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PODCAST

School of Movies

Alex & Sharon Shaw

Super in-depth analysis of movies (and occasionally TV, and video games). Hosted by veteran podcasters Alex & Sharon Shaw with different guests for round-table chats every week.

tv & film

All Episodes

01:25:52

The Coen Brothers: Part 1

School of Movies ·

2023/01/06

[School of Movies 2023] This is the start of a Director series that will run throughout the year, focusing on the complete works of Joel and Ethan Coen. Now in their mid-to-late-60s these two have been making quirky, dark films about stolen money and mysterious strangers for forty years. We begin with their first five stories of philandering spouses, struggling artists, uncomfortable criminals, screwball kidnapping and absurd industry. 1984: Blood Simple 1987: Raising Arizona 1990: Miller's

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02:38:02

The Fantastic Four

School of Movies ·

2022/12/30

[School of Movies 2022] For years this seminal, game-changing Silver Age comic book has seemed damned-near impossible to adapt into a movie, with all four efforts failing resoundingly at getting major audiences to care about Marvel's First Family. And yet Pixar did it twice with the serial numbers filed off and the clear vision of Brad Bird. So Sharon and I look back on those movies, two that we've covered in the past just based on their own merits (2005 and 2007) and two others whose productions

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02:52:34

The Muppet Christmas Carol

School of Movies ·

2022/12/23

[School of Movies 2022] This is a movie we covered already, back in the winter of 2011. But back then I was really just getting warmed up, and it was a comparative show with the Robert Zemekis version from 2009. But huge thanks to my guests back then who always bring the insight; Taylor Nova and Matt Ramsey. This time we delve deep into both the Dickens book and why the Henson version hits all the notes exactly right, as well as the recent and long-awaited restoration of the 1992 film (with the

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02:20:03

It’s a Wonderful Life

School of Movies ·

2022/12/16

[School of Movies 2022] Perhaps the oldest film we have covered as a Main Event show to date, as well as one of the most significant from that era. Frank Capra's seminal Holiday classic is often dismissed as syrupy fluff by those who haven't yet seen it, or misremembered as light comedy by those who caught it in fragments over the years without sitting down to really take in what it's saying. It's neither of those things, and the greatest tragedy is how searingly relevant this 1946 post-war exercise

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02:41:50

The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe

School of Movies ·

2022/12/09

[School of Movies 2022] We've been planning Narnia shows for many years. This was a very special book series to me as a child, informing on my worldview and writing. It was also the first long-form live action fantasy series I watched on television, as the BBC production which ran from November 1988 to December 1991 adapted four books over three 6-episode seasons. I always wondered why they stopped at The Silver Chair. Later I began to understand the kind of scope and budgets and potentially thorny

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03:43

Early Commissions 2023

School of Movies ·

2022/12/06

This is a quick lowdown of what we have coming up in the next few weeks, along with official notification that the window for our Early 2023 Commissions Season is opening up right now. So if you have an episode you want crafted by us, the standard price for a film is $150 with video games and TV shows scaling that amount, depending on the hours we will have to invest. Get in touch via Patreon Messenger, Discord, Twitter or email, and have a very happy holidays.

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02:03:44

Superman: The Animated Series

School of Movies ·

2022/12/02

[School of Everything Else 2022] Following the tremendous critical and commercial success of the first ever dedicated animated Batman show, the same creative team turned their eyes to his sunny counterpart, the original, archetypal superhero, the last son of Krypton. It's always more challenging creating a successful, beloved Clark Kent than it is a Bruce Wayne. People like the brooding and the darkness. By contrast it is natural to be mistrusting of someone who purports to be so utterly GOOD all

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01:13:01

Riddick

School of Movies ·

2022/11/25

[School of Movies 2022] Nine years after his Chronicles, Richard B. Riddick is sat upon his iron throne, the crown hanging heavy, too many pie suppers since he was at his physical peak and too many wenches left in wordless ecstasy, sloughing around his greasy bedsheets. This is the story of how he gets easily tricked, shot in the back, left for dead on a barren planet filled with beasties designed exclusively to kill you, and soon after making a four-legged friend, he becomes beset by not one, but

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01:50:47

The Chronicles of Riddick

School of Movies ·

2022/11/18

[School of Movies 2022] After knocking it out of the park on the first try with Pitch Black, David Twohy and Vin Diesel limbered back up four years later with a complete change of pace, scale and even sci-fi sub-genre. If you look at Pitch Black as The Hobbit, then where they took the series next was their Lord of the Rings. However, there is a world of difference between what went into the expansion and historical goings-on of Professor Tolkein and the Conan-the-Barbarian-in-space that Riddick

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01:54:16

Pitch Black

School of Movies ·

2022/11/11

[School of Movies 2022] This one is really rather special and arguably the longest time coming of any of our shows. Pitch Black, released in February 2000 in the USA didn't make it to the UK until November of that year. There's even some confusion in this episode because I wasn't sure if Sharon and I were actually together as a couple when we saw it (turns out we were, just). But significantly, this was our first movie where we left the cinema together on fire with analysis that we were twanging

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01:19:21

Retro Emulation Gaming

School of Movies ·

2022/11/04

[School of Everything Else 2022] This one has been many years in the making. Around about the time the pandemic hit, followed by the global chip shortage there was a series of jumps in both quality and quantity of retro gaming machines being manufactured in China and shipped out to folks stuck in lockdown with a serious hankering to revisit a simpler less-apocalypsy past. At the same time the secondary collector's market for vintage hardware, cartridges and discs also ballooned, and those with the

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02:44

New Book: The Lights from Distant Bonfires: 18 Gothic...

School of Movies ·

2022/10/31

In case you didn't catch this at the end of the Company of Wolves show yet, Sharon, myself and even Willow have helped put together an anthology of Gothic tales written by members of the School of Movies community. It's available to buy right now on Amazon and if as many of you as possible buy it at once, talk about it on social media, (and if you want to be extra specially helpful leave us an honest, positive review when you've finished and recommend it to friends) that should help it get some

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01:17:04

The Company of Wolves

School of Movies ·

2022/10/28

[School of Movies 2022] This is an obscure coming-of age fable from the director of Interview With the Vampire and The Crying Game. It was made on a very low budget in 1984 in Shepperton Studios, England, but it has some of the best werewolf fiction within its toothy confines. The framing device is a young girl who has gone to bed with tummy cramps. In her restless dreams she ties together various cautionary tails about Red Riding Hood, the boy who cried wolf, visitations from the Devil himself,

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01:52:09

Ghostbusters: Afterlife

School of Movies ·

2022/10/21

[School of Movies 2022] It is a confusing time to be a lover of Ghostbusters. On the one hand you have the long-planned but never-realised Ghostbusters 3 reunion Dan Aykroyd always had plans for. On the other you have the 2016 oops-all-ladies remakeboot which plenty of people enjoyed yet made some guys so mad they burned down half the internet and scared Sony (as well as malignantly harassing several of the stars away from social media). And on the third hand you have the hot new take that the 1984

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01:16:38

Smile

School of Movies ·

2022/10/14

[School of Movies 2022] WARNING: This episode contains lengthy discussions on depression, trauma and suicide. You do not need to see this movie before listening to the episode. In fact, in a rare instance we actually suggest you *don't* see it, for reasons we will be elaborating on at length. It has reviewed well, and as with many horror movies based on a simple hook that shakes people up, it has done gangbusters at the box office. That puts it in league with Saw and Paranormal Activity and

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01:12:37

Lightyear

School of Movies ·

2022/10/07

[School of Movies 2022] It is hard to approach the Pixar of the 2020s with the same eye as the Pixar of the 2000s. For a long while this was a barely-interrupted chain of truly excellent and game-changing 3D animated films which signified to other studios that they didn't have to copy Disney in order to attain success, they could get their own Shrek. Their story structure was always reliably potent and they could blindside you with poignancy. Then, as with disposable blockbusters, live action

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01:47:27

Analyze This

School of Movies ·

2022/09/30

[School of Movies 2022] Our favourite mafia movie, even over the venerated classics, for reasons that will become immediately apparent. This 1999 comedy directed by Harold Ramis was made at almost exactly the same time as The Sopranos first season was developed. Both explore the very real anxiety that comes with a lifestyle that is inherently dangerous, as well as one that involves such a close-knit family and all the loyalties, hopes, dreams, betrayals and disappointments that come with every other

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02:27:28

Four Slices of American Pie

School of Movies ·

2022/09/23

[School of Movies 2022] WARNING: This episode contains foul language and repeated references to very crude sexual situations, bodily fluids and some nasty-as-hell behaviour. Thou art warned! This began as a simple re-watch of the original 1999 film "American Pie", but it quickly spiralled into a look back on the gross, frat-house movie craze of the early 2000s. We go through each film in turn and mine them for anything even remotely positive, before spanking the living hell out of them for their

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01:24:53

Thor: Love and Thunder

School of Movies ·

2022/09/16

[School of Movies 2022] Back when this was announced there was all kinds of excitement. Thor, much like his buddy Hulk was a character it seemed like Marvel took a while to get a handle on, relative to the duo of immediate home runs with Iron man and Captain America. The first film was a relative success, he contributed greatly to the chemistry of The Avengers, but then underwhelmed in The Dark World and felt vestigial in Age of Ultron. But Taika Waititi and Chris Hemsworth's 2017 Ragnarok

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03:13:35

Everything Everywhere All At Once

School of Movies ·

2022/09/09

[School of Movies 2022] A truly magnificent film about pondering the nature of existence and being trapped between nihilistic despair and existential motivation. But also a touching and painful drama about a little, broken Asian family who no longer know what to say to each other any more. But also a spectacular running battle of martial arts and clownery, nestled inside a high-concept sci-fi about jumping between dimensions and occupying the bodies of the alternate versions of yourself, and

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