TruStory FM Specials: Recent Episodes
TruStory FM
TruStory FM Specials is a feed of interviews, explorations, and observations in film podcasts, many of which evolve into their own series!
Welcome back to Behind the Sites, a long-overdue return to one of our favorite series here at The Next Reel. This series celebrates the technology behind the entertainment industry... specifically, the sites and apps we use to learn about the movies and shows of which we call ourselves fans.
Casey Liss is a podcaster, developer, and writer from Richmond, Virginia. However, these days, it might be hard to know in which order to put those things. He's one-third of the Accidental Tech Podcast, a must-listen for principled nerds, and half of Analog(ue) on Relay FM. But he's here today to talk about his latest app, Callsheet, an entertainment industry search experience that might just earn a prized spot on the home screen of your phone.
Along the way, Casey talks about the challenges that come with attempting to peel back the features of an existing monolith in order to create an app that is fast, yet still seemingly feature-complete. We talk about what goes into working on an app that is dependent on a third-party API in an era that has rendered API a dirty, profit-seeking word. Oh, and we talk about Plex. For members, we talk a lot about Plex.
Links & Notes
- Callsheet
- Callsheet on the App Store
- The Movie Database
- TheMovieDB API
- Casey did a guest spot on Mac Power Users with David Sparks and Stephen Hackett and, if you're as intrigued by a complex Plex set-up as I am, check out this episode and let's get ripping! (ripping our legal media acquired legally because we don't want to insinuate in any way that we condone that other sort of rubbish. -ed)
Learn more about the WGA strike here.
Learn more about the SAG-AFTRA strike here.
Welcome to the Story Well, a way station for storytellers of all stripes to pull up a seat alongside their compatriots and listen to them talk of art and craft.
The topic of the day is NaNoWriMo, the writing endurance test where writers are tasked with writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. All three of us competed in this Mount Everest of writing challenges with varying levels of success. But what does success even mean in this case? We’ll talk ideas, strategies and then take some time to create a story from scratch.
Kyle and Rob are back to talk Trek. This time, our list is stand alone episodes of Star Trek that meant something to us. No two-parters or movies are allowed. Make it so!
Physical copies vs. digital copies. Ownership from one country to another. Andy and Steve are joined by entertainment attorney Donald Smiley and distributor & owner of Archstone Entertainment Scott Martin to talk about a lot of these behind-the-scenes bits of the business of film production.
CJ and Jordan from The Nerd Critic podcast are taking over the feed today to share the first of their series leading up to next weekend’s big release with the first of the JJ-Star-Warsies in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Like what you hear, but you’ve never heard of The Nerd Critic? No worries! Just head over to reelcontender.com, or find them in Himalaya, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere else you get your podcasts. Like we do!
Enjoy the show, and be on the lookout for a little Next Reel invasion over there soon!
Before Steve Rogers could do this all day, before Batman asked Superman if he could bleed, before Venom got weirdly obsessed with the pancreas, there was a superhero boom in the movies of the late 80s and early 90s that paved the way for the golden age we are presently experiencing. But how did these movies prepare audiences for seeing comic book heroes on the big screen? What mistakes did they make?
A topic this big is too big for one show, so our own Andy Nelson joined the folks behind Road To Infinity and Most Excellent 80s Movies podcasts have teamed up to create an epic crossover event. No stone left unturned, no flop left unflipped, and you are right in the middle of the recording session at Phoenix Fan Fusion 2019!
As part of our ongoing series on the people behind the sites and services that serve the film-loving community, today we’re talking to Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for comScore. You may not be familiar with comScore but you’re likely familiar with reports on how well any particular movie did on any given weekend. comScore is the company that gathers all of that information from the movie theatres, organizes the statistics into useful information, and gets it back to the studios so they know how well their movies did. Paul works as the frontman for the company and is often seen as the face of the numbers in interviews far and wide. Paul joins us to talk about the exciting world of film statistics, how he got started in the business and his love for film.
Thank you for supporting The Next Reel Film Podcast on Patreon! — https://patreon.com/thenextreel
What’s this? More Trek? We can’t get enough of it! This week, Ethan Siegel joins Pete to talk about the science of Star Trek, talking through those questions that stumped us during our film series. From space propulsion to transporters, energy fields to sliding doors, Ethan builds a bridge connecting the fantastic technology that provides the foundation for the Trek future, back to the practical science of today.
Who is Ethan Siegel? He’s a Ph.D. astrophysicist, author, and science communicator, who professes physics and astronomy at various colleges. He has won numerous awards for science writing since 2008 for his blog, “Starts With A Bang,” including the award for best science blog by the Institute of Physics. His two books, Treknology: The Science of Star Trek from Tricorders to Warp Drive, and Beyond the Galaxy: How humanity looked beyond our Milky Way and discovered the entire Universe, are available wherever books are sold.
Links & Notes Thank you for supporting The Next Reel Film Podcast on Patreon! — https://patreon.com/thenextreel
- Treknology: The Science of Star Trek from Tricorders to Warp Drive
- Starts with a Bang — Ethan’s Blog
"Du Jour means teamwork!" You know the feeling. You have a ridiculous internal affair with a movie. You’ve seen it a dozen times. You laugh at all the right places and cry when it ends. But alas, you are alone. Your friends don’t understand you. They shun you. They malign your tastes. You suffer in silence.
It is in that spirit that Tommy Handsome brings you No, No, Wait! Hear Me Out! The latest Next Reel Short is a chance to right a wrong in the world by building a case that a movie you think you’re supposed to hate actually has some value. This month, it’s Josie and the Pussycats, Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan directing. This B-list film about a C-list comic book band actually offers some A-list comedy, says Tommy. Starring Rachael Leigh Cook, Rosario Dawson, Tara Reid, Alan Cumming, and Parker Posey, this cast manages to deliver a level of insight into consumer culture that punches well above its weight.
So join us on this maiden voyage of No, No, Wait! Hear Me Out! and let your shame drift, drift away with three… small… words…
Film Sundries
- Watch this film: iTunes • Amazon
- Script Transcript
- Original theatrical trailer
- Original poster artwork
- Flickchart
- Letterboxd
It was a dark and stormy . . . actually, it was a sunny June Sunday evening when Andy and Steve decided to celebrate the joys of fatherhood with John Carpenter, the Master of Horror. On Father’s Day 2016, these two bold men decided to forego the company of their wives and children and settled in for an evening of sonic chills.
Carpenter is in the middle of a worldwide tour, performing selections from the scores of his films and themes from his recent albums, Lost Themes and Lost Themes II. Listen in as Andy and Steve describe their experience and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of Carpenter’s compositions.
The Next Reel was born out of “Movies We Like” and in this new TNR Short JJ and Tommy Handsome talk about one of our favorite movie gimmicks, tricks, twists, archetypes or whatever you want to call it — it includes all those stories that make you question the reality that’s portrayed to you on the screen. What do you believe? Does it matter? Do you like to question it ... or do you like cheeseburgers? Consider the source and listen to Mindbender.
Film Sundries
- Brazil: iTunes • Amazon
- Shutter Island: iTunes • Amazon
- Inception: iTunes • Amazon
- Jacob’s Ladder: iTunes • Amazon
- Donnie Darko: iTunes • Amazon
- Total Recall: iTunes • Amazon
- Adam & Evelyn: IMDB
- Wizard of Oz: iTunes • Amazon
- It’s a Wonderful Life: iTunes • Amazon
- A Christmas Carol: iTunes • Amazon
As part of our ongoing series on the people behind the sites and services that serve the film-loving community, today we’re talking to Matthew Buchanan, co-founder of Letterboxd.com. Letterboxd has become an indispensable service for film journalists, diarists, and fans, marked by a beautiful design and just the right mix of social connectivity. Matthew and team have created a robust community in Letterboxd, one that stands out on the Internet not only in calibre of discussion, but in kindness of its members.
Sundries
- Letterboxd.com
- Matthew Buchanan on Letterboxd
- Matthew Buchanan on Twitter
- MatthewBuchanan.name
- Joe Zappulla’s Reviews with his Mom
As a part of our series on the movie sites we love, today we’re talking about one of our favorite movie projects. Jamie Benning has become, through great effort and time, custodian to the behind the scenes media of our most iconic films of the 70’s and 80s through his ultimate fan creations: Filmumentaries. In addition to his feature Filmumentaries on the original Star Wars trilogy, Raiders, and Jaws, he’s released a series of shorts furthering his contribution to the body of film analysis, and cementing his position as primary source for schleps like us.
Sundries
- Filmumentaries
- Filmumentaries on Vimeo
- Filmumentaries on Youtube
- Jamie on Twitter
As a part of our series on the movie sites we love, you’d probably guess that we couldn’t go very far without talking to Nathan Chase and Jeremy Thompson, the team behind Flickchart.com. Over the years, Flickchart has become central to our own ranking of films we review on this show, and offers a fun — if enormously frustrating at times — paradigm for stack ranking our favorites. It’s at once a service and an addiction, and we’re thrilled to be able to sit down with Nathan and Jeremy to hear how it all came to be. We talk about the origins of the site and founding philosophy. We explore the technical underpinnings of the site and how the technology has had to scale to keep up with growth and complexity. Most importantly, we get to hear a little bit about Flickchart 2.0, and get a firm non-committal committal of a specific though frustratingly vague launch date … No, we can’t wait to get our hands on it either.
Links & Notes
- Nathan Chase on Flickchart
- Jeremy Thompson on Flickchart
A few weeks ago, we ran across a new site dedicated to movie trailers. It’s called Trailer.Town and it’s a clean, well-organized home for our favorite form of promotion. This week on Shorts, we’re joined by Joel Farris and Alex Carvalho, half of the Trailer.Town team and founders of the site to talk about trailers, spoilers, and the importance of curation in a messy Youtube world.
Sundries * Trailer.Town * About Trailer.Town * @Trailer_Town * @JFarris * @alexcarvalho
Last year, DC Barns entered his name in a contest to join the cast and crew of Star Wars: The Force Awakens at Pinewood Studios in London. He and friend J Trent Adams were treated to the full on-set experience — complete with trailer and a walk-on role in the film — and now, after nearly 12 months in embargoed silence, they are free to speak of their experience inside the Mystery Box.
Today on TNRShorts, a special interview with DC Barns and J Trent Adams.
“I’m happy to be able to defend Volunteers, and maybe you can have me back to defend Mannequin Two."
In 237 episodes of The Next Reel and nearly 200 movies as a part of the weekly show, we try to do solid service to the creators of the work that we talk about. Most of the time, we think we do a pretty good job. Sometimes, we drop the ball.
A few weeks back, as part of our guilty pleasure series, we did the movie Volunteers from 1985 directed by Nicholas Meyer, written by Ken Levine and David Isaacs. We did our usual thing and in the process of talking about the characters and story, we did particularly short shrift to the guys who wrote it.
Of course, we didn’t realize that we came up short until we were called out by Ken Levine himself on his blog, by Ken Levine.
Ken’s credits are one thing, but just wait… he and Isaacs are behind truly seminal television series, and that’s not hyperbolic: how about MASH? Mary? Wings? Cheers? Frasier? Yeah, all those, and many more… he even named a baseball team on The Simpsons. And that doesn’t even begin to touch his other career as a play-by-play baseball announcer.
So you can imagine how thrilled — and a touch embarrassed — we are to have the one and only Ken Levine with us on The Next Reel. We talk about his history in the field, from his first assignment on The Jeffersons to his latest plays. We talk about the craft of writing, doing so with a partner, and the growing writer’s room today. And of course, we talk all about Volunteers and what it took to bring cast and crew together for one of Andy’s favorite flicks!
Andy had a kidney removed earlier this week to donate to a friend. Pete took a few minutes to call and check in on his recovery, and see which movies he's been watching all week.
Richard Dysart is one of those faces that you instantly recognize. He's acted on the stage, on the movie screen and on the TV screen most of his life. In his films, he generally played strong supporting characters, helping to fill any given scene with what it needed. (Look at him in the films we've discussed in our Dysart series as well as several past shows — The Hospital and The Thing — to really get a sense as to what he brought to those movies.) On TV, he often carried the projects, whether he was playing a US President (he played Truman and Eisenhower twice each), a studio head (Jack Warner and Louis B. Mayer), or his most iconic character, Leland McKenzie on the entire run of L.A. Law. He's worked in about every genre there is (as well as animation), has played some of the kindest characters on screen and some of the most vile, and has worked with an incredibly wide array of actors, directors and others in the industry. Join us — Pete Wright and Andy Nelson — as we have a special episode talking with the incredible, humble and versatile Richard Dysart. We talk with Dick about where his passion for this crazy industry grew from and how he took that passion and turned it into a career in radio, which led to theatre, eventually TV and inevitably film. We chat about the way 'live TV' worked and how everyone was still kinda winging it in this fledgling industry at the time, and talk about how it's changed as the industry matured. We discuss his move into film, first playing an uncredited role in a Steve McQueen film, and then touch on a wide variety of movies that he worked in over the years. We point out several of our favorites and talk about the work on those specific projects. And we ask him about what he's up to now and if he has any regrets with his career. It's a delightful conversation with a funny, congenial man full of insight about the industry, stories about experiences on set, and a genuine passion for the world of acting. We're thrilled to ask you to join us for this special episode.
Hey! You know what would be awesome? If you would drop us a positive rating on iTunes! If you like what we’re doing here on TNR, it really is the best way to make sure that this show appears when others search for it, plus, it’s just a nice thing to do. Thanks!!
- The Next Reel on iTunes
- The Next Reel on Facebook
- The Next Reel on Twitter
- The Next Reel on Flickchart
- The Next Reel on Letterboxd
- Guess the Movie with The Next Reel on Instagram
- Check out the Posters with The Next Reel on Pinterest
And for anyone interested in our fine bouquet of show hosts:
- Follow Andy Nelson on Twitter
- Follow Pete Wright on Twitter
- Follow Steve Sarmento on Twitter
- Check out Tom Metz on IMDB
- Follow Mike Evans on Twitter
- Follow Chadd Stoops on Twitter