The Projectors

Eephus (2024)

SURPRISE!!! It’s a SPECIAL EDITION of The Projectors. We are still, technically, on a break and will be for a while but today the stars came together because a group of us went to our local independent theater and caught a flick and we saw a baseball movie. We like sports films like we enjoy many types of film but we haven’t really broken into that film sub-genre too much. So with the assist of Bob’s friend, baseball fanatic, former teammate and current local radio DJ: DREW, who was once a part of the cycle of co-hosts from our very first podcast “Documenteers” (good luck finding it, we might post it all back up someday)we talk up our first true sports film. Angela is sticking to her break. You haven’t heard the last of her but Drew and Bob went to the Belcourt in Nashville and watched Carson Lund’s casual ode to baseball and community in the critically buzzing “EEPHUS” featuring some great character performances from folks like Keith William Richards and Frederick Wiseman but the biggest names in the movie  are probably Wayne Diamond (Eccentric old school NYC fashion guy from “Uncut Gems”) and eccentric veteran Red Sox pitcher Bill “Spaceman” Lee. Some tired middle aged guys have had a beer league rivalry for decades but now their old field will be torn down and a middle school is going on top of it. One last game to send it all off. Despite the complaining and the aches and pains of aging and the bitterness that can fuel remembrance, a baseball game is to be played and it’s an experience as casual as any nice day on the diamond. Bob and Drew have some memories of their own including a story of one of Bob’s most embarrassing moments ever while playing Rec League Softball. Hear us speak on this, Eephus and potential sports episodes down the road. Go check out “EEPHUS” when it reaches your town and go to the fucking movies. Just go to the movies. Here’s a link to Drew’s sports show on our local free-form station 101.5 WXNA: https://www.wxnafm.org/playlists/?id=114480
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2025 OSCAR BUZZ +PREDICTIONS! DISCUSSING & RATING OTHER MOVIES OF 2024! GENE HACKMAN TRIBUTE!

We’re still going on a break but we wanted to hit up some 2025 Oscar predictions as well as discuss other movies we saw in 2024 and we rate several of them. A loose episode exploring all the buzz around the upcoming Academy Awards and guessing who’s going to win based off of only seeing, maybe, thirty precent of these movies. The Beekeeper got snubbed. That’s all that really matters. Several movies discussed and we got a little Oscar prediction sheet Angela made that you can print out from here: https://theprojectorspodcast.wordpress.com/oscars-2025/ we’re not sure what we win. Bragging rights? Come up with your own fun prizes and punishments. We may have stumbled onto a new format with this episode. Hope your Oscar watching is a good time! See ya after a little while!
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Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-projectors/id1664326117
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/culturewrought

After Earth (2013)

After this episode we will be taking an extended break from the show (HUNDREDS of past episodes over the span of 2 and a half years at your disposal SUBSCRIBE NOW!) but we did make a promise to talk about all of M. Night Shyamalan’s filmography throughout the year AND WE’RE KEEPING THAT PROMISE! So it will probably be another M. Night joint when you hear from us again. Shyamalan’s movies have always been divisive amongst film fans but this particular discussion is of a movie that arrived, made it’s money and disappeared into the ether of cultural noise that this YouTube/podcast about movies is very familiar with. It did not inspire. The Smith’s are involved in this one. Even the Brother-in-Law. Including Jada but no Willow. We’re talking M. Night Shyamalan’s 2013 sci-fi “AFTER EARTH” starring father & son, Will & Jaden Smith. Elder Smith plays a heroic sociopath in a future where we’re still not free of various versions of off-white on everything. His son, our special-boy Jaden, wants to be a Ranger but failed at it so his dad feels bad because he’s never around so he nepos his kid onto a flight. Just like how Will nepo’d his kid into a sci-fi lead. They crash onto a planet Earth that rejected humanity long ago and then the video game level one tutorial begins. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is just you thinking about the future, y’know?  This movie is pretty much those “No Fear” shirts kids wore in the 90s but filtered through Scientology. You probably have better things to do than watch this movie but hearing us discuss it should be a top priority. 
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Out of Time (2003)

It’s our final stop for BODY & SOUL and our penultimate drop before our extended break. January of last year we discussed Carl Franklin’s “Devil in a Blue Dress” starring Denzel Washington and it was so good that we decided to revisit that director/lead pairing with Carl Franklin’s 2003 thriller “OUT OF TIME” starring Denzel, Eva Mendes & Sanaa Lathan. A police chief in the Florida keys (Denzel) got honeypotted so hard that he’s got his fingerprints all over a double murder with more than enough motive to put him away for multiple life sentences. His hottie soon-to-be ex wife is a fed who has come down from Miami to work on the case. Can this throughly honeydicked police chief track down the people who have screwed him over before they leave the country with gobs of evidence money he passed off because he thought his side pice was dying of cancer? It’s not as good as their previous film, a bit more cluttered, but there’s some domestic thrills and some ham-fisted fun to keep you going just enough in this deeper cut Denzel feature. Yes, Bob does sing that Hall & Oates song in this episode. We found a link to the flick right here: https://archive.org/details/OutOfTimeFilm
 
Video preview for this month’s theme: https://youtu.be/DpM2KXOl4hY
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Contact us here: MOVIEHUMPERS@gmail.com
Check our past & current film ratings here: https://theprojectorspodcast.wordpress.com
Hear us on podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5siQayjxclrq83jsNmWaO7?si=a0cf5063e58b43e4
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-projectors/id1664326117
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Black Panther (2018)

We’re in our last stretch of BODY & SOUL and we’re discussing a bonafide BILLY of a movie. A “Billy” is a movie that made a billions dollars. There’s more than a few (20? 30something Billys out there?) and since today’s theme is all about Black Directors and Black Lead Actors there’s one prolific box office smash that catapulted a longstanding character into the mainstream pop culture zeitgeist. Only our third Marvel Studios movie discussion, we’re talking Ryan Coogler’s 2018 superhero film “BLACK PANTHER” starring the late Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira and plenty plenty more including Forest Whitaker who we forget to even mention in this episode. Coogler’s flick stands as a prolific monument to the notions of Afro-Futurism and the villain of Killmonger has understandable notions even if the movie stumbles over some pretty layered philosophical implications. Also there’s fighting and car chases and South Africans with soundwave blaster gun hands and the CGI is decent about 80% of the time. The successful immersion of the techno-utopian concepts of Wakanda helped launch the first ever black superhero deeper into the consciousness of black culture all over the world. It really helps that the villain is good. That really stinks up most of these Marvel movies. Let’s revisit this iconic flick and see how it holds up. 
 
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Widows (2018)

BODY & SOUL month has given us a week of worthy modern noir and today is no exception in this discussion of British director Steve McQueen’s web of Chicago crime and politics. Three women are forced to pay back some money stolen by their husbands in a heist that led to them, and the money, going up in flames. The blackmail leads to them picking up where their men left off and plotting a heist that one’s husband mostly already laid out. They just gotta figure out where this money is before a month is done or they could be in the ground next to their husbands. That’s just one layer to all this wicked mess and the reveals go heavy in McQueen’s 2018 heist noir “WIDOWS” starring Viola Davis and quite an extensive ensemble that includes Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Cynthia Erivo, Liam Neeson, Colin Farrell, Brian Tyree Henry, Daniel Kaluuya, Robert Duvall, Lucas Haas and even more. Hear us talk of this crime film that stands out quite nicely from the last ten years. Not one loaded hot dog or gooey slice of stuffed pizza in this whole Chi-Town joint but we do get a mention that the Bears won the Super Bowl in 1985. A requirement for any Chicago film set after that point. Walter Peyton. Solid guy. RIP.
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Belly (1998)

It’s Neo noir week for this month’s theme of BODY & SOUL (black directors, black leads) and we hit up a very stylish feature film that was popular amongst the teens and college aged crowd when Bob was a youngster so many years ago. Hype Williams only feature film was paved the way by a plethora of rap, hip-hop & R&B music videos that he directed throughout the 90s. Hype expanded all of his visual knowledge into a what is essentially a long rap video. That’s not a bad thing as it feels distinct amongst crime films to this very day. Of course we’re talking about the 1998 film “BELLY” starring Nas, DMX (RIP), T-Boz, Taral Hicks, Louie Rankin and many more. This one takes us back to when MTV would actually inform us of things and we’d all sit around getting high and watch “Gummo”. Buns and Sincere are a lot like us putting aside the robbing and killing of website managers of nightclubs. Are they forever trapped in the Belly of the Beast? (Omaha Nebraska) Can they get out and get to Africa before the Jamaican ninjas come? Will they gain knowledge and inspiration represented through spectacles? We will see but I do think that if you went to church near midnight on New Years Eve in 1999 then that is definitely weird as hell. 
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Deep Cover (1992)

BODY & SOUL all February. Black directors with black leads and today’s discussion is of a dripping Neo noir that is sometimes insane and funny but always entertaining. Actor/Director Bill Duke dropped this crime drama in the wake of the success of films like “Boyz in the Hood”. While not as prolific as those, Duke’s 1992 film “DEEP COVER” starring Laurence Fishburne, Jeff Goldblum & Clarence Williams III has earned it’s place among film appreciators as a worthy Neo-noir full of style and all the hard boiled film tropes that still hit. Fishburne goes by “John” he’s a cop deep undercover trying to take down some drug kingpins and with the help of a flashy lawyer who seems very comfortable on the streets, “John” becomes quite successful at criminality. The lines blur on every level and the politics of the war on drugs makes doing the right thing practically impossible. Is he a cop pretending to be a drug dealer or a drug dealer pretending to be a cop? Some great lines in this one. We happened to find a link to this one: https://archive.org/details/deep-cover_202404
 
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The Photograph (2020)

Happy Valentines Day, folks! Hope you’re out there getting freaked now if not sooner. Today’s lovely selection is a silky smooth flick about generational flaws made easier by very attractive people getting together.   Stella Meghie’s 2020 romance “THE PHOTOGRAPH” starring Issa Rae, Lakeith Stanfield & Chanté Adams has the feeling despite it being a story about emotional unavailability. But you know that emotional unavailability is gonna break right? It’s valentines Day! Sure, it would not be unusual if Bob picked some fucked up shit on the holiday but, nah, we want to feel the love. Also, this film is remarkably relaxing and, yes, people do get freaked in it. There’s also a conversation about Hip-Hop stars that seems as though it would be very different in today’s world. More on that inside. They not like us, I heard. Canadiens, I think. I believe we caught this on Freevee so put it on with your love buddy and feel the love on Love Day. 
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Cuties / Mignonnes (2020)

Today’s discussion for February’s theme, BODY & SOUL (black directors black leads), comes from France by way of Senegal and was available in the US in 2020 on Netflix until several very well known and high ranking pedophiles in government decided that this film belonged in the culture war sphere of nonsense. Maimouna Doucouré’s coming of age film “CUTIES (MIGNONNES)” is an obvious critique of the oversexualization of young people through online & social media in particular. It’s obvious if you’re not stupid or some ultracynical political ghoul. That’s not to say that Doucouré’s film doesn’t provoke. She wields discomfort throughout the movie unless you’re a creep, and this film acknowledge the existence of those creeps. Creeps such as those who criticized this movie and called for its banning. Creeps like alleged pedophile Senator Josh Hawley who likely is driven in this quest by dark feelings he may have deep down inside. First generation French Senegalese girl “Amy”, played by Fathia Youssouf, is desperate for some friends outside of her traditional upbringing. She ingrains herself into a dance obsessed clique in her school and secretly navigates the online world (on a phone she stole from her cousin who never turned it off) to find ways to fit in with her boy obsessed peers. This movie has been taken down on US Netflix (company choice) so it is rather difficult to find. Good luck. Maybe you saw it five years ago? Watch out for pedophiles in your government. There are A LOT. They often complain about art. That’s a sign to watch for. 
 
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