Best Pick with John Dorney, Jessica Regan and Tom Salinsky

Episode 319: Vertigo

Released 25 June 2025

For this episode, we watched the 1958 Alfred Hitchcock film Vertigo starring James Stewart and Kim Novak, based on the French novel The Living and the Dead by Boileau and Narcejac and with a screenplay credited to Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor. It’s a favourite of countless subsequent movie makers and topped the 2012 Sight and Sound poll before being pushed down into second place by Jeanne Dielman in 2022.

• So-called “Foreign Censorship Ending” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xorq7mGusw
• https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/feb/15/i-had-to-leave-hollywood-to-save-myself-kim-novak-on-art-bipolar-hitchcock-and-happiness
• Kim Novak at the Academy Awards https://youtu.be/a1t-TMhObFc?si=SqByAHgZs3UJ0E-k&t=116
• https://www.kimnovakartist.com
• 16 Postcodes with Jessica Regan (use offer code DRAMASCHOOL for a 20% discount) https://museumofcomedy.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/shows/873655309

Next time we will be discussing The Man with a Movie Camera. If you want to watch it before listening to the next episode, you can buy the DVD or Blu-Ray on Amazon.co.uk, or Amazon.com, or you can download it via iTunes (UK) or iTunes (USA).

BEST PICK the book is available now from all the usual places, and the paperback is out now.

• From the publisher https://tinyurl.com/best-pick-book-rowman
• UK Amazon https://amzn.to/3zFNATI
• US Amazon https://www.amzn.com/1538163101
• UK bookstore https://www.waterstones.com/book/9781538163108
• US bookstore https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/best-pick-john-dorney/1139956434
• Audio book https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Best-Pick-Audiobook/B09SBMX1V4

To send in your questions, comments, thoughts and ideas, you can join our Facebook group, email us on bestpickpod@gmail.com, or find us on Bluesky.

You can also visit our website at https://bestpickpod.com and sign up to our mailing list to get notified as soon as a new episode is released. Just follow this link: http://eepurl.com/dbHO3n.

If you enjoy this podcast and you’d like to help us to continue to make it, you can now support us on Patreon for as little as £2.50 per month.

Best Pick with John Dorney, Jessica Regan and Tom Salinsky

Episode 318: Tokyo Story

Released 28 May 2025

For this episode, we watched the 1953 Japanese classic Tokyo Story, directed by Yasujirō Ozu from a screenplay by Ozu and his frequent collaborator Kogo Noda. This film came in at number 4 on the most recent Sight & Sound critics poll and has often featured in the poll’s upper reaches as well as making strong showings in many other greatest-films-of-all-time lists. It has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 100/100 on Metacritic.

• Influential Storytelling thesis https://gensoken.toyo.ac.jp/japanese-society-and-culture/vol3/iss1/2/
• 16 Postcodes https://museumofcomedy.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/shows/873655309
• https://variety.com/2025/film/awards/oscars-viewing-requirement-loopholes-1236380799/

BEST PICK – the book is available now from all the usual places, and the paperback is out now.

• From the publisher https://tinyurl.com/best-pick-book-rowman
• UK Amazon https://amzn.to/3zFNATI
• US Amazon https://www.amzn.com/1538163101
• UK bookstore https://www.waterstones.com/book/9781538163108
• US bookstore https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/best-pick-john-dorney/1139956434
• Audio book https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Best-Pick-Audiobook/B09SBMX1V4

To send in your questions, comments, thoughts and ideas, you can join our Facebook group, email us on bestpickpod@gmail.com, or find us on Bluesky.

You can also visit our website at https://bestpickpod.com and sign up to our mailing list to get notified as soon as a new episode is released. Just follow this link: http://eepurl.com/dbHO3n.

If you enjoy this podcast and you’d like to help us to continue to make it, you can now support us on Patreon for as little as £2.50 per month, but please be aware that future releases will continue to be sporadic.

Best Pick with John Dorney, Jessica Regan and Tom Salinsky

Episode 317. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Released 30 April 2025

Today we watched two contrasting episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. We kicked off with an episode from the fifth season, the celebratory romp Trials and Tribble-ations in which the 24th century crew revisits the action of the classic original series episode The Trouble with Tribbles. Pretty much all the senior writing staff had a go at this one. The story is credited to Ira Steven Behr, Hans Beimler and Robert Hewitt Wolfe and the teleplay to Ronald D Moore and René Echevarria. It was directed by Jonathan West, and it was first shown on 4 November 1996.

We followed this up with In the Pale Moonlight from towards the end of the sixth season, airing on 15 April 1998. The story is by Peter Allan Fields and the screenplay is credited to Michael Taylor, although Ronald D Moore heavily rewrote it. It was directed by Victor Lobl and it earned the full five stars from me (in fact, both episodes did).

These and hundreds more episodes are covered in the second volume of my Star Trek chronicle which is now available from all the usual places, including…

• From the publisher https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Star-Trek-Discovering-the-TV-Series-Hardback/p/51781
• UK Amazon https://amzn.to/4lzI1hN
• US Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Star-Trek-Discovering-Voyager-1993-1999/dp/1399034995
• UK bookstore https://www.waterstones.com/book/star-trek-discovering-the-tv-series/tom-salinsky/9781399034999
• US bookstore https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/star-trek-tom-salinsky/1146305492?ean=9781399034999

To send in your questions, comments, thoughts and ideas, you can join our Facebook group, find us on BlueSky https://bsky.app/profile/bestpickpod.bsky.social or email us on bestpickpod@gmail.com. You can also visit our website at https://bestpickpod.com and sign up to our mailing list to get notified as soon as a new episode is released. Just follow this link: http://eepurl.com/dbHO3n.