Dakota Arsenault had the opportunity to chat with Mitchell Cushman, director of the play Jerusalem that is currently showing at Crow’s Nest Theatre until March 10th. You may remember Mitchell who previously appeared on Contra Zoom back on episode three when he talked about directing Mr. Burns a Post Electric Play.

Special thanks to Mr. Cushman and to Red Eye Media for setting up this chat. Look for Dakota’s review of the play coming soon.

This is the second Oscar Primer podcast for Contra Zoom of the year, continuing the series of Oscar Primer’s Dakota does every year, normally just as written articles. Last week he talked about Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Darkest Hour and Lady Bird. He is flying solo this episode as he talks about Dunkirk, Get Out, Call Me By Your Name and The Post. 

For the last written primer check it out HERE.

These are the nominations for Dunkirk.

Best Picture

Best Director- Christopher Nolan 

Best Cinematography- Hoyte Van Hoytema 

Best Film Editing- Lee Smith

Best Production Design- Nathan Crowley and Gary Fettis

Best Original Score- Hans Zimmer 

Best Sound Editing- Richard King and Alex Gibson

Best Sound Mixing- Gregg Landaker, Gary Rizzo and Mark Weingarten

*Correction I mistakenly say Hans Zimmer has a million nominations when I actually confused him with John Williams who scored his 51st nomination compared to Zimmer’s mere 11 nominations. 

These are the nominations for Get Out.

Best Picture

Best Actor- Daniel Kaluuya 

Best Director- Jordan Peele 

Best Original Screenplay- Jordan Peele

These are the nominations for Call Me By Your Name. 

Best Picture

Best Actor- Timothée Chalamet 

Best Adapted Screenplay- James Ivory 

Best Original Song- Sufjan Stevens for “The Mystery of Love”

These are the nominations for The Post.

Best Picture

Best Actress- Meryl Strep

This is the first Oscar Primer podcast for Contra Zoom of the year, continuing the series of Oscar Primer’s Dakota does every year, normally just as written articles. He is flying solo this episode as he talks about Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Darkest Hour and Lady Bird.

These are the nominations for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri 

These are the nominations for Darkest Hour

These are the nominations for Lady Bird

Make sure you check out this week’s Oscar Primer where Dakota goes over Blade Runner 2049, Coco, The Big Sick and The Florida Project. These Primers will be posted once a week on Tuesdays. Follow Dakota @Dgapa and follow the show @ContraZoomPod on Twitter.

Sammy Feilchenfeld joins Dakota to talk about the biggest news stories of 2017. This isn’t the usual top movie of the year podcast, but instead reflecting on the year that was and what to expect for 2018. For an amazing Best Of list check out Rachel Gordon’s Top 25 Films of 2017, Live in Limbo’s official Best Of list.

– Best Picture Winner mixup back in Feb causing LaLaLand to think it won when Moonlight actually did.

– Horror movies absolutely raking in the dough with IT, Get Out, Split and Annabelle: Creation all earning more than $100 million.

– Systematic abuse is finally being taken serious with the likes of Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Brett Ratner, Louis CK and others being taken to task for the suffering they put people through.

– Star Wars having all types of Director issues, from Colin Trevarrow being kicked off of Ep 9 (and replaced by JJ Abrams), Phil Lord and Christopher Miller being fired before reshoots of Solo (and replaced by Ron Howard) and on the heels of Gareth Edwards having Tony Gilroy oversee Rogue One reshoots and the franchise has had either the number 1 or 2 highest grossing movie of the last 3 years. 

– Disney buying 21st Century Fox and what that mean’s that now about 40% of all entertainment will be produced by one studio.

For examples of all of our stories in one easy source check out Collider or Empire Online. 

The guys also ran down the highest grossing films of the last year.

Music from this episode is Sun Slug and Sleepwalker by psych rockers Possum. They have recently played with acts like Ty Seagall and Sam Coffey and the Iron Lungs.

Make sure you follow Possum on Twitter @possumyyz. You can listen to their records on Spotify or buy it on Bandcamp. 

Let us know your favourite movie moments from 2017 @contrazoompod and @dgapa.

Here is part two of our Best Picture Countdown of movies that won between 1978-1987. On the last episode we ran down the bottom five films, click HERE to see the list and listen to the episode. On this episode Stephanie Prior joins Dakota again and they talk about the best of that decade. 

Here are the bottom five pictures in our ratings. Dakota’s ratings come first and Stephanie’s second next to each film.

5. The Last Emperor 7.9/10 7.5/10

4. The Deer Hunter 8.4/10 7.7/10

3. Amadeus 7.5/10 8.5/10

And for the very first time we have a tie for first place!

1. Kramer vs. Kramer 8.5/10 8.2/10

1. Ordinary People 8.7/10 8/10

If you have seen any of these films let Dakota know what you think! Follow Dakota @Dgapa and the show @ContraZoomPod on Twitter.

After more than a year off from continuing the Best Picture Ranking series, it is back with a vengeance! Stephanie Prior steps in to join Dakota to review the Best Picture winners from the 1978-1987 Oscars (the 50th-59th winners). The series also got a much overdue name changing dropping the Birdman for the most recent winner Moonlight. If you missed the last time the series was discussed click HERE.

Site photographer Cole Leuthel joins us to talk about his three favourite movies.

Here are the bottom five pictures in our ratings. Dakota’s ratings come first and Stephanie’s second next to each film.

10. Terms of Endearment 6/10 5.5/10

9. Gandhi 6.3/10 6.5/10

8. Out of Africa 6.8/10 7/10

7. Chariots of Fire 6.5/10 6/10

6. Platoon 7/10 7/10

Tune into the next episode where Dakota and Stephanie count down the top five Best Pictures from the decade.

Music from this week’s episode comes from Brooklyn Doran, a Toronto based singer songwriter. Brooklyn challenged herself to perform 100 concerts in 2017 and she completed that task just in the knick of time! Her debut full length album These Paper Wings made our top 50 albums of 2016 list last year and expect big things from her next year! Follow Brooklyn on Twitter @brooklyndoran and on Facebook.

If you have seen any of these films let Dakota know what you think! Follow Dakota @Dgapa and the show @ContraZoomPod on Twitter.

For this massive episode Sammy Feilchenfeld joins Dakota Arsenault again to talk about all things concerning the new trend of “Cinematic Universes”, starting with reviews of both Justice League and Thor: Ragnarok the films that helped kick this new style of moving making off.

After reviewing the two latest superhero movies, the guys look to see what the future holds for both the MCU and DCEU.

– For the MCU about 20 films are already in the pipeline to come out over the next 10 years barring no major catastrophe.

– For something more immediate, we learn that Marvel’s first female lead film, appropriately named Captain Marvel starring Brie Larson, has just cast Jude Law. 

– Sony wants to get in on the action after lending Marvel Spider-Man, and has decided to start its own Spider-centric universe, with the first movie being based on Tom Hardy’s portrayal of Venom.

– Sammy praises the new Monster-verse kicked off with Godzilla and Kong: Skull Island for starting a franchise off right. 

– The guys also belittle the very poorly conceived “Dark Universe” that started with this year’s The Mummy and how its poor reception has caused the entire planned universe to be scrapped.

– Also talked about is the X-Men series and how Deadpool is connected to it, the Star Wars series and how Rian Johnson is about to be given carte blanche to explore the galaxy from long, long ago to new heights and The Incredibles among other movie related offerings. 

Music from this episode is Teach Me by folk singer Caren. You can catch her December 19th at the Horseshoe Tavern and January 27th at Musiikki Café in Kingston. 

Make sure you follow Caren on Twitter @songsbycaren and on Facebook.

You can listen to her self titled album on Spotify or buy it on iTunes. 

After being out for over a month, Dakota Arsenault finally gets around to talking about the new Blade Runner 2049 movie. Sammy Feilchenfeld returns to talk about what he calls his favourite movie of the year so far. 

Since this movie has been out for so long, spoilers are talked about in this episode so listeners be warned!

– Sammy and Dakota want to heap all the praise on all the amazing actresses in this movie specifically singling out Robin Wright, Ana De Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Hiam Abbas, Mackenzie Davis and Carla Juri

– Dave Bautista doesn’t want to be your typical leading man

– The guys talk about where director Denis Villeneuve ranks among the greatest current working directors. Earlier this summer there was an episode of Contra Zoom that Sammy guested on talking about the greatest Canadian filmmakers of all time. 

– Roger Deakins hopefully will finally win first Oscar for his cinematography after being nominated a whopping 13 times!!!

– The stunning sets weren’t all massive larger than life ones; some were miniature with really impressive detail included.

– We eagerly await Villeneuve’s take on Dune.  

If you saw Blade Runner 2049, let Dakota know what you thought! Follow Dakota @Dgapa and the show @ContraZoomPod on Twitter.

Episode was originally posted on November 16, 2017

On this very special episode Dakota Arsenault celebrates reaching the milestone of 50 episodes! The very first one was back in April of 2015 discussing the first ten Best Picture Winner’s can be found HEREand marvel at how much better the quality has gotten (and notice the run times are much shorter!) A bit of the podcast’s history is shared including the origin of our name. 

Special thanks goes out to Sean Chin, Live in Limbo’s Editor in Chief and the creator and host of Capsulewho sent in a lovely congratulatory message. 

Joining Dakota is Stephanie Prior, who has twice been a guest specializing in the Make/Remakesegment of the show. Dakota and Stephanie talk about the history of Dracula in cinema in regards to three specific films.

1931’s Dracula stars Bela Lugosi as the first “real” on screen Dracula. The film is directed by Tod Browning and with its lack of music is as close to a silent film as a talkie can get. 

1958’s Horror of Dracula stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in the Hammer Production directed by Terence Fisher. The film has a historical epic feel to it while also being more of a drama than a horror flick.

1993’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula stars Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins directed by Francis Ford Coppola in what is both a defining and a copycat film at the same time. Paying homage to not just Dracula films but horror films in general. Easily the goriest of the three films in this series.

Briefly touched upon is both the German film Nosferatu (the original Dracula) and the mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows, which spoofs all previous Dracula/vampire films. 

Happy Halloween! Make sure you send us your favourite Halloween/Horror films to watch! Follow Dakota @Dgapa and the show @ContraZoomPod on Twitter.

Episode was originally posted on October 19, 2017

The Toronto International Film Festival wrapped a few weeks ago and Mehek Seyid makes a return to Contra Zoom where she talks about the 28 (!) films she saw at this year festival. 

The films that won top honours were Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, which won the People’s Choice award, with I, Tonya and Call Me By Your Name being named as runner ups. The top Canadian film was Les Affamés.

We also talk about the ethics of having the audience vote on People’s Choice and why it might be a bit of a flawed system. 

Here are the 28 films Mehek saw and I linked all the films that had trailers released so far. 

Follow Dakota @Dgapa and the show @ContraZoomPod on Twitter.

Episode originally posted on October 8, 2017