Derailed Trains of Thought

30/08/2025

September is just around the corner, which in recent years has also meant...the premiere of a new season of Let's Finally Watch This! That's right, Season 4 will be starting up next week on Sept. 5 and will continue releasing on Fridays for the next few months. This season, we'll be giving a little extra focus on the directors of the movies we cover, including such notable filmmakers as Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, Ron Howard, David Lean, D.W. Griffith, Sergei Eisenstein, Kenneth Branagh, and more. Get ready to go through the decades of film with us once again!

13/09/2024

It’s 1904. French director Georges Méliès is at the height of his career, creating fantastic, creative movies in the early days of cinema. Like his earlier A Trip to the Moon, this film is about a fantastic voyage, but as the Institute of Incoherent Geography visits mountain villagers, the surface of the sun, and monster-infested oceans, it is in some ways a more frantic and adventurous movie.

What The Impossible Voyage offers casual movie fans who have always meant to watch classic movies: a 20-minute feast for eyes and imagination; another example of Méliès’ cinematic experimentation and opulent sets; and an almost fever-dream level series of cartoonish escapades.

https://derailedtrainsofthought.com/index.php/podcast/episode-23-the-impossible-voyage-1904/

05/09/2024

Season 3 of Let's Finally Watch this premieres tomorrow! Once again, we'll be looking at movies from across the decades, this time including the work of such notable directors and film stars as: Clint Eastwood, Frank Capra, Akira Kurosawa, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Clark Gable, Tom Hanks, Buster Keaton, Jack Nicholson, James Cameron, Fred MacMurray, Claudette Colbert, Barbara Stanwyck, George Méliès, Roman Polanski, and many more.

As always, we try to keep each movie discussion relatively spoiler-free, but if you'd like to watch some of these movies ahead of time, here's a link for this season's full list!

1904 The Impossible Voyage Sci-fi/fantasy Directed by George Méliès 1914 Cabiria Epic Directed by by Giovani Pastrone 1924 Sherlock, Jr. Comedy Starring Buster Keaton 1934 It Happened One Night Romantic comedy Directed by Frank Capra. Starring Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert. 1944 D...

26/08/2024

Coming Soon: Season 3 of Let's Finally Watch This!!!

You may recall at the end of last season, we weren't sure if we'd have more episodes this year since we've put our main podcast on indefinite hiatus. However, we have a lot of fun watching movies for Let's Finally Watch This, so we decided to compromise.

As a result, Season 3 will be slightly abridged compared to the previous two seasons. We're still going to have 12 episodes, covering movies from 1904 to 2014, but the history sections won't be quite as in-depth and the movie discussions will have a fixed limit of recording time.

That said, we've got a great line-up of classic movies to discuss! Please be on the lookout for more info next week. Hope you're looking forward to the return of Let's Finally Watch This on September 6!

19/08/2024

Unfortunately, due to a hosting shake-up, a lot of our old episodes are currently unavailable on our website and podcast feeds. We are working on an update to fix this, but currently this problem affects old episodes of Derailed Trains of Thought and The Weekly Hijack. Thankfully, this does not affect Let's Finally Watch This.

In the meantime, all 150 episodes of Derailed Trains of Thought are still available on our YouTube channel, so if you've been meaning to catch up you still can over there! We'll update you as soon as the other platforms are up and running again.

Send a message to learn more

27/03/2024

It's Episode 150 , folks! Hosts Timothy Deal and Nick Hayden are putting the podcast on haitus, but not before delivering a massive episode featuring a Story School about nostalgia and a wide-ranging review of the last 150 episodes of your premiere podcast on storytelling for the creator and consumer, Derailed Trains of Thought. Come enjoy the memories, the clips, and the new content!

Sometimes we look back at the stories that shaped us, at the memories of characters and fictional worlds that left their impression upon us. We can remember with fondness what we learned and experi…

28/02/2024

New Episode - #149 - In the Middle of It All

Hosts Timothy Deal and Nick Hayden discuss how to make the middle of the story work well (and how to make it not work). Also, music, random passages from classic books, and our regular hijinks.

Everyone knows famous first lines from classic novels. Everyone has their favorite endings to a long-running series. But people don’t share their favorite “middle scenes” near as …

29/12/2023

It's time to wrap up another season of Let's Finally Watch This. We start by making a few corrections, filling in a few gaps in this season's discussion of film exhibition, and discussing how film continues to change up to the present. But, then, the heart of the episode--our Ranking of Essentialness for this season's movies! We also share our personal favorities from the season. Thanks for joining us for another journey through the decades of film! Show Notes

It’s time to wrap up another season of Let’s Finally Watch This. We start by making a few corrections, filling in a few gaps in this season’s discussion of film exhibition, and di…

16/12/2023

It's nearly Christmas. Among other things, this means it's time to rest from the chaos of Christmas preparations; it's time to spend some with the people you love most; it's time to ponder peace on earth and goodwill toward man. It's time to reevaluate the year that's past and look forward to the year to come. It's a time of restoration....

It’s nearly Christmas. Among other things, this means it’s time to rest from the chaos of Christmas preparations; it’s time to spend some with the people you love most; it’s…