Observed from a distance, the past several months at movie theaters seemed somewhat dire in terms of quality. As I recounted in the initial framing to our most recent “Cinemails” contribution from Edwanike Harbour and Jason Fuhrman, summer has become a time of year “fraught with predictability” rather than promising excitement for discovery.
However, even if a few too many of these experiences proved to be tests of patience, I figured it’d be worth commiserating and conferring with others as the season began to wind down. We’d celebrate intermittent moments of inspiration, and wrestle with the emergent narratives both within franchises themselves and in the world of film criticism.
In August, I messaged Josiah Wampfler, host of Two Tickets Please! on OCA Media. Immediately following our Wisconsin Film Festival discussion in April, we had briefly talked in person about reconvening to recap our moviegoing adventures of the summer—from points high and low.
Filmmaker and freelance contributor David Boffa joined Wampfler and me at Oregon High School on Friday, August 22, to record what became a full-on 70-minute traditional podcast-like episode. We took the temperature, if you will, before delving into a conversation that picked apart a few bigger Blockbuster titles like Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, F1, and James Gunn’s Superman. Our dialogue wrapped with a focus on two smaller, or at least more niche or idiosyncratic, films: 28 Years Later and Sorry, Baby.
Additional thanks to Wampfler for devoting well over an hour to the tech setup in the absence of OCA Media executive director Paul Zwicker. A little about OCA Media: it is a local non-profit public access station serving the Oregon, Wisconsin, area. Its media library and Wampfler’s show, active since early 2021, are accessible through the station’s YouTube page as well as on Spectrum and TDS channels.
We once again did not make a verbatim, staff-checked transcription as with Four Star podcasts from prior years, but please let us know if that accessibility and convenience is something you’d like us to commit time to. YouTube’s built-in “subtitles/closed captions” and auto-generative transcript tools are imperfect, but they can still be resourceful.
If you prefer an audio-only version of this discussion, I’ve uploaded the file to Tone Madison‘s SoundCloud below.
Thanks so much for keeping up with our extensive coverage of film-related happenings in the Madison area. You can routinely find writing on UW Cinematheque events, recent essays about experimental video art, documentaries, and more via our main film section tab. —Grant Phipps, Film Editor