The Projection Booth

#Shocktober2019 continues with a look at the 1980 film from director Vernon Zimmerman, Fade to Black. The film stars Dennis Christopher as Eric Binford, a youth who spends too much of his time watching and obsessing about movies. Unfortunately, Eric’s a little mentally unstable thanks in part to his family which consists of his harridan Aunt Stella. Heather Drain and Bill Ackerman join Mike to dis...

On this special episode, Maurice Bursztynski and David Kettridge join Mike to discuss the 1980 film Die Laughing. It stars Robbie Benson as Pinsky -- a cab driver by day and folk singer/songwriter by night who gets involved in a web of international intrigue when a secret-bearing monkey comes into his life. Director Jeff Werner and co-star Carel Struycken share their experiences working on the fil...

On this special episode of The Projection Booth, Mike talks to filmmaker James D. Stern about his work as a producer and director on Broadway, television, and at the movies. Stern has produced works as diverse as Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, Self/Less, Snowden, Murder Mystery, American Chaos, and Looper. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Become a supporter of thi...

Dahlia Schweitzer and Patrick Bromley join Mike to kick off Shocktober 2019 with a look at World War Z. It's not necessarily based on Max Brooks’s book of the same name though he gets a credit at the beginning. It’s a zombie apocalypse film starring Brad Pitt that takes Pitt around the world looking for the cause of and cure for a zombie plague. Special guest Dr. Sarah Juliet Lauro, author of The...

On this special episode of The Projection Booth, Kevin Heffernan and Samm Deighan join Mike to discuss Milos Forman's Loves of a Blonde. A mix of professional and non-professional actors, the film tells the tale of Andula (Hana Brejchova), one of hundreds of women that work in a factory who is introduced to an "eligible male" via a government-sponsored dance. The track was originally produced for...

On this special episode of The Projection Booth, Mike talks with author Matthew Asprey Gear about his latest work Moseby Confidential: Arthur Penn’s Night Moves and the Rise of Neo-Noir. Gear examines how Penn's film worked among the neo-noirs of the '70s as well as how screenwriter Alan Sharp injected a lot of his biography into the work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adcho...

We conclude Czechtember 2019 with a look at Jan Kadar and Elmar Klos’s The Shop on Main Street. Also known as the Shop on High Street, the film was released in 1965 and written by Ladislav Grosman, based on his own story and book. The film tells the tale of Tono, a carpenter who has been refused from working on his little town’s major building project. Instead, he’s assigned to be the Aryan face o...

On this special report, Mike talks to actress Lesley Ann Warren and writer/director/producer/actor Larry Clarke about the new film 3 Days with Dad. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth--5513239/support . Become a supporter of The Projection Booth at http://www.patreon.com/projectionbooth 

Known chiefly for the role he's played for over a decade, the Victorian Toronto detective Murdoch, Yannick Billson speaks to Mike about his role in the popular TV show as well as some of his other work including the 2018 horror film Hellington and 2019's A Perfect Plan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podca...

Czechtember 2019 continues with a look at Jaromil Jires’s The Joke. Shot in 1968 and released in 1969, the film was adapted by Jires and Milan Kundera, the author of the book of the same name. It tells the tale of Ludvik who was ousted from the Communist party after the youthful indiscretion of making a joke. He spends the rest of his life feeling the effects of this including hatching a plan for...

As part of the University of Illinois's Masters of Modern Science Fiction series, D. Harlan Wilson has written a literary biography of J.G. Ballard examining the themes and progression of Ballard's fiction and (fictional) biographical work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth--55132...

It's time for Ego Fest 8 in which Mike answers your burning questions, get some advice and then promptly ignores it, and gives thanks to the Projection Booth's Patreon donors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth--5513239/support . Become a supporter of The Projection Booth at http:/...

Banned before it was even released, Karel Kachyňa’s The Ear is a study in paranoia. When Anna and Ludvic return home from a party they find that their front gate is unlocked and their home is open. Someone's been there but they don't know who or why and they spend the rest of the night trying to figure out if they will be part of the recent purge within The Party. Learn more about your ad choices....

On this special episode of The Projection Booth, Mike talks to Jeffrey Combs about his one man play Nevermore, an evening with Edgar Allan Poe. Mr. Combs will be performing the play at the Sleepy Hollow Film Festival on Saturday October 12 2019. Find out more at sleepyhollowfilmfest.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.s...

Released in 1979, Bill Norton’s More American Graffiti reunites most of the original cast of George Lucas’s 1973 film save for Richard Dreyfus. Rather than looking at a single night, the film spans four New Years Eves across the lives of five main characters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-proj...

We’re kicking off Czechtember 2019 with a look at Jan Schmidt’s End of August at the Ozone Hotel. Released in 1967 the film is another in a collaboration between Schmidt and screenwriter Pavel Juracek who we discussed on our Case for a Rookie Hangman episode. Juracek wrote the screenplay which has a group of women trying to survive in the post nuclear apocalypse. The film moves at a slow but deter...

On this special episode of The Projection Booth, Mike talks to Randall Lobb the co-director of Power of Grayskull: The Definitive History of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Lobb has already directed a documentary on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and is working on a Conan documentary, A Riddle of Steel. Learn more at fauxpop.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adcho...

Released in 2008, Tarsem Singh's The Fall is a very loose remake of the 1981 Bulgarian film Yo Ho Ho. The film stars Lee Pace as Roy, a stunt man who’s had an accident that has left him paralyzed from the waist down. While at the hospital he befriends a little girl named Alexandria who’s played by Catinca Untaru. The film goes between the two of them at the hospital and a wild world of imagination...

Based loosely on Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary’s Pulp Fiction, Plump Fiction (1997) stars Paul Dinello and Tommy Davidson as a salt and pepper hit man team. Dinello has been asked by his boss to take out the boss’s wife, Mimi Hungry -- played by Julie Brown -- to show her a good time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www...

Dan Martin and Jennifer Handorf join Mike to discuss a quartet of films made between 1998 and 2001; Caught in the Eye of the Storm, Revelation, Tribulation, and Judgement. They tell a sprawling tale of the biblical End Times from the Rapture to the rise of the AntiChrist. There's also some Virtual Reality and Mr. T thrown in for good measure. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/ad...

Based on a book by Richard C. O’Brien, Don Bluth's Secret of NIMH (1982) is the animated tale of Mrs. Brisby, the widow with several children, one of whom is very sick and can not be moved. This is a problem as the Brisby family needs to move due to the impending plowing of their home. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.sp...

Released in 1972, Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris is the second of three adaptations of Stanislav Lem's 1961 book of the same name. The film tells the tale of Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) who travels to a station orbiting the planet Solaris, a sentient ocean that seems to be able to read the unconscious thoughts of those on the station and conjure up living embodiments of someone from the astronauts'...

Ron Howard's Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) is the origin story of Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) when he was a little scamp on Corellia and all the things that put him on the path to be the Han Solo we all loved... before he was horrifically murdered by his own son. Chris Bricklemyer and Josh Stewart join Mike to discuss the oft-maligned and troubled Star Wars film. VFX Supervisor and Co-Producer Ro...

Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo’s It Happened Here tells the story of Pauline, a nurse who lives in a world where the Nazis took over the UK during World War II. At first she goes along with the rule of the Reich until she witnesses -- and unwittingly participates in -- their cruelty, prompting her to join the British Resistance. Wynter Tyson and Caelum Vatnsdal join Mike to discuss alternate hist...

Released in 1983, Krull was directed by Peter Yates and written by Stanford Sherman. The film stars Ken Marshall as Colwyn, a somewhat brash young warrior who is betrothed to Lysette Anthony as Lyssa. The two are to form an alliance between two kingdoms -- to unite their armies in hopes of defeating The Beast and his Slayers, ruthless extra terrestrials bent on taking over their world. But when th...