School of Movies

Early Commissions 2023

This is a quick lowdown of what we have coming up in the next few weeks, along with official notification that the window for our Early 2023 Commissions Season is opening up right now.

So if you have an episode you want crafted by us, the standard price for a film is $150 with video games and TV shows scaling that amount, depending on the hours we will have to invest. 

Get in touch via Patreon Messenger, Discord, Twitter or email, and have a very happy holidays. 

Superman: The Animated Series

[School of Everything Else 2022]

Following the tremendous critical and commercial success of the first ever dedicated  animated Batman show, the same creative team turned their eyes to his sunny counterpart, the original, archetypal superhero, the last son of Krypton.

It's always more challenging creating a successful, beloved Clark Kent than it is a Bruce Wayne. People like the brooding and the darkness. By contrast it is natural to be mistrusting of someone who purports to be so utterly GOOD all the time. Surely there's an angle. Look how naïve he is. What if he turned bad? Unfortunately this last prospect is the Superman story we keep returning to in pop culture. Because we can understand why someone would wield supreme power as a conquering weapon.

This, however is THE definitive Superman. Christopher Reeve is no doubt the most wonderful, memorable, impeccably performed live-action Kal-El, but this show which ran for three seasons from 1996-2000 is most definitely the place to go to find the *context* for Superman. A world based on the comics that the creative team love and have actually read! A rogue's gallery that aren't all just Lex Luthor and General Zod, and the finest Lois Lane we may ever see.

This Animated Series is a gift. 

Guests:

Toby Jungius @TJungius of Through the Wind Door

Kevin Veighey @KevinTimeGeek86 whose Let's Plays on YouTube can be found here

Riddick

[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.

The Chronicles of Riddick

[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!

Pitch Black

[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. 

Retro Emulation Gaming

[School of Everything Else 2022]

This one has been many years in the making. 

Around about the time the pandemic hit, followed by the global chip shortage there was a series of jumps in both quality and quantity of retro gaming machines being manufactured in China and shipped out to folks stuck in lockdown with a serious hankering to revisit a simpler less-apocalypsy past.

At the same time the secondary collector's market for vintage hardware, cartridges and discs also ballooned, and those with the engineering abilities started restoring and upgrading classic handhelds and consoles. 

This show is not a buyer's guide, nor an overly technical breakdown of the processes. It's a focused, historical slice of perspective on gaming; past, present and future. It is an exploration of the fragile nature of what we play and the lengths we will often go to, in order to recapture those memories. It's about the sheer joy of curation, archiving and preservation, and the strangely benign communities that have developed around these principles. 

New Book: The Lights from Distant Bonfires: 18 Gothic Tales (Promo)

In case you didn't catch this at the end of the Company of Wolves show yet, Sharon, myself and even Willow have helped put together an anthology of Gothic tales written by members of the School of Movies community.

It's available to buy right now on Amazon and if as many of you as possible buy it at once, talk about it on social media, (and if you want to be extra specially helpful leave us an honest, positive review when you've finished and recommend it to friends) that should help it get some visibility.

It's called "The Lights from Distant Bonfires" and we've been preparing it for many months now. These stories are stirring and spine-tingling and should conjure up haunting images to dwell on this Fall. We are keeping the price low and selling the paperback at cost to get it into as many trembling hands as possible. 

USA Edition

UK Edition 

The 14 Authors:
Lincoln Alpern, James Batchelor, Nama Chibitty, Greg Downing, Jesse Ferguson, Chris Finik, Nick Jaragosky, Hanna Peregrine, Alexander Shaw, Sharon Shaw, Willow Shaw, Maya Souris, Alejandra Vargas, Bradford Yurkiw

The Company of Wolves

[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.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife

[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. 

Smile

[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 

UK Samaritans 

Get Help, Talk Suicide: Canada 

Australia Lifeline 

Find a Helpline: Emotional Support in 150+ Countries