Ted Giese, a pastor as Mount Oliver Lutheran Church, has channeled his love of movies into a Regina based film podcast.
“We get into all corners of the world of film,” said Lutheran Pastor Ted Giese of his film podcast “Bill and Ted Watch Movies”.
When he is not conducting ceremonies and sermons at Mount Olive Lutheran Church, Pastor Ted Giese uses his downtime to watch, discuss and review movies. He currently serves as the co-host of the Regina based podcast “Bill and Ted Watch Movies”, along with Bill Schwerla and they have aired over 70 episodes. Aside from the podcast, he has also composed various film reviews that have been published on various websites.
The Bill and Ted podcast has covered famous movies such as “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”, but the podcast is not limited to classics, Giese notes “we’ve done a whole gamut of things, said Giese. “We hop all over the place, like ‘The Goonies’ and ‘Being John Malkovich.’”
Giese minored in art history, at the University of Halifax, where he took a variety of film theory courses. In 2010, Giese wrote a review of the movie “Inception”, for the Lutheran Church of Canada. For over 10 years he has also written movie reviews for “Issues, etc.” It wasn’t until he moved to Regina that Giese came up with the idea the “Bill and Ted Watch Movies”, Giese came up with idea because Bill had told him he had not seen many movies and gave the example that Bill had only seen one movie by by acclaimed director Wes Anderson. Two of his more recent reviews, were picked up by the “Federalist” in the United States.
Giese also enjoys talking about his love of films with members of his congregation, church member Dylan Hunstad called his podcast is “really interesting and unique, especially the depth he’s take it”.
Giese’s favourite movie of all time is David Lynch’s film “Dune” from 1984, where he stated he had seen it 50 times a single year. For films from Canadian directors, his favourite are David Cronenberg’s “The Brood” and Denis Villeneuve’s 2016 movie “Arrival.”
“For me at this point, it’s the analysis, it’s the puzzle of what you are looking at.”, said Giese. Giese particularly enjoy asking internal questions to himself about why or how the filmmakers do particular things in their movies.
“The analysis can be as fun as watching the movie itself”, said Giese. He gives the example of how filmmaker Ridley Scott was able to incorporate the Roman idea of “Romulus and Remus” in his movies. Giese said that Scott was involved in two films from 2024 that drew inspiration from this tale which were “Alien: Romulus” and “Gladiator Two.”
Giese also said he really enjoyed the critically panned film “Joker: Folie A Deux”, which came out in 2024. He encouraged movie lovers to give the movie a second chance. As for the new year, he hopes it will be a better year for quality movies, calling 2024 “a tough year for movies.”
