Ciara Moloney and Dean Buckley Film

2024 in Film(s That Didn’t Come Out in 2024)

Check out previous instalments here.

Thus spoke the prophet: “Well, the years start comin’ and they don’t stop comin’.” There were elections and wars, genocides that proceed unabated and natural disasters that we can hardly call natural when we’ve created conditions that make them inevitable. So many celebrities died that there would have been a whole “fuck you, 2016!”-style outcry if we didn’t have other things to worry about: those who lived long lives, like Maggie Smith, James Earl Jones or Donald Sutherland, and those whose lives were cut tragically short, from Shannen Doherty to Liam Payne. (Reports of Noam Chomsky’s death were greatly exaggerated.) But there were bright spots, too – Mickey Mouse finally entered the public domain, all that Mikey Madison stock we bought early is paying dividends, and Terrifier 3 made people throw up. (If that one doesn’t sound like good news, please factor in some 2000s kid nostalgia.)

It was a year of endings and beginnings, as are, admittedly, all years. Ciara finished her thesis after years of toiling in the PhD mines. Dean suddenly became an investigative journalist, and he rocks at it. Ciara’s extended family found out that she’s a writer or something when she wrote about her epilepsy journey for the Irish Independent, and Dean helped found a network of community groups to promote integration in Tipperary. Ciara watched all of Seinfeld for the first time, and Dean finally finished Fez, a video game he first purchased in 2012. We both launched new podcasts: Ciara’s is about films, as is her wont, and Dean’s is about Tipperary, as is his wont, these days. Both of them are excellent, if we do say so ourselves. 

As ever, we’ll be singing the praises of our favourite films released in 2024 in March, for the ninth (ninth!) annual Sundae Film Awards. Right now, we’re going to look back at the best films from the rest of the medium’s history that we watched for the first time this year, from North Korean kaiju adventures to camp classics about child abuse.

Continue reading “2024 in Film(s That Didn’t Come Out in 2024)” →
Ciara Moloney and Dean Buckley Podcast

Adult Swim Yule Log: The Sundae Presents Episode 39

Ciara and Dean co-host The Sundae Presents, a podcast in which they each make the other watch films they haven’t seen. In our Christmas special, Dean made Ciara watch a recent film he hopes will become a new seasonal classic: Adult Swim Yule Log. They talk about traumatic guilt, Americana and the death of television.

Adult Swim Yule Log – The Sundae Presents

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Ciara Moloney Podcast

Friday Film Showcased, Episode 4: Giallo – Screamless Bunny Edition

For many years, with regard to their film-watching, Ciara and Conor have been theming their months. On Friday Film Showcased (FFS to friends, and sometimes enemies), they look back on themes gone by.

In the Quatro episode of FFS, Ciara and Conor discuss the genre of giallo, including the films in the title of this episode and Stagefright Aquarius, Blood and Black Lace, Pieces, Lizard in a Woman’s Skin and Bird With the Crystal Plumage.

In the interests of listeners who don’t enjoy listening to screaming, we have released a version where screams, chainsaws and eyeball popping replaced with the soothing sound of bunny rabbits! The uncensored version is also available, but you can listen to the Screamless Bunny Edition here:

Screamless Bunny Edition – Episode 4: Giallo – Deep Red, Bay of Blood, Dressed to Kill, What Have You Done to Solange and More – Friday Film Showcased

Listen and subscribe on: Spotify || Apple Podcasts || Amazon Music || Castbox || Overcast || Pocketcasts || Goodpods

Giallo list on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/hoganassasin/list/giallo-season/

We continue our discussion on giallo with a deep dive on Lucio Fulci’s 1972 masterpiece Don’t Torture a Duckling:

Episode 5: Giallo – Don't Torture a Duckling (1972) – Friday Film Showcased

Mentioned in the podcast

Giallo in Casa Muppet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_AikJ8F5oY

Ciara’s article on Pieces: https://crookedmarquee.com/pieces-isnt-exactly-what-you-think-it-is/

The Giallo Files: https://giallofiles.blogspot.com/

YELLOW in ITALIANO Coldplay cover https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_PtHYQoC20

De Palma (2015) documentary, dir. Noah Baumbach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Zlxmwz55Tk

J.K. Rowling | ContraPoints https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gDKbT_l2us (discussion of transphobia in cinema including Psycho and Silence of the Lambs from 50:00)

Ciara Moloney Podcast

Friday Film Showcased, Episode 4: Giallo – Deep Red, Bay of Blood, Dressed to Kill, What Have You Done to Solange and More

For many years, with regard to their film-watching, Ciara and Conor have been theming their months. On Friday Film Showcased (FFS to friends, and sometimes enemies), they look back on themes gone by.

In the Quatro episode of FFS, Ciara and Conor discuss the genre of giallo, including the films in the title of this episode and Stagefright Aquarius, Blood and Black Lace, Pieces, Lizard in a Woman’s Skin and Bird With the Crystal Plumage.

Will we ever find out happened to Solange?

Giallo list on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/hoganassasin/list/giallo-season/

You can listen to it here:

Episode 4: Giallo – Deep Red, Bay of Blood, Dressed to Kill, What Have You Done to Solange and More – Friday Film Showcased

A version in which the screaming is replaced by bunny noises is now available. How relaxing!

Screamless Bunny Edition – Episode 4: Giallo – Deep Red, Bay of Blood, Dressed to Kill, What Have You Done to Solange and More – Friday Film Showcased

Listen and subscribe on: Spotify || Apple Podcasts || Amazon Music || Castbox || Overcast || Pocketcasts || Goodpods

We continue our discussion on giallo with a deep dive on Lucio Fulci’s 1972 masterpiece Don’t Torture a Duckling:

Episode 5: Giallo – Don't Torture a Duckling (1972) – Friday Film Showcased

Mentioned in the podcast

Giallo in Casa Muppet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_AikJ8F5oY

Ciara’s article on Pieces: https://crookedmarquee.com/pieces-isnt-exactly-what-you-think-it-is/

The Giallo Files: https://giallofiles.blogspot.com/

YELLOW in ITALIANO Coldplay cover https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_PtHYQoC20

De Palma (2015) documentary, dir. Noah Baumbach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Zlxmwz55Tk

J.K. Rowling | ContraPoints https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gDKbT_l2us (discussion of transphobia in cinema including Psycho and Silence of the Lambs from 50:00)

Ciara Moloney and Dean Buckley Podcast

One Scene Wonders: Dinah Manoff in Ordinary People

A minosode. With the body of a man from Crete and the head of an episode.

The Sundae Presents returns to our primordial ooze to talk about great performances that are only one scene long. First up: Dinah Manoff as Karen in one scene in Ordinary People (1980).

One Scene Wonders: Dinah Manoff in Ordinary People – The Sundae Presents

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Ciara Moloney and Dean Buckley Television

The Sundae TV Awards 2024

We didn’t watch as much new TV this year as we usually do. Partly that’s because we are both increasingly busy killing it at other things, but mostly it’s because, frankly, the TV landscape is increasingly disillusioning. We are so far gone from the days when it seemed like streaming might crack the possibilities of the medium wide open and change them forever. It did, to be clear, but then the vast, rapacious conglomerates that control all TV decided that, actually, ambition and vision are for losers who don’t have a Scrooge McDuck money vault. It’s hard to want to watch a lot of new shows these days when more and more of it seems like little more than an indistinguishable slurry of “content”.

What do you do when you’re a TV critic getting jaded with modern TV? If you’re Ciara, you sail the seven seas of classic television and answer the siren call of the new only when it earns your interest. If you’re Dean, you just start shooting as much animation and stand-up directly into your veins as possible, because there, if nowhere else, are ambition and vision still alive and well. But you never give up on television, because when it’s good it still melts your face off.

We’re two days late this year, but considering we were months ahead of the Emmys last year, we’re sure you’ll forgive us. These, as far as we’re concerned, are the best shows of the most recent TV season (June 2023 – May 2024). As well as the classic drama and comedy awards, we also have two awards for reality, variety and documentary television, including game shows, professional wrestling and whatever Eric Andre is doing at any given minute. We picked our winners by consensus, so only shows we both watched were eligible to win, but we each picked a runner-up, regardless of whether the other has seen it.

You can find each of our full slates of nominees at the bottom of the post. We recommend checking them out if you’re looking for recommendations.

Continue reading “The Sundae TV Awards 2024” →
Ciara Moloney External Links

How Capitalism Incentivizes the Destruction of Art

Wile E. Coyote is a famously loyal customer of Acme Corporation, producers of nitroglycerine, bird seed, giant rubber bands, explosive tennis balls, do-it-yourself tornado kits, and jet-propelled pogo sticks. His brand loyalty is absurd considering his actual experience of using Acme products to try to catch Road Runner: anything Acme-branded inevitably backfires. He’s the one who gets blown up by the explosive tennis balls. When he uses the tornado kit, he’s the one who gets sucked up into a twister. The jet-propelled pogo stick launches him backwards off a cliff. 

In Coyote vs. Acme, Wile E. Coyote decides to sue Acme with the help of a down-and-out human lawyer played by Will Forte. A live-action/animation hybrid in the tradition of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the film involved artists sketching line drawings of the animated characters over a rough edit which was then used as a reference for the animators and visual effects artists. It was a combination of 2D and 3D animation which captured the look and feel of the original Looney Tunes designs in a live-action world. 

Coyote vs. Acme “is about a giant corporation choosing stock over empathy, doing nothing ‘illegal’ but morally shady stuff for profit. It’s a David vs Goliath story,” the film’s editor, Carsten Kurpanek, wrote on X. “It’s about the cynical and casual cruelness of capitalism and corporate greed.”

In November 2023, Warner Bros. announced that they wouldn’t be releasing it. The crew were not informed in advance; instead they were blindsided after the decision had already been made. The film had been completed. Test audiences reportedly scored it very highly. But Warner Bros. decided that they would rather take a tax write-off of $30 million. 

Thirty million dollars. To shred a completed work of art. Once again, things blow up in Wile E. Coyote’s face. 

I wrote about the cancellation of Coyote vs. Acme and what it says about the state of the movie business for Current Affairs. You can read the whole thing here!

Ciara Moloney and Dean Buckley Podcast

Killer vs Killer: Best Served Cold: The Sundae Presents Episode 38

Ciara and Dean co-host The Sundae Presents, a podcast in which they each make the other watch films they haven’t seen. For the season three finale, it’s assassin versus assassin as Ciara brings John Woo’s The Killer and Dean brings David Fincher’s The Killer. They talk about the homoeroticism of The Killer, the bleak emptiness of The Killer and, of course, the music of The Killer.

Killer vs Killer: Best Served Cold – The Sundae Presents

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