Show Notes
🎬 Episode Highlights & Kinolime Updates
The 2.0 Feature Competition: John and Danny reflect on the massive leap in writing quality seen in this year's feature competition, which crowned Eric Landau's brilliant comedy Mob Mentality as the winner. The hosts discuss the immense patience required to properly develop a screenplay and why they refuse to rush a script into production before it's truly ready.
The Rise of Short Films: The hosts celebrate the explosive success of Kinolime's inaugural short film competition, praising the digestible format and the incredible passion of independent directors. (Shoutout to Edward, whose winning short Pushing Daisy is already in the can!)
Inside the Kinolime Development Slate: For the first time ever, John and Danny pull back the curtain on the projects they are actively developing. Hear updates on The Waif (directed by Stephen Fingleton and heading into spring production), the search for a comedy director for Mob Mentality, their South African feature Something Like Molasses (helmed by Adze Ugah), and the Canadian 9/11 drama Falling Man.
📜 Introducing The Inaugural "Limelist"
To honor the incredible scripts that didn't win the competition but still blew the development team away, Kinolime introduces the "Limelist." The hosts highlight three must-read screenplays from 2025:
The Seahorse: A beautiful, Holdovers-esque drama about a neglectful father diagnosed with dementia and the estranged daughter tasked with caring for him.
The Muellers: A hilarious, throwback college comedy set over Parents' Weekend, featuring a clash between a young sorority girl and her overly philosophical, Nietzsche-quoting father.
Dork Whore: A wildly funny, coming-of-age road trip script following a young female veteran trying to "find herself" (and get laid) across South Asia.
🍿 Danny's Top 10 Hidden Gems of 2025
Danny closes out the year with a rapid-fire list of 10 incredible indie films that you probably missed in theaters, but absolutely need to watch:
The Surfer: A psychological nightmare starring Nicolas Cage as a man whose life unravels on a beautiful beach.
Eephus: The purest, most grounded baseball movie of the year.
Universal Language: A visually stunning, dry comedy set in a mythical Iranian-Canada.
Left-Handed Girl: A masterful, Sean Baker-edited Taiwanese family drama with the best child performance of the year.
Baltimore-ons: A low-budget, heartwarming holiday comedy from Jay Duplass.
Blue Moon: Richard Linklater's dialogue-heavy masterpiece featuring Ethan Hawke's most rambling, poignant performance yet.
Familiar Touch: A deeply empathetic look at dementia, featuring an Oscar-worthy turn by Kathleen Chalfant.
It Ends: A contained horror hangout film about a road trip that physically cannot stop.
Vulcan Isadora: The most bizarre and twisted buddy comedy of the year.
Kukuho: A multi-decade Japanese epic tracking the complex relationship between two ambitious Kabuki performers.
Full Transcript
[00:00]
Like there's so much going on.
[00:01]
Like just to show you like how busy we are
[00:03]
outside of the competitions,
