Shot/Reverse Shot: 167 - 2017 Preview

There's a brand new year stretching out ahead of us, which means 12 months of films good and bad to sift through. To help sort the wheat from the chaff (except in the instances where the chaff sounds weirdly fascinating), I'm joined by John Hunter to discuss the films and TV shows that we're most intrigued by between now and when awards season kicks off in September.

Shot/Reverse Shot: 166. 2016 Round-up

With 2016 rapidly disappearing into the review, Matt and I talk about the best and worst things that the year had to offer. The hits, the misses, the deaths. We then say goodbye to the year (and Matt, since he's going to be traveling around the Americas for much of 2017) by counting down the SRS Top Ten of 2016.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

To mark the release of the first "standalone" Star Wars movie from Disney and LucasFilm, Matt and I watched Gareth Edwards' Rogue One, a prequel to the original Star Wars in which a ragtag group of rebels led by Felicity Jones work together to steal the plans for the Death Star. We discuss the stuff we liked about it (the action and pacing), the stuff we didn't (undead Peter Cushing) and reveal the real reason behind those pesky reshoots.

Shot/Reverse Shot: 131 - Piracy Redux

We got a lot of feedback from our previous episode on Piracy, so this episode is the Shot/Reverse Shot equivalent of the BBC's Have Your Say as Matt and I read out some of the correspondence we have received, both from those who are fervently against illegal downloading, those who see no problem with it, and those who exist in the moral no man's land between the two. I also find time to complain about ITV's The Wine Show, which may be the most middle-class show anyone has devised.

Shot/Reverse Shot: 130 - X-Files Season 10 (with Michaela Livingstone-Banks)

To mark the end of the tenth season of Fox's The X-Files, the long dormant and highly influential science fiction series that returned to much fanfare this year, I sat down with Michaela Livingstone-Banks of Oxford Sparks to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the revival, the limits of nostalgia, and whether or not Chris Carter is a terrible writer or the most terrible writer.

Shot/Reverse Shot: 129 - Oscar Predictions 2016

With the Oscars mere days away, Matt and I try to guess who will win in each category and draw out obvious similarities between Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Green.

128. Friday Night Lights

This week marked the fifth anniversary of the end of Friday Night Lights, a strong contender for the title of best television show of the past ten years. To commemorate this event, and because Matt has recently watched the entire show for the first time, we spend this episode of the podcast talking about what made it so special, its legacy, and its place as one of the truly great works of television.

Shot/Reverse Shot: 127 - Sports

Apparently there was some big football game yesterday, so to honour it, Matt and I sat down to talk about Sports Movies. This is mainly an opportunity to talk about Friday Night Lights and 30 For 30 - both of which are frequent topics of our conversations off-mic - but we also talk about how hard it is to guess movie tag lines, the differences between sports docs and dramatic features, and the recent-ish news about Joseph Fiennes being cast as Michael Jackson.

Shot/Reverse Shot: 126 - Sundance

The Sundance film festival is winding down for another year. While neither of us attended, we still thought it would be interesting to discuss the big news coming out of the festival, as well as how its place in pop culture has changed since its heyday in the mid-'90s.

Shot/Reverse Shot: 125 - Piracy

Matt and I take on one of the hottest topics in film and TV culture this week: Piracy. Most people do it, plenty of them admit to it, and they offer lots of justifications for it, ranging from moral objections to political stances to a simple desire not to pay for things. We tackle those ideas as well as the industry's difficulties tackling the problem of piracy in a meaningful way. We also talk about the ongoing controversy surrounding #OscarsSoWhite, and why a push for greater diversity by the Academy is an undeniable positive, but one which may not do that much to resolve deeper underlying problems that Hollywood has when it comes to race and gender.

Shot/Reverse Shot: David Bowie and Alan Rickman

Well, this last week was pretty fucking terrible, wasn't it? Just as we were all coming to terms with the death of David Bowie, Alan Rickman passed away, dealing a double blow to anyone who grew up fascinated by beautiful weirdos and sonorous tones. Matt and I weren't able to record an episode together due to circumstances beyond our control, so I recorded a minisode in which I talk about what the work of the two men meant to me, and what we as a culture have lost now that they are both gone.

Shot/Reverse Shot: 124 - 2016 Preview

It's a new year, and technically a new season of Shot/Reverse Shot (when you do an episode every week it becomes hard to split these things up neatly), so we do what we do every January and look at what the year ahead has to offer. We run down the films that we're excited about, the films we're skeptical of, and the films that are complete unknown qualities at this point, but which could very well appear on our best of lists at the end of the 2016. Here's to another great year of films and talking about films.

Shot/Reverse Shot: 123 - 2015 Round-Up

Another year has come and gone, which means that it is now time to talk about what kind of year it's been and arbitrarily rank works of art! In this episode, we run down the big stories of the year, the films that were big hits and massive failures, the TV shows we loved, and round it off with the official Shot/Reverse Shot Top 10 of 2015.

Shot/Reverse Shot - Star Wars: The Force Awakens

We break from the usual format in this episode in order to talk about a specific film. Not just any film, but possibly the most anticipated film in living memory: Star Wars: The Force Awakens. In this spoiler-heavy episode, Matt and I talk about what we liked about the film, what we didn't like, and what the already stellar success of the film means for the future of the Star Wars series, and possibly film in general.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Christmas Minisode!

No full episode this week due to circumstances beyond our control. However, Matt and I did find time to talk about what we hope to see in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Christmas traditions, and our shared ambivalence towards turkey.

Shot/Reverse Shot: 122 - Michael Winterbottom

In the finale of our series of artist profiles, we look at the varied career of Michael Winterbottom, the British filmmaker who seems determined to make a film in every conceivable genre. We also discuss British cinema's inferiority complex, musical groups who now fulfill the role previously occupied by National Service, and awkward romantic encounters.

Shot/Reverse Shot: 121 - Wasted Potential

This week, Matt and I discuss Wasted Potential in cinema: films that squander talented casts, artists who didn't live up to their full potential, and good ideas that were turned into bad movies (a surprisingly large number of which being directed by Andrew Niccols). I also butcher the title of Night of the Hunter, and inadvertently create the greatest videogame that never excited.

Shot/Reverse Shot: 120 - Pixar

To coincide with the release of The Good Dinosaur, as well as the twentieth anniversary of the release of Toy Story, Matt and I decided to sit down and chat about Pixar. In addition to airing our thoughts on the studio's latest offering, we take a look at the impact they have had on American animation, their fractious relationship with Disney, and ponder what the future holds for one of the most creatively and commercially successful companies in Hollywood history.

Shot/Reverse Shot: 119 - Matt's Birthday, 2015

It was Matt's birthday this week, so this episode of the show is a free-for-all in which we discuss films we loved as kids but have soured on now, our cautious optimism over The Force Awakens, and the odd experience of watching a film for the first time despite knowing everything about it through cultural osmosis.

Shot/Reverse Shot: 118 - Madonna

In the penultimate installment of our series of artist profiles, Matt and I discuss the cinematic oeuvre of Madonna.