Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. And sometimes we’re lucky enough to talk to the movie stars about their B-Sides.

The great Sam Rockwell joins us today to chat about his new film, Gore Verbinski's Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, as well as B-Sides like Lawn Dogs, Safe Men, Snow Angels, and The Winning Season. We marvel at the range Rockwell has, the sheer amount of films he’s made (big and small alike), and the line reads from the Martin McDonagh comedy Seven Psychopaths.

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. 

Today we celebrate Canadian greatness. We celebrate Rachel McAdams! Our B-Sides include The Lucky Ones, The Time Traveller's Wife, Passion, and Every Thing Will Be Fine. We also spend some time on The Hot Chick, and do a couple of Rachel McAdams-inspired quizzes at the top of the episode. It’s fun!

We talk about her new Sam Raimi movie Send Help. We reflect on McAdams’ stratospheric rise to stardom within the first few years (and films) of her career, that time she dated Ryan Gosling, and her many accents over the years. We also shout-out the sheer amount of great filmmakers she’s worked with over the years: Wes Craven, Ira Sachs, Woody Allen, Terrence Malick, Brian De Palma, Cameron Crowe, Antoine Fuqua, Tom McCarthy, Wim Wenders, Mark Osborne (animated), Sam Raimi, and Kelly Fremon Craig. That’s incredible!

There’s the limited amount of press she has done over the years (though this podcast episode is lovely, about her and her dear friend) and the fact that the hit movies she’s starred in throughout her career are mostly not made for movie theaters anymore. We speak to her comedy chops and her constant alignment with the directors she works with. She’s a pro! And finally, we show some appropriate respect to the Michael Sucsy-directed romance The Vow. The woman loves a movie wherein time is manipulated!

On a special 2025 wrap-up podcast, The Film Stage co-founder and editor-in-chief Jordan Raup is joined by managing editor and Emulsion host Nick Newman and The B-Side co-host Conor O'Donnell to discuss our favorite films of the year.

We also discuss our favorite first-viewings of the year, favorite documentaries, the most overrated and most overlooked films of 2025. Before signing off, we provide a look ahead at our most-anticipated films of 2026, plus a few films coming this year we've already seen to have on your radar.

On the episode, we also discuss The Film Stage's Top 50 Films of 2025: https://thefilmstage.com/the-film-stages-top-50-films-of-2025/

The Film Stage's 100 Most-Anticipated Films of 2026: https://thefilmstage.com/the-100-most-anticipated-films-of-2026-part-one

And more of our year-end features: https://thefilmstage.com/tag/best-of-2025/

Thanks for listening all year long, and stay tuned for more conversations!

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.

Today we discuss America’s everyman and one of its most indelible movie stars: James Stewart!

Our returning guest is our dear friend Mitchell Beaupre, Head of Editorial at Letterboxd and our B-Sides today include Vivacious Lady, You Gotta Stay Happy, No Highway in the Sky, The Far Country, and Fools' Parade.

We debate what it is exactly that made Stewart so relatable and endearing to millions, we marvel at his WWII service and how it affected his on-screen demeanor, and we acknowledge that even though he starred in dozens of westerns most people still remember him better as George Bailey from It’s a Wonderful Life.

Mitchell, Conor, and I discuss the incredible films he made with Anthony Mann, the late pictures he made with Andrew V. McLaglen, and the early starring roles in his career.

We also mention how he was one of the most reliable box office stars over decades, a legendary ladies man in his younger days, and a staunch conservative throughout his life.

There’s also the already-infamous trailer for the forthcoming James Stewart biopic. Wow, does it look bad!

Listen below and subscribe here. Be sure to give us a follow on Bluesky at @tfsbside.bsky.social. Enjoy!

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie directors! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.

Today we celebrate filmmaker James L. Brooks! His new movie Ella McKay is in theaters now!

Our returning guest is very good friend Adam Drosin, and together we are The Brooks Brothers. Our B-Sides today are I’ll Do Anything (musical cut included), Spanglish, and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

We discuss Brooks’ impossibly successful career as a producer of both film and television, his keen eye for talent (his support of superb filmmaker Kelly Fremon Craig), and, of course, his reckoning with failure.

There’s also the recipe for that sandwich in Spanglish, Julia Roberts’ feelings about Nick Nolte on the set of I Love Trouble (which came out the same year as I’ll Do Anything, a rough year for Nolte professionally), and that Gracie Films fanfare. We also give The Critic some deserved love.

We ponder the editing choices in Brooks’ 2010 debacle How Do You Know and celebrate his acting in the masterpiece Modern Romance (directed by Albert Brooks!). Cinematographer John Seale also said in an interview that the movie he shot that he used the most film on was Spanglish!

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.

Today we talk about someone who played Bond, James Bond, and Blanc, Benoit Blanc. It’s Daniel Craig!

Our returning guest is the great Gavin Mevius, co-host of both The Mixed Reviews Podcast and The Q Division on Glitterjaw.

Our B-Sides today include The Mother, Enduring Love, The Golden Compass, and Cowboys & Aliens. We also spend some time on The Invasion.

We remember the controversy of Craig’s being blonde and being cast as Bond (silly!), as well as the early roles he took on before our B-Sides. There’s conversation on the films of Roger Michell and if he really is some version of Mike Leigh lite. There’s also an earnest debate about which film is worse: The Golden Compass or Cowboys & Aliens?

Mild shock takes hold as we three recall both that HBO did in fact make FULL THREE SEASONS of His Dark Materials (!) and the somewhat disingenuous, cash-grabby way Cowboys & Aliens came to be.

One of the many special things in Train Dreams, directed by Clint Bentley, is the production design. Nearly every element of each setting feels like it was just sitting there, waiting to be captured. Of course, this is not the case. It was meticulously, carefully planned and built. The Film Stage's Dan Mecca was lucky and honored to speak with Alexandra Schaller, the film’s production designer, about the agonies and ecstasies of bringing Train Dreams to life, as well as some earlier, accomplished work in her career.

Additional thanks to Schaller, who provided The Film Stage access to mood boards and behind-the-scenes photos from the project.

Explore here: https://thefilmstage.com/train-dreams-production-designer-alexandra-schaller-on-finding-beauty-in-the-land-and-making-small-films-feel-big/

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie directors! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.

Today we discuss Richard Linklater! He’s an American indie legend who we recently just spoke to! With two new films out here at the end of 2025 (Blue Moon and Nouvelle Vague), we discuss his B-Sides: SubUrbia, The Newton Boys, Me and Orson Welles, and Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood.

Our guest is Ryland Aldrich, our dear friend, an accomplished producer and experienced writer on film, as well as the creator of FYCit App,“the number one smartphone app for awards voters and guild members to find awards screenings, events, and content for all the season’s top contenders.”

Conor, Ryland, and I dig into our love for Linklater, the highs and lows of his long, accomplished career, and his continued improvement as a stylist.

We debate Ethan Hawke’s chances of getting an Oscar nomination for his Blue Moon performance, the lasting cultural relevance of School of Rock, and Orson Welles’ famous response to a question about Elia Kazan many years ago.

There’s also mention of the Mercury Theater’s famous 1938 broadcast of “The War of the Worlds,” the documentary Chasing Chasing Amy, and those real-life clips of The Newton Boys.

A world-cinema fixture who's earned the support of Martin Scorsese, M. Night Shyamalan, Olivier Assayas, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Béla Tarr, Claire Denis, Christian Petzold, Tilda Swinton, and Ryusuke Hamaguchi––among many others––Carlo Chatrian reshaped the festival landscape with his work as artistic director of the Locarno Film Festival and Berlinale, his influence such that an abdication of his position at the latter in 2023 caused an honest-to-God outcry.

He is now serving as director of the National Cinema Museum in Turin and, for the last couple weeks, also acted as head of the international competition jury at the Tokyo International Film Festival. While we were both there, I sought the opportunity to ask him about these responsibilities, and found myself engaged in a rigorous serious conversation about where he sees cinema culture at the moment, where it might be headed, and––amidst all this––reasons to be hopeful.

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie directors! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. 

Today we discuss David Cronenberg, one of the truly great Canadian geniuses and the filmmaker credited with the advent of “body horror” (a distinction he bristles against, for what it’s worth). Our B-Sides today include Fast Company, The Brood, M. Butterfly, and Spider. Our guest today is the incomparable Veronica Fitzpatrick, professor at Brown University and Editor-at-Large and Podcast Co-Host at Bright Wall/Dark Room. 

We talk about how handsome Oliver Reed is in The Brood, how Cronenberg’s films often start with a bang, how misguided M. Butterfly is, and how Fast Company was, in fact, a movie directed by David Cronenberg. There’s talk of his novel Consumed, his multiple collaborations with certain great performers like Jeremy Irons, and his incredible, intellectual mind. This is a man who has adapted Stephen King, William Burroughs, Don DeLillo, J.G. Ballard, and Patrick McGrath. What range!

There’s the real-life French diplomat on which M. Butterfly is based, as well as the metatextual nature of both Cronenberg’s adaptation of David Henry Hwang and his later picture A Dangerous Method. It’s Cronenberg taking stock of the psychology of his own films! Fascinating. Veronica mentions B.D. Wong’s Tony speech, we all marvel at the fact that Adrian Lyne remade Lolita (with Jeremy Irons!) in 1997 and it barely got a release! There’s a lot in here! Happy Halloween!