Note: We were supposed to have guests, but they were no-shows. Because of that, Jay forgot to share a couple things during the podcast and it’s too late already.

Episode recorded: May 16th, 2026 (05/16/2026)

Madzy Williams is back. And one of our former co-hosts has suggested we look into a  vampire action flick From Dusk Till Dawn, made by our favorite film director Robert Rodriguez and written by Quentin Tarantino based on an idea from special effects artist Robert Kurtzman. To contextualize the independent filmmaking of the time of its release, we also look into Rodriguez’s first feature film El Mariachi, which made its headline for its small budget of $7000. Jay and Madzy talk about their favorite Rodriguez’s movies, the indie movie boom of the 90s, and its similarities with the indie animation boom of the 2020s. Jay has also expressed his annoyance at people comparing last year’s Sinners with From Dusk Till Dawn for their superficial similarities.

El Mariachi is currently distributed by Columbia Pictures. It’s now available on video-on-demand, Blu-Rays, and DVDs from Arrow Videos. From Dusk Till Dawn is currently distributed by Miramax through Paramount Pictures. It’s now available on video-on-demand, Blu-Rays, and DVDs from Paramount Home Entertainment. 

Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/ReAnimateTHISPodcast

For inquiries: [email protected]

Some promotions, shout outs, and fundraising: 

Jay is now working as one of the observers at the Troma Entertainment, the studio behind The Toxic Avengers and Sgt. Kabukiman. TROMA-THON '26 is going to happen from July 17th to 18th at the Mahoning Drive-in Theater in Lehighton, PA. If you want to see Jay in person, please come to TROMA-THON '26 where you also get to watch some Troma movies.

https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/mahoningdrivein/Troma26

The submission for Tromadance Film Festival 2026 is still open. If you have made a DIY short film that feels like a Troma production, then please submit your entries now at Tromadance’s Film Freeway page. It will be closed on June 20th. The submission is absolutely free. Tromadance will be held at the Pine Box Rock Shop from September 4th to 6th. 

https://filmfreeway.com/TromadanceFilmFestival

Intro music: WANDERLUST (Celest3 mix) by Celest3 - https://celest3.bandcamp.com/track/wanderlust-celest3-mix (CC BY-SA 4.0 - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)

Ad break music: Early Riser by Kevin MacLeod - https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Kevin_MacLeod/Best_of_2014_1461/Early_Riser (licensed under a Attribution 3.0 International License)

Ending music: Arizona Green Tea by Stuffy Doll - https://stuffydollband.bandcamp.com/track/arizona-green-tea (used it with a permission)

Narrator: Dom Valentini

Audio Editor: Jay Whang

Movies, shorts, and tv shows we have mostly discussed during the episode (spoilers ahead): 

Sources:

Rodriguez, R. (1996). Rebel without a crew: Or how a 23-year-old filmmaker with $7,000 became a Hollywood player. Plume.

Episode recorded: April 18th, 2026 (04/18/2026)

April is the Armenian American Heritage Month, this means Jay is going to talk about The Color of Pomegranates, that one Armenian movie he mentioned in last year’s Halloween Special. Before that, he invited two creatives of Armenian background - one is his close friend and another is a novelist who has his latest novel publishing soon. Mari Vial-Golden is a theatre actress while Joe Kassabian is a military history podcaster with his gunpowder fantasy novel The Highlands Burn soon coming out. By pure coincidence, The Color of Pomegranates is about a real-life ashugh Sayat-Nova, and the main character of The Highlands Burn is named Sayat. Before going into Sergei Parajanov’s tableau vivants movie, Jay is going to ask Joe about the inspirations behind his upcoming novel. After that, we will deep dive into Parajanov's filmography, his influences from illustrated manuscripts, Armenia’s rich animation culture, and whether The Highlands Burn would be considered as “the first Armenian anime”?

And sorry for Jay explaining the summary of these Armenian shorts poorly.

The Color of Pomegranates is currently distributed by Janus Films. It is now part of the Criterion Collection and available on video-on-demand, streaming, blu-ray, and DVD. 

Mari’s website: https://www.marivialgolden.com/

Joe Kassabian’s social media profile: https://bsky.app/profile/jkass99.bsky.social

Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast’s Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys

Pre-order Joe Kassabian’s The Highlands Burn: https://a.co/d/09pahrj0

Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/ReAnimateTHISPodcast

For inquiries: [email protected]

Some promotions, shout outs, and fundraising:

Scout Tafoya’s Stubborn Beast GoFundMe page: https://gofund.me/383ef7b6b

Link to the ticket page for the premiere of Ryan’s short Dork at the Coney Island Film Festival: 

https://www.coneyisland.com/2026-ciff/program-7

Link to the ticket page for the New York City screening of Hellavision Television’s CUNT-A-VISION 2.0: Fix Your Heart Or Die: 

https://restlessnites.com/events/hellavisioncuntavision21may2026

For info on more screenings of Hellavision Television’s CUNT-A-VISION 2.0: Fix Your Heart Or Die: 

https://www.hellavisiontelevision.com/episodes/cunt-a-vision-2-0-fix-your-hearts-or-die

https://www.hellavisiontelevision.com/links

ARMOR Coalition: https://www.instagram.com/armorcoalition/

The Garod Collective: https://www.instagram.com/garod_collective/

Arshak Makichyan: https://www.instagram.com/makichyan.arshak/

Warren Manvelyan: https://www.instagram.com/warren.manvelyan/

Anoush Ter Taulian:

https://www.instagram.com/anoushforjustice/

(for funds to help the displaced people of Artsakh): https://venmo.com/u/anoushforjustice

https://freearmenianprisoners.com/

For Vrej Khatchatyran’s education fund: https://donorbox.org/my-sweet-land-vrejs-fund

Intro music: WANDERLUST (Celest3 mix) by Celest3 - https://celest3.bandcamp.com/track/wanderlust-celest3-mix (CC BY-SA 4.0 - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)

Ad break music: Early Riser by Kevin MacLeod - https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Kevin_MacLeod/Best_of_2014_1461/Early_Riser (licensed under a Attribution 3.0 International License)

Ending music: Arizona Green Tea by Stuffy Doll - https://stuffydollband.bandcamp.com/track/arizona-green-tea (used it with a permission)

Narrator: Dom Valentini

Audio Editor: Jay Whang & Jessie Hymowitz

Movies, shorts, and tv shows we have mostly discussed during the episode (spoilers ahead):

Most of sources that I have cited:

Episode recorded: March 21st, 2026 (03/21/2026)

This is mostly a clip-less episode.

Jay and Ryan are back with talking about A Grand Mockery, an Australian movie shot with Super 8mm films and set in the city of Brisbane, Australia. From there on, they discuss Australian film industry, how feature films rarely shot on 8mm films, and what would be the New Yorker animation equivalent to it. In the midst of it, the movie's directors Sam Dixon and Adam C. Briggs enter in and tell the creative process and inspirations behind A Grand Mockery.

A Grand Mockery is currently distributed by Yellow Veil Pictures. It is now available on video-on-demand and blu-ray. You can purchase the physical copy on Vinegar Syndrome. 

Follow Adam and Sam on Instagram:

And also, please help our co-editor Jessie get her short film Affluenza funded: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aidanserviss/affluenza-a-satirical-short-film

And support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/ReAnimateTHISPodcast

Intro music: WANDERLUST (Celest3 mix) by Celest3 - https://celest3.bandcamp.com/track/wanderlust-celest3-mix (CC BY-SA 4.0 - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)

Ad break music: Early Riser by Kevin MacLeod - https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Kevin_MacLeod/Best_of_2014_1461/Early_Riser (licensed under a Attribution 3.0 International License)

Ending music: Arizona Green Tea by Stuffy Doll - https://stuffydollband.bandcamp.com/track/arizona-green-tea (used it with a permission)

Narrator: Dom Valentini

Audio Editor: Jay Whang

Movies, shorts, and works that we have discussed (spoilers ahead!):

Episode recorded: February 22nd, 2026 (02/22/2026)

Note: Yes, I made a typo on the thumbnail. And yes some of Brandyn's audio got muted out due to internet connection issue. It was too glitchy that I couldn't hear his explanation. 

Please support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/c/ReAnimateTHISPodcast

Black history month of February is coming to close and Brandyn of The Most Important Election of Our Lives is back with an Afro-futuristic cult classic movie Born in Flames, directed by Lizzie Borden. It was made during the No Wave Cinema movement right before the indie cinema boom of the 1990s.

What Jay and his animator co-host Ryan Castrillo didn’t expect was the NYC-set movie’s non-conformist storytelling and its surprisingly relevant political theme - and dare to confront the inherent flaws of democratic socialist alternative to then-recent Reagan’s America. To keep themselves warm during the massive blizzard in New York City, each of them share their hot takes and rebel against the conventional opinions (as long as it’s nothing problematic). Jay, Ryan, and Brandyn explore political media with non-conventional aesthetics, animated documentary with lo-fi elements, experimental animation with guerrilla filmmaking elements, and the possibility of animation media that’s rebellious inside-out. This episode was truly born in flames.

Also, check out Hellavision Television’s latest open-call C*NT-A-VISION 2: https://www.hellavisiontelevision.com/open-calls/cuntavision-2-open-call

Intro music: WANDERLUST (Celest3 mix) by Celest3 - https://celest3.bandcamp.com/track/wanderlust-celest3-mix (CC BY-SA 4.0 - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)

Ending music: Arizona Green Tea by Stuffy Doll - https://stuffydollband.bandcamp.com/track/arizona-green-tea (used it with a permission)

Narrator: Dom Valentini

Audio Editor: Jay Whang & Jessie Hymowitz

Movies, shorts, and works that we have discussed (spoilers ahead!):

Episode recorded: January 24th, 2026 (01/24/2026)

To start off the new season, we will be talking about a silent movie and perhaps the oldest movie we have discussed so far. Jay and his co-editor Jessie has invited Fritzi Kramer of Movies Silently, a blog that dedicates to researching silent movies, to discuss Georges Méliès, his famous short film A Trip to the Moon, his intentional colorization, Ted Turner's forced colorization that has led to the creation of National Film Registry, the early filmmaking of his era, the works of Winsor McCay, his legacy on the modern animation, The Great Train Robbery director Edwin S. Porter's live-action adaptation of McCay's Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, Porter's complicity to Topsy's electrocution, how the global filmmaking community connected with the inventor Thomas Edison, and whether Méliès's ideas would work better in the medium of animation.

And Jay has opened up a lot of cans of worms.

Because we are discussing silent movies, there are not much of audio clips. And Jay was too busy working on commissioned works that he was unable to finish the narration script, so there are no information narrations from Dom this time. Plus, we have discussed much about Georges Méliès, Winsor McCay, Edwin S. Porter, and Thomas Edison enough throughout the episode.

Intro music: WANDERLUST (Celest3 mix) by Celest3 - https://celest3.bandcamp.com/track/wanderlust-celest3-mix (CC BY-SA 4.0 - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)

Ending music: Arizona Green Tea by Stuffy Doll - https://stuffydollband.bandcamp.com/track/arizona-green-tea (used it with a permission)

Episode edited by Jay Whang

Movies that we have discussed throughout the episode (possible spoilers ahead):

Episode recorded: December 17th, 2025 (12/17/2025)

Jay invited most of the rotating co-hosts along with Brandyn to his apartment in Brooklyn and celebrate the New Year's Eve party. Those who couldn't make it have left their voice messages. From there on, they discuss various things, including what they are looking forward to next year.

Narration: Dom Valentini

Episode recorded: November 1st, 2025 (11/01/2025)

This episode is dedicated to Scout's grandmother Susann Tafoya (1937-2025). May she rest in peace. 

We have finally reached the season finale, so Jay and Meredith will be talking about another Lars von Trier movie to bookend the very first episode. Jay brought his former mentor at the City College of New York, Emmett Goodman, along with the past guest Scout Tafoya, who was also a cast member in Jay's previous work The Tragic End of Rodney & Madlyn U., which also starred Meredith, as last-minute minute guests. (However, Scout was only available temporarily due to a different commitment and left in the middle of the recording).

Check out Emmett Goodman's works: https://www.emmettgoodman.com/

Check out Scout Tafoya's The Unloved videos on RogerEbert.com: https://www.rogerebert.com/features/the-history-of-the-unloved

And Scout's Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/honorszombie

Together, we discussed Lars von Trier's Dogville, a 3-hours long idiosyncratic retelling of Bertolt Brecht's song Pirate Jenny set in an isolated American town with a very few props. We talked about the use of sexual violence as a narrative crutch, timelessness of American suburban facade , the surprisingly relevant politics regarding how the US today treats migrants and refugees, how von Trier applied Brecht's distancing effect, how to bring it into a medium of animation through mixed-media, and Lotte Reiniger's body of works. Jay wants an answer to the question that nobody has asked before: why there are only few animated works with a Brechtian distancing effect (Verfremdungseffekt)?

The original guest for this episode, Devon Manney, whose recent animated short The Wings was partially inspired from works of Bertolt Brecht, has backed out a day before the recording due to an emergency. That being said, Devon Manney agreed to answer some questions that Jay wanted to ask him on the show. Jay read Devon's responses during the podcast in regards to the possibility of using Brecht's distancing effect in animation (and why animation filmmakers don't use it often as live-action filmmakers). 

Please check out Devon's short The Wings: https://vimeo.com/1053227103?fl=pl&fe=sh

Movies, shorts, and tv shows we have mostly discussed during the episode (spoilers ahead):

Most of sources that I have cited:

Khoshniat, Ahmad. “Bertolt Brecht’s Soul in the Body of Experimental Animation: Common Audiovisual Strategies between Epic Theatre and Robert Breer’s Short Animations.” AVANCA | CINEMA, no. 13 (October 30, 2022). https://doi.org/10.37390/avancacinema.2022.a369.

Fox, Jesse David. “BoJack Horseman’s Raphael Bob-Waksberg on Why Puns Are like ‘math, Sex, and Comedy’ All in One.” Vulture, July 26, 2016. https://www.vulture.com/2016/07/bojack-horseman-has-so-many-puns.html.

Information segments narration: Dom Valentini

Note: We have faced some technical issues before, during, and after the recording. We recorded this episode while Brandyn was on his way back home and taking subways. You are about to hear some roughed audio quality.

Recording date: October 18th, 2025 (10/18/2025)

Brandyn from The Most Important Election of Our Lives is back for this Halloween special episode. We will be talking about one movie of Brandyn's choice, and it is Tarsem Singh's trippy psychological thriller The Cell, starring Jennifer Lopez, Vince Vaughn, and Vincent D'Onofrio. We have gone on several tangents, explored the theme of empathy, depiction of mental illness in the media, shoddy CGIs, talked about the Parajayan influences in Tarsem Singh's works, Meredith's love for the Brothers Quay, and more!

And special shout out to Bailey Wolfe! Listen to The Most Important Election of Our Lives podcast episode featuring her: https://podcasts.apple.com/bo/podcast/gunpla-vs-nato-regulations/id1793488824?i=1000723841922&l=en-GB

Movies & shorts that we have discussed (spoilers ahead!):

Information segments narration: Dom Valentini

Episode recorded: September 10th, 2025

The September 2025 slot was empty, so Jay and his another rotating co-host Dom filled that up by discussing the movie of the latter's choice - Alex Proyas’s film adaptation of James O’Barr’s indie comic book series of the same name The Crow (1994). 

From now on, we are inserting some scripted segments that give you some background information (about the movie’s summary, director’s biography, etc.). All of the segments are voiced by Dom Valentini himself.

We are going to discuss the 1994 movie starring the late Brandon Lee, that period of time when the city of Detroit was a common punchline, James O’Barr’s original comic book that was influenced by the tragic death of his loved one, the indie comic book scene, Marcell Jankovics’s poetic black-and-white animated shorts, his fascination with mythology, an adult animated movie that actually take the theme of violence seriously, and deconstructing all of the wasted potentials of the 2024 reboot.

And shout out to the Bad Princess Movies podcast!

https://badprincessmovies.podbean.com/

Additional credit: that audio clip (25:51) is from this youtube video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ysyZF-DZFY

Movies and short films that we will (mostly) be talking about (spoilers ahead!):

Into and Outro music: Scorpions sting by Celeste3

https://celest3.bandcamp.com/track/scorpions-sting

And please help her out: https://ko-fi.com/pupceleste

If you have questions, suggestions, or interested to be on the show, let Jay know: [email protected]

Episode recorded: August 10th, 2025

Jay and his co-editor Jessie Hymowitz invited Ali Khamseh, a Hammer Horror movie fan from Iran, and talked about three movies of his choice: the underappreciated Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004), and two Hammer Horror movies with the great Christopher Lee (The Devil Rides Out and The Gorgon). We talked about the unexpected genre materials from Iran, how Kerry Conran's tragic flop predicted both the blockbuster & low-budget filmmaking trends of the 2020s, the historical context of the old Hammer Horror movies, and the magic of stop-motion animation.

Movies that we will be (mostly) discussing:

Please follow Ali here (note: 88 in Ali's usernames meant the Persian calendar year of 1388 when he made his first email account):

His YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJOSmbfG5-nW79Q7I3OyyTw

His 2nd YouTube channel (AK88): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP37QXeEcOQ5vJpQKgnph1w

His Letterboxd account: https://letterboxd.com/AKhamseh88/

His Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/akhamseh88/

His own podcast: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/akhamseh88/

Audio Editor: Jay Whang & Jessie Hymowitz

Into and Outro music: Scorpions sting by Celeste3

https://celest3.bandcamp.com/track/scorpions-sting

And please help her out: https://ko-fi.com/pupceleste

If you have questions, suggestions, or interested to be on the show, let Jay know: [email protected]