Why have one podcast when you can have two? We are announcing a second cast, Criterion Short Cuts. Okay, in reality it is still the same cast and will be on the same feed as Criterion Close-Up, which you can subscribe to at the links below. We will have a different numbering system, and these will be Short Cuts, literally. We will still watch the films, take notes, flesh out the themes and deconstruct the content, while also evaluating it as a piece of art and a Criterion release. The only difference with Short Cuts is we expect to do this within 20-30 minutes, focusing on one film at a time without a sub-topic. As we’ve found with our main cast, we will inevitably get caught up in a good conversation and go longer on occasion, but we will do our best to be concise.

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Eventually we may have a separate page for Short Cuts, but for now we’ll list them over at the Podcast page, one-by-one as we record them.

Conveniently, (or maybe inconveniently) we had our first major technical glitch with the House & The Shining episode. I feel the episode still stands on its own, and I really appreciate Keith Silva and the conversation about The Shining. This new series might be a good excuse to have a “do over.” We’re going to try to lure Keith back with beer and other delights, and hopefully we can recapture that lightning. Short Cuts is a way to do that.

We will have guests. The constant will be me, Aaron, although occasionally Mark will join when he can. I already have guests lined up for other episodes. Fortunately our cast has had no shortage of people wanting to guest. There will be situations where I’ll have a title lined up and nobody is prepared, and on that occasion I will be prepared to go forward with a solo cast. That will be weird, but I think it is possible. I’m planning to do so for Alambrista!, which may or may not be the first episode.

We also are planning on doing Night and the City, A Master Builder, Videodrome, Monterey Pop maybe Godard’s Weekend, and plenty of other titles. For those who follow this blog and see my yearly lists, you may have noticed that I like to prepare for those lists by watching the respective Criterion releases. That will guide some of this project, as will trying to keep caught up on new releases. It also gives us flexibility to do an easy cast without having to do a big main episode.

More content is better, right? I am enthused about this new sub-project and I think it will be a worthy supplement to our main cast, which I feel is still improving as we go — provided we can keep the Gremlins away.