Shoot The Glass

I'm in a rush! So this is going to be the shortest post ever. This week we talk about Red Obsession, Much Ado About Nothing, Behind the Candelabra and The World's End. Also, Pete and I disagree! Which is weird. And we're not quite sure what to do with it. And the homework for this week -- we tried to rename it the Bill Collins of the week, but it just didn't stick -- the homework for this week is Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado and Cassavetes' Shadows. Enjoy!

In this episode of Shoot The Glass we look at three films with ideas about what an apocalypse might look like: This Is The End, Seth Rogan's directorial debut and probably the best stoner-rapture film ever made, Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim, in which Godzilla's extended family comes back for revenge and Idris Elba tries to cancel their planned apocalypse with a line of enormous toys, and Zack Snyder's Man of Steel, which reimagines Superman as a noble, square-jawed humanitarian crisis. Would you believe that not one but two of these films feature giant cocks? Well it's true, so just a warning up front: expect a small but still contemptible quantity of childish giggling. In between the childishness, however, there's profound insight and deep discussion. Or your money back! So, as the apocalypse rages on above us, pull up a chair and crack open an army surplus ration with Pete and Justin in the palatial comfort of the Shoot The Glass bunker! Also, you can find us on twitter at @shoottheglass, and this week's Bill Collins Special is Richard Donner's 1978 version of Superman.

We do! And in this episode of Shoot The Glass we talk in depth about the action flick to end all action flicks, the film that catapulted Bruce Willis to the A-list and launched a thousand terrible Alan Rickman impressions, John McTiernan's 1988 masterpiece Die Hard. We go through the film in more or less chronological order and attempt to tease out, moment-by-moment, what makes Die Hard so good. As it turns out there are a lot of things that make it so good, and we decide that maybe we should just go back and watch it again, so much do we love it... along with our Bill Collins picks of the week: McTiernan's other good films Predator and The Hunt for Red October, and two films that share some of Die Hard's action aesthetic, The Bourne Identity and Mission Impossible III. There's an awful lot of genius in Die Hard, and two geeks talking about it for an hour or so isn't going to do full justice to all of the clever and inspired decisions that the film makes, so don't feel aggrieved if we've left out your favourite bit. The music, for example. It's got great music but we don't really get to discuss it. And Jan De Bont's cinematography could probably occupy a whole podcast itself... we can't cover everything, or we'd be recording for a week! But we do give the film a lot of love, and hopefully we find a bit of insight along the way. We also say a fond farewell to the great James Gandolfini, who unexpectedly passed this week. So jump in the limo with Pete and Justin and we'll hit the minibar on the way to Nakatomi Plaza in the latest episode of Shoot the Glass!

In the latest episode of Shoot The Glass we eulogise the late great Ray Harryhausen, the special effects master who passed away only last month. Watching the guy from LA Law battle a stop-motion Medusa in a Sunday matinee was the highlight of my week back in the early 80's, and it bears mentioning that Ray's thirty-year-old work makes for a lot more fun than the CG-heavy, 3D emptiness of the more recent Clash of the Titans remake. We also talk about Dan Harmon's unexpected return to Community, and the long-anticipated fourth season of Arrested Development, the show that made single-camera sitcoms cool and paved the way for innovative shows like Community while also making Modern Family inevitable. Then we discuss two films I haven't actually seen, The Hangover Part III and Baz Luhrman's The Great Gatsby. One of these films was surprisingly good according to Pete; I'll leave it a mystery as to which one. You'll just have to listen! Spoiler: It's Gatsby. But listen anyway! Speaking of spoilers, we spoil the hell out of JJ Abrams' new chunk of interstellar lunacy, Star Trek Into Darkness. We spend a lot of time alternating between gushing over this film and providing something resembling thoughtful critique. I'll level with you, there's more gushing than thoughtful anything. We didn't get even a quarter of the way towards really exploring everything that this film might mean; alas, our enthusiasms just got the better of us. We're not used to actually liking movies, okay? At least, not ones made after, say, 1988. So come join Pete and Justin on the Shoot The Glass Podcast! And hit us up on twitter at @shoottheglass if you want to talk to us.

This week we say a fond farewell to Roger Ebert, who passed away last month. We discuss his prodigious capacity for dismissing films with a single well-chosen phrase; I believe that they're called 'zingers' in US, and Ebert was  pretty good at them. We also discuss the accuracy of a few of his reviews -- including both the original Star Wars and the infamous prequel The Phantom Menace and also Battlefield Earth, Fight Club and of course Die Hard, which he didn't like at all. You read that right: he didn't like Die Hard. Now that would usually get most people on my list under "Unaware of distinction between arses and elbows" or "Sharpness markedly exceeded by other knives in drawer". As I'm sure you already know, this podcast is named for a quote from Die Hard, so much do we love that movie. We love it because it's the single best action-film of all time and a pivotal moment in cinema.  But, well... this is Ebert. He got this one wrong, but he's already on my list under "Has forgotten more than you will ever know about cinema" and "Awesome." So he gets a pass. He will be missed. RIP Roger Ebert! And, of course, we talk about some new films. Pete saw The Place Beyond The Pines and discovered that he doesn't buy Ryan Gosling in any role that doesn't involve a ridiculous quantity of sex-appeal and quite a lot of brooding. A bit like nobody would believe Liam Neeson as a greengrocer: the man played Zeus, for God's sake. I saw the latest Tom Cruise film, Oblivion, and discovered that no quantity of fantastic visuals torn from the covers of golden-age science-fiction novels can make films without proper characters really work. And then we discuss the latest milestone in Marvel's (or should I say Disney's) plans for world domination, the unstoppably lucrative and unimaginatively titled Iron Man 3. Which was directed by Shane Black, who's one of Hollywood's more interesting characters. He wrote Lethal Weapon and sold it for a packet when he was twenty-three years old. Twenty-fucking-three! Can you believe that? Not only that, he was in Predator. He was that weedy guy with the terrible jokes. Now he's writing and directing blockbusters. Far out, huh? We finish up with a quick discussion of Community and the return of an old segment -- one that predates this podcast and used to be called "homework", but is now called the Bill Collins Special Of The Week. This week's is Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Shane Black's directorial debut and the first step in the return of Robert Downey Jr. to the A-list. So come and take the path less travelled with Pete and Justin! And any abuse you need to get off your chest should be directed towards @shoottheglass on twitter!

This post will have to be quick and to the point! Which is in contravention of everything I hold dear, but I have to be in Sydney tonight for Pete's belated wedding reception and that means getting on a plane pretty soon... so here we go: in this episode we talk about the film  Jurassic Park 3D, Jack the Giant Slayer, Warm Bodies and Identity Thief. The sound quality is lower than usual due to technical computery problems, but it's still fine and the actual content is, for good or ill, of the quality you've come to expect. So join Justin and Pete as they talk screen-related nonsense once more on the Shoot The Glass podcast! Right -- gotta run! Oh, and follow @shoottheglass on twitter!

In the latest episode of Shoot the Glass we discuss so many films! Too many, you might say, for a fifty-odd minute podcast. And you'd be correct, but hey... that whole "less is more" thing is a scam, am I right? More is always better! Like with the show Firefly. I'm just saying. First up we look at Ang Lee's tale of shipwrecked teenagers and misnamed tigers on the open ocean in Life of Pi, adapted from the book by Yann Martel. It's not really about a shipwreck, though, its about a spiritual journey. And I don't mean that in the way that Robocop is really a Jesus story or the Terminator actually represents the inevitability of death, I mean this film tells you in the first five minutes that it can, by the end, make you believe in God. Then we move on to Oz the Great and Powerful, which is a prequel to The Wizard of Oz. Yep... a prequel to one of the most iconic films ever made, a prequel to a film so firmly nestled in its own historical moment that it uses a change from black-and-white to colour as a 'wow' moment. What kind of idiot would watch such a stupid idea of a film, you ask? Well what if I told you it's directed by the legendary Sam Raimi? And hey, maybe that idiot is doing a movie podcast, and it's his goddamn job to take a bullet for you if it comes to that. Third, we look at Spielberg's take on the personal and political mythology surrounding the great emancipator in Lincoln. Spielberg's virtuosic capacities have made him such a fixture in filmmaking that he tends not to really get the respect he deserves; the man is a genius after all. You can judge for yourself whether Pete and I do anything to correct this tendency when we ask: can he resist putting awkward and mawkish bookends on this like he did for Private Ryan? Finally we delve into Cloud Atlas, adapted from the book by David Mitchell and directed by the Wachowskis. And also Tom Tykwer, although he goes accidentally unmentioned in the podcast (Sorry Tom!). Not satisfied with being a mere sprawling epic, Cloud Atlas epically sprawls in entirely new ways, burning through more story than four or five of your garden-variety films combined along the way. Sometimes more movie is just what you want, like with the Firefly movie; Cloud Atlas gives us so much movie it's hard to know quite what to do with it all. Does it work, though? Does the ambition of Cloud Atlas translate into good cinema? Can Spielberg's oft-forgotten genius make a biopic really work as a movie and not just a tribute? Can Sam Raimi make a comprehensively stupid movie idea into something wonderful? Can Ang Lee make you believe in God? Come join Peter Wells and Justin Gibson as they tackle these questions and more in the fourth episode of Shoot the Glass. And we're on twitter as @shoottheglass if you want to hit us up for anything.

There's an old Klingon proverb that says that revenge is a dish best served cold... and, I think we can all agree, that's some cold-blooded shit to say to a motherfucker before you pop a cap in his ass. But, you know, is it? Really? Is it best served cold? Should it be served anyway? If it should be served, how should it be served, and to whom? In the latest episode of the Shoot The Glass Podcast we talk about two movies that engage very specifically with the concepts of vengeance and justice: Tarantino's masterpiece Django Unchained (yeah, I'm just gonna say it, it's a masterpiece) and Bigelow's Oscar-bait Zero Dark Thirty (I only called it Oscar-bait to be controversial). We also discuss Tina Fey and Amy Poehler at the Golden Globes and a recent series of youtube clips that detail the worst cinematic crimes of certain recent films, and briefly mention Red Letter Media's mostly excellent review of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. A crazy quantity of work went into the musical intro for this podcast! Where did it come from? And which movies did that old Klingon proverb come from? Extra points for the first person to comment on this post, or shout it out to @shoottheglass on twitter!

The second episode of the Shoot The Glass Podcast is finally out, in which two cranky old bastards called Justin Gibson and Peter Wells talk about Ruben Fleischer's Gangster Squad and Disney's latest Wreck-It Ralph and conclude that they're admirable films that aren't bad at all and there's really nothing wrong with them and hey, what's not to like? We also discuss how often Rian Johnson's Looper appeared in people's best-of-2012 lists and wonder why it didn't get a mention in ours, and talk about the number of screeners you can find on the net this time of year and whether or not we ought to watch them. Also, Pete confuses Sean Penn and Al Pacino, and I confuse the films Hoodlum and Mobsters. Because we're just that good. I know you can't watch movies all the time, you have responsibilities and commitments. Your time is in short supply. Fortunately, the Shoot The Glass Podcast is just dandy to listen to while you're doing other things. While you do the dishes, say. Or clean up those Lego blocks the kids left strewn all over the lounge-room floor. Or maybe you're jogging. Well, we both know you're not jogging, because jogging is both hard and boring... but you know what goes perfectly with not jogging? The Shoot The Glass Podcast, that's what! (One thing -- the Skype gods were also a bit cranky on this recording, so in spite of our best efforts Pete's voice glitches occasionally... nothing major, though. You never actually lose the point of what he's saying. Still, sorry about that!) Enjoy! And feel free to leave comments below, or hit us up on twitter at @shoottheglass!

'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature was stirring except for... the Shoot The Glass Podcast! ...in which Justin Gibson (that's me!) joins the excellent and admirable Peter Wells to discuss all things film and TV. In this episode we'll be looking at Peter Jackson's latest addition to his ongoing cinematic parsing of Tolkien's Middle Earth and trying our best to sum up 2012's movie landmarks: we're talking Battleship, The Muppets, Moonrise Kingdom, The Avengers, Prometheus, Snow White and the Huntsman, The Master, Safety Not Guaranteed and a shitload more. Why did Pete get a screening of Django Unchained but I didn't? Why did George sell Han Solo to The Mouse? Will The Mouse shoot first? A smarter man than me would pretend that he had the answers... but I'm not a smarter man than me, so I'll just freely admit that this podcast will not answer these questions. Come along on this Christmas eve and swim in the cool waters of mystery with Pete and Justin on the Shoot The Glass Podcast. Tell us what you think here, or tweet @shoottheglass. But unless you agree with us, you'll be wrong. I'm just saying. Merry Christmas!