The Intermission

The Intermission is back with another episode. Returning special guest Barry joins Dodi in the second chair to talk about the resurgence of the MCU with Deadpool and Wolverine. They break down the third Deadpool movie, its meta humour, and all its cameos while bidding a permanent goodbye to the Fox era of Marvel movies, and a tentative goodbye to Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Finally, they talk about...

What a lovely day, what a lovely lovely day! Grab yourself a pint of aqua-cola and settle down... Witness us, as we beam this episode straight from the gates of Valhalla. It's Mad Max time at the Intermission podcast! Dodi and Nitin dive into the entire (actual) Saga of George Miller's steampunk dystopia, where revenge, retribution and coolth co-exist in the wastelands. We talk about all f...

After a long hiatus, The Intermission is back to celebrate 25 years of The Matrix. Morpheus said "No one can tell you what The Matrix is", but Nitin and Dodi give it a shot with the help of friend-of-the-pod Barry the Baadu-shah making his first live appearance. Barry tells us who Neo is to him; Dodi explains why Keanu is the Andre Agassi of Hollywood; and Nitin posits his theory on why...

Enter the world of Dune with Dodi and special guest Ronak Gupta. First, Dodi and Ronak fanboy about their shared admiration for Denis Villeneuve; they talk about Denis' visual storytelling and his penchant for using sound as a storytelling device. They then enter the world of Arrakis and Dune, revisiting the first film, before jumping into the latest entry in the franchise. Dodi and Ronak trac...

Ahead of the Academy Award weekend, Nitin and Dodi do a quick run through of the top categories and nominees and pick their favourites. Oppie or Barbie? Poor Things or Past Lives? Or is this the year of the underdog, ie Anatomy of the Fall? Tune in to find out what we think about the top nominations, as well as what we think about the Oscars itself. Find us wherever you get your podcasts, includin...

Nitin and Dodi look back at podcasting as a medium and where it is now. They talk about how their first experiences as podcast consumers and and trace their journey to becoming afficionados (addicts?). Nitin laments the loss of his favourite podcast - Heavyweight, and they try to unpack what brought us to this sad juncture. Nitin and Dodi rant about the big bad wolf of podcasting, and provide some...

A Happy New Year to all our loyal Intermissionaries ;-) Dodi and Nitin welcome a new panelist, Videep Vijay Kumar to the pod, and look back at the highs of 2023. The groundrule was that each panelist would come in with a top 3, and as expected rules go for a toss. Videep makes a prolific debut, with eclectic catch-all picks (one of his picks is a month - go figure), and stuffing each of them with...

Fargo returns after 3 years, and it feels like it's been just as long since The Intermission dropped an episode. Nitin and Dodi enter the Fargiverse, starting with the Coen brothers movie that first took us to Fargo, North Dakota. They also go into a detailed discussion about the multiple seasons of the TV show, where creator Noah Hawley recycles, resuses, and repurposes plot elements across s...

The smashin success of Shah Rukh Khan's latest gets Naren and Nitin to come back with an episode barely a week after their last one. And finally, an episode of this podcast that passes the Bechdel Test! Divya Rolla and Arya Bharath make their Intermission debuts, and hit the ground running with truckloads of Shah Rukh fan-girling. The gang contextualises Shah Rukh's resurgence, compares Ja...

Naren and Nitin are back, and to make up for lost time, here is a bonanza episode in which they review four movies from the summer! Like Ethan Hunt taking on everything wrong with the world... Like Greta Gerwig packing way too much commentary into a fun film... Like Christopher Nolan, iMAXing the freckles on Cillian Murphy's face king size... Like Rajnikanth and friends gamely donning increasi...

Naren and Nitin are joined by returning cast member Mithun Sundar for a fully loaded, all-guns blazing review of John Wick: Chapter 4, followed by a sprawling retrospective of the entire John Wick saga. The gang discusses threadbare the framework and set-up of the rules binding Wick-verse, and the escalating scope of action choreography through the progress of the series. Also on the pod - a disse...

It's a s***show at the f*** factory as The Intermission gears up for the final season of HBO's Succession. The latest episode charts the ups and downs of the Roy clan and the various parasites and leeches that cling on to them for sustenance. Nitin and Dodi talk through the first three seasons of Succession, and list their favourite actors and characters on the show. They debate whether Su...

As everyone winds down from Valentine's Day, The Intermission explores love in all its forms with genre-bending epic Everything Everywhere All At Once. Nitin and Dodi go deep into the multiverse to suss out what the Daniels are trying to say about choices, what-ifs, rocks and Raccacoonies. They trace the Daniels evolution from music videos to features and rave about Ke Huy Quan's fanny pack. Nitin...

The Intermission is back, baby! After a leisurely year-end break, Nitin and Dodi return with a breakdown of Golden Globe winner Naatu Naatu from RRR composed by M M Keeravani (or is M M Kareem or Maradagamani?). They then take a trip down memory lane to another seminal dance number from the 90s - Prabhu Deva's Pettai Rap. For the first time, we have a guest on the podcast - Mithun Sundar joins the...

Strap in for a mega-episode of The Intermission as Nitin and Dodi look back at the year gone by, and rank their Top 5 movies and TV shows of 2022. Dodi plays fast and loose with the inherent limitations of a Top 5 list, and Nitin fills in his watchlist till... 2026. A strategic miscalculation by both Nitin and Dodi leads to the on-air creation of a new category outside the Top 5 and (numerous) Hon...

Given our hosts have strong Chennai connections, it's a surprise that it took us this long to do an episode on Rajnikanth, but here we are! The Superstar turns 72 on Dec 12, and The Intermission dives deeeeep into the Rajniverse, celebrating the legend in style. This episode touches upon multiple facets of the Rajni story - the humble origins, the early years, the storied rivalry and friendship wi...

The Black Panther lives! Returning director Ryan Coogler and the Marvel machinery have to find a way to take the story of Wakanda forward after the sudden death of their T'Challa, Chadwick Boseman. It's an impossible task, but they do it with grace and respect; honouring and celebrating Boseman's life. Nitin and Dodi talk the Black Panther's arc from his introduction in Captain America: Civil War...

It's extremely tough to make a movie about African-American women, and it's extremely tough to make an action movie around women. Gina Prince-Bythewood manages these incredible feats with The Woman King, which is a darned good movie, with a whole new grammar to action choreography, and also serves as a compelling footnote in the legacy of Afro-futurism. Dodi and Nitin rabbit-hole deep into the bea...

Is the Bollywood boycott down to the quality of movies? Or is it a coordinated agenda against a particular type of creativity and creator? Following Samanth Subramanian's deeply reported New Yorker piece on the subject, Dodi and Nitin go deep into the issue, and what it means for freedom of expression, and more importantly, what it says about the power of a weaponised internet. And despite the ser...

This episode features a compare-and-contrast between the Hindi and Tamil versions of Pushkar-Gayatri's Vikram Vedha, and a commentary on mass moments and stylised super slow-mos in Indian movies - do they help or hinder? Also, a discussion on Vijay Sethupathi's career trajectory in the time that has elapsed between the two versions of the movie, and the surfeit of multi-starrers in Tamil cinema. P...

In Part 2 of the Quentin Tarantino discussion, Nitin breaks down the many Pulp Fiction references in Breaking Bad, and Dodi talks about how Quentin uses his platform to promote other filmmakers and goes off on a tangent about Bong Joon-Ho. As they go down into the rabbithole, they find a way to talk about Top Gun, K S Ravikumar, Kamal Haasan, and even Rajini’s iconic cigarette flicking move. Come...

On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the release of Reservoir Dogs, Nitin and Dodi go deep into the life and times of Quentin Tarantino, and his dazzling career. Isn't it fitting that a QT retrospective is available in two chapters (or should we say volumes)! The first part of this conversation covers QT the director vs QT the writer, thoughts on Quentin’s chapter approach, and the distincti...