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Episodes
Two old friends and movie lovers discuss established classics that they like and loathe.
Episodes
Oct 24, 2024
Oct 24, 2024
1hr 15 min
Episode 17-Gladiator
In this epic episode of the Punching Up Movie Podcast Adam unleashes hell (and a couple of hungry man-eating tigers) on Gladiator, Ridley Scott’s tale of Roman revenge and arena combat.
Adam quite likes Scott but really doesn’t like Gladiator.
Damian likes Gladiator but has an axe to grind with Sir Ridley.
Let battle commence.
Will either of them earn their place in Elysium? Probably not.
But Adam might get into Valhalla on a technicality, because of the amount of time he namechecks the (in his opinion) far superior Conan the Barbarian.
So listen, by Crom, or Jupiter will get you.
Get in touch :O) by sending us an email @
Sep 19, 2024
Sep 19, 2024
56 min
Episode 16-Dr Strangelove
What could possibly be worse than Peter Sellers? Peter Sellers times 3.
In Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 nuclear war black comedy, Dr Strangelove, England’s greatest comic actor plays three separate characters and Damian Asher doesn’t like it.
Does three times the Sellers = three times the hate from the normally benign Stanley Kubrick uber fan Damian?
Combine that with the usual radioactive malice of myself, Adam Nightingale and will the Punching Up squad accidently trigger a chain reaction of spite that will consume the world in a permanent nuclear winter of white-hot Peter Sellers hatred?
Or alternatively will they simply run out of horrible things to say about the man and sheepishly admit that he’s actually quite funny.
Get in touch :O) by sending us an email @
Sep 12, 2024
Sep 12, 2024
1hr 8 min
Episode 15-Bram Stoker's Dracula
Who is the best Dracula? Is it Bela Lugosi’s suave count, Christopher Lee’s aristocratic Prince of Darkness, Max Shrek’s rat faced Nosferatu… or Gary Oldman’s lovelorn immortal who has crossed oceans of time to romance Winona Rider in Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula? Well, if you're Adam Nightingale it is most definitely not Gary Oldman, as the Lord of the Undead goes twelve rounds with the punching up team.
It’s a long one as Damian and Adam cover all things Dracula and still have oceans of time left to mention drama school dance workouts, dirty vampires vs clean vampires, David Soul’s pop career and how Damian Asher saved Adam from Christian rock music in the early 1990s.
You would be Vlad to miss it.
Get in touch :O) by sending us an email @
Aug 8, 2024
Aug 8, 2024
57 min
Episode 14-Kill Bill Vol 2
In the second part of our first two-parter, Punching Up punches up at its first sequel, Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol 2.
Damian perpetuates his beef with QT’s roaring, raging, rampage of revenging but narrows his focus to the eponymous Bill himself. Damian doesn’t like David Carradine’s performance. Adam tries manfully to defend the late martial artist movie star who can’t do martial arts, who once adorned yellow face to play a Chinese criminal named Wang Dong and died under very dubious circumstances in a Thailand hotel room (which we gallantly do not mention in this episode).
Who will win this roaring, retributive, rampage of retribution-ism-ing.
Tune in and find out.
Get in touch :O) by sending us an email @
Jul 25, 2024
Jul 25, 2024
58 min
Episode 13-Kill Bill Volume 1
In this episode Damian and Adam don’t so much punch up but chop down, with a katana sword (or to be more precise, a Hattori Hanzo sword), as it is time to kill Kill Bill, or kill Kill Bill Volume 1 (to be even more precise), Quention Tarantino’s martial arts masterpiece of retribution and revenge.
So, expect 450 gallons of blood, a million cult movie references, a hundred million needle drops, multiple flying body parts, and attractive ladies naked feet…so, so many attractive ladies naked feet. It’s going to get bloody and it’s going to get weird as Damian and Adam cross swords (and play footsy) with the great Q T.
Get in touch :O). Send us an email @
Jul 4, 2024
Jul 4, 2024
47 min
Episode 12-Bande a Part
In the immortal words of Thin Lizzy (or that blues band that played in 48 Hours),
The Boys Are Back In Town.
That's right, Punching Up The Movie Podcast is back.
This week we take shots at one of the pioneers of the French Nouvelle Vague cinema, Maoist essayist and intellectual contrarian, Jean Luc Godard and his supposedly most accessible film Bande a Part.
Will Godard’s fourth-wall breaking tale of two guys, one beautiful girl, smoking, shrugging, dancing and petty crime expand Damian and Adam’s intellectual horizons?
Or will it be the most boring and pretentious 90 minutes they have ever collectively endured.
Listen in and find out.
Get in touch :O). Send us an email @
Mar 29, 2024
Mar 29, 2024
1hr 8 min
Episode 11-EASY RIDER (1969)
Two men went looking for a podcast and couldn’t find it anywhere.
On this episode Adam takes a swing at the biker movie, road movie, hippytastic gamechanger that singlehandedly launched the New Hollywood, 1969’s Easy Rider, not realizing that it is one of Damian’s favourite movies.
Will their friendship survive, or will they (in the paraphrased words of the immortal Peter Fonda) Blow It?
Why does Damian like Easy Rider so much?
Is it his innate love of counter culture and the magic herb?
Why does Adam hate Easy Rider so much and what has he got against travelling troops of Hippy actors? Does it have something to do with his murky Christian drama group past?
Hold on. Is it therapy time, again????
Come on Adam, let the sunshine in.
In the paraphrased words of the immortal Stephen Schwartz: Join Us and find out.
Feb 22, 2024
Feb 22, 2024
54 min
Episode 10-THE DEPARTED (2006)
What has poor Martin Scorsese done to annoy the Punching Up team?
Our series hasn’t been going that long and this is the third time around for America’s greatest living director.
It’s beginning to look like a lot like bullying.
This time it’s the turn of The Departed, Scorsese’s Boston-based Irish-American remake of the Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs starring Leonardo Di Caprio, Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson.
Damian doesn’t like remakes and dislikes The Departed.
Adam doesn’t like remakes but really likes The Departed. Damian doesn’t like remakes but likes Scorsese’s remake of Cape Fear.
Adam doesn’t like Cape Fear but loves Juliette Lewis.
But at least there’s one thing they can both agree on, neither Adam nor Damian like Ray Winstone’s ropey America accent in The Departed.
Enjoy the carnage.
The Punching Up Movie Podcast
Damian & Adam discuss lauded films and at times agree and at others disagree on 'their take', enjoyment or 'lack of' of the film in question.
Each episode we will take on a behemoth and attempt to dissect, discover and sometimes disassemble the percieved classic film.
Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode.
All research by Adam Nightingale and Damian Asher.
Produced and edited by Damian Asher.
TESTIMONIALS
"Philip Jose Farmer once said something like ”Disagreement is the heart of scholarship”. I enjoy hearing a good defence of a movie that is popularly considered to have failed to be the classic it could have been. Here, my friend Adam Nightingale takes the opposite approach and argues that one of my favourite movies, 2001, is NOT the classic it is popularly held to be.
I learned things I never knew about Kubrick’s iconic film, and enjoyed the intellectual, friendly fan disagreement with his bud, Damian Asher. Fan debates should be part of the fun of being a fan (just dont cross me on who’s stronger, Thor or The Hulk.”
Micah Harris (Graphic Novelist)
"......love listening to your podcast. Amazing and insightful and somewhat comforting too. You 'n Adam Buxton are my nos 1's at the moment."
Andrea Gordon
"Great stuff Damian. One of the best movie reviewers out there."
Terence Maynard
"This is excellent Damian. Really enjoying it."
Steven Bloomer