Movie Podcast Weekly Producer / Host, Jason Pyles, is the only member of the group that is an honest-to-goodness film critic, but you’d hardly know it from his taste in movies. In fact, Jason’s movie tastes reflect his dietary tastes: pure junk food. Jason is also the main man on MPW to turn to for crime film and horror flick recommendations, which deeply concerns all of those closest to him. Years later, they will be quoted in police reports as saying, “He always seemed like such a nice guy. Quiet, kept to himself.”
Jason began writing film criticism in 2005. From 2006 to 2008, he wrote movie reviews for The College Times newspaper at Utah Valley University, where he completed a book-length thesis entitled “Achieving Genuine Movie Criticism: The Motive of an Artist.” He also wrote movie reviews in 2007 for a local video store in Orem, Utah. In 2008 Jason wrote movie reviews on political films for Scoop08.com. Jason and Andy began the Considering the Cinema discussion blog in July 2008. Later in ’08, Jason began writing mini and full-length movie reviews for The Intelligencer and the Wheeling News-Register newspapers in his hometown of Wheeling, West Virginia. He did so until 2010, when he returned to Salt Lake City and began podcasting. It was all downhill from there.
Jason’s former podcasts include Considering the Sequels (which ran for 22 episodes), The Weekly Horror Movie Podcast (26 episodes), The Best Picture Podcast (3 episodes), Horror Metropolis (10 episodes), Podcasting Revolution (10 episodes), and Movie Stream Cast (26 episodes). His current podcasts include Horror Movie Podcast and Movie Podcast Weekly. Bets are now being taken as to how long they will last. Contact your local bookie. The odds are fantastic!
Jason’s latest gig is over the radio airwaves. He appears every other Wednesday as the film critic for The Dave Bowman Show — Power Talk 1360 and 1280 Modesto / Stockton.
Jason is widely known as: The Nicest Guy in Podcasting. Although there is no evidence that he gave himself that title, there is also none to the contrary. Jason names Roger Ebert and Stanley Kauffmann as his film criticism heroes and his favorite woodland creatures as bunnies. And despite relentless abuse and martyr-like persecution, he still says his all-time favorite film is M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Village” (2004).
Dear moviepodcastweekly,
I have been looking forward to your special content for ‘Love Actually’ since it was announced in last week’s podcast. I am writing to let you know that it was very enjoyable session – and thank you very much for producing this podcast session.
I watched this movie in cinema with my girlfriend back then (now we are happily married) and that was the first movie we went to. She later told me she was kind of surprised by my choice that I took her to a Xmas chick flick – as I impressed her somehow that I was into ‘weird’ art-house movies with un-easy depth. We enjoyed the movie together and revisited the movie many times over the years.
It seems you either love this movie or don’t go with it at all – exactly the contrast between Karl and Josh –This movie is by no means a master piece – it is fragmented, very loose plots, very cheesy at times, and rather stereo typing, 2 dimensional (all Josh’ ticks, I think). However, I guess putting yourself in the right heart when watching it is the key to enjoy it. This is not a movie that showcase the movie techniques nor Charlie Kaufman writing. It is really the consumer movie at its best – provide not much nutrition to the brain but great time with combined with potato crisps, popcorns and M&M…
I am nicely surprised how much after-work Karl has invested into this movie – he provided a fantastic stream line of the trivia knowledge that makes the podcast worthwhile… Making up for the absence of Andy for majority part of the movie!
One suggestions I would make is that I wish the movie sound track could be stronger when the team were not in discussion – I listen to the podcast on train and that will put me in the perspective of the movie screen a lot better – but that will require Jason to do up-and-down on the remote all the time I guess.
Overall great content guys, thank you so much and keep it up!
P.S: to make the premium content work, the key is to pick the right movie (right game).
Roar is discussed in the latest edition of Entertainment Weekly. http://www.ew.com/article/2015/04/08/lions-are-king-crazy-clip-melanie-griffith-starring-roar
Making a murderer is pure fiction. I lived through this nightmare that Steven Avery is a psychopath.
Alan Sheldon
Fitchburg, WI
Hi Jason,
I found out about you through the trading podcast you do with Rob Booker. Love the show! Your comments are always very insightful. Based on comments you and Rob have made I gather you are both LDS. I am too and I have always been torn between my faith and my love for movies! (many of which I definitely would not watch with my bishop). I would love to hear from you about how you negotiate your faith and your love of movies and the inappropriate content in many many good movies. Please shoot me an email at your convenience.