Shot/Reverse Shot

A few words about James Gandolfini, who tragically died last week.

As promised last time around, Joe and Ed descended on Sheffield DocFest, armed with nought but a pair of mics and a quest for the truth. They talk about the films, the events, the masterclasses and the parties that made DocFest's 20th anniversary so very special. Amongst all that important stuff, this episode includes the search for a mythical free breakfast and a disastrous, drunken attempt to interview someone on a dancefloor. Thanks to Tom Grater, Martin Parsons and Ralph Mackinder for additional waffle.

This week's Top Ten list sees Ed and Joe getting giddy about the coming attractions of the Sheffield International Documentary Festival, which celebrates it's 20th Anniversary this year. With both Ed and Joe in attendance this year, the boys run down the ten films, events and parties that they are most excited about. During the festival itself - which runs from 12-16 June 2013 - you can follow Ed and Joe's exploits on Twitter, finding them on that social network at @ejrdavies and @thewoodenkimono respectively. As usual, listen, enjoy, rate and review!

It's little over a week since 15 brand new episodes of the resurrected Arrested Development landed and Joe and Ed have watched them all (twice) to see if they're safe for general consumption. Does the highly anticipated return of the Bluth Family meet their expectations? Have a listen and find out. WARNING: Contains mild disagreement.

So, yeah, that Dan Harmon eh? Never coming back to Community is he? Now follows Joe & Ed's climbdown on their previous assertion that the - now returning - ex showrunner would never return.

After receiving reams of angry network notes, the boys have decided to separate the top ten lists that usually end each episode into their own standalone show. For the very first of these episodes, Joe & Ed fire off  list of 10 superb TV Show Adaptations. Some are films adapted from TV shows, some are TV shows adapted from films. One is actually a TV show adapted from a TV show. Mind boggling. Being able to focus on the list on it's own unfortunately does not mean the boys are actually any more focused. During this episode, Ed dumbfounds Joe with details of the upcoming LEGO movie, the pair imagine a disgustingly profane alternative to The Avengers and Joe reveals what his confused, 11 year old self made of Twin Peaks when it aired first time around. As per usual, listen, enjoy, rate and review!

This week, Joe and Ed run the rule over the very latest season of NBC's Community, a show that against all odds has found itself being renewed for an incredibly unlikely fifth season. The boys assess what impact the departure of creator Dan Harmon had on the show, talk about season four's various highs and lows and also ponder what the future holds for the students of Greendale. As usual, listen, enjoy, rate and review!

After it's wildly popular appearance as a segment in the 2013 Preview episode, Michael BayWatch returns as a standalone episode, in which Joe and Ed raise awareness of the threat posed to the public by Pain & Gain. Part review, part public safety announcement. Stay Vigilant. Stay safe.

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!

We thought it'd be remiss of us not to say a few words about the late, great Roger Ebert, who sadly passed away last week.

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!

After spending more than a year choosing the subjects on which they show off their freeform waffling skills, Joe and Ed decided to hand the talking stick to you - the audience - to pick the topics of discussion. Selecting a wide range of questions volunteered via Facebook and Twitter, the boys find themselves debating hypothetical dust ups between nightclub bouncers and Jedi Knights, wondering why films seem to be so long these days and pondering on the scarcity of unicorns in motion pictures. As always, listen, enjoy, rate and review!

As promised at the end of the last episode, Joe and Ed fulfill their contractual obligation and cast their eyes over the veritable feast of TV coming up this year. Show favourites Arrested Development, Mad Men, Breaking Bad and Community all return, 30 Rock draws to a close and fresh faced young bucks S.H.I.E.L.D and Under the Dome vie for position on the autumn schedule. As always, the focus of this episode wanders, most specifically becuase Joe is surreptitiously watching Couples Retreat in the background.... Listen, enjoy, rate and review!

Season Two of Shot/Reverse Shot kicks off with an epic look at the cinematic year ahead of us. Joe and Ed take a shifty at everything from the wonkiest blockbuster to the most gongworthy Oscar bait. We preview the awards season, speculate as to what will be the movers and shakers of the year and then run down out top ten most anticipated films of the coming 12 months. As per usual, there are tangents aplenty, including a new Crimewatch-style feature and a seemingly unending list of mispronounced surnames. Listen, enjoy, rate and review!

In the final part of their 2012 round up, the boys finally get to learn what their top films of 2012 were. Compiled using a complex and highly secret mathematical formula, Joe and Ed take you on a 90 minute tour of the very best of 2012, firstly running through the films that didn't quite make the cut, before discussing the top 10 films of the year one by one. As always, listen, enjoy, rate and review!

In the 2nd part of the Shot/Reverse Shot review of the year, Joe & Ed focus on the very worst 2012 had to offer. They look at the box office losers John Carter and Rock of Ages, Ed loses it whilst recalling the moment the plot turned in Woman in the Fifth and Joe relives the horror of Red Tails. Along the way, the boys disagree on what to make of the year's more divisive films, such as Shame and Ted, but patch things up before it gets out of hand. As always, listen, enjoy, rate and review!

Holy shit, the Shot/Reverse Shot Podcast is one year old. Like most one year olds, we still soil ourselves and dribble, thankfully in the form of 90 minutes of informative  mildly amusing film natter. We've been on a bit of a hiatus, but we're back to round up the year that was 2012, with part one of our 3 part review of the ups and downs of the cinematic calendar. Here, in part one, Joe and  Ed chat about 2012 in general, talk about the big news stories, box office winners and losers and do that bit where they talk about folk who have sadly left us in the last 12 months. Of course, this is presented in Shot/Reverse Shot's trademark rambling style, with tangents aplenty. As always, 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!