Kyle is joined by podcast impresario and professional talker Pete Wright for a ten-slot love letter to one of the last movie stars who was equal parts matinee idol, quirky character actor, and chaotic neutral energy bomb: it’s Val Kilmer. No, this is not a definitive ranking of Val Kilmer performances (because, come on, that would be impossible and also wrong), but rather the moments that defined Val for them.
They cover everything from the obvious (Tombstone, The Doors) to the gloriously oddball (Top Secret, The Saint), to the just-barely-legal cinematic hallucinations (The Island of Dr. Moreau—which is to movies what “raw chicken sushi” is to food). Along the way, you’ll get tales of tuberculosis towns, awkward horse stories, and a beefy defense of “Real Genius” as the Rosetta Stone of the “Hot Smart Guy With a Joke” archetype.
Also: Val plays Elvis in True Romance—but you never get a full view of his face. That’s how cool he was. He didn’t even need a face. He could haunt your cinematic soul with a voice and some shadows. WHO ELSE CAN DO THAT?
So, pour yourself a drink, set your VHS copy of Willow to rewind, and settle in for a warm and weird walk through the career of a man whose IMDb is overflowing with range and at least one rogue documentary. And yes, they skip Top Gun. Why? Because Iceman was right. That’s why.
Links & Notes
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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
Learn how to support our show and The Next Reel’s family of film podcasts by becoming a member. It's just $5 monthly or $55 annually. Learn more here.
Join the conversation with movie lovers from around the world in our Discord community!
Here’s where you can find us around the internet:
What are some other ways you can support us and show your love? Glad you asked!
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
Learn how to support our show and The Next Reel’s family of film podcasts by becoming a member. It's just $5 monthly or $55 annually. Learn more here.
Join the conversation with movie lovers from around the world in our Discord community!
Here’s where you can find us around the internet:
What are some other ways you can support us and show your love? Glad you asked!
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
Learn how to support our show and The Next Reel’s family of film podcasts by becoming a member. It's just $5 monthly or $55 annually. Learn more here.
Join the conversation with movie lovers from around the world in our Discord community!
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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
Learn how to support our show and The Next Reel’s family of film podcasts by becoming a member. It's just $5 monthly or $55 annually. Learn more here.
Join the conversation with movie lovers from around the world in our Discord community!
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What are some other ways you can support us and show your love? Glad you asked!
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
Learn how to support our show and The Next Reel’s family of film podcasts by becoming a member. It's just $5 monthly or $55 annually. Learn more here.
Join the conversation with movie lovers from around the world in our Discord community!
Here’s where you can find us around the internet:
What are some other ways you can support us and show your love? Glad you asked!
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
Learn how to support our show and The Next Reel’s family of film podcasts by becoming a member. It's just $5 monthly or $55 annually. Learn more here.
Join the conversation with movie lovers from around the world in our Discord community!
Here’s where you can find us around the internet:
What are some other ways you can support us and show your love? Glad you asked!