A Regrettable Moment of Sincerity

Here is a podcast/radio interview from my appearance on Morning Feed with Ed Feldman from October of 2011, when I was promoting the Medium Rare Cinema screenings of Dream Lover and Comfort and Joy. Like my other appearances on Morning Feed, the topics are wide ranging starting with Harry Dean Stanton and Death Watch and concluding 2 […]

Here's a podcast with Tim League, creator and CEO of The Alamo Drafthouse and Fantastic Fest. This was recorded around November 2010 and the interview was initiated because Tim and Alamo Drafthouse Films were putting out Chris Morris' Four Lions as their first film. You can hear my interview with Chris Morris here. This very […]

Here is a podcast with actress Summer Qing (also known as Qing Xu), who plays the wife of Bruce Willis‘ character in Rian Johnson‘s twisty action sci-fi film Looper. Summer's role is the main motivation for Willis' entire journey through time. Summer was also in a few Chen Kaige films, like Farewell, My Concubine, and […]

During the audio commentary for The Goonies, there's a moment when the actor who played Chunk , Jeff Cohen (who is now an attorney), points out that a certain shot of his hands are “not my hands.” That's about the way it should be, where the only person who notices that an insert shot, like the […]

Here is my 5 minute interpretation of John Bruno's Virus, a sci-fi thriller from 1999 starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Sutherland, and William Baldwin. As a movie, about a mysterious electrical life-force that animates killer robots on an abandoned Russian research vessel in the South Pacific, Virus is somehow simultaneously frantic and low energy. It's […]

Here is volume 2 of the 5 Minute Feature Film series, this time on Michael Oblowitz's adaptation of Jim Thompson's This World, Then the Fireworks. The 5 Minute Feature Film series is where I take a full length movie and cut it down to 5 minutes in length, re-score it, but tell basically the same […]

Below is a q+a with actor Fran Kranz, who plays Marty, the resident stoner in the new meta-horror-comedy The Cabin in the Woods. It was recorded after a screening of the film on April 9th in Philadelphia. The Cabin in the Woods is the feature directing debut of Cloverfield writer Drew Goddard. It was produced […]

As a companion piece to my analysis of Nicolas Cage's current career, below is a visual summation of his 2011 movie Trespass, co-starring Nicole Kidman and Cam Gigandet. I've edited the entire thing down to just under 5 minutes, briefly glossing over important plot points (without major spoilers), yet you'll still get the sense of […]

It's quite a bold move to try to explore mediocrity. Most of us never rise above it anyway. But if you have talent and you use it to look at those who can't get past the middle, it can be seen as condescending and/or gloating. That's why the context of mediocrity is so important; when […]

I was on Gtown radio on Friday morning to talk about the Medium Rare Cinema screening of the uncut version of Burn! (being shown at a new location), but also to talk about the Oscars. I took the opportunity to discuss my experience in voting in the Online Film Critics Society awards, and the various […]

Though it might have been his open plea to loosen monogamy's grip on society, sex columnist Dan Savage's veritable mantra that “all relationships end, except the one that doesn't,” is oddly logical. At first it seems callous and cynical, relying on the notion that we all die alone, but, apart from ignoring the notion of […]

It was then. That doesn't make it right. But that doesn't make it different either.” – Comedian Greg Proops on why racist behavior in old movies shouldn't be excused, but it shouldn't make them worthless either.   The above quote is a canny way to explain away dated material without condemning it for being what […]

Here is the third in a series of no doubt 4 million appearances (or maybe less) that I made on Ed Feldman's Morning Feed. Originally the interview ran at an epic length, 3 and 1/2 hours. Now, after some judicious editing, it runs at a mini-epic length of 2 hours, but you'll still get plenty […]

I am not a fan of year-end lists. They are entirely reductive and self-congratulatory. However the text below was triggered by another critic, Examiner.com's Jason Roestel, who asked me to contribute to his year-end piece. So this is a version that fixes as many grammatical errors as I originally had, as well as some significant […]

Here's a podcast with Danny Buday, the writer/director of Five Star Day. Now I'm totally aware that most people will not have heard of this film, Mr. Buday's first. That's because Five Star Day, as of November 4th, has received a limited theatrical release, as well as a simultaneous release on Facebook. The movie itself […]

Here's my second radio appearance on Morning Feed with Ed Feldman. This time I was promoting the Medium Rare Cinema screening of the Richard Dreyfuss vehicle The Big Fix but the conversation once again jumps around a lot to movies being released around that time (June 2011) such as Submarine, Tree of Life, Super 8, […]

Here's a podcast with Ann Louise Bardach, journalist for The New York Times, Newsweek, Slate, etc., and the screenwriter of Dennis Hopper's Backtrack, the director's cut of which I reviewed here. Now Backtrack was an incredibly troubled production, sitting on the shelf for two years before being dumped by its bankrupt distributor in a cut […]

This is my appearance with Ed Feldman on his show Morning Feed, on Gtown Radio, on May 19th, 2011. As of this writing, I've appeared 4 times, this being the first, and it runs just a shade under 2 hours. I was there to promote the Medium Rare Cinema screening of John Woo's Bullet in […]

The initial financial failure of Disney's Tron (directed by Steven Lisberger) was attributed to the enormous expectations based on the egregious expense of the project because of the complicated computer effects. Tron was simplistic story-wise, and the replication of the feel of a video game would become commonplace not long after its 1982 release. The […]

Below is an interview with director Billy Corben, who made the two Cocaine Cowboys films, Raw Deal, Limelight, Square Grouper (his new documentary about pot smuggling in Florida, which he happened to be promoting at the time of this interview), and The U, which is relevant now since its subject is Miami University's football team, […]

Here's a podcast with Amanda Fuller, the star of Red, White & Blue. This interview was recorded in August of 2010, but because of the quick blip on the theatrical radar the film got, I decided to wait until it came out on DVD to release the interview. Now, considering Amanda and I do discuss […]

Here's an audio excerpt from  a q+a that M. Night Shyamalan did after a screening of Unbreakable at last October's Philadelphia Film Festival. Since there were no mics in the audience, only M. Night is completely audible, so I deleted the first question and you just have Night's answer. Basically the question was about the […]

Here's a podcast with Josh Shelov, the writer/director of The Best and the Brightest. While the film is screening in Philadelphia as you read this (that is, if you're reading this as soon as I post it, so, that would just be me), it will open in a more traditional fashion in the next few […]

The following is a review of Source Code, but I also conducted an interview with director Duncan Jones, which you can listen to at the bottom of the page. If anyone's ever watched an airplane edit of a film, they know that often changes are made which make no sense within the logic of the […]

Here's a podcast with Australian director Rolf De Heer. It was originally recorded in August of 2008 and there was even an unedited and intro-free version on the site before. I've cleaned it up significantly, trimming 20 minutes and tightening it up to the point where it flows considerably better than it did before. Now […]

Here's an audio interview with Joe Winston who directed, along with his wife Laura Cohen, the documentary adaptation of Thomas Frank's best-selling book, What's the Matter With Kansas? Though you might think that this will be a discussion between two commie liberals bashing on heartland folk, that assumption would only be half right, because there's […]

Here's both a roundtable q+a with 127 Hours director Danny Boyle and an audience q+a recorded after a screening the night before the roundtable was held.  There's a bit of overlap in the 50 total minutes (20 for roundtable, 30 for audience q+a) but considering the audience q+a (which is moderated by Philadelphia Inquirer critic […]

Here's a podcast with Chris Morris, the writer/director of the suicide bomber satire, Four Lions. While Morris is not particularly well known in the US, he has a huge following in the UK, where his satirical TV shows like Brass Eye, Nathan Barley, and the surrealist shock comedy Jam, have made quite an impression. And […]

Here's a podcast about the film Conviction with star Sam Rockwell, director Tony Goldwyn, and subject Betty Anne Waters. [You can read a review of the film here.] While this may seem like a normal roundtable podcast, it is not. This is because I recently got a complaint from another reporter that I was using […]

Here's a podcast with Karl Urban, co-star of the action-comedy Red with Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, and Brian Cox (who was also in a 2008 movie named Red). This is a recording of a conference call between Karl and 3 journalists, including me. It runs quickly and it is short (under […]

Here's a podcast with Amy Ryan, Oscar nominated for Gone Baby Gone and Jack Goes Boating, which she was promoting in this particular case. The film is the directorial debut of Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who you can see in the photo to your left, accompanied by his dreadlocks. There were seven of us in the […]

This podcast was a tough one. It's an interview with the writer of Going the Distance, Geoff LaTulippe. Geoff wrote the original screenplay that was on the 2008 Blacklist (Up in the Air was also on it), which is a list of all of the best unproduced screenplays floating around Hollywood. I've read Geoff's screenplay, […]

Here is a podcast q+a with Kelly McGillis (Witness, Top Gun), recorded during Philadelphia's QFest (Queerfest), as Ms. McGillis was being given the artistic achievement award. Normally, this isn't the sort of q+a I'd upload, but the whole thing was so strange, I figured I should share. To give some context, Ms. McGillis was considered […]

Here is part II with Jordan Brady, stand-up comic, and director of the new documentary on stand-up, I Am Comic. While this podcast was recorded at the same time as part I (which you can find here) and it's not required to listen to it to understand part II. You'll probably be confused though, so […]

Though this may seem like a normal podcast for A Regrettable Moment of Sincerity, it's actually unique for a few reasons. First, because the interview with I Am Comic director and stand-up comedian Jordan Brady went on for more than 3 hours, I've split it into two parts (part II is here). Second, because I'm […]

Here's a podcast q&a with the star of the Duplass brothers' new film Cyrus, John C. Reilly. The interview was held after a Philadelphia screening of Cyrus. There's nothing mindblowing about the questions, they cover the expected topics like working with Will Ferrell, Marisa Tomei, and the differences between playing comedy and playing drama. However, […]

Here's a podcast with Roger Nygard, the director of Trekkies, Trekkies 2, High Strung (w/Steve Odekerk and Jim Carrey), Back to Back: American Yakuza 2, Suckers, and his new documentary The Nature of Existence. This hour long podcast covers such topics as how to sell your movie in Japan by adding a vs. to the […]

Below is a podcast I did with Mark Jones, the director of Fraternity Massacre at Hell Island, a very low-budget gay slasher parody. And since the movie was finished in 2005, did the festival circuit in 2007, and was finally released on DVD in April, it probably means that not only have none of you […]

Here's an audio interview I conducted with character actor Daniel Franzese, star of Bully, Mean Girls, The Missing Person, and the upcoming remake of I Spit on Your Grave. In the course of an hour, Daniel told many detailed stories about how he was cast in Bully, despite Larry Clark's intense dislike of him, how […]

Here's a 30-minute Q&A with Vincenzo Natali, the director of Splice, which I recorded after a screening of the film last week. Vincenzo was very composed and self-effacing and was willing to answer any question (including a deliberately absurd one I asked early on). Those who haven't seen Splice may want to skip through this […]

Australian stuntman Nash Edgerton made his first feature, The Square, back in 2008, but it was just released in the US.  The film is a twisty noir that takes place in a small, insular town, similar to Henrik Ruben Genz's Terribly Happy (which also got a podcast dedicated to it).  I interviewed Edgerton along with […]

Here's an interview I did with Zoe Kazan, the star of Bradley Rust Gray's spare, no-frills drama, The Exploding Girl. Kazan, who won a best actress award at The Tribeca Film Festival for the film, plays a girl struggling with her epilepsy, and so Zoe and I discussed how to keep her emotions in check, […]

Below is an interview with the director of the Danish dark comedy Terribly Happy, Henrik Ruben Genz. We discuss the connections between his film and Blood Simple, the satirical underpinnings of Terribly Happy and how that relates to political refugees in Denmark, the inherent humor within the arrogance of Dogme '95 and how Lars Von […]

Here's a podcast with Crazy Heart director Scott Cooper who led lead actor Jeff Bridges to a Golden Globe Award. The film is about “Bad” Blake, an alcohol soaked, washed up rock/blues singer, touring dingy bars across the US. Unable to get albums released without the help of his former protege, and now big star, […]

Here's an audio interview conducted in a room full of reporters with Youth In Revolt stars Michael Cera and Portia Doubleday. While all 15 of us got to ask 2 questions each*, there were a plethora of tangents that had nothing to do with the movie (yes, Cera would be interested in an Arrested Development […]

Here's an audio interview I did with Alexis Spraic, the director of Shadow Billionaire, a movie without a distributor at the moment, that I reviewed here. We talk about how hard it must be to profile her subject Larry Hillblom, DHL magnate and procurer of young Vietnamese and Filipino virgin girls, in an objective fashion, […]

Here's a nearly 30 minute interview I did with Troy Duffy, the director of The Boondock Saints and the upcoming The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day (he was also the subject of the muckraking documentary Overnight). Also in attendance were Boondock stars Sean Patrick Flannery and Norman Reedus. Sean is very talkative, but Norman […]

Here's an interview with the writer/star and the director of the new blaxploitation parody, Black Dynamite, Michael Jai White (Spawn) and Scott Sanders (the review of the movie is here). The topics covered include comparisons to the movie Grindhouse, the political agenda of Black Dynamite, the specificity of the blaxploitation era (as well as the […]

This is the radio interview I did with the editors of Outlook Weekly. The broadcast was about a two-part story I did for Outlook where I pretended be an ex-gay going through Christian reorientation therapy. The first part, which you can read here, appeared in Outlook Weekly in June of 2008, the second part, which […]

Below is a podcast I conducted with Soylent Green about his reaction to Mike Judge's Extract. You can read my review of the film here. Click the play icon to listen to the podcast. Or you can download the podcast here. (Right-click, Save Link As…)

Below is a podcast I conducted with Jesus about his reaction to the recent 3-D hit, The Final Destination. You can read my review of the film here. Click the play icon to listen to the podcast. Or you can download the podcast here. (Right-click, Save Link As…)