At the Flicks

It's holiday time! Yes, even for us. Your At The Flicks team are off to the coast while listening to the classic Cliff Richard track Summer Holiday on repeat to annoy Jeff.

Before we go, we have prepared a unique and very entertaining mid month show for you. The team aren't on it which in itself some of you might find a blessing. Instead we have an interview and the latest from Lucy on the state of the movies.

Our interview is with young Theo Hogben, an up and coming film maker who already has been involved in some impressive projects. The main focus of our discussion is Theo's latest, which is currently on the film festival circuit, called A Most Savage Beast. Theo has very kindly provided us with a special offer just for At The Flicks listeners. If you are interested in seeing this quality short, then send us your details and we will pass them onto Theo. He will try and make a screener available to you. Thank you Theo for your generosity.

Also on the show, Lucy returns and talks to Jeff about her favourite Stephen King films. Some great choices and much to Graham and Neil's relief, not all horror films. Do you agree with the films selected under the banner of the greatest Stephen King films? Let us know, we would love to hear from you.

OK, the car's packed and time to travel. If you hear a car pass with Summer Holiday on repeat and the sounds of not another bloody comic book movie, you know we are coming your way!

Enjoy the rest of the Summer and we will be back later in the month

To mark our 50th Show; Jeff, Neil and Graham sit down to reminisce about the audio journey from our first show 18 months ago, right up to this one and onto our plans for the rest of this year.

We talk about Jeff's idea of starting a Podcast! His original idea of capturing and sharing our post cinema discussions, or as Jeff so eloquently put it: "three old codgers, in a pub, talking bollocks about movies". Now there's a mission statement!

We also talk about the growth of the show; the migration from a review centric format, to a more magazine type show, filled with interviews and regular contributors. Our constant struggle with the review format and finally "where to next?"!

This show is a pause in our hectic schedule to thank all out listeners, contributors and guests and to talk for a few moments about our past, our hopes and our aspirations for the future.

Thanks again to everyone and enjoy the show!

This week friend of the show Darren joins us as a guest reviewer. He starts in fine style reviewing Spider-Man : Far From Home. Like Darren, Neil and Graham find much to like in this latest outing from the web slinger. As for Jeff, he has another comic book hero rant, until we manage to find his meds and calm him down!

Other films reviewed this month include Midsommar, Yesterday, Apollo 11 and Cabin In The Woods. Yes, you read that right, Graham has taken Em's advice and watched this comedy horror flick. Did he like it? Check out the show to find out.

Apart from wall to wall reviews, we manage to find a corner for Steve to return to give us the lowdown on what is coming to Cineworld. As well as the film list, Steve gives us a Jaws story which hopefully will not prove to be a little too close for comfort!

If you think this all sounds very professional, don't worry, Jeff tries out a new interview technique on us, with unexpected consequences for him.

The At The Flicks podcast the perfect tonic for Summer, with only the occasional deluge provided by Jeff.

Enjoy

Think you know your Coen Brothers? Think again?

This month, Phil Foster of Phil the Bear's Blog, talks us through his incredible retrospective article on the Coen brothers filmography. From Raising Arizona parenting tips, to looking after cats with Llewyn Davis, it's all here.

In this absorbing, funny and informative episode, Phil details the five Coen Brothers movies that he thinks are modern masterpieces. We discuss the significance of the hat in Miller’s Crossing, roles for Robert Redford in O Brother, Where Art Thou, devils and angles and the sheer diversity of their back catalogue. Screwball comedy, film noire or intense drama, the Coen's can do it all and have, many times.

If, after listening to this episode, you want to have your say on this topic, please drop us a line. We would love to hear from you.

Our contact details are on our Website attheflicks.uk you can email us at [email protected] and you can always find us on Twitter at @AttheFlicksPod

We at the At The Flicks team love our show. However we don't exclusively listen to ourselves speaking (Jeff being the exception). There are some great movie podcasts out there that we love to check out.

One such podcast is Verbal Diorama (yes, you read that right; the explanation for that fascinating title is revealed during the interview). Verbal Diorama is the brainchild of Em. The reason we liked it and just had to talk to her? Em focuses on one film per podcast and it usually is a movie which didn't get the recognition during its original release. Her retrospectives are delivered in an enthusiastic and knowledgeable way.

After listening to the wonderful Em and her motivations and ideas, we are sure you, like us, will become big fans of the show.

Speaking of voices we like, this episode Elijah returns. This month our rediscovering the classics with Elijah focuses on the original Planet Of The Apes from 1968. We couldn't leave it there of course, as our science fiction expert Graham made sure we covered the entire Apes universe! The discussion is so much fun our Neil wishes he had an Apes type time machine to go back to the 70's to watch them when they were released; you don't need that Neil, just a good streaming service!

As if that isn't enough, we have a scoop for you in our movie news. No, not Mel Gibson, although of course Graham just can't resist talking about him. We tell you about an important British film called Falklands Square which starts shooting this Summer. Find out what it is about and why it is very relevant in our movie news section.

A packed show for you.

Enjoy

The “At the Flicks” team are very proud and honoured, to bring you a very special podcast which concentrates on a single short film.

 

Stroud's Secret Suffragist: The Film

 

This film was one of the highlights of the 2019 Stroud Film Festival. This local film gives a fascinating insight into the life of Margaret Hills. One hundred years ago, Margaret was a leading member of the Suffragist movement. Over the years, however, the achievements of this remarkable woman have faded from public view. Until now!

 

Thanks to an amazing creative team, Margaret's story is told in this powerful short film. We talk to the researcher who whilst digging through local council archives discovered the story. We then talk to the talented writer, who took these research fragments and brought them to life as a dramatic live street performance in Stroud. We also managed to interview the actor who played Margaret in that live street performance.

 

Finally, we move onto the team who created the film, based on all this work. We talk to the young film maker/director/editor and her producer, about the long and difficult development process in the production of the film.

On this podcast you can follow the journey of that team through the film's creative process. We have been kindly allowed to use original music from the film during the podcast.

 

We would like to thank the whole creative team for sharing this astounding woman's life with us and our listeners.

Our traditional end of month show is a little late.

Two reasons for that

1) A new review format which took a little bit of tinkering with. Don't worry though, it might be a new review format, but it is the same old men (thanks for pointing that out Phil)

2) A July 4th treat for our American listeners!

Yes we have shaken up the review format and even woken Neil up in the process! Our reviews are shorter and there are more of them. This means we have finally fulfilled a promise from our very first show. Some of our reviews are retrospectives of older and classic films. We can now answer the question, are they still good after all this time and, given our ageing brains, do we still remember them.

Listen out for Jeff realising Who Framed Roger Rabbit is part animation and Graham shocked at the use of an electric chair in The Green Mile!

As if that isn't enough for you, we have added a new feature called Carry on Streaming. New contributor Declan will be joining us every other month to reveal what are the best shows out there on the streaming and iPlayer platforms, as well as what is worth looking out for.

Something for everyone to enjoy as you gather around your barbecues as long as it doesn't

This month in our monthly catch up with Phil, we tackle the big one. Bigger than what's the meaning of life, bigger even than why does Graham like Mel Gibson so much. It is Cinema Vs Streaming where are we and what is the future? Can cinema compete with the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime?

It was such a big topic that we had to bring in reinforcements. Joining the team for this show (and hopefully coming back for future visits) is Paul. Paul brings his knowledge of what happened to the music industry to show some interesting comparisons.

It is a fascinating and occasionally eye opening discussion as we look at where we currently are, what changes are on the horizon and where could we be in a few years time.

If listening to this you want to have your say on this big topic, please drop us a line. We would love to hear from you.

We are honoured this month to have an interview with music producer and composer Rupert Christie. As a composer, Rupert scored the very successful British movie Fisherman's Friends and also, as a producer, was responsible for their phenomenal chart topping success.

Rupert talks in detail about his involvement on the film and his work on other features with Michael Kamen such as Open Range.

Composers feature a lot in our show this month as the our "Rediscovering the classics with Elijah" film of the month is Psycho. There is no way we could talk about this Hitchcock classic without reference to Bernhard Herrmann's famous score.

Of course as Psycho is horror, Graham and Neil became very unsettled talking about that genre. So, to calm them down, in our movie news slot, I had Neil talk about a horror film being made locally and Graham talk about horror films in general. Although Graham believes all of his film news pieces are horrific!

We hope enjoy this special show which we are all very proud of.

A special thank you to Fred Clifton from A&R records for permission to use some of Rupert's excellent score from Fisherman's Friends. The score can be purchased from Amazon or can be found on your music provider of choice.

Recently the At The Flicks team had to hold an emergency meeting. The Summer movie season was about to start, Neil was worried there would be no highbrow films, Jeff was annoyed there would be weekly superhero features and Graham was fuming as no Mel Gibson movies were in the lineup.

What were we to do?

Suddenly the answer became clear. The first ever Cheltenham International Film Festival was taking place in Cheltenham (obviously) at the end of May. We had to be a part of this. So we volunteered to help (well, two of us did), while we carefully planned which films in the excellent line up we were going to watch.

If you are still reading it will come as no surprise to you that this is not an official Cheltenham International Film Festival podcast, just the At The Flicks memories of this wonderful event captured for our listeners.

Follow us through four days of the festival as we help in various capacities, meet some very interesting people and watch some great and some not so great films.

Thank you to everyone who organised and participated in this first Cheltenham International Film Festival. We are already looking forward to the second.

Just to be clear, this podcast is not affiliated with the Cheltenham International Film Festival and all reviews and opinions are from the At The Flicks team only.

Enjoy.