Podcasts! | the m0vie blog

New Podcast! The Time is Now – Season 2, Episode 23 (“The Time is Now”)

Posted on July 1, 2020 by Darren

And with that, The Time is Now finishes its coverage of the second season of Millennium, and I was flattered to be invited to discuss the second part of the two-part season finale The Time is Now with the fantastic Kurt North.

I’ve talked a great deal before about how the second season of Millennium is one of my favourite seasons of television ever made. And it has been an absolute joy revisiting it for these podcast discussions. It’s been amazing to see that the show still holds up more than twenty years after it was originally produced, and to see how it resonates in entirely new and surprising ways with the world as it exists today. Twenty years later, the second season is still a monumental and underrated piece of television.

It has been a huge honour to talk so much about the season. I think, outside of Kurt, I’ve been the contributor who has appeared most frequently on these episodes. I hope I’ve been able to make a coherent and convincing case for why I think so many of the individual episodes – and indeed the larger season as a whole – are masterpieces of storytelling and among the very best material that Ten Thirteen ever produced. Thanks to Kurt and Tony for having me, and thanks to the listeners for putting up with me.

As ever, you can listen directly to the episode here, subscribe to the podcast here, or click the link below.

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Filed under: Millennium, Podcasts! | Tagged: apocalypse, death, destruction, end of the world, frank black, millennium, podcast, the time is now | Leave a comment »

188. The Truman Show (#177)

Posted on June 27, 2020 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guest Kurt North, 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, Peter Weir’s The Truman Show.

Truman Burbank has the perfect life. He has a good job, a loving wife, a charming best friend. He lives an idylised existence, one where he wants for nothing. However, a series of freak occurences jolt Truman out of his blissful world and force him to confront a potentially horrifying reality: what if everything that he knows is just an elaborate lie?

At time of recording, it was ranked 177th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: backlash, blockbuster, comedy, drama, hype, jim carrey, kurt north, nineties, Peter Weir, reality, reality television, the truman show, unreality | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The X-Cast – Fight the Future Minute #55 (“The Syndicate III”)

Posted on June 25, 2020 by Darren

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.

This episode wraps up my first stretch of episodes discussing Fight the Future, taking a look at the end of the conversation between the Well-Manicured Man and the rest of the Syndicate around him. It’s a fun discussion that finally gets to the heart of Fight the Future, bringing Mulder and Scully back into the story and communicating the stakes clearly to the audience munching on their popcorn.

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

Filed under: Podcasts!, The X-Files | Tagged: conspiracy, kurt north, mulder, scully, the syndicate, the well-manicured man, the x-cast, the x-files, the x-files: fight the future | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The X-Cast – Fight the Future Minute #54 (“The Syndicate II”)

Posted on June 24, 2020 by Darren

The delineation between my second and third minutes on the project is a bit looser than the clear demarcation between the first and second, in that it is a continuation of the same scene. Still, Kurt and I take a little bit of a closer look at the character of Strughold, the special celebrity guest star “big bad” who is drafted in to provide suitable amounts of menace to Fight the Future and then never appears again – probably because Armin Mueller-Stahl was a bit above the show’s paygrade, even after it moved to Los Angeles.

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

Filed under: Podcasts!, The X-Files | Tagged: armin mueller-stahl, conspiracy, fight the future, kurt north, podcast, the syndicate, the x-files: fight the future | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The Time is Now – Season 2, Episode 22 (“The Fourth Horseman”)

Posted on June 24, 2020 by Darren

The Time is Now is winding down its coverage of the second season of Millennium, and I was flattered to be invited to discuss the first part of the two-part season finale The Fourth Horseman with the fantastic Kurt North.

I’ve talked a lot about my love of the second season of Millennium, and I’ve argued that the show has one of the finest season (and arguably series) finales in television history. The Fourth Horseman and The Time is Now were episodes that really shattered my expectations of what was possible on network television in the nineties. They are bold, provocative and melancholy episodes of television. They remain one of the most evocative depictions of the end of the world that I have ever encountered in media. So it was a thrill to get to discuss them.

As ever, you can listen directly to the episode here, subscribe to the podcast here, or click the link below.

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Filed under: Millennium, Podcasts! | Tagged: kurt north, Lance Henriksen, millennium, plague, podcast, the end of the world, the fourth horseman, the time is now | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The X-Cast – Fight the Future Minute #53 (“The Syndicate”)

Posted on June 23, 2020 by Darren

In some ways, this section of the film is an illustration of how tightly structured Fight the Future is, in terms of communicating exposition and character dynamics to an audience that may not be entirely up to date with the grand mechanics of the X-Files universe. So Fight the Future spends almost exactly a minute with the Well-Manicured Man before throwing him into conflict with the Syndicate. In doing so, it draws a contrast between the two that serves to very clearly define what distinguishes the Well-Manicured Man from his colleagues and partners.

Again, it would be too much to describe the storytelling here as elegant, but it does communicate things like character motivation quite clearly without distracting too heavily from the emotional crux of Fight the Future. Carter and Bowman both understand that the key is to communicate all of this as clearly and as quickly as possible, in order to get back to what is the movie’s real attraction, the movie-star tension between David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. However, even with that in mind, the storytelling here is commendably efficient.

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

Filed under: Podcasts!, The X-Files | Tagged: aliens, conspiracy, conspirators, fight the future, kurt north, podcast, the syndicate, the well-manicured man, the x-files, the x-files: fight the future | 2 Comments »

New Podcast! The X-Cast – Fight the Future Minute #52 (“A Well-Manicured Man (Again!)”)

Posted on June 23, 2020 by Darren

The Well-Manicured Man is – not so secretly – one of my favourite characters in the larger X-Files pantheon. This is partly because he’s played by the wonderful character actor John Neville, but also because he serves as an excellent analogy for the corrupting influence of the sort of power that runs through The X-Files. While the Cigarette-Smoking Man is transparently evil, and while the Elders are vaguely defined at best, the Well-Manicured Man is interesting in large part because he seems actually conflicted about what he has committed to.

In the first of this stretch of minutes, Fight the Future reintroduces the Well-Manicured Man in what is effectively a microcosm of the movie’s approach to storytelling. The audience is immediately given some understanding of who this character is, what he represents and what his motivations might be. It is more economical and effective than elegant, and a prime example of how Fight the Future was trying to position itself as a blockbuster rather than a cult film.

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

Filed under: Podcasts!, The X-Files | Tagged: fight the future, John Neville, kurt north, the x-cast, the x-files, well-manicured man | Leave a comment »

187. Catch Me If You Can (#194)

Posted on June 21, 2020 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guests Luke Dunne and Jess Dunne from The Breakout Role Podcast, 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, Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can.

When his parents announce their divorce, high school student Frank Abagnale runs away home. He never stops running. The enterprising young man reinvents himself as a dashing airline pilot, a debonair doctor and a diligent lawyer. However, Frank can only stay ahead of the long arm of the law for so long. As the ground starts shrinking out from him, as FBI Agent Carl Hanratty closes in, Frank wonders if he’ll ever be able to stop running.

At time of recording, it was ranked 194th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: america, amy adams, capitalism, catch me if you can, christopher walken, con, con artist, corruption, frank abagnale, jess dunne, Leonardo diCaprio, luke dunne, nostalgia, persona, sixties, steven spielberg, tom hanks, wealth | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The Time is Now – Season 2, Episode 21 (“Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me…”)

Posted on June 16, 2020 by Darren

I’m thrilled to appear on another episode of The Time is Now, discussing the second season of Millennium, which remains one of my favourite seasons of television ever. It’s a huge pleasure to have been asked back to discuss the last standalone episode of the season, Darin Morgan’s superb Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me, with the wonderful duo of Kurt North and Michael John Petty.

Somehow, Satan Got Behind me is a fascinating piece of television. It is effectively a miniature anthology episode, a collection of short stories, in which Frank Black doesn’t play a major role. Instead, Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me offers a decidedly off-kilter meditation on some of the core themes of Millennium in general and the second season in particular. These are stories about evil, but in its most petty and mundane forms. Four demons trade stories over coffee and pastry, reflecting on what mankind has made of the world that they were given.

As ever, you can listen directly to the episode here, subscribe to the podcast here, or click the link below.

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Filed under: Millennium, Podcasts! | Tagged: Darin Morgan, evil, kurt north, michael john petty, millennium, somehow satan got behind me | Leave a comment »

186. Det Sjunde inseglet (The Seventh Seal) – World Tour 2020 (#155)

Posted on June 13, 2020 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guest Phil Bagnall, 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, Ingmar Bergman’s Det Sjunde inseglet.

Death stalks the countryside of medieval Sweden. Antonius Block is a knight returning home after a long crusade to the Middle East, and horrified to find that the black death is ravaging his homeland. On the beach, Block is confronted by the spectral figure of the Grim Reaper himself. Block challenges Death to a game of chess, hoping that he might escape his opponents glare. As Block continues his journey home, he tries to make sense the fleeting nature of human existence and seeks desperate reassurance that something – anything – lies waiting beyond.

At time of recording, it was ranked 155th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.