Writers on Film

Lawrence Kasdan has created some of the most influential films in Hollywood history. He is the screenwriter of such beloved blockbusters as  The Empire Strikes Back  (1980),  Raiders of the Lost Ark  (1981),  The Bodyguard  (1992), and  The Force Awakens  (2015). Simultaneously, he has gained critical acclaim as the director of pictures that dissect contemporary American society:  Body Heat  (1981...

John Bleasdale talks to Julie Salamon the author of The Devil's Candy, The Bonfire of the Vanities Goes to Hollywood. The book is available here . The book was also the basis for the podcast series The Plot Thickens which you can listen to here . “So much better, so much more fun, than the movie it is about that one must be thankful to the filmmakers for producing such a spectacle, if only so that...

John Bleasdale talks to author Mark Harris about his books Pictures from the Revolution and his recent biography of Mike NIchols. Mark's recommended book is Jason Bailey's Fun City Cinema, available here . Here's the blurb to Mark's most recent book: An instant  New York Times  Bestseller! A magnificent biography of one of the most protean creative forces in American entertainment history, a life...

Movies Go Fourth  is a celebration of the fourth movies in the most popular film franchises of all time. It offers behind-the-scenes stories of fourth films from such beloved series as  Star Wars ,  Star Trek , and  James Bond.  It also explores infamous fourth films, including  Jaws: The Revenge ,  Superman IV: The Quest for Peace , and  Batman & Robin . This riveting book reveals the inside scoo...

I talk to esteemed film critic and friend Rafa Sales Ross ( find her work here ), Noaz Deshe about his new film Xoftex and Christos Nikou about Apples, Apple and Fingernails. The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival is the largest film festival in the Czech Republic and the most prestigious such festival in Central and Eastern Europe. It is one of the oldest A-list film festivals (i.e., non-sp...

I speak with the the co-director of the Bologna Cinema Ritrovato festival Ehsan KhoshBakht and film restoration expert MIchael Dawson whose restorations of Stanley Kubrick's shorts showed at the festival. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and us...

Roger Lewis comes back to the pod to talk about his small masterpiece of biographical investigation, and fitting testament to a comic genius whose place in British cultural history is now assured. Charles Hawtrey, the skinny one with the granny glasses, was everybody's favourite in the Carry Ons - but who exactly was he? Up to now the man has remained a mystery. Examining Hawtrey's origins as a ch...

Ramsey Campbell is an English horror fiction writer, editor and critic who has been writing for well over fifty years. He is the author of over 30 novels and hundreds of short stories, many of them winners of literary awards. Three of his novels have been adapted into films. He is also the author of Ramsey's Rambles , a book of film criticism and Six Stooges and Counting, a study of the famous com...

Ian Christie FBA is a British film scholar whose work on Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, Martin Scorsese and the development of cinema has made him one of the most respected film writers today. He is a regular contributor to Sight & Sound magazine and a frequent broadcaster as well as being the Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck, University of London. Get bonus content on P...

Bilge Ebiri is one of the finest critics currently working. He was the critic for the Village Voice and is now writing for New York Magazine and Vulture. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Siddhant Adlakha Talks All We Imagine as Light and more Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

As Cannes nears a close we have predictions and trends to discuss and ask is it time for the titans of cinema to give way? Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hugo Emmerzael from FilmKrant joins me to talk about Kevin Costner’s Horizon: an American Saga, chapter one. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Substance directed by Coralie Fargeat, and starring Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid, is the most talked about film of the Cannes Film Festival, so here we go. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for adver...

Thomas Schultze from German trade website Spot ( click here ) talks the latest film by dissident Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tokumbo Salako, EuroNews culture editor, joins me to review the latest films on the Croisette in the third of my special Cannes Reports. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the second of our special reports from the Cannes Film Festival, Christina Jeurling Birro talks Yorgos Lanthimos’s new film and her highlights from her first ever Cannes. She also coins the term Plemmon-heads. our conversation on Megalopolis is available to hear here. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz compa...

Fred Ponsard and David Mouriquand from EuroNews join John Bleasdale to talk Wild Diamond and the Cannes Film Festival. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The behind-the-scenes story of the iconic film, featuring new interviews with the cast and crew. An unflinching confrontation of humanity’s dark side, Brian De Palma’s crime drama film  Scarface  gave rise to a cultural revolution upon its release in 1983. Its impact was unprecedented, making globe-spanning waves as a defining portrait of the gritty Miami street life. From Al Pacino’s masterful ch...

Jonathan Glazer is now - having only made four films - one of the most important filmmakers of this century. It helps that those four films were all masterpieces and the third Under the Skin is the subject of novelist Maureen Foster's wonderful study The Alien in the Mirror: Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Glazer and Under the Skin . For more information and to order the book go to Maureen's website...

Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were a Sixties supercharged couple in an era of supercharged couples. As a pairing they were fantasy figures, impossibly desirable. Liz supple and soft, in perfumes and furs - yet with something demonic and lethal about her. Dick, in turn, with his ravaged, handsome face, looked as though lit by silver moonlight - poised to turn into a wolf. Roger Lewis uses thi...

Paul Duncan talks Dr. No, and the making of James Bond's first cinematic asdventure. Book now available from Taschen . Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A  NEW YORK TIMES  BESTSELLER *  LOS ANGELES TIMES  BESTSELLER *  USA TODAY  BESTSELLER This heartfelt and wry career memoir from the director of  Blood Diamond ,  The Last Samurai ,  Legends of the Fall ,  About Last Night , and  Glory , creator of the show  thirtysomething , and executive producer of  My So-Called Life , gives a dishy, behind-the-scenes look at working with some of the biggest n...

This fifth edition of  Film, Form, and Culture  by Robert P Kolker and Marsha Gordon offers a lively introduction to both the formal and cultural aspects of film. Additional resources for students and teachers can be found on the eResource, which includes case studies, discussion questions, and links to useful websites. Get the book HERE. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com...

MURDER! MOTHERS! MEN ON THE RUN! Film fans know these are just a few key ingredients of Alfred Hitchcock’s movies. When Hitchcock fused these elements with his innovative directorial approach, that blend of familiar themes and stylistic ingenuity became known as ‘Hitchcockian’. In a refreshingly original way,  HITCHOLOGY  considers how Hitchcock used these narrative tropes and formal flourishes to...