Middlebrow Madness – Noise Space: Recent Episodes
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https://pinecast.com/listen/b8639c1d-63e9-4645-93e7-33dbaf1295c4.mp3Recorded on 23 February 2024
Derek must’ve angered one or another of the Computer Gods, because part of this episode was garbled beyond recognition. But never fear, sports fans! Thanks to Isabelle’s considerable skills as an editrix, the seams on the episode are nary audible. So you will hear in the highest fidelity our intrepid hosts debate the pros and cons of your dad’s favourite movie, Derek’s favorite character actor joke, and of course, the entirety of Isabelle’s online bullshit fire sale. We also mention in passing two titans of the American arts who have recently passed. In short, another classic episode!
This week’s matchups:
Good Will Hunting v. Dial M for Murder
Saving Private Ryan v. The Terminator
Further reading:
“Everyone Is Beautiful and No One Is Horny” by RS Benedict
“F/X Porn” by David Foster Wallace (via Michael S. Fuchs)
See the bracket [SPOILERS AHEAD]
Drop us a line: middlebrowmadness@gmail.com
Follow the show on Twitter: @middlebrowpod
Follow Isabelle on Bluesky: @lilieswithout
Check out Derek’s stuff at derekgodin.com
Join the Middlebrow Madness Discord
https://pinecast.com/listen/03db6948-9175-4969-8ff9-2947e7f3d088.mp3Recorded on 24 November 2023
Sports fans, Isabelle brought the thunder with her reading this week, which threatened to swallow this episode whole, so to speak. But as all episodes must, we eventually get to the matter at hand, which in this case includes one of the most whiplash-inducing matchups in the bracket thus far. We also have some metagaming, a lot of fawning over the classics, and a short discussion of what we mean when we call something “good.” In short, another classic episode!
This week’s matchups:
Toy Story v. The Deer Hunter
Casablanca v. Barry Lyndon
See the bracket [SPOILERS AHEAD]
Drop us a line: middlebrowmadness@gmail.com
Follow the show on Twitter: @middlebrowpod
Follow Isabelle on Bluesky: @lilieswithout
Check out Derek’s stuff at derekgodin.com
Join the Middlebrow Madness Discord
https://pinecast.com/listen/fee21a41-07de-4d91-90cd-796c61097959.mp3Recorded on 15 September 2023
Well that goofball Derek up and forgot to upload the new episode last week, so can chastise him via your medium of choice. Sorry about that! But here it is, one week late but no worse for wear.
Sports fans, we invite you to take a trip back in time with us, a trip back to the fall of 2023, where your intrepid hosts dusted off their microphones and open-source audio software and recorded an episode of this very podcast for the first time in over two years. This is worth noting because we make a few references that place it in that time span (I think Derek literally refers to “2023” as the present within the opening five minutes). It’s an episode full of hot takes, celebrity investment regrets, and more skimming the plot of the movies we’re covering that usual (we will get better at this, I promise). We also disparage a bunch of sacred cows and fawn over one of the most beautiful and heart-wrenching movies of all time. In short, another classic episode!
This week’s matchups:
Some Like It Hot v. On the Waterfront
Forrest Gump v. Paris, Texas
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See the bracket [SPOILERS AHEAD]
Drop us a line: middlebrowmadness@gmail.com
Follow the show on Twitter: @middlebrowpod
Follow Isabelle on Bluesky: @lilieswithout
Check out Derek’s stuff at derekgodin.com
Join the Middlebrow Madness Discord
https://pinecast.com/listen/62015558-4577-4f42-8bb7-921d94b4135a.mp3tap tap Is this thing on?
Your eyes and ears do not deceive you, sports fans! We are back from our long hibernation, but instead of overwhelming you with takes so hot they break the Scoville scale, our intrepid hosts return with a super-sized life update spectacular, filling you in on the details of what exactly they’ve been doing with their lives since mid-2021. Spoiler alert: a lot of hobbies were indulged in and a lot of media was consumed. Derek and Isabelle tell stories, recommend art, and go off on tangents. It’s like we never left!
The quest for the Greatest Movie of All Time* resumes March 12th.
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See the bracket [SPOILERS AHEAD]
Drop us a line: middlebrowmadness@gmail.com
Follow the show on Twitter: @middlebrowpod
Follow Isabelle on Bluesky: @lilieswithout
Check out Derek’s stuff at derekgodin.com
Join the Middlebrow Madness Discord
Now I’m not one for boasting, sports fans, but this one is a corker. We have an instant-classic opening bit, a huge upset (wink), and an all-time difficult opening round matchup pitting two masterpieces that have a surprising amount in common despite the 75 years that separate them. Also Isabelle makes her co-horst laugh the […]
NOTE: This episode contains discussions of suicide. Sometimes the Universe gives you a gift, and sometimes that gift is a poisoned chalice. Sports fans, I have to tell you, our second matchup in this episode has no business happening in Round 1. But the Bracket Gods are capricious, and they will do as they please. […]
Sports fans, as we being a-tumblin’ down towards the end of round one, we encounter in these matchups a couple of mirrored pairs. We have two movies that our intrepid hosts revisit for the first time in a long time, and two masterpieces of their form, each close to one host’s heart. Who will gracefully […]
In the words of the great American philosopher Jon Bon Jovi, we’re halfway there! Well, we’re halfway through the first round of this white elephant we call the Middlebow Madness bracket, which means we’re really only a quarter of the way there. In any case, our intrepid hosts take a load off and contemplate the […]
It was bound to happen sooner or later, sports fans: we finally cracked two hours. Naturally, this episode is packed to the gills with tangents about crawdads and Twitter Jail and Derek’s dubious acting career. Not that there isn’t any movie talk at all: Isabelle has a galaxy-brain take to end all galaxy-brain takes regarding […]
Sports fans, a good podcast episode is only as good as its digressions, and this one has several (shocking, I know). What do our intrepid hosts talk about that isn’t the four movies listed below? Isabelle’s corny jokes! Derek’s pet theory about musical theatre! One of them reads a little Faulkner! Which host, you ask? […]
Sports fans, we nominally talk movies about on the show, but you know what else crops up a lot in this, our landmark 30th episode and our first missive of 2021? Racism in Hollywood, and piss. Lots of it. Not necessarily in that order. We go short on some masterpieces and long on what Derek […]
Sports fans, you are getting four podcasts for the price of one this week! In addition to the usual movie bracket-based shenanigans, we have a QAnon-skewering politics podcast at the top, a short true-crime missive in the middle, and a full-on miniature games podcast to close the whole thing out. Digressive? Us? Perish the thought. […]
Running parallel to our intrepid hosts’ quest for the Greatest Movie of All Time* is their quest to make each episode of the show longer and more digressive than the previous one. And sports fans? Both quests are humming along quite nicely. So what treasures does this episode contain? The residual evils of pandemic capitalism! […]
A little bit of inside baseball for you, sports fans: when Isabelle sent Derek the edited version of the show, she titled it “The One Where It Goes Off the Rails.” What could possibly have made the longest episode of the show to date disintegrate in such a way? Could it have something to with […]
It’s been a long, long six months, sports fans, but the show is in fact back from the dead! We pick up right where we left off, which is to say we have a long X-rated digression right at the top and then remember that there are movies to talk about. Four movies to be […]
We’re a little late, but no worse for wear, sports fans! This time around, our intrepid hosts ponder whether the crew of Sunrise actually got a pig drunk, the concept of audience manipulation in cinema, and contend with Derek’s wild, earth-shattering take about Ridley Scott. Plus, a new chapter in the Untitled Isabelle Arf Fan […]
Hot off our viewing of Judgment at Nuremberg, Isabelle schools us on the work of German political theorist Carl Schmitt and how they intersect (or don’t) with Stanley Kramer’s film. NOTE: It was raining during the recording of this episode, so please forgive the sound quality. And yes, Isabelle knows that “Weimar” is pronounced with […]
Sports fans, this one’s got everything you can ask for: weird bits, charlatanry, amphibian Messiahs, v i b e s, nostalgia, smart stuff, dumb stuff, and what is probably the single most shocking scene in any film we’ve covered so far. Here’s a hint: it has something to do with the movie with the word […]
Sports fans, Derek knows he fucked up the number of the show in the intro, don’t worry about it. But despite that rocky start, our intrepid hosts navigate between the twin poles of Wild Digressions (conspiracy theories! the recorded output of the Decemberists!) and Hard-Hitting Film Criticism (the lingering effects of propaganda! agreeing in bad […]
We’re back with a vengeance, sports fans! We talk about the why of the dudebro canon, director market correction, the funny side of Ingmar Bergman, and the motion picture with the credits that have perhaps aged the worst of all the movies we’ve covered so far. Plus, Isabelle introduces a new node in her increasingly […]
Sorry for the radio silence, sports fans! Derek and Isabelle are here to bring you to up to speed with the goings-on in their lives, the ongoing pandemic, and gauge interest in a potential fan Discord (among other things). – See the bracket [SPOILERS AHEAD] Drop us a line: middlebrowmadness@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter: @middlebrowpod […]
Sports fans, I’m not going to lie to you: thins get real blue and real weird real fast in this on. If this pod had a rating, it’d be a hard R. It’s also an episode that swings wildly between the twin poles of “tangential bullshit” (left-of-centre fetishes and 90s rom-coms where one of the […]
We’re back, sports fans, and we’re ringing in the new year! Only we don’t make reference to this fact at all, since we recorded this some time ago. Our intrepid hosts experience both sides of the quality coin in this one, from baffling slogs to baffling successes. There’s also talk of Baz Luhrmann and chili […]
Our march towards the championship match chugs on, sports fans! Our intrepid hosts cover everything you’ve come to expect from the show: Sex! Metagaming! Personality quizzes! They also go deep on three of the funnest films they’ve covered so far on the pod, and, uh… one that is decidedly less fun. We’ll let you figure […]
Hard swerve! Isabelle takes the reins in this solo minisode where she elaborates on the concept of normative statements and how they apply in our criticism of the 2005 feature film V for Vendetta. NOTE: AT 4:39, Isabelle says “descriptive” when she meant “prescriptive.” – Motherfuckin’ show notes! 83: The Unchecked Conservative Ideology of US […]
It’s time to get into the spirit of giving, sports fans! Isabelle gives Derek a gift! The Middlebrow Madness will give you a bonus episode! We give some searing hot takes on some beloved classics! And best of all question mark?, we give you CWs for racism, CSA, and transphobia. It’s another classic episode of […]
Break time is over, sports fans! We actually talk a lot about music at the top of this one. (Tangents? On a podcast?! My word!) But fear not, we resume our dizzying climb to the top of the bracket in short order. This time around, we talk about the limitations of charm, the value of […]
Sports fans! We are 25% of the way up the bracket, and so we’re planting a marker and taking stock of how far we’ve come. We talk about out picks, mourn the fallen, pick some superlatives, and we answer some 100% genuine grain-fed grade-A viewer mail. Stray topics include the films of S. Craig Zahler, […]
We’re back (a dinosaur’s story), and we come bearing the gifts of CWs for sexual assault, rape, and CSA! But also, we’re talking about some great movies, including one of those slippery, queasy Awesome Movies Directed By a Reprehensible Person, and one movie that’s kind of a dud. Also, now we’re 25% of the way […]
We’re back on the bracket beat, sports fans, and we’re asking the tough questions! Does The Dark Knight Rises have a coherent ideology? What is the “normie” Andrei Tarkovsky movie? What’s the deep ecology read on WALL-E? Why were the 90s such a fecund period for stories about the falseness of reality? We answer all […]
A little late but no less great! That’s right, sports fans, we’re back with another classic episode of the pod, where we reaffirm our positions as heads of the Newman/Redford Booster Club, fawn over a certain pair of directorial brothers, and marvel at a film that smiles in the face of a cruel, uncaring world. […]
Three heavy hitters in this one, and a fourth one that’s… okay? Well, I guess it depends on who you ask. One of these movies is definitely not like the others. Also, this episode isn’t as blue as the last few, but there’s plenty of Boner Content to go around for the faithful. We also […]
Sports fans, I’ve got to to come clean: we are a couple of dirty, dirty birdies at the top of this one. Like real filthy. There’s also some mental health talk. But we do talk about movies, specifically about the influence of classical Hollywood film, mental illness in film, “middlebrow” as a qualifier, and navel-gazing […]
Holy cannoli, sports fans, did this one ever get away from us. Get a load of that runtime! 76 god damn minutes! Well, if you’re into weird tangents, you’re in luck: this has one stuff ranging from late-period classic rock to everyone’s least-favourite Canadian lobster man. But crucially, we get to talk about some movies! […]
This episode features three celebrated auteurs from three different countries, and a fourth guy who thought making The Godfather twice as long and ten time more impenetrable was a good idea. And also some digressive NSFW goofiness off the top because Isabelle will make “melt Derek’s brain at the top of the show” a bit […]
That’s right, sports fans, it’s time to checks index card blaze ya dead homie?! Wait, hold on, I got my cards mixed up. It’s actually for checks new index card a crash course in how to properly pronounce the name of a French-Canadian auteur??? I thought this was a movie podcast! I mean, Isabelle and […]
We’re back after a short hiatus, and let me tell you, this episode has everything. Dramatic readings! Our first wild card movie! Ill-advised usage of internet slang by a man in his thirties! Oh, and thoughtful considerations regarding trauma, faith, and the moving image. CW: some saucy shit in the front, and Nazi shit in […]
Derek and Michelle are back in town and ready to send two more movies to the second round. This time around, our intrepid hosts consider two of the best close-up movies of all time, a no-frills war picture from the 50s, and a movie that, frankly, shouldn’t even be on this list. Also, Michelle keeps […]
Who’s ready to get deeply uncomfortable? What do the Bracket Gods have in store for us this time. Well, uh, cringe-inducing drama, the spectre of the Confederacy, and 21st century terror! Yeah, baby! But the movies are pretty good, and the breakdowns are too. Also Derek forgets the word “harbour,” so that’s pretty funny. One […]
This one is weirdly suicide-heavy, so maybe know that going in? Another podcast means another four contenders step up to the plate! Our long march to the finals continues as we take our first trip to India (and it is a doozy), talk about how cool Bogey is, and take sides in the eternal Keaton/Chaplin […]
Well, we’re here, sports fans. We have to contend with who is possibly the biggest boil on cinema’s ass to date, and possibly of the whole bracket. But not before we screw up the names of fantasy dudes and silent film pioneers and generally just make a mess of things. But fear not, we gets […]
Onward and upward through the IMDb Top 250 bracket we go! Two reprehensible Hollywood leading men go head to head in the director’s chair, and Michelle continues the great podcasting tradition of Derek’s co-host cursing him out. Which of these movies deserved their Oscars? Which ones didn’t? The answers may shock and confound you! – […]
Our intrepid bracketeers have returned to take on the next two matchups in the IMDb Top 250 tournament. Which classic film will hang its head in shame? Which kind of neo-noir is superior? How many times is Derek going to assert that a movie “fucks?” Listen and find out! – This week’s matchups: L.A. Confidential […]
And they’re off! Michelle and Derek cover the first two matchups of the IMDb bracket’s first round. They also talk about movies from their childhood, Letterboxd pranksters, and that sexy sexy so-and-so Paul Newman. – This week’s matchups: A Clockwork Orange v. Cool Hand Luke Back to the Future v. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance […]
It all begins here. Michelle Arf and Derek Godin of Dim the House Lights have decided to take on the Herculean task of plugging the Internet Movie Database’s Top 250 films (plus six wild cards) into a single elimination bracket and finding out which one is the real middlebrow champion. In this inaugural episode, they […]
Isabelle Arf and Derek Godin use the tried and true method of the single-elimination bracket to find out which movie from the IMDb Top 250 is the best one.