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SMC Pod #203: Classic Hollywood Christmas
Christmas movies are a genre unto themselves. And Classic Hollywood Christmas movies are a special part of that genre. Holiday movies made in Hollywood's heyday of the 1930's-1940's. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill takes a look at five favorites-Frank Capra's 1946 It's A Wonderful Life, Ernst Lubitsch's 1940 The Shop Around the Corner, Preston Struges' 1944 The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, Vincente Minnelli's 1944 Meet Me In St. Louis, and W.S.Van Dyke's 1934 The Thin Man. Interestingly, all these classic use dark subject matter-contemplated suicide, financial stress, murder, small town scandal-to contrast and thus emphasize Christmas themes of redemption, family, second chances. We also take a look at two modern classics-Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can and Terry Zwigoff's Bad Santa and how they share much the same DNA as their classic Hollywood counterparts.
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SMC Pod #202: The Italian Stylists
What is it about the Italians? The rich food. Thousands of years of incredible art and sculpture and music. Something's in the blood over there that produces a high concentration of moviemakers with incredible lush styles: Sergio Leone, Federico Fellini, Lucio Fulci, Mario Bava, and Dario Argento to name just a few. This week, Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill riffs on what it means to be a "stylist". And why Italian masters like Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica don't quite feel like part of that category because other traits of their moviemaking dominate. Craig also tries explores why, even if your aesthetic is different, studying stylists is key to the craft.
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SMC Pod #201: Blade Runner & dystopian sci-fi movies
Ridley Scott's 1982 sci-fi dystopian noir Blade Runner where a disillusionedd private eye/cop/robot hunter Harrison Ford tracks down and falls in love with "Replicants" or robot cyborgs made to look like humans is a pinnacle of the sci-fi dystopian genre. Blade Runner presents a disturbing, overpopulated, megalopolis Los Angeles and explores sci-fi questions of what it means to be human, to exist, to live. Dystopia movies like Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men, Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, Mike Judge's Idiocracy, show humanity and society hanging on but everything falling apart. These are movies just before the apocalypse. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill takes a look at many of these movies and how years like 1971 and 2006 when the US was at war both internally and internationally produced dystopia sci-fi classics that mirrored our own anxiety and worry.
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SMC Podcast #200: Lightning Bottle Movie Masterpieces
To celebrate our 200th podcast, we take a look at some of the less screened and spoken about movie masterpieces that give us "that feel". Movies like Chaplin's The Gold Rush, Renoir's Boudu Saved From Drowning, Forman's The Fireman's Ball, the Coens' Barton Fink, Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire among many others are what Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill calls "lightning bottle movie masterpieces". Movies that give you "that feel" of electric, exciting "I want to do this" moviemaking. We discuss 15 movies in all, including asserting that Citizen Kane, as discussed as it is, is taken for granted and underrated now. Our hope here is that you'll go check out or re-watch a few of these movies and seek out cinema that gives you "that feel" to make amazing movies.
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SMC Pod #199: The Toronto Film Festival 2025 1st Person POV-Blake Winston Rice & his short DISC
Filmmaker Blake Winston Rice returns to the pod to talk about his most recent short, DISC, starring Victoria Ratermanis & indie phenom Jim Cummings and how it premiered at the 2025 Toronto Film Festival (TIFF). Blake joined us on SMC Pod #182 to talk about how his short TEA got into the Cannes Film Festival and what it was like to actually attend the world's greatest film fest in person. Now Blake returns to talk about Toronto which is in the Top 5 world film fests and often viewed as the springboard for moviemakers ahead of awards season. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill and Blake talk about what a moviemaker needs to do these days to keep the needle moving forward towards feature work, financing, and career-building.
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