Retro Grade Podcast

"EVERY CIVILIZATION FINDS IT NECESSARY TO NEGOTIATE COMPROMISES WITH ITS OWN VALUES" On this episode of Retro Grade, we go over Steven Spielberg's Munich, the 2005 film about the massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. After 11 Israeli athletes are killed, Israel green lights the assassinations of the men involved with the attack. This is the beginning of a battle that ravages through most of E...

On the conclusion of our New Year’s special, we talk with a mutual friend, and a professional in film distribution, Dillan Damodar. We try to get some answers to some of the questions raised in our previous episode and talk about how the pandemic has changed the film industry. We talk about the importance of subscribers vs box office numbers, how expensive it is to get a film to play in theaters,...

On this special New Year’s Day episode of Retro Grade, we discuss the 2012 documentary Side by Side. This is the first part of a two-part episode about the film. Featuring Keanu Reeves, the documentary is about the rise of digital filmmaking technology in the film industry, more specifically about film cameras and the creation and use of digital sensors to capture images. The reason we wanted to w...

Hope you are all having a safe holiday season in 2020. This episode and the next are special, off format episodes to share about what Christmas means to Austin and Jorge, and what the future of movies might look like while we are getting through this pandemic. On this episode, we talk about our relationship, or lack thereof , to the holiday, and what movies we associate with it. Then at the end of...

“I DON’T NEED BACKUPS. I’M GOING TO HARVARD.“ This week we change it up and talk about a different kind of movie. A certain legal comedy that came out in 2001 called Legally Blonde! (Anyone who says it’s a rom-com is wrong, sorry, we don’t make the rules.) Austin’s girlfriend, Leanna, makes her podcast debut and talks about what this movie meant to her as a child. Austin and Jorge also reminisce o...

“YOUR BABY IS THE MIRACLE THE WHOLE WORLD HAS BEEN WAITING FOR.” Very rarely does a film come along that can entertain with amazing action set pieces but also engage with real world issues. On this week's episode, we go into Children of Men, a 2006 science fiction film directed by future Academy Award Winner Alfonso Cuaron. We talk about the our first viewings of the film, and how the theatrical e...

“YOU JUST CAN’T GO AROUND KILLING PEOPLE!“ This episode we talk about one of the greatest action films ever made, Terminator 2, directed by the one and only James Cameron! We talk about our childhood memories of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the D.A.R.E. program, and the time Jorge almost burned down his school. We get into the fact that this is one of the first mainstream movies to feature a cop in unif...

“I AM THE WRITING ON THE WALL. THE WHISPER IN THE CLASSROOM. WITHOUT THESE THINGS I AM NOTHING.“ Happy Halloween! On our first (of many) horror movies, we picked 1992’s Candyman, directed by Bernard Rose. It’s a “slasher“ film that is actually a lot more intellectual and sophisticated when you think about it, or at least that’s the case that Austin tries to make. We give a brief backstory to the l...

“SHUT UP GRANDMA, DRINK YOUR PRUNE JUICE!” On this episode we cover a Michael Bay’s Transformers. One of Jorge’s favorites and one of Austin’s least favorites. This is one of the first movies covered on the podcast where we actually remember seeing it in the theater! Remember those? Remember when movies could get away with portraying racial stereotypes for laughs? That’s pretty much where half of...

“SON, YOUR EGO IS WRITING CHECKS YOUR BODY CAN’T CASH.“ On this episode we go back to 1986 and talk about the highest grossing movie of that year, Tony Scott’s TOP GUN. Jorge talks about the origin of his Tom Cruise fandom and Austin talks about ANOTHER long lost unlicensed board game. In addition to catapulting Tom Cruise’s Hollywood Career as a lead, it also changed the way movies were made (not...

“DON’T FEED THE PLANTS!“ In this episode we talk about Frank Oz’s adaptation of the off-Broadway musical (based off of the Roger Corman film,) Little Shop of Horrors! Austin loves this movie and his it firmly placed in his loose assortment of”Top 10’s,” and Jorge has never seen it, or even heard much about it at all. In fact, Jorge doesn’t really like musicals. However, by the end of the episode m...

“THIS RACE IS FULL OF CHEATERS.“ In this episode we talk about a movie we both love, but it seems like the rest of the world hates. The movie? The Wachowskis’ Speed Racer from 2008! The Speed Racer that opened a week after Marvel Studios’ Iron Man. The world was not ready for something as wacky, colorful, and emotionally powerful as Speed Racer. We talk about how long the film took to be made, who...

"WELCOME TO EARTH." In this episode we talk about Roland Emmerich's Independence Day from 1996. Jorge loves it, Austin thinks "Mars Attacks!" was the better movie of this year. We talk about how this movie's aggressive, revolutionary marketing campaign, talk how the movie is so similar to (or derivative of) Star Wars, and how good/bad the special effects were for the time. The second part of our e...

This is the first episode we ever recorded for the show. We talk about Jorge's childhood trauma associated with this movie and how politically and socially relevant this film was back in '87 and today. Sorry in advance for the uneven audio issues, we are still learning and hopefully the next episode will sound better. Thank you for listening! Music is from Triune Digital and audio clips pulled fro...

Welcome to Retro Grade! In this episode we introduce ourselves. We talk about some of our favorite movies and shows so you get a bit of our taste profiles. We also talk about how we met. While we sound like good friends now, this was not always the case.. We also talk about what we do on the show, and why. Thank you for giving us a listen. Music is from Triune Digital and audio clips pulled from m...