travelers | the m0vie blog

178. Snatch – World Tour 2020, w/ When Irish Eyes Are Watching (#100)

Posted on April 18, 2020 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guests Alex Towers and Sean Driver from When Irish Eyes Are Watching, 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, Guy Ritchie’s Snatch.

Two low-level grifters looking to buy a caravan from some Irish travellers. One international thief lying low in London after an Antwerp job. A former Soviet secret agent. A reliable Jewish fence and his American counterpart. A tough old gangland geezer who isn’t used to not having things go his way. A diamond. A dog. And the chaos that ensues when all of these elements collide in the most unexpected of ways.

At time of recording, it was ranked 100th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

Continue reading →

Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: brad pitt, irish, irishness, Jason Statham, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Podcasts!, Snatch, The 250, travelers, when irish eyes are watching | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The X-Cast X-Files Podwatch – Episode #57 (Travelers/Mind’s Eye)

Posted on December 1, 2017 by Darren

I’m thrilled to be a part of The X-Cast X-Files Podwatch, a daily snippet podcast rewatching the entirety of The X-Files between now and the launch of the new season. It is something of a spin-off of The X-Cast, a great X-Files podcast run by the charming Tony Black. Tony has assembled a fantastic array of guests and hosts to go through The X-Files episode-by-episodes. With the new season announced to be starting in early January, Tony’s doing two episodes of the podcast per day, so buckle up. It’s going to be fun.

My third (and penultimate) episode of the fifth season reteams me with the great Chris Knowles, a man who has forgotten more about The X-Files than I will ever know. We’re talking about the episodes Travelers and Mind’s Eye, both somewhat underrated fifth season episodes that (we think) tap into some of the show’s core strengths.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Podcasts!, The X-Files | Tagged: chris knowles, Lili Taylor, mind's eye, the x-cast, the x-cast podwatch, the x-files, travelers | Leave a comment »

The X-Files – Travelers (Review)

Posted on June 15, 2015 by Darren

This May and June, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the fifth season of The X-Files and the second season of Millennium.

For all that the fifth season of The X-Files is building towards a major summer movie release, the production team seem surprisingly relaxed about it.

The fifth season is as experimental and as loose as the show ever got. Patient X and The Red and the Black suggested that Chris Carter didn’t even feel beholden to the continuity of The X-Files: Fight the Future, introducing new characters and concepts to the mythology that could not possibly be inserted into the film at this late stage. Similarly, the show was willing to play around with special guest writers like Stephen King and William Gibson, film an entire episode in black and white, focus on relatively minor characters, and reveal two separate secret histories of the X-files.

What do you call a baby Fox?

Of course, some of these innovations were driven by necessity or large goals. Patient X and The Red and the Black represent the beginning of the end for this stage of the mythology. Stories like Unusual Suspects and Travelers focus on characters other than Mulder or Scully because David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson were otherwise engaged. Nevertheless, there is a very relaxed vibe to the fifth season, as if the show is taking an extended moment to enjoy the peak of its popularity. As well it should.

Travelers is an episode that is far from essential in many respects. It is clunky in places, indulgent in others. It feels like the production teams are just happy to root through the old costuming wardrobe and prop departments, delighted to compose over-written monologues and stock characters. Travelers is light and fun, with its indulgence and its relative lack of substance making it more enjoyable than it would otherwise be.