Shot/Reverse Shot

The debate over whether television or film is the superior medium has been going on for many decades at this point, but it seems to have flared up a lot recently owing to television's perceived edge in terms of storytelling quality during its "Golden Age" and cinema's perceived slump at around about the same time. The boys decided that it was time someone waded in to this mess and tried to sort it all out, or at least spend an episode of a podcast deriding people who even take part in the debate.

This is one of our leaner episodes, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for some prime cut nonsense, so look forward to wild speculation on how Gravity might work as a TV show (spoiler: It wouldn't), how Peter Jackson might have directed Game of Thrones as a film series, and the many ways in which Shot/Reverse Shot is like a 19th century workhouse.

On a more serious note, this episode is dedicated to the memory of Emma Davies, Ed's younger sister, who died suddenly last week following an accident. She loved films and television, and was a big supporter of the podcast, so this episode is our small tribute to her.

Living as we do in an age where almost any film or TV show can be found online via a streaming service or similar On-Demand forms, what will happen to the traditional means of culture consumption? The boys attempt to answer that question this week as they look at the different ways in which we can now enjoy the things we enjoy. Along the way, they contemplate the future of the cinematic experience, wonder whether The Lone Ranger could have been saved by day-and-date releasing, and generally muse over the future of cinemas, TV networks and physical formats. Despite being uncommonly focused, there are digressions aplenty, including a disturbing peak inside Joe's campaign to get Mannequin re-released.

Enjoy, you modern ne'er do wells!

Recorded almost a year ago, but now only just seeing the light of day, Joe and Ed sit down for a lengthy natter about David Simon's sprawling dissection of the modern American city in decay, The Wire. Because it was recorded last year, it's in the old format with the Top Ten included, so it's longer than newer listeners will be accustomed to, but the quality is high in this unusually focused episode.

This week, the boys decide that rather than riff on a theme for an hour, they'd use a single film - in the case, Charles Laughton's seminal The Night of the Hunter -  as a stimulus for an hour's worth of cinematic waffle. What comes forth from this bold experiment is a discussion exploring the themes of the film, plus also some meandering to include such things as Andy Murray's Wimbledon triumph and the stifling heatwave overwhelming England.

The second part of the Ages of Man podcast series finally drops, with the boys having a look at those difficult teenage years. There's much to discuss, including the stock themes of rebellion and sexual awakening alongside a look at what makes High Schools such great settings for all sorts of teen ballyhoo.

To mark this year's IDFest in Derby, Joe and Ed have a look at the Family unit on screen. They run down the fine selection of films screening at this year's festival, talk about why directors such as Wes Anderson and Steven Spielberg are drawn to dysfunctional families, discuss the surrogate family units of Boogie Nights and Near Dark and then run down their top ten film families. They keep it light, with cannibalism, incest and necrophilia only taking up a fraction of this episode's running time.

In the first of an ambitious, multi -podcast series exploring the ages of man, Joe and Ed start - appropriately enough - with Childhood. They discuss what drew them to film as kids, talk about depictions of childhood on film and the difficulties encountered when working with child actors, before running down a top ten of the very best child performances on film. Predictably enough, there are some tangents. 6 months on, Joe still can't work out what he thinks of Beasts of the Southern Wild, whilst Ed reveals a deep rooted fear of being eaten by a rhinoceros. As always, listen, enjoy, rate and review!

The boys are getting as close as humanly possible to being topical this week, with a look at the now-probably-not-topical-at-all Veronica Mars Movie Kickstarter campaign. Is this a paradigm shift? A new model for funding films? Exploitative? Against the spirit of crowdsourcing? All these questions and more are ummed and erred around by Joe and Ed, who do their very best to sound informed. Along the way, they ponder what the success of the Veronica Mars campaign means to other cancelled TV projects such as Community, Terriers and Party Down and speculate wildly at just how much the campaign will end up splashing out on T-Shirts. n.b. All comments made during this podcast about non-union Mexican film crews are done so purely in jest.

As promised in the Ask Us Anything episode, the boys spend a bit of time pondering a question posed that was deemed too weighty to answer alongside the ones about Unicorns and Obi Wan Kenobi fighting Patrick Swayze. Using the recent documentary Side by Side as a jumping off point, Joe and Ed explore the ever changing relationship between celluloid and digital, tracing it's history, assessing the strengths of each medium and then asking if it really matters what format a film is shot on. To wrap the episode up, Joe and Ed run down their 10 favourite films shot digitally. Listen, enjoy, rate and review!

It's an age old question; what is the downright biggest stinking mess of a film you've ever seen? In this special minisode, Ed & Joe re-live some personal cinematic nightmares, including a Feldman/Haim post-fame 'comedy', ropey Greek found footage horror and something called Pumaman. It's not just the obscure films we shed light on, we also sit some of the Hollywood big boys on the naughty step for 15 minutes so they can think about what they've done. As per usual, listen, enjoy, rate and review!

Episode 17 of Shot/Reverse Shot finds the boys discussing issues of adapting other properties for films. They discuss what makes for good and bad adaptations, get distracted by what the insects really represent in Starship Troopers and use this opportunity to once again put the boot in to Zack Snyder, or more specifically, his shallow-as-a-pie-dish attempt to bring Watchmen to life. All this fun is of course rife with tangents, including Ed displaying his love for 'Boyzone Adventures' and Joe getting The Corrections muddled up with The Lord of The Rings. The whole sorry affair is topped with an absolute doozy of a top ten list, in which Ed and Joe list the adaptations they'd kill to see, including a very interesting spin on Hamlet... As usual, listen, enjoy, rate and review!

This week, Joe and Ed find themselves talking about Directors, who are apparently quite important in films. They start with a brief history of directing through the ages, then talk about depictions of directors on film before wrapping things up with a cracking top ten list of directors who, for various reasons, have only directed one film. Of course, no-one listens to Shot/Reverse Shot to learn anything, they listen for the tangents, of which there a plenty, including the boys uncovering of a conspiracy in which Drew Barrymore assassinates President Obama, reveal that a janitor actually directed Rio Bravo and wonder if Chinatown really should have been called Bad Dad. Also, this episode sees the debut of a TRULY AMAZING new top ten jingle. As always, listen, enjoy, rate and review!

After recovering from recent insipid vampire melodrama overload,  we are proud to present the now very delayed episode on Critics. Recorded as a reaction to the publication of the decade-in-the-making Sight & Sound Poll, this episode finds Joe & Ed mulling over the poll's findings in addition to musing on what it means to be a critic in the age of the blogger. As per usual, we take in a few tangential detours and wrap it up with our Top Ten films that didn't feature in the Sight & Sound top 100. Enjoy!

In this very special, if misguided episode of Shot/Reverse Shot, Joe & Ed find themselves holed up in a basement watching all four Twilight films back to back. This twisted human experiment was recorded for your enjoyment.

We thought we'd treat you all to a special little Minisode, given there seems to have been quite a lot going on in the world of film. This mini dispatch sees Ed and myself pondering how Danny Boyle graduated from (possibly) directing Taggart to helming the jaw-dropping spectacle of the London 2012 Olympic opening ceremony, wonder why Javier Bardem is dressed as Max Zorin in the Skyfall trailer, ask how on earth a film of Cloud Atlas is going to be possible and wrap things up with a cautious appraisal of the decision to stretch The Hobbit to three films. We hope you enjoy it and if you do, please rate and review on iTunes!

Holy bonus! It's a special episode in which myself and Ed discuss The Dark Knight Rises. It seemed fitting having talked abut Blockbusters in the last episode to shamelessly cash in on the hype talk in depth about one of the year's biggest films. Those who found our near 2hr epic Blockbusters episode too long can breathe easy, as this one weighs in at a lean 43 minutes. That's not to say we stick to the point, as we discuss the suggestion that Moses was raised by penguins, confuse Joseph Gordon Levitt for Jennifer Love Hewitt and get sidetracked by the unsolved murder in Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep. Enjoy!

This month sees Joe and Ed take a look at the mega bucks flash bang wallop world of the Hollywood blockbuster. Neither are  particularly enamoured with the form and what follows is about 50% critique, 50% bile. They talk about the devolution of the blockbuster, unfairly compare Transformers 2 to Jaws (repeatedly) and then, for the sake of 'balance' run down the 10 best blockbusters since The Matrix, which turns out to be harder than it sounds. Along the way, Ed relives the nightmare of The Avengers (not that one, the 1999 one) and Joe  admits to not really understanding what happens in Batman Begins. When you spend a whole podcast arguing that modern blockbusters are bloated, overlong and preposterous, it's quite something to realise you've turned in an episode that runs to nearly 2 hours. So, strap yourself in for an episode of epic proportions!

With Sheffield Doc/Fest 2012 about to kick off, myself and Ed see if we can handle the truth, talking about our shared dislike of bio-pics (and how to pronounce it), artifice and the documentary film making aesthetic and then cap it all off with a run down of some of our favourite documentaries.

This week sees myself and Ed discussing the finer points of Education on and in film. We speculate as to why Wonder Boys is the key film in the Marvel Universe, hit back at some listener criticism of Brick and I personally educate Ed in the ways of Soul Man. As usual, we meander off on tangents pondering on broader touchstones such as High School films vs College films, the merits of going to film school and a run down of the top 10 educators on film. Enjoy!

This week Joe and Ed talk about unwarranted sequels, films about homecomings and discuss directors in desperate need of a return to form. Amongst the subjects of discussion are Brett Rattner's Midnight Run sequel, the masterpiece that is Five Easy Pieces and whether or not Martin Scorsese has made a great film since Goodfellas. Along the way, there is a quad bike race in the street outside the studio, some pontification about the events between Lethal Weapon 2 and 3 and some seriously disturbed revelations about the fate of the title character in Hugo.