School of Movies

[School of Movies 2017] At long last, after years of preparation, we bring you a truly epic three hour show all about one of the worst movies ever made. It's an exercise in absurdity, as unprepared actors are thrown in front of a camera and made to chew out abysmal dialogue, wrestle with characters that make no sense, get stuck in loops of expressing the same, contrary thoughts out loud, and all t...

[School of Everything Else 2017] This is the first of several episodes on the fantastic Netflix animated show Bojack Horseman. Next week will be an episode on seasons 2 & 3 and at some point we will probably do season 4. It starts off as a black adult comedy about show business and Hollywood and you could be forgiven for lumping it in with Family Guy, however, it quickly establishes itself as a dr...

[School of Movies 2017] Prepare for a twisting, mind-bending journey into a tangent universe and back again as we tackle one of the most head-scratchy of cult films of the 2000s. Directed by Richard Kelly when he was only 26 years old and accompanied by an extensive website filled with extra reading to help you understand what goes on in the movie, this is still pretty difficulty to completely gra...

[School of Everything Else 2017] This is our second of two episodes on Season 1 of Stranger Things.  We lost Alasdair Stuart for this one, but we gained a recomended friend of his, Guy Adams, author of Notes from the Upside Down - Inside the World of Stranger Things: An Unofficial Handbook to the Hit TV Series, now available in Hardcover and Kindle format and coming soon in Paperback. The wonderfu...

[School of Everything Else 2017] This is our first of two episodes on Season 1 of Stranger Things.  One of our most requested topics, which ironically makes for a daunting prospect, because we have to cover something that means so much for so many people? We eventually relented when this was commissioned by Stephen Maxwell Lowe, Toby Jungius, Nick Grugin and Joel Robinson.  For this first part we...

[School of Everything Else 2017] This week, on commission from Nicholas Kosky and Joel Robinson, we cover the first season of the celebrated mid-90s animated series.  Released in 1994, just a little after we were getting into sit-coms like Friends and Frasier, this show somehow attained a cult following AND a 52-episode second season. Those two things don't happen together very often.  With us is...

[School of Movies 2017] This is a big one, a DC movie that we not only don't hate, but actively love. Wonder Woman is breaking all sorts of new ground and Gal Gadot looks set to be the next universally beloved big screen superhero, joining a fairly small group that includes Reeves as Superman, Maguire as Spider-Man, Downey Jnr. as Iron Man and Evans as Captain America. To mark this occasion we ass...

[School of Movies 2017] Back with Marvel for one of their best movies yet. We kick off with why this hit me like a freight train, right in the soul, and then move on to an extensive and tasty discussion about these wonderful characters, old and new. With us are Joshua Garrity of Cane and Rinse, Brendan Agnew of Cinapse.co and Jerome McIntosh of GameBurst. This episode, like the movie, is very spec...

[School of Movies 2017] This episode will be the deepest single Disney show we will ever do. It weighs in at just under four hours long, so I'd recommend absorbing it in two sessions, unless you have a long drive or a flight. But if you love the film you'll feel like you've died and gone to never-ending Lion Heaven! Daniel Floyd of Extra Credits joins us again to examine this magnificent beast of...

[School of Movies 2017] This one was recorded immediately after the Beauty and the Beast show, so we are absolutely exhausted by the end. What you can't hear because I trimmed it out is all the times we lose our thread and forget the point we were making. The magic of audio editing. As it is, with musical breaks and comedy clips, this is another superbly detailed show where we praise the animation...

[School of Movies 2017] Get ready for a show of epic proportions, and a roller-coaster journey through the making of an absolute classic. Daniel Floyd of Extra Credits and Joshua Garrity of Cane and Rinse join us for a deep study into what made this work so well, and why it manages what so many of the previous films in the canon couldn't quite reach. Every aspect is discussed, from animation to mu...

[School of Movies 2017] We finally his the 90s third renaissance for Disney, and this kicks off a series of two hours plus shows of super detail and perspective on this era. Disney was under new management and after a string of mediocre successes and big failures now aimed to pull themselves out of the doldrums they had settled into following Walt's death. This entailed a storm of creativity with...

[School of Everything Else 2016]   This is one of the films of the year. A Japanese fable delivered in stunning stop-motion by American studio LAIKA, the team behind Coraline, ParaNorman and Boxtrolls.  Every single one of you needs to see it.    Joining us are animation experts Joshua Garrity of Cane and Rinse and Jerome McIntosh of GameBurst. Among other things we discuss the climate for animate...

[School of Everything Else 2016] Alex's 500th Podcast.   I've been at this game for almost a decade and produced and hosted  four media discussion shows, Digital Cowboys, Digital Gonzo, Digital Drift and School of Movies.  What we have here is a collection of highlights from the first few years. This celebratory episode ended up as two, simply because there was so much to choose from. So Episode 5...

[School of Everything Else 2016] This show (which is one of the best individual podcasts we've ever put together) is all about The Hero's Journey. It explores the monomyth, the idea that nearly all of the tales that we embrace as a species are telling the same story.  Carl Jung theorized with the collective unconscious that our brains are all roughly the same shaped organ, with very similar emotio...

[School of Movies 2016] We start off with my initial thoughts on coming back from the cinema. The first 16 minutes is relatively spoiler-free and Sharon asks me the following questions. Then we get to the rotten meat of the whole bloody affair.    Then there’s a considerably more positive ten minute piece from Eric Jones    Then we hit the main event and Bob Chipman joins myself, Sharon Shaw and J...

[School of Movies 2016] In the run-up to Batman V Superman, let's take a dive into the mind of director Zack Snyder. Let's look at how he sees the world, how he sees the human psyche and how he sees women.   Prepare for a furious battle of wills as Alex goes in guns blazing to take apart a film he never wants to talk about again, and Lorin Grieve of A Year of Steam defends the movie he loves. Shar...

[School of Movies 2015] Part 1: A film so important and so passionately adored by us that we needed two shows and two groups of guests to fully cover, welcome to part 1 of our Force Awakens show. With us for this first outing in which we discuss Rey, Finn, Ren, Han, Huxx, Snoke and the hugely positive side of this effectively being a retelling of the events of A New Hope. Part 2: The second instal...

[Digital Drift 2015] We had planned to release The Lost World this week but Mad Max: Fury Road appeared out of nowhere and turned out to be rather special. So we broke suddenly, veered off the road, picked up a couple of passengers and thundered into an epic analysis review.  We begin with a 45 minute discussion of the original Mad Max trilogy, all of which contain elements that found their way in...

[School of Movies 2016] We're back on the Disney shows with Daniel Floyd, this time on the cusp of the 90s renaissance. This episode delves lightly into two of the last examples of their Dog/Cat/Mouse fetishism that defined the post-Walt wilderness years. The Great Mouse Detective, originally named Basil of Baker Street (from the novel) is Sherlock Holmes with rodents. Oliver is the Twisty Dickens...

[School of Movies 2016] Continuing our Disney podcasts with Daniel Floyd of Extra Histories, this one covers the fifteen year period between 1970 and 1985.  It was a dark and odd time for the once great animation studio. Their mentor and namesake had fallen and they were carrying on without him, or the acclaim that went with the bold and beautiful films of their golden years. The Many Adventures o...

[School of Movies 2016] Robin Hood (1973) is 83 minutes of amusing shenanigans. It's twee, minimally dramatic, fun and light with lovable simple characters. It did not restore Disney to the heights of Snow White and Cinderella popularity it had previously reached.  Originally we recorded a paltry ten minute chat about Disney's Robin Hood during our sessions with Daniel Floyd, because there really...

[School of Movies 2016] The Disney shows return. Daniel Floyd of Extra Credits is back to talk us through the difficult 1960s period for Walt Disney Studios. *101 Dalmatians *The Sword in the Stone *The Jungle Book *The Aristocats Animation was changing, cinema was being influenced by television and for some reason people really liked British writers. In this show we'll talk about where Disney wen...

[School of Movies 2015] The much-needed success of Cinderella cemented Disney as more than just a one-hit wonder. Following this we delve into the absurd ramblings of Lewis Carol to talk about Alice in Wonderland. According to the Disney of the early 1950s royals will chase you down on black horses in the middle of the night, base the future of their family upon footwear, play croquet with live an...

[School of Movies 2015] The Disney series continues with two cute animal pictures with unfortunate mother figures. One gets locked up and deemed insane, the other gets shot dead by the most terrifying monster of all. Both of these moments have a profound effect on what we take away from the viewing experience. The third sections covers the period between 1942 and 1949 when, due to World War II the...