Movie Podcasts

I watch a lot of movies, and so it follows that I also listen to a lot of movie podcasts. It’s an interesting “genre” of podcast in that many of them feature similar segments (i.e. top 5, listener feedback, director spotlight, etc…), and most of them have to walk that fine line between art house and mainstream, obscure and popular. So here’s a list of my favorite podcasts… alas, some are now defunct, but are still worth checking out anyway.

• Filmspotting: The first podcast I ever listened to regularly, and I think it’s also the best. It’s probably also one of the longest running podcasts and is also one of the best produced (I believe their shows are broadcast on NPR these days). They’ve got a great format, covering at least one new release a week, sometimes doing a marathon of older films (I’ve played along with several of these), massacre theater (a contest where they act out a scene from a movie and you have to guess what movie), and a top 5 list. It’s a great show, and it’s still going strong. I do find that I miss one of the original hosts, Sam Van Hallgren, but the show really hasn’t missed a beat since his departure.
• All Movie Talk: I seem to be in the habit of discovering awesome podcasts that almost immediately stop making new episodes. Nevertheless, every All Movie Talk episode is excellent, and since they chose not to review current releases, most of their shows take on a more timeless quality. The show features Samuel Stoddard (of Rinkworks fame) and Stephen Keller (of, uh, All Movie Talk fame) and a whole host of interchangeable segments like director spotlight, trivia questions, industry trends, how to (where they make fun of certain genres by explaining how to be in one of them, for example, “How to: Be the New Teacher In the Hood”), top 6 (and they do a good job picking more obscure categories for this, like “Plot Holes In Good Movies”), and film buff’s dictionary (where they take a film term and explain what it means and how it impacts movies, etc…) They actually have a great mix between the old and the new, and I found myself actually learning a lot about movie history and how movies are made. I highly recommend downloading their episodes and listening to them.
• Creative Screenwriting Magazine: This podcast basically features Q&A sessions with screenwriters (and sometimes directors). As such, the podcast depends entirely on the screenwriter in question, but when you get a good personality on there, it’s great. You also get a nice window into screenwriting, a lesser known side of movie-making.
• The Treatment: Similar to Creative Screenwring podcast above, this NPR show basically features an interview with a filmmaker or writer, and again, it depends highly on who is being interviewed. Still, it’s interesting stuff.
• Mastercritic: This now long-defunct podcast was one of my favorites when it was on, and probably one of the more fun amateur podcasts out there. Still, it was an interesting podcast, and it featured some great topics, like “the number of zombies it would take to kill all of Tom Cruise’s movie characters” (which I should probably write a blog post about). The podcast was made by a bunch of video game developers, which was actually a pretty interesting perspective. They also had some fun movie-based trivia games, and it was actually pretty well produced (except towards the end, when they stopped playing music behind the show, which actually did change the feel of the show). Like a lot of the now-defunct podcasts, this one turned out to be too much work for those involved, and really, I can’t blame them.
• The Chud Show: This show is… strange. It’s probably not for everyone. It’s a great movie news site, but once you realize that the name of their site (Cinematic Happenings Under Development – CHUD) is partly an homage to a cheesy 80s horror flick (in which CHUD stands for “Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers”), you can see why perhaps not everyone would appreciate the show. Still, if you share their odd (pun-saturated) sense of humor, it’s pretty funny.
• Smodcast: I’m not sure if this actually counts as a “movie” podcast, but it’s a podcast by Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier (of Clerks., Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, etc… fame). Sometimes they talk about movies, but more often than not, they’re just bullshitting about some random topic. As such, it’s a little uneven, but almost always worth a listen. I wouldn’t have expected this, but the episodes that feature Walt Flanagan as a guest host are actually some of the best ones (the episode where they discuss the comic book action figures is absolutely hilarious)…
• Hollywood Saloon: They don’t release shows that often, but when they do, they’re these huge 2 hour opuses. There’s no set format for them, but they’ve done an excellent director spotlight on David Fincher, and series spotlights on James Bond, Halloween, and Indiana Jones. They’ve also recently started posting commentary tracks… I haven’t listened to any of them yet, but I will. The shows are actually rather informal, and they do tend to ramble on and repeat themselves from time to time, but they’re still a lot of fun to listen to.
• Some other podcasts I listen to: MeanDawg Top 5 (rather than have a segment for top 5, they just make a whole show out of it), Outside the Cinema (B-movie and horror focused podcast, also featuring a top 6 segment), Watching the Directors (basically covers individual directos, and they also do something called The Ten Quiz – this is another podcast that depends on who is being covered and if you’re familiar with they’re films, but it’s a decent podcast), and Filmically Perfect (anothe NPR podcast that covers one classic movie per episode)

If I were to ever do a movie podcast, I’d probably feature a lot of the segments mentioned above, but instead of a top 5, I’d want to do something that would allow me to talk about movies I like that aren’t necessarily the greatest of their genre. I have a really hard time picking a “top 5” for various genres (as evidenced by listing 20 heist movies in my top 5 recently), so I think I’d be better at just picking a bunch of movies to talk about, perhaps in various categories (i.e. Classic, Contemporary Classic, Obscure/Sleeper, Remake, Sequel, etc…) Not all the categories would match up with every category, but it would be interesting. Of course, this would assume I’d have enough time and motivation to put something like that together, week after week. For now, I’ll settle for listening to more podcasts. Anyone have any other great film podcasts?

Update 8.13.08 – Celluloid Geekazoid has taken podcast reviewing to the next level with his multifaceted, weighted ratings. I should try that. He covers a bunch of podcasts I haven’t reviewed. I’ve listened to most of them though and never really cared for them. The only one on his list that’s a real discovery for me is the excellent Left Field Cinema. I’m a little different than CG in that I prefer a longer show, but LFC seems to be a good length for what it is.