The Big Picture

I just discovered this podcast and I really enjoy it. I’m totally addicted to catching up on all the hall of fame and movie draft episodes.

The review of wicked (for good) was tbh… embarrassing. I’m hardly the world’s biggest Wicked fan, and there is plenty to critique about this film, but the hosts spend half of this episode shouting questions about the plot that are either: literal canon, easily google-able, or answered in the film… This is not a difficult film to understand, these are not difficult metaphors to grasp- the hosts (especially Sean) are indignant and intentionally dense throughout this conversation. Even if you’re too much of a snob to pretend to care about this film, this is a FILM REVIEW podcast and this film is a cultural phenomenon of a story based on a musical based on a fan fiction novel based on maybe THE most famous early Hollywood film based on a book… spanning over 100 years. On top of that, there are clear, highly topical, socio-political thru lines rules for the picking. If you’re not going to respect a work enough to,at the very least, offer a substantiated and mildly researched critique, why even bother? This basically sounded like a vapid, day drunk, brunch conversation from a table of cringey str8s 🤷🏻

I don’t get this podcast I don’t even know what there are talking about

I’ve listened for years and until this year considered it one of my favorites. I realized this week it is no longer worth the time. Amanda is often openly hostile to the type of people this podcast should be for and often proves, through her various tangents, that she’d rather be talking about literally anything other than movies. The ad strategy is absolutely irritating. Often there is less than a handful of minutes between ads whether it’s the Bill Simmons prerecorded ones or the live read ads. It’s so painful. If the ad market is that bad give me a way to pay for an ad free version. Sean’s movie watching habits are so wildly elitist that it’s difficult to relate to as a normal person who can first watch movies when they come to theaters. If you’re watching a movie so far ahead of release that you can’t speak to it by the time it actually becomes widely available what good are you as a public film influencer? Reading the recent reviews about the pod is incredibly validating and I hope someone drives the change the audience is asking for.