This Week’s MPN Podcast: Movies Exclusive to Vudu and Other Digital Purchase Sites ; NYT ‘Best’ Movies of 2022?; More on Cameron and ‘Avatar’
December 14, 2022
On this week’s episode of the Media Play News podcast, hosts Charles Parkman and Charlie Showley lead with a list of Golden Globe-nominated movies newly released to Vudu for digital rent or download, exclusive to that service. This leads to a discussion around the merits of digital ownership in general and whether it’s ultimately worth more than owning physical releases. It contrasts nicely with how the episode wraps with several newly announced extravagant DVD/Blu-ray Disc boxed sets just in time for Christmas.
In between these segments, the hosts check in on James Cameron again. This is the last episode before Avatar 2 hits the big screen, and Cameron is featured in yet another interview hyping up his expected box office blockbuster. The latest: he received zero studio notes for his script for Avatar 4, and yes, he wrote the script for Avatars 2-4 before even starting to film The Way of Water. While no studio notes historically portend a mediocre movie that studios will write off, if any other director was going to break that mold, it would be Cameron.
The other major segment of the episode is a breakdown of a recent list of movies released by the New York Times that Charles and Charlie roast, as said list consists almost entirely of extremely niche movies that nobody seems to have heard of. Given that the hosts lead a movie-themed podcast, they both find it strange that these movies flew so under the radar and yet made it to such a year-end list.