The Projector #34: A Slight Change in Direction (Patreon)

by Keith Phipps

So, it looks like we’re going to be indoors for a while now, doesn’t it? For a podcast dedicated to pairing a new movie — almost always new movie you can go see in a theater — with an older movie, that makes things kind of tough. For that to work we’d have to have open movie theaters. We’re going to roll with it, however, starting with our next pairing, which will consider Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion next to Elia Kazan’s Panic in the Streets. 

Contagion, you might notice, isn’t technically a new movie, having hit theaters nine years ago. But it is a movie much in the news these days, one relevant to current events. That’s one possible model we’ll follow during this crisis. Another would be to select a recent-ish movie we didn’t cover on the show. (We’re tossing around a pretty good, and much less topical, pairing idea for our next set of episodes.) We can also always look to streaming premieres for pairing ideas, especially since more and more movies will be making their debuts there in the coming months. [Long sigh.]

Anyway, life isn’t normal, but we’re going to try to keep The Next Picture Show as normal as possible, including this week’s episode on The Invisible Man. (Which we saw in theaters, just weeks ago before all this set in; if you missed out, Universal is releasing it early on VOD this Friday.) We hope you’ll continue to join us.

Want some stuff to read? Try these pieces:

• For The Guardian, Anne Bilson considers the underrepresentation of black cowboys in western movies.

• Relevant to our next pairing, at Slate, Sam Adams spoke to Contagion screenwriter Scott Z. Burns about the renewed interest in the movie.

• At Fangoria, Vanessa Gritton considered the horror-movie influence on the work oof designer Alexander McQueen.

• Our own Tasha Robinson guested on an episode of Star Wars Minute to talk about Rogue One.

• At Polygon, Michael Frank looked at the new wave of Pope-ertainment.

• At Vulture, Bilge Ebiri considers the career of good actor Mark Walhberg.

• And for The Guardian, Scott Tobias takes a 20-years-later look at Erin Brockovich.