Shoot The Glass

This week Pete saw the Seth Rogen-Rose Byrne comedy Bad Neighbors, I saw Lars von Trier's two-part epic Nymphomaniac, and we discuss at length the latest crack at reviving the granddaddy of all city-chomping monsters, Godzilla. Before you listen I should say that I didn't give enough love to Godzilla: some of the scenes in this film really stayed with me, something few tentpole blockbusters have ever done, especially remakes and especially ones about giant monsters. It did so much that was right that it gives me genuine pleasure to say that while the film didn't quite do it for either me or Pete, it's going great guns at the box-office and will doubtless propel director Gareth Edwards on to further opportunities to explore his considerable talent. I look forward to that. Speaking of considerable talent we also discuss another project Pete's involved in, the Australian tech-news site Reckoner.com.au. It won a well-deserved Best Independent Media award at The Lizzies this year and Pete both contributes to the site and brings his formidable charm and smarts to hosting the excellent Reckoner Podcast. If you're not a listener, you ought to be! For homework we naturally have the 1954 original Godzilla, along with four Lars von Trier films to watch if you've never seen a Lars von Trier film: The Idiots, Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark and Dogville. So come and run screaming from an enormous, civilisation-threatening  metaphor with Pete and Justin on the Shoot The Glass podcast!

In this episode we talk about a 90-minute toy ad called The Lego Movie and the latest of Marvel's post-Avengers cycle of superhero movies Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier. I caught up with Errol Morris' doco about Donald Rumsfeld The Unknown Known and Pete reports on Darren Aaronofsky's biblical epic Noah. Pete also went to see The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and discovered that there's a thin line between watching a movie and just sitting for a couple of hours in a big room with lots of seats pointed at a wall. For homework we have the classic animated short The Magic Portal, an early 'Brickfilm' made with stop-motion and a lot of Lego. So throw away the instructions, tip all your bricks onto this blanket and (wait, do you have any blue sixers there? And I need some more wheels. Here, take all my reds, I don't need them) free your imagination with Pete and Justin on the Shoot The Glass podcast!  

There are no show notes... only Zuul.

This has taken forever to edit so I'll keep this short and... well, short. Sorry for the delay, dear listeners! And sorry to my dear co-host Mister Peter Wells! In this episode we talk about the Academy Awards, TV shows True Detective and Community, documentary The Armstrong Lie, and recent films 300: Rise of an Empire, Winter's Tale, and Vampire Academy. We wrap up with the Coens' latest Inside Llewyn Davis and then talk about it more in our spoilery segment after the show along with a very brief discussion of the 300 sequel because you probably won't see it and you probably don't care about being spoiled. Surprise! Dudes with muscles have swords. Yeah. For homework we have Nick Cave and John Hillcoat's classic Ghosts... of the Civil Dead and, in honour of the late Harold Ramis, the Brendan Fraser-Elizabeth Hurley vehicle Bedazzled. So come strum a steel-string and sing a three-part with Pete and Justin on the Shoot the Glass Podcast!

Shorter and less sweet than ever before! This episode we talk Disney's Frozen, Dallas Buyers Club, and the remake of Robocop. We also talk about Robocop in our new spoilery segment after the show. For homework we have How to Survive a Plague, Cars 2 and the episode of 21 Jump St. where Johnny has to protect a kid with AIDS from bullying. Apparently it's great! If you can find it. I couldn't. And we say a fond farewell to Philip Seymour Hoffman. We'd rather say a fond hello, but we're all out of options here. Take off your hat and bow your head with the Shoot The Glass podcast.

Because this episode is so late I'll keep it short and sweet! Well, I'll keep it short. In this installment of Shoot the Glass we talk about the Stallone-De Niro match-up Grudge Match, Keanu vehicle 47 Ronin, Scorcese's Wolf of Wall Street, David O. Russell's American Hustle and Spike Jonze's Her. And after the usual spoiler-free podcast we go on to talk about Her with no concern for spoilers. That's a bit of an experiment, we hope you like it! For homework, Pete has classic doco Hoop Dreams, I have Jane Espenson's excellent blog, and we give a quick shout-out to the Scriptnotes podcast. So join Pete and Justin in the boiler room and remember that the good leads are for closers on the Shoot The Glass podcast!

Which film was the best of 2013? Which was the worst? Which was the most disappointing? Pete and I answer these questions and more on the latest episode of the Shoot the Glass podcast! We also talk about the films we've seen in the last few weeks including Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, Philomena, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Railway Man and the obligatory blockbuster The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. For homework, in honour of the recently departed Peter O'Toole, we have David Lean's masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia. Watching O'Toole in this is like looking directly at the sun but, to paraphrase Lawrence in the film: the trick, dear listener, is not minding that it hurts. And you won't mind at all! Find a big screen with great sound and see the longest cut you can. It's just magnificent. So grab your army compass, mount your camel and join Pete and Justin as we cross the Nefud that was 2013 on the Shoot the Glass podcast!

This episode had a bomb on it set to explode if we went too slow! Keanu saved us, of course, but not before we broke all the laws of traffic and physics and discussed August: Osage County, Blackfish, 12 Years a Slave, American Hustle and The Spectacular Now. For homework we've got listener and friend of the show Kynan's Kurosawa recommendations Dersu Uzala and Red Beard, and Pete's John Cusack favourites Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer. So come and join Pete and Justin as they shoot the hostage and catch the crook on the Shoot the Glass podcast!

This episode Pete saw blockbuster The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and poetry slammer Kill Your Darlings, I saw Enough Said starring the late, great James Gandolfini, and we both saw the new adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie. And we shamelessly hit the Star Wars hype to discuss the two lucky fans who've been hired to build R2D2's and the unsubstantiated rumour that the upcoming production has already built sets for the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy, the Millennium Falcon. We also discuss an amusing and terrifying theory about what the main characters got up to off-screen after the final battle in the original Star Wars. For homework Pete recommends Veep starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and I go to town recommending films from the justifiably legendary director Akira Kurosawa: Yojimbo The Hidden Fortress Rashomon Kagemusha ...and I left plenty of good ones off the list! So ask someone pretty to be your date, put on your Sunday best and come join Pete and Justin at the worst prom in history on Shoot The Glass!  

A lot of life has managed to get in the way of editing and posting the latest podcast, but here it finally is! Sorry it's so late, dear listeners! For this episode I saw no movies but, luckily, Pete saw them all -- Ender's Game, Thor: The Dark World, Filth, The To Do List and  20 Feet from Stardom.  And because we're talking about it next episode, this week's homework is to see either the De Palma or the new version of Stephen King's Carrie along with The To Do List, starring the enchantingly indifferent Aubrey Plaza. So pour yourself a blue milk, cock your blaster under the table and always shoot first with Pete and Justin on Shoot the Glass!

Others would prevent the death of a loved one, others still would win the lottery. Here at Shoot The Glass we would travel back in time just to hate a movie that Pete saw. Which movie? Well, you'll have to travel forward with us in time, at one minute every minute, to find out! This week we talk about loads of films. Pete saw the doco about Kubrick's The Shining, Room 237, the cinematic version of a real-life tragedy at Fruitvale Station, and Richard Curtis' About Time... and he has opinions, I can tell you. I saw Marvel superhero picture Thor: The Dark World and the strangely unnecessary 2 Guns, and I also have opinions but they're not nearly as clever. During our discussions we discover that if Kubrick wants a penis in his movie you'll notice the penis, a post-racial utopia is waiting for us in the organic produce aisle, and although the enthusiasm of conspiracy theorists is highly infectious we definitely went to the fucking moon. This weeks homework includes a lauded film that Pete and I haven't seen, Timecrimes, along with Spike Lee's classic Do The Right Thing and the often overlooked early Kubrick films The Killing and Paths of Glory. So come join Pete and Justin as we swelter in our suits and sip Old Fashioneds on Shoot The Glass!

In this episode Pete tells us about Prisoners, which is directed by some Canadian dude, and Captain Phillips, which is directed by Shoot The Glass favourite Paul Greengrass. I've got a few things to say about Woody Allen's latest, Blue Jasmine, and a few things to say about Cate Blanchett and Meryl Streep. Which I now feel a bit bad about. We wrap up with a broader discussion of Woody Allen, and for homework Pete gives us his list of the best Woody films. And it's not a short list! Take the Money and Run Annie Hall Manhattan Zelig Broadway Danny Rose Hannah and her Sisters Crimes and Misdemeanors Bullets Over Broadway We also mention the Scriptnotes Podcast with John August and Craig Mazin, which everyone should listen to because it's awesome. So mix a little vermouth into that whiskey, add a few drops of bitters, and come and clink glasses with Pete and Justin as we survey the New Amsterdam skyline!  

This week on Shoot The Glass we only talk about one movie but it's a doozie: Alfonso Cuaron's latest, Gravity. We also have a look at some TV, starting with Joss Whedon's latest Marvel product Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and finishing with analysis and comparison of the final episodes of Breaking Bad, Dexter and The Sopranos. The homework is all relatively recent stuff -- Chopper (because Chopper Read passed away just recently), Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing (Which is as much for Pete as anyone else) and the Adult Swim comedy Childrens Hospital. And... well, that's it! So come and breathe shallow to conserve oxygen with Pete and Justin on the Shoot The Glass Podcast!

The title is only coarse, of course, because it refers to the monologue delivered by Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross, David Mamet's classic movie based on his own play. And it's the title because in this episode, Pete and I talk about Kevin Spacey's fantastic MacTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival. And Spacey was in that movie, and at any moment in his lecture he could easily have quoted that monologue and it would've made sense. But he didn't. And I will start a sentence with a conjunction any time I feel like it. But not always. Only sometimes. We also talk about the latest benchmark for terrible blockbusters starring great actors, R.I.P.D., the heist film Now You See Me, and the latest of David Twohy's Riddick movies, the elegantly titled "Riddick". Pete tells us about a TV show he's discovered called The Americans and for homework we have a podcast called The Verse, which examines all of Joss Whedon's work one episode at a time starting with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I can tell you it's good with some authority because I'm in it! It's all the invention of producer James Smith from the excellent and admirable Twobiquity podcast that he does with James Griffiths and it's recommended listening all round. Oh, and we briefly discuss the amazing story behind Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights. So grab your ouija board and your unlicenced  nuclear accelerator and come chase ghosts with Pete and Justin on the Shoot The Glass Podcast!

This week on Shoot The Glass we talk about the unimaginatively titled Jobs, political thriller The East, post-postmodern superhero flick Kick Ass 2, and Neill Blomkamp's second feature Elysium. For homework we've got Pirates of Silicon Valley and a choice of  films based on the works of Elmore Leonard -- Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Jackie Brown and the 2007 version of  3:10 to Yuma. And Pete casually throws an old and awesome classic on the pile in Bridge on the River Kwai, which is totally directed by David Lean and totally stars Obi Wan and I was totally right about those two things. So come and join Pete and Justin as we hoist the mainsail, put some Strauss on the gramophone, and set course for that big ole space station in the sky! And you can hit us up at @shoottheglass on twitter.