Best Pick

Best Pick with John Dorney, Jessica Regan and Tom Salinsky Episode 326: Oscar Nominations 2026 Released 22 January 2026 For this episode, Tom and John briefly reviewed the nominations for the 98th Academy Awards, mere moments after the live-stream ended. Tom's new podcast: https://podfollow.com/all-british-comedy-explained Jess's storytelling theatre show: https://kingsheadtheatre.com/whats-on/16-postcodes-jhby BEST PICK – the book is out now from all the usual places, including… 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, Tweet us on @bestpickpod or email us on bestpickpod@gmail.com. You can also Tweet us individuall

Best Pick with John Dorney, Jessica Regan and Tom Salinsky Episode 97: Anora Released 21 January 2026 For this episode, we watched the 2024 Best Picture winner Anora, for which Sean Baker picked up a record-setting four Oscars, its fifth going to star Mikey Madison, who triumphed over hot favourite Demi Moore. Along the way we also take in some other films featuring erotic dancers. Tom's new podcast: https://podfollow.com/all-british-comedy-explained Jess's storytelling theatre show: https://kingsheadtheatre.com/whats-on/16-postcodes-jhby BEST PICK – the book is out now from all the usual places, including… 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,

Best Pick with John Dorney, Jessica Regan and Tom Salinsky Episode 325: Christmas Films Released 17 November 2025 For this episode we nominated some favourite (and not-so-favourite) Christmas films, in the categories of Best Classic, Best Modern, Best Oddball and Least Anything. But first – have Tom and John seen Home Alone yet? Tom's new podcast: https://podfollow.com/all-british-comedy-explained Jess's storytelling theatre show: https://kingsheadtheatre.com/whats-on/16-postcodes-jhby BEST PICK – the book is available now from all the usual places. 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@

Best Pick with John Dorney, Jessica Regan and Tom Salinsky Episode 324: Singin' in the Rain Released 26 November 2025 For this episode, we watched the 1952 MGM musical Singin' in the Rain, directed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly who also starred alongside Donald O'Connor, Debbie Reynolds and Jean Hagen. Arthur Freed produced and wrote most of the songs alongside composer Nacio Herb Brown. Slightly overshadowed at the time by the enormous commercial and critical success of An American in Paris the year before, this movie is now widely regarded as the absolute pinnacle of the golden age of Hollywood musicals. And who are we to disagree? Tom's new podcast: https://podfollow.com/all-british-comedy-explained Jess's storytelling theatre show: https://kingsheadtheatre.com/whats-on/16-postcodes-jhby Lip Sync Battle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPCJIB1f7jk BEST PICK – the book is available now from all the usual places. From the publisher https://tinyurl.com/best-pick-book-rowman UK Amazon https://amzn.to/3zF

Best Pick with John Dorney, Jessica Regan and Tom Salinsky Episode 323: 2001 A Space Odyssey Released 29 October 2025 For this episode, we watched Stanley Kubrick's iconic science fiction masterpiece 2001 A Space Odyssey, written by Kubrick and Arthur C Clarke and starring Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester and the voice of Douglas Rain. It was nominated for four Oscars and won one for its special effects, the only Academy Award which Kubrick ever won. It ranks sixth on the 2022 Sight & Sound critics list and it tops the directors list. Tom's new podcast: https://podfollow.com/all-british-comedy-explained Jess's amazing storytelling show: https://kingsheadtheatre.com/whats-on/16-postcodes-jhby BEST PICK – the book is available now from all the usual places. 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

Best Pick with John Dorney, Jessica Regan and Tom Salinsky Episode 18: Annie Hall (1977) recorded live at the London Podcast Festival. Released 26 September 2018. Rereleased 12 October 2025. For this episode – which we are re-running in honour of Diane Keaton – we watched Annie Hall, written by Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman and directed by Allen, who also starred alongside Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts, Carol Kane and Paul Simon. The film won four Academy Awards including Best Actress for Diane Keaton and Best Screenplay for Allen and Brickman. Star Wars Despecialized https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGrXO2RDzLg&vl=en Kathy Griffin’s Woody Allen story https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i62GcGDgI4 Thanks to Zoe, Sally and everyone at the London Podcast Festival for making this happen. Tom’s new podcast ALL BRITISH COMEDY EXPLAINED is now available here in audio: https://podfollow.com/all-british-comedy-explained and here in video: https://www.youtube.com/@AllBritishComedyExplained BEST PICK the book is ava

Best Pick with John Dorney, Jessica Regan and Tom Salinsky Episode 322: Beau Travail Released 24 September 2025 For this episode, we watched Claire Denis’s 1999 story of three men in the French Foreign Legion, drawn in part from Herman Melville’s unfinished novella Billy Budd. The film stars Denis Lavant, Michel Subor and Grégoire Colin and Denis also wrote the script along with Jean-Pol Fargeau. It has an 87% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and it’s at number seven in the 2022 Sight & Sound poll. We also feature an exclusive clip from Tom’s new podcast All British Comedy Explained. Check it out here. https://podfollow.com/all-british-comedy-explained Next time we will be discussing 2001: A Space Odyssey. 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 stream it via Apple TV+ (UK) or Apple TV+ (USA). Blood Shine https://mubi.com/en/gb/films/blood-shine The One I Love https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/70299863 https:/

Best Pick with John Dorney, Jessica Regan and Tom Salinsky Episode 321: In the Mood for Love Released 27 August 2025 For this episode, we watched the Wong Kar-wai’s modern classic In the Mood for Love, starring Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000. It sits at a hugely impressive fifth place on the 2022 Sight and Sound list and has a 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It has also run at the Prince Charles Cinema in London for a record-breaking 75 consecutive weeks, so we take a look at the history of that UK institution as well. Tom Cruise breaks his ankle. https://youtu.be/KCm7uhCqo9c https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/movies/best-movies-21st-century.html Next time we will be discussing Beau Travail. 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

Best Pick with John Dorney, Jessica Regan and Tom Salinsky Episode 320: Man with a Movie Camera (Chelovek’s kinoapparatom) Released 30 July 2025 For this episode, we watched the 1929 experimental Soviet documentary Man with a Movie Camera, written and directed by Dziga Vertov. Our version had a soundtrack composed by Michael Nyman. For its age, it’s a relatively recent entry to the Sight and Sound list, making its first entry in 1992, making it to the top ten in 2012 and settling in ninth place in 2022. It has a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Next time we will be discussing In the Mood for Love. 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 boo

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 d

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:

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 episod

Best Pick with John Dorney, Jessica Regan and Tom Salinsky Episode 316: Oscars 2025 Released 3 March 2025 For this episode, we quickly recapped the 97th Academy Awards which were broadcast in the UK in the early hours of Monday 3 March 2025. 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/dbHO

Best Pick with John Dorney, Jessica Regan and Tom Salinsky Episode 315: Jeanne Dielman Released 12 February 2025 For this episode, we watched the 1975 film Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, written and directed by Chantal Akerman and starring Delphine Seyrig. As well as holding a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the film unexpectedly topped the 2022 Sight & Sound poll of the greatest movies ever made. We take the opportunity to explore what this poll is, how it has changed over seventy years, and what films we would have put on our lists, had we been asked. https://princecharlescinema.com/savethepcc/ Sight and Sound Top Tens https://bestpickpod.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/The-Sight-and-Sound-Survey-top-tens-1.pdf https://thefilmstage.com/watch-a-behind-the-scenes-documentary-on-the-making-of-jeanne-dielman https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/q-a-with-chantal-akerman-jeanne-dielman-three-decades-later/ John Cage’s 4’33” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTEFKFiXSx4 BEST PICK – the bo

Best Pick with John Dorney, Jessica Regan and Tom Salinsky Episode 314: Oscar nominations 2025 Released 23 January 2025. For this episode, we quickly reviewed the nominations for the 97th Academy Awards which were announced by Bowen Yang and Rachel Sennott. Donate today to help victims of the LA fires. https://mutualaidla.org The Substance Behind the Scenes https://youtu.be/8H64HNvXrqU Guilty Feminist interview with Shiori Ito and Megumi Inman https://pod.fo/e/2a1532 BEST PICK – the book is out now from all the usual places, including… 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 or find us on BlueSky. You should also vi

Best Pick with John Dorney, Jessica Regan and Tom Salinsky Episode 231: Mulholland Drive (REDUX) First released 19 October 2022. Rereleased 17 January 2025 in tribute to David Lynch. We lost David Lynch this week at the age of 78. In tribute to this giant of American cinema, we are rerunning this episode in which we looked at his 2001 slice of LA Gothic Mulholland Drive. Donate today to help victims of the LA fires. https://mutualaidla.org For this episode, we watched the 2001 David Lynch film Mulholland Drive, starring Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Justin Theroux, Robert Forster and Ann Miller. This film began life as a TV pilot and was eventually repurposed by Lynch as a one-off feature film. It was suggested by Patreon supporter Joel Aarons, made it on to our shortlist and came top of our Patreon poll, by a narrow margin. ·         https://crooked.com/podcast/bros-dont-prefer-blonde-w-isabella-rossellini/ ·         Brand New Cherry Flavor https://youtu.be/wOzM3c33TVg ·         Mel Gibson interview https:/

Best Pick with John Dorney, Jessica Regan and Tom Salinsky Episode 96: Oppenheimer Released 18 December 2024 For this episode, we watched the 2023 Best Picture winner Oppenheimer written and directed by Christopher Nolan, based on American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin. The cast includes Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr, Florence Pugh and Josh Hartnett, with acting Oscars for Murphy and Downey, contributing to its total of seven awards. We also discuss Barbenheimer, dream sequels and Sylvia Simms. No CGI is really just invisible CGI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ttG90raCNo BEST PICK – the book is out now from all the usual places, including… 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-Au

Tom's new book is out now wherever books are sold. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Red-Dwarf-Discovering-TV-1988-1993/dp/1399034944  https://www.waterstones.com/book/red-dwarf-discovering-the-tv-series/tom-salinsky/9781399034944

Tom's new book is out now wherever books are sold. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Red-Dwarf-Discovering-TV-1988-1993/dp/1399034944 https://www.waterstones.com/book/red-dwarf-discovering-the-tv-series/tom-salinsky/9781399034944 Get your tickets to the launch event on 3 October here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/952245641347

Twenty years, 16 postcodes, one city. In her debut storytelling show, Jessica Regan (BBC, Channel 4, Guilty Feminist) shares lessons lived and learned from a life in no particular order. Each show is drawn from true tales of love and landlords, of mice and men and more, told with help from the audience who will play their part in her odyssey as she moves North, South, East and West, finding out which is best. This is a journey through an impenetrable city with an all-too-open heart. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you rent cos you can't afford to buy... Where: Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh Fringe When: 1-26 August (not 12), 3:30pm Tickets: https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/16-postcodes