Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

Hooray for Hollywood. Yes, it’s Oscar time again, with the excessive glitz and glamour that goes with the award ceremony: things like 100,000 dollar swagbags, and a red carpet to show off a parade of dresses. Then there’s the awards themselves, the celebration of an increasingly rarefied and incestuous genre that some say exists only for the awards themselves. And yet… as many as a billion people still watch it – including me.

To help me talk about the Oscars and present our (probably) wrong predictions, I invited movie pundit Simon Howell.  Simon co-hosts two podcasts: one focused on genre film called Sordid Cinema, and another The Lodgers, a Twin Peaks podcast, that he also produces. Previously a music and talk show host at CJLO in Montreal, Simon is an “avid devotee of all forms of expression that let you remain invisible.”

I spoke to Simon Howell in studio at CIUT 89.5 FM.