***I don't like doing disclaimers on episodes and this one isn't totally filthy or anything but there is some explicit dialogue in the film that we discuss, so if you listen in the car with other people or whatever, you've been warned***

"This is the way the world ends. Not with a whimper, but with a bang."

There are a handful of movies that I've specifically wanted to cover on the show from the very beginning and today we're checking a big one off of the list. Richard Kelly blew up on the scene with his debut feature Donnie Darko. It was a massive cult hit that earned him the attention and favor of both audiences and filmmakers. So much so that he was allowed to make one of the wildest (complimentary) movies of the aughts, with an absolutely stacked cast of stars like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Sean William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Mandy Moore, and Justin Timberlake as well as several SNL alumni (and Will Sasso). The plot of the film is hard to convey briefly (thought Kev does a wonderful job at the top of our discussion) but suffice it to say it's about post 9/11 America and the ways we may destroy ourselves.

Joining us for this discussion are Kev and Anna Ghoul from the phenomenal new podcast Laurie Strode Trap House, a show about friendship and horror in the 21st century. Go check the out!

Blah blah blah follow or subscribe to the show so new episodes pop on your feed and hit the 5 star button if you think we deserve it!

Substantive Cinema Letterboxd List

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Hey there, we intended to get this episode published last month but life and *waves hands at everything going on in the US* got in the way. HOWEVER! This was an encouraging conversation and a great way to orient ourselves as we kick off a new year under an oppressive, malicious, and very dumb empire.

Kat Armas is is a Cuban American writer, speaker, and theologian from Miami, FL. She holds a ThM from Vanderbilt Divinity School, and a dual MDiv and MAT from Fuller Theological Seminary where she was awarded the Frederick Buechner Award for Excellence in Writing. She is also a very thoughtful writer and a great hang. Topics included on this episode:

• The way Empire trades mystery and memory for conformity
• Her book dedication on LfRE
• Advent and how the Incarnation relates to what she's been thinking and writing about lately
• Her love of reading and horror movies
• and MORE!

Check out her upcoming stops on her book tour and take some friends to see her when she's in your area!

Buy Liturgies For Resisting Empire (30% off & Free Shipping rn!)

Listen on Libby through your local library

Shoutouts:

The Correspondents

Tell Me Everything

Alien series

Small Things Like These

Children of Men

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Website

Substack

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They said it couldn't be done but here we are, getting in our Christmas episode riiiiight before the big day!

A few years ago Alexander Payne's The Holdovers made a big splash and became an instant Christmas classic to many. The film follows professor Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) as he is forced to look after the students without anywhere to go over Christmas break. Through a series of events he bonds with a talented but mischievous student played by Dominic Sessa, in an incredible debut performance, and the school's head cook (Da'Vine Joy Randolph) who just lost her son.

Joining us for this conversation is friend of the show Marta Djordjevic. We cover many things including:

• Dream Criterion Collection titles
• The beauty of New England in the winter
• How Payne and cinematographer Eigil Bryld masterfully evoke 1970s cinema
• The way the whole film is shaped by the underlying realities of class, race, and economic disparity
• Layers of meaning that are revealed in repeat viewings
• How funny the movie is
• and MORE!

We hope you enjoy the film and our discussion! If you do, be sure to tell a friend 😃

List of Substantive Cinema Episodes

Watch along with us on Letterboxd and tag your reviews "substantive cinema" so that we can se them and engage with them on future episodes!

Shoutouts:

Malpertuis

La Vie De Boheme

The Timekeepers of Eternity

Highest 2 Lowest

Open Throat by Henry Hoke

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Rewind and Revive

Recent Projection Booth Episode

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Enjoy this feed drop from earlier this year when host Philip Marinello joined Mike White and Robert Bellissimo on The Projection Booth to talk about the underseen Palme d'Or winning 1962 film O Pagador de Promessas.

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"Do you read Sutter Cane?!"

We're back in your feeds with another underrated banger from one of the all time Masters of Horror™. John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness is an absolute thrill ride and since Arrow Video has released what we hear is a gorgeous new 4K we figured it was time talk about one of his best (and most slept on) movies.

We are excited to be joined by Derrick (simi.views on all the socials) for his first appearance on the show as he's beginning to really get into Carpenter's work. When we just saw him log this highly on Letterboxd we thought this was a perfect fit and we weren't wrong as this was a wonderful conversation!

On this episode we discuss:

• Our journeys so far with Carpenter's work
• Physical media we have been enjoying lately
• The state of film scholarship in the age of social media
• How JC's less is more approach to showing the overt horrors here was so effective
• Sam Neill's perfect casting
• The power of the film despite its memeification
• How Carpenter's work feels more powerful year after year
• and MORE!

Substantive Cinema Episode List

Shoutouts:

Tsukamoto Box Set

Kotoko

Cloud

The Cat

Breathe In, Bleed Out

Takeout (Tubi, sponsor the show!)

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We are back! Had big plans for Spooky Season this year but health, vehicle nonsense, family, and general exhaustion at the state of things in the US had other plans. It was an absolute pleasure talking with Clark Collis about his new book Screaming and Conjuring on the last episode and to follow it up we've brought back an incredible guest and we're diving back into the work of one of the undisputed Masters of Horror™.

A few years ago we covered Romero's debut film and foundational masterpiece The Night of the Living Dead with Filmspotting's Josh Larsen. Romero's Dead movies are something we'd like to revisit sometime here at The Substance but today we're looking at a long hidden gem from early in his career that only recently became widely available, The Amusement Park.

Commissioned by The Lutheran Society of Western Pennsylvania as a PSA on the perils of aging in America (especially as a non wealthy White), Romero decided to boldly make the project his own and instead of an after school special with talking heads discussing the difficulties that our senior neighbors face, he turned in something surreal and terrifying. With minimal dialogue the film conjures up the horrors of aging in an individualistic capitalist society: steep economic cost, difficulties with transportation, not being taken seriously by the general public, red tape accessing medical care, predatory assisted living facilities, and more. It's not a fun time but it's a visceral experience and one that stirs up questions worth asking related to what we owe to our more elderly neighbors.

And we are delighted to be joined by Dale_A from the Bat & Spider podcast. Next time we have him back for something more uplifting!

Substantive Cinema List

Shoutouts:

John Carpenter soundtracks

True Indie by Don Coscarelli

Bat & Spider Episode #250 Phantasm Extravaganza

One Cut of the Dead

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Happy Spooky Season, all! We're kicking off our October programming this year with a bang and covering two of our favorite things: horror movies and beautiful hardcover books.

Clark Collis is a British entertainment journalist and a long time senior writer for Entertainment Weekly along with being a regular contributor to other outlets covering film. He's also a life long horror fan. Modern horror cinema is in a fascinating place and in his new book, Screaming and Conjuring, Clark charts the period of horror cinema that immediately preceeds our current time (from Scream to The Conjuring) to chart the course of how we got here and what we may expect going forward. In our conversation we cover:

• The life of an entertainment journalist when that was a valued position
• Clark learning about Tommy Wiseau's The Room on a day trip with Tim & Eric
• The BFI library's impressive Fangoria collection
• How the DVD boom was big business (and a precurser to many film podcasts)
• "Is horror finished/back?"
• Familiar vs Fresh in relation to horror premises
• Don Coscarelli and the lovely legacy of Phantasm
• Lionsgate becoming the horror powerhouse of the aughts
• Meeting the real Warrens & Annabelle
• and MORE!

Substantive Cinema Episode List

Buy Clark's books!

You've Got Red on You

Screaming and Conjuring

Shoutouts:

Shaun of the Dead

The Descent

Barbarian

Weapons

The Chucky series

Follow Clark:

Instagram

Entertainment Weekly

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Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver & Raging Bull are widely considered two of the best films of their era that were made in America. He and Robert DeNiro were a powerhouse creative team and they're still considered one of the all-time great collaborations in the history of the medium. This makes it curious that the film that they made together in between these monumental classics, 1977's New York, New York, has been largely forgotten and left out of the conversation.

We're seeking to remedy that with our episode this week and we are happy to be joined by film enthusiast and historian Jim Hemphill. Jim has loved the film since he saw as a young film student and he brings some wonderful and personal insights to the discussion.

In the episode we cover:

• Why directors and actors are often poor judges of their own work
• Jim's early days in LA and getting to meet folks like Samuel Fuller, Billy Wilder, Budd Boetticher, and Blake Edwards
• The power of laserdiscs (and physical media in general) to develop and nurture generations of movie lovers
• Marty's balance of strengths in having the talents of a classical studio director alongside the passions of an independent auteur
• The fact that NYNY may be Scorsese's only film (beyond his "faith trilogy") where the protagonist experiences genuine growth
• And more!

Buy New York, New York Limited Edition Blu-Ray

Substantive Cinema Episode List

Jim's IndieWire article on NYNY

Blu-ray Commentaries with Jim and his wife: The Golden Child and Navy Seals

Shoutouts:

The Smashing Machine

One Battle After Another

Dexter: Resurrection

Follow Jim:

Instagram

IndieWire

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It's been a crazy week, so the show notes will be short and sweet.

Brian Recker is a public theologian, has a new book on Hell coming out at the end of the month, and I had a great time talking with him. In our conversation we cover:

• Our mutual love of movies (and solo theater visits)
• The extremely conservative colleges we attended
• Hell as a foundational principle
• Coercive, fear based spirituality
• Keeping up relationships with family with whom we disagree
• Progressive purity tests
• Men's Fall fashion
• And MORE!

We hope you enjoy the episode. If you do, tell a friend!

Pre-Order Hell Bent (and DM your receipt to Brian for some cool preorder bonuses!)

Shoutouts:

Splitsville

A Rebellion of Care

Wrong Turns podcast

Grave Conversations

Andor

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When Netflix first expanded from being a mail order DVD/Blu-ray service to starting a streaming video service, it was revolutionary. They had top creators making movies and television series and had a wonderfully full library of titles to offer. Then Amazon Prime, Hulu, AMC+, Disney+, Paramount+, Peacock, the many variations of HBO, and more came and the selections of any single given service was severely diminished (Tubi & Kanopy, we love you! Sponsor the show 😉). With costs going up and our collective attention spans diminishing, this is not a recipe for a thriving culture. It's also not a sustainable business model.

To talk about these topics and more, we are joined today by Jeff Rauseo. Jeff is a content creator in the film community who is a passionate advocate of physical media and has written the new book Lost in the Stream: How Algorithms Redefined the Way Movies Are Made and Watched.

In our conversation we discuss:

• Early memories of physical media
• Video store culture (Blockbuster, etc)
• Seeing Jaws at formative ages
• The theatrical life of a movie now vs. when we were younger
• How great dollar theaters were
• Studios now making disposable content
• The 2,000 some local theaters lost during COVID

• How repertoire cinema and local film communities will be the way forward

• And MORE!

If you enjoy the show, please consider following on your platform of choice and sharing it with a friend!

Buy Lost in the Stream

Shoutotus:

Andor (Disney+)

Bring Her Back

Snipe Hunter (Tyler Childers)

The Black Parade (My Chemical Romance)

Last Pod on the Left

Full Moon set

Arrow TMNT

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