Ciara appeared on Darren Mooney and Andrew Quinn’s podcast The 250 to put her PhD research to good use and talk about Sundae Award Best Picture winner The Banshees of Inisherin, and also bring up Under Siege for no reason. Give it a listen below, or on your preferred podcast platform!
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”
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 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.
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For many years, with regard to their film-watching, Ciara and Conor have been theming their months. On Friday Film Showcased (FFS to friends), they look back on themes gone by.
In the tertian episode of FFS, Ciara and Conor discuss the life and films of Jack Nicholson, and Showcase one film in particular.
Spoiler: It’s The Fortune (1975). But they also talk a lot about Five Easy Pieces, The Last Detail, About Schmidt, The Shooting (and the Roger Corman days), Head (and the Monkees), Something’s Gotta Give, Tommy and Broadcast News. How do you know? Because you listened to the podcast.
Jack (Nicholson) July: https://letterboxd.com/hoganassasin/list/jack-nicholson-july/
You can listen to it here:
And you can even listen accompanied by the soothing sounds of desert winds. Relaxing!
Listen and subscribe on: Spotify (with desert wind) || Apple Podcasts (with desert wind) || Amazon Music (with desert wind) || Castbox (with desert wind) || Overcast (with desert wind)|| Pocketcasts (with desert wind) || Goodpods (with desert wind)
Mentioned in the podcast
Darren Aronofsky doesn’t know who Mario Bava is: https://youtu.be/B6LeXVCiOOM?si=emomg909-7HfoK16
Matt Damon on Jack Nicholson changing the script in The Departed: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/teK_CFdc7gM
Klingons do not: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bxIs-Z15jk
Jack Nicholson interview with the BFI: https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/jack-nicholson-interview-1974-antonioni-passenger-easy-rider
Jack Nicholson: The Ultimate Viewing Guide in Empire magazine: https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/empire-classic-jack-nicholson/
Monte Hellman interview in 2011 at The Flashback Files: https://www.flashbackfiles.com/monte-hellman-interview
Vincent Canby’s review of The Fortune in The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/1975/05/21/archives/nicholss-fortune-is-oldtime-farce.html
Ben Mankiewicz introducing The Fortune on TCM:1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM3vtaKemG4
Ciara’s film diary on Head for In The Mood magazine: https://www.inthemoodmagazine.com/issue-2/film-diaries
1. Ben’s comments are partly incorporated in Conor’s trailer for The Fortune, included in the episode. There is no trailer for this movie on the entire internet. Mad. Anyway, thanks, Ben!
For many years, with regard to their film-watching, Ciara and Conor have been theming their months. For instance:
Sometimes the titles of these months are puns, sometimes alliterative. Sometimes, it is awful strained altogether (see above). But it has always been fun. Or at least I hope so. They’ve been doing it long enough!
In the bi-augural (that means second?) episode of FFS, Ciara and Conor discuss their June film seasons (Cartoon June and Soviet (J)Un(e)ion), and Showcase two in particular.
Spoiler: It’s the two films in the title of this episode. Watchlist:
Cartoon June: https://letterboxd.com/hoganassasin/list/cartoon-june/
Soviet (J)un(e)ion: https://letterboxd.com/hoganassasin/list/soviet-junion/
You can listen to it here:
And you can even listen to it accompanied by the soothing sounds of a rainstorm. Relaxing!
Listen and subscribe on: Spotify (with relaxing rain sounds) || Apple Podcasts (with relaxing rain sounds) || Amazon Music (with relaxing rain sounds) || Castbox (with relaxing rain sounds) || Pocketcasts (with relaxing rain sounds) || Goodpods (with relaxing rain sounds)
Mentioned in the podcast
Ciara’s Article on Soviet Cinema: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2023/10/why-you-should-be-watching-soviet-cinema
Slash Film article on The Last Unicorn and Studio Ghibli: https://www.slashfilm.com/751443/turns-out-the-last-unicorn-is-a-secret-studio-ghibli-film/
Philip French’s review of An American Tail: https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-observer-an-american-tail/124883207/
The Watership Down Podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/watershipdown
Cinemablend article on Song of the South and Splash Mountain: https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2547968/the-complicated-history-of-disneylands-splash-mountain-and-song-of-the-south
Last summer, at the peak of the Barbenheimer phenomenon, it seemed like cinematic gender essentialism – the kind that made a Ghostbusters reboot a lightning rod for controversy the guts of a decade ago – had finally died off. Barbie and Oppenheimer were released on the same day, and what was set up as a versus between the “boy movie” and the “girl movie” quickly became a both/and. There were no movies for this gender or that, just a couple of great films that we all wanted to see. I saw them back-to-back. Loads of people saw them back-to-back, and tons more watched both films at some point in their long runs on the big screen. The movies were back, and this time, quadrants could be damned.
Then awards season came along and, as usual, crushed all my hopes and dreams.
I wrote about the girliest movie for girls going, Brian De Palma’s Scarface, for Crooked Marquee! You can read it here.
Nearly everyone agrees: Aaron Sorkin’s career lives in the shadow of his early masterpiece. He has tried to recapture the magic of this small-screen triumph over and over again, mostly in vain. “What if I did the same show but set at Saturday Night Live?” he asked, and gave us Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. “What if I did the same show but set in a newsroom?” he asked, and gave us The Newsroom. It’s a truism of Sorkin studies, generally mentioned within the first two paragraphs of a review of any movie he had a hand in. And everybody’s right—except for one thing: they think it’s The West Wing he’s trying to recreate.
I wrote about Sports Night for Paste. You can read it here!
A brand new podcast, hot and fresh out the kitchen, hosted by Ciara Moloney and Conor Hogan.
For many years, with regard to their film-watching, Ciara and Conor have been theming their months. For instance:
Sometimes the titles of these months are puns, sometimes alliterative. Sometimes, it is awful strained altogether (see above). But it has always been fun. Or at least I hope so. They’ve been doing it long enough!
In the inaugural (that means first) episode of FFS, Ciara and Conor discuss their May film seasons (Elaine May and William Shakespeare), and Showcase two in particular.
Spoiler: It’s the two films in the title of this episode. Watchlist:
Elaine May: https://letterboxd.com/hoganassasin/list/elaine-may-may-sic/
William Shakespeare: https://letterboxd.com/hoganassasin/list/darling-works-of-may-shakespeare-watched/
You can listen to it here:
And you can even listen to it accompanied by the soothing sounds of a Crackling Fireplace. Relaxing!
Listen and subscribe on: Spotify (with fireplace) || Apple Podcasts (with fireplace) || Amazon Music (with fireplace) || Castbox (with fireplace) || Pocketcasts (with fireplace)
Mentioned in the podcast
Jeffrey Salkin article on The Heartbreak Kid: https://religionnews.com/2021/05/20/charles-grodin/
Michael Sragow on Tootsie: https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/3404-tootsie-one-great-dame
Kenneth Branagh and Love’s Labour’s Lost cast on Charlie Rose: https://charlierose.com/videos/19196
Ciara’s article in Ishtar: https://thesundae.net/2019/10/28/you-should-watch-ishtar/
Scenes from a Mall (1991): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102849/
Ciara and Dean co-host The Sundae Presents, a podcast in which they each make the other watch films they haven’t seen. Dean closes out this season’s regular episodes by showing Ciara his favourite Spike Lee film, Summer of Sam. They talk about punk vs disco, the madonna-whore complex and its relationship with Do the Right Thing.
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The Sundae 