Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 93 - Avengers: Age of Ultron

Now that Avengers: Age of Ultron has been unleashed upon the world and is destroying the box office like The Hulk in a built-up area, it seems like the perfect time to discuss what will likely become one of the biggest films of all time, and check in on the health of Marvel's mega-franchise. Matt and I discuss our feelings about the film, how it compares to the first film, and offer our live reaction to the unveiling of the first cast photo from Suicide Squad, an event which derails the entire last five minutes or so of the podcast.

Spoiler Warning: We discuss events in the Civil War comics which may (or may not) become part of the forthcoming Civil War film, so if you want to avoid them then please skip the discussion from 31:30 to 33:00.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 92 - Unmade Films

A recent - or at least recent-ish - viewing of the documentary Jodorowsky's Dune, which chronicles the legendary failed attempt by madman/poet Alejandro Jodorowsky to direct a lavish production of Frank Herbert's novel, has us thinking about the appeal of projects that never came to be, as well as ones which did get made, but in a form which differed vastly from their original conception. In addition to Dune, we talk about an immortal Russell Crowe, a utopian New York and raptors that are packing heat.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 91 - Marketing and Hype

It's been a pretty marketing-intensive week in the world of film as we saw a teaser for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (which was itself preceded by a teaser for the trailer), a new trailer for Fantastic Four, a new trailer for Jurassic World and, of course, the second teaser for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. With all this hype overwhelming the Internet, Matt and I decided to talk about the state of movie marketing and various trends - such as releasing so much footage for a film in trailers that people end up seeing a huge chunk of it before the release date, as happened with The Amazing Spider-Man several years ago - that have us worried. We also talk about Netflix's Daredevil series and a baffling British musical called Walking on Sunshine, just to add a bit of variety.

Spoiler Warning: We discuss the most recent trailer for Terminator Genisys and how it reveals a piece of information which probably should not have been included in a trailer. If you want to avoid that spoiler, then please skip from 21:30 to 22:00.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 85 - Parks and Recreation

A somewhat bittersweet episode this week as Matt and I say goodbye to one of our favourite TV series, the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation. It's a goodbye that would always have been pretty melancholy, given that Pawnee, Indiana was such a warm and inviting place to visit each week, but which was made even more so by the sudden death of writer and producer Harris Wittels the week before the finale aired. We pay tribute to both, which takes the form of sharing favourite jokes, scenes and episodes.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 84 - Clint Eastwood

For our second artist profile, Matt and I talk about the long and varied career of one Clint Eastwood. While we touch upon his iconic work as one of the giants of the revisionist Western, we mainly talk about our conflicting feelings about American Sniper, and how the debate surrounding it has forced us to defend a film that neither of us feels that strongly about, and go in-depth about how terrible and misguided Eastwood's adaptation of the Broadway smash Jersey Boys was.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 83 - Why Do We Care About the Oscars?

We're a little bit introspective this week since the episode is all about how Matt and I are massive hypocrites. We both claim not to care about the Oscars, yet every year we get annoyed at the nominees or the results, and we use "it was nominated for/won an Oscar" as a signifier of quality, despite insisting they're meaningless. To that end, we discuss the importance of an Oscar to the financial success of a film, what it means for the people who win them, and share some silly Oscar trivia that you are free to use at your next dinner party or work function.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 82 - Historical Accuracy

Prompted by the suspiciously timely outrage surrounding deviations from the historical record in Ava DuVernay's superb civil rights drama Selma, this week's episode of Shot/Reverse Shot is about whether or not historical accuracy actual matters in cinematic storytelling. More importantly, it's an opportunity to talk about one of the weirder episodes from Red Dwarf.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 77 - 2014 Round-Up

It's the time of year when everyone is busy putting together their end of year Top 10s and reflecting on the year that has passed. We at Shot/Reverse Shot are no different, although we are funnier than most. In this round up we discuss the big stories of the year, the TV shows that we liked, the films that we didn't, and the films that we have crowned, through a complicated and clandestine system of voting, the very best that 2014 had to offer.

In addition to our usual chatter, this episode features montages of dialogue and music from films released this year, often to comment on the different segments of the episode. A breakdown of which songs and films were included can be found below.



Opening

Music: Jim Croce - "Time in a Bottle" from X-Men: Days of Future Past/Mica Levi - "Lipstick to Void" from Under the Skin.
Dialogue: J.K. Simmons in Whiplash/Kim Dickens in Gone Girl /Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler

News Round-up

Music: Mica Levi - "Lipstick to Void" from Under the Skin
Dialogue: Jesse Eisenberg and Christopher Morris in The Double/Tilda Swinton in Snowpiercer

Box Office

Dialogue: Michael Keaton and Edward Norton in Birdman

Who Had A Good Year?

Music: Redbone - "Come and Get Your Love" from Guardians of the Galaxy
Dialogue: Chris Pratt in Guardians of the Galaxy/Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in The Trip to Italy/Most of the Cast of Neighbors/Ice Cube in 22 Jump Street

TV Round-up

Music: Theme from Transparent by Dustin O'Halloran
Dialogue: Bradley Whitford and Jeffrey Tambor in Transparent/Matthew McConaughey in True Detective/John Oliver in Last Week Tonight*/Ilana Glazer and Hannibal Buress in Broad City/Peter Dinklage in Game of Thrones/Keegan-Michael Key, Romany Malco and Jordan Peele in Key and Peele/Andy Daly in Review


*I didn't initially intend for Oliver's lines to serve as a comment on Rust Cohle's character but I'm kind of happy that it turned out that way.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 76 - The Alternate 100 Part 10!

Yes, that's right, 2014 is nearly done, and so is the Alternate 100. After six months and ten episode, Shot/Reverse Shot's attempt to create a canon of the under-appreciated, under-discussed and just plain under-rated goes out with a bang, as we discuss time travel, space hippies and French animation.

This episode is especially good if you want to hear me completely fail to keep it together while talking about Black Dynamite.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 75 - The Alternate 100 Part 9

2014 is drawing to a close and so is the Shot/Reverse Shot Alternate 100. For the penultimate installment, we talk about a couple of classic horror movies, films that triumphed over incredibly low budgets, and the angriest footsteps in cinema history. I also make a comparison between the 1962 film Carnival of Souls and the music of Daniel Johnston, which is great if you fall in the centre of a very specific Venn diagram.

Note: On several occasions in this episode I mix up The Sweet Smell of Success and The Secret of My Success. I blame this on being tired and the fact that those two titles are sort of similar.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 60 - Knowing Too Much

Inspired by a recent viewing of Escape From Tomorrow, a psychological horror film which was filmed in secret in several Disney theme parks, Joe and I decided to talk about the issues that arise from knowing too much about how a film was made. This includes positive examples - Escape From Tomorrow likely wouldn't have received half the attention it did without its backstory, and the appeal of Richard Linklater's Boyhood is tied directly to its unique process - and negative ones, such as the way in which film blogs and websites pick apart troubled productions and generate negative buzz long before a film ever sees release. It's a fun discussion that we'll no doubt revisit in the future, since studios revealing too much about their films is not a problem that will go away any time soon.

Note: There are some audio issues with this episode stemming from a problem with my microphone, so I apologise in advance for the background buzz throughout. It's not so bad as to make the episode unlistenable, but I'll try to make sure the issue doesn't occur in future.

As always, you can stream the podcast using the link below, or preferably (from our point of view) you can subscribe using iTunes. If you choose the later, please rate it and leave a review because it helps us to get more listeners, and also gives us something to obsess over. Speaking of which, you can also Like us on Facebook, assuming that you do.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 59 - Marvel

This weekend saw the release of Guardians of the Galaxy, the latest wildly successful blockbuster from Marvel Studios. To mark the occasion, Joe and I went to see the film - sadly not together, because that would have involved international travel - and then sat down to discuss the film, as well as to have a broader conversation about what Marvel has achieved since the first Iron Man was released back in 2008.

The episode is very light on plot details about Guardians of the Galaxy, so if you haven't seen the film yet the episode won't spoil it for you. However, we do talk a little bit about the post-credits scenes from 10:40 to 16:10, so if you haven't seen the film please feel to skip ahead during that portion of the show.

As always, you can stream the podcast using the link below or preferably (from our point of view) you can subscribe using iTunes. If you choose the latter, please rate it and leave a review because it helps us to get more listeners, and also gives us something to obsess over. Speaking of which, you can also Like us on Facebook, assuming that you do.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 58 - The Alternate 100 Part 3

We're really cooking with gas now. As we speed through the Shot/Reverse Shot Alternate 100, we talk about Hollywood's historical and contemporary squeamishness when it comes to depicting inter-racial relationships, the ephemeral and symbiotic relationship between a director and a composer, and take time to share our weird, disparate memories of the year 1997, and how they may or may not relate to visions of past dystopias.

As always, you can stream the podcast using the link below, or preferably (from our point of view) you can subscribe using iTunes. If you choose the later, please rate it and leave a review because it helps us to get more listeners, and also gives us something to obsess over. Speaking of which, you can also Like us on Facebook, assuming that you do.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 57 - The Alternate 100 Part 2

Continuing our quest to celebrate films that don't get enough attention from the likes of IMDb and the BFI, the latest installment of the Shot/Reverse Shot: Alternate 100 finds us talking about lesser known works by directors like John Huston and Robert Wise, while also discussing the rules of how to make a monster movie, and pitching possibly the most depressing film-to-videogame adaptations ever.

As always, you can stream the podcast using the link below, or preferably (from our point of view) you can subscribe using iTunes. If you choose the later, please rate it and leave a review because it helps us to get more listeners, and also gives us something to obsess over. Speaking of which, you can also Like us on Facebook, assuming that you do.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 56 - Separating Art from the Artist

Inspired in part by Gary Oldman's controversial interview in Playboy, this week finds Joe and I talking about artists whose work we respect or even love, even though they may have committed crimes or hold views that we disagree with on moral or political grounds. It's a touch more serious than our usual subject matter, but we still somehow found time to wonder whether or not Rolf Harris is more similar to Caravaggio than most people give him credit for.

As always, you can stream the podcast using the link below, or preferably (from our point of view) you can subscribe using iTunes. If you choose the later, please rate it and leave a review because it helps us to get more listeners, and also gives us something to obsess over. Speaking of which, you can also Like us on Facebook, assuming that you do.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 55 - Community Redux Redux

We're not the most prolific of podcasters, though we are hoping to change that in the near future in the hopes of completing our Alternate 100 project, and a large part of that is because we often record episodes in advance, then take a while getting round to editing them. This approach caught up to us in a big way with this episode, which initially was a simple discussion of Community's fifth and - at the time - presumably final season. Mere days after we recorded it, assuming that this would be the last we'd hear of Dan Harmon's frequently brilliant show, news broke that Yahoo (Yahoo!) had picked up the show for an incredibly unlikely sixth season. Rather than scrap the whole episode, we recorded a new intro and outro discussing the last minute renewal, which serve as bookends to a discussion about a strange, difficult season of television.

As always, you can stream the podcast using the link below, or preferably (from our point of view) you can subscribe using iTunes. If you choose the later, please rate it and leave a review because it helps us to get more listeners, and also gives us something to obsess over. Speaking of which, you can also Like us on Facebook, assuming that you do.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 54 - Game of Thrones Season 4

To mark the end of the fourth season of HBO's Game of Thrones, a season that saw it reach new levels of popularity - when you combine live viewings and on-demand figures it's now the highest rated show in HBO history - and controversy, particular with regards to its use of sexual violence as a plot device, Joe Gastineau and I decided to sit down and have an in-depth discussion about the show.

We talk a little bit about specific events in the history of the show, so there are spoilers pretty much from the beginning, but we mainly use it as a jumping off point to discuss the reasons for the show's success, how it functions as an adaptation of a long, involved and still unfinished series of books, and whether or not it is a fundamentally more ambitious show than The Crystal Maze. It's a fun, wide-ranging talk that keeps the Hodoring down to a minimum.

As always, you can stream the podcast using the link below, or preferably (from our point of view) you can subscribe using iTunes. If you choose the later, please rate it and leave a review because it helps us to get more listeners, and also gives us something to obsess over. Speaking of which, you can also Like us on Facebook, assuming that you do.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 53 - The Alternate 100 Part 1

After months and months of delays caused by technical problems, contentious arguments and good old fashioned procrastination, Shot/Reverse Shot finally start in earnest our ten-part series: The Alternate 100. Over the next year, we'll put together and discuss a list of 100 great films that we feel have been under appreciated and underrepresented by the likes of the IMDb Top 250 and the BFI Sight and Sound Top 100. As such, the only criteria for inclusion are that a film cannot appear on either of those lists, and that both Joe Gastineau and myself actually like it. In addition to these episodes, the list will be constructed ten at a time over at Letterboxd, so feel free to pop over there and leave us a comment.

In this first installment we discuss whether or not Kafka is meant to be funny, get in one of our customary and gratuitous digs at the expense of Zach Braff, and keep our weird conversational perambulations down to one discussion about monkey butlers.

As always, you can stream the podcast using the link below, or preferably (from our point of view) you can subscribe using iTunes. If you choose the later, please rate it and leave a review because it helps us to get more listeners, and also gives us something to obsess over. Speaking of which, you can also Like us on Facebook, assuming that you do.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 51 - True Detective

Artist's Impression of Joe Gastineau (left) and me.

Following on from our 2014 Preview, in which we singled it out as a show we were very much intrigued by, this week finds Joe and myself poring over the first season of HBO's True Detective, the finale of which aired last Sunday. In addition to wondering just how Dion Dublin fits into the broader mythology of the show, we discuss the aesthetic choices of director Cary Fukanaga, the influence that Weird Fiction had on the tone of the show, and address some of the criticisms of the show, in particular accusations that it is sexist and misogynist, rather than an exploration of sexism and misogyny. (Claims that I think have some considerable merit.) We go into a bit of detail about the resolution of the show, so please do not listen if you haven't seen the whole season.

We also find time to talk about where we think the show will go in the future given that creator Nic Pizzolatto has said that each year will focus on different characters. If HBO want to draw from their stable of past performers, and if the rumours that the next season will focus on female detectives turn out to be true, then I'd like to start the campaign for Melissa Leo and Amy Ryan to headline season two. I mean, I'm not going to start a petition or anything, but I'd just like to throw the suggestion out there and hope that finds purchase.

As always, you can stream the podcast using the link below, or preferably (from our point of view) you can subscribe using iTunes. If you choose the later, please rate it and leave a review because it helps us to get more listeners, and also gives us something to obsess over. Speaking of which, you can also Like us on Facebook, assuming that you do.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 49 - Cult Films

To coincide with the beginning of the second semester of The Five and Dime Picture Show movie strand at the University of Sheffield - which Joe co-curates - we're talking about Cult Films this week. What makes a film a "cult" film? Is it a certain set of aesthetic criteria or the type of audience it attracts? What sets a real cult film apart from manufactured cult films like Snakes of a Plane? Are all Kevin Smith fans terrible, terrible people? These are the sort of questions we address with a little help from Joe's fellow Five and Dimer Ryan Finnigan, whose writing can be found on [SIC] Blog.

As always, you can stream the podcast using the link below, or preferably (from our point of view) you can subscribe using iTunes. If you choose the later, please rate it and leave a review because it helps us to get more listeners, and also gives us something to obsess over. Speaking of which, you can also Like us on Facebook, assuming that you do.