254 episodes
Random Acts of Cinema Mike Noyes and Charles Peterson
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- Arts
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3.8 • 13 Ratings
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Each week friends Mike and Charlie have Randy (the random number generator) select a film for them to watch from the Criterion Collection. Then they discuss and review it for your listening pleasure. It’s a podcast about the love of film, expanding horizons, painstakingly cataloging the duration of every long take, and friendship.
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76 - Brief Encounter (1945)
Sweeping vistas! Dangerous men driven by greed, glory, honor, and obsession! Is this what acclaimed epic director David Lean has in store for us today? Well… it does feature some dramatically filmed trains. That’s one of his things, right?
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Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here!
*Come support the podcast and get yourself or someone you love a random gift at our merch store. T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, stickers, and more!
If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964). -
173 - The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
I can’t help it if I’m scarred from too many bad 1980s and 90s comic book movie adaptations that weren’t faithful to the source material. I know it shouldn’t matter. Especially if the movie was made in the 1940s, it’s directed by podcast-favorites Powell and Pressburger, and it’s actually excellent.
Join our Patreon and support the podcast!
Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here!
*Come support the podcast and get yourself or someone you love a random gift at our merch store. T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, stickers, and more!
If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing David Lean’s Brief Encounter (1945). -
163 Hopscotch (1980)
Can we chalk this up as another Walter Matthau all-time slam-dunk that most people have never heard of? Or is this old man spy caper exactly what it looks like? We are joined by the duo Brad and Jake from the Never Did it podcast as we race across the globe in search of a potential antidote to Moonraker (which Charlie still thinks is a very good old man spy caper for some reason).
Join our Patreon and support the podcast!
Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here!
*Come support the podcast and get yourself or someone you love a random gift at our merch store. T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, stickers, and more!
If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1946). -
1215 - Shakes the Clown (1991)
Singular-voiced American comedic auteur Bobcat Goldthwait writes, directs, and stars in his absurdist satire of the 1980s stand-up comedy scene reimagined as a grimey city infested with infighting sub-castes of clowns whose insecurities, addictions, and lack of talent lock them in a perpetual rut of demeaning gigs, black-out benders, and petty jealousies. But one stands apart: Shakes. Perhaps the most talented and definitely the most alcoholic and self-sabotaging of them all.
Join our Patreon and support the podcast!
Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here!
*Come support the podcast and get yourself or someone you love a random gift at our merch store. T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, stickers, and more!
If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Ronald Neames’ Hopscotch (1980). -
820 - Fantastic Planet (1973)
René Lalou’s timeless (well, maybe not exactly) hand drawn science fiction epic turns a skeptical eye on human systems of power in an unimaginable world of inhuman blue giants (that are somehow even more human). You know: it’s your basic Jack and the Beanstalk meets Avatar situation. With better (by which I mean funkier) music.
Join our Patreon and support the podcast!
Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here!
*Come support the podcast and get yourself or someone you love a random gift at our merch store. T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, stickers, and more!
If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Bobcat Goldthwait’s Shakes the Clown (1991). -
879 - Taipei Story (1985)
The good days are long past for Chan and Leung, a couple slowly drifting apart, and losing themselves in the oncoming wave of modernity consisting of unemployment, debt, loneliness, and alienation. But since Edward Yang directed it, somehow it’s all beautiful.
Join our Patreon and support the podcast!
Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here!
*Come support the podcast and get yourself or someone you love a random gift at our merch store. T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, stickers, and more!
If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing René Lalou’s Fantastic Planet (1973).
Customer Reviews
The Intro Matters
I listened to Blow Up episode and after the introduction I immediately subscribed and gave you five stars. To describe Antonioni in 9 sentences without mentioning none of his movies nor his name takes a certain amount of knowledge of the filmmaker that only a cinephile could pull off. And adding humor to an Antonioni episode, I’m raising my hat! Well done gentlemen. A breathe of fresh air to hear a podcast and learn something in these drought of good film analysis.
Let me confess I rewind and listened to the intro and this is the most precious or perhaps the only Antonioni joke ever told. Thank you !
Great podcast
Charlie’s tangents. Mike’s yes-ands. Excellent guests. What more could you ask for?
Fun and thought provoking
Random Acts of Cinema is best described by the opening line of each episode, “A podcast where two friends sit down and talk about random movies in the criterion collection”. One friend an art historian among other things and the other a director himself among other pursuits. I love hearing their exhaustive, humorous, and intellectual discussions on movies. I appreciate being able to learn about movies I will never watch just as much as learning about camera-work and directorial choices. Lots of in-depth analysis of story lines and actor choices along with biting critique when necessary. Definitely a great way to spend an hour or so learning about lots of different movies each week.