Tag: the room

Smug Film Podcast Episode #28 – Tommy Wiseau / The Room LIVE RiffTrax (5/4/15)

Episode 28 1:02:45 | View on iTunes | Download Mp3

On this episode, John D’Amico, Jenna Ipcar and I are joined via phone by Tommy Wiseau, the producer, writer, director, and star of the cult classic The Room and the new Hulu series The Neighbors! We discuss the upcoming live RiffTrax of The Room that is showing via satellite to over 700 theaters May 6th and 12th, and talk all about his work. Plus, questions from the mailbag, and Chloe Pelletier with her thoughts on Avengers: Age of Ultron!

Links Mentioned On This Episode:
The Room: LIVE RiffTrax May 6th & 12th
Tommy Wiseau’s The Neighbors
Tony Jaa Fighting Demonstration

If you have a movie-related question you’d like answered on the show, send it to Podcast@SmugFilm.com!
Continue reading Smug Film Podcast Episode #28 – Tommy Wiseau / The Room LIVE RiffTrax (5/4/15)

Smug Film Podcast Episode #5 – Rick Harper / The Room / Room Full of Spoons (5/5/14)

roomfull
51:18 | View on iTunes | Download Mp3

On this episode, Jenna Ipcar and I are joined by Rick Harper, producer and director of the upcoming documentary on the cult film The Room, Room Full of Spoons. We discuss both films, his personal experiences with Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero, and answer some questions from mailbag. This episode also contains a free DVD giveaway, so be sure to listen! Five lucky listeners will each win a DVD of The Room. The instructions on how to win are in the episode.

If you have a movie-related question you’d like answered on the show, leave it in the comments or email us at Podcast@SmugFilm.com.

If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to subscribe on iTunes, and leave a rating and a comment on there as well. Doing this helps us immensely as far as our ranking on there, which is what allows people to be able to discover us. Word of mouth is always best of all though, so spread the word!

Movie Stuff Referenced in this Episode:
Continue reading Smug Film Podcast Episode #5 – Rick Harper / The Room / Room Full of Spoons (5/5/14)

God is Dead?: A Review of ‘God’s Not Dead’

godsnotdead


God’s Not Dead (2014)
Directed by Harold Cronk
Written by Chuck Konzelman and Gary Solomon
113 min.

Mild spoilers, but who cares.

There’s a scene in God’s Not Dead where a woman who has been diagnosed with cancer sits down with her boyfriend for a fancy dinner at a nice restaurant.  The boyfriend smiles excitedly and says “I just made partner.”  She responds with “I have cancer.”  He replies, “Can’t this wait?” and then proceeds to break up with her for having cancer.

This is what Christians think atheists are like.

Also, apparently, just about everyone is an atheist.
Continue reading God is Dead?: A Review of ‘God’s Not Dead’

Male Gaze, Female Snooze: A Review of ‘Blue is the Warmest Color’

Adele Exarchopoulos Lea Seydoux


Blue is the Warmest Color (2013)
Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche
Screenplay by Abdellatif Kechiche & Ghalia Lacroix
Adapted from the comic book ‘Blue is the Warmest Color’ by Julie Maroh
179 min.

Spoiler-free.

As a jaded New Yorker, I typically don’t drool over well-reviewed movies on principle. I’m skeptical of ‘buzz’ and ‘hype’ of any kind, and this overhyped movie in particular seemed to be generating some intriguingly divisive opinions. Between the overwhelming amount of reviewers (largely male) heralding it as “breathtaking,” and the author of the original graphic novel, Julie Maroh, calling it a flat-out straight mens’ porno fantasy, I found myself reading articles about the controversy before I even knew it was a movie slated to come out.

Now call me biased, but I’m going to trust the lesbian author over the male French director when it comes to who really “gets” lesbian love and sex. And as such, I did what any dismissive, self-respecting woman would do and wrote it off as something to miss. But eventually, the whole fantastic vs. awful rhetoric—plus some light peer pressuring from a coworker—finally got me off my ass and into the theater to give it a fair shot. Hey, we already know I’m down to make myself miserable when it comes to movies, so why not?
Continue reading Male Gaze, Female Snooze: A Review of ‘Blue is the Warmest Color’

I Hate Metascores, And You Should Too

rotten2


Metascoring, in case you aren’t aware, is the process of gauging a movie’s quality through aggregating lots of different reviews and spitting out a score based on the percentage of positive reviews it’s gotten. Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic are two very popular websites that metascore, and you’ve probably visited one or both at some point in your life.

The entire concept is bunk.

Even just the idea of applying a ‘score’ to a movie is stupid, and yet it’s become customary for critics to tack them on at the end of their reviews for some reason. We’ve all seen the five-star system, the four-star system, the percent-out-of-a-hundred system—or out of ten, but with decimals—or maybe the most offensive, the A to F grading, which treats the film as though it were a High School essay on Wuthering Heights rather than a comprehensive piece of art.
Continue reading I Hate Metascores, And You Should Too