Amy Nicholson

Amy Nicholson is the co-host of the podcast “Unspooled” and critic for KPCC’s Film Week. Formerly, she was the chief film critic for MTV News and LA Weekly. Her other credits include the New York Times, Variety, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and the Guardian, as well as the podcast miniseries “Zoom,” “The Canon,” “Quentin Tarantino Presents,” “Halloween Unmasked,” and “Skillset.” She has served on the jury for Sundance and SXSW, and screened submissions for Sundance, AFI, and the Los Angeles Film Festival. Amy holds a double B.A. in Film Studies and Anthropology from the University of Oklahoma as well as a Masters in Professional Writing from USC. Her first book, “Tom Cruise: Anatomy of an Actor,” was published by Cahiers du Cinema, and her second, “Extra Girls,” will be published by Simon & Schuster in 2022. Reach her on Twitter at @theamynicholson.

Host

Unspooled

with Paul Scheer, Amy Nicholson

Listen up, film fans! Actor & comedian Paul Scheer and film critic Amy Nicholson want your advice as they make the ultimate list of the greatest movies of all time. In Season 1, they watched every one of the AFI’s Top 100 films…and decided they could kick off half. Now, they’re filling in the gaps by investigating wildly…

Guest Appearances

March 3, 2019

We’re fresh off ‘Green Book’ achieving its dream Oscar night (CONGRATULATIONS you made-up Hero Dad Story you!!!). But this week’s episode is about EVERY Oscars ceremony. Why? Because the Oscars dictate most of your movie-watching year: October-December = “good movies”, January-February = “failed attempts at good movies”, summertime = “movies seeking the big green Oscar better known as MONEY.” So we asked ourselves a question. We asked what might happen if the Oscars stopped dictating that schedule? And what if they stopped dictating it because the Oscars stopped happening at all, freeing up all of pop culture to function differently (and maybe function better)?

On this week’s episode of The Cracked Podcast, please enjoy the oracular brilliance and Hollywood wisdom of comedians/podcasters Caitlin Gill, Dan Hopper, Amy Nicholson, and Danielle Radford, who joined Alex Schmidt for this LIVE episode from the UCB Sunset Theatre in Los Angeles. They’ll dig into the biggest possible pop culture thought experiment: what would happen if the Oscars went away.

Footnotes: http://www.cracked.com/podcast/what-would-happen-if-oscars-went-away/

October 23, 2018

Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson of Unspooled join Howard, Stard and Kev to count down the hottest pop culture charts! Paul and Amy offer up remixes on the classic Jaws formula before they get into Billboard’s Top 100. Plus, A Star Is Born gets put to the fire and Paul goes into which film could have escaped the How Did This Get Made treatment during the Movie Chart, and a special Kiss connection is revealed as the gang counts down their Hot Picks.

This episode is sponsored by FleetWit (www.fleetwit.com/CHARTED code: CHARTED) and Robinhood (charted.robinhood.com).

October 1, 2018

Paul introduces a special episode of Unspooled, the show where Paul & Amy Nicholson explore the AFI’s list of the 100 greatest American films of all time. This episode covers Steven Spielberg’s alien classic E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. For more Unspooled, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts!

August 19, 2018

You need to arm yourself against weaponized old tweets. Not your own tweets, hopefully (though who knows). We’re talking about how every time you open social media, someone’s outrageous words are being used against them. Maybe the frequency of that scares you; after all, every one of us is lucky certain things we’ve said weren’t timestamped for eternity. Or maybe that pile of outrage excites you; justice relies on evidence, so maybe the more evidence there is the better the world will get. But take a look past all these maybes and semicolons (we know we used a lot; we feel fancy today, deal with it). Look at what’s actually going on with Internet outrage right now. Is all that handwringing the same across the board? Or is some of it intended to ruin lives just to win a political game?

On this week’s episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by Amy Nicholson (Unspooled) and Andrew Ti (Yo, Is This Racist?) for an always-timely look at how you can tell worthwhile online activism apart from digital harassment. They’ll examine recent cases from James Gunn to Sarah Jeong to Roseanne Barr. They’ll lay out basic rules of thumb to help you handle the next hashtag that comes along. And they’ll find a fuller answer to all this than Twitter users usually can, thanks to the magic of being human toward each other in more than 280 characters.

Footnotes: https://goo.gl/izjyN7

May 17, 2018

Paul Scheer & Amy Nicholson’s new podcast launches today! Here’s a preview of Unspooled, the show where Paul and Amy team up to watch the greatest movies of all time. Episode 1: Citizen Kane is out right now.

Check out Unspooled in Apple Podcasts: www.applepodcasts.com/unspooled

May 17, 2018

Paul’s new podcast launches today! Here’s a preview of Unspooled, the show where Paul teams up with Amy Nicholson to watch the greatest movies of all time. Episode 1: Citizen Kane is out right now.

Check out Unspooled in Apple Podcasts: www.applepodcasts.com/unspooled