Fifteen Minute Film Fanatics

Season 5 begins with Dan and Mike talking about Double Indemnity, Billy Wilder's 1944 masterpiece about seduction, murder, and conscience. What a movie! So light that match with your thumb, get a new ankle bracelet, and meet us on the train's observation deck for a conversation about one of our favorites.

Please subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts and follow us on YouTube, Twitter and Letterboxd. Please rate and review the show on Apple podcasts and contact us at [email protected]. Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

After being told by his friends that he was a "grump" for not being excited about the new cut of Justice League, Mike responded that the best DC film was Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, the 2000 animated film (released in its uncut form two years later).  He and Dan spend this One Shot talking about why this animated film surpasses many live-action ones without requiring $70 million dollars for a recut.  

Please follow or subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts and on Twitter @15MinFilm.   You can also contact us at [email protected], and support the show with a buck or two at Venmo @FifteenMinuteFiIm.  All proceeds go right back to the show!  

Terrific bumper music by Jackson Frederick Smith

URL: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jackson_F_Smith/Jackson_Frederick_Smith/Cantina_Rag

When was the last time you had a truly cathartic film experience? Many people would respond, "When I saw Dear Zachary," Kurt Kuenne's 2008 documentary about the murder of his friend Andrew Bagby. Dan and Mike talk about why--besides its subject--the film affects viewers so viscerally and profoundly. How does "the buffer of fiction" shield us as we watch dramatizations, rather than documentaries? Give it a listen and see if you agree with the single-sentence text Dan sent Mike after he saw this for the first time.  

Please subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts and follow us on YouTube, Twitter and Letterboxd. Please rate and review the show on Apple podcasts and contact us at [email protected]. Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

Mike just finished watching all seven seasons of The Shield, Shawn Ryan's brutal police series that ran from 2002-2008.  He joins Dan in this short episode to share his reaction, comparing the show to King Lear.  Spoilers abound!  

Please follow or subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts and on Twitter @15MinFilm.   You can also contact us at [email protected], and support the show with a buck or two at Venmo @FifteenMinuteFiIm.  

Terrific bumper music by Jackson Frederick Smith

URL: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jackson_F_Smith/Jackson_Frederick_Smith/Cantina_Rag

Orson Welles called Leo McCary's Make Way for Tomorrow (1937) "the saddest film ever made." Who are Mike and Dan to second-guess the great man? The guys talk about how the film defies categorization, uses the grammar of comedy to treat some unfunny business, and silences any viewer fortunate enough to spend a day with Bark and Lucy. So order two old fashioneds for two old-fashioned people and give it a listen!

Please subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts and follow us on YouTube, Twitter and Letterboxd. Please rate and review the show on Apple podcasts and contact us at [email protected]. Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

"If we ever turn these into a book," Mike remarks in this episode, "it'll be called Trial by Viewer." That's one of the subjects the guys discuss when they look at Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder (1959), one of the greatest courtroom-dramas of all time because it breaks some fundamental rules about the genre--and, in doing so, puts the viewer in the same uncomfortable place as the jury. So suspend judgment for now, pause that Duke Ellington CD, and settle in for a conversation about Jimmy Stewart and George C. Scott as two lawyers trying the case of the unlikable Ben Gazzara.  

Please subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts and follow us on YouTube, Twitter and Letterboxd. Please rate and review the show on Apple podcasts and contact us at [email protected]. Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

How much must a person sacrifice to reach a new level of skill? How much of one's emotional life must be repressed for the sake of one's art? Mike and Dan talk about how Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) poses these questions. Dan talks about the beauty of the scenery, actors, screenplay, and, of course, the fights; Mike compares the film's subtle delivery of information to the opening twenty minutes of The Searchers.  Ultimately, the guys and the film ask about what we need to be happy--and how Jen may have found the answer in the film's final moments. So float down from that rooftop and give it a listen!  

Please subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts and follow us on YouTube, Twitter and Letterboxd. Please rate and review the show on Apple podcasts and contact us at [email protected]. Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

"Baby, I don't care," says a super-cool Robert Mitchum in this week's film: Jacques Tourneur's 1947 noir classic, Out of the Past.  Mike brings up Double Indemnity as a universe unlike the one in which Out of the Past takes place, Dan describes the dialogue as something like singing, and both talk about the deaf kid who opens and closes the film. So light another Chesterfield, pour some bourbon, and settle in for a conversation about a man trying to outrun time.

Please subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts and follow us on YouTube, Twitter and Letterboxd. Please rate and review the show on Apple podcasts and contact us at [email protected]. Incredible bumper music by John Deley.  

After rescuing Mike from the future, Dan finds fifteen minutes to ask him about Tenet, Christopher Nolan's 2020 espionage time-travel thriller. They tackle the common complaint that the movie is too complex, bringing in Chinatown and 2001 as foils, talk about how directing a film is like traveling through time, and the "ladder of audacity" that Nolan keeps climbing. So put on that oxygen mask, fistfight yourself, and go back in time with Mike and Dan as they have their first conversation about Tenet.  Or, if you really want to get into the spirit, Tenet tuoba noitasrevnoc tsrif rieht evah yeht sa Nad dna Ekim htiw emit ni kcab og dna , flesruoy thgiftsif, ksam negyxo taht no tup.

Please subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts and follow us on YouTube, Twitter and Letterboxd. Please rate and review the show on Apple podcasts and contact us at [email protected]. Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

Before this one-shot mini-episode, check out Ruben Ostlund's 2010 short film Incident by a Bank, available online.  Then listen as Mike and Dan talk about bank robberies in films vs. ones in real life and the issue of "realistic" cinema.  It's a terrific short that's well worth checking out before the show.

Please follow or subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts and on Twitter @15MinFilm.   You can also contact us at [email protected], and support the show with a buck or two at Venmo @FifteenMinuteFiIm.  

Terrific bumper music by Jackson Frederick Smith

URL: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jackson_F_Smith/Jackson_Frederick_Smith/Cantina_Rag