PODCAST

Reel Deep Dive

Ryan Valentine

Does the world really need yet another movie podcast? Probably not, but I made one anyways.

arts performing arts

All Episodes

00:48:08

Shorts! Wallace & Gromit (1989-1995)

Reel Deep Dive ·

2021/05/16

Reel Deep Dive makes its first foray into the world of short films by doing a study of the first three Wallace & Gromit outings. 1989's A Grand Day Out began life as a student film by animator Nick Park and, after a laborious six year creative process, became an unexpected smash hit. Its two follow-ups, 1993's The Wrong Trousers and 1995's A Close Shave, solidified the starring duo's status as British pop culture icons while winning awards, generating lucrative spinoff characters, and driving

00:28:47

Winchester (2018)

Reel Deep Dive ·

2021/05/09

Winchester, alternatively known as Winchester: The House That Ghosts Built, is a 2018 horror film that had been in some form of development since 2009. It's an anachronistic take on the infamous Winchester Mystery House, a building erected by the wealthy rifle heiress Sarah Winchester. This woman was convinced that she was being haunted by the vindictive ghosts of those killed by the Winchester repeating rifle, so the house was under perpetual renovation during her lifetime and it bears many

00:45:48

Lone Wolf And Cub: Sword of Vengeance (1972)

Reel Deep Dive ·

2021/05/03

Closely adapted from the classic manga series, Lone Wolf And Cub: Sword of Vengeance is the first of a film series that ran for six installments between 1972 and 1974. It stars Tomisaburo Wakayama as Ogami Itto, a disgraced former executioner to the shogun. He is forced to travel the Japanese countryside with his young son in a heavily-armed baby carriage. Together, the two take on dirty jobs in the hopes of one day exacting vengeance against the wicked clan who framed Itto for the crimes that

00:32:30

Godzilla Vs. Kong (2021)

Reel Deep Dive ·

2021/04/25

Godzilla Vs. Kong is a deliberately silly movie that accidentally got swept up in a number of larger forces. It's the first major studio film to make a big splash in American theaters during the pandemic, meaning that cultural historians of later generations may examine it as a signpost of how society reacted to the specter of Covid-19. Did audiences show up to Godzilla Vs. Kong for its promises of escapism? Did they buy tickets because this was simply the first massive studio release to come out

00:25:49

Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge (2020)

Reel Deep Dive ·

2021/04/18

In order to boost their engagement, many film podcasts will schedule episodes relevant to the current discourse in the cinema landscape. Reel Deep Dive is hesitant to chase after trending topics, but Ryan just happened to record a discussion about this direct-to-DVD Mortal Kombat animated film. So, he's scheduling it a week before a new Mortal Kombat film is debuting in theaters and HBO Max. Maybe we'll get a few extra clicks out of it... Regardless, Ryan's had a bee in his bonnet about this movie

00:29:18

Blood Quantum (2019)

Reel Deep Dive ·

2021/04/11

Blood Quantum is a Canadian zombie film written, produced, directed, and starring First Nations people. It centers on an Indigenous Reservation that becomes a refuge during an archetypical zombie apocalypse. In this film's universe, indigenous people are immune to infection from zombie bites. This puts them in a precarious position when white refugees arrive at their compound and beg for sanctuary. The metaphors in the subtext of this plot are about as obvious as zombies wandering around a shopping

00:42:44

2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)

Reel Deep Dive ·

2021/04/04

Reel Deep Dive continues its breakdown of the Fast & The Furious franchise with its second installment, often argued as the worst installment in the series. Vin Diesel declined to participate, meaning that Paul Walker's street racing foil is now played by Tyreese Gibson. They've been conscripted to infiltrate a Floridian drug cartel and take down its kingpin by being really, really good at stunt driving. Hijinks, high speed chases, and half-assed ad-libbed dialogue ensues. Ryan is joined by

00:26:15

Loving Vincent (2017)

Reel Deep Dive ·

2021/03/28

The plot of Loving Vincent takes place a year after the death of its titular character and centers upon a young man obsessively seeking the truth behind the artist's suspicious suicide. That being said, the core appeal of the film lies not in its story but rather in its storytelling. Loving Vincent was famously animated through hundreds of oil paintings that were painstakingly retouched by hand before each frame was shot. This process is a laborious, unprecedented approach whose result is an utter

00:54:48

Bridge On The River Kwai (1957)

Reel Deep Dive ·

2021/03/21

Reel Deep Dive hasn't really covered an old fashioned "dad movie" yet, so Rachel suggested that we talk about director David Lean's first foray into epic cinematic storytelling. Set during World War II, Bridge On The River Kwai concerns a group of British POWs tasked with building a strategically-valuable bridge on a path between Rangoon and Siam. Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness) is initially uncooperative with his Japanese captors, but ultimately grows obsessed with completing the

00:33:39

WandaVision Episodes 7-9 (2021)

Reel Deep Dive ·

2021/03/14

We're wrapping up our coverage of WandaVision with this episode. Ryan is joined by Sarah and Nicole to discuss Wanda processing her trauma, reckoning with inflicting her grief upon the citizens of Westview, coping with the loss of her family, confronting the story's main antagonists, and (since this is an MCU product) providing some teasers about what's coming next. Discussion topics for this segment centers upon how art meditates upon loss, how the structure of network sitcoms intersects with the

00:40:16

Zardoz (1974)

Reel Deep Dive ·

2021/03/07

Zardoz lingers in the public imagination as an unintentionally hilarious creative misfire. It was written, directed, and produced by a supremely confident John Boorman, fresh off a succession of creative and commercial triumphs. It features Sean Connery skulking about in both a red diaper and a wedding dress. This first ten minutes of the film showcases a floating stone head that lectures people about how the penis is evil before it vomits rifles at them. For some, Zardoz is a cautionary tale about

00:25:13

WandaVision Episodes 4-6 (2021)

Reel Deep Dive ·

2021/02/28

This is the second of three Reel Deep Dive episodes covering WandaVision. Feel free to scroll down and click on the preceding installment if you'd like to listen to us cover episodes 1-3. For this installment, Ryan is joined by Sarah and Nicole as he deconstructs the middle segment of Wanda and Vision's story-arc. This covers the period where Wanda's sitcom reality warp are being monitored by government agencies in the outside world. Certain elements of Wanda's trauma are explored more deeply, the

00:41:25

The Karate Kid (1984)

Reel Deep Dive ·

2021/02/21

Plenty of fun things on the internet lose their appeal once their creators begin tracing trends. A sense of joy is lost when one stops writing about what they care about and focus instead upon what they think will drive clicks. Conversely, anyone who produces a podcast, video essay, or blog post is doing so for an audience. Even the most iconoclastic maverick has to be at least a little bit conscientious of what people actually want to watch or listen to. This is a roundabout way to explain why

00:45:52

Key Episodes: The Twilight Zone by Jerry Sohl (1963-64)

Reel Deep Dive ·

2021/02/14

This episode kicks off a series of features centering on The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling's classic anthology show of sci-fi, twist endings, and socio-political allegories. We're going to be dividing them up based on writers. Ryan had too much trepidation about tackling Serling or Richard Matheson for the initial outing, so we're talking about the three episodes that Jerry Sohl ghostwrote on behalf of Charles Beaumont. They include "Queen of the Nile", "The New Exhibit", and the iconic "Living Doll"

00:32:41

Terror Of Mechagodzilla (1975)

Reel Deep Dive ·

2021/02/07

It's fairly common knowledge that the first Godzilla film was a thinly-veiled allegory for nuclear devastation. However, while parables about ecological ruin and government fallibility never quite left the series, Godzilla's growing appeal among small children meant that his sequels would get progressively more colorful and silly as the years went on. Terror of Mechagodzilla, the subject for this episode, came out when its star was depicted as an unambiguous superhero; it wound up being the final

00:35:51

WandaVision Episodes 1-3 (2021)

Reel Deep Dive ·

2021/01/31

A common complaint about the Marvel Cinematic Universe is that its films often come off as the homogenous product of an anonymous assembly line. The superhero comics that they're derived from are often the formulaic result of journeymen frantically scrambling to meet deadlines for an audience of undiscerning eight year olds, but the longevity of certain characters have meant that creative teams have interpreted them through many different perspectives. Superheroes are a mash-up of a number of 1930's

00:44:46

The Fast And The Furious (2001)

Reel Deep Dive ·

2021/01/24

The Fast And The Furious was a successful movie, but it's unlikely that anyone in 2001 could predict that it would be the starting point for a massively-successful and influential franchise that's beloved the world over, has begrudgingly won critical accolades, and is still going strong after two decades. A teenaged Ryan certainly didn't think so when a high school friend dragged him in to see the first movie in theaters; he was unimpressed and skipped all the sequels despite the fact that all the

00:49:42

Selena (1997)

Reel Deep Dive ·

2021/01/17

Ryan definitely wouldn't have picked this topic if left to his own devices; he's not a big Selena listener and he's not usually fond of biopics for iconic musicians (he later had to cut a lot of ranting on the latter subject out of the episode because it veered too far away from relevancy). Sylvan, on the other hand, had an adolescent obsession with the charismatic Tejano vocalist profiled in this film. Shot less than two years after the death of its subject, Selena helped make Jennifer Lopez a

00:53:51

Stagecoach (1939)

Reel Deep Dive ·

2021/01/10

Stagecoach is a film that revived the Western as a film genre, solidified John Ford as one of the iconic Western directors, and made John Wayne into a star. It's also a strong ensemble feature that boasts gripping action scenes, gorgeous shots of Monument Valley, tight editing, layered characterization, and defining performances from Claire Trevor, Andy Devine, and Thomas Mitchell. Ryan is joined by Rachel for this look at one of the defining gems of Golden Age Hollywood. This is the first Western

00:45:06

The Inferno (1911)

Reel Deep Dive ·

2021/01/03

This adaptation of Dante Alighieri's narrative poem, one of the earliest feature-length films, finds the poet braving the terrors of hell with Virgil as a guide. Drawing from Gustave Doré's famed engravings and employing many of the trick photography techniques pioneered by Georges Méliès, The Inferno caused an instant sensation upon its 1911 debut and has yet to lose its ability to strike audiences. Only about a third of the film's three hours have survived to the present day, but The Inferno

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