If you’re a film lover and are looking to fill up the little time you have between watching movies, here are five podcasts to keep you company.
The Worst Idea Of All Time
There couldn’t be a worse idea: Hosts Guy Montgomery and Tim Batt pick a movie and watch it repeatedly for an entire year every weekend and podcast about it. But the results are more than satisfactory. Now in their third season (they are currently watching We Are Your Friends), these two blokes from New Zealand have become an international success, with listeners across the globe tuning into listen to them hash out a terrible movie over the course of 52 weeks. The twenty-minute long episodes are ingeniously hilarious and surprisingly captivating, and a must-listen for those who like meandering conversations about pop culture and movies.
Interesting tit-bit: The choice of movie for the second season was partly inspired by the UAE. When the hosts looked at their listener stats at the end of season one, they realised a huge chunk of people were from the UAE, which they found unusual. So, in homage, they decided to go with Sex and the City 2, set in the Abu Dhabi (but shot ultimately in Morocco).
Blank Check Podcast
Hosts Griffin Newman and David Sims are as obsessive as they can get: Every episode/miniseries on the podcast delves into the filmography of one auteur, and then carefully dissects the trajectory of their careers — the giddy successes of their early movies that lent them the proverbial “blank check”, with which they made their subsequent masterpieces/flops. No one’s spared: From George Lucas to the Wachowskis to M. Night Shyamalan.
You Must Remember This
Film critic/writer Karina Longworth’s carefully researched and beautifully produced podcast takes Hollywood film buffs into the forgotten stories of Tinseltown’s first century. The episodes are moody, tinged with nostalgia and full of industry secrets and legends, brought to life by Longworth, whose voice drips with noir goodness and research involves hours of digging deep into the annals of Hollywood by reading tomes of books, biographies and watching hundreds of old movies and obscure documentaries.
The latest episode, released on March 20, takes listeners through the last five years of Marilyn Monroe’s controversial life, her marriage with Arthur Miller and the mystery that still surrounds her death at the age of 36. But if you’re looking for a place to begin, then give the Charles Manson miniseries a listen.
The Flop House
If you’re a film buff, or a fan of anything really, you know your favourite pastime is talking about all the stuff you categorically do not like. Nothing gives you the same satisfaction that an hour of full-blown venting about a particularly bad movie or TV show does. And now, Elliott Kalan, Dan McCoy and Stuart Wellington have made a successful side business of doing exactly that — discussing, with unbridled passion, the worst movies of all time. Passionate movie buffs, these guys give away as many precious movie recommendations as they talk about movies you should avoid.
Faculty of Horror
Andrea Subissati and Alexandra West have made it their jobs to illuminate movie lovers on the various intricacies of horror films. Mainly speaking from a feminist perspective, the two women make an argument for understanding the history of cinema, through the lens of the horror genre. While this may sound to some degree a serious topic, Subissati and West infuse their academic approach with lively discussions and a dash of humour.