Ciara Moloney Podcast

Friday Film Showcased, Episode 1: The Heartbreak Kid (1972) | Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000)

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:

  • Elaine May May (sic) – films starring, written by, or directed by Elaine May.
  • Darling works (?) of May – William Shakespeare Films.
  • Cartoon June – you know, animated.
  • Soviet (J)Un(e)(ion) – Films from countries that were once in the USSR.

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:

Episode 1: The Heartbreak Kid (1972) | Love's Labour's Lost (2000) – Friday Film Showcased

And you can even listen to it accompanied by the soothing sounds of a Crackling Fireplace. Relaxing!

Crackling Fireplace Edition – Episode 1: The Heartbreak Kid (1972) | Love's Labour's Lost (2000) – Friday Film Showcased

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 Moloney and Dean Buckley Film

2021 in Film(s That Didn’t Come Out in 2021)

Check out previous installments here, here, here and here.

2021 was, I’m sure we can all agree, the most recent year in the Gregorian calendar. Though, that being said, Ciara now exclusively understands the passage of time through self-programmed film seasons (e.g. Soviet June-ion, Silent September, Shane Black Christmas) and Dean has lost track of linear time altogether. It was a year of surprises in film: Zack Snyder finally got to finish his four-hour superhero epic and Sylvester Stallone, for better or worse, finally got to cut the robot from Rocky IV. We started a podcast, The Sundae Presents, where we take turns showing each other favourite films of ours the other hasn’t seen (catch up now!). We published lots of good pieces, including the first guest contribution to our pop punk series. Ciara finished watching all the Nightmares on Elm Street (except the remake, obviously) and Dean watched every Gus Van Sant film, then immediately got super into pirate movies for some reason. 

We’ll be looking back at our favourite films released in 2021 on Oscars weekend, which we guess is in March this year? This is a look back at some of the best films from other years that we watched for the first time, spanning eighty years of cinema from the earliest days of animation to the earliest days of Paul Verhoeven’s post-Hollywood career. At the risk of repeating ourselves, one of the few upsides to a year where staying inside was, at the very least, highly recommended was a lot of time to watch movies, and these represent less than five percent of them, so you know they come highly recommended. We’ve got Arthurian myth and silent romance and four films from the seventies, because we can’t pretend we don’t have a period bias. Check them out and stay tuned to The Sundae for more cold takes and fresh pods in 2022!

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Ciara Moloney Film

Notes on Hamlet (2000)

This article is part of the Notes on Failure series, which discusses interesting cinematic failures. Previously, notes on Split. 

Sometimes a film is so set up for me to like it that nothing speaks to its failure like my thinking it’s only okay. It might tick a bunch of boxes of things I reliably enjoy, like Hell or High Water, a neo-western about the Great Recession featuring comedic bank robberies and a great performance from Jeff Bridges, one of my favourite actors. It might be targeted at a very specific niche of which I am a part: Mary Magdalene was described as not appealing to Christians because it’s such a different take on the Gospel story, and not appealing to non-Christians because it’s so religious, but I’m a feminist Christian whose favourite film is The Last Temptation of Christ, king of unorthodox Gospel films. It’s kind of heartbreaking, when a film stacks the deck so in favour of me loving it, as if it was made with me in mind, but fucks it up so badly that I think “it’s basically fine, I guess, I don’t know, it has some problems.”

Hamlet (2000) is one such film. Here’s why.

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