All posts by Marisa

Jesse

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Labor Day Special

Happy Labor day from your pals at SportsAlcohol.com! We got you a podcast episode! Earlier this summer, Ben convened a small panel of labor experts (by which we mean Marisa, Jeremy, and Jesse) to talk about the bumper crop of movies about companies making products. Air, Blackberry, Flamin’ Hot, and Tetris all came out within months of each other — what gives? In this episode, led by a bona fide MBA, we talk about each movie, which ones (if any) appealed to us and why, and the greater meaning of this trend. (We recorded this episode before The Beanie Bubble dropped but you know what? It’s barely worth discussing anyway!) Please, spend your hard-earned Labor Day with us! Download link available on the embedded player below!

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Top Summer Movies of 2003

Remember 2003? Remember the summer? Remember the summer movies of 2003? Remember Hulkmania? Remember how The Matrix Reloaded was going to blow everyone’s mind? Remember just whatever random cop movies making $125 million? Remember the X-Men starring in what was considered the best superhero movie ever made? Remember going to see 2 Fast 2 Furious by yourself, maybe sneaking in as part of a double feature with maybe Wrong Turn? Remember the Pirates defeating the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? Remember going full throttle? Remember that weirdo sitting next to you at Bruce Almighty who was visibly and vocally moved by the film? Remember how Seabiscuit was nominated for Best Picture? Remember Eddie Murphy doing uninspired family comedies that you’d skip and they’d make $100 million anyway? Remember sequels, sequels, sequels? Remember when sequels took over and never relinquished their grip? Remember?!?!?

SportsAlcohol.com remembers. We remember everything! So here, continuing our look at the biggest summer movies of the 2000s, is our look back at summer movies of 2003. Most of us were in our twenties. One of us was younger. Jesse, Marisa, Jeremy, Ben, and Becca assemble to talk about our memories of the summer movies of 2003, our new observations from fresh watches and rewatches,

In case you’re collecting SportsAlcohol.com podcasts about 2000s summer movies, here’s the complete set so far:

2000
2001
2002

And here’s the latest and greatest, including a download link if you need it:

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Best Movies of 2022

Movies! Now more than ever! For this late-but-not-that-late episode on the Best Movies of 2022, the SportsAlcohol.com movie core of Marisa, Sara, Jeremy, Jesse, and Nathaniel each submitted a list of, yes, their 20 favorite and/or best movies of 2022, aggregated into a single list. Four of us then run through those collective choices in this loose countdown, which means talking about movies that are and are not actually about the magic of cinema. Musicals, multiverses, Hitchcockian thrillers, dark comedies, and emotional devastation… this year’s best movies of 2022 had it all! Along with our group’s consensus choices, we offer occasional dissent with each other’s picks, plus a quartet of outliers that only made certain individual lists. There’s a lot to enjoy here, so get to listening!

We are now up to SIX (6) different ways to listen to a SportsAlcohol podcast:

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Best Streaming TV of 2022

You may have heard of a coming streaming recession or TV apocalypse, but regardless of what the future may hold, right now, there is still a hell of a lot of streaming TV out there for your consumption, whether your streaming provider is Netflix, Hulu, Paramount, Apple, Disney, Tubi, or all of the above (or just Tubi because Tubi is the best). Sensing a need for categorization and consensus in this vast streaming TV landscape, Ben called an emergency session of the SportsAlcohol.com podcast crew to talk about our favorite shows of 2022, sorted neatly into a series of categories: workplace shows, relationship shows, fantastical shows, funny shows, animated shows… all the types of shows, as favored variously by Ben, Jeremy, Sara, Marisa, and even TV agnostic and confirmed “movie person” (ugh) Jesse. So before you just shrug your shoulders and fire up that new season of Mad About You that you missed a few years ago, why not listen to us stump for our favorites (and run down a few of our anti-favorites)? We’ve got something for just about everyone, and if you watch all of these shows already, you can hear us praise and/or debate them. Happy listening and watching!

We are now up to SIX (6) different ways to listen to a SportsAlcohol podcast:

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Avatar 2 and the Films of James Cameron

Avatar is back! Everybody brace for cultural impact! James Cameron’s special-effects extravaganza Avatar: The Way of Water has finally made it to movie theaters — in fact, it’s now topped the domestic box office for seven weekends in a row, garnered a Best Picture nomination, and raked in over $2 billion worldwide. In light of this stunning failure to attract any kind of substantial audience or acclaim, your SportsAlcohol.com crew hopped in their submersible and did a deep-dive podcast on the films of James Cameron, in all their water-y, tech-y, earnest glory. The Avatars, the Terminators, the Aliens, the various boats and choppers and motion-captured Na’vi… they’re all here in this two-hour-plus extravaganza that is still shorter than the runtime of Avatar: The Way of Water. Discussion points include high frame rate, 3-D, sending Bill Paxton to explore the real Titanic, the names of characters in Avatar, Cameron’s facility with sequels and what sets the Avatar follow apart, Titanic opening-night memories, and more. Jesse, Marisa, Jeremy, Nathaniel, and Jeff are your guides through the floating mountains of Pandora and beyond! And if you feel the need to do some penance following this epic appreciation of megablockbuster entertainment, we did do a podcast about a bunch of recent indie movies!

We are now up to SIX (6) different ways to listen to a SportsAlcohol podcast:

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast Lost Episode: Indie Movies of Summer 2022

Hey there! It’s been a while, I know! We recorded our annual wrap-up of highlights from an indie-movie summer (and recommendations for a healthy streaming fall) back in September, but life, paid gigs, and occasionally COVID got in the way of Jesse actually editing the damn thing and getting it out into the world. I thought this particular movie podcast episode might feel outdated now that it’s December, but as it turns out, this is a terrific compendium of summer indies that will probably be largely overlooked as we head into the big end-of-year list-making season. Plus, some of these movies are newly available on Netflix and/or Hulu and/or old pals at AMC Plus, an organization that we make a case should be sponsoring us on this very episode! So let Sara, Marisa, Jeremy, and Jesse take you on a whirlwind tour of the movies you might have missed last summer while you were seeing Top Gun 2 a third time! You won’t regret it!

We are now up to SIX (6) different ways to listen to a SportsAlcohol podcast:

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Top Summer Movies of 1992

Summer 2022 is officially and unequivocally over. Long live summer 1992! As we continue to sweep the corners on summer movies past, we have arrived at the summer movies of 1992, which looks a hell of a lot different from 2022 or 2002. Eddie Murphy and Steve Martin haven’t yet teamed up for Bowfinger (and are both trying their hands at screwball rom-coms of sorts). Jack Ryan is only on his third actor. Tom Cruise is there, but he’s Irish. There’s just one superhero movie, and it’s way hornier than usual. And girls?!? Playing baseball??! To sort through all of this, we’ve reunited Nathaniel, Ben, Marisa, Becca, Jeremy, and Jesse to talk about our experiences (largely but not entirely facilitated by home video!) with this eclectic and occasionally maddening look at the summer movies of 1992.

If you need to catch up before checking out the latest and greatest, here’s the complete history of this project:

1990
1991
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002

We are now up to SIX (6) different ways to listen to a SportsAlcohol podcast:

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Doctor Strange 2 and the Films of Sam Raimi

All right, you primitive screwheads, listen up: Sam Raimi put out his first new movie in nine years this summer, returning to the world of Marvel superheroes with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. We thought it would be a good time to revisit all of his older films and, in the process, analyze just how much of his voice can be heard in the MCU machine. And though Jesse did not edit this episode in a timely manner, Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange 2 is now on Disney+, so you can do a full Sam Raimi marathon, from Evil Dead trilogy to the normal-movie trilogy to the Spider-Man trilogy and beyond, from the comfort of home! Join Nathaniel, Jeremy, Marisa, and Jesse as we discuss every single Sam Raimi feature film, including his latest. Who defends Oz the Great and Powerful? Who was not feeling Darkman? Who loves The Quick and the Dead more now than as a callow teenager? Now dig on this and find out! (And if we don’t talk enough about Spidey for your tastes, there’s always this old episode!)

We are now up to SEVEN (7) different ways to listen to a SportsAlcohol podcast:

  • You can subscribe to our podcast using the rss feed.
  • I’m not sure why they allowed it, but we are on iTunes! If you enjoy what you hear, a positive comment and a rating would be great.
  • I don’t really know what Stitcher is, but we are also on Stitcher.
  • SportsAlcohol.com is a proud member of the Aha Radio Network. What is Aha? It’s kind of like Stitcher, but for your car.
  • You can download the mp3 of the episode directly here.
  • Our most recent episode or two will sometimes be available on our Soundcloud. We don’t always have it working right but there’s good stuff there regardless!
  • You can listen to the episode in the player below.

The Best Movies of 2021

It’s been a long year. I’m referring, of course, to 2020, which is still going, some 800-plus days after it started. Oh, it’s 2022?! Ah, shit. That means this list is super-late. Sorry! But maybe we could all use some extra time to think about our choices, and how extremely correct they all are. I won’t waste any more time. Let’s get to the list for another year where everything was garbage but the movies. You can listen to us defend our choices here.
Continue reading The Best Movies of 2021

The SportsAlcohol.dom Podcast Double Feature: Best Movies of 2021, and the Oscars

It’s been a quiet winter, podcasting-wise, at SportsAlcohol.com HQ, but now Marisa, Sara, Jeremy, and Jesse are back with two new retrospective episodes! In the first, we continue our annual tradition of counting down our collective top 15 movies of the year (that’s 2021, not 2022). The full list will be on the site soon, but you can get a preview with our discussion of group and personal faves. Then we convened to talk about some of the best-and-other movies of 2021, offering our predictions, preferences, and occasional complaints about the recent Oscar nominations. Sure, it’s March, but the Oscars still haven’t happened yet! So why not take a last listen to us talking about the highlights (and occasional Oscar-honored lowlights) of the 2021 movie year? It’s been a rollercoaster year-plus, but keep in mind: Heartbreak feels good in a place like this.

We are now up to SEVEN (7) different ways to listen to a SportsAlcohol podcast:

  • You can subscribe to our podcast using the rss feed.
  • I’m not sure why they allowed it, but we are on iTunes! If you enjoy what you hear, a positive comment and a rating would be great.
  • I don’t really know what Stitcher is, but we are also on Stitcher.
  • SportsAlcohol.com is a proud member of the Aha Radio Network. What is Aha? It’s kind of like Stitcher, but for your car.
  • You can download the mp3 of the episode directly here for the best movies of 2021 and here for the Oscars.
  • Our most recent episode or two will sometimes be available on our Soundcloud. We don’t always have it working right but there’s good stuff there regardless!
  • You can listen to the episodes in the players below.