Be thankful we did your Gladiator II homework, rewatching Ridley Scott’s Gladiator 1 (2000) with amateur Russell Crowe historian Blake Howard.

This is a Gladiator II-spoiler-free conversation: listen as we get into Crowe kissing disembodied feet, Scott’s world-building, the technology of acting, Oliver Reed’s digitized face (RIP), is anything better than practical effects, expressionism vs. historical accuracy, and more. Gladiator: a good movie.

Further reading: here’s Gladiator cinematographer John Mathieson on returning to the sequel after 24 years.

The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman, produced by Eli Sands, and edited by Buczar. Our theme music is composed by Chad.

This episode is sponsored by Galerie: a new kind of film club. BW/DR listeners can sign up for 3 months of free access to essays, curated film lists, live screenings, and more at join.galerie.com.

You can find every issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room here. Holy trinity: please give us a follow, rate the pod, give a review. We’re on Bluesky at @BWDR and @BWDRPod, and welcome feedback & inquiries at [email protected].

This month’s mini-episode takes us into the rich opening sequence of a pick curated by director Andrew Haigh: Nicolas Roeg’s Venetian nightmare, Don’t Look Now .

We get into Graeme Clifford’s expressionist editing, celebrating movies for grownups, the color red, non-chronology, grief, and what lies “beyond the fragile geometry of space.”

--

The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman, produced by Eli Sands, and edited by Buczar. Our theme music is composed by Chad.

This episode is sponsored by Galerie, a new kind of film club. BW/DR listeners can sign up for 3 months of free access to Galerie's curated film lists, essays, live screenings & more at join.galerie.com.

This holiday season, we're revisiting last year's holiday special: an audio essay of one of the most popular articles we've every published on the site: Ethan Warren's ⁠A Grand Yuletide Theory: The Muppet Christmas Carol is the Best Adaptation of A Christmas Carol⁠.

Written and read by ⁠Ethan⁠ himself, with holiday music from ⁠Ryan Pollie⁠.

(Originally aired December 17, 2023)

--

We'll be back later this month with two brand new pods, but in the meantime:

Happy Holidays from ⁠Bright Wall/Dark Room⁠!

--

This episode is sponsored by ⁠Galerie⁠, a new kind of film club. BW/DR listeners can sign up for three months of free access to Galerie by using this special link.

On this special mega episode, co-host Veronica sits down with critic ⁠Fran Hoepfner⁠ and our producer Eli Sands to postmortem the 62nd New York Film Festival. This is a mainly spoiler-free conversation!

We get into: Hard Truths, Caught by the Tides, Nickel Boys, April, Harvest, The Brutalist, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, The Shrouds, Queer, Maria, Stranger Eyes, Eephus, I’m Still Here, Anora, The Room Next Door, one stray line about Misericordia, plus: wife guy directors, the surveillance motif, doing Mike Leigh homework, critic versus public screenings, do we need subtitles to understand Scottish accents, stop describing Brutalist as monumental, are movies too long, Almodóvar’s secret to killing it at Q&A, what lipstick is Mikey wearing in Anora, and more.

Further reading and listening: Fran’s ⁠NYFF report⁠ for Bright Wall/Dark Room and her incredible ⁠piece on Dick Pope⁠, and more of Eli on the festival at ⁠Deep Cut⁠. Find Fran online at ⁠Fran Mag⁠, ⁠Twitter⁠, and ⁠Letterboxd⁠.

--

The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by⁠ Veronica Fitzpatrick⁠ and⁠ Chad Perman⁠, produced by⁠ Eli Sands⁠, and edited by ⁠Buczar⁠. Our theme music is composed by Chad.

Please: follow, rate, review!

Find all 135 issues of Bright Wall/Dark Room at ⁠brightwalldarkroom.com⁠ (and be sure to check out our upcoming November issue, Neo-Noir 2024). We’re on Twitter (@BWDR and @TheBWDRPodcast), ⁠Bluesky⁠, and ⁠Letterboxd⁠, and welcome feedback and ad/sponsorship inquiries at ⁠[email protected]⁠.

--

This episode is sponsored by ⁠⁠Galerie⁠⁠: a new kind of film club. Listeners can currently sign up for three months of full access to essays, curated film lists, live screenings and much more at ⁠⁠join.galerie.com⁠⁠.

This month’s mini-episode takes us into one of costume designer Sophie de Rakoff’s curated picks: Irvin Kershner’s The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978), an American giallo with style to spare. We get into Faye Dunaway’s scream, POV in horror, how this is Helmut Newton x John Carpenter, the ethics of glamorizing suffering, and, yes, the clothes.

--

The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman, produced by Eli Sands, and edited by Buczar. Our theme music is composed by Chad.

This episode is sponsored by Galerie, a new kind of film club. BW/DR listeners can sign up for three full months of free access to curated film lists, essays, live screenings and more here.

This whole episode is a trap. In it, we join Josh Hartnett scholar and The Film Stage gentleman Dan Mecca to dissect the ins and outs of M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap.

We talk about: baby bangs, Hartnett always being a little bit weird, the tooth gap, Sleeping with the Enemy’s hand towels, auteur theory, one good part in The Village, Hayley Mills on the walkie-talkie, and more.

Further reading: Dan’s interview with Hartnett for Film Stage, Nicholas Russell’s M. Night Shyamalan essay for BWDR, and you can even run it back to Dan’s first-ever The B-Side episode on Hartnett himself.

---

The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman, produced by Eli Sands, and edited by Buczar. Our theme music is composed by Chad.

You can find all 134 issues of Bright Wall/Dark Room, including our most recent issue on Spike Lee, at brightwalldarkroom.com. Please help us find more ears: follow, rate, comment, leave us a review!

This episode is sponsored by ⁠Galerie⁠: a new kind of film club. Listeners can sign up for 3 full months of free access to curated film lists & streaming films, essays, live screenings and much more at ⁠join.galerie.com⁠.

Inspired by the curation of costume designer ⁠Sophie de Rakoff⁠, this month we're taking a loving look at the gear-shifting, hybrid charms of Jonathan Demme's screwball noir, Something Wild—and the Ray Liotta entrance that changes everything.

--

This episode is sponsored by Galerie, a new kind of film club. BW/DR listeners can now sign up for 3 months of free access here.

Joining us this month: Blank Check co-host & staff writer at The Atlantic, David Sims!

In summer’s last gasp, we go back to a flashpoint of summer blockbuster season: Jan de Bont’s 1996 Twister, plus its legacy in Twisters (Lee Isaac Chung, 2024), epic ensemble casting, craving movies about grown-ups, Hollywood’s dangerous brunettes, why not kissing at the airport matters, whether anyone votes in the world of Twisters, cinema sequences and storm spectatorship, Daisy Edgar Jones’s accent work, and the Spielberg touch.

Stuff we reference: Jan de Bont in conversation with Tim Grierson, and Lee Isaac Chung on the Twisters ending.

The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands. Our theme music is composed by Chad.

---

This episode is sponsored by ⁠Galerie⁠, a new kind of film club featuring curated films, original articles and interviews, and interactive live events. BW/DR listeners can now sign up for three full months of free access to Galerie through ⁠this special link⁠.

Chad goes full dad in this mini-episode on Richard Linklater’s 2014 coming-of-age epic Boyhood. Specifically, the plural meanings of Patricia Arquette’s anguished move-out speech, and why raising children to lead their own lives is a bittersweet success.

The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands. Our theme music is composed by Chad.

---

This episode is sponsored by Galerie, where you can join Veronica & Chad for a watch party this Sunday, August 18 at 3pm ET/12pm PT. We'll be hosting a viewing of Olivier Assayas' ⁠Clouds of Sils Maria⁠, with live commentary and conversation, and would love to have you stop by and say hello!

(BW/DR listeners can currently sign up for three months of free access to Galerie ⁠here⁠.)

Welcome back to the pod Carrie Courogen, author of Miss May Does Not Exist: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood’s Hidden Genius out now from St. Martin’s Press.

Carrie joins us to discuss Elaine May’s The Heartbreak Kid (1972), her honeymoon horror film co-starring May’s daughter Jeannie Berlin and Charles Grodin as doomed newlyweds and Cybill Shepherd as the coed for whom Grodin’s Lenny quite literally risks it all.

Further reading: here’s Chad’s interview with Carrie in the June 2024 issue. BW/DR did its own Elaine May issue back in September 2019, where you can find the genesis of Carrie’s May scholarship along with Ethan Warren on The Heartbreak Kid, and Veronica on May’s first feature, A New Leaf. 

The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands. Our theme music is composed by Chad. 

Find every issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room at brightwalldarkroom.com. Podcast-wise, we appreciate your ratings and reviews. We’re on Twitter @BWDR and @TheBWDRPodcast, and welcome feedback and inquiries at [email protected].

This episode is sponsored by Galerie, a new kind of film club featuring curated films, original content, and live events. BW/DR listeners can now sign up for three months of free access at https://join.galerie.com⁠.