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Back in 2015, actor and comedian Griffin Newman and staff writer/film critic for The Atlantic David Sims decided to watch the one and only Star Wars film, The Phantom Menace, every week for 10 weeks, recording a podcast episode about it each time for their podcast The Phantom Podcast. At the end of those 10 weeks, after having gone insane and also having recorded a palate-cleansing episode "Judging the Judge" about Robert Downey Jr.'s ill-conceived Oscar-bait movie in which Robert Duvall shits himself, they discovered there was a second Star Wars movie - a sequel! - entitled Attack of the Clones. So they recorded another ten episodes and went insane again. Then they did the same for Revenge of the Sith. After that, what was left to do? Well, they dropped the whole bit about pretending not to know there were more Star Wars films, and pivoted. They renamed the podcast Blank Check with Griffin and David. Now it's a podcast about the filmographies of directors who receive a "blank check" - they had a massive success and then were given the chance to make crazy passion projects with infinite resources, like Lucas's prequel trilogy. The show has covered the filmographies of directors like M. Night Shyamalan, Brad Bird, Ang Lee, Paul Verhoeven, Kathryn Bigelow, Christopher Nolan, Nancy Meyers, the Wachowski Sisters, and Cameron Crowe. The podcast covers filmographies, which means they have episodes about not just the hits but EVERY film the director has done, in order. Did you know Kathryn Bigelow's first movie was a biker movie which featured Willem Dafoe's first starring role? That Ang Lee made a movie about Woodstock starring Demetri Martin (the son of a Greek Orthodox priest) as a gay Jewish guy? That Speed Racer is an absolute stone cold masterpiece of cinema? You'll learn all this and more from listening.    The appeal of the podcast (for me at least) is threefold: 1) the hosts are "connoisseurs of context," going deep into careers, box office returns, industry scuttlebutt, and all sorts of other stuff in their deep conversations. 2) the hosts are hilarious and have great banter. The producer of the show, who chimes in sometimes, is also hilarious. 3) they cover a really interesting mix of directors.    If you want to start listening, you can pretty much jump in wherever. Most people recommend starting with either an episode for a movie you like, or an episode at the beginning of the filmography for a director you like. Another option is to listen to everything from the beginning, which is nice because you'll understand all the in-jokes. If you want, you can listen to the "best of" compilations for the Star Wars casts: Best of the Phantom Podcast | Best of Attack of the Podcast | Best of Revenge of the Podcast Links
TychoCelchuuu fucked around with this message at 06:36 on Jan 12, 2020 |
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Jun 9, 2019 23:09
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 01:26 |
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One of the things I like about being a fan of this podcast is that it's gotten me to watch more movies I don't like. Before I started listening to movie podcasts (and this along with Black Men Can't Jump in Hollywood is the main movie podcast I listen to) I would basically try to only watch good movies, because, like, why wouldn't I? But since I watch all the movies they cover, this means I'm watching the mediocre and bad ones too (hello Elizabethtown and The Weight of Water). I find that watching some bad movies makes me appreciate and understand what works in good movies more than I did before, and it's also a different sort of movie watching experience, so I value both of those. Plus, sometimes I like the "bad" movies. For instance, I really enjoy Aloha. There's no loving way I would've watched that of my own volition otherwise, and now I have this really interesting knowledge that a movie every sane person hates is something I enjoy! It's nice to know more about how my tastes are unique, rather than finding out that, like, yeah, I like Citizen Kane pretty well or whatever. I've fallen behind though so I haven't watched any of the Mann. I've seen about half of his movies already, but not Last of the Mohicans, so I don't have much to add there.
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Jun 10, 2019 02:25
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Well I've seen Manhunter and Thief which are both fantastic, and although I've heard mixed things about The Keep my entire life, what little I've heard about it makes it seem like it's my jam. I also like Miami Vice, one of the Manns many people dislike, and really now that I think about it, I've never seen a Mann I don't enjoy. So, we'll see!
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Jun 10, 2019 03:28
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Grenrow posted:Did you listen to the Incredibles episode, where 85% of the runtime was Griffin and some other rich NYC rear end in a top hat talking about their high school summer camp? The show can be really interesting and fun when they actually talk about and engage with the movie, but sometimes they let themselves run right off the rails and it's a slog. For better or for worse, since he's one of the hosts, I think Griffin gets to indulge himself more on Blank Check than anywhere else. If you listen to his guest appearances on other podcasts (he's in two of my favorite episodes of Off-Book) he's just as funny but way less self-indulgent, which I think for some people is probably a much better fit. I like Griffin's schtick anyways so I don't care, but for anyone who's convinced they hate him, I'd say maybe stop listening to Blank Check and just check out all the promo tours he did for The Tick on various podcasts or whatever.
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Jun 11, 2019 02:32
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Like almost all stuff that lots of people think is great, Blank Check is pretty divisive. For instance, I love the ad reads! They're my second favorite ads in all of podcasting, second only to Hollywood Handbook, which is even more drawn out than Blank Check.
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Jun 11, 2019 17:26
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:Is Griffin being crazy or is hotel Transylvania actually good?
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Jun 11, 2019 18:41
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caligulamprey posted:I find their actual taste in movies to be kinda subpar - or a better way to describe it is they're not as critical as they should be? I'm just saying they defended Tim Burton much longer than they should have. Both of them do seem somewhat similar to me and Keanu Reeves, though, in that we all just love movies. So it might be that we're juts less critical of movies overall than you. None of this means their taste is "subpar," though. It just means it's different from yours. Of course most people use "your taste is subpar" to mean "your taste is different from mine" but that's not the right way to think about things!
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Jun 11, 2019 22:50
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The Star Wars episodes are different in a lot of ways from the rest of the episodes.
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Jun 13, 2019 15:15
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As many of you know, Griffin is obsessed with Toy Story. He got to see Toy Story 4 early at a press screening (thanks to past and future? guest of the show Richard Lawson) and there is not going to be an emergency Toy Story 4 episode, but he will talk about it on the Filmspotting podcast soon, and eventually the Patreon commentaries will cover all four Toy Story movies.
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Jun 14, 2019 18:15
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If you like the Griffin + Serafinowicz comedy stuff, there's an episode of Hollywood Handbook that they were both on. And of course there's their recently cancelled series The Tick on Amazon Prime, which is very good although Serafinowicz isn't doing much dry humor there.
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Jun 16, 2019 00:45
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The latest episode about Heat (with Jon Gabrus) is almost three hours long!
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Jun 16, 2019 15:13
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caligulamprey posted:On the off-chance you haven't seen Near Dark, absolutely see Near Dark.
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Jun 19, 2019 10:31
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I feel like that's a really weird list of movies to love for it not to include Heat, The Terminator, Terminator 2, and Robocop. Or is "truly love" a very high degree of praise? If that's the case, then yeah, they've actually covered quite a few, especially given how many episodes they've done in total.
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Jul 7, 2019 09:05
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Very pumped for the just-released Miami Vice episode which is 2 hours and 45 minutes long, with no guest. David is presumably very off the leash.
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Jul 14, 2019 05:47
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Meanwhile I rewatched it a couple days ago and it jumped from "mostly like it" to "love it" in my estimation. This is the second time I've seen it and for all I know it'll get better the third time!
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Jul 16, 2019 06:27
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The cast has me filling in the Miyazakis I've missed, which is mostly the early ones. Just saw Nausicaä a few days ago and that was great.
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Sep 3, 2019 10:07
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The only question about Ghibli films is "are they all masterpieces, or are almost all of them masterpieces?" so everyone who hasn't seen many (or any) should really step up their game!
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Sep 24, 2019 07:56
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jojoinnit posted:Hmmm that'll be annoying since the only one of his films I've seen is the remake and that was on a plane so not very optimal.
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Sep 27, 2019 02:45
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mlmp08 posted:and I’m David I'm very behind on the podcast but the string of episodes they just finished (Carpenter up through They Live!) is such a fantastic stretch of filmmaking. Carpenter is such a great cinematic voice.
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Oct 22, 2021 04:28
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Coheed and Camembert posted:Gotta agree. I'm also not much of a horror movie guy, so this series has basically been a full skip for me.
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Nov 3, 2021 02:49
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morestuff posted:I didn’t realize he was such a divisive guest, he’s got some dumb opinions but I always enjoy the vibe of the shows he’s on
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May 29, 2022 18:46
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I agree. In other news, the Fosse miniseries is beginning. One of the best directors they've done, and they've done some really great directors!
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Jul 3, 2022 12:18
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R. Guyovich posted:they announce next week's guest at the end of this episode and boy if it doesn't make it an insta-skip, even for all that jazz
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Jul 18, 2022 04:42
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morestuff posted:Lin Manuel
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Jul 18, 2022 05:20
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BigglesSWE posted:Haven't listened to this in ages, has Griffin done his humble brag about being an old friend of Ezra Miller recently?
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Jul 21, 2022 04:55
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R. Guyovich posted:well this is my other problem with the podcast along with the fact neither griffin nor david are as funny as they think they are and the generally tepid opinions held by anyone within or adjacent to the professional film criticism scene, which is the fun of movie discussion shows is passionate people arguing about things they like or don't like and neither of them have the backbone to actually do that. we've known as far back as siskel and ebert that vicarious fights about movies make for good entertainment and here the prevailing mood is "don't rock the boat."
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Aug 3, 2022 16:53
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I'm sure he'll get over it. (I don't know what you mean because I haven't listened to their first Kubrick episode yet.)
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Aug 7, 2022 05:47
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Yeah. don't treat the podcast as an educational program. It's good for comedy and good for film criticism. Everything else: very questionable!
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Nov 9, 2022 03:20
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March Madness approaches... https://twitter.com/blankcheckpod/status/1628417098987757568
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Feb 22, 2023 17:02
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I adore his movies but Cronenberg might be the worst outcome. Tons of movies, all in English, with a lot of pretty similar themes.
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Feb 27, 2023 16:18
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What a tight finish! I knew I should've voted twice.
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Apr 1, 2023 16:27
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I haven't listened yet but I heard her latest episode is quite good!
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Apr 12, 2023 07:24
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Check this out. Search through Blank Check episodes!
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Apr 15, 2023 03:22
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Not quite the same thing but they do have an all box office game Patreon episode.
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Apr 15, 2023 10:01
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They had a practice run with that stuff recently via Avatar 2, featuring blueface, a white guy with dreads, etc.
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Apr 21, 2023 16:41
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 01:26 |
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Xiahou Dun posted:Have they announced the next series yet anywhere? I don’t really follow social media.
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Nov 21, 2023 10:34
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