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New Podcast! The Movie Palace – “Summer of Psycho: The Shower Sequence”

I had the pleasure of joining the great and generous Carl Sweeney on his excellent classic Hollywood podcast The Movie Palace.

To mark the sixtieth anniversary of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, The Movie Palace has dedicated a run of episodes to exploring various elements of the iconic horror film. I was thrilled to join Carl for a discussion of the movie’s infamous shower scene, one of the famous memorable and distinctive sequences in the history of cinema. So we discuss what it means and how it works, both in the context of Psycho and outside of it.

You can listen to the episode here, back episodes of the podcast here, click the link below or even listen directly.

192. Hamilton: An American Musical – This Just In (#20)

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guest Deirdre Mulomby, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users.

This time, Thomas Kail’s Hamilton: An American Musical.

Reconstructed from a pair of live theatrical recordings and additional material compiled in June 2016, Hamilton features one of the last performances from the original Broadway cast of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s record-breaking smash hit cultural sensation, available on streaming for the first time.

At time of recording, it was ranked 20th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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New Podcast! The X-Cast – Fight the Future Minute #86 (“Well-Manicured Sacrifice”)

So The X-Cast reached the end of the show’s fifth season, and approached The X-Files: Fight the Future. This naturally meant it was time for another breathtakingly ambitious project, so the podcast is going literally minute-by-minute through the first X-Files feature film. I’m joining the wonderful Kurt North for two brief stretches featuring the Well-Manicured Man.

And so my time on the Fight the Future minute comes to an end. It has been a pleasure. I like to think that Kurt and I go out like the Well-Manicured Man himself, in a blaze of glory. We discuss everything from the Well-Manicured Man’s flare for the theatrical, to his somewhat unnecessary killing spree, to how exactly we imagine the local papers are going to cover the weird murder-suicide-in-an-alley sequence. It’s fun, it’s playful, it’s a recording I really enjoyed – and which I hope you enjoy as well.

You can listen to the episode here, or click the link below.

New Podcast! The X-Cast – Fight the Future Minute #85 (“Well-Manicured Murder”)

So The X-Cast reached the end of the show’s fifth season, and approached The X-Files: Fight the Future. This naturally meant it was time for another breathtakingly ambitious project, so the podcast is going literally minute-by-minute through the first X-Files feature film. I’m joining the wonderful Kurt North for two brief stretches featuring the Well-Manicured Man.

And so my time on the Fight the Future minute nears an end. However, there’s still one minute left. So this provides a nice opportunity to talk about the weirdness of the Well-Manicured Man’s plan during this exposition-driven sequence that apparently includes crossing “double murder-suicide” off his bucket list. We also discuss the narrative conventions that require a propulsive conspiracy thriller like Fight the Future to generate completely absurd tension and suspense in place where it really has no reason to exist.

You can listen to the episode here, or click the link below.

New Podcast! The X-Cast – Fight the Future Minute #84 (“Well-Manicured Rationale”)

So The X-Cast reached the end of the show’s fifth season, and approached The X-Files: Fight the Future. This naturally meant it was time for another breathtakingly ambitious project, so the podcast is going literally minute-by-minute through the first X-Files feature film. I’m joining the wonderful Kurt North for two brief stretches featuring the Well-Manicured Man.

And so, after the exposition comes character motivation – which is handily provided via exposition. The limousine sequence in Fight the Future is notable primarily as a bridging sequence. In terms of the “play the hits” aesthetic of Fight the Future, it serves to get Mulder from Scully’s abduction to his Arctic expedition. As a result, it’s a section of the film tasked with tying all of this together, in a rather condensed and contracted period of time. The results aren’t always elegant, but there is something fun about them.

You can listen to the episode here, or click the link below.

New Podcast! The X-Cast – Fight the Future Minute #82 (“Well-Manicured Truth I”)

So The X-Cast reached the end of the show’s fifth season, and approached The X-Files: Fight the Future. This naturally meant it was time for another breathtakingly ambitious project, so the podcast is going literally minute-by-minute through the first X-Files feature film. I’m joining the wonderful Kurt North for two brief stretches featuring the Well-Manicured Man.

Who doesn’t like exposition? Especially when it’s delivered by a veteran British character actor trying to cram as much as physically possible into the space between two set pieces? We’re in an incredibly dense stretch of Fight the Future in which the film tries to offer a cliffnotes of the show’s mythology for the blockbuster audiences watching in cinemas. The result isn’t always elegant, but it’s surprisingly effective.

You can listen to the episode here, or click the link below.

 

191. Sunset Boulevard (#64)

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guests Charlene Lydon and Rioghnach Ní Ghrioghair, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users.

This time, Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard.

Screenwriter Joe Gillis is found floating upside down in the pool of silent era film star Norma Desmond. As the authorities begin to piece together exactly what happened, Gillis’ corpse narrates a sordid tale of desperation, resentment, lust – and Hollywood haunted by its own past.

At time of recording, it was ranked 64th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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190. 12 Angry Men (#5)

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guests Donald Clarke and John Maguire, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users.

This time, Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men.

In New York, in the height of summer, twelve jurors assemble for what should be a simple open and shut case. Most of the jury assumes that they’ll be done within the hour. However, against all of that evidence and in spite of all of that expectation, one member of the group isn’t entirely convinced that the accused is guilty.

At time of recording, it was ranked 5th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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New Podcast! Galactic Yo-yo – Peter Davison’s “Doctor Who”

I was very thrilled to be invited to guest on the Galactic Yo-yo podcast by the wonderful Molly Marsh, to discuss Doctor Who.

We’d talked a little bit about Doctor Who before the podcast, and I’d wanted to talk a little bit about classic Doctor Who, because I don’t always get a chance to delve into the classic series. Plus, with the recent blu ray collections, I’d been watching a bit of it. More than that, I’d been delving back into Peter Davison’s almost-three-seasons in the role and was quite impressed with the way in which the Fifth Doctor often seemed to be a protagonist trying desperately to stay on top of a show that was falling to pieces around him. So we talked a great deal about Peter Davison.

Anyway, it was a huge honour to be invited to the show, and I hope that you enjoy it and I didn’t embarrass myself. You can subscribe to the show here. You can listen to the episode here, or click the link below.

189. White Heat – w/ The Movie Palace – Independence Day 2020 (#—)

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, The 250 is a fortnightly 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, a special crossover episode with The Movie Palace Podcast, a film podcast hosted by Carl Sweeney taking a look at the classics of Hollywood’s golden age. Carl suggested a crossover episode taking a look at the list, and particularly some of the classic movies listed on it.

So this week, Raoul Walsh’s White Heat.

Fleeing the authorities after a train robbery that resulted in two murders, Cody Jarrett latches on to an unconventional scheme to evade detection. Jarrett turns himself into the authorities for a crime he didn’t commit, earning a lesser sentence and putting him in the clear. However, things are changing rapidly for Cody, and the ground is very quickly shrinking out from under him.

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

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