oct 21, 2022
Ghostbusters: Afterlife
Friday Oct 21, 2022
Friday Oct 21, 2022
[School of Movies 2022]
It is a confusing time to be a lover of Ghostbusters. On the one hand you have the long-planned but never-realised Ghostbusters 3 reunion Dan Aykroyd always had plans for. On the other you have the 2016 oops-all-ladies remakeboot which plenty of people enjoyed yet made some guys so mad they burned down half the internet and scared Sony (as well as malignantly harassing several of the stars away from social media).
And on the third hand you have the hot new take that the 1984 original movie is in fact capitalist trash and some compelling arguments about demonising the Environmental Protection Agency in Reagan-era America. And then there's this fourth movie that upon announcement met a storm of derision, perceived as placating those rotten fans mentioned above. And when it finally came out, late in 2021 it was so meek and inoffensive that it barely registered in a year when going back to the cinema was both special and risky.
The prevailing view is that it was also trash. So we brought in someone who helped us talk about the original two movies all the way back in 2013 to detail why it's their favourite!
Guest:
Taylor Nova of GameBurst @TaylorNova6
NOTE: This episode was recorded almost a year ago, and in an instance of spectacular timing, the final edit emerged within hours of some horrible reports on both Bill Murray and Ivan Reitman. This is why nearly all of my heroes are fictional. Because when you hear Captain America was horrendous to someone, that's on the writer.
Friday Oct 14, 2022
Smile
Friday Oct 14, 2022
Friday Oct 14, 2022
[School of Movies 2022]
WARNING: This episode contains lengthy discussions on depression, trauma and suicide.
You do not need to see this movie before listening to the episode. In fact, in a rare instance we actually suggest you *don't* see it, for reasons we will be elaborating on at length.
It has reviewed well, and as with many horror movies based on a simple hook that shakes people up, it has done gangbusters at the box office. That puts it in league with Saw and Paranormal Activity and Insidious. And as you'll hear, on a technical scale, in terms of moment to moment nerve-jangling scenes it ties itself together with a confidence that makes debut director Parker Finn likely to be successful moving forward.
As I watched I became aware that the premise was uncannily similar to It Follows (2014) by David Robert Mitchell, and I've seen many people online echo that similarity. However, my idle brain found nine further films that this clearly draws from, which makes a spread of influences that is either shameless or impressive, depending on perspective. But that isn't the reason not to see it.
Guest:
Spencer Leeb of The New Century Multiverse
If you have ever felt the need to talk to somebody about this very serious and personal state of mind please bookmark whichever of these is helpful to you.
USA: 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline
Friday Sep 30, 2022
Analyze This
Friday Sep 30, 2022
Friday Sep 30, 2022
[School of Movies 2022]
Our favourite mafia movie, even over the venerated classics, for reasons that will become immediately apparent. This 1999 comedy directed by Harold Ramis was made at almost exactly the same time as The Sopranos first season was developed. Both explore the very real anxiety that comes with a lifestyle that is inherently dangerous, as well as one that involves such a close-knit family and all the loyalties, hopes, dreams, betrayals and disappointments that come with every other family, only this kind whack people for betrayal.
And we knew exactly who to call on for this analysis, our Australian buddies from The Two Shrinks Pod. Together with these professionals we delve into Robert De Niro's disarmingly vulnerable take on a worried father and a still-grieving son, along with Billy Crystal's harangued shrink, positively terrified of winding up sleeping with the fishes, whilst nursing his own paternal resentment.
School of Movies and Two Shrinks are part of the podcast group Fireside Alliance. Come along and check out the other shows we rub shoulders with. https://www.firesidealliance.com/
Guests:
Dr Hunter Mulcare @realhuntermmm
Amy Donaldson of @TwoShrinksPod
Friday Sep 23, 2022
Four Slices of American Pie
Friday Sep 23, 2022
Friday Sep 23, 2022
[School of Movies 2022]
WARNING: This episode contains foul language and repeated references to very crude sexual situations, bodily fluids and some nasty-as-hell behaviour. Thou art warned!
This began as a simple re-watch of the original 1999 film "American Pie", but it quickly spiralled into a look back on the gross, frat-house movie craze of the early 2000s. We go through each film in turn and mine them for anything even remotely positive, before spanking the living hell out of them for their awful, creepy and sometimes disturbing attempts to wrestle laughs out of an audience that was growing up faster than they were.
American Pie 2 (2001) reunited the gang for spring break, American Wedding (2003) saw two of the more wholesome characters get married, whilst also depicting what I dubbed then and now as the death of comedy, maybe even the death of narrative cinema! And then the one with the most potential for retrospection on our own filthy, mistake-filled youths American Reunion (2012) brought everyone back as adults, thinning hairlines and disappointment all-round. And somehow, despite all the ingredients being present, they managed to bake their most rotten apple pie last! And yet despite all this, we managed to pull together one of the most fun shows we've done. This is going to be a favourite for some listeners.
Friday Sep 09, 2022
Everything Everywhere All At Once
Friday Sep 09, 2022
Friday Sep 09, 2022
[School of Movies 2022]
A truly magnificent film about pondering the nature of existence and being trapped between nihilistic despair and existential motivation.
But also a touching and painful drama about a little, broken Asian family who no longer know what to say to each other any more.
But also a spectacular running battle of martial arts and clownery, nestled inside a high-concept sci-fi about jumping between dimensions and occupying the bodies of the alternate versions of yourself, and borrowing the abilities they honed leading different lives to you.
This was a commissioned show, because there was SO MUCH to talk about that we would have delayed it forever otherwise. But now it's one of our very best shows. And that is due mostly to our guests who had so much to say. Nothing but editorial was cut. We've given you Everything!
Guests:
Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnewof Cinapse
Maya Souris @TheStuntLady
Greg Downing of Through the Wind Door @MightyGregDoge
Alejandra Vargas @Plutoburns
Chris Finik @finmonster09