In the quatorzième episode of the Hammer & Camera podcast, the communist are storming the Normandy Beach of Cinema, aka the Cannes Film Festival. Reporting from the front is T.W. Stechnij, an American ex-pat, sometimes-writer and film industry employee who attended the Festival for a few day...
2019-06-07 07:29:29 +0000 UTC View PostIn our bakers-dozenth episode, we're joined by Matt Christman of the Chapo Trap House media conglomerate in analyzing, hating on, nitpicking, mocking, and mourning the near-decade-spanning HBO television series Game of Thrones. We talk Khaleesi, the Starks, the freaking Dothraki and Unsullied, al...
2019-05-28 17:04:13 +0000 UTC View PostOur dozenth episode sees us traverse the cosmos in Claire Denis' High Life and the Marvel's Avengers: Endgame, along with the dingiest green rooms in america in Alex Ross Perry's rock 'n' roll show Her Smell. We also talk Barry, the French, Representation, and rage, rage, rage against the Marvel ...
2019-05-22 19:59:25 +0000 UTC View PostThe eleventh installment of the Hammer & Camera podcast sees us dealing with the films of April. We cover Harmony Korine's The Beach Bum (along with a short overview of the filmmaker's career), Jia Zhangke's Ash is Purest White, and David Sandberg's Shazam!. We also...
2019-05-11 09:13:42 +0000 UTC View Post
As part of our double-feature collaboration with Rev Left Radio and Breht, our Patreon episode for April covers the recently released Us, Jordan Peele's follow-up to Get Out, which we covered in our publ...
2019-05-02 19:14:00 +0000 UTC View PostFor our tenth episode, we take it back to our roots; Hammer & Camera began as a spinoff of Revolutionary Left Radio's Film Vanguard series, and we're so pleased to welcome RLR's Breht to the podcast as a guest for the first time! Our topic of discussion is Jordan Peele's 2017 film Get Out, an...
2019-05-01 03:37:39 +0000 UTC View PostEpisode 9 features the guest appearances of Jon and Ash, co-hosts of the Horror Vanguard podcast, as we discuss and dissect the Chinese animated series The Leader (领风者) released earlier this year, an adaptation of the life of Marx and a treatment of many of his important works. The series c...
2019-04-22 20:48:30 +0000 UTC View PostIn our eighth episode, we briefly banter on the subject of Thirstiness in film criticism, and look back at our film selections for March: the documentary Apollo 11, Gaspar Noé's dance/horror film Climax, and Christian Petzold's modern WWII take Transit.
We discuss the political meaning of...
2019-04-11 03:51:48 +0000 UTC View Post
To round out the month, we take a closer look at poll runner-up Blade Runner, the 1982 phenomenon that has, for better or for worse, defined cyberpunk for generations. We talk about what's good, what's b...
2019-03-31 19:40:25 +0000 UTC View PostIn the seventh episode of the Hammer & Camera podcast, we dive into the M. Night Shyamalan Extended Universe, aka the Unbreakable Trilogy, aka the Eastrail 177 Trilogy. Consisting of Unbreakable (2000), Split (2017), and Glass (2019), the series is Shyamalan's attempt at interpreting and crit...
2019-03-29 20:53:57 +0000 UTC View Post
For our first of two March Movie Nights, we're spending some quality time merging our consciousness with Mamoru Oshii's 1995 cyberpunk classic Ghost in the Shell! There's so much to get from this fantast...
2019-03-17 16:45:15 +0000 UTC View Post
We received a great suggestion for a Movie Club theme a while back from Wesley Chapman.
"I’m a lover of the 'repercussions on our humanity from unchecked technological growth' genre of tech...
2019-03-05 20:58:03 +0000 UTC View PostOn the February episode, we review Paweł Pawlikowski's Cold War, Hans Petter Moland's Cold Pursuit, and the James Cameron-produced, Robert Rodriguez-directed Alita: Battle Angel.
We also discuss whether or not Zac Efron is too sexy to be a serial killer, and get psychoanalytical on everyt...
2019-02-28 18:32:19 +0000 UTC View PostHere's a short audio update to fill you all in on our plan for this and next month. It also contains the theme for the next Movie Night Episode! We'll be posting the poll for that soon.
2019-02-28 05:14:26 +0000 UTC View Post
Our January Movie Night episode comes courtesy of Kaleb W, who suggested coverage of the Fyre Fest documentaries! He writes: "A Marxist breakdown of that entire event would be interesting because its suc...
2019-01-31 21:38:05 +0000 UTC View PostOn the January episode of the Hammer and Camera podcast, we review Barry Jenkins' If Beale Street Could Talk, Jeffrey Nachmanoff's Replicas, and Henry Dunham's The Standoff at Sparrow Creek.
We also posit Hollywood trolley problems, discuss Lucrecia Martel's short-lived Marvel career, and...
2019-01-28 23:17:02 +0000 UTC View PostIn a very special Hammer & Camera Special Topics episode, we give Shrek, the 2001 animated masterpiece directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson, the detailed analysis it deserves. We're joined by Nolan, aka @toomuchprotein, aka @gr18vidz14kidz, a Shrek-expert (Shrekspert?), producer of the...
2019-01-16 22:57:11 +0000 UTC View Post
Our Movie Night movie for December is 1993's Last Action Hero, an action-comedy with some meta quirks. It's a perfect movie for Movie Night: unabashedly fun, with some really interesting implications to ...
2019-01-01 02:32:53 +0000 UTC View PostPhil and Taylor review Burning, The Favourite, and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
They also discuss the meaning of the Great Gatsby, what happens when universes collide, and the best performances of the year. Become a Patron and join us for our Movie Night episodes here:
The Movie Night flick for December is the 1993 action comedy Last Action Hero, a Schwarzenegger-starring feature that attempted to send up the musclebound star's celluloid exploits while simultaneously p...
2018-12-28 08:18:47 +0000 UTC View Post
November's Movie Night episode covers Alexander Payne's Election, a dark comedy set in a Midwestern high school about a teacher, played by Matthew Broderick, who begins to tamper with the headline-echoing class president campaign of his overachieving student, played by Reese Witherspoon.
We t...
Phil and Taylor review Mid90s, Overlord, and Wildlife, and discuss films released in the year of our births. We have mild disagreements over the star values of the films, and ponder the difference between nostalgia overload and tasteful period piece, and whether or not its okay for actors to be w...
2018-11-24 22:36:56 +0000 UTC View Post
The results are in, and "Election" has been elected to be this month's Movie Night film! Alexander Payne's second major feature, the film taps into the id beneath our cultural obsession with elections, with the...
2018-11-21 07:18:57 +0000 UTC View Post
By Taylor
Unjust laws deserve to be broken. The 2008 financial crisis, and as of 2018, what seems like the endless fall-out from it, prove that laws can be bent when a class of people exerts its influence...
2018-11-09 06:41:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Phil and Taylor review A Star is Born, Mandy, and Venom, give a rundown of our 15 favorite films. We ask, are celebrities working class? How do we grieve ethically? Why did Sony bother making Venom? And more!
2018-11-06 02:23:05 +0000 UTC View PostPhil and Taylor review A Star is Born, Mandy, and Venom, and ask are celebrities working class? How do we grieve ethically? Why did Sony bother making Venom? And more!
2018-11-06 00:04:42 +0000 UTC View PostRemember, to get the Movie Club episode, you need to be a $5 subscriber.
If you want to follow along, the films we're covering in our public episode are Mandy, A Star is Born, and Venom.
Here's a patron-exclusive review Taylor wrote for Zhao's film, which was released earlier this year. Spoiler alert: he liked it. A lot.
(The Roving Eye was a blog project we were planning before Hammer & Camera started really coming along. We definitely plan on continuing written work and maki...
2018-09-28 18:43:54 +0000 UTC View Post