A Podcast is Born

I’ve been talking about doing a movie podcast for what seems like years, probably because it has been years. We were actually on the verge of launching one, with equipment purchased and everything, when TechnologyTell closed back in the summer of 2015.

My friend Rich Heimlich and I had been talking about launching both a Philadelphia film critics group and a podcast for years, and now, happily, we’ve launched both. You can check out the first three episodes of the Film Scribes podcast- the first two of which I’m in, right here, and you can also subscribe on iTunes, and even leave us a nice review if you so choose. We record every Sunday at The Olde Bar, in the old Bookbinders on Walnut Street in Old City, and it’s usually online on Tuesdays.

On the first episode we previewed the recently completed Philadelphia Film Festival, and on the third my colleagues recapped it, and I’m happy to have spread my coverage of the fest over three different outlets

• I reviewed I, Tonya and The Florida Project at Broad Street Review.
• I reviewed three of the festival’s best films, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Lady Bird, and Alaska is a Drag, at Splice Today.
• And I wrote about the award given to Bruce Willis by M. Night Shyamalan, at Philly Voice.
• On the day of the Willis event, I was happy to present a discussion of the movie Denial at Temple Sinai in Dresher, PA, as part of Hot Dog and a Movie Night (We thought about calling it “Hot Dogs and Holocaust Denial,” but…) Anyway, if you’re at a synagogue or another institution and would like to host me for such an event, get in touch with me.
• As always, you can read all of my movie reviews at my Rotten Tomatoes page.
• In addition to that, I recently took on a new part-time role as Northeast Regional Casting Reporter for Backstage.com. If you have any movie, TV or theater casting notices in Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Washington, Cleveland or Cincinnati, let me know.
• I’ve got another new gig coming up that I can’t talk about yet, but soon. I also had one book project I was working on, stalled out with it, and started working on another one. More on that later.

A few other recent writings of mine:

• I was interviewed by my friend Pete Croatto for The Writer magazine about my process for finding gigs. I talked to Pete for this a LONG time ago, but good to see it finally surface.
• At the website known as Living Life Fearless, I have written three essays: A defense of traditional movie-going, an argument for movies to cast Kyle MacLachlan, and an essay about The Meyerowitz Stories and the career of Noah Baumbach.
• I wrote an essay at Splice Today about the fraught topic of Harvey Weinstein and jokes. 
• I wrote another essay for Screen Rant about why there’s a good chance Blazing Saddles could be made today. You can read my other Screen Rant stuff here.
• At Philly Voice, I looked at Philadelphia’s ever-more-crowded roster of comic-con events.
• I wrote for the newly-renamed NBC Sports Philadelphia about Markelle Fultz, and while it’s wrong to demand that athletes “play hurt”

And finally, speaking of which: I’m thinking about launching a Patreon-supported website, in which I would write, five days a week, columns about Philadelphia sports. Would you be interested in reading about this? Donating to it? If so, let me know.