Junk Filter
183 episodes - English - Latest episode: 5 days ago - ★★★★★ - 41 ratingsJunk Filter: a podcast about strange and overlooked artifacts from the worlds of film, music and popular culture with a generous side order of jokes and politics. Hosted by Jesse Hawken with guests from the worlds of Politics Twitter and Film Twitter. Original music for the program by Marker Starling. Follow us now on Twitter: @junkfilterpod
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Episodes
TEASER - 123: The Dick Tracy Trilogy (with Will Sloan)
February 19, 2023 04:11 - 3 minutes - 2.77 MBAccess this entire 70 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! https://www.patreon.com/posts/123-dick-tracy-78893447 The writer and podcaster Will Sloan returns for a show about Warren Beatty and his now-decades long relationship to Chester Gould’s classic thirties comic strip detective Dick Tracy. We discuss what we can now call The Dick Tracy trilogy: the gorgeously crafted 1990 blockbuster he starred in and directed, and two curious no-bud...
122: Aftersun (with Rafa Sales Ross)
February 14, 2023 19:54 - 1 hour - 71.1 MBThis episode contains major spoilers and deals with difficult subject matter, so please watch the film before you listen to this discussion. Freelance film critic and programmer Rafa Sales Ross joins me from Scotland to discuss Charlotte Wells’ debut feature Aftersun, starring newcomer Frankie Corio and Paul Mescal in an Academy Award-nominated performance as Calum, a Scottish single father who takes his 11 year old daughter Sophie on a trip to a resort in Turkey in the late nineties, a sto...
UNLOCKED: 45: The Genius of Burt Bacharach (with Marker Starling)
February 09, 2023 15:37 - 2 hours - 122 MBIn honor of the passing of the great Burt Bacharach, this premium episode of the podcast from July 29, 2021 has been unlocked. There are dozens of exclusive episodes of Junk Filter available to patrons of the podcast; you can sign up at patreon.com/junkfilter Toronto-based musician Marker Starling returns to the podcast for an extensive conversation about the life and career of Burt Bacharach, one of the greatest American musicians. His songbook with lyricist Hal David is a monumental catal...
121: A History of Canadian Pay TV (with Ed Conroy)
February 01, 2023 23:07 - 1 hour - 60.9 MBEd Conroy, a Toronto-based cultural historian and the creator of Retrontario, joins the show for a look back at the 40th anniversary of Pay TV in Canada. On February 1, 1983, Canada’s first Pay TV channels arrived on the airwaves to great fanfare: Competing movie services First Choice and Superchannel offered subscribers blockbuster movies "uncut and commercial free" while the more refined C Channel offered more highbrow fare: world cinema, opera, theatre and concerts. First Choice distingu...
TEASER - 120: The Singing Detective (with Ted Mills)
January 31, 2023 03:35 - 3 minutes - 3.13 MBAccess this entire 87 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! https://www.patreon.com/posts/120-singing-with-77990062 The American writer and filmmaker Ted Mills, now living in Wellington New Zealand, joins the program for a discussion of the television playwright Dennis Potter’s greatest achievement, his 1986 series for the BBC, The Singing Detective. One of the earliest examples of what we would now call “Prestige TV”, The Singing Detectiv...
TEASER - 119: YMO Part 1: Those Naughty Boys (with Isobel from pet wife)
January 25, 2023 14:54 - 3 minutes - 4.92 MBAccess this entire 83 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! https://www.patreon.com/posts/119-ymo-part-1-77692321 Isobel from the Brooklyn-based electronic group pet wife returns to the show for the first of a two-part series on the pioneering Japanese electronic music supergroup Yellow Magic Orchestra: keyboardist Ryuichi Sakamoto, bassist Haruomi Hosono and the drummer, Yukihiro Takahashi. Part one of the series is about how YMO changed ...
TEASER - 76: Marvin Gaye’s Here, My Dear (with pet wife)
January 24, 2023 18:38 - 5 minutes - 4.58 MBAccess the entire 92 minute episode (and additional bonus episodes) by becoming a patron of Junk Filter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/63667721 Isobel and Noelle from the experimental electro pop group pet wife join me from Bushwick, Brooklyn to discuss the life of Marvin Gaye and his 1978 concept album Here, My Dear. There’s nothing like Here, My Dear, the result of a divorce settlement between Gaye and his first wife Anna, where it was agreed that he would record his next album for Motow...
118: Star Wars: Andor (with Roxana Hadadi and Corey Atad)
January 06, 2023 17:58 - 1 hour - 124 MBRoxana Hadadi, a TV critic for New York magazine's culture site Vulture. and returning guest Corey Atad join me for an enthusiastic discussion of Tony Gilroy’s ambitious new Disney Star Wars streaming series Andor. Gilroy, who had been brought in by Lucasfilm to rescue the troubled production Rogue One in 2016, recently returned to the franchise for a series that provides a backstory for the character Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) who sacrificed his life to steal the plans for the Death Star. ...
117: Winner Wonderland (with Alex Shephard)
December 25, 2022 16:38 - 1 hour - 141 MBAlex Shephard, senior writer for The New Republic, returns to Junk Filter to discuss two demented grindhouse classics from the English director Michael Winner, the notorious Charles Bronson thriller Death Wish 3 (1985) and a recently rediscovered home invasion melodrama from the year prior, Scream For Help. Both films have much in common: two trashy and violent melodramas, both set in New York State but mostly filmed in London. each with an original soundtrack from a member of Led Zeppelin!...
TEASER - 116: Straub, Sight & Sound (with Ben Nash)
December 12, 2022 02:33 - 5 minutes - 7.04 MBAccess this entire 65 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! https://www.patreon.com/posts/116-straub-sight-75792117 Ben Nash returns to the podcast from Colchester England to say farewell to the influential French filmmaker Jean-Marie Straub, who with his wife Danièle Huillet produced several decades worth of formally controlled yet fiercely radical works. We offer the listener an introduction to the relatively obscure films of Straub-Huil...
TEASER - 115: Risky Business (with James Majure)
November 28, 2022 15:00 - 5 minutes - 7.45 MBAccess this entire 85 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! https://www.patreon.com/posts/115-risky-with-75212483 Public health worker and trivia host James Majure returns to the pod from Athens, GA for a show about one of the most significant American films of the eighties: Paul Brickman’s Risky Business, the movie that instantly turned Tom Cruise into a star and still stands as one of his best films nearly 40 years on. Seen today Risky B...
114: Jurassic Musk (with Jacob Bacharach)
November 22, 2022 01:55 - 1 hour - 129 MBThe novelist and essayist Jacob Bacharach returns to the pod to discuss the Elon Musk era of Twitter in relation to another cautionary tale about what happens when you fool with Mother Nature, Steven Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster Jurassic Park. It turns out there are unintended consequences to messing around with systems you didn’t understand when you first altered them! We talk about Jurassic Park as a perfect example of blockbuster filmmaking, and how to get over one’s snobbery about Spiel...
TEASER - 113: Diego Maradona (with Conrado Falco)
November 18, 2022 05:11 - 3 minutes - 5.41 MBAccess this entire 70 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! https://www.patreon.com/posts/113-diego-with-74800431 On the eve of what looks like the most cursed World Cup yet, the host of the Criterion Project podcast Conrado Falco joins the show to discuss Asif Kapadia’s 2019 football documentary Diego Maradona, the Get Back of sports documentaries, assembled from hundreds of hours of video filmed for an abandoned documentary project in the...
112: American Hustle (with Matthew Perpetua)
November 06, 2022 15:27 - 1 hour - 109 MBMatthew Perpetua of the long-running Fluxblog returns to the pod from Brooklyn, but this time his visit is only tangentially related to Steely Dan. This is an episode about the notorious director David O. Russell, whose first film in 7 years, the all-star Amsterdam, just bombed at the box office. But it has a lot in common with an earlier Russell film that was a big hit with audiences, if not with most critics, 2013’s American Hustle, a film Matthew and I both quite liked. Released in the s...
111: Bram Stoker’s Dracula (with David Moscrop)
October 31, 2022 13:03 - 1 hour - 98.6 MBThe writer and podcaster David Moscrop, a contributing columnist for the Washington Post, returns to the pod from Ottawa to discuss a Spooky Season classic, Francis Ford Coppola’s lavish adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a film that turned 30 years old this year but like a vampire has barely aged a day. Coppola followed up The Godfather Part III with an ambitious gothic horror with an all-star cast, filmed entirely indoors on sets and soundstages. His visual effects supervisor was his so...
TEASER - 110: Michael Mann: The Keep (with Sean Armstrong)
October 29, 2022 02:58 - 5 minutes - 6.87 MBAccess this entire 75 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! https://www.patreon.com/posts/110-michael-mann-73896455 Veteran boom operator Sean Armstrong (Hannibal, Star Trek: Discovery) returns to the podcast for the latest episode on our series on the films of Michael Mann, with the one film he prefers not to discuss, his second feature, 1983’s supernatural horror thriller The Keep. Paramount took control of the production as the costs an...
109: Blob ’88 (with Meg Shields)
October 24, 2022 15:52 - 1 hour - 93.5 MBThe writer Meg Shields (Film School Rejects) returns to the show for a look at one of the highlights of Criterion Channel’s lineup of 80s Horror, Chuck Russell’s 1988 remake of the fifties cult classic The Blob. Not as celebrated as two other eighties Body Horror remakes of fifties sci-fi (Carpenter’s The Thing and Cronenberg’s The Fly), The Blob is ripe for rediscovery with it’s incredible use of practical special effects and miniatures to tell the tale of a goopy pink organism that terror...
TEASER - 108: Holly Hunter (with Ursula Lawrence)
October 17, 2022 20:49 - 3 minutes - 4.56 MBAccess this entire 81 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes) by becoming a Junk Filter patron: https://www.patreon.com/posts/108-holly-hunter-73420058 Comedy writer Ursula Lawrence (Drunk History, Adam Ruins Everything) returns to the pod for a show about the great actor Holly Hunter, with a look at the two classic movies she made to launch her big-screen career in 1987, Raising Arizona and Broadcast News, as well as one of her best performances in Michael Ritchie’s 1993 sma...
107: Hair Metal (with Elana Levin)
October 10, 2022 15:45 - 1 hour - 123 MBFew genres of music are as critically maligned as the Hair Metal genre, also known as Glam Metal, a term invented to distinguish “Legitimate" Heavy Metal from the poppier and more ridiculous guitar rock performed by men with big hair who wore “feminine” makeup and accessories and performed power ballads. The music writer and podcaster Elana Levin joins the show from Brooklyn to discuss the lineage of Hair Metal, how it functions as camp, the importance of pop music as an influence on the so...
106: Michael Mann: The Insider (with James Slaymaker)
September 27, 2022 15:51 - 1 hour - 111 MBJames Slaymaker, a film writer and the author of Time is Luck: The Cinema of Michael Mann returns to the show from Southampton, England to discuss one of Mann’s finest films, 1999’s The Insider. One of the great films about journalism, The Insider is based on the true story of Dr. Jeffrey Wigand, a former tobacco company vice president who dares to go on the record about Big Tobacco and the product tampering that posed a public health risk. Wigand agrees to appear on 60 Minutes thanks to th...
TEASER - 105: Sorcerer & The Wages of Fear (with Peter Fishbeast)
September 22, 2022 21:07 - 4 minutes - 4.08 MBAccess this entire 81 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes) by becoming a Junk Filter patron: https://www.patreon.com/posts/72332422 Filmmaker Peter Fishbeast returns to the podcast from Belper, England to discuss the great director William Friedkin and his 1977 thriller Sorcerer. Hot off two of the biggest hits of the seventies (The French Connection and The Exorcist), Friedkin decided to do his own version of one of the most acclaimed international films of all time, Hen...
104: JLG/RIP (with Will Sloan, Toph, Ben Nash and James Slaymaker)
September 20, 2022 03:27 - 1 hour - 88.2 MBTo commemorate the death of Jean-Luc Godard, we’ve assembled a panel to discuss his impact on cinema: returning guests Will Sloan and Ben Nash are joined by two new guests, the Southampton-based film writer and PhD researcher James Slaymaker, and in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, Toph, friend of the show, francophile socialiste and Twitchstreamer. We’ve all come to Godard from different directions and different parts of the world, and we discuss the effect his films have had on each of us, with a p...
103: My Son Hunter (with Dave Weigel)
September 12, 2022 18:27 - 1 hour - 85.9 MBWashington Post political reporter Dave Weigel returns to the show for a look at the new conservative political satire My Son Hunter, directed by the actor Robert Davi, his first directorial feature in 15 years. The story of the chaotic lifestyle of Hunter Biden, his business dealings and the salacious details of the contents of his recovered laptop has frustrated the right ever since it failed to change the outcome of the 2020 election. Davi’s movie about the affair, distributed online di...
TEASER - 102: Blood & Chocolate (with Scott Bunn)
September 08, 2022 17:46 - 6 minutes - 6.17 MBAccess the entire 109 minute episode (and additional bonus episodes) by becoming a patron of the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/posts/102-blood-with-71701563 In the latest in a recurring series on the albums of Elvis Costello, Scott Bunn, the author of the wonderful Recliner Notes blog, joins me from Asheville, North Carolina for an in-depth discussion of EC’s final album for Columbia Records before the breakup of his band The Attractions, Blood & Chocolate. After a creative low point in...
101: Olivia Newton-John (with Terrance Balazo)
August 24, 2022 16:27 - 1 hour - 68.3 MBWriter and trivia host Terrance Balazo returns to the show to mark the passing of Olivia Newton-John. Beyond achieving iconic screen stardom as the “good girl gone bad” Sandy in Grease, she changed the sound of country music in the seventies and then pop music in the eighties with “Physical”, the biggest chart hit of the decade and a key influence on performers like Madonna and later Kylie Minogue. Of course we discuss Grease (and Grease 2), but we also dive into Olivia’s notorious rollersk...
TEASER - 100: Michael Mann: Thief (with James Majure)
August 22, 2022 00:58 - 4 minutes - 4.35 MBAccess the entire 79 minute episode (and additional bonus episodes) by becoming a patron of the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/posts/100-michael-mann-70847596 For the 100th episode of Junk Filter, public health worker and trivia host James Majure joins us from Athens, GA to discuss Michael Mann’s first feature film as a director, 1981’s Thief starring James Caan and Tuesday Weld. Thief is a fundamental text of modern cinematic language, and the starting point for all of Mann’s career-lon...
99: It's Morbin' Time (with Jacob Bacharach)
August 10, 2022 01:45 - 1 hour - 92.3 MBThe author Jacob Bacharach returns for a show about the new film about the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr. Michael Morbius. The failure of Morbius, both critically and commercially, is interesting to ponder: why did this particular Marvel movie bomb? Why did this film inspire so many viral memes that Sony Pictures decided to re-release it in cinemas to cash in on Morb Fever? And is the ironic online Morbius Cult our contemporary equivalent to the Juggalos? Jacob and I discuss Morbius in ...
98: He Got Game (with Mike Mekus)
August 02, 2022 13:33 - 1 hour - 74.5 MBManhattan-based actor and writer Mike Mekus returns to the show for a discussion of one of Spike Lee’s most underrated films, 1998’s basketball drama He Got Game starring Denzel Washington and NBA player Ray Allen. Denzel is Jake Shuttlesworth, a convict secretly released from Attica by order of the warden to try to get his son Jesus, a future NBA star, to sign a letter of intent to play college ball for the Governor’s alma mater “Big State”. But Jesus is estranged from his father and under...
TEASER - 97: Michael Mann: Heat (with Chris Calogero)
July 29, 2022 02:59 - 3 minutes - 3.52 MBAccess the entire 84 minute episode (and additional bonus episodes) by becoming a patron of Junk Filter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/69724035 The very funny actor and comedian Chris Calogero joins me from Los Angeles for a discussion on one of the great L.A. films, Michael Mann’s Heat! Michael Mann is back in action lately, with Ferrari in production, the impending release of his first novel Heat 2, and the news that it will be adapted for the screen as a prequel/sequel to the 1995 class...
96: Blue Murder (with Patrick Marlborough)
July 26, 2022 23:31 - 1 hour - 71.9 MBThe writer, actor and musician Patrick Marlborough, a regular contributor to Vice, Gawker and The Guardian, joins me from Perth in Western Australia for a show about the groundbreaking 1995 miniseries Blue Murder, starring Richard Roxburgh. Blue Murder tells the true story of corruption in the New South Wales police department and the friendship between the hot-headed detective Roger Rogerson and the Sydney crime kingpin Neddy Smith, who was given the “green light” by Rogerson to commit cri...
95: Mission: Impossible 2 (with Aaron Casias and Carlee Gomes)
July 12, 2022 12:54 - 1 hour - 77.5 MBThe hosts of the Hit Factory podcast, Aaron Casias and Carlee Gomes, return to the show from San Francisco to defend John Woo’s Mission: Impossible 2 (2000), generally considered the weakest film in the series. Woo’s underappreciated sequel is best enjoyed as his attempt to fuse modern American blockbuster filmmaking with the delirious style of Hong Kong action cinema and the spirit of Hitchcock’s grand Hollywood entertainments, in this case openly echoing the plot of Notorious. It also set...
95: Mission: Impossible 2 (with Aaron and Carlee from Hit Factory)
July 12, 2022 12:54 - 1 hour - 77.5 MBThe hosts of the Hit Factory podcast, Aaron Casias and Carlee Gomes, return to the show from San Francisco to defend John Woo’s Mission: Impossible 2 (2000), generally considered the weakest film in the series. Woo’s underappreciated sequel is best enjoyed as his attempt to fuse modern American blockbuster filmmaking with the delirious style of Hong Kong action cinema and the spirit of Hitchcock’s grand Hollywood entertainments, in this case openly echoing the plot of Notorious. It also set...
TEASER - 94: Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis (with Alex Shephard)
July 04, 2022 00:10 - 4 minutes - 3.8 MBAccess the entire 84 minute episode (and additional bonus episodes) by becoming a patron of Junk Filter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/68615908 Alex Shephard, senior writer for The New Republic and co-host of the Mr. Difficult podcast, returns to Junk Filter for a discussion of Baz Luhrmann’s maximalist jukebox musical biopic Elvis, starring Austin Butler in a star-making role as The King and the distracting cartoonish performance from Tom Hanks as his manager/svengali Colonel Tom Parker. ...
93: Lightyear (with Adam Jackson)
June 28, 2022 15:32 - 1 hour - 61.7 MBWriter Adam Jackson (Vice, Noisey) returns to the podcast for a discussion of the new Disney/Pixar animated feature Lightyear. Why did Lightyear fail at the box office? Was it the convoluted premise (this isn’t a movie about the toy Buzz Lightyear or even a Toy Story film, this is the movie about the actual Buzz Lightyear that young Andy loved so much in 1995 that he bought the toy)? Was it the “controversial” LGBTQ content (which adds up to about 45 seconds of screen time and yet triggered...
92: Serial Mom (with Karen Geier)
June 20, 2022 15:44 - 1 hour - 97.9 MBToronto-based writer and content strategist Karen Geier returns to the show for a discussion of John Waters and his 1994 “true crime” comedy Serial Mom, starring Kathleen Turner as a suburban Baltimore housewife who is eventually discovered to be a serial killer and becomes a tabloid sensation during her criminal trial. The remarkable thing about this film is it was released mere weeks before the O.J. Simpson murders and Waters strangely anticipated the cultural issues brought up by this cas...
TEASER - 91: Bully (with Ricky Camilleri and Chris Chafin)
June 12, 2022 14:56 - 4 minutes - 4.49 MBAccess the entire 90 minute episode (and additional bonus episodes) by becoming a patron of Junk Filter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/67675544 The hosts of the 30 Years Later podcast, Ricky Camilleri and Chris Chafin, join me from New York City to discuss Larry Clark’s 2001 true-crime drama Bully. Possibly the ultimate Florida movie, Bully is a tale of crime and punishment that contrasts a strongly moralistic narrative with Clark’s sweaty, lurid and lecherous visual approach to adapt the ...
90: Riders of Justice (with Gus Lanzetta)
June 06, 2022 14:15 - 1 hour - 67.2 MBWriter and podcaster Gus Lanzetta returns to the podcast from São Paulo, Brazil for a show about Mads Mikkelsen and his 2020 Danish action comedy Riders of Justice. Along the way we discuss Mikkelsen’s two careers in domestic and international cinema, the history of Danish cinema that dates back to the beginning of the medium, and how Riders of Justice balances action, violence and comedy and puts a uniquely Danish spin on familiar genre tropes. Plus: Gus lends his Fast Saga expertise to d...
TEASER - 89: Ricky Gervais (with Rob Rousseau)
June 01, 2022 00:41 - 3 minutes - 2.99 MBAccess the entire 72 minute episode (and additional bonus episodes) by becoming a patron of Junk Filter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/67140452 From Montreal, Rob Rousseau returns to the podcast for a discussion of the decline of comedian Ricky Gervais, with the release of his new Netflix special Super Nature. We’re a long way from the heights of The Office now. Why does Gervais seem more determined now to court controversy than to tell actual funny jokes? Do edgy "anti-woke" comedians with...
88: The Imperial Six (with Gerry Flahive)
May 27, 2022 17:47 - 1 hour - 82.9 MBWriter and former NFB senior producer Gerry Flahive joins the podcast to discuss moviegoing in Toronto in the 1970s, at the dawn of the multiplex age. Gerry worked as a teenage usher at the new Imperial Six cinema, under the precise command of cinema manager Phil Traynor, the inspiration for Gerry’s alternate Twitter persona Bert Xanadu, who tweets from the year 1973 where he is both the reigning mayor of Toronto and the manager of the Imperial Six. Bert’s tweets and essays have been collect...
TEASER - 87: Joe Piscopo (with Will Sloan)
May 20, 2022 01:58 - 4 minutes - 4.06 MBAccess the entire 88 minute episode (and additional bonus episodes) by becoming a patron of Junk Filter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/66652078 Will Sloan returns to the podcast for an in-depth discussion of the strange career path of comedian and impressionist Joe Piscopo: from his origins on Saturday Night Live and stardom as their second banana to superstar Eddie Murphy, his short-lived movie career, his bodybuilding phase, his various network tv specials, most notably 2012’s A Night at ...
86: Martin Campbell — Selected Works (with David Roth)
May 16, 2022 12:55 - 1 hour - 89.9 MBDefector Media’s David Roth returns to Junk Filter to discuss highlights from the long career of veteran action filmmaker Martin Campbell and pay tribute to his work beyond the famous 007 reboots. We discuss his origins in film and television: his debut in British sex comedies in the seventies, his groundbreaking 1985 BBC miniseries Edge of Darkness with Bob Peck and Joe Don Baker, a terrific “bottle episode” he made for NBC’s Homicide: Life on the Street (“Three Men and Adena”), No Escape,...
85: The Hoffa Cinematic Universe (with Ursula Lawrence)
April 29, 2022 18:51 - 1 hour - 81.5 MBComedy writer and labor organizer Ursula Lawrence (Drunk History, Adam Ruins Everything) returns to the show from Madison, Wisconsin for a look at 3 epic films that in unique ways depict the life of the controversial president of the Teamsters Union Jimmy Hoffa: Sylvester Stallone in F.I.S.T. (Norman Jewison, 1978), Jack Nicholson in Hoffa (Danny DeVito, 1992) and Al Pacino in The Irishman (Scorsese, 2019). How do these films contrast Hoffa’s achievements for the American worker with his co...
TEASER - 84: Under the Silver Lake (with Brian Buster)
April 23, 2022 01:25 - 3 minutes - 2.95 MBAccess the entire 88 minute episode (and additional bonus episodes) by becoming a patron of Junk Filter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/65467969 Writer Brian Buster joins me from Los Angeles to discuss David Robert Mitchell’s 2018 mystery Under the Silver Lake, Mitchell’s blank check film after the success of It Follows. Silver Lake played in competition at Cannes but for some reason its distributor A24 got cold feet and after moving the release date a couple of times, dumped it into a few t...
83: Father Stu (with Ethan Vestby)
April 17, 2022 19:20 - 1 hour - 61.1 MBReturning guest Ethan Vestby, a contributor to The Film Stage, joins the pod for a discussion of All Things Wahlberg, including Mark's brand new project, the faith-based comedy/drama Father Stu, based on a true story, co-starring Mel Gibson and directed by Gibson’s girlfriend Rosalind Ross in her feature debut. Father Stu is the kind of studio movie we don’t see a lot of these days, a personal project aimed at Catholic audiences that Wahlberg partly financed himself along the lines of Mel G...
82: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (with Peter Fishbeast)
April 12, 2022 13:17 - 59 minutes - 54 MBFilmmaker Peter Fishbeast joins me from Belper in Derbyshire, England to discuss the 1969 George Roy Hill blockbuster Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, aka Dudes Rock: Origins. Butch Cassidy is a great example of the influence the French New Wave had on late sixties Hollywood cinema, as it transitioned towards the New American Cinema of the seventies. It’s a western loaded with countercultural appeal and modern sensibilities, powered by an unexpected Burt Bacharach soundtrack that spawned...
TEASER - 81: The Power of the Dog & The Searchers (with Brenden Gallagher)
April 07, 2022 00:10 - 4 minutes - 4.45 MBAccess the entire 82 minute episode (and additional bonus episodes) by becoming a patron of Junk Filter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/64822370 Screenwriter and filmmaker Brenden Gallagher joins the program from Los Angeles to discuss two westerns about Toxic Masculinity: Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog (2021), for which she won Best Director at this year’s Academy Awards, and John Ford’s The Searchers (1956). In some ways The Power of the Dog seems to be a film in dialogue with The Se...
80: Red Heat (with Asawin Suebsaeng)
April 03, 2022 17:00 - 1 hour - 65.1 MBAsawin Suebsaeng, senior reporter for The Daily Beast and co-host of the Fever Dreams podcast, joins the show from Cincinnati to discuss Walter Hill’s underrated 1988 Cold War cop thriller Red Heat, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a KGB cop on the hunt for a Soviet gangster on the loose in the United States, forced to cooperate on the case with Chicago cop Jim Belushi. Arnold mentioned filming Red Heat in Moscow during his recent video address for the Russian people to tell them the truth ...
79: The Last of Sheila (with Marker Starling)
March 25, 2022 01:25 - 1 hour - 96.8 MBToronto musician Marker Starling, who does the music for the podcast, returns for a deep dive into one of our favourites: the 1973 all-star murder mystery The Last of Sheila, directed by Herbert Ross, with an original screenplay by puzzle fanatics Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins. A producer’s wife is killed in an unsolved hit-and-run death during his house party. A year later, the producer invites some guests from the party, all Hollywood strivers, for a weeklong cruise on the French R...
TEASER - 78: We Are All Batmen, Part II (with Corey Atad and Ben Nash)
March 18, 2022 12:12 - 2 minutes - 2.47 MBAccess the entire 58 minute episode (and additional bonus episodes) by becoming a patron of Junk Filter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/63901173 Part two of our Bat Panel on the Gotham Cinematic Universe focuses on Joker (Phillips, 2019) starring Joaquin Phoenix in his Oscar-winning performance as the Clown Prince of Crime, and how both it and The Batman lean heavily on signifiers from other characteristic filmmakers to tell their stories. We also continue our discussion of The Batman, incl...
77: We Are All Batmen, Part I (with Corey Atad and Ben Nash)
March 17, 2022 13:32 - 1 hour - 84.6 MBReturning Junk Filter guests Corey Atad and Ben Nash join forces for a special Bat Panel, a two part episode on the latest films in the Gotham Cinematic Universe. Part one takes a deep dive into Matt Reeves’ The Batman (2022): what we liked about it, our issues with the film, a discussion of the film’s politics, and how DC and Warner Bros. continues to evoke the cinematic style of other filmmakers (in this case the work of David Fincher) to tell the Batman story. Part two (available on the...