Out There in the Dark

By Basement Inc.

Hosts Azed Majeed and Tom Alexander discuss philosophy, psychology, politics and culture through film.... more

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FAQs about Out There in the Dark:

How many episodes does Out There in the Dark have?

The podcast currently has 63 episodes available.

Out There in the Dark episodes:

April 07, 2021 MoP 52: The Hoser Mystique - The Best Canadian Films of All Time
On this episode of Mutiny of Preverts we discuss something quite rare indeed. Along with our special guest, filmmaker Sean Cisterna, we talk about the very best Canadian films of all time, including Hard Core Logo, Dead Ringers, 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould, Begone Dull Care and a bunch more. We also dig into the inner workings of the Canadian film industry itself. What works? What doesn't? Are we as a country really producing the best cinema we could be? What's holding us back?
After an honest and insightful discussion the truth behind all Canadian cinema revealed itself to us like a shining beacon from a plane of existence beyond all human knowledge and understanding. That truth sprouted and swelled inside our minds until we all saw that the one true analogue for all of Canadian cinema is the feminist sit-com classic The Golden Girls. Think about it; David Cronenberg is Bea Arthur, the core figure and ringleader. Denis Villeneuve is Rue McClanahan, the diva who is also (let's face it) kinda slutty (he just can't seem to keep from getting in bed with our American cousins). Guy Maddin is Betty White, the kooky one. And Arthur Lipsett is Estelle Getty, the grump.
Whether a film fits into The Golden Girls paradigm should now and forever be the standard by which all Canadian cinema is judged. All else should be expelled from the country and labelled as... oh I don't know, Belgian.
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1h 38min
March 24, 2021 051 Pocket Preversion edition: Defending DC Cab!
Well, it happened. The pandemic has finally pushed Azed & Jay over the brink and into the mouth of madness. How else to explain this episode, wherein Kieran Dick, a Toronto/Brooklyn experimental video and film artist, who once refused to shake David Bowie's hand, zestfully defends the greasy 80's "comedy" DC Cab? Kieran is on record declaring that DC Cab is the one movie he would take "into the bunker". Can a movie using Mr. T as it's main selling point really be defended? Is there a hidden subtext in this otherwise clunky, super-inappropriate movie? Were the 80's all a dream? Tune in to find out.
Joining in on the "fun" is comic performer and entrepreneur Trevor Burnett, who classes up the episode with some true Hollywood tales about his time as a background performer in Billy Madison. And we go full TMZ when Trevor starts throwing shade on Adam Sandler for trying to pick up hot extras on set and having zero game.
NOTE: Azed gets increasingly drunk as the episode progresses and subsequently becomes more belligerent and sloppy than usual.
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1h 34min
March 11, 2021 050: The Loneliness of the Long Distance Psychopath
Here we are at episode 50 for the Mutiny of Preverts podcast! A milestone that neither Azed nor Jay bothered to even mention while recording. Is it because they switched from milk to lead based paint in their breakfast cereal? Or could it be the result of too little grey matter in their temporal lobes? The latter would certainly be fitting since lack of grey matter is one of the signs of psychopathy. And that very mental disorder (and sociopathy too) is the topic for this episode.
In particular, Azed and Jay discuss how the loneliness of our times may be particularly fertile ground for the proliferation of sociopathy and the values of the post-Thatcher/Reagan era have been disturbingly kind to the psychopathically inclined. Some of the films discussed are Mike Leigh's Naked, No Country for Old Men, A Clockwork Orange, In a Lonely Place, Man Bites Dog, The Vanishing, Gone Girl and Titanic.
*Disclaimer: Any murderous ideation resulting from the listening of this episode is not the responsibility Mutiny of Preverts. Should you decide to act on this ideation you do so at your own risk.
P.S. But if you do commit murder please don't just hide the bodies in your crawl space. It's been done. Have a little respect for your craft.
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2h 14min
February 20, 2021 049: Defending Billy Madison!
In the first of our new series of "micro-episodes", MoP favourite, Omar Majeed defends the much maligned Adam Sandler movie, Billy Madison (1995). The conceptual reasoning behind these micro-episodes is to up our production output by doing, what the kids call, a "hot take" on a movie or topic within the cinematic discourse. Less work, less impressive but a hell of a lotta fun! And these days, don't we all just want a little more fun in our lives? Still, it wouldn't be an MoP episode without some random Lacan references and some unnecessary psychoanalytic cultural theory thrown in there to impress the elites! So don't panic pseudo intellectuals, we will never forget about you, as we are one of you!
NOTE: MoP highly recommends that you re-watch the film in question while high, with multiple shitty snacks, wearing either a "onesie" a "slanket" or just in your underwear, as long as you've been wearing them for at least three days straight. ENJOY!
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56min
January 27, 2021 048: Best Films of 2020 (Part 2)
We're back with Part 2 of our discussion with Omar Majeed, Tom Alexander and Raul Pinto on our favourite films of 2020. In this part we discuss categories like The Film You Wish You Made, Biggest Disappointment, Most Original Film and Best Old Film You Watched.
Same rules apply as last time, no biting, pinching or hair pulling, but crotch shots wholly encouraged! We hope you enjoy.
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1h 32min
January 20, 2021 047: Best Films of 2020 (Part 1)
If there's one thing that Mutiny of Preverts prides itself in is our ability to read the cultural moment. And what do people want to do now more than reminisce about what a splendiferous and joyous experience that was the year 2020?
But what might be hard to believe is that after looking back we realized that a lot of bad stuff happened and 2020 wasn't really that splendiferous after all. Maybe even the opposite of splendiferous which I'm going to say is something like drinking a big puddle of dog water filled with napalm and used bandaids.
So we decided to have some fun with this one and instead of doing a simple best of list we mined the Preverts back catalogue and used the same format that we did for our best of the decade by organizing the episode around a series of unusual, but hopefully insightful categories including The Crypto-Fascist Award, Most Original Film, The Film That Made You Skip Pornhub and a bunch more.
To help us ensure that we didn't miss any hidden gems we also invited three of our favourite guests from past episodes, Omar Majeed, Tom Alexander and Raul Pinto to join us. With these three devoted cinephiles we ended up with a diverse and sprawling discussion on everything from Mank to Another Round to First Cow and a whole lot more. So much more that we had to break the episode into two parts. But we won't leave you hanging for long. Part two will be out in a week.
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1h 43min
December 15, 2020 046: Citizen Fincher: Authorship and Myth in Mank
The authorship of Citizen Kane has been the subject of much debate ever since Pauline Kael's essay Raising Kane which put forth the strange notion that Orson Welles was less of the driving force behind Kane and naming screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz as the unsung hero who deserved sole credit for one of cinema's greatest achievements. Fincher seems to be using this template for his bio pic of Mankiewicz, played by Gary Oldman as a shambolic court jester much in demand among the Hollywood elites until his own self-destructive tendencies bring it all down. As with all Hollywood lore, the characters that populate this myth are well known epic figures from Irving Thalberg to Upton Sinclair, but the underlying themes of movies as propaganda and the political machinations of the media machine bely a certain unconscious irony for Fincher, who seems to be trading in the very same myth making by upholding the idea that Welles was a megalomaniacal credit hog and not the brilliant filmmaker who would go onto make many superb films.
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1h 19min
October 26, 2020 045: Halloween Monster Movie Madness - Steve Bannon in Errol Morris’ American Dharma
When asked about the creation of Godzilla Ishiro Honda said that his character was too tall, too strong, too heavy. The monster wasn't evil by choice. That was its tragedy. The sympathy engendered by this tragedy is what makes Godzilla such an iconic monster. But what kind of monster wreaks destruction not only by choice, but because of resentment stemming from a perceived lack of strength and power? Can or should we ever have sympathy for such a monster?
Using several iconic Hollywood films chosen by his subject, Errol Morris explores the depths, or perhaps the lack of depth, in Bannon's ideology. By intercutting between characters like Gregory Peck in Twelve O'Clock High, John Wayne in The Searchers and Orson Welles in Chimes at Midnight and his interview with Bannon does Morris make the mistake of reinforcing Bannon's own myth-making or does it offer a subtle undermining of Bannon in comparison to these iconic characters? The controversy surrounding American Dharma derives from the perception that Bannon is a figure that needs to be erased at all costs. Why make a film which runs the risk of legitimizing him?
Azed and Jay dig into the complexities of making a film about someone whose ideology is defined by its drive for destruction. They also share a few thoughts on the election that is about to take place in the U.S. revealing some disagreements they have about the state of things and what hope there may be for the future.
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1h 48min
October 15, 2020 044: Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things
The Spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.--Guy DeBord
Writer/director Charlie Kaufman utilizes aspects of horror, surrealism and art house to produce one of the most intriguing and talked about movies of the year. Starting out as a sort of "meet the parents" road trip movie, it slowly starts to devolve into strange, absurdist territory that leaves one unhooked from the narrative in frightening but fascinating way. Azed and Jay discuss the themes of interiority, suicidal ideation and crushing alienation...and then they talk about the movie! Ha, ha! See what I did there? Self burn!
Also in this episode: we respond to a request from one of our fans, discuss the movie Independence Day: Resurgence and superhero take down series, The Boys.
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1h 15min
September 24, 2020 043: Bacurau and Revenge Cinema Reimagined
After the gluttonous excesses of the most recent multi-film and guest host packed episodes Azed and Jay strip the podcast bare and tackle a single film, the Brazilian genre exercise Bacurau.
When a group of Western tourists with a taste for hunting the "most dangerous game" isolate and surround the small Brazilian village of Bacurau the stage is set for a massacre. But directors Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles recognize a strength in this tightly knit community that the atomized Westerners lack. The social bonds between the residents have been strengthened as a result of multiple generations having to defend their very lives against violent and exploitative outside forces.
Influenced by numerous Western films like Wake in Fright and filmmakers like John Carpenter and Sergio Leone, the film both draws on and breaks down just about every genre convention it encounters for a vision totally unique to the Global South.
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1h 17min

FAQs about Out There in the Dark:

How many episodes does Out There in the Dark have?

The podcast currently has 63 episodes available.