Above the Title: A Saoirse Ronan Podcast

This week, the great Jeff Sweeney joins us for the return of everyone's favorite podcast within a podcast: that's right, it's time for another episode of Oops! All Rushmores! Listen in to increasingly deranged and contentious deep dives into the careers of six - count em, six! - of the finest character actors Europe has to offer. Also we discuss the 2013 Spanish animated film Justin and the Knights of Valour for the legally required minimum and not a second more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How I Live Now is ostensibly a 2013 film in which Saoirse Ronan plays a teenage girl trying to survive a war torn England. What How I Live now actually is is a movie with a relatively minor plot point so insane we find it completely impossible to talk about anything else and gradually descend into madness. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, the great Andrew Jagielski returns to the show to discuss the last of Saoirse's attempts towards traditional stardom, Andrew Niccol's The Host. An adaptation of the only non-Twilight novel Stephenie Meyer ever wrote, the film stars Saoirse as a young woman possessed by an alien parasite dueling for control over her body, and get this - they both like different boys. Listen in as we debate the metrics by which one determines what is the worst, eulogize the Saw franchise, consider the long term benefits of being in a flop, and go long on Saoirse's career in comparison to other actresses of her generation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we're checking back in with our old friend Neil Jordan for 2012's Byzantium, in which Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan play mother and daughter vampires eking out a living in an English coastal town. Listen as we ponder such questions as: are vampires played out as a narrative concept? Does this movie function as an earnest feminist counter to its sex-centered marketing? Is this movie an attempt to better execute the core ideas behind Jordan's previous film Ondine? Is Caleb Landy Jones Good in this? What's going on with Caleb Landry Jones' Wikipedia page? What's going on with this movie's Wikipedia page? What going on with Chris Columbus' Wikipedia page? The answers to these questions, and more, can be found within. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, the great Justin Stillmaker returns to the show to discuss Violet & Daisy, the... other movie from 2011 where Saoirse Ronan plays a teen girl assassin. Co-starring Alexis Bledel, the film was the directorial debut and swan song of Academy Award-winning screenwriter of Precious Geoffrey S. Fletcher, and as we try to wrap our heads around this befuddling movie and his incredibly brief career, we also defend Spike Lee's honor, continue to litigate the long cultural tail of Quentin Tarantino, somehow keep mentioning Seijun Suzuki, and contemplate alternate casting possibilities both real (this was almost a Saoirse/Carey Mulligan vehicle!) and imagined. But we devote most of the episode towards eulogizing the legendary James Gandolfini, in one of his last performances before his untimely death.Check out the trailer for Justin's upcoming movie The Rider: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DFLAZvZOFUy/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ%3D%3D Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

sorry about this one gang Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, the great Charlie Schumann returns to chat about 9-1-1, the late career of Jennifer Lopez, and the relationship between the Mission: Impossible films and the tv show. Oh, and when we remember we also discuss Saoirse's first lead role City of Ember, a failed YA dystopian franchise starter about an underground city that definitely makes sense and definitely isn't boring. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we're playing clean-up on the last of the movies rushed into release to capitalize on Saoirse's Oscar nomination with Gillian Armstrong's Death Defying Acts. An almost entirely fictionalized melodrama set in the last weeks of Harry Houdini's life, the film stars Guy Pearce and Catherine Zeta-Jones at the very tail end of the star runs, and Saoirse Ronan as the latter's plucky con artist daughter. We talk the two leads' A-list careers twenty years on, fancast our own Harry Houdini biopics, argue over which de Havilland sister was better, and devote some time to talking about The Pitt. We mostly talk about The Pitt. How good is The Pitt y'all. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The year is 2007. Saoirse Ronan is thirteen years old and four years into her career and has just gotten her first Oscar nomination. This week, Mark Tilley returns to the podcast to discuss Atonement, Joe Wright's sweeping epic of forbidden love and overwhelming guilt. Listen as we heap praise on Wright, discuss the film's Oscar run, debate just how much of this movie is meant to be real, and perform some atonement of our own as we address this podcast's greatest shame. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

not gonna lie gang this one broke us Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Above the Title celebrates Age Gap April with a look at Amy Heckerling's misbegotten May December romcom I Could Never Be Your Woman, starring Michelle Pfeiffer as an aging, divorced TV executive and Paul Rudd as the younger actor she falls for. We talk the film's lengthy and disastrous production, its poorly aged conception of feminism, and the ways both resonant and unsettling it seems to reflect Heckerling's biography. Plus: a young Saoirse Ronan in her first actual role, deep dives on both Pfeiffer and Rudd, and a lot of MCU talk. A weird amount of MCU talk. I actually cut a good portion of the MCU talk so just remember that when you're listening. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, season 2 of Above the Title begins with a look at the early television work of our new subject, Saoirse Ronan. First, there's The Clinic, a long running gentle soap opera about the personal lives of healthcare workers. Then, there's the second season of Proof, a gritty and short lived drama about journalists uncovering corruption. Is Saoirse in either of these to any degree more than just being a kid who can pop into a few scenes? No, not really, but hey, it's a completionist podcast, that's what you signed up for. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our brief retrospective through the lost Colin episodes ends with 2021's After Yang, a movie that long time listeners know contains (spoilers) one of our all-time favorite Colin Farrell performance. Listen in as we talk Cannes section placement, theorize on this movie's half-assed released, sing the praises of Kogonada, make some incredibly inaccurate Oscar predictions, and generally get bored to tears. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we're taking a look at Voyagers, the movie where arguably the entire class of sexy young movie stars in training gets on a spaceship and descends into horny chaos while Colin tries to keep the peace. Honestly we mostly just talk about Gran Turismo in this one vroom vroom. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In round 2 of the lost Colin Farrell episodes, we discuss Ava, the Jessica Chastain thriller that was one of the surprise hits of the pandemic. Join us as we talk the long lineage of assassins onscreen, Chastain the auteur, this film's contentious relationship with the Me Too movement, new developments in the Colin/Ewan symbiosis, the Fear Street movies, late style Geena Davis, the streaming attention economy in the era of Covid, and John Malkovich's entire career. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Surprise! The lost Colin Farrell episodes have been recovered! Listen back to April 2024 when the great Colin Hamingson joined us to discuss the long in development children's fantasy adventure picture Artemis Fowl, an extremely normal Covid era catastrophe that Colin Farrell definitely wasn't added to at the last second. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, it's a first for Above the Title - we're doubling back to a movie we've already covered. That's right, it's a return look at the first role Saoirse booked after her Oscar nomination and her one collaboration with Colin Farrell, Peter Weir's swan song The Way Back. Our original episode was one of our most contentious, and we've had two years to let our thoughts percolate on this divisive film. Kind of a postscript episode this week, but a fun one, even if we mostly talk about the Russo brothers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, the great Morgan Garrity joins us to discuss Peter Jackson's boondoggle adaptation of Alice Sebold's best selling novel The Lovely Bones, starring Soairse as the ghost of a girl murdered in the 1970s. We talk the film's lengthy production and the complicated history behind the novel, get into our thoughts on Jackson and this adaptation, but really we're all here to sort one thing out: is Academy Award nominee Stanley Tucci good in this movie? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After two long years, we've finally reached the end of Colin's filmography, and this week we're taking a moment to collect our thoughts on his career and where he's going from here. But first: we loop back around to cover 1999's The War Zone, Colin's first proper movie which fell outside our initial 21st century limitations. Then, we dive into everything he's done since, finally unveil the Colin Farrell Rushmore, and announce the subject of our next season. Thanks for the memories, kid.Please note The War Zone deals with sexual assault and incest in extremely bracing and explicit terms and we discuss it with the bluntness it deserves. If you would prefer not to listen to that portion of the episode, the discussion begins at 13 minutes in and ends at 54 minutes and 20 seconds. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, the great Jeff Sweeney returns to the show to put up a defense for the Reeves Batmanverse and talk HBO's The Penguin, the first time in Colin's career he's return to a role he's already played. Spoiler alert: two people on this episode thought this show was terrible and the third is just happy to be here. Topics include: live Golden Globes reactions, wildly out of date Oscar predictions, our frustrations with prestige TV storytelling, the show's disinterest in engaging with the larger Batman mythos, whether or not Colin should be winning awards for this, and our thoughts on Batman's rogues gallery. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.