RopeofSilicon Podcast

This week we delve into more of your questions along with Oscar talk as is the thing to do at this time of year along with a look at how we voted for the upcoming Critics Choice Awards, which will be airing this Thursday night and Laremy and I will be in attendance. We also look into some of the latest news topics such as wondering what's going on with David O. Russell, talk of sequels to Narc and Bruce Almighty, our most anticipated films of 2012 and the week's new DVD and Blu-ray releases.

We asked for your questions and you delivered and we did our best to answer them all, which as a result may not be the best thing to do since this latest episode of the podcast is LOOONG! How long? Try over 101 minutes long. Topics include my brief comments on The Devil Inside, film criticism, a look at the Oscar race, primarily where Bridesmaids stands after a sudden surge, a discussion on Jeremy Renner's recent rise to action stardom and several of your topics from 'Can movie theaters be saved?' to guilty pleasures, 'Who should take over for David Fincher if he doesn't come back for The Girl Who Played with Fire?' and much more.

Happy New Year and welcome to the first RopeofSilicon podcast of 2012 with myself and Laremy Legel. We open this edition with a series of across the board topics from books, festival chatter, focus groups and news that Columbia and Paramount are moving forward with The Girl Who Played with Fire and Paranormal Activity 4 respectively. We also delve into a few listener topics before discussing both of our top ten lists for 2011 and this week's new DVD and Blu-ray releases before shutting things down with a long discussion on how both of us came to write about movies on the Internet. Hopefully you enjoy and hopefully we didn't drone on too long about ourselves.

It's the final podcast of 2011 and I am happy to say it seems like we were able to commit to doing them on a regular basis and with this final installment we have a 77-minute year-end finale in which we take a look at the worst films of 2011 (saving a look at the best films of 2011 for our first podcast of 2012) along with a series of random topics from Louis C.K.'s digital success and how that same technique could be used for movies, Words with Friends, what it means for a film to be overrated, more on Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and a few other things that find their way into the mix.

It may be a light week due to the holidays, but Laremy and I are still ready to bring you a new episode of the RopeofSilicon podcast even if it is only a 45-minute episode and even if we stray from talking just movies as we kick off our conversation this week talking about books, but work our way back into the movie biz. We talk about the recent stumbles at the box-office, the state of the Best Picture race, new DVD and Blu-rays this week, the coastal divide on Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and a few more random bits here and there.

It's a Wednesday podcast as we will not be doing our regular Friday podcast this week due to the holidays and as a result it ends up being a long one as we hit 75 minutes this time around with reviews and commentary on new films including Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, War Horse, The Adventures of Tintin, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and We Bought a Zoo. We also pepper in a batch of news stories and awards chatter to kick things off, discuss the newest DVD and Blu-ray releases, touch on our early thoughts when it comes to the best and worst of 2011 and a few more random asides here and there.

It was a week of awards and very little sleep and we're ready to close it out and shut it down as Laremy and I discuss the Golden Globe Award nominations, the new trailer for Jack the Giant Killer as well as this week's new releases including Carnage, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and Mission: Impossible � Ghost Protocol. Also embedded in there is a brief quote from Laremy's interview with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy star Gary Oldman and his thoughts on what movies could use a little more of with the NC-17 rated Shame serving as the catalyst.

The 2012 Screen Actors Guild Award nominations were announced this morning and Brad and Laremy sat down for a quick chat exploring some of the inclusions and omissions and what can be learned, if anything, from these nominations when trying to predict the Oscar nominees.

This Tuesday's podcast is primarily dedicated to this morning's announcement of the 2012 Critics Choice Award nominations as both Laremy and I participated in the nomination process so we are discussing not only who got in, but which nominees of ours didn't get in, the nomination process itself and a line-by-line exploration of each category with a little more time spent on some than others.

The podcast is late this Friday as it's been a busy, busy week and this was the only opportunity we had to get it completed. That said, we have a 64-minute episode this week as we cover a lot of randomness in the first 25 minutes or so before breaking into reviews for We Need to Talk About Kevin, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Sitter, Young Adult and New Year's Eve and then finally continuing the randomness over the last 7 minutes. Perhaps we're delirious with awards season at this point and this is simply the result, give it a listen and you decide.

A lot of awards talk today as Laremy and I are both preparing to turn in our nominations for the Critics Choice Awards and we also discuss potential Oscar nominations in the Best Actor, Supporting Actor and even dip into conversation related to Original Score. Beyond that we talk a little insider baseball after the review embargo mess surrounding The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo, talk about our expectations with Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, chat documentaries and then dig into whether or not watching movies on screeners is a good thing or a bad thing. Finally, we look at the week's new DVD and Blu-ray releases of which there is very little to recommend.

We have packed this 55-minute podcast tight as a drum with topics despite the fact there isn't a single new wide release this week. We open up with a surprising 15 minute conversation centered on television, which is something we rarely get into, and then translate to awards season talk as well as a conversation on how we go about selecting our own end of the year top ten lists. From there we discuss Roman Polanski's Carnage, Jason Reitman's Young Adult and George Clooney's The Ides of March now that Laremy has finally seen it. After all of that we turn to the week's limited releases in Shame, Sleeping Beauty, Coriolanus and Outrage before ending with random chatter concerning the upcoming Ender's Game adaptation and a few other notes.

It's Tuesday and we're back on our regular schedule with a 45-minute episode for you as we are now knee-deep into the awards season and it's time to start watching screeners and predicting which films will do what. In this week's Tuesday episode we begin with casual conversation regarding Steven Soderbergh and the recently announced release date for Star Trek 2 before moving into awards conversation concerning what we recently watched along with a little Golden Globe prediction conversation. From there we discuss our thoughts on Cameron Crowe's We Bought a Zoo as well as this week's batch of new DVD and Blu-ray releases.

Due to holiday travel schedules we weren't able to do our regularly scheduled Tuesday podcast and we won't be able to do our Friday podcast this week, so instead we bring you a Wednesday, Thanksgiving Edition of the RopeofSilicon podcast and Laremy and I have plenty of films to talk about. We begin with talk of the Oscar qualifying documentary Project Nim as well as discussion of We Were Here and Corman's World before moving into two of this week's very limited releases, Rampart and A Dangerous Method. From there it is non-stop reviews as we talk about My Week with Marilyn, Arthur Christmas, Hugo, The Muppets and The Artist before closing things out with a brief conversation of the week's box-office prospects.

For anyone that believes Laremy and I agree too often, you will want to listen to our review of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 as we not only discuss the actual film, but discuss our approach to the film and it goes on for a LONG time - 37 minutes to be exact - but hopefully it doesn't get too uncomfortable as we metaphorically hug it out in the end. That Twilight, it sure brings out the passion. Other than that, we discuss Alexander Payne's The Descendants and Happy Feet Two along with our opinions on the return of Ricky Gervais to host the 2012 Golden Globe Awards, the trailers for Mirror Mirror and Brave and even a little Tim Tebow and Natalie Wood.