Our discussion of The Room has been pushed back a week but we still had a lot to get to on this week show. We talk to the director of the film Buck, which made the short list for the Oscars. Speaking of the Oscars we give a few of our prediction on the top awards and more.

0:45 – Cindy Meehl (director, Buck) interview.
22:55 – News.
52:30 – Oscar predictions.
1:15:15 – Mailbag
1:22:27 – Recommendations

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Pitchers and catchers report to MLB Spring Training in less than 24 hours and it’s only a matter of time before the 2012 season is a go. If you’re like me and love baseball this is an exciting prospect. Also if you’re like me you know how awful Winter without baseball can be. So baseball fans across the country get their baseball fix any way they can: MLB Network, ESPN, World Series DVD’s and of course baseball movies.

Baseball movies are usually terrible. Written by people who barely understands the game, most baseball movies are “screwball comedies” trying to capture the feel of Major League and failing. I’ve seen them all and enjoyed very few. Here is my list of the Top 5 Baseball Movies of All Time. May they keep you warm until the first game of Spring Training airs.

5. The Natural (1984): This movie had such an impact on my brother-in-law that he actually made a baseball bat out of wood himself like in the movie. Robert Redford gives a great performance as an aging ballplayer who has never played in the majors but now takes on the task on getting his last place team to the playoffs. Also stars a young Kim Basinger.

4. Field of Dreams (1989): This movie has captured everyone from all over no matter if they were baseball fans or not. Kevin Costner, who is in far too many baseball movies, hears a whisper… “If you build it, they will come.” Broke and about to lose his home and farm, Costner’s character decides to listen to the voice in his head and rip up his corn to build a regulation baseball field. In doing so, he’s not only connected with the infamous 1919 Chicago White Sox and reconnected with a very important person from his past. This movie is not so much a look into a ballplayer’s life but rather shares the intangible, mystic feel of the game that continues to be passed down through the generations. 

3. Bull Durham (1988): An extremely realistic look at an aging career minor leaguer who only had a cup of coffee in the major leagues. Kevin Costner finds himself in the low-level minors and is given the task of preparing a cocky top pitching prospect for a major league career. And of course you know there is a love story pitting Costner up with a big fan. If you can get past that part you will enjoy a peak at the relationships baseball players share as they try to cut their teeth in the sport and learn about life along the way.

2. 61* (2001): Based on a true story, this film takes a look at the 1961 season where New York Yankee legends Mickey Mantle and  Roger Maris battled to dethrone Babe Ruth as the single-season home run record holder. Getting the record is only part of this story. The real story comes the relationship between the two Yankees who were competing against each other while on the seam team and the scrutiny that Maris came under from the world for simply not being Mickey Mantle. Directed by Billy Crystal and starring Thomas Jane and Barry Pepper. If you love movies you need to see this one.

1. Moneyball (2011): If you’ve been listening to the podcast you knew this was coming. Based on the true story of the 2002 Oakland A’s, this film follows general manager Billy Beane as he tries to replace 3 superstars players with very little money to spend. What he ends up doing changes the baseball world forever. Witness the birth of computer-generated analysis being taken seriously in Major League Baseball. This Oscar-nominated film isn’t just for baseball fans, it’s for everyone. And if you don’t like baseball you will leave with a bigger appreciation for the game. As Brad Pitt as Billy Beane says: “How can you not get romantic about baseball.”

Honorable Mentions: Major League, A Player to Be Named Later, Sugar, For Love of the Game.

Movies I Still Have to See: The Bronx is Burning, Pride of the Yankees, Eight Men Out.

This week’s podcast features 4 reviews: Shame, The Innkeepers, A Dangerous Method and get Jeff’s take on the 3D theatrical release of Star Wars Episode 1. Also, Jay plays a great phone prank on Jeff and Mark, we discuss the latest trailers, answer a mailbag question and more.

4:14 – News/Jay’s Prank
30:32 – Reviews (Shame, A Dangerous Method, The Innkeepers, Star Wars Episode 1 in 3D)
1:31:26 – Trailer Talk
2:00:20 – Mailbag
2:07:44 – Recommendations

You can download it on iTunes by clicking the “Listen to the Podcast” tab on the top. Or if you are bad at commitment you can stream it HERE.  

Co-directed by The Wachowski’s and Tom Tykwer, I’m surprised the film keeps falling off of my radar. The production is incredibly ambitious – three directors, six stories, and one hell of a cast, with each actor tackling multiple roles. We’re going through an era of staleness in Hollywood the likes of which have never been seen, and a project like Cloud Atlas should get even the most jaded film fan excited.

Aside from the plot description (of the book) below, very little is known about the production so far, although some concept art was released a few months ago. Now, one of the film’s stars has spilled a few details. And just like that, Cloud Atlas has shot to a spot within my top 5 most anticipated films of 2012 list.

Speaking with Empire magazine, Grant let it be known that he has not one, not two, not three four or five, but SIX roles in the film. And apparently all six of those characters are “incredibly evil.” And apparently one of them is a cannibal. A futuristic cannibal who, according to Mr. Grant, stands

on a mountaintop in Germany and they are saying, ‘You know, hungry! We must have that flesh-eating, like a leopard who is so hungry…’

Is that so, Hugh? Please, tell us a little bit more about the character(s) you play in the fi-

I do a lot of killing and raping.

Whoa whoa whoa! Seemed a little bit too excited to get that out, Mr. Grant!

So let me get this straight: in Cloud Atlas, Hugh Grant plays an incredibly evil futuristic cannibal who rapes and kills people? When do tickets go on sale?

Cloud Atlas is expected to open sometime in October of 2012. Which is way, way, way, way, way too far away.

The novel consists of six nested stories that take the reader from the remote South Pacific in the nineteenth century to a distant, post-apocalyptic future. Each tale is revealed to be a story that is read (or watched) by the main character in the next. All stories but the last one get interrupted at some moment, and after the sixth story concludes at the center of the book, the novel “goes back” in time, “closing” each story as the book progresses in terms of pages but regresses in terms of the historical period in which the action takes place. Eventually, readers end where they started, with Adam Ewing in the Pacific Ocean, circa 1850.

Some problems with out iTunes feed this week as most of you got a repeat of episode 140. However, we have episode 141 right here. The Woman in Black, Chronicle, ScatterMovies, and all the regulars. You can stream the actual episode 141 right HERE.

Everyone balked when Columbia Pictures decided to reboot Spidey not even a decade after the first film hit the screen. Then it was announced that not only would the series get a makeover, but that it would again tell the origin of the sticky-palmed crime fighter.

All along the way, though, director Marc Webb (500 Days of Summer) has insisted that The Amazing Spider-Man is not your little cousin’s Spider-Man, explaining that the origin story will differ greatly from Raimi’s films.

A 2 and a 1/2 minute “teaser” trailer hit last June, and while it confirmed Webb’s film was heading in an unfamiliar direction it was, rightly so, widely panned. Peter Parker looked one bullying session away from shooting up his school, and a “misunderstood loner” vibe straight out of a Stephanie Myers novel permeated from the initial preview.

Yesterday, Columbia released a proper trailer, showing more footage or both Spidey (played by Andrew Garfield) and his nemesis The Lizard (Rhys Ifans), and wisely excising the first-person city-swinging viewpoint we were unlucky enough to see in the teaser.

My impression of this trailer? Much better than the teaser, and the first thing from this production to actually pique my interest in the film. I like Garfield’s wise-cracking delivery, and although I miss the more cartoonish aesthetic of Raimi’s films, at least the effects look well done – The Lizard appears to have weight, and looks well integrated into action. I’m hoping the movie doesn’t get bogged down by grit (seriously, fanboys, not every superhero needs to be edgy), but my fear of that has been assuaged somewhat by this footage.

Check out the trailer below or in HD over at Apple. The Amazing Spider-Man hits theaters July 3, 2012.

1:18 – Nicole Franklin and Jasim Tigget interview.
30:40 – News
45:22 – Reviews
1:30:18 – Character Cage Match
2:13:15 – Mailbag
2:25:27 – Recommendations

Subscribe to iTunes by clicking that tab on top of the screen on stream it HERE.

WARNING: SLIGHT SPOILERS FOR GAME OF THRONES SEASON 1 BELOW

If you didn’t watch Game of Thrones during it’s first season run on HBO, do yourself a favor and remedy that come March 6. Seriously. It’s time to step out of your comfort zone and switch off CSI, House, and whichever one of the six-hundred Law and Order shows you watch and switch on a big people drama. I don’t watch much television, and Game of Thrones reminded me of why I don’t – most shows refuse to be as uncompromising, ambitious, and enthralling, and therefore I find most aren’t worth my time. Obviously, this particular hour long medieval fantasy is.

Although we’re less than two months away from the release of season 2, which is based on the second book in George RR Martins’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series, called A Clash of Kings, HBO hasn’t released much in the way of footage for the show’s sophomore stint. There was a punishingly short teaser a few months ago, and a few making-of vids have popped up online, but mostly the Home Box Office people have kept fans of the show salivating. Even the newest trailer below withholds a good look at new characters, such as Stannis Baratheon, the man who believes himself rightful heir to the Seven Kingdoms his brother Robert formerly ruled.

The man who plays Stannis, Stephene Dillaine, narrated the teaser, while Conleth Hill, who plays the slippery eunuch Lord Varys, slips in an allegorical story over the new footage in this trailer. Lord Varys’s man-parts may be missing, but his words can be more dangerous than any full-testicled Hound with a sword (warning: graphic beheading of a horse at that link!).

We do get to see a little bit more of Arya Stark (above), my personal favorite character from the Game of Thrones series (so far). Here’s also a little BTS video of Arya’s new look.

Game of Thrones season 2 debuts April 1, 2012.

In the film, Pearce plays Snow (he doesn’t appear to have a first name. Why? Because Guy Pearce no longer plays characters with first names, that’s why), a convict recruited from a maximum security space prison (not kidding) who’s recruited to rescue the president’s daughter, played by everyone’s favorite kidnapee Maggie Grace.

The story has more than a passing resemblance to John Carpenter’s Escape From New York, but that’s ok. Neil Marshall directed Doomsday, another EFNY clone a few years ago and that turned out to be pretty stellar. Of course, that film had Malcolm McDowell and cannibals, so of course it was good. What it didn’t have is Guy Pearce, like Lockout does. So of course this is better.

I’m halfway joking, because I really don’t think Lockout is going to be any good, based on this trailer at least. The effects look decent at best, the action cut to shreds, and I find Maggie Grace to be as full of life as present day Kim Jong-il.

But I’m completely serious about Guy Pearce being awesome. Seriously, he’s like an Australian Michael Fassbender, and has been being awesome for at least a decade longer than his German-Irish counterpart. I will see Lockout strictly because Pearce looks amazing in it. I never thought anyone could out-Kurt Russell Kurt Russell, but Pearce seems like he’s proved me wrong.

Lockout sees release April 20, 2012. See the synopsis and trailer below. Also below is the trailer for Escape From New York. Because I never get tired of seeing Ernest Borgnine throw a molotov cocktail.

A man wrongly convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage against the U.S. is offered his freedom if he can rescue the president’s daughter from an outer space prison taken over by violent inmates.

On this week’s episode of The Everything Film Show we have a review of Haywire starring Gina Carano. Juan also gives us his thoughts on Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. As usual we have mailbag, recommendations, and a lengthy news segment where we discuss our initial thoughts of the Oscar nominees, and play a game of Scattermovies. Check it out and send us an email theeverythingfilmshow@yahoo.com

8:00 – News and Oscar thoughts
49:55 – Haywire review
1:27:00 – Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close review
1:38:40 – Scattermovies
1:54:45 – Mailbag
2:06:42 – Recommendations

Subscribe to it on iTunes by clicking the “Listen to the Podcast” tab above or stream it right HERE.