The MacGuffin

Another Top 5 segment from The MacGuffin. This time Allen and Brandi share their top 5 cliched but awesome moments.

This segment is also available on Stitcher and iTunes. The audio version can be downloaded directly from here. After you’ve watched the video please vote in our poll and share which one you think is the best.

Another MacGuffin Film Podcast Top 5′s segment. This time Brandi and Allen share their top 5 bad titles for good films.

This segment is also available on Stitcher, iTunes, and Zune. The audio version can be downloaded directly from here.

“It places the lotion in the basket.” – Buffalo Bill

I once took a course in college named “Murder: The Psychology of The Serial Killer.” In it, we learned a brief history of some of the more notorious murderers in U.S. history. We studied their backgrounds, methods, and obsessions, trying to get a glimpse into their patterns and see how authorities were able to track down and apprehend a number of these people. One of the more interesting stories was that of The Green River Killer, a serial murderer based out of the Pacific Northwest, and how the lead investigator conducted a number of interviews with another famous criminal, Ted Bundy, in an attempt to catch the killer before he struck again. This fascinated me, as I remembered the exact same process done in Jonathan Demme’s great, tense thriller The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

It’s hard to separate Mel Gibson from the man he plays in Jodie Foster’s The Beaver (2011). Here is an actor who was once on top of the world, a strong leading man with infinite charisma, charm, and likeability. An award-winning filmmaker, there was a point in time when Gibson could do no wrong. Boy, have things changed quickly since. Bouts with alcoholism, arrests, and outlandish remarks have sent his career on a downward spiral that would be near impossible for anyone else to crawl out from. When I heard about the premise of the film—involving a man fighting his way out of depression through the use of a stuffed beaver puppet—I almost groaned at its absurdity. After seeing the film, though, I was almost shocked by how effective it actually was. And it’s because of Gibson; perhaps no one else in the world could have played this role.

Spencer and John preview the movies slated to be released during the summer of 2011, before closing out with their DVD picks of the week.

Taxi Driver (1976), directed by Martin Scorsese from a Paul Schrader script, is simply put one of the all-time great movies.  It is the movie that made me want to learn more about movies.  The story of Travis Bickle, “God’s Lonely Man”, roaming the streets of New York City, burning with an urge to do something, anything, to rid the streets of the scum he so hated, left an impression on me that has lasted until today, I’d never seen anything quite like it before, or since.