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Hustle & The Phantom of the Open | Awesome Friday Podcast
Greetings programs! It’s time for a new episode of the Awesome Friday Podcast! This week we’re looking at a pair of sports movies: Hustle, the love letter to basketball from Adam Sandler, and The Phantom of the Open, the true story of the man who shot the worst round of golf in British Open History, starring Mark Rylance. Episode Homepage: https://awesomefriday.ca/2022/06/podcast-hustle-the-phantom-of-the-open/
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The Righteous & Top Gun: Maverick | Awesome Friday Podcast
Greetings, programs, and welcome to this week’s podcast! Following a year-long journey from its festival premiere at Fantasia 2021, Mark O’Brien’s The Righteous is finally coming to cinemas and on-demand thanks to Arrow Video and Vortex Media, and after a 36-year gap, Tom Cruise is back as a Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell in the long-awaited sequel to the 1980s classic Top Gun, Top Gun: Maverick. Episode Homepage: https://awesomefriday.ca/2022/06/podcast-the-righteous-top-gun-maverick/
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Interview: Mark O’Brien on his film “The Righteous” | Awesome Friday Podcast
Greetings programs! Canadian actor Mark O’Brien has been working steadily since the mid-2000s with roles in CBC’s The Republic of Doyle and AMC’s Halt & Catch Fire, and movie appearances in Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s Ready or Not, and Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story. This week sees his feature film writing and directorial debut, The Righteous, arrive in cinemas nearly a year after its premiere at least year Fantasia Festival. Grappling with themes of faith and guilt, The Righteous stars a who’s who of Canadian talent including O’Brien himself, Henry Czerny, Mimi Kuzyk, and Nygel Bennet. It also picked up three Canadian Screen Award nominations this year…
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RRR & The Northman | Awesome Friday Podcast
This week on the Awesome Friday Podcast, we’re talking about two big 2022 historical epic films. First up is the Tollywood breakout RRR from director S. S. Rajamouli and stars Ram Charam and N. T. Rama Rao Jr. Second, the latest from The Witch and The Lighthouse director Robert Eggers, The Northman. Episode Homepage: https://awesomefriday.ca/2022/05/podcast-rrr-northman/
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Uncharted & Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers | Awesome Friday Podcast
Greeting programs! This week, we’re looking at the newly on-demand Uncharted starring Tom Holland and the new streaming nostalgia trip Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers. Episode Homepage: https://awesomefriday.ca/2022/05/podcast-uncharted-chip-n-dale-rescue-rangers/
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Make/Remake: Zero Hour! & Airplane! | Awesome Friday Podcast
Greetings, programs, and welcome to a very special episode of the Awesome Friday Podcast. Airplane! is one of the greatest comedy films of all time, but did you know it’s a remake? This week we are talking all about Airplane! and the 1957 Canadian Melodrama it’s based on Zero Hour!. Episode Homepage: https://awesomefriday.ca/2022/05/make-remake-zero-hour-airplane/
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Interview: Director Emerson Moore on his film “Escape the Field” | Awesome Friday Podcast
Greetings programs! Writer and director Emerson Moore’s first feature, Escape the Field, a story about six strangers stranded in an endless cornfield, is on-demand now. I had the chance to sit down with him via zoom to talk about the film, his experiences making it, and more! Interview Homepage: https://awesomefriday.ca/2022/05/interview-director-emerson-moore-on-his-film-escape-the-field/
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‘Fire of Love’ Paints a Portrait of Love in Magma | Awesome Friday!
Katia and Maurice Krafft were rock stars in the field of volcanology. Among the earliest scientists to extensively film and photograph active and erupting volcanoes, and often got as close as possible to the magma flows in an age when the unpredictability of the geological activity kept everyone else hundreds of feet away. It is into this love affair –both with each other and with volcanoes– Fire of Love takes a deep dive. This was a couple deeply committed to their field, one that had indeed found something they loved and thus never worked, but filmmaker Sara Dosa is able to paint…
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Petite Maman & Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness | Awesome Friday Podcast
Greetings, programs, and welcome to another episode of the Awesome Friday Podcast! This week we’re taking a look at Celine Schiamma’s delightful Petite Maman and the latest entry in the juggernaut that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Episode Homepage: https://awesomefriday.ca/2022/05/podcast-petite-maman-doctor-strange/
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‘Make People Better’ leans too hard into being a thriller but remains compelling nonetheless | Awesome Friday!
In the film Gattaca, there is a scene where a set of new parents are consulting a doctor about genetically altering the baby they wish to conceive. When they posit that maybe it’s better to leave a few things to chance, the doctor scoffs and tells them they want to give their baby the best possible start. The film is a warning about the kind of future that genetic engineering and eugenics could create. That hasn’t stopped us from researching this science, though, and in 2018, Dr He Jiankui (JK for short), a geneticist in China, created the first genetically…
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Scrap Is a Thoughtful Meditation on the Things We Build | Awesome Friday!
Where do the things we make go when we’re done with them? It’s a question that we too often don’t ask ourselves, along with what the long-term effects are of what we do with our old stuff. Scrap doesn’t have any easy answers, but the new film from director Stacey Tenenbaum does offer a fascinating glimpse at a part of our modern world that we prefer not to think about. Presented more as a series of thematically connected vignettes than one narrative, Scrap takes you on a journey around the globe from a forest full of cars in the United States to…
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Framing Agnes Obscures Its Own Powerful Premise and Story | Awesome Friday!
In the 1950s and 60s, researchers at UCLA conducted a study into sex disorders. The resulting archive of data contains a cross-section of trans history in the form of interviews conducted with the study’s participants. One of the participants –a woman known only as Agnes- used the study to receive gender-affirming care and then seemingly disappeared. With Framing Agnes, director Chase Joynt takes a handful of the stories collected in the UCLA study and presents them to the audience. The interviews themselves are re-framed as interviews on a late-night talk show and performed by trans performers. The performers themselves, along with…
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Memory & Everything Everywhere All At Once | Awesome Friday Podcast
Another week, another podcast episode! Join us for discussions of the new Liam Neeson led action thriller Memory and the sophomore effort from The Daniels Everything Everywhere All At Once. Episode Homepage: https://awesomefriday.ca/2022/05/podcast-memory-everything-everywhere-all-at-once/
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Star Trek Reboot Trilogy | Jacked Up Review Show
J.J. Abrams’ successful yet like-it-or-hate-it plotting is on display in the flashy yet cliche take on the original Star Trek formula. What should truly happen in the upcoming fourth film? Why is the 2009 film rather funny yet empty on interesting antagonists? Why does Into Darkness bring on the brutal action and gritty character add-ons yet feels like it must go back to familiar mirror universe tactics? Why is Beyond just a soul-sucking car commercial with an annoying runtime and nothing memorable whatsoever? All that and how without these non-philosophical films, we’d be without any NEW Star Trek content! Episode…
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2022 Hot Docs Most Anticipated Movies | ForReel
Hot Docs will run from April 28 to May 8, both in person and virtually. I’ll be covering the festival virtually again this year, and as usual, there are a lot of fantastic documentaries on display at the festival from all over the world, including features like Navalny, Million Dollar Pigeon, and The American Dream And Other Fairy Tales. But with so many films to choose from, which might be the best ones to priotize? In this Hot Docs Curtain Raiser video, I talk with Matthew Simpson from Awesome Friday to talk about which films we’re looking forward to most…
I am a Rotten Tomatoes-approved, freelance film & television critic and podcast host from Vancouver, Canada! I am a co-founder of the Cascadia Film & Television Critics Association and a voting member of the International Film Society Critics, Pandora International Critics, and the Online Film & Television Association.
I maintain bylines at Exclaim!, Awesome Friday!, That Shelf, ForReel, Movies We Texted About, KeithLovesMovies, and I can be heard regularly on the Contra Zoom Podcast and The LAMBCast.
