Cinema Double Shot

River City Stories collaborator Paul Hood joins Wally to talk about Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show and the many forms of protest that artists have at their disposal. Along the way, we talk about Iranian cinema, Spike Lee, the Civil Rights Movement, and the underrated gem that is The Last Black Man in San Francisco.

00:00:29 Kendrick Lamar and the Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show

00:13:01 Why Did Samuel L. Jackson Show Up?

00:16:40 Gil Scott-Heron and The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

00:25:59 Difficult art and Pablo Picasso’s Guernica

00:30:19 The Last Black Man in San Francisco

00:42:20 Ava DuVernay’s Selma and Historical Protest

00:45:50 Alex Garland’s Civil War

00:53:06 Iranian Cinema and The Seed of the Sacred Fig

00:57:43 Jafar Panahi and This Is Not a Film

01:03:58 Spike Lee’s Protest Cinema: Bamboozled

01:05:59 Inside Man: Hiding Protest in Plain Sight

01:08:18 The 25th Hour

01:08:50 Do the Right Thing

01:12:14 Chi-Raq

01:13:27 Modern Protest Cinema

Get tickets for River City Stories: 

🎟️ https://www.westshoretheatre.org/tickets/

Like what you see? Consider supporting the filmmaker at: 

☕️ https://www.buymeacoffee.com/wallyfilm 

Follow what I'm watching on Letterboxd: 

📽️ https://letterboxd.com/inwidescreen/

"Baby, take a ride on my disco ball!" Filmmaking friend Hal Cramer joins Wally to talk about their adventures in low-budget indie filmmaking — and, yes, a few of their favorite Hollywood movies, too.

Some of the films discussed: Disney Pixar's Coco, the BBC TV show Inside No. 9, Documentary Now, David Lynch's The Return, Top Gun: Maverick, Timothee Chalamet and A Complete Unknown (again!), Todd Haynes' I'm Not There and Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, Christopher Nolan's films (Memento, The Prestige, Interstellar, and Oppenheimer), Kevin Smith, Richard Kelly's films (Donnie Darko and Southland Tales), Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza), The Simpsons, John Waters, Francis Ford Coppola, and Nora Ephron.

Follow Hal and Josh on YouTube, where you can see some of the films mentioned on this podcast:

🎬 https://www.youtube.com/@wallyfilm

🎬 https://www.youtube.com/@MrHalcramerface

Like what you see? Consider supporting the filmmaker at:☕️ https://www.buymeacoffee.com/wallyfilmFollow what I'm watching on Letterboxd:📽️ https://letterboxd.com/inwidescreen/

Get tickets for River City Stories:🎟️ https://www.westshoretheatre.org/tickets/

Frequent collaborator Lisa Lutton Weitzman, an actor and educator, joins Wally to talk about the process of preparing for a role. They also discuss a few of their favorite performances, the business of acting, and Willem Dafoe's *ahem* body double.

Just a few of the actors, movies, and teachers discussed: Timothée Chalamet in A Complete Unknown; Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable in The Misfits; Yorgos Lanthimos' frequent collaborators: Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, and Rachel Weisz; Meryl Streep; Viola Davis; Glenn Close; Konstantin Stanislavski; Sanford Meisner; Stella Adler; Lee Strasberg; Pamela Anderson and The Last Showgirl; and, of course, Willem Dafoe.

Check out Lisa's acting course, Mastering the Monologue:

🎭 https://bit.ly/4guuYdH

Like what you see? Consider supporting the filmmaker at:

Get tickets for River City Stories:

Playwright Paul Hood joins Wally to talk about their favorite biopics — and some famous people who deserve the biopic treatment. Inspired by this year's Oscar-nominated biopics (and biopic-adjacent) A Complete Unknown and The Brutalist, we take a deep dive into the history of the genre.

Just a few of the movies discussed: A Complete Unknown, The Brutalist, Malcolm X, Ray, Rocketman, Bohemian Rhapsody, Notorious, What's Love Got to Do With It, Strange Days, The Aviator, The Wolf of Wall Street, What Happened Miss Simone? and Hunger.

Get tickets for River City Stories:

🎟️ https://www.westshoretheatre.org/tickets/

Like what you see? Consider supporting the filmmaker at:

Academy Award nominations will be announced soon, continuing a film tradition that began nearly a century ago. We’ve got traditions of our own: The Wallys, an annual awards show now in its 20th year. Josh and Wally discuss the absurdity of pitting movies against each other and our obsession with awards, all while handing out a few of them ourselves to the best movies of 2024. Featuring guest appearances by Steven Spielberg, Gloria Stuart, and Yasijiro Ozu! 😉

See all of this year’s Wallys, the Snoddys, and previous years:

🔗 http://inwidescreen.blogspot.com/

Like what you see? Consider supporting the filmmaker at:

☕️ https://www.buymeacoffee.com/wallyfilm

Follow what I'm watching on Letterboxd:

📽️ https://letterboxd.com/inwidescreen/

Inspired by the cult classic-in-the-making horror movie (or is it?) The Front Room starring Brandy and Kathryn Hunter, Josh and Wally discuss what makes a good horror film.

Along the way, they talk about some of the more ambiguously horrific movies of the last century.

Just a few of the movies discussed: Black Swan, Freaks, Hocus Pocus, I Saw the TV Glow, In a Violent Nature, The Lighthouse, Midsommar, Notes on a Scandal, Perfect Blue, Requiem for a Dream, Serial Mom, The Shape of Water, Silence of the Lambs, The Substance, Targets, Under the Skin, Zodiac and Martin Scorsese's rarely seen student film The Big Shave.