MIGHTY MOVIE PODCAST Podcasts

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Feed your film jones with MIGHTY MOVIE PODCAST! In every 10 - 15 minute episode, you'll join film journalist Dan Persons (Independent Film Channel; Air America) as he takes you behind the scenes for a lively conversation with some of the most innovative and intriguing filmmakers working today. Primary Format : Films Language : Also Listed as: City : New York State/Province : NY Country : USA Region : NA User Tags: auteurs behind the scenes Cinema comedy creativity directors drama documentary filmmakers filmmaking Films Movies User Votes: RSS Feed Website People found this Podcast Searching for: View this Podcast on a Google Map. Podcast iTunes Link Text Only listing of MIGHTY MOVIE PODCAST Podcasts Methings.com listings of MIGHTY MOVIE PODCAST Podcasts If you like this podcast, you might also like:

Cinefantastique Spotlight: RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES Startling the studios, startling the critics, and startling its delighted audiences, RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES has arrived to prove that a reboot — in the hands of a skilled director and inspired writers, actors and effects artists — does not necessarily need to serve as Exhibit One in the case for the … Continue reading » Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Evan Glodell on BELLFLOWER The course of true love is never easy. When an imposing, MAD-MAX-like, fire-breathing automobile intervenes, it can get downright complicated. Evan Glodell’s BELLFLOWER is the tale of two Southern Californians — Woodrow (Glodell) and Aiden (Tyler Dawson) — who fill their free time with speculations of the post-apocalyptic future and preparations for same that include … Continue reading » Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Spotlight: COWBOYS AND ALIENS It’s genre-meets-genre at your local multiplex, and not since Gene Autry faced down an advanced, subterranean civilization in PHANTOM EMPIRE has the American west faced such daunting enemies as are encountered in COWBOYS AND ALIENS. With Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig bringing steely resolve to their roles as bitter foes forced to set aside differences … Continue reading » Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Spotlight: CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER We’re betting Paramount would’ve preferred that CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER had come out on the Memorial Day or July 4th weekends. However, martial-arts-happy animals and big-ass robots claimed those two slots, so here we are in later summer, trying to get our patriotism back for a red-white-and-blue bedecked super hero doing his bit for … Continue reading » Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Spotlight: HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2 And so it comes to this: one determined, no-longer-a-boy-wizard versus one living incarnation of evil, facing off in a battle to the death. Meanwhile, millions of loving fans watch on, thinking, This is the culmination of all my dreams made real, while a smaller contingent of more critical spectators settle into their theater seats praying … Continue reading » Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Oliver Schmitz on LIFE, ABOVE ALL Maybe you’re gonna weep at the tale of a child paying a steep price for a community’s silence. Maybe you’re gonna take heart at the thought that one voice, breaking through that silence, can rescue not just the child, but all those around her, even the ones insisting on that fearful hush. Either way, LIFE, … Continue reading » Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Spotlight: JOHN CARPENTER’S THE WARD and ZOOKEEPER How does a review show handle the situation where two, exciting, soon-to-be-classic films are released on the same weekend? We don’t know, but this weekend saw the release of JOHN CARPENTER’S THE WARD and the Kevin James comedy, ZOOKEEPER, so we decided to cover both of those instead. Granted, there’s not much of a correlation … Continue reading » Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Michael Tully on SEPTIEN It’s hard to put a precise finger on the nature of Michael Tully’s SEPTIEN. I’m starting to think of it as kind of a Southern gothic chamber piece with epic ambitions, a family comedy-drama that at points incorporates inquests into the natures of love, creativity, competition, sex, and ultimate good and evil. Or maybe it’s … Continue reading » Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Joe Franklin Knows Talent (Sponsored Post) You know you got it, you know it’s good, you just need that push to get your unique talent onto the stage and before an awaiting public. Well, our sponsor for this episode, Samsung, is ready to give you your chance with Samsung Mobile Stage, a competition that will grant a handful of standout entrants … Continue reading » Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Spotlight: TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON Big. Bigger. Biggest. Somehow those words don’t seem fitting descriptions for the new TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON. Biggeriest? Spectactimammogigantular? In any case, it seems that Michael Bay’s plan for redeeming himself for the universally reviled TRANSFORMERS: RISE OF THE FALLEN involves ironically jettisoning as much plot as possible and focusing on the fireworks, all … Continue reading » Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Guillaume Dolmans Goes on “The Date” (Sponsored Post) So, another fun little sponsored post for y’all. This time Heineken’s the backer: They’ve got a new episode in what appears to be their ongoing series of “Nightlives of Really Cool Guys” videos. This one’s called “The Date,” and in about a minute and a half it depicts the kind of night you’ve always wished … Continue reading » Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Spotlight: CARS 2 Kids love cars, and kids love CARS — that seems to be the calculation behind Pixar’s latest animated offering, CARS 2. Abandoning the original film’s theme that celebrated the romance of exploring off-the-beaten-superhighway U.S, director John Lasseter and crew have devised an espionage plotline for this sequel, with cocky racecar Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) and … Continue reading » Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Robert Persons on GENERAL ORDERS NO. 9 I tend to lose patience with people who go the “words cannot describe…” route when they’re talking about something. There are always words, if you know how to use them. I gotta admit, though, GENERAL ORDERS NO. 9, the enigmatic debut work of filmmaker Robert Persons (no relation), is something of a challenge. A meditation … Continue reading » Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Spotlight Podcast: GREEN LANTERN Somebody notify Kermit: Being green just got a little easier. That’s what happens when the all-powerful will of the universe taps test pilot Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) to be its latest defender, and a dying alien bequeaths him a ring that turns him into the GREEN LANTERN, a mighty force for good with a bitchin’ … Continue reading » Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Monte Hellman on ROAD TO NOWHERE As politics too often demonstrates, the line between truth and fiction is a fragile one. In ROAD TO NOWHERE, a director (Tygh Runyan) casts an unknown actress (Shannyn Sossamon) in his latest project, a Southern noir film based on a true story, little realizing that the woman’s past connects her directly to the crime being … Continue reading » Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Spotlight: SUPER 8 J.J. Abrams, the man who set the deliriously enigmatic pace for LOST in that show’s pilot and upended STAR TREK by blowing up Vulcan (we still haven’t recovered) now sets his sights on the Spielbergian kids’ adventure in SUPER 8. Set in a small-town, rose-tinted version of 1979, the sf/fantasy film tells the tale of … Continue reading » Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Djo Tunda Wa Munga on VIVA RIVA! Sex, violence and… gasoline? Yeah, that’s the blend you get when your setting is Kinshasa and limited fuel supplies make the stuff as good as gold. Riva (Patsha Bay Mukuna) knows: He’s just snuck into the Congo with a healthy supply of the stuff and plans to leverage it into a handsome payday. The problems: [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Alberta Cross on David O. Russell (Sponsored Post) Hey, wow, we’ve got a Prestige Sponsor for this episode: Ketel One Vodka. And it’s a somewhat unusual, albeit ultimately logical, topic of discussion for the show: the Ketel One guys have produced a batch of new music videos by the hard-driving band Alberta Cross, and brought in David O. Russell to direct. When we [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Spotlight: X-MEN: FIRST CLASS It isn’t particularly well known, but mutants were with Washington when he crossed the Delaware, with Einstein when he developed the theory of relativity, and with Sarah Palin while she was waiting for Russia to raise its head above Alaska. Most specifically, they were directly engaged in the Cuban Missile Crisis — the world-changing historical [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mali Elfman on DO NOT DISTURB Shot on the proverbial shoestring over seven quick production days, DO NOT DISTURB is a curious little anthology film with some interesting names attached. Mali Elfman — daughter of Danny — wrote and produced, as well as starring in a couple of segments; Eric Balfour (SKYLINE) directs one segment and stars in another. Other helmers [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: KUNG FU PANDA 2 Ready for another visit from the most awesome martial arts master ever? Well, ready or not, Po, the legendary Dragon Warrior (and roly-poly panda) is back in this follow up to the well-received KUNG FU PANDA. And this time Po (voice of Jack Black) and his compatriots, the Furious Five — Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Monkey [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Spotlight: PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES pulled into port this weekend, plundering $90+ million from eager audiences. And that’s no surprise: People just love that incorrigible rapscallion (rapscallion?) Capt. Jack Sparrow — as portrayed by Johnny Depp — and apparently have a bottomless hunger for his adventures in a world where history and magic [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Greg Jacobs and Jon Siskel on LOUDER THAN A BOMB I’m basically down with anything that celebrates language, but LOUDER THAN A BOMB is something special. Based around the 2008 Louder Than a Bomb youth poetry slam that took place in Chicago, the film focuses on four high school teams as they face the difficulties of prepping and competing in the event. In the midst [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Spotlight: PRIEST The post-apocalyptic future, what could be more fun? Well, puppies, stick ball, and watching Donald Trump eat a bug, amongst other things. Nevertheless, the producers of PRIEST are hoping you’re jazzed to see a ravaged world in which the war between humanity and blind, sluglike creatures called vampires has reached a stalemate, and Paul Bettany’s [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Spotlight: THOR Most Mother’s Days, loving children show their gratitude with flowers and breakfast in bed. This Mother’s Day, the kids had the option of taking Mom to the multiplex, where she could drool over the handsomely chiseled Thor in the newest, big-screen adventure out of the Marvel stable. Is THOR — directed by Kenneth Branagh, starring [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Spotlight: DYLAN DOG: DEAD OF NIGHT Much like the denizens of the night that its title character is purported to protect, the horror-comedy DYLAN DOG: DEAD OF NIGHT has stealthily crept onto our mortal plane, sneaking into a handful of theaters for the consumption of a small (very small) audience. But are those who witness this Buffy-like mash-up of zombies, vampires, [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Clio Barnard on THE ARBOR Director Clio Barnard uses what was originally a theatrical technique in her hybrid documentary/drama THE ARBOR: She interviewed the friends, family, and acquaintances of the late playwright Andrea Dunbar and her troubled daughter Lorraine, then brought in actors to lip-synch to the resulting soundtrack. The process, shot partly in the working-class housing project that Dunbar [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CFQ Black Hole Ultra Lounge: Confirmed Film Genius & Video on D-Box It’s time for another trip into the depths of the Black Hole – the Black Hole Ultra Lounge Podcast, that is, this time brought to you with all the excitement of D-Box motion simulation. So strap yourself in and get ready for a bumpy ride as Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski ruminate on [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Spotlight: SCREAM 4 Poor Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell). Not satisified with the ordeals she suffered in SCREAMs 1 – 3, she’s gotta go and tempt fate by returning to Woodsboro and tempting the attention of the psycho killer Ghostface, who it turns out is still kicking around and slaughtering high-schoolers with manic glee. And if the main protagonist [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Spotlight Podcast: HANNA In this week’s episode of the Cinefantastique Spotlight Podcast, Lawrence French and Dan Persons focus on HANNA, Joe Wright’s dynamic action-thriller about a pint-sized female assassin whose intelligence, dexterity, and especially lethal skills seem just a tad beyond normal human capacity. It’s SUCKER PUNCH  by way of THE BOURNE IDENTITY by way of take your [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bertrand Tavernier on THE PRINCESS OF MONTPENSIER Supposedly, when Madame de Lafayette wrote her 17th century novella, The Princess of Montpensier, she was chronicling the romantic intrigues of her own time. Propriety, however, prevented her from making the parallels between her fictional characters and their real-life counterparts too obvious, so she displaced the drama some sixty years earlier, when France was torn apart by [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Spotlight: SOURCE CODE Marty McFly only had to be sure his mom ‘n’ dad fell in love.  Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) has to keep a bomb from killing a trainful of Chicago commuters, identify the bomber, foil his plan for detonating a dirty bomb in the heart of the city, connect with a pretty passenger [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Spotlight Podcast: SUCKER PUNCH Steve Biodrowski and Dan Persons narrowly avoid a sucker punch to the solar plexus as they dodge and feint their way through an examination of Zack Snyder’s new CGI-laced fantasy action pic. Is SUCKER PUNCH a female empowerment flick or another male fantasy about hot chicks in skirts wielding weapons? Is it an original vision [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Quentin Dupieux on RUBBER Yes, RUBBER was released theatrically on April 1st. No, it’s not some kind of a joke — I’ve seen it, I know. It’s actually a film about a tire that gains consciousness in the middle of the desert, finds it has the power to destroy objects and animals (including the human kind) with its mind, [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Round Table: SUPER 8 Sneak Preview Get a sneak peak at SUPER 8, the upcoming science fiction film from J.J. Abrams, on this edition of the Cinefantastique Round Table Podcast, the weekly round-up of news and views focusing on horror, fantasy & science fiction films. Also on the menu this week: Dan Persons and Steve Biodrowski explore the questions of whether [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Spotlight: LIMITLESS Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski expand their minds to LIMITLESS proportions in the latest installment of Cinefantastique’s Spotlight Podcast, which focuses on the new movie starring Bradley Cooper as a man who achieves fame and fortune thanks to ingestion of NZT, an illegal wonder drug that allows users to reach their fullest potential. [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Round Table: Zemeckis Vanishes into the Uncanny Valley It’s another weekly round-up of news, events, and home video releases at the Cinefantastique Round Table, the podcast with a Sense of Wonder. Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski focus their sights on what’s happening in the world of horror, fantasy, and science fiction cinema, including a discussion of the dissolution of Robert Zemeckis’ [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Eric Mendelsohn on 3 BACKYARDS Worlds get overturned in writer/director Eric Mendelsohn’s new film, 3 BACKYARDS, but quietly, subtly, with no little humor and with finely tuned emotion. Set in a Long Island suburb, a businessman (Elias Koteas) finds himself suddenly rootless when a cancelled flight leaves him with a day free and nowhere, really, to go; meanwhile, a housewife [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Spotlight: BATTLE: LOS ANGELES Aliens invade Los Angeles – well, Santa Monica, actually – in BATTLE: LOS ANGELES, the subject of this week’s episode of the Cinefantastique Spotlight Podcast. Dan Persons returns as host, hashing over the details of the latest entry in the alien-invasion sub-genre with Steve Biodrowski. The story follows an old soldier on the verge of [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sebastian Gutierrez on ELECTRA LUXX Should a movie about a pregnant porn star fleeing her past and questioning her future be this much fun? If it’s Sebastian Gutierrez’s gleefully frisky ELECTRA LUXX, yeah, sure. As he did with this film’s predecessor, Gutierrez has gathered a talented, largely female cast, including Carla Gugino as the titular Electra, Adrianne Palicki and Emmanuelle [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: DRIVE ANGRY 3D Twisted metal, slow-motion explosions, outrageous gunfights, and more bodies than you can count – some naked, some bloody, some both – and all of it in 3-D! It’s a rip-roaring trip down the Road to Hell as the Cinefantastique Podcast crew (Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski) hitch a ride with Nicolas Cage [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: I AM NUMBER FOUR with Andrea Lipinski Who are you? Why, I am Number Four – or at least that’s what the title tells me. But I am not a number; I am a free man! No, wait – that’s THE PRISONER. This week’s topic of conversation on the newly re-christened Cinefantastique Spotlight Review Podcast is I AM NUMBER FOUR, the new [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Ben Lyons on Oscar 2011 So the people over at Yellow Tail wines were in touch with me again with an offer to talk with critic Ben Lyons. He’s doing some Oscar-related stuff over at their movie/wine pairings website ReserveYourNight.com, and it sounded like a good opportunity to get his take on some issues dealing with the coming Academy Award [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Cinefantastique Round Table 02:07 This week offers a wide-ranging edition of the Cinefantastique Round Table Podcast, including capsule reviews by Dan Persons of three films currently in release: GNOMEO & JULIET, Disney’s animated adaptation of Shakespeare; VANISHING ON 7TH STREET, an independent film with a TWILIGHT ZONE vibe making its way around the country with art house engagements; and [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Iciar Bollain and Paul Laverty on EVEN THE RAIN Columbus did not land in Bolivia. But a Spanish film crew has chosen that country to shoot their historic recreation of that event — and how some priests fought against the subsequent enslavement of the natives — because, well, it’s cheaper. That initial bit of convenient exploitation is only the start of the parallels in [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Brad Anderson on VANISHING ON 7TH STREET Brad Anderson knows his way around old school horror — you know, the kind that relies on atmosphere and suggestion, the kind values the power of the disturbing thought as much as or more than threateningly wielded power tools and bleeding limb-stumps. In films such as THE MACHINIST (where Christian Bale almost literally wasted away [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Liz Canner on ORGASM INC. And you thought Restless Leg Syndrome was a boondoggle. Undaunted by the tsunami of ridicule that greeted such a dodgy prognosis, the pharmaceutical industry is at it again, floating a new disease — female sexual dysfunction, or FSD — and proposing a dazzling array of costly pills, creams, inserts, and worse — much, much worse [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CFQ Post-Mortem: The Eternal Mystery of the Standing Man In the break following the recording of the spotlight episode on THE RITE and before beginning last week’s round table episode, Dan recounts to Steve and Larry his encounter with a curious audience member. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Michael Madsen on INTO ETERNITY It is truly the gift that keeps on giving: The stockpile of nuclear waste that we continue to generate, year in and year out, useless for any practical purpose, but still deadly. In Finland, they think they’ve come up with a solution — it’s called Onkalo (literally Finnish for “hiding place”), a massive, man-made cave [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Gregg Araki on KABOOM His previous film, SMILEY FACE, seems to have perked director Gregg Araki up considerably. There’s a fatality to his newest, KABOOM — dealing with the imminent end of the world and all that — but there’s also an antic attitude to it that pulls the proceedings away from the darkness. Granted, when your story is [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Roundtable: Hopkins to PSYCHO/THE LITTLE MERMAID vs. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST All kinds of news prompt all kinds of discussion from this week’s panel: the rumored casting of Anthony Hopkins as Alfred Hitchcock in a film about the making of PSYCHO gets theofantastique.com’s John W. Morehead, CFQ’s Steve Biodrowski, and Dan Persons musing about what behind-the-scenes events could be dramatized in a film that [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Spotlight: Steven Moffat’s JEKYLL And the dream comes true for one young, idealistic podcast host. After months of campaigning, Dan finally gets a chance to bring Steven Moffat’s (DOCTOR WHO) BBC series, JEKYLL, to the table for an extended discussion. Listen in as CFQ editor Steve Biodrowski and theofantastique.com’s John W. Morehead join Dan Persons in a [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lawrence Michael Levine & Sophia Takal on GABI ON THE ROOF IN JULY The people behind GABI ON THE ROOF IN JULY pretty much created their film on a whim: director/star Lawrence Michael Levine wanted to follow up his previous project, TERRITORY, but was finding trouble matching his ambitions with what the market would fund. Meanwhile, co-star/producer Sophia Takal was willing to put up some residuals from a [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Roundtable: ALIEN & the Ill-Advised World of Prequels Seems that it was a good call, us taking the news portion of The Cinefantastique Podcast and mating it with what had to date been called the Cinefantastique Post-Mortem Podcast. Word that Ridley Scott is turning his scheduled ALIEN prequel into a kinda non-prequel puts Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons in a [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Spotlight: THE GREEN HORNET It’s all change, baby, and with that in mind we’re experimenting with the format of the podcast. We’ve stripped away the news and theatrical and homevid release segments, combining them with our weekly Post-Mortem bull session to form what will be called the Cinefantastique Round Table Podcast. What’s left, now dubbed the Cinefantastique Spotlight Podcast, [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Richard J. Lewis on BARNEY’S VERSION Paul Giamatti has added another entry to his roster of flawed protogonists: Barney Panofsky — schlock TV producer, accused murderer, and a guy so unlucky in romance that he has to get married twice before finding his true love (on his wedding night, yet). Based on the final novel by Mordecai Richler, BARNEY’S VERSION is [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: SEASON OF THE WITCH Nic Cage’s latest, SEASON OF THE WITCH — about two knights who seek to redeem themselves for their participation in the Crusades by transporting an accused witch to a monastery for trial — has been roundly burned at the stake by most critics. But is this film truly deserving of such [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Post-Mortem: Bumpin’ Gullivers & More J-Horror Having roundly belittled the recent, Jack Black-infused version of GULLIVER’S TRAVELS, Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons turn their sights to other, earlier versions of the fantasy classic. Of a slate that includes an animated version from the Fleischers, a kid-oriented take from Ray Harryhausen, and the Halmis’ encyclopedic [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website THE TIME THAT REMAINS and IF I WANT TO WHISTLE, I WHISTLE For the first show of 2011, how about a little international perspective? We’ve got interviews with two directors whose latest films deliver gripping, cinematically daring glimpses into worlds rarely examined from our side. First up is Romanian director Florin Serban, talking about IF I WANT TO WHISTLE, I WHISTLE, a stark, naturalistic drama about an imprisoned [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: GULLIVER’S TRAVELS The CFQ crew is back, all rested after their holiday break and ready to tackle the new and exciting fantasy, horror, and science fiction film releases of 2011. But first, there’s GULLIVER’S TRAVELS, the big-budget adaptation of Jonathan Swift’s beloved comic novel, starring Jack Black as the titular traveler — here portrayed (in a stunning [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mike Leigh on ANOTHER YEAR Is it marketing genius on the part of Sony Classics that they usher in 2011 with a film called ANOTHER YEAR? Nah, more likely they just wanted to get Oscar tongues a-buzzing for Mike Leigh’s latest glimpse into joys, pains, hopes, and desperations of ordinary life, especially for a sterling cast that includes Jim Broadbent, [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CFQ Post-Mortem: YOGI BEAR; Original TRON; and Best Laid Plans So, in the place of a CINEFANTASTIQUE PODCAST in which we discuss our top ten lists for 2010, we give you a CINEFANTASTIQUE POST-MORTEM in which we discuss doing a show in which we discuss our top ten lists for 2010. Who knew a little thing like a holiday weekend was going [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Brad Bird on THE IRON GIANT In 1999, Warner’s released THE IRON GIANT. Well… released may not be the best term. Slipped into theaters under the cover of night so that anyone who might be remotely interested couldn’t possibly know of its existence… yeah, that’s the term. Despite the stealth marketing, director Brad Bird’s animated tale of a young boy who [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: TRON: LEGACY In the latest episode of the THE CINEFANTASTIQUE PODCAST, Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons attempt to build their own consensual reality after a viewing of Disney’s return to the gaming grid, TRON: LEGACY. Has visual artistry overrode engaging narrative in this sequel? Who should preside over the new, cyber [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Post-Mortem: Special Stream-of-Consciousness Episode, Featuring THE TEMPEST Having survived the rocky shoals of THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER, Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons decide to kick it freestyle (as the kids all say — the kids do all say that, don’t they?) in a wide-ranging, nay, recklessly random episode of THE CINEFANTASTIQUE [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Cinefantastique Review: THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER For the second week in a row, Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons immerse themselves in a magical, 3D kingdom for this episode of The Cinefantastique Review. This time, though, instead of Disney whimsy, it’s C.S. Lewis faith-tinged adventure, as they join siblings Lucy and Edmund Pevensie (Susan and Peter appear to be away [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Post-Mortem: BLACK SWAN and WARRIOR’S WAY Having delved into the fairy tale world of Walt Disney Pictures’ TANGLED earlier this week, the CFQ Podcast crew returns with a post-mortem detailing the two other genre films now in theatres: BLACK SWAN and THE WARRIORS WAY. The former is Darren Aronofsky’s study of a neurotic ballerina (Natalie Portman), a drama that turns into [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Cinefantastique Review: TANGLED For their 50th animated feature film, Walt Disney Pictures presents TANGLED – a CGI modernization of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale “Rapunzel.” Is this the new millennium equivalent of Disney classics like BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, or is it a failed and schizophrenic attempt to meld the new and the old into one uneasy mix? [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Post-Mortem: The Chronic Rift, KURONEKO, & Le Bad Film Having taken the world’s most depressing world tour in HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, PART 1, the Cinefantastique Podcast crew – along with guest Andrea Lipinski – set their sights on numerous other subjects during the Post-Mortem. First, we’ll talk with Andrea about her long-term participation with The Chronic Rift Podcast, then explore writer-director [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Javier Fuentes-León on UNDERTOW The triangles just keep getting more complicated, don’t they? In the new Peruvian film, UNDERTOW, fisherman Miguel (Cristian Mercado) is eagerly awaiting the arrival of his child by his wife Mariel (Tatiana Astengo), while at the same time carrying on an affair with his male lover, the artist Santiago (Manolo Cardona). But when Santiago dies [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 1 HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, PART 1 is a bona fide box office sensation. But is it any good, or is it just a prequel for Part 2? Is this another example of movie-going as Tribal Identifier? Is IMAX the best way to see the the latest film adaptation of J.R. Rowling, or [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Post-Mortem: Remembering Dino DeLaurentiis In this week’s Cinefantastique Post-Mortem Podcast, Dan Persons and Steve Biodrowski bid farewell to producer Dino DeLaurentiis, who died on November 10 at the age of 91. DeLaurentiis was a frequent contributor to the cinefantastique genres, producing numerous horror, fantasy, and science fiction films: DANGER: DIABOLIK (1968), KING KONG (1976), CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1982), DUNE [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: SKYLINE This week, the Cinefantastique Podcast watches the skies – or, rather, the SKYLINE. Tune in as Dan Persons and Steve Biodrowski (minus the missing-in-action Lawrence French) take a stand against brain-eating aliens intent on taking over Tinsel Town – and apparently the rest of the world. It’s a special effects-filled mash-up of WAR OF THE [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Post-Mortem: Snubbing George Takei & MONSTERS Mini-Review After debating whether three animated films in one year is more than enough from DreamWorks Animation, the Cinefantastique podcast crew of Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski attack MONSTERS (2010), the low-budget science fiction film getting a platform theatrical release to boost its VOD. Also on the menu: a brief discussion of why you [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Patrick Hughes on RED HILL It’s not really necessary that you be fully schooled in the great Australian action films of seventies and eighties — or even in American westerns — to enjoy Patrick Hughes’ RED HILL, but it wouldn’t hurt. Hughes has taken the immortal, mythic figure of the lone lawman standing up for decency and right in untamed [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: MEGAMIND Throwing caution to the wind, the DreamWorks Animation crew has decided to go for a hat trick, releasing three action-packed, CG animated, 3D-enhanced films this year. The last of the trio, MEGAMIND, takes the usual superhero-supervillain rivalry and turns it upside down (or inside out). The result – voiced by Will Ferrell, Brad Pitt, and [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Post-Mortem: I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE vs. LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT Having exorcised the demonic apparitions of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 in this week’s Cinefantastique Podcast, Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowsk turn their attention to the world-shattering debate over whether the original version of I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (1978) is more technically competent than Wes Craven’s original version of THE LAST HOUSE ON THE [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 is a huge hit, avoiding the sequel curse that struck down BLAIR WITCH 2: BOOK OF SHADOWS. But is PA2 really a worth follow-up, or is it just more of the same? (Or could it possibly be both at the same time? Ooooh, spooky!) Find out on this week’s edition of the [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Kerthy Fix on STRANGE POWERS: STEPHIN MERRITT AND THE MAGNETIC FIELDS A songwriter who can dream up lyrics like, “When we kiss, it feels like a flying saucer landing,” can score those lyrics in any one of a thousand, infectious styles, and as a result command praises from the likes of Peter Gabriel, Neil Gaiman, and Sarah Silverman definitely deserves his own documentary. Co-directors Kerthy [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Post-Mortem: Best Movies about the Afterlife & Clint Eastwood: Filmmaker Having laid Clint Eastwood’s HEREAFTER to rest in this week’s Cinefantastique Podcast, John W. Morehead, Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski return in the Cinefantastique Post-Mortem to discuss the general merits of Eastwood as a director, as well as explore Morehead’s incisive blog on genre film and spirituality, Theofantastique, and discuss the great afterlife [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jeffrey Tambor and Thane Rosenbaum on …AND JUSTICE FOR ALL When you’re offered the opportunity to talk with Jeffrey Tambor — a.k.a Hank Kingsley, a.k.a. George Bluth Sr, a.k.a. Sid Garner for those who really keep track of these things — do you say no? You do not — of course, you do not. Jeffrey was in town to participate in the closing night of [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: HEREAFTER with John W. Morehead & Gareth Edwards on MONSTERS Big show this week, chock-a-block full of genre film goodness! First, Dan Persons sits down with director Gareth Edwards to talk about his uncommonly soulful and sharply observed alien infestation film, MONSTERS. Then, we’ll take a journey into the HEREAFTER, as special guest John W. Morehead, of Theofantastique, joins Dan, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Post-Mortem: I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE & Loving a Film, but Not Enough In the mood for some unrated horror of the revenge variety? Then listen in to this week’s CFQ Post-Mortem Podcast as Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski mull the pros and cons of I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, the remake of the notorious exploitation shocker. Also on the table for discussion: listener mail on [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: SUSPIRIA It’s ’70s flashback time on the Cinefantastique Podcast, as Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski gaze in wonder at the Technicolor extravagance of SUSPIRIA (1977), Dario Argento’s pulse-pounding cult classic of supernatural horror, starring Jessica Harper, Joan Bennett, and Alida Valli. How does Argento’s extremely stylized vision of violence and terror hold up decades [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: MY SOUL TO TAKE A confluence of events — including sudden, debilitating illness; faulty recording software; and, yes, the Los Angeles bus system — has conspired to delay the release of this week’s episode. But Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons have rallied their forces, girded their loins, and written stern letters to the manufacturers of the PrettyMay [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Stephen Frears on TAMARA DREWE and Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck on IT’S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY Three filmmakers, two films, two comic views on how we humans strive, through all adversity, to find new ways to frak ourselves up. I know I promised Stephen Frears for last week. Life — as it has been doing recently — intervened, so I teamed his interview up with the interview scheduled for this week, [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Post-Mortem: Hatchet II Having tapped the vein of LET ME IN during this week’s main episode of Cinefantastique Podcast, Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski take a cleaver to HATCHET II during the CFQ Post-Mortem Podcast. How does writer-director Adam Green’s sequel stack up to his 2006 sleeper? Is it a cut above or a notch below? [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: LET ME IN Can a disturbed young boy find true love with the vampire next door? Can Los Alamos, New Mexico afford more than one police officer? Can an American remake of a brilliant Swedish film be worth watching on its own merits? Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski answer these and other questions as they examine [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Post-Mortem: LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS: THE OWLS OF GA’HOOLE Having examined the subtle but powerful science fiction of NEVER LET ME GO, Dan Persons and Lawrence French turn their attention to the family-oriented fantasy of LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS: THE OWLS OF GA’HOOL, a computer-animated film directed by Zack Snyder and presented in dynamic, immersive 3D. Can the man behind the stylized violence of [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Chronic Rift – In Review: NEVER LET ME GO Following up my recent appearance on THE CHRONIC RIFT’s Fall Movie Preview show(s — it was actually broken into two episodes), I make my debut as the resident movie critic of the podcast produced expressly for lovers of genre media in all its forms. In addition, there are book reviews by Andrea Lipinski, TV reviews by [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: NEVER LET ME GO with Director Mark Romanek Our stalwart editor Steve Biodrowski couldn’t make the recording session for this episode — he said it had something to do with his teaching gig, we think he’s fled to the beaches of Tahiti to paint the native girls — so we’re rallying on without him. In this episode of the Cinefantastique Podcast, CFQ San [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Post-Mortem: Shyamalan vs. Spoilers & Claustrophobic Thrillers After taking an elevator ride with the DEVIL, Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski explore the subject of claustrophobic thrillers on this week’s installment of the Cinefantastique Post-Mortem Podcast. CUBE, SAW, DEMONS, THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL all feature hapless victims locked in inescapable situations – a guaranteed formula for suspense that we like to [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Post-Mortem Catch-Up: 2001 & AVATAR In case you were keeping track, yes, this episode of the Cinefantastique Post-Mortem should have posted last week. Life intervened, but the topics discussed are evergreen, anyway, so enjoy. The newest episode of the PM shall follow, almost immediately. This week’s edition of the Cinefantastique Post-Mortem Podcast delves into the immersive cinematic world of James Cameron’s [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Gaspar Noé on ENTER THE VOID Kinda sorry I’m going to see LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS in IMAX 3D this weekend, and not Gaspar Noé’s new film, ENTER THE VOID. This is the movie that could benefit from the full, immersive, 3D treatment: a swirling, gliding, electric voyage into life and death, with sex, drugs, and a dynamically surreal Tokyo thrown [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: DEVIL This week, the CFQ Podcasters Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski suffer the flames of perdition as they go for a horrifying elevator ride to Hell in DEVIL, the new horror film “from the mind of M. Night Shyamalan.” The first in what is being billed as “The Night Chronicles,” DEVIL takes a TWILIGHT [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Chat with Ben Lyons So how about a little break from the filmmaker interviews? Yellow Tail — the wine people — have started up a new website that recruits film critics to pair wines with movies, and in connection with that got in touch with me about talking with critic and journalist Ben Lyons. Since I’ve recently been involved [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE 3D with Ali Larter Is there life after the apocalypse? Find out on this week’s episode of the Cinefantastique Podcast, as Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski focus on RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE 3D, the latest installment of the film franchise based on the popular videogame and starring Milla Jovovich. Included is an interview with actress Ali Larter (HEROES), [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Interviews: HIDEAWAY and BRAN NUE DAE Gonna warn you up front: The two films covered in this week’s episode are so different that you might get the bends when we transition from one to another. Yeah, there’s sort of a common theme of escape, but one film takes a literal and energetic approach to the subject, and the other, spiritual and [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CFQ Post-Mortem: MACHETE is Genre? & Paul W.S. Anderson: Auteur Summer’s gone and so is the Cinefantastique Podcast’s Summer Wrap-up Episode. In its wake, Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski debate the merits of classifying James Bond as a member in good standing of the science fiction and/or fantasy genre, while omitting MACHETE, and engage in a brief disquisition on the career of genre [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: 2010 Summer Wrap-Up It’s a special Labor Day edition of the Cinefantastique Podcast. Eschewing the usual round-up of news and reviews, Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski provide their assessment on the best and worst that this summer had to offer. What tops the list: SPLICE, INCEPTION, PREDATORS, or IRON MAN 2? And what lies at the [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sean Baker on PRINCE OF BROADWAY It would appear Sean Baker is equally comfortable with the real and the surreal. On TV, he’s one of the perpetrators of the satirical puppet show, GREG THE BUNNY. In the cinema though, he’s far more grounded, employing a documentary- like shooting style and recruiting a largely amateur cast to tell stories of New York [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CFQ Post-Mortem: PREDATORS Redux & Tons o’ Exorcisms After casting the devil out of THE LAST EXORCISM, Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski exercise their analytic on other possession movies in the latest episode of Cinefantastique’s weekly Post-Mortem Podcast. What are the best and worst the genre has to offer: THE EXORCIST, THE EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC, THE EXORCIST III, HOUSE [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: THE LAST EXORCISM In the mood for an exorcism? Then join Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski as they scourge the unclean spirits of THE LAST EXORCISM, casting out the plot spoilers and narrative inconsistencies that bedevil the tortured soul of the new faux-documentary from producer Eli Roth and director Daniel Stamm. Also in this episode, a [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CFQ Post-Mortem: The Worlds of Ray Bradbury & William Castle August 22, 2010 represented fantasy author Ray Bradbury’s 90th birthday. In celebration of that event, this week’s Post-Mortem podcast examines his career, including the many film and television adaptations of his work: FARENHEIT 451, THE BEAST FROM 20000 FATHOMS, THE ILLUSTRATED MAN, THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES, SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES, etc. [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Neil Marshall on CENTURION & Danièle Thompson on CHANGE OF PLANS This weekend’s releases offer up some tantalizing choices: Do you want to go witty and urbane with a sharply observed dinner comedy from France? Or would you rather indulge in a gritty, adrenaline-fueled historical action film? Why not see both? (Oh, that’s MMP for you — always willing to take the bold stand.) In CHANGE OF [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Chronic Rift: Fall 2010 Sci-Fi, Fantasy, & Horror Preview – Part 2 Jeff Bridges returns to the game grid, Harry Potter faces down some deathly hallows — whatever the hell those are — and Jacques Tati gets animated as CHRONIC RIFT producer/host John Drew and I pick up our discussion of the cinematic goodness that will be greeting us as the year raps up. And if TRON: [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Chronic Rift: Fall 2010 Sci-Fi, Fantasy, & Horror Preview And the wonderful world of Upstart continues to expand. In anticipation of my assuming the role of movie critic for THE CHRONIC RIFT — the legendary discussion show of all things science fiction, fantasy and horror that’s beginning its third year as a podcast — John Drew invited me on to discuss what genre fans [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: LAST EXORCISM Preview & PIRANHA 3D Review It’s a day of interviews and reviews at the Cinefantastique Podcast. First, a chat with director Daniel Stamm and producer Eli Roth on their new, demon-possession-in-the-bible-belt thriller, THE LAST EXORCISM, opening on Friday, August 27. Then an in-depth discussion of PIRANHA 3D, Alexandre Aja’s ultra-gory remake of the 1978 cult classic directed by Joe [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CFQ Post-Mortem: The Alternate Worlds of Recycled Footage After a passionate discussion of SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD, Dan Persons and Steve Biodrowski leave the recorder running as they delve deeply into the minutia of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. This week focuses on films that recycle plots and/or footage to create alternate versions and/or whole new movies: * THE EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING and [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD This week’s installment of the Cinefantastique Podcast takes a ringside seat for SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD, director Edgar Wright’s genre-spanning (and genre-erupting) adaptation of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novels, starring Michael Cera  as a conflicted but earnest Toronto slacker who must find love and personal balance, all while defeating his new girlfriend’s seven evil [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website David Michod on ANIMAL KINGDOM Finally, the family film we’ve been waiting for this summer. Okay, that’s an obvious joke, sorry. ANIMAL KINGDOM is about a family, but one that, if you’re lucky, you’ll never have as next door neighbors. Set in crime-ridden Melbourne, Australia, the film focuses on the Cody clan, a criminal unit that’s fallen on hard times. ANIMAL [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CFQ Post-Mortem: More on BLACK SUNDAY and Mario Bava Following up on the Cinefantastique Podcast 1.26, Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski delve deeper into the mysteries of director Mario Bava and BLACK SUNDAY, not to mention the distinction between giallo and Gothic horror. BLACK SUNDAY was Bava’s directorial debut, and its reputation is so grand among fans that many think he never topped [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: BLACK SUNDAY – 50th Anniversary Special No new genre films hit theaters this weekend, but fear not: Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski once again rev up the time machine and take you five decades into the past for a look at one of the greatest horror films of all time, director Mario Bava’s masterpiece of black-and-white Gothic horror, BLACK [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Samuel Maoz on LEBANON I went into LEBANON convinced that I really didn’t want to see another examination of the moral quandary that is the Middle East conflict. I came out of it — head and heart racing — convinced that I had seen one of the best films of the year. That’s a considerable achievement, considering that [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CFQ Post-Mortem: CHARLIE ST. CLOUD & Why We Review Following up on this week’s Cinefantastique Podcast, which covered CATS & DOGS: THE REVENGE OF KITTY GALORE, the Cinefantastique Post-Mortem Podcast examines the weekend’s other major fantasy film release, CHARLIE ST. CLOUD, starring Zac Efron  as a young man who sees dead people – in particular, his younger brother. Also on the menu: listener mail [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: CATS AND DOGS: THE REVENGE OF KITTY GALORE 2001’s CATS AND DOGS was a disappointing dud, despite what sounded like a sure-fire premise for family-friendly fun. Does the sequel, CATS AND DOGS: THE REVENGE OF KITTY GALORE, improve upon the original, or is it time for a trip to the animal control shelter? Dan Persons, Steve Biodrowski, and Lawrence French [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Aaron Schneider on GET LOW This summer has been something of a bummer as far as the tent-poles are concerned (and I’m writing this scant hours after seeing CATS AND DOGS: THE REVENGE OF KITTY GALORE, a film that does nothing to brighten my general opinion of the season). Smaller, cleverer, more thoughtful films are doing pretty good, though. We’ve [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CFQ Post-Mortem: Prep for BLACK SUNDAY; del Toro Enters THE HAUNTED MANSION Following up on this week’s in-depth discussion of EYES WITHOUT A FACE, Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski launch into an informal chat about horror, fantasy, and science fiction films of 1960, including BLACK SUNDAY (which will become the subject of a future podcast in August). Also on the menu: another look at DESPICABLE [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: EYES WITHOUT A FACE – 50th Anniversary Special With theaters offering no new genre films this weekend, The Cinefantastique Podcast turns its all-seeing gaze back through the mists of time to a 50th anniversary examination of EYES WITHOUT A FACE, director George Franju’s moody masterpiece of art house horror. Imagine a dream of lyrical black-and-white images, of a lonely young woman, flitting through [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CFQ Post-Mortem: THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE; More on INCEPTION In the latest weekly installment of CFQ’s Post-Mortem Podcast, Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski offer a free-form follow-up to this Cinefantastique Podcast, including further in-depth insights on the dreamscape of Christopher Nolan’s INCEPTION and a look at the big-budget disappointment, THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE, starring Nicolas Cage and Jay Baruchel, and loosely inspired by [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: INCEPTION Dream a little dream with the 23rd episode of the Cinefantastique Podcast, as Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski analyze INCEPTION, Christopher Nolan’s multi-leveled special effects extravaganza about invading other people’s dreams to steal or plant ideas. Is it the thinking person’s action-packed blockbuster? Or is this dream one in which (to paraphrase [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CFQ Post-Mortem: DESPICABLE ME; More on PREDATORS In CFQ’s Post-Mortem Podcast (or should that be Podcast Post-Mortem?), Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski offer a free-form follow-up to the regular Cinefantastique Podcast, including further in-depth insights on the minutia of PREDATORS and a look at the week’s other big genre release, DESPICABLE ME, the hilarious 3-D animated film [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: PREDATORS This week, the Cinefantastique Podcast sets its sights on PREDATORS, produced by Robert Rodriguez and directed by Nimrod Antal, from a screenplay by Alex Litvak and Michael Finch. Is this sequel to PREDATOR (1987) a brilliant pop culture mediation on the ability of the human spirit to triumph in dire circumstances, or is it merely [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lisa Cholodenko on THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT In my discussion with director Lisa Cholodenko about her new film, THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT — about a sperm donor (Mark Ruffalo) abruptly entering the lives of a lesbian couple (Annette Bening and Julianne Moore) whose children were spawned from his seed — I mentioned to her that the tone felt distinctly Southern Californian. [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CFQ Post-Mortem: THE KILLER INSIDE ME; KING KONG 360; More on THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE In the second Cinefantastique Post-Mortem Pocast, your trio of talented talkers (i.e., Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski) leave the recorder running after their episode dedicated to PREDATORS, THE LAST AIRBENDER, and THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE – offering free-form observations, rants, suppositions, and confessions. Included is a discussion of the non-horror – but still frightening – hard-boiled film noir, THE [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: Nimrod Antal on PREDATORS; Discussions of THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE and THE LAST AIRBENDER It’s a double-dose of photodramatic discussion, disputation, and dissention on this week’s episode of the the Cinefantastique Podcast, as Dan Persons, Steve Biodrowski, and Lawrence French take on romantic vampires, macho werewolves, and elemental airbenders. Does THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE deliver? Can the post-production 3-D conversion process add depth to M. Night Shyamalan’s live-action adaptation of Nickelodeon’s THE LAST AIRBENDER? [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CFQ Post-Mortem: More on PSYCHO & HOUSE OF USHER; Did JAWS & STAR WARS ruin movies? This week features a bold new experiment in podcasting, the likes of which have seldom if ever been seen in our lifetimes! At the end of this week’s Cinefantastique Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction Podcast 1:20, we let the recorder run on just to see what happened. The result is the [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: PSYCHO, PEEPING TOM, HOUSE OF USHER With no new horror, fantasy, and science fiction films opening nationwide this week, the Cinefantastique Podcast turns its eye on the 50th anniversary of a trio of terror from the year 1960: Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO, Michael Powell’s PEEPING TOM, and Roger Corman’s HOUSE OF USHER. Relax and [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Luca Guadagnino on I AM LOVE Before going on a brief hiatus (explained further in the show; we’ll be back at the end of July, latest), we were lucky enough to get some time with Luca Guadagnino, director of the captivating drama, I AM LOVE. The film comes out of Italy, and — in its story of a well-to-do woman (Tilda Swinton) [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Kate Davis & David Heilbroner on STONEWALL UPRISING And so now we catch up on a couple of very good films that opened last week, but — because there’s only so much podcasting I can do before my ears start to bleed — had to wait a week to be covered. In the case of the film featured in this episode, STONEWALL UPRISING, [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: TOY STORY 3 and JONAH HEX This week, the podcast review of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror takes you from the sublime to the ridiculous, as Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski review TOY STORY 3 and JONAH HEX. Does TOY STORY 3 live up to its predecessors? Is JONAH HEX the biggest bomb of the [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CYRUS and LET IT RAIN Wow. Four films worth talking about, all opening in the same week, and I’ve got interviews for all of them. I’m also pretty strung out to begin with, so I’m not going to attempt to get them all in within a single show, or even a couple of shows. Instead, we’ll start off with two [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: MICMACS The premiere audio review of science fiction, fantasy, and horror is back with another exciting episode! This time, Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski eschew the big-time summer blockbusters in favor of the French comedy-fantasy MICMACS (Micmacs a tire-lairgot, or “Non-stop Madness”), latest surreal confectionery from supreme stylist Jean-Pierre Jeunet (who charmed audience with AMELIE). Also this [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: SPLICE In Volume 1, Episode 17 of the Cinefantastique Podcast, Dan Persons Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski delve into the worlds of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, unraveling the mysteries of genetic engineering and bad parenting as they analyze SPLICE, Vincenzo Natali’s thoughtful variation on the old “mad scientists create a monster” scenario. Also this week, [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mark Hopkins on LIVING IN EMERGENCY It’s getting to be that my fortitude is being tested on a weekly basis. I’ve witnessed the psychotic outrages of THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE (and liked it), the moral confrontation that is THE KILLER INSIDE ME (liked it), and the let’s-put-The-Rock-in-a-tutu TOOTH FAIRY (you’re kidding, right?). But all that was make-believe stuff. LIVING IN EMERGENCY is [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: PRINCE OF PERSIA In the sixteenth episode of Cinefantastique’s weekly Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction Podcast, Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski sift through the Sands of Time as they search PRINCE OF PERSIA for hidden political metaphors and/or weapons of mass destruction. The big screen film version of the popular video game stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Ben [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mia Hansen-Love on THE FATHER OF MY CHILDREN The reported death of the serious, small drama — the kind of things that major studios used to do before opening-weekend grosses became all-important; the kind of thing that indie production companies used to do before the major studios bought them up and made opening-weekend grosses all-important — may be a little premature, but that [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Podcast: SHREK FOREVER AFTER and SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD This week, the Cinefantastique Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction Podcast scrutinizes a pair of sequels that seem to have nothing in common: SHREK FOREVER AFTER, the latest family-friendly CGI fantasy from DreamWorks Animation; and SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD, the latest horrifying episode in George A. Romero’s on-going zombie apocalypse, which began way back in 1968 with NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. What’s the [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD and MICMACS Y’know, people probably shouldn’t be this gleeful about issues of mortality, but in the cases of the movies being discussed in this episode, we’re kinda glad they are. This episode features interviews with Jean-Pierre Jeunet and George A. Romero, both of whom have previously addressed matters of life-and-death in their own, unique ways, and have [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lance Bangs on THE LAZARUS EFFECT Before the big show this weekend (Jean-Pierre Jeunet on MICMACS and George Romero on SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD, yippee!), here’s a bonus episode focusing on a special, short documentary that HBO will be debuting next Monday, May 24th, at 9 PM, eastern time. It’s called THE LAZARUS EFFECT, it was produced in cooperation with (RED), a [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website THE CINEFANTASTIQUE HORROR FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION PODCAST V1N14: Metropolis In Volume 1, Episode 14 of the Cinefantastique Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction Podcast, Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski visit the futuristic city of METROPOLIS, the 1927 science fiction classic from director Fritz Lang. The subject of a recent restoration that added over twenty minutes of footage, the film is ripe for [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Michael Paul Stephenson on BEST WORST MOVIE Have no doubt, I love bad movies. I still have fond memories of the first time I stumbled onto ROBOT MONSTER, back in the days when local broadcast television had afternoon movie shows, and one could serendipitously chance upon such inspired dreadfulness as a cheesy science fiction epic — with Hamlet-like ambitions — in which [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website THE CINEFANTASTIQUE HORROR FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION PODCAST V1N13: Iron Man 2 This time, Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski take a can opener to IRON MAN 2, the successful sequel to the 2008 blockbuster, starring Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark. Does it live up to the original? Do the special effects give more bang for the buck? Can Tony Stark’s ego grow any bigger? [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website BABIES and BEETLE QUEEN CONQUERS TOKYO Sorta weird how this became the globe-trotter episode. I’d seen BABIES a few weeks ago and was going to go with it as the sole focus of the show, then late last week I stumbled onto BEETLE QUEEN CONQUERS TOKYO and — despite the little voice whispering ever so delicately in the back of my [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website THE CINEFANTASTIQUE HORROR FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION PODCAST V1N12: A Nightmare on Elm Street Freddy’s back, and the Cinefantastique Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction Podcast has him in its sights. Is the new A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET a dreamscape of unspeakable terrors, or is it a big snooze guaranteed to induce micronaps? What’s up with those dour teens? Why are their parents so oblivious? And how big a [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Tom Six on THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE There are some films that you’re either for or agin, and wow, does THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE fit into that category. A vivid little bit of Grand Guignol wherein a couple of hapless tourists (Ashley C. Williams and Ashlynn Yennie) stumble upon the lair of the prototypical mad doctor (Dieter Laser) who proceeds to stitch them [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website THE CINEFANTASTIQUE HORROR FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION PODCAST V1N11: Langarama! – WOMAN IN THE MOON and THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE In anticipation of the release of the almost-fully-restored silent science-fiction classic, METROPOLIS, the Cinefantastique Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction Podcast presents Langarama!, an episode focusing  back on two classics of yesteryear from renowned German master filmmaker Fritz Lang:  WOMAN IN THE MOON (1929) and THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE (1933). The first is an ambitious [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website THE CINEFANTASTIQUE HORROR FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION PODCAST V1N10: KICK-ASS Cinefantastique’s Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction Podcast returns with a blow-by-blow knock-down debate regarding the merits (or lack thereof) in the new comic-book superhero fantasy KICK ASS, starring Aaron Johnson, Chloe Moretz, and Nicolas Cage. Does the film kick ass, or does it fall flatter than an empty cape? Also [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Juan Jose Campanella on THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES Seems to be some confusion about the title of this. For the record, according to the front page of the production notes, it’s THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES. Not THE SECRET OF THEIR EYES or even THE SECRET IN HER EYES, which is the way the video file for the trailer is labeled. So I [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website THE CINEFANTASTIQUE HORROR FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION PODCAST V1:N9 – AFTER.LIFE After sitting out last week’s CLASH OF THE TITAN’s episode, Dan Person’s is back in the host’s chair this week for a round-table discussion of AFTER.LIFE, the new horror-thriller starring Christina Ricci, Liam Neeson, and Justin Long, about a young woman who wakes up after a car accident to find that she is in a [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website THE SQUARE and THE SUN BEHIND THE CLOUDS So what have we been doing for the past couple of weeks? Pulling our hair out, what’s left of it. Making repeated calls to Verizon. Hosting a visit from their friendly and professional service person (really, no sarcasm there, the guy was good). Being granted the privilege of shelling out for a replacement modem and [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website THE CINEFANTASTIQUE HORROR FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION PODCAST V1:N7 – HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON In this week’s episode, Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski debate the merits of domesticated dragons as they bring their combined acumen to bear upon analyzing DreamWorks 3D aerial extravaganza, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON. Also on the chopping block: news from the world of horror, fantasy, and science fiction film-making; [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website WAKING SLEEPING BEAUTY and CHLOE Diversity is what we’re all about here at MIGHTY MOVIE PODCAST. Actually, what we’re all about these days is trying just to get the frakking show out in the midst of all the other stuff going on in our lives (hence the lateness this week), but when we’re not pulling our hair out about [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website THE CINEFANTASTIQUE HORROR FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION PODCAST V1:N6 – REPO MEN This week’s topic is REPO MEN, the new science fiction film starring Jude Law and Forest Whitaker as company agents who retrieve artificial organs from donor recipients unable to pay for the price of a new heart. Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski also discuss the week’s top news stories, offer random recommendations of [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Tomm Moore on THE SECRET OF KELLS I’m not sure when I first heard of THE SECRET OF KELLS. Probably last year, likely through AICN, definitely way before it wound up on the Oscar nominee list for animated feature (and everybody started going, “The what of who?”). At that time, the buzz was growing around this small, exquisitely designed film out of [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website THE CINEFANTASTIQUE HORROR FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION PODCAST V1:E5 – Overlooked & Underrated: INK, GHOST WRITER, DR. PARNASSUS It’s a genre light week, with no new horror, fantasy, or science fiction titles released in cinemas, so Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski take this opportunity to shine a little much-deserved light on some overlooked and/or under-rated genre titles. The main topic of discussion is INK, the surprisingly good [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website THE EXPLODING GIRL and TALES FROM THE SCRIPT Postponing the Blast: Zoe Kazan in THE EXPLODING GIRL So actress Zoe Kazan slips into the room, gives director Bradley Rust Gray a hug, and lingers a minute to answer a couple of questions. Quite unanticipated, obviously. Very welcome, actually. And pretty much fitting for the film being discussed, THE EXPLODING GIRL, which itself has a [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CINEFANTASTIQUE HORROR, FANTASY, & SCIENCE FICTION PODCAST – v1n4: ALICE IN WONDERLAND Dan Persons, Steve Biodrowski, and Lawrence French follow Tim Burton down the rabbit hole, analyzing his live-action redo of the Disney animated classic, ALICE IN WONDERLAND. Is it Burton at his best – or another blunder? Does it surpass the original, or does it fall flat as a knave of hearts? Also on the bill, [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Moeller and Jacoby on HARLAN – IN THE SHADOW OF JEW SUSS It’s typical in these circumstances to say, “I don’t know what came over me.” But I do know what came over me: I was going to interview Felix Moeller about his new documentary, HARLAN – IN THE SHADOW OF JEW SUSS — the film about German director Veit Harlan, his infamous, anti-Semitic 1940 creation JEW [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CINEFANTASTIQUE HORROR, FANTASY, & SCIENCE FICTION PODCAST – v1n3: THE CRAZIES Dan Persons, Steve Biodrowski, and Lawrence French are back with an in-depth discussion of THE CRAZIES, the new horror-thriller about a small town caught between a rock and a hard place when a bioweapon contaminates the drinking supply, turning the locals into homicidal maniacs and prompting a take-no-prisoners quarantine by the military. It’s based on [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website THE ART OF THE STEAL Interview At one point in the new film THE ART OF THE STEAL, one of the people protesting the moving of Dr. Albert Barnes’ art collection (Picasso, Modigliani, Renoir, Cézanne, amongst others) from its home outside Philadelphia into the city proper stands outside the gates of the museum’s eventual home, screaming, “Philistines!” The art world occasionally [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Horror Fantasy & Science Fiction Podcast v1n2: SHUTTER ISLAND In the second installment of Cinefantastique’s new weekly podcast, Dan Persons, Steve Biodrowski, and Lawrence French look at Martin Scorsese’s new horror-thriller, SHUTTER ISLAND, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Kingsley, Mark Ruffalo, and Max Von Sydow. Also: a look at the SHUTTER ISLAND videogame, and other news and reviews. Click on the player above to hear the [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jessica Hausner on LOURDES Sometimes it feels as if 2010 so far can be summed up as an ongoing quest to avoid discussing AVATAR. (Okay, you want my one-word review? Meh.) Fortunately, a number of filmmakers have stepped up to offer heartening proof that the whole of cinema isn’t henceforth going to be consigned to the twin plagues of [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cinefantastique Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction Podcast – Volume 1, Number 1: The Wolfman Join Cinefantastique contributors Dan Persons, Lawrence, French, and Steve Biodrowski as they hunt the wild werewolf in the debut episode of the weekly Cinefantastique Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction Podcast. This week’s subject is THE WOLFMAN, starring Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins. The film is of course a remake of THE WOLFMAN (1941), starring Lon Chaney [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher on OCTOBER COUNTRY A tangent here, but stick with me: At the beginning of the animated film, MY NEIGHBORS THE YAMATAS, director Isao Takahata envisions the world of his titular family as an ocean voyage, complete with pounding waves and raging storms, but arriving eventually at a safe port. If the analogy was transferred to OCTOBER COUNTRY, the [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website SHUTTER ISLAND Press Conference The embargo on the SHUTTER ISLAND press conference has lifted, so I’m putting it out for your entertainment and enrichment. However, I believe the embargo on criticism is still in place, so I can’t really set this up in the way that I’d like. You’re just going to have to wait for the BRAND NEW [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Nicole Opper on OFF AND RUNNING Went to a screening last week; not going to tell you which one, because I walked out in the middle — yes, it was that good. But the focus of the film was on this family that was straight out of the Twilight Zone, totally unreal. Honestly, these guys would’ve given Donna Reed the hives [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Michael Hoffman on THE LAST STATION The core of THE LAST STATION’S story is the conflict between Leo Tolstoy and his wife, the Countess Sofya, over the rights to his works. But frack that, what really matters is that you’ve got Christopher Plummer as Tolstoy and Helen Mirren as the Countess, and the opportunity to watch them seduce, cajole, clash, and [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Kate Davis and David Heilbroner on WAITING FOR ARMAGEDDON I’ll admit I have little patience for people who confuse religious mythology for real-world politics. You want to believe that, when the earthly going gets tough, you’re going to be zapped up to heaven and have a front row seat for the conflagration and the return of your deity? Cool, swell, no skin off my [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Scott Cooper on CRAZY HEART And so here we are at the last MMP episode of 2009, unless, of course, a there’s an emergency, late-breaking filmmaker interview (Mr. Scorsese, my calendar’s open). Barring that, we’re going out with a good ‘un: Scott Cooper’s finely crafted, astutely observed CRAZY HEART. This is Cooper’s directorial debut — not even a short film to [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Kevin Heffernan on THE SLAMMIN’ SALMON To put it bluntly, the holidays bum me out. I don’t think it really has anything to do with the occasion — y’know, all that stuff about how we instinctively reject the incessant pressure towards merriment and good will (aka Holly Jolly Complex) — I think it’s more physical. The extended darkness and the plummeting [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell on UNTIL THE LIGHT TAKES US As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not all that obsessive over metal, heavy or otherwise. Don’t hate it — in fact, I like the beat and the aggression and the flights into epic, audio assault — it just doesn’t take priority when I’m programming my Pandora stations. Nevertheless, I’m happy when one year brings us two [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Tim Burton at MoMA So you go into this room at New York’s Museum of Modern Art’s Tim Burton exhibit, and it’s like striking gold: the Jack Skellington figure is there, along with a choice selection of the replacement heads that were used to animate dialogue; there’s the creepy, completely covered baby Penguin wicker stroller from BATMAN RETURNS; you [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website John Woo on RED CLIFF The short form would be that John Woo rediscovered himself in returning to China, but that really doesn’t capture what’s going on. Woo made his name with such beautiful, dynamic, and surprisingly thoughtful urban crime films as HARD BOILED and THE KILLER — pop culture with soul — then made his way to America for [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website PIRATE RADIO Part 2: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Richard Curtis Richard Curtis had a death in the family. I’d flown in to London to do the interviews for my PIRATE RADIO coverage, and the director was at the top of my list. Some things, though, take precedence over spending fifteen minutes with a dumpy New York journalist, and for Curtis, this had to be one [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website PIRATE RADIO Part 1: Nick Frost, Talulah Riley, Tom Sturridge So here’s what I did on my class trip to London: shoot a video featuring people on the street discussing whether they preferred PIRATE RADIO or THE BOAT THAT ROCKED as the title of the latest Richard Curtis film; interview some of the stars of the film itself; and eat British airport pizza. Two of [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Michael Aimette and John G. Hofmann on TURNING GREEN Not to put too fine a point on it, but the poster for TURNING GREEN lies. It showcases Tim Hutton, Colm Meaney, and Allesandro Nivola, but while they’re prominent figures in the film, it ain’t about them. Off in the lower right, with his back turned towards the camera, there’s your protagonist: A teenage boy, [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Ti West on THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL Ti West sure digs his retro. In THE ROOST — his tidy little horror film about a group of travelers threatened by some really nasty bats — he added a wraparound featuring Tom Noonan in tacky butler drag, holding forth in front of a cardboard set as host of a local Saturday Night Chiller Feature [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Anthony Fabian on SKIN You could probably forge a good, absurdist, dark comedy out of a government where racial identity can be declared and reversed by official decree, and white parents whose child’s skin is, because of a genetic quirk, darker than theirs struggle to get their kid designated Caucasian. I can imagine Terry Gilliam going to town on [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website ANTICHRIST: A Conversation “Lars von Trier doesn’t like to fly.” “Lars von Trier isn’t going to talk to a lot of press.” Yeah, yeah; yadda-yadda. But just because he isn’t talking to us doesn’t mean we can’t talk about him, particularly about his childhood. I have it on good authority that he refused to eat his sandwiches until [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mira Nair on AMELIA You’re going to have to trust me on this one: I am a romantic. ONCE is one of my favorite films; I teared up at both UP and MARY AND MAX (animated characters struggling for their small bit of happiness just hit some special spot in me). But when you’re telling the tale of Amelia [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website (Almost) Live from London: PIRATE RADIO vs. THE BOAT THAT ROCKED So I figured, while I’m in London interviewing some of the people involved with PIRATE RADIO, Richard Curtis’ film about those intrepid souls who in the 60’s brought the UK their daily dose of rock when the BBC was loathe to, why not try a little experiment in whether one dude with a netbook, a [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sebastian Silva on THE MAID New York Magazine’s David Edelstein pretty much called it: About midway through, you could be forgiven for worrying if THE MAID was teetering on the precipice of going the full, THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE route — a concern that’s only enhanced when a stray cat turns up that seems to have “I [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Nicolas Winding Refn on BRONSON You wanna talk extreme? Charles Bronson, ne Michael Peterson, has spent thirty-four of his fifty-six years of life in incarceration of one form or another — most of that time has been in solitary confinement. The system has been violent to him, but he’s been violent back, and an anti-authoritarian cult has risen around his [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Tom Hooper on THE DAMNED UNITED To be clear, I’ve got nothing against sports films that exult in good sportsmanship and the triumph of the underdog and the sheer joy of human competition. THE NATURAL? Sure. BAD NEWS BEARS? No prob. THE MIGHTY DUCKS? Let’s not go crazy, now. But to be honest, I’m more favorably inclined towards films like THE DAMNED [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Florent-Emilio Siri on INTIMATE ENEMIES Okay, so I think we all have something we can now say about ill-advised wars. France, though, learned its lesson fifty years ago. A lot of lives (some 500,000, both soldier and civilian) were lost in trying keep Algiers from declaring its independence. The battle, which ran from 1954 to 1962, has received sparse treatment [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website SPOILER FREE Joel and Ethan Coen on A SERIOUS MAN This is the spoiler-free version of the A SERIOUS MAN episode. To listen to the complete version, and to read the introductory text, watch the trailer and get links to the official website, go to the post marked “SPOILER ALERT!” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Joel and Ethan Coen on A SERIOUS MAN [SPOILER ALERT!] The Coen brothers are at it again. They’ve already sicced existential hit men, lunkheaded convicts, and over-ambitious hula hoop manufacturers on the populace, now they’ve gone and recruited God as chief tormentor. The target this time: Some poor, midwestern schlub who isn’t gonna know what hit him. A SERIOUS MAN is a comedy, but a comedy [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Austin Peck on THE BLUE TOOTH VIRGIN A TV writer tries his hand at a feature film. His friend reads the script, thinks it’s an ungodly mess of muddled symbolism and Freud 101 anxieties. “Be honest,” the writer says. This is the way friendships end, and mean, funny films about the deaths of such friendships are born. In THE BLUE TOOTH VIRGIN, Austin Peck [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Flashback: Sacha Gervasi on ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL The rock documentary, ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL is having its TV debut this Saturday, October 3, at 10 PM ET/PT on VH1 and VH1 Classic. In honor of the event, I figured I’d repost the interview I conducted with the film’s director, Sacha Gervasi. Check out the doc — it’s a good ‘un — [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Anne Fontaine on COCO BEFORE CHANEL So last week we had BRIGHT STAR, in which 19th century Fanny Brawne came into her own through her gifts as a seamstress. And now we have Anne Fontaine’s COCO BEFORE CHANEL, in which Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel… well… “comes into her own” is putting it mildly. She frackin’ defined an industry, after all. Thankfully, this is [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Michael Almereyda on PARADISE Let’s forget about narrative for now, shall we? Let’s not focus on narrative, let’s live in the moment. And let’s consider a documentary focused on isolated pieces of time, how those pieces can be compiled into a portrait of life as it is lived around the world. Michael Almereyda is no stranger to toying with film [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Ben Whishaw and Paul Schneider on BRIGHT STAR Guess I’m going to have to reevaluate my opinion of THE PIANO. I was one of those backlash guys, one of the ones who read all the effulgent praise about the film, the stuff elevating it to hitherto unknown heights as a stunning, sensuous cinematic event, and anticipated an experience that would forever change my [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Tim Burton on 9 So… more li’l doll people. Been a good year for that kinda thing — CORALINE, $9.99. And now there’s 9, in which a group of burlapy, goggle-eyed humanoids struggle for survival in a post-apocalyptic waste heap. Would it surprise you that Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov were co-producers on this project? Would it further surprise [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Ondi Timoner on WE LIVE IN PUBLIC Look, it’s really no big surprise how far we’ve let slip our right to privacy. What comes as something of a shock is how happily we’ve volunteered its erosion, cookie by cookie, behavioral analysis by behavioral analysis. Well, maybe one guy wasn’t so startled:  Josh Harris, founder in the ’90s of Pseudo, the first [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Dan Stone & James Joyner on AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD Paul Watson dropped out of Greenpeace because he felt they weren’t doing enough to protect whales from fleets hunting in supposedly protected seas. He founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, and over the years has become the bane of whalers — Japanese in particular — by employing confrontational tactics that start at stink bombs (did [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Ang Lee on TAKING WOODSTOCK If I was to be completely honest about it, I’d have to say that my disappointment at not being able to attend Woodstock had less to do with the possibility of experiencing the performances of Joplin, Hendrix, The Who, et al, than with my fourteen-year-old, hyper-hormonal self missing the opportunity to see a real, live [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Spike Lee & Stew on PASSING STRANGE: THE MOVIE It’s got trenchant insights into art and identity, and you can dance to it. It’s a grand irony that you can live in New York, one of the greatest theater cities in the world, and not be able to swing the cost of tickets without taking out a second mortgage on your apartment. I’d heard the [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Oliver Hirschbiegel on FIVE MINUTES OF HEAVEN Could it just be coincidence? Could it just be that, by some random alignment of the planets, we have two films about the conflict in Northern Ireland opening on the same weekend? I’m seeing conspiracy, frankly. Your grandmas may be safe from the death panels, but that doesn’t mean the government hasn’t got its sights [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Glenn McQuaid on I SELL THE DEAD Thank you, Glenn McQuaid, for letting us laugh at the desecration of holy ground again. Shot on a tight budget, with New York City — mostly Staten Island — standing in for the British Isles in the nineteenth century, I SELL THE DEAD has pretty much nothing going for it except a neat cast, plus the [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Neal Brennan on THE GOODS So here’s my tale: On Monday, we finally had to put our cat, Boris, to sleep. He had been a good friend for nineteen years, but in the last few weeks in particular it had become evident he had reached the end of the line. Didn’t make the decision any easier. At the same time, Paramount [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sophie Barthes on COLD SOULS Will the public option cover soul extractions? As if TOTAL RECALL and THE ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND weren’t warnings enough that technology should be employed prudently when messing with the human mind, now comes Sophie Barthes’ COLD SOULS, a comic fantasy in which getting your soul removed may do wonders for your acting [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Louie Psihoyos on THE COVE Who the hell didn’t love FLIPPER? Cute ‘n’ cuddly (and how many sea creatures do you know get to claim those adjectives?), the titular bottle-nose dolphin of the classic sixties TV show was a real Up with People kinda mammal. You may not remember any of the specific episodes (didn’t most of them have to [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Monika Treut on GHOSTED It’s turning out to be a pretty good year for unexpected international co-productions — check out the MMP ep on the superb Israeli/Australian stop-motion animated film $9.99 if you don’t believe me. Now Germany and Taiwan have joined forces, not for the exquisitely designed yet affordable home entertainment system you might expect, but for German [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Max Mayer on ADAM Turning out to be a rough month for romance, isn’t it? ADAM, the new drama directed by Max Mayer and starring Hugh Dancy and Rose Byrne, doesn’t skip back and forth within its time line or offer the narrative flamboyancy of (500) DAYS OF SUMMER, but that doesn’t mean that the course of love is [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Marcel Sarmiento & Gadi Harel on DEADGIRL Wow, midnight movies. I know they still happen, I just hadn’t recently heard of anyone basing a distribution pattern solely around the phenomenon. Nevertheless, the producers of DEADGIRL are rolling the dice on it, debuting their film at midnight this weekend (July 24 & 25, 2009), and dispatching the filmmakers and cast to screening cities [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website THE SUMMER OF CORRECTIONS: iTunes Repost for (500) DAYS OF SUMMER and Release Date for IN THE LOOP Turns out there may be some trouble downloading the (500) DAYS OF SUMMER episode on iTunes, so this is a repost that hopefully will fix things. If you had trouble downloading on iTunes before, give it a shot again. If you wind up getting two copies of this ep, well, consider that twice the MMP [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Armando Iannucci on IN THE LOOP I’m not going to say that IN THE LOOP — the new British political comedy directed by Armando Iannucci and based on his award-winning BBC sitcom THE THICK OF IT — is going help put the last eight years of U.S./Great Britain relations into context, but at the very least, I think it provides some [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lynn Shelton on HUMPDAY I do so love the comedy of discomfort — you know, the kind of thing that pokes us where we’re tender, has the nerve to call attention to it, and then makes us laugh at our sensitivity. Doesn’t really get done often, because there’s a grand risk involved: This is the kind of thing where [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Amat Escalante on LOS BASTARDOS Well, here’s a nice, nasty way to kick off your July 4th weekend. LOS BASTARDOS is spare and brutal, a survey of the suburban wasteland that finds two illegal immigrants (non-pros Jesus Moises Rodriguez and Ruben Sosa) staging a home invasion and finding that their hostage (Nina Zavarin) is too benumbed to care. Director Amat Escalante [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Tommy Wirkola on DEAD SNOW Listening to this episode, you might get the impression that I’m really hooked on the phrase, “zombie Nazis.” I am. I really am. Look at it this way: Two of my favorite film titles of all time belong to the Troma releases SURF NAZIS MUST DIE and CHOPPER CHICKS IN ZOMBIE TOWN (although, to pronounce [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Tatia Rosenthal on $9.99 What with all the “family-oriented” animation that we’re going to be saddled with over the next few months, Tatia Rosenthal’s debut stop-motion animated feature, $9.99, comes as a welcome change. Based on the stories of Etgar Keret — who for the indie film crowd is probably best known for writing the seed story that became [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Woody Allen on WHATEVER WORKS Woody Allen’s back, and  in comedy mode this time, adapting an unproduced script he wrote in the seventies, casting Larry David as the misanthrope’s misanthrope, Evan Rachel Wood as the young woman from the south who improbably falls in love with him, and throwing in Ed Begley Jr. and Patricia Clarkson as the woman’s estranged [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Duncan Jones on MOON Just for the record, I have nothing against Michael Bay as a matter of principle. I find some of his films fun, if almost always aggressively ADD. But particularly in the summer season, even under the best of conditions, one can begin to long for genre films that deliver a little something more than just [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Donald Petrie on MY LIFE IN RUINS Okay, let’s not kid ourselves, this weekend THE HANGOVER will be the comedy that moviegoers are lining up to see (and I can’t blame them — the thing is damn funny). But there’s another comedy opening this weekend: MY LIFE IN RUINS, starring Nia Vardalos as an ex-pat American turned Greek tour guide, Richard Dreyfuss [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bruce McDonald on PONTYPOOL Flat-out, rip yer guts out, splatter the gore against the lens horror is just fine with me. I dug HOSTEL, liked Carpenter’s THE THING and, of course, HALLOWEEN. (All those teen-stalker and NIGHTMARE ripoffs, though, don’t really do it for me — too much winking at the audience.) PONTYPOOL takes a more subtle tack to freaking [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Review: UP In which we consider how an increasingly formidable animation studio is like a certain, humble but beneficial insect, and I — inveterate cat person — confess to an irrational love for a non-existant, talking dog. Hey, whaddya want? It’s Friday. MMP’s second review ep, this time on Disney/Pixar’s UP Trailer [There is a video that cannot be displayed [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Stephan Elliott on EASY VIRTUE Not so much a classic, dry martini as one of those newfangled drinks that get whipped up in upscale bars — you know, the kind of beverage made with exotic liquors and maybe one of those faux, LED ice cubes for a bit of dazzle — EASY VIRTUE takes one of Noel Coward’s earlier plays [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Review: NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM: BATTLE OF THE SMITHSONIAN Y’know, I suspect the production of HEAVEN’S GATE wasn’t as arduous as the creation of our first review episode. Lack of sleep, machine crashes, and a profound case of cold feet on the part of yours truly conspired to push this show from debuting on Wednesday, as I’d planned, to this premiere, just a shade [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Anders Ostergaard on BURMA VJ Not quite six months in, this has been a pretty strong year for releases. Seen some fantastic stuff, not all of which I’ve been able to cover on MMP. (If they come your way, be sure to check out SUMMER HOURS, a smart, subtly turned French film, and BIG MAN JAPAN, a delirious, kick-ass send-up [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jake Rademacher on BROTHERS AT WAR I have to admit: I can get a little knee-jerk liberal at times. So when I saw that BROTHERS AT WAR was exec produced by Gary Sinise and came with high praise from Jon Voight — especially since my last exposure to the political Jon Voight was through his role as George Washington in the [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Paul Morrison on LITTLE ASHES The relationship between Salvadore Dali and filmmaker Luis Bunuel is well-known — their collaboration, UN CHIEN ANDALOU, is one of the landmarks of film history. Less well known is that the association began while they were students at a university in Madrid, and included radical poet and author Federico Garcia Lorca. Really less known — [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Deirdre Timmons on A WINK AND A SMILE Let’s get the hoary ol’ cliche out of the way right off: sex sells. That’s a formula relied upon by anyone involved in the media — including podcast producers hoping to up their hit counts (and thus, permit me a moment to address the search engines directly: sex, sex, sexity, sex, sex, sex. And, in [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Atom Egoyan on ADORATION Okay, no fooling, I really like Atom Egoyan’s work. He got me at THE SWEET HEREAFTER, then I backtracked to EXOTICA and followed up with FELICIA’S JOURNEY, and found them all rewarding experiences. (WHERE THE TRUTH LIES didn’t quite do it for me, but hey, an occasional miss is only to be expected.) Something about [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Carlos Cuaron on RUDO Y CURSI Rudo means “tough.” Cursi means “corny.” Sorry for the remedial Spanish lesson, but I took French in high school, so all this is news to me. In the tale of two brothers that is RUDO Y CURSI, Diego Luna is the tough Beto — hot-headed and an inveterate gambler — while Gael Garcia Bernal is the [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Michael Keaton on THE MERRY GENTLEMAN The gentleman is not merry. The gentleman is quite morose, as a matter of fact. The title only becomes comprehensible once you know that the THE MERRY GENTLEMAN, Michael Keaton’s directing debut, takes place during Christmas. Thus, by placing a “God rest ye…” before the title, you get some idea of the film’s emotional outlook. Keaton [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Paolo Sorrentino on IL DIVO Okay, no fooling, IL DIVO is a challenge. It boasts tons of characters who probably have some notoriety in Italy but are pretty obscure here, and on top of that, deals with the Italian political system, which appears to be just slightly less mind-boggling than the Klingon-language edition of Finnegan’s Wake. So what’s to recommend the [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Marc H. Simon & Matthew Makar on NURSERY UNIVERSITY Episode 10! And they said it couldn’t be done. Actually, no one said it couldn’t be done — everybody’s been quite supportive. But I’m feeling extra dramatic today. If you don’t have kids or live outside of New York, you hear about the nightmarish process that attends enrolling a child in the city’s better nursery schools, [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website So Yong Kim on TREELESS MOUNTAIN Ohhhhh, the pitfalls director So Yong Kim faced in making the protagonists of her film, TREELESS MOUNTAIN, two young children. One false move, and the effort could’ve turned into a sloppy, mawkish mess. Fortunately for her, the nonprofessional actresses she cast in the roles — Hee Yeon Kim as Jin and Song Hee Kim as [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website REPOST: Eran Riklis on LEMON TREE We at MMP proudly salute the developers of our completely seamless and absolutely foolproof podcasting software, software that would never, say, send out blank e-mails to our subscriber list, or spontaneously truncate the mp3 file. This is by way of apology to anyone who suffered from these glitches. Hopefully this repost will behave better. Eran Riklis has [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Alex Rivera on SLEEP DEALER Whatever happened to cyberpunk, a.k.a. virtual reality? Used to be a big thing at one point, then THE MATRIX came and everybody just seemed to lose interest. Was there a general consensus that it was just too hard a genre to pull off effectively on film? Or did everyone just think the Wachowskis had said [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Slava Tsukerman on PERESTROIKA The plus side of not having IFC, Sundance Channel, NetFlix, VOD, etc, etc, was that when you saw an indie film, you were pretty much sure your friends saw it as well, and so it was easy to discuss the merits, or lack thereof, of any title. And, man, did we discuss the hell out [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Tim Disney on AMERICAN VIOLET For director Tim Disney, the irony of one, brave woman taking on an unfairly balanced, Texas criminal court system at the same time that George Bush was gaming the Supreme Court to get into the White House was irresistible. Based on a true story (as the saying goes), AMERICAN VIOLET explores what happens when innocent [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Director Sacha Gervasi on ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL We wrap up our debut week with an interview with director Sacha Gervasi about his documentary, ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL. I’ve never been a major metal-head — my musical tastes in the late seventies/early eighties skittered between Genesis and Elvis Costello — so the likes of a seminal Canadian metal band, formed by Steve “Lips” [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Director Donny Moss on BLINDERS Donny Moss doesn’t mince words: He wants to see the carriage horses that haul funnelcake-fortified tourists around New York’s Central Park gone for good. To that end, this Gotham-based comedian has created BLINDERS, a documentary that captures the abuses these hardworking creatures undergo, and lays out the reasons that many animal advocates believe the only [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Rupert Wyatt on THE ESCAPIST THE ESCAPIST is about as rough, as nasty, as gripping as a prison escape movie can be. Building the story around his lead performer, Brian Cox, director Rupert Wyatt’s feature debut takes the audience into the bowels of hell, while using a daring story structure to play with their expectations. Here’s Wyatt talking about what [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Director Matt Aselton on GIGANTIC Ah, comes the spring! And in the spring, a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of how to protect himself from getting his butt kicked by a homicidal homeless man. At least that’s the state of things in GIGANTIC, an off-beat, New York based romantic comedy starring Paul Dano, Zooey Deschanel, John Goodman, Jane Alexander, [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Episode 00: “A Sea Change” - An Interview with Filmmakers Barbara Ettinger & Sven Huseby Okay, this may just be a test run to see if the entire podcast mechanism is up & running, but don’t say we don’t deliver value even then! In this, essentially our pilot episode, we feature an interesting few minutes with Barbara Ettinger and Sven Huseby, environmental activists and filmmakers whose documentary about the threat [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website