Podcast Review: Battleship Pretension

I’ve been listening to this podcast for a long time, but will I still be listening when this review is over?

Battleship Pretension

The Gist

Tyler Smith and David Bax are the two hosts of the long running, they’ve been around since 2007, Battleship Pretension. Each week they get together, often times with a guest, to discuss all things film. Usually they pick a topic or two and really delve into them, each episode lasts between an hour to two hours, taking the topic in various directions. They also do special episodes that are sometimes longer, more than two hours in most cases, that are focused on a specific aspect of a topic or a certain individual/property in film. Every year, at least I think it’s every year, they celebrate the podcast ad their fans with a live episode.

Episodes Listened To

#220: Artist Profile Of F.W. Murnau
#221: with Susan Burke
#222: with Emily Maya Mills

My Thoughts

As I said in the teaser I’ve been listening to Battleship Pretension for a long time. I can’t remember why I started listening to Battleship Pretension but, other than the odd exception I’m very glad I did. When I see that a new episode has popped up in my iTunes feed I know I will have some quality film talk to listen to and that isn’t something I can say about a lot of film related podcasts out there. With Battleship Pretension there’s more at play, I know I’ll be getting quality film talk but I also know I’ll be spending time with two hosts whose opinions I value and who, more than anything, I enjoy spending time with.

Even the best of podcasts can seem like a drag sometime, that’s why many podcasters try to keep their podcasts around a specific run time, the length it usually takes to commute from home to work in an urban setting. I’m a big fan of podcasts that throw that rule to the side and are still good, Battleship Pretension is one such podcast. Their episodes are often long, but I don’t mind when I finish a long car ride, pause the episode and know that I still have forty minutes to go in said episode. No matter how long an episode is, Tyler Bax and David Smith almost always have interesting conversations that I look forward to getting back into. That’s not an aspect of a podcast to be easily scoffed at, all the production values in the world are’t worth a penny if I don’t want to hear what the hosts have to say.

Luckily I always want to hear what Battleship Pretension has to say. I disagree with Tyler and David a lot, but that’s okay, because I respect their opinions and the way they present their opinions. These are two gentlemen who know what they are talking about, they present informed and educated opinions (while admitting their ignorance in cases where they are not informed) and never for a second do they sound stuck-up or talk to their listeners in a condescending manner. This is something else that I highly value in a podcast, there are plenty of other film podcasts out there with hosts who know their stuff, but very few allow the listener to relate to them as well as Tyler and David do on Battleship Pretension.

I realize I’ve talked this long and I have yet to talk about the content found in Battleship Pretension. I don’t want anyone coming away from this review thinking that Battleship Pretension is a podcast with no meat to be found anywhere. When Tyler and David take on a topic they bring it, and in the best of ways. They go in depth on topics, they offer the already mentioned informed opinions across a broad spectrum within any given topic. They tend to not just look at one aspect of a topic, instead they branch out and truly explore the space of a topic. I learn things from Battleship Pretension, but most of all it’s a podcast that allows my brain to traverse new routes and take in ideas I hadn’t bothered thinking of myself.

If there are negatives I would levy against Battleship Pretension they would have to be a few of their guests and the live specials. Maybe the live specials play better when you are in attendance, but out of every five comedians they put on the show maybe one will be funny. Again, maybe it’s just those comedians having off nights, but I’ve never been a fan of the live specials and how different they are from the usual episodes in tone and content. As far as the guests go, Battleship Pretension has a bevy of great guests, but they have a few guests who do annoy me. Take Josh Fadem for instance, he has yet to provide anything to the show that impressed me. His most recent supplemental episode actually pissed me off. Tyler ad David were trying to discuss the movies being released over the summer and Fadem consistently shut them down with utterances like “It’s stupid,” or, “who cares.” That episode, and Fadem, really rubbed me the wrong way because I know the podcast is much better than that. However, like I said previously, Battleship Pretension does have a lot of great guests on and usually even when the guest is blah Tyler and David more than make up for it.

Wow, I did not expect to talk about Battleship Pretension this much. I knew I liked the podcast, but I didn’t realize I liked it as much as I obviously do. Battleship Pretension is an extremely reliable podcast, I know I’ll get great discussion out of Tyler and David week in and week out and I take that for granted. I shouldn’t take Battleship Pretension for granted, because as this column has already proved finding great film discussion isn’t an easy task. Trust me folks, Battleship Pretension is a podcast worth your time, it’s a podcast everyone should be listening to. If you aren’t already listening then do yourself a favor and subscribe to Battleship Pretension, the film lover in your brain will be all the better, and happier, for it.

The Bottom Line

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Cheers,
Bill

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