Hello Threadlings! After some consideration, your hosts need to take a break. As some of you may be feeling yourselves, this quarantine situation has us feeling low, and it’s hard to step up and bring you our best conversations without that spark. After an entire year (!) of loving Check Your Threading, we’re going to take a few weeks off and regroup our hearts and our brains. We hope you’ll rejoin us in mid-June for new episodes, and we’ll bring you some bite-sized content (stray threads, if you will) in the meantime, if we can. We love this project, and we love your feedback and dedication, and we can’t wait to see you in the summertime. 

Episode 26: Moonlight (2016)

Explore the origins of Liberty City, the history of racism in the lighting and color correction of film, how to achieve intimacy through cinematography, and the devastating vulnerability of hope.

Episode 25: Funny Games (1997)

Stuck in your house? This week we talk about the movie that redefined “home invasion”! Plus, social contract theory, the importance (and cruelty) of breaking the fourth wall, and Michael Haneke’s message to U.S. audiences.

Episode 24: Straw Dogs (1971)

In this smorgasbord of toxic masculinity, we explore the pattern of violence in rural towns, the history of Vietnam campus protests, Sam Peckinpah’s reputation for brutality on and off camera, and the controversy surrounding the film. 

Episode 23: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

The retro flavor of nuclear apocalypse films, the history of the OPEC oil crisis, how George Miller builds his own mythology – and borrows from the mythos of other cultures – and the role of music on the battlefield. Ride with us on the fury road to glory!

Episode 22: All the President’s Men (1976)

Let’s talk about the importance of investigative journalism, the edge-of-your-seat anxiety that this film creates, Woodward and Bernstein as heroes, and why the pen is truly mightier than the sword. Plus, the state of newspapers today, and why we need independent journalism more than ever in 2020. Featuring special guest Phil Linsalata, award-winning investigative reporter.

Episode 21: Vice (2018)

We review the history of two of our most outlandish Vice Presidents (other than Dick, obviously), the tonal ambiguity of Vice as a film, the value of a good montage sequence, and our inherent discomfort with Cheney’s legacy.

Episode 20: Ocean’s Eleven (2001)

We lay out the best real-life Las Vegas heists, debate whether or not heist movies are their own genre, and explore why Ocean’s Eleven still works almost 20 years later. Let us steal some of your time with this episode!

 

Episode 19: Jurassic Park (1993)

Learn about the “Jurassic Park generation” of paleontologists, how the film affected the scientific community, some amazing fan theories and, the, uh, lasting impact of Dr. Ian Malcolm as the film’s moral center. Hold onto your butts!

 

Episode 18: The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

What makes an epic truly EPIC? Why were the 80s so intense for evangelical Christians? What’s up with Jungian psychology? Why was The Last Temptation of Christ so controversial when other bible movies are so formulaic? All these questions AND MORE answered in our very special holiday episode. Merry Chrysler! It’s Chrismin.