Our new Page to Screen podcast series continues, and in our second interview, the ISA's Director of Community Outreach and podcast host, Max Timm, joins Jeff York to discuss the critically acclaimed new film from Tom McCarthy, Spotlight. As you may already know, in this series of interviews the ISA will jump on the line with some of our Development Program writers to review newly released films and TV shows with Jeff York. Jeff is a long time development program writer, as well as a film critic. With Page to Screen, we strip away all of the pretentiousness of typical film review sources and formats, and dive into the heart of the show by discussing the writing elements of each project.
Jeff and his guests will of course talk about what they enjoyed and didn’t enjoy about each viewing, but we’re taking a writing-centric approach to the review. In this particular conversation, Max joined Jeff not as a way to self-promote, but to help kick-off this fun review series of podcasts and bring a critical eye to this critical film. Spotlight is a difficult film to watch simply due its content. Not that it wasn’t enjoyable as a film in and of itself – the acting is fantastic, the writing and structure works well – but because of the extreme subtleties and its focus purely on the content and message, the story itself is delivered in a very non-character motivated way and doesn’t grip the viewer on a hero’s journey kind of level. I’m confident that the filmmakers were not trying to approach the story in this way, and because of such a conscious decision, the movie works. All in all, Spotlight is an important movie to watch and should get quite a bit of awards season press and notoriety.
Thanks for listening, everyone! Remember that this is an interactive kind of podcast series, so please feel free to share your own thoughts on each reviewed movie or show and leave your comments on the ISA Facebook page or Twitter account! The ISA loves offering you these free resources, and all we ask in return is to share the podcasts and rate us on iTunes. Now that the holiday season is upon us, we hope that you can get out to a theatre or flip through your home theatre set-up and watch some fine entertainment. As always, thanks for being a valued member of the ISA, and enjoy the discussion.