the movie palace | the m0vie blog

238. To Be Or Not To Be – w/ The Movie Palace (#199)

Posted on June 12, 2021 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, with special guest Carl Sweeney, 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. New episodes are released every Saturday at 6pm GMT.

This time, a crossover with The Movie Palace, Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be Or Not To Be.

War rages across Europe. Hitler is on the march. In Poland, a troupe of actors find themselves cast as the most unlikely heroes in a daring mission to prevent vital intelligence from making its way to the Nazi authorities. Saving the day will require courage, guile and the ability to hit their marks.

At time of recording, it was ranked 199th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: american cinema, Billy Wilder, carl sweeney, carole lombard, comedy, ernst lubitsch, europe, fascism, film, genre, history, holocaust, imdb, jack benny, jewish, jewishness, Mel Brooks, Movies, Nazism, podcast, Poland, spoof, the movie palace, to be or not to be, tragedy, world war ii | Leave a comment »

210. Hugo – Summer of Scorsese, w/ The Movie Palace (#–)

Posted on December 1, 2020 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn, Jay Coyle and Darren Mooney, with special guest Carl Sweeney, 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. New episodes are released every Saturday at 6pm GMT.

This time, continuing our Summer of Scorsese season with a crossover with The Movie Palace, Martin Scorsese’s Hugo.

Martin Scorsese is one of the defining directors in American cinema, with a host of massively successful (and cult) hits that have shaped and defined cinema across generations: Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, New York, New York, Goodfellas, Kundun, The Departed, The Wolf of Wall Street. The Summer of Scorsese season offers a trip through his filmography via the IMDb‘s 250.

Hugo Cabret is a twelve-year-old kid living and hiding in the industrial spaces behind a central Paris railway station. Recovering from the loss of his father, Hugo is desperate to repair the damaged automaton that is the last connection that he shares with his deceased parent. The mystery leads Hugo to a strange and lonely old man operating a kiosk, and into a whole new world.

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

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: adventure, carl sweeney, childhood, cinema, history, Hugo, jay coyle, love, martin scorsese, paris, podcast, scorsese, season of scorsese, summer of scorsese, The 250, the movie palace, trauma, violence, wonder | Leave a comment »

207. The Aviator – Summer of Scorsese, w/ The Movie Palace (#—)

Posted on November 7, 2020 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn, Jay Coyle and Darren Mooney, 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. New episodes are released every Saturday at 6pm GMT.

This time, continuing our Summer of Scorsese season, a special treat.

Darren appeared on The Movie Palace podcast back in march, discussing Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator. This was before we kicked off our Summer of Scorsese, but we thought we’d share it with listeners. The bulk of the episode is a discussion between Carl and Darren over The Aviator, but we did record a special intro with Andrew and Jay just to offer a brief discussion of the film.

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

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: carl sweeney, fame, howard hughes, jay coyle, john logan, Leonardo diCaprio, martin scorsese, money, quarantine, season of scorsese, summer of scorsese, the aviator, the movie palace | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The Movie Palace – “Summer of Psycho: Gus Van Sant’s Psycho”

Posted on August 3, 2020 by Darren

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 elements of the iconic horror film. I was thrilled to rejoin Carl for a discussion of the infamous and divisive remake of the film, in which Gus Van Sant leveraged the success of Good Will Hunting to convince Universal to sign off on a full colour remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic, using a largely unchanged script and even emulating a lot of the same camera angles. The result was a critical and commercial failure, but remains an interesting experiment.

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

Filed under: Movies, Podcasts! | Tagged: carl sweeney, film, gus van sant, hollywood, Movie, Psycho, psycho (1998), remakes, the movie palace | Leave a comment »

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

Posted on July 27, 2020 by Darren

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.

Filed under: On Second Thought, Podcasts! | Tagged: carl, podcast, Psycho, the movie palace | Leave a comment »

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

Posted on July 4, 2020 by Darren

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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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: atomic horror, carl sweeney, end of an era, Film noir, gangsters, horror, james cagney, monster movie, podcast, raoul walsh, recording, second world war, the movie palace, warners, white heat | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The Movie Palace – “The Aviator”

Posted on April 27, 2020 by Darren

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

Carl had put the podcast on a bit of a hiatus earlier in the year, but these are strange times. So to kick off a new season, he invited me on to talk about The Aviator, one of Martin Scorsese’s odes to classic Hollywood. I was delighted to accept the invitation, as I’m always happy to revisit a Scorsese film. The Aviator has aged in interesting ways, providing an encapsulation of some of Scorsese’s core themes and ideas, but also blending modern filmmaking with a classic aesthetic. It’s a fascinating window into what makes Scorsese such a unique filmmaker.

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

Filed under: On Second Thought, Podcasts! | Tagged: carl sweeney, martin scorsese, the aviator, the movie palace | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The Movie Palace – “Gilda”

Posted on August 20, 2018 by Darren

It was a pleasure to join the great Carl Sweeney on his podcast The Movie Palace to discuss Gilda, Charles Vidor’s iconic postwar film noir which is possibly the most exciting movie ever made about tungsten monopolies. A psycho-sexual thriller about two men trying to forge a future in Buenos Aires and the woman who comes between them, Gilda remains one of the most enduring films of the late forties in large part due to Rita Hayworth’s central performance.

At the same time, Gilda occupies an interesting place in the film noir canon, never quite considered a classic in the style of Casablanca or The Maltese Falcon or Double Indemnity, but always respected by those with an appreciation for postwar American cinema. It’s certainly a film about which I have very mixed feelings, even if they aren’t quite as intense as those between Johnny and Gilda.

The Movie Palace is a podcast that takes an affectionate look at the Golden Age of Hollywood, with Carl talking about a classic film with a guest once a week. It was an honour to be asked on, even if I’ll concede out of the gate that I’m not anywhere near as familiar with the era of filmmaking as Carl is. You can check out the episode here, back episodes of the podcast here, or just click the link below.