Secret Movie Club Podcast

SMC Pod #71: Stranger Than Paradise & Jim Jarmusch

The Secret Movie Club team (Connor Lloyd Crews, Edwin Gomez, Daniel Ott, Craig Hammill) discuss writer/director Jim Jarmusch's breakout hit 2nd feature STRANGER THAN PARADISE and Jarmusch's career as a whole. Edwin insists NIGHT ON EARTH is Jarmusch's best while Daniel and Craig lean PATTERSON and DOWN BY LAW. Connor gets passionate about Texas politics and a short discussion about California's upcoming recall election spontaneously erupts. Plus Edwin brags about getting Patton Oswalt to sign a blu ray. 

Secret Movie Club September 2021 Calendar Show!

The Secret Movie Club team (Connor Lloyd Crews, Edwin Gomez, Daniel Ott, Craig Hammill) rap through our September 2021 calendar of events rapid fire so we don't waste your time. But we also give some trivia, synopses, thoughts. You hear it here first so you know everything we're doing. 

SMC Pod #70: Cinema as Transformative Art

The Secret Movie Club team (Connor Lloyd Crews, Edwin Gomez, Daniel Ott, Craig Hammill) discuss movies that have a next life as re-purposed art by other moviemakers and artists. Whether that's the Coen Brothers' The Big Lebowski inspiring a new religion and Lebowski fest, the fan re-imagined features for Star Wars A New Hope or Robocop or even comedic re-dubs of movies like Gamara 2 or Mystery Science Theater 3000. The team notes how these often wildly funny original re-imaginings introduce folks to movies they might have otherwise never watched. 

SMC Pod #69: Erotic, Sexual, & Horny Movies

The SMC Team (Connor Lloyd Crews, Edwin Gomez, Daniel Ott, Craig Hammill) discuss erotic, sexual, and horny movies (and the differences between them). Edwin praises Helen Mirren. Craig and Connor agree on their belief that one of the core difficulties in making successful movies with explicit sexuality resides in story structure. Daniel notes why PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN ON FIRE is so successful as both a narrative and a movie about sexuality. 

DEFEND THIS MOVIE #2: MAMMA MIA!

On our second off-shoot podcast DEFEND THIS MOVIE, Secret Movie Clubber Edwin Gomez demands that Secret Movie Clubber Daniel Ott defend Ott's love for the 2008 jukebox musical MAMMA MIA! starring Meryl Streep, directed by Phyllida Lloyd, with music by ABBA.  Daniel's unshakeable good heartedness and love of feel-good movies meets Edwin's relentless burning hatred for anything schmaltzy.  Who wins? Listen and decide!

SMC Pod #68: The Pieces of Cinema-Design

The SMC Team (Edwin Gomez, Connor Lloyd Crews, a strangely ethereal Daniel Ott, Craig Hammill) return to SMC's occasional series on different elements that go into making a movie. Today, the team discusses production design, costume design, makeup design. Basically all the design elements that go into the world building of great movies.  Daniel, as if like a God from high, floors everyone with his pithy observations. Craig laments the doughnuts and beer he is consuming.

SMC Pod #67: David Lynch's DUNE & disastrous movies for their filmmakers

Returning special guest Bri Robert (@brirob9) and the SMC team (Connor Lloyd Crews, Craig Hammill) discuss David Lynch's 1984 DUNE which Lynch feels to this day was the worst movie experience of his life. The team then discusses other horrible experiences for their filmmakers, if even awful experiences can end up having good results. Bri and Connor also talk about M. Night Shamalyan's most recent movie OLD. 

 

 

SMC Pod #66: STOP MAKING SENSE & when directors do docs, music videos, commercials, etc.

The Secret Movie Club Team (Connor Lloyd Crews, Edwin Gomez, Daniel Ott, Craig Hammill) discuss the Talking Heads' & Jonathan Demme's all-time great concert film STOP MAKING SENSE as well as when narrative filmmakers branch out to do documentaries, commercials, music videos, etc.  A sleep-deprived Craig, now with three children, overshares an actual nighttime dream he had 6 hours earlier and feelings about people who don't utilize more than 10% of cinema's capabilities. 

SMC Pod #65: Akira Kurosawa, master filmmaker

The Secret Movie Club team (Connor Lloyd Crews, Edwin Gomez, Daniel Ott, Craig Hammill) finally (!!) after a year of podcasting gets to one of Craig's top three directors, the Japanese master Akira Kurosawa. We discuss some of our personal favorite Kurosawas, his techniques, and his relevancy to filmmaking to this day.  Also Craig tries to talk to Edwin about the Taoist view of war and violence. 

SMC Pod #64: The Pieces of Cinema-Sound!

Special Guest Sound Designer/Re-recording mixer Jamie Hardt (@jamie_hardt) who has worked on everything from THE HURT LOCKER through Netflix's most recent TRANSFORMERS series joins the team (Connor Lloyd Crews, Edwin Gomez, Daniel Ott, Craig Hammill) to discuss the absolute importance of sound to cinema and great examples of it throughout movie history.  The Wachowski's SPEED RACER gets much love, Edwin drops a Tarkovsky nod, Connor yet again mentions EVIL DEAD.