Shot/Reverse Shot

ESPN's 30 For 30 strand has been producing great, fascinating documentaries about significant sporting events and athletes for years now, but the series may have reached its pinnacle with Ezra Edelman's seven and a half hour, five part miniseries about the life of O.J. Simpson. Encapsulating Simpson's football career, marriage, murder trial, slide into obscurity and eventual trial for burglary and kidnapping, Edelman's film also stands as a breathtaking examination of race, gender and celebrity in American society, the history of L.A. and systemic racism in the LAPD, and uses the prism of one man's life to tell the story of the society that created him. In short, it's excellent, and Matt and Ed thought it would be remiss of them not to discuss it.

Following a week of terrible sadness in the real world, this week's episode is about finding solace in art and entertainment. Matt and Ed discuss times in their lives when art helped them cope with heartbreak, bereavement and wrenching change, create a fictional Canadian basketball team, and try to describe one scene from Up without crying. 

After discussing disastrous movies last week, Matt and Ed talk about Disaster Movies this week. Specifically, they contrast the more human-centric stories of the genres '70s heyday against the inhumanity of the '90s force of nature entries into the genre, and the out-and-out disaster porn that has come to define so much of blockbuster filmmaking over the past decade. They also talk about Larry David maybe bringing back Curb Your Enthusiasm, the complexity of the Jack Frost series, and wonder which of his films Kevin Smith will cannibalise after he fails to make a Mallrats TV series.