the m0vie blog

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guests Deirdre Molumby and Graham Day, The 250 is a weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released Saturdays at 6pm GMT.

This week, we’re continuing a season focusing on the work of one particular director: Brad Bird’s Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.

When a mad man embarks on a plan that will lead to nuclear annihilation, secret agent Ethan Hunt is the world’s last and only hope. The only problem is that Hunt may not be the man that he once was. Assembling a crack team of operatives in a desperate race against time, Hunt undertakes a globe trotting adventure with the highest stakes imaginable.

At time of recording, it was not ranked on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

Show Notes:

• Recorded 23rd November 2022.
• Note: Due to the COVID-19 situation, this episode was recorded remotely. We suspect, going forward that a lot of our episodes will be until the crisis resolves.
• Note: Darren incorrectly states that Ghost Protocol was the highest-grossing Mission: Impossible at time of release. It was actually the second-highest, grossing slightly less than Mission: Impossible II, but significantly more than Mission: Impossible and Mission: Impossible III.
• Note: We can now swear, having switched the podcast rating to “explicit” on iTunes.
• Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol at The Internet Movie Database.
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• Read Dee’s reviews at entertainment.ie.
• Read Graham’s reviews at Scannain.
• Hear Graham on Speaking Geek.
• Read Graham’s guide to Irish Gaming at Gameir.
• Follow Graham on Twitter.
• Tony Ortega at The Village Voice reports on FBI fears that David Miscavige would abscond in Tom Cruise’s private jet in the event of a raid on Scientology, March 2012.
• Carolyn Marshall at The New York Times reports on the passing of “the Tom Cruise law”, May 2006.
• Daniel Engber at Slate argues that Avatar is an animated film, February 2010.
• James Cameron talks to Variety about how Avatar could be considered an animated film, December 2019.
• Steven Spielberg talks to IndieWire about how much of The Adventures of Tintin is animation, October 2011.
• Tim Appelo at The Hollywood Reporter looks at Gore Verbinski’s move into animation with Rango, February 2012.
• Chris Lee at The Los Angeles Times reports on the controversy over whether Wes Anderson directed The Fantastic Mr. Fox over email, October 2009.
• Michael Cavna at The Washington Post reports on Rango as a pivotal film in the evolution of animation as genre attracting live action directors, March 2011.
• Douglas Laman at Collider at the migration of live action directors into animation, November 2022.
• Andrew Stanton looks back on his career in conversation with Vulture, November 2022.
• Brooks Barnes interviews Brad Bird for The New York Times, December 2011.
• Peter Sciretta at /film reports on the plan for Pixar and Warner Bros. to co-produce 1906, March 2008.
• Brad Bird talks to Collider about how he now plans to make 1906 as a hybrid film and television project, June 2018.
• Brad Bird talks to Wired about how he came to work on Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, December 2011.
• Kate Knibbs at The Ringer discusses Tom Cruise’s famous couch jump on The Oprah Winfrey Show, August 2018.
• You’re Wrong About explores the context and consequences of Tom Cruise’s famous couch jump on The Oprah Winfrey Show, January 2022.
• Maxine Frith at The Independent reports on claims that Tom Cruise would eat Katie Holmes’ placenta, April 2006.
• The Associated Press reports on Tom Cruise’s plans for Katie Holmes’ “silent birth”, April 2006.
• Tom Cruise has a tense conversation with Matt Lauer on the Today show, June 2005.
• Katherine Thomson at The Huffington Post reports on Tom Cruise arranging a picket of Steven Spielberg’s family’s doctor, March 2008.
• Ciar Byrne at The Independent reports on Tom Cruise firing his sister as his publicist, November 2005.
• Gitesh Pandya at Rotten Tomatoes reports on the underwhelming opening box office of Mission: Impossible III, May 2006.
• Reuters reports on the underwhelming global box office of Lions for Lambs, November 2007.
• Jeremy Kay at The Guardian reports on how the public mood had turned against Cruise in the lead-up to the release of Knight and Day, June 2010.
• David Germain at The Christian Science Monitor reports on Knight and Day as Cruise’s weakest action opening since Days of Thunder, June 2010.
• CNN reports on Paramount severing its ties to Tom Cruise, August 2006.
• Claude Brodesser-Akner at Vulture reports on early plans for a Maverick-lite sequel to Top Gun, October 2010.
• Ethan Sacks at The New York Daily News considers Jack Reacher as a potential new franchise for Tom Cruise, October 2012.
• Ethan Altar at Yahoo! reports on how Tom Cruise refused to shoot his retirement scene in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, December 2021.
• Dougray Scott talks to Yahoo! about how working on Mission: Impossible II prevented him from playing Wolverine in X-Men, March 2020.
• Brad Bird talks to The Los Angeles Times about the decision to release Ghost Protocol early in IMAX, September 2011.
• Brad Bird talks to Den of Geek about his use of sound, music and silence in Ghost Protocol, December 2011.
• Jeremy Renner talks to The Irish Independent about taking over the Bourne franchise, August 2012.
• Jeremy Renner talks to MTV about possibly taking over the Mission: Impossible franchise, November 2010.
• Adam Sternbergh at Vulture considers Jeremy Renner as “Hollywood’s Greatest Negotiating Tool”, July 2016.
• Alex McLevy at The A.V. Club reveals that Jeremy Renner was not in Mission: Impossible – Fallout because he was also not in Avengers: Infinity War, July 2018.
• Niraj Chokshi at The New York Times reflects on the absurdity of “the Jeremy Renner app”, September 2019.
• The Irish Times reports on domestic abuse allegations against Jeremy Renner, October 2019.
• CBC News reports on Jeremy Renner’s reluctance to apologise for sexist comments, May 2015.
• Zosha Millman at Polygon reports on the use of Jeremy Renner’s cover of House of the Rising Sun in Umbrella Academy, June 2022.
• Jesse Hassenger at The A.V. Club considers the creative partnership between Mark Wahlberg and Peter Berg, March 2020.
• The Daily Mail reports on Tom Cruise sitting atop the Burj Khalifa, November 2010.
• Ann Lee at Metro reports on the photograph of Tom Cruise sitting on top of the Burj Khalifa, December 2011.
• Tom Cruise shares footage of how he broke his ankle filming Mission: Impossible – Fallout with Vanity Fair, January 2018.
• Andrew Pulver at The Guardian reports on Scarlett Johansson’s criticisms of her portrayal in Iron Man 2, June 2021.
• Simon Reynolds at Digital Spy reports on Damon Lindelof’s apology for putting Alice Eve in her underwear in Star Trek Into Darkness, May 2013.
• Shamni Pande at Business Today reports on the box office success of Avatar in India, February 2010.
• Chandra Arora at Times of India reports on Hollywood’s attempts to break into the Indian film market, December 2011.
• Nandini Raghavendra at The India Times reports on the American films opening early in India, December 2011.
• Anil Kapoor talks to The Hollywood Reporter about his role in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, December 2011.
• Haleigh Foutch at Collider reports on how Christopher McQuarrie retooled a lot of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, December 2018.
• Charles Barfield at The Playlist reports on how Christopher McQuarrie “blew up” the underlying assumptions of Ghost Protocol during rewrites, May 2020.
• Christian Long at SyFy Wire reports on cinematographer Robert Elswit’s account of how Christopher McQuarrie altered Ethan Hunt’s fate in Ghost Protocol, February 2019.
• The Economist reports on the politics of language in Ukraine, August 2022.
• Peter Baker at Foreign Policy looks at the complicated relationship between George W. Bush and Valdimir Putin, November 2013.
• A.A. Dowd at The A.V. Club discusses the similarities between the climax of Ghost Protocol and various Pixar movies, February 2014.
• Richard Brody at The New Yorker considers Ghost Protocol as “a surprisingly sincere paean to a mythic middle America“, December 2011.
• Ethan Anderton at First Showing suggests that Ghost Protocol had originally intended a cameo for Vanessa Redgrave, January 2012.
• Josh Applebaum and André Nemec talk to Light the Fuse podcast about the planned cameo from Vanessa Redgrace in Ghost Protocol, December 2021.
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