Jason and the Movienauts Jason Sacks

This week Carl Smith of Becoming Valiant: A Valiant Comics Podcast joins Jason to talk about one of the more oddball intriguing stories of comics-to-film.

You might never have heard of Valiant Comics, but it's possible that if COVID had never happened, Valiant would be a household name these days. See, their big-screen debut, Bloodshot, hit just as Coronavirus shutdowns hit the world. That means nobody ended up seeing the film and that caused the Valiant Cinematic Universe to die before it was ever born.

Carl and Jason talk Bloodshot along with a fan-produced Valiant film, and try to decide which one is better: the ultra-cheap YouTube vid or the longform, expensive Vin Diesel film from Sony.

Umm, we might have telegraphed the answer to that question, but we think you'll enjoy this episode.




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For the last two weeks on this podcast, we've been discussing David Lynch films. So what better topic to discuss to follow up on the Lynch analysis than to talk about a director whose work reminds many of Lynch? Chris joins Jason again as the guys try to make sense of Beau is Afraid, Hereditary and Midsommar - and they come up with some interesting conclusions. We think you'll enjoy this one on the day after Mother's Day as Chris and Jason dig into dysfuctional families, subjective vs objective storytelling, and the bizarre acting skills of one Joaquin Phoenix.




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Shawn and Paul join Jason once again to discuss the biggie of all the David Lynch films: Mulholland Drive. Ofte called one of the best - if not the best - film of the century - the guys attempt to examine why the film is so well loved, what the heck it's all about, and just who was lying dead in that bed anyway?




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Shawn and Paul are back once again to help Jason make sense of David Lynch's most massive and often overwhelming film: Inland Empire. Just what is it about this film that resists analysis and compels a myriad of YouTube users to create hour long breakdowns of this film? And why is does the film still compel us to stare into the abyss and try to add a rational plot to a fundamentally irrational story? Listen as the guys try to puzzle it all out.




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Eric and Jason are back talking about the films of Masahiro Shinoda, this time discussing three films with bizarre emotional triangles of a sort: Our Marriage, Gonza the Spearman and The Petrified Forest.

The guys are surprised how emotionally satisfying Our Marriage is despite its brief 66-minute running length. The film captures a specific moment in Japanese history with a brilliant sort of all-encompassing eye... hopefully a listen to this pod will convince you to check out this vastly under-known film.

Which is not to say that Gonza and Forest are not excellent films. As Eric and Jason explore, they both are satisying in that particular sort of massive dark way Shinoda often delivers. Each is a fascinating, deep insight into human nature and well worth a listen and a watch.



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Blaize and Jason are now getting towards the later section of Paul Schrader's complex career. This time they get to a couple of really pretty intriguing films by him.

Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist is one of those films which has a backstory as compelling as what viewers see up on the screen. Blaize gets into all of the amazing backstory here, exploring how Schrader opted to go back to work for the studios, how his Exorcist prequel was taken away from him, and how that prequel was ultimately released.

Even with all that backstory, Dominion is a complex, fairly interesting film with a surprising amount of depth, and the guys find a lot in the fulm to make it compelling.

The Walker, Blaize and Jason agree, is kind of a lost classic. It features a fantastic performance by Woody Harrelson in an excellent character study that adroitly explores late 00s Washington DC, full of decadence and betrayal and even murder.

Both films are worth searching for and we think you'll enjoy this discussion.


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