The Good, The Pod and The Ugly

Send us a textSPECIAL NOTE: SEASON 15 OF THE GOOD, THE POD AND THE UGLY WILL CELEBRATE THE USE OF THE PRACTICAL AND DIGITAL EFFECT KNOWN AS THE SQUIB. REAL WORLD VIOLENCE IS NOT TOLERATED  AND IS  RENOUNCED BUT... CINEMATIC VIOLENCE WILL BE CELEBRATED IN A WAY THAT DISTURBS SOME LISTENERS. SQUIBS CAN BE ARTBONNIE AND CLYDE (1967)If they try to act like citizensAnd rent them a nice little flatAbout the third nightThey're invited to fight by aSub gun's rat-a-tatSome day they'll go down togetherThey'll bury them side by sideTo few, it will be grief, to the law a reliefBut it's death for Bonnie and Clyde - Bonnie & Clyde - Serge GainsbourgAll I need in this life of sin is me and my girlfriend(Me and my girlfriend)Down to ride 'til the very end, is me and my boyfriend(Me and my boyfriend, that's right)All I need in this life of sin is me and my girlfriend(Me and my girlfriend, look for me)Down to ride 'til the very end, is me and my boyfriend(Me and my boyfriend, talk to 'em, B) - '03 Bonnie & Clyde, Jay-Z, BeyoncéTHEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gLetterboxd (follow us!):Podcast: goodpoduglyKen: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a textJOHN WICK CHAPTER 2 (2017)SPECIAL NOTE: SEASON 15 OF THE GOOD, THE POD AND THE UGLY WILL CELEBRATE THE USE OF THE PRACTICAL AND DIGITAL EFFECT KNOWN AS THE SQUIB. REAL WORLD VIOLENCE IS NOT TOLERATED  AND IS  RENOUNCED BUT... CINEMATIC VIOLENCE WILL BE CELEBRATED IN A WAY THAT DISTURBS SOME LISTENERS. SQUIBS CAN BE ARTA SPECIAL MESSAGE FROM GUEST EDITOR TERRENCE MALICK!*Where was I? Oh yes, The ephemeral and elusive act of capturing memory. It has vexed me so the last 60 years as a filmmaker. How do you capture the furtive nature of memory in film? What happened is in the past and dead. All that has meaning is the here and now. So it is I was contacted by this podcast to listen to raw, uncorrupted and truthful audio of a discussion of John Wick Chapter Two (2017) and edit it into a fine, pleasant and informative podcast. "Jaunty" they say they wanted and, naturally, they thought of me.I  have a tattoo of John Wick saying "I are thought I back" on my right calf so people see it from behind when I am at the gym on the treadmill wearing corduroy athletic shorts. I mention this to let you know I am a super fan of the series and when I listened to the raw, unfiltered audio and thought about the task of editing out co-host Ken's laugh and heavy breathing or Ryan's "Ums" or Zoomer Jack's ToikTok inspired chortles, I realized their special guest Patrick, who runs a record store in Portland, Oregon called "Tomorrow Records" and which I am assured by my vinyl brothers and sisters is a mecca for music, simply did not fit my idea of the episode or, indeed, the film itself. So I cut him out. Adrien Brody has won two - TWO - Oscars since I cut him out as the main character of The Thin Red Line. I feel the same fate will befall to Patrick once the sting of my removal has dimmed. What remains is as much a perfect podcast about John Wick 2 as can humanly be achieved. Please enjoy. (I have an edit in which the remaining hosts are also removed but I was told an hour of silence would not cut it outside of Apple Exclusive mindfulness podcasts.) TM - June, 2025THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gLetterboxd (follow us!):Podcast: goodpoduglyKen: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias*not really Terrence Malick. Don't sue us, TM, we love you!

Send us a textContent Warning: Filmic violence is and will often be celebrated throughout Season 15 – Squib Season. Second in the series and keeping to their unpatented temporal pincer movement, the enlisted four of TGTPTU storm the beachheads of Season 15 this week to liberate Squib Season's earliest covered picture, the black-and-white WWII movie HELL TO ETERNITY (1960). (Not to be confused with To Hell from Eternity, which does not exist; To Hell and Back, which does and preceded in Technicolor this week's talkie by five years; or From Hell to Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, which is actually the combined titles of two vastly different films released, respectively, 41 years and 35 years after this week's feature.) In Hell to Eternity, the 6'0”-tall, New Orleans-born Caucasian actor Jeffrey Hunter (yes, yes, nerds, we know he's Captain Chistopher Pike, listen back to our The Searchers 4x4 episode but also listen to this week's for an irony behind Hunter's being replaced on Star Trek TOS by actor Sean Kenney in Season 1's clips episode two-parter “The Menagerie”), then age 34, plays war hero and protagonist Guy Gabaldon in this biopic based on the real life events of the 5'4”-foot tall Latino Los Angelean of the same name when he was 18.  As in the movie, Gabaldon was raised by adoptive Japanese parents, learning their first language (and presumably, as in the movie, their stories about fish and love), and enlisted after Pearl Harbor as a translator. It's with his language skills that Gabaldon was able to, as depicted at the end of the film, convince over 800 Japanese soldiers and civilians to surrender, although further research would be required by the author of these show notes to know whether real-life Gabaldon adopted/stole a Japanese child to be his son as implied at the end of the film (IMDB Trivia does claim Gabaldon named one of his sons after Hunter as he was enamored by his portrayal of him, implying Gabaldon had more than one son) or if the eighteen-year-old short king had swell times in swinging Hawaii as shown in the film's contentious, extended party sequence containing not just one but two apartment burlesque routines.  The film is lensed by Burnett Guffey who will go on to shoot (on film) our next earliest entry, i.e., BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967) for which he'd earn his second Academy Award. His first Oscar win was for another flick whose title lends itself to easy confusion with this week's, namely FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953). Also involved, Lieutenant (later Captain) Sulu (or the actor and activist who originally played the helmsman/fencing expert in Star Trek TOS). Also, hundreds of Japanese Imperial Army veterans and active-duty U.S. Marines who reenacted events from the Battle of Saipan on the adjacent island of Okinawa for the cameras commanded by Guffrey. And some squibs.   This episode, hear Ryan explain both what squibs are and, later, how a man got his start as a boy. Jack, subsequent to the latter, loses his mind. Tom spoils the surprise appearance by a famous and long-deceased sports announcer. And Ken, as impossible as it might seem, might actually change his opinion on mic, specifically about the seemingly endless Hawaii party scene.  Subscribe and listen as the Good Pod Boys give a 21-gun salute to this forgotten classic. THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gLetterboxd (follow us!):Podcast: goodpoduglyKen: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a textREVENGE Major Content Warning: Plot-related sexual assault is mentioned throughout this episode.  Minor Content Warning: Filmic violence is and will often celebrated throughout Season 15.   Salut! and welcome to TGTPTU's long-awaited SQUIB SEASON (Season 15) and a return to the pod's unpatented temporal pincer movement with the series' first film covered being the most recent release: REVENGE (2017).   Distributed en Francais in France and Quebec as Revenge, the identically English-titled Revenge is Parisian auteur Coralie Fargeat's premier feature film; her second was last year's thrice Oscar-nominated THE SUBSTANCE, a.k.a. in Francophone countries as LA SUBSTANCE.  Fargeat's début film follows a familiar rape-revenge plot to tell a deliciously violence-laden story. Its deviations from predecessors such as I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (1978) (and presumably its little-watched 2010s redux quadrilogy) are smart, sans salacious depictions of the abuse, and put the emphasis on survival rather than on its title as Italian model and actress Matilda Lutz shows no merci, pardon, no “mercy” upon her assailant, her murderer, or either crime's bystander (a character renamed Jacque this episode for a passing resemblance to the French-Canadian skizzbag of Twin Peaks universe) when she's backed into a figurative corner of a barren desert.   As host Jacque's (“Jack” in American) pick, the film is no faux pas to start the season with. Its style possesses a je ne sais quoi freshness, lensed by regular Adil & Bilall collaborator Robrecht Heyvaert and scored by Caen-native ROB (né Robin Coudert).   Listen this episode as “squibs” is defined; Ken confuses his birds; and Ryan expresses a great liking for the picture's ass shots while Ken and Jack like its shots through the head and Thomas is nonchalant. Also, Ken tries out a few bits for seasonal stickiness; enfant terrible Thomas ends up putting a chapeau on a chapeau by trying out a French accent; and although they've not yet reached their second episode to pair the oldest to-boe-covered with this most recent, the entire seasonal start this episode has a sense of déjà vu.    Bon appétit et au revoir! THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!): Podcast: goodpoduglyKen: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a textMYSTERY ROAD It's the end of the road for Season 14 as TGTPTU's four White fellas travel across the world to the land down under for host Ken's 1x1 flick pick and this season's final film: MYSTERY ROAD (2013), sponsored this week by the Criminal Island's very own Hoppy Joe Beer (Get Your Hop On!). Directed by (and written by and lensed by and edited by and music with sound design by) Ivan Sen, this Aussie neo noir film that will launch a sequel and multiple standalone seasons of a TV season is the Australian filmmaker's first genre film. Sen's work is made with considerations to the conditions of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (a.k.a. First Peoples, a.k.a. First Nations, a.k.a. Indigenous Australians), and when news of his making a crime fiction film spread, an all-star cast of Oz acting talent lined up to join, beginning with Australian Broadcasting Corporation mainstay Aaron Pedersen, for whom Sen wrote the part of the film's protagonist Detective Jay Swan, with second cast Hugo Weaving whose star power from the past two decades of Hollywood IP films subsequent to serving the Matrix franchise as Agent Smith helped draw in Ryan Kwanten, Bruce Spence, and an early appearance by Samara Weaving, a pod fav who made an appearance in an early TGTPTU Halloween episode.  Plot: A local First Nations girl is found murdered, and Detective Swan freshly back in his hometown from time away catches his first homicide case and must reckon with his family left behind as investigating the homicide brings him into the town's underworld of drugs and prostitution, a world not unknown to his estranged wife and daughter. Pedersen's character also encounters alcoholics (it's Australia after all) drinking themselves to death; a mysterious death of a rookie officer and, separately, a senile man's pet; aspiring cop-killer children on bicycles; mutant dogs; fast barefoot humans; overt and covert racism; Chinese food; and two crack shots in H. Weaving's and Kwanten's characters.    This week Ken and Jack recover from a week-long cold; Thomas brings his comedic A (short for "Australia") game; and Ryan offers background on the growth of media by First Nations peoples in Australia and later demos next season's theme song--all on this special, concluding, evening-record episode of TGTPTU. “Is that a fact?”THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!): Podcast: goodpoduglyKen: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a textRISKYSometimes you gotta say, “What the Fuck” to research, make your move. This week Season 14's penultimate 1x1 is co-host Ryan's pick: RISKY BUSINESS (1983). His reason: TGTPTU normally pairs filmographies of a single director or actor, and the writer-director on this film was so triggered by the experience of having his written, shot, and edited original ending replaced in the final cut that he never directed another film again… or at least not until his second film in 1990 (WTF, Ryan?).  This film that would go on to become part of 1980s iconography by first-time director Paul Brickman, who had previously written the Michael Pressman-directed The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training (1977) and the Jonathan Demme-directed Handle with Care (1977) and would later be one of three credited writers on Clint Eastwood's True Crime (alternately known as Speed Zoo) (1999), Risky Business as dark teen comedy and potential Reagon-era satire stars a number of early roles by actors who'd become comedy stars of the 1980s, including as the protagonist Joel's fellow yuppie North Shore friends and entrepreneuring high school seniors in their first film appearances Curtis Armstrong (also known as Booger in the 1980s) and Bronson Pinchot (aka Balki in the 80s). It costars Rebecca De Mornay (later in the 90s known for her roles as a terrible nanny and as Milady de Winter) as the business-savvy prostitute, and has an early movie appearance by Joey Pants (known in the late-90s for taking the blue pill, Ralphie Cifaretto in the 00s, and a Bad Boy 4 life) as Guido the pimp.   Oh, and it's also the first time that actor born Thomas Mapother IV, better known later in life by his stage name Tom Cruise, stars in the leading role in a film (but not the first time he danced in his underwear or kissed a female person, if DVD commentary tracks are to be believed).  Behind the camera, you have two cinematographers: Eastwood's 70s and early-80s collaborator Bruce Surtees as well as regular Hollywood comedy lenser Reynaldo Villalobos. Pod-favorite Tangerine Dream scores. And the film scores big with first watches by host Tom and guest host Jack and with the Gen X'ers Ken and Ryan.   It's a wild ride, so mind your parking brake. In this episode Ryan explains the economic milieu behind the 80's yuppie culture to the two young hosts while drawing comparisons to American Psycho (2000); the two Zoomers discover how to shorten future episodes; and Broom Hilda's creator, whose life strangely overlaps with Ken's past and present, drops by studio.  Our podcast is The Good, The Pod, and The Ugly. We deal in human fulfillment. We grossed over eight thousand listeners in one night. An hour of your life, huh, kid?  FURTHER NOTESThomas requested we share the following Wikipedia links for those who'd like to perform additional research or to simply follow along: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Booker%27s_marathon_speechhttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Detroit  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cop_Rock  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_RenegadesTHEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!): Podcast: goodpodugly

Send us a textFriends of EddieThe second 1x1 feature rounding out Season 14 and, chosen by Jack, the film is THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE (1973). Directed by Peter Yates, whose career TGTPTU is unlikely to cover in a future 4x4 despite having Krull and Bullitt in his credits, TFOEC is an adaptation of George V. Higgins' inaugural novel and notable as a unromanticized depiction of crime in artistic response to The Godfather, the Puzo book and Coppola film each preceding, respectively, the book and movie versions of TFOEC by one year.  Higgins would take issue with the book as his debut novel. The former deputy assistant attorney general claimed to have written and burned 14 novels over 17 years prior to TFOEC and would go on to author over 30 books, both fiction and nonfiction before his fatal heart attack in 1999, but none with the impact of his first. As seasonal guest host Jack points out, nearly all the dialogue in the film is as it is on the page, and the pages are dripping with dialogue that creates the setting and action for this ironic story of “friends” who double-cross and live less than glamorous lives as Irish mobsters and criminals in Boston.  Yates populates the film with faces, faces that we don't see much anymore, distinct faces and every one telling a story, from the titular Coyle plated by Robert Mitchum who earlier in this life reluctantly left the assembly line to be an actor to actor Alex Rocco who starred as Moe Greene in The Godfather and helped Mitchum meet some of his old criminal friends whom Rocco had to leave behind after he (the actor Alex Rocco) was held for questioning in relation to the murder that kicked off the Boston Irish Gang War of the 1960s to James Tolkan before he'd lost his hair a decade prior to portraying Principal Strickland in the Back to the Future movies and Detective Hugh Lubic in the Cannon Films classic Masters of the Universe.  For this episode, everyone did research: Jack and Thomas pair off for book report; Ryan covers the career of Mitchum; and Ken covers Yates and laments how now Hollywood lacks hacks as well as provides a new shaggy dog with The Pals of Charlie Brown. Make sure to wipe your prints clean on this one before listening with a friend. THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!): Podcast: goodpoduglyKen: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a textHEDWIGBefore we say auf wiedersehen to Season 14 with its eight revamps of the previously covered during the show's first five years, the boys of TGTPTU reveal their unexpected special little packages: 1x1's, wherein each host shall choose a single film by its merits of discussion and unlikelihood to be exposed on a future 4x4, creator, or thematic season. The first of these darlings is Thomas's: HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (2001). Adapted from the rock musical of the same name that started as the collaboration between frontman of the NYC-based band Cheater (performing on stage as Hedwig's band) Stephen Trask and then actor later turned actor-director with this debut film John Cameron Mitchell. Hedwig's story, on stage told in song and monologue, of male-to-female surgery so as to marry an American GI and leave East Berlin originated from Mitchell's own experiences as a military brat in Germany and Kansas trailer parks while the jealousy and newer betrayal Hedwig expresses toward her protégé and superstar success/successor Tommy Gnosis (also played by Mitchell in the play but embodied by Early Aughts indie film darling and pod-contentious actor Michael Pitt) is elevated by Trask's music and lyrics and is expanded and enriched with animation, locations, and added characters (most notably Andrea Martin as the band's manager) for the silver screen.   Learn more about the progression from stage to screen from Thomas on research; jam out to Rock Facts with Ryan (sorry, mineralogists, but we're talking glam and punk rock here); former host Jack on vibes in the rhythm section wakes up mid-episode to like the film and dig the hand-drawn animation; and Ken lands his rimshot, getting to tell his joke that calls back to TGTPTU's Nolan coverage (Season 12).  Spoiler: You'll be hearing from four Hed heads.  Reminder: You don't put a bra in a dryer!  CONTENT WARNING: At least once during the episode the “f” word (“Ferengi”) is used. For those allergic to Star Trek and nerdom, our sincerest apologies. My you live long and prosper. THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!): Podcast: goodpoduglyKen: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a textAMERICAN SNIPERThe once distant end of Season 14's curated rewatched flicks is now in our sights as the TGTPTU crew pulls the trigger on their final movie of the eight enlisted pairs mustering their Redux Season, taking aim at Clint Eastwood's highest grossing film: AMERICAN SNIPER (2014).  Originally covered early in the pod's first season (S1, E5 in Year 2020) and chosen by host Thomas who'd never seen, this American Sniper revisit offers new insight into the film the original hosting duo of Ken and Jack ranked as the worst of any Eastwood-starring or -directed picture in their Season 3 final rankings episode that concluded the Eastwood run of the show. Frequent guest Erik Van Der Wolf provides the episode's cold open; bookworm and host Thomas read almost half the Chris Kyle's titular book; host Ken takes aim with some advice to filmmakers regarding a pre-shooting watch of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace; former host Jack, aka last episode's Judas, sticks to his guns; and host Ryan joins Thomas to geek out about a Buffy the Vampire connection. Listen to the end of the episode for season rankings of the eight films re-covered to see if American Sniper maintains its title as the worst Eastwood for Ken and Jack and for new hosts Ryan and Thomas as well as for the surprise announcement of the season's four-film extension.  Next ep: The start of the one-offs. Well done, fellas and Liz. THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!): Podcast: goodpoduglyKen: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a textWHITE HUNTER, BLACK HEART Episode 7, and you can feel the excitement of the hunt this episode, the first of TGTPTU's final paired rewatches of the Redux Season (Season 14) and another double Eastwood starting with a bang with WHITE HUNTER, BLACK HEART (1990, originally covered by TGTPTU during Season 3, Episode 9).   As flick curator extraordinaire Ken's second rewatch pick, the o.g. host hopes to sway opinion his way, believing this adaptation by Peter Viertel of his autobiographical roman à clef dramatizing his work and consternation with John Huston during preproduction on The African Queen to be a masterpiece, approaching Unforgiven in its use of Eastwood's (playing director John Wilson, a thinly veiled Huston) Hollywood persona. And Ken might just have an adherent in new host Ryan, who has a take(s) about Eastwood and the 1990's cinema scene and auteur theory and potential deeper meanings of this film. And Thomas offers insight into his own autobiography's veracity in the chapters that have him inventing snowboarding and fighting ninjas. Meanwhile, host Jack read was able to read 0% of the book to prepare for the ep and takes the brunt of Ken's anger upon relistening to the original episode.   On that episode nearly a half-decade ago, Jack had opined the film mid. Fellow Gen Z'er Thomas who'd guested on that original episode with Ken and Jack also found the movie somewhere between. But a rewatch with new pairings and fresh eyes outside the marathon of covering every Eastwood film during the first three seasons has surprises in store! Someone is called a Judas, and someone sticks to his elephant guns. Listen to find out who.  And if you ever wondered why the voice in the recent seasons' intro songs is “not supposed to fight with the guests, Mr. Wilson,” then you might just understand after listening, you yellow bastard.  THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!): Podcast: goodpoduglyKen: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a textThe 15:17 to ParisEpisode 6, all aboard! TGTPTU rides the Season 14 train to the end of the line of this third pairing of the season. Another rewatch of an Eastwood-directed film, this car was originally hitched to Season 1, Episode 3's engine and nearly derailed the podcast as it left the station back in the Year 2020, and that movie running again on time and Ken's first flick pick to redux is THE 15:17 TO PARIS (2018).  For a fuller recap of the plot and production of this film that stars comedic actors cast in serious roles and the three friends and heroes who aborted the mass shooting cast as themselves, listen to the original episode. But if you want to change tracks and discover the original cohosts Ken and Jack's sense of how the film has held up over time and for the two new-timers Ryan and Thomas's reactions of their first watch, along with re-imaginings of the film with Roseanne Barr and/or a Bob Dylan needle drop, this is your ep. Jack throws shade Tom Cruise's way at the top of the show while Thomas compares the movie to the book upon which it is based and which he'd recently read. Ryan has things to say about Christian rock and how to watch this film. Ken finds both relief in not having his fellow cohosts wrestle him to the ground and hogtie him for his pick and his shirt in the bathroom, which he puts back on.  While the shortest runtime of Eastwood's directorial oeuvre, the boys find the experience of watching this film warps time and space, perhaps even transcending the realm of movie, as Ryan and Jack claim, to a spiritual plane for motion pictures.  Next week, Tom and Ken's final rewatch picks are announced and paired. Spoiler: Both are Eastwoods with, like the third pairing, Eastwood directing and starring in a book adaptation for Ken's pick while the latter pick of Tom's also an adaption of book's true events. Wink-wink, nudge-nudge, bang-bang. THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!): Podcast: goodpoduglyKen: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a textHONKYTONK MAN TGTPTU continues to play its old hits with Episode 5 of Season 14, its redux series season celebrating five years and don't you worry about us, hoss, we'll get through this pairing of Eastwood flicks starting with HONKYTONK MAN (1982).  Originally discussed toward the end of the epic run covering all of Clint Eastwood's filmography (Season 3, Episode 12), founding cohosts Ken and Jack invite the show's newer hosts Ryan and Thomas in to session with fresh ears and silver tongues on this adaptation of the Dust Bowl era, vaguely veiled retelling of the final years of country wester legend Jimmie Rodgers novel by Clancy Carlile adapted by him and Eastwood into a semi-comedic bildungsroman road trip movie.  Two years prior to the creation of the PG-13 rating by the MPA (né MPAA), this Eastwood-directed and starring flick brings in Eastwood's own son Kyle, roughly 14 years of age at the time, to play the nephew of a singer/songwriter who gets into all kinds of trouble with his honkytonk uncle man, from underage driving to poultry theft to jailbreaking and whoring (procured, not proffered) and contact marijuana highs and hit song composing between f-bombs and s-words and statutory rape.  Original ep guest Patrick drops in with some words of encouragement before the gents figure out on mic that this movie was Ryan's other rewatch flick pick and the show gets on the road with recently promoted host Ryan having things to say about the music scoring; Thomas checking facts like a hockey enforcer checks bodies on the ice; Ken having a spell during which he actively hallucinates Eastwood wearing his hat backwards and suppresses coughs; and Jack, staying mostly awake for this retirement home movie that borders on a “lead paint flick” designation, brings the low energy by the bushel. Also of interest, pod fav Tracey Walter appears “right chair” in the movie and “black pill” is the word of the day.  Find out what these four have to say now that the dust has settled and chickens come home to roost and learn why this Depression Era coming-of-age and one final hurrah adult-teen road trip movie with musical act interludes might be one of the least watched of Clint Eastwood's films.   CONTENT WARNING: The hosts say the titular “h word” a lot. THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!): Podcast: goodpoduglyKen: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a textTHE WHALEIt's the fourth episode of Season 14, and our hungry boys are still going for seconds with their rewatch of the recently covered THE WHALE (2022), original episode from TGTPTU's initial pairing that started the epic scarf/Darren Aronofsky season (S11, E2, Airdate 2/17/24).  Jack sits out this first of host Ryan's two redux picks, leaving Ken and Thomas to rehash the original episode. That episode marked an early, and soon to be recurring, appearance by Ryan (this was before he was made a provisional host, which was before his becoming a host and now teetering again on provisional status).  As a gentlemen's agreement between Ryan and Thomas, Season 14 was premised on Ryan agreeing to have The Whale be one of his picks and to actually watch the movie being discussed this second time around, watching the movie being something he was reluctant to and didn't do the first time around as our guest caller at the top of the ep points out. And it wasn't just the caller who got upset by that original episode released just over a year ago: Ken, too, related how he regularly wanted to destroy his device during his relisten. Meanwhile, Thomas repeatedly repeats himself to say again and again how he was impressed by his ability to keep calm during that original episode, if he hadn't mentioned it before.  TGTPTU retreads old ground in covering the adapted play's script and the re-viewing experience (second time for Ken, third time for Thomas). With greater time elapsed, hosts are able to speak more on lead actor Fraser's “Brenaissance,” or lack thereof, and to find new insight into the family dynamics and semiology. A deeper consideration and attention is given to Ellie, the teenage daughter role played Sadie Sink.  So what did Ryan think upon fully watching the film he's reviewing? Wait, did he watch it before recording this episode? No spoilers!  Instead, know that Ken continues to support listening to the podcast at 1.5x speed and recommends getting insurance or at least the extended warranty on your phone in case the temptation to throw it against a wall in rage or smash it under your heel is too great. Thomas, if he hadn't said so, was really impressed by his restraint that initial episode. And Ryan gets personal with addiction while Thomas is a little less calm and Ken gets mileage out of how often someone if coming, going, or knocking on the movie apartment's door.  So find an old Zune in your junk drawer or an iPod or phone you won't mind destroying, put your earbuds in, and come and knock on our door. (Three's company too.)  THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!): Podcast: goodpoduglyKen: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a textPIGSeason 14 continues serving up second helpings of movies previously covered on TGTPTU with PIG (2021). Jack's flick picked this week pulls from his, Ken's, and then recently added host Thomas's post-Eastwood season CAGE UNCAGED (S4, air date 7/23/21). As established in the original episode, the Nicolas Cage movie is set and shot in Portland, Oregon prior to it burning to the ground just shortly after shooting wrapped; while the city remains in rubble, the movie is remembered by the original hosts (Ken, Jack, Thomas) fondly as a film they returned to theaters post-C19 to watch in-person and honor the memory of the city that was, a place of underground restro markets and fight clubs. Now, nearly 3-1/2 years later, the hosts reconsider their predictions for Cage's career and their responses to the film after watching again at-home.  Enjoy Ken, doubled-up NyQuil, and his takes on the flick, including recasting as a Charles Bronson movie, and his quoting Twin Peaks Season 3 (Lynch - rest in power); listen as Jack Letterboxd-checks Ryan about where he was the Summer of 2021; hear for the first time what Portland-area transplant TGTPTU's new and increasingly provisional host Ryan thought of the quiet film; and celebrate with Thomas finding the secret snore-track on the DVD from Multnomah County Library. Bon Appétit. THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!): Podcast: goodpoduglyKen: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a textDEATH BECOMES HER (1992)For the second episode in TGTPTU's Season 14 redux series, the film choice was Thomas's. As he explains at the top of the ep, he wanted to do a Streep rewatch with recent co-host Ryan, specifically and especially a comedy. His first choice of Adaptation got nixed as it had previously been covered twice, first during the Cage and then again in the Streep season. So paired with the previous episode's High Plains Driver, this week TGTPTU (re)presents SHE-DEVIL (1986), the laugh-out-loud revenge story featuring Roseanne Barr as— Oh, apologies. We just lost half of our hosts and all of our listeners. Okay, let's try again.  For the second in our Season 14 redux series, the choice is Thomas's and I guess we'll go with DEATH BECOMES HER (1992), originally recorded in 2023 as Season 8, Episode 12. And although during that Streeps of Fire season surprise special guests and Jack recorded an excellent episode in all but audio quality, none of the three current hosts (Ken, Thomas, or Ryan) were on to talk Robert Zemeckis's special effects comedy starring the co-billed Streep, Hawn, and Willis.  So grabs some fresh takes on the film (e.g., Death Becomes Her structured a TV dinner) as Ken beefs with writer David Koepp; Ryan with Zemeckis; Thomas with olds telling youngs how to spend money on food; and Jack with the ghost of Maggie Thatcher. Thomas also puts Jack on blast for not watching films he mentioned going to watch during the original episode's recording while, don't worry, She-Devil receives plenty of mentions throughout. And if that's not enough ep for you ingrates, cohost throughout Season 8 and the voice singing the first three seasons' intro songs, the illustrious and always opinionated Andi drops in briefly to say some unkind words of demotivation to the boys. Stay flaccid, y'all. THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!): Podcast: goodpoduglyKen: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a textHigh Plains Drifter (1973)TRIGGER WARNING: HPD features sexual assault as a plot point. Season 14, a new season with a hefty helping of old, comes to town as the TGTPTU hosts return to movies they undervalued and/or missed over the thirteen seasons, beginning with Jack's pick to rewatch HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER (1973). In that original episode released as S2, E6 in 2020, then hosts Ken and Jack were joined by a special guest, and now ongoing host, Thomas.   High Plains Drifter, Eastwood's second directed film, left a bad taste in Jack's mouth five years ago when the Eastwood character appears celebrated early in the film during a rape scene, one of arguably multiple instances of sexual violence in the film. As TPTPTU-celebrated director Alex Cox shares in a commentary track on the HPD Blu-ray, while such things were common in and to be judged as of their time, “It is hard to discuss these scenes in an enthusiastic way.”   Now five years older and perhaps some the wiser, Jack returns as a guest to weigh in on his rewatch and is joined by new and ever-so-provisional host Ryan who contractually has to relate any and all films shot in the early 70s to ‘Nam. This one is no exception.   Hear the frustration as Jack gets his head stuck in plastic bag and how half a decade can change one's take on a movie.  Season 8 guest Maggie Thatcher also drops in to offer her two pence. So paint the town red and get the pigshit outta your ears: it's time to go full Western gothic with Malpaso Productions' giants Eastwood, Geoffrey Lewis, and Buddy Van Horn.THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!): Podcast: goodpoduglyKen: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a textBOSS OF IT ALL (2006)Well, as the famous playwright Antonio Gambini once wrote: All good things (and Season 13 of TGTPTU) must come to a close. And what better stage for which our four hosts to give their final thoughts and review of the four directors covered this 4x4 season, as well as their general opinions of Lars von Trier, than with LvT's office comedy THE BOSS OF IT ALL (2006)? (Sorry, we can't hear you response. This isn't a radio show, and you're not live on the air and it was a rhetorical question as The House that Jack Built would have been better, your author of the Show Notes knows, but the movie was banned from discussion by the TGTPTU's boss of it all.) Before LvT's crippling depression set in (see previous episode covering 2009's Antichrist), while mainly dealing with anxiety, and in-between his second and still unmade third installment of his America Trilogy, the enfant terrible and Cannes darling challenged himself with a genre he'd yet to, and hasn't returned to, film: a comedy. While edited using his Dogme 95-influenced time-cut style, instead of hand-held camerawork by LvT himself The Boss of It All was another- first-and-only for the filmmaker in using Automavision. This LvT invented technique let a computer decide focus and movement as replacement for a cameraperson. Allowing the blame to be put on the computer instead of himself, LvT symbolically repeats the conceit of his comedy where the character of Ravn hires an amateur actor and playwright Gambini stan Kristoffer, played by Jens Albinus (mentioned previous ep), to pretend to be The Boss of It All, an absentee owner that Ravn created to pretend he did not own the company and to shunt unpopular decisions but now needs Kristoffer to pretend to be in order to sell the company. Hilarity ensues.    Join the fearsome foursome for their collective explorations of neoliberal capitalism while, individually, Ken predicts beyond the new year into the near future by betting LvT has sent drones back in time to shoot the comedy that will be Year 2025; Thomas nearly learns Danish; Ryan reveals he hates the look of a $20k engine inside a Datsun; and Jack stays awake for the entire film.  And keep listening past the wrap of our fourth movie by our fourth director to enjoy a surprise visit from a musical guest--the Boss himself--who introduces hosts' LvT four-film rankings and Season 13 reflections.THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @mrkoral.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a text4X4: Lars von Trier #3Breaking our own arbitrary rules just like Lars von Trier, the enfant terrible final director of Season 13's 4x4, the TGTPTU crew for our final pairing breaks with release date order to review the later paired film earlier, giving you this week ANTICHRIST (2009).  From the throes of depression, LVT emerged to sink the world into his vision of grief, anxiety, and madness with the horror story of a couple (played by Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg), their gendered power dynamics, and a totally normal depiction of married sex life. Not only are these two main husband-wife characters unnamed (something host Jack hates), with the exception their child who won't survive the movie's Prologue, all other characters are extras who appear with faces blurred, maintaining the isolation and focus on the archetypes of a controlling male and a woman who cannot find herself in the narratives of motherhood. Or, that's one interpretation of many readings Antichrist allows as it questions, potentially: whether human nature is good or evil, if there is a different nature for women than men, how nature influences nurture, and if nature itself can be framed in terms of good or evil. Also left to questioning: the crew on this film as to whether LVT would finish the movie as his struggle with depression persisted. But what is not open to question is how visually arresting the film is. In combination with the Dogme 95-inspired handheld camerawork complemented by the time-cut style discussed last episode with Dancer in the Dark (also with no preproduction rehearsals for actors), LVT introduces two visual styles new to his filmography. The first, shot in a repetitive extreme close-ups, is a sequence reminiscent of Aronofsky's hip-hop montage (see Season 11) and 2024's Cuckoo (see future Season 19 Singer vs. Singer) that captures the feelings of anxiety experienced, initially, by the wife. The second stylist tone, and the one that opens the tragedy of their neglected child falling from a window while they are having black-and-white penetrative sex, uses high resolution slow motion for gorgeously crisp imagery that later is repeated but spectrally layered as if in a dream. From the hosts this week: Thomas demonstrates effectively totally knows what sex is; Ryan goes Cartesian; Jack receives a visit from the Sight and Sound people about putting Audition on his list; and Ken is a grump who wants LA to burn to the ground. Join one pair of hosts in praising the film or perhaps pose the question as a reporter for the Daily Mail did at Cannes (available on the Blu-ray) to LVT: “Would you please, for my benefit, explain and justify why you made this movie?”  What does it really matter? Chaos reigns.  Content Note: While a forest retreat where Dafoe's character discovers a mommy deer, a helpful crow, and a talking fox might sound like a family-friend animated film, the genital mutilation in the film definitely veers toward adult content. So CONTENT WARNING: while you might enjoy this film as two TGTPTU hosts did, you're not going to leave this film content.  Final Note: At the release of this episode (late-January 2025), Bob's Big Boy in LA has been booked solid and the front of the building covered with flowers, but at the time of this episode's recording David Lynch had yet to slip into the ether. THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @mrkoral.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Rya

Send us a textDANCER IN THE DARK (2000)Broadcasting live from 1964, and entirely in song, this week's very special episode of TGTPTU covers Lars von Trier's sixth film (but only our second of his covered this 4x4): DANCER IN THE DARK (2000).  It's been over a hundred episodes, since Season 1's Paint Yer Hereafter ep during our Clint Eastwood coverage, that TGTPTU has covered a musical. Dancer in the Dark, the third entry into Lars von Trier's Golden Heart trilogy, follows LVT's preceding two film both in being shot à la the Dane's handheld style developed during TV show The Kingdom and in their general plot of a woman who sacrifices more than most would believe conscionable. And starring in Dancer as that woman, an immigrant named Selma with diminishing eyesight who takes on extra shifts at the factory and side work to finance her son's secret surgery and slips into worlds of musical fantasy, is Björk.  At perhaps the height of her stardom (and somehow choosing to be in a relationship with TGTPTU's previously discussed avant-garde director Matthew Barney), Björk in her first major movie role had a stake in the production and her own interpretation of Selma, which caused friction on set with the notoriously controlling Danish director, but likely contributed to her winning Best Actress at Cannes and the film the Palme d'Or. That friction may have been caused by her taking on an emotionally fraught role, especially in the second half of the film as Selma faces execution for a murder she did not intend for reasons she cannot share or else risk the wellbeing of her son. The situation onset may have also not been helped by alleged events that came out during the #MeToo, which while referenced in the episode can be found more fully here: https://www.nme.com/news/music/bjork-lends-voice-metoo-campaign-detail-sexual-harassment-hands-danish-director-lars-von-trier-2150898  As to that handheld camera style, often held by LVT himself, its digital video and potentially jarring, anti-Hollywood time cuts are complimented with a second camera aesthetic reserved for the musical moments, called “100 cameras.” This technique involved using a hundred stationary DV cameras of lesser quality than the one used for handheld footage. The hope for this multitude of cameras was for them to capture a single take of a performance without different setups. These cameras were remotely operated on ten monitors hardwired with a toggle switch inside a special construction trailer hidden in the background of the shot. Alas, this hope, unrealized, for the capture of movement to allow smoother cutting than the time cuts LVT used for the handhold was not to be. Yet the hundred camera experiment would still allow for a different feel and aesthetic from the handheld footage, especially when their transfer to film used cathode ray tube (verses the sharper laser transfer for main handheld DV camera). So tune in on your home system or your crystal radio on the a.m. dial, close your eyes, and let the dulcet voices of our four hosts' song set against industrial percussion transport you up through your ceiling and into cinema heaven. Clang! Bang! Clatter, crash, clack! THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @mrkoral.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a textELEMENTWelcome to a new year and a new director as TGTPTU's latest 4x4 reaches its fourth of four directors: Lars Von Trier. We start with his first wide-release feature THE ELEMENT OF CRIME (1984). And so begins our wrap-up of Season 13 with water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink…   Set in a post-catastrophe Europe (as will the Dane's next two films forming his first thematic trilogy: Europa), The Element of Crime follows the memories under hypnotism of an investigator named Fisher who employs the methodology of his now disgraced mentor, namely, the-now-clichéd-but-then-fairly-metafictionally-fresh-idea-of-following-in-a-psychopathic-criminal's-footsteps, to enter their thinking. And so begins a degeneration and headaches and sex atop the hood of a vehicle in order to track down the Lotto Killer, a serial murderer who targets young girls who sell lotto tickets and who might be closer than Fisher realizes.  Paired with next week's Dancer in the Dark (the final film of LVT's second trilogy) which will utilize an entirely different cinematic language, The Element of Crime is beautifully shot as it follows Fisher throughout the flooded landscapes of Europe lit by sodium light that create a sepia tone (and, in some cases, LVT will cheat by shooting in black-and-white and colorizing). The script originally focused on three encounters Fisher has with the fascistic police chief Kramer played by Jerold Wells, a British actor perhaps best known for his work with Terry Gilliam ending with Time Bandits (Gilliam's Brazil with its own pneumatic tube future will come out the following year), but the world was expanded as LVT and his team of two Thomas's (cinematographer Tom Elling, and editor and possible horse murderer Tómas Gislason) found new locations such as sewers and dilapidated buildings to expand Fisher's search as he finds himself inside the pattern to the killings.  Listen in and get the skinny on LVT's challenge to Steven Spielberg and masturbating monkeys from Thomas; hear about Ken's beef with a German post-punk band ruining his joke; and scream along silently with Jack in frustration about the ongoing technical issues the once-and-future provisional co-host Ryan reliably brings to being unreliable.  The host unanimously agree: a beautifully shot movie with an amazing final image. Are you there? You can wake me up now. Are you there?...  THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @mrkoral.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a textJUROR #2 It's late-December and, foregoing our usual Christmas-adjacent movie watch, this year TGTPTU has a very special treat for the holidays. That's right, listener, we bring to you our hot takes on what may prove to be Clint Eastwood's final film--and even more likely his final theatrically-released film--JUROR #2 (2024) in time for its MAX streaming release so that you might celebrate with us and have yourself a very Merry Clint-mas. Eastwood's latest film with Warner Brothers continues what was a trend (excepting Cry Macho and The Mule) of not starring the star of the 70's ape comedies and the Dirty Harry series, instead keeping Eastwood off camera and bringing in a murderer's row (some pun intended) of character actors, including Nicholas Hoult from multiple Bryan Singer flicks as the titular Juror #2; Toni Collette from The Sixth Sense as Assistant DA Faith Killebrew who may put her career on the line to explore whether the person she put away for murder is guilty; J.K. Simmons from Postal (and likely some other films) as a former detective on the jury who also has suspicions of innocence; Cedric Yarbrough from Reno 911! as juror out for justice; Kiefer Sutherland from multiple Joel Schumacher flicks as Juror #2's AA sponsor and lawyer confidant; and even one of Eastwood's many children--Francesca Eastwood--giving the double bird in multiple, retold scenes Rashomon-style playing the once-and-future corpse.  From The Mule & Richard Jewell, cinematographer Yves Bélanger is back with Mark Mancina returning from Cry Macho for the score. And surprisingly and, as discussed, perhaps as a first for Eastwood as a director, the man who addressed an empty chair at the RNC and practices TM actually worked with the film's writer to GASP! rewrite the script, an act host Ken who has seen and reported back on every Eastwood film takes to mean Juror #2 is the 94-year-old director's swan song.   And the song is good! While the hosts conflict on where the movie lands politically in its cynicism and realism, all four of the folx talking in your earholes believe the moving picture a solid mid-budget thriller that harkens back to a time/era of pre-streaming moviegoing. Speaking of an era ending, Warner Brothers appears to believe the Time of Eastwood is done, releasing this latest film from the long-time collaborator in under 50 theaters seven scheduled weeks before releasing it for streaming on MAX.   So get your spoilers here, and listen to the end of the p for what starts as a rant against WB's treatment of Eastwood and becomes men complaining about previews and ads before films that eventually ends with the four hosts recapping their 2024 movie-going experiences before awarding their best films of the year. Also fun: Evidence is presented throughout by hosts Ken and Thomas for whether provisional cohost Ryan should be promoted to a full-time host. Congrats, newly fully-fledged host Ryan. Don't rush to mess this up. THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @mrkoral.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a text4X4X3: WILLIAM WYLER CONCLUSION: THE COLLECTORTGTPTU wraps its third director of Season 13's 4x4 with a discussion of a fourth and final William Wyler film THE COLLECTOR (1965). Like The Big Country, its paired film from last week, The Collector began as a book, this one penned by John Fowles, author whose adapted novel The French Lieutenant's Woman was covered by TGTPTU during our Meryl Streep season. The Collector was Fowles' first published book, and Wyler took liberties with its epistolary structure to refocus the movie as, mentioned later below, a “love story.” And like last week's western picture, The Collector is shot in glorious color, interestingly unlike Wyler's preceding The Children's Hour (problematic treatment of lesbianism? who knows? not your hosts, not in time for this ep, but maybe TGTPTU's loquacious critic Annabel with offer their opinion on a future ep?) whose black-and-white film stock marked a departure from Wyler's two preceding films The Big Country and Ben-Hur where in the latter someone may have died filming the chariot race and was also a book adaptation.  But as for The Collector, which was very provisional cohost Ryan's ringer of a movie, that is, the one he pitched when he was sandboxing his 4x4 choice of directors because he was sure it would score, our final Wyler film under discussion misses the post leaving the hosts wonder whether it's close enough to count as Wyler-essential (horseshoe puns aren't part of The Collector, just your show note writer's indulgence).  While a dark tale of sexual abduction and obsession, Terrence Stamp--the titular collector of butterflies but also of at least one woman in his dungeon--was told by Wyler that they were secretly shooting a love story and while Wyler utilized his old-Hollywood directing style by shutting out on set the relative novice actress Samantha Eggar in the role of abducted in this two-hander movie (a cast of seemingly four credited actors) so that she would feel the isolation her character locked away lost in the British countryside, the direction and acting can't seem to overcome a rather flat script.  But stay tuned to the end to hear the boys rank their Willies, including from the first movie pairing how they prefer their dicks and for all four flicks hear them consider their manhood as Willy exposes it. Throughout the ep, listen for the tension in Ken's voice as the other three hosts conspire to stretch the recording session into kickoff time with Ryan sharing stories from the streets and country clubs and Thomas striving for an episode parental advisory warning. And laugh alone as the hosts skip right past Ken's allusion to The Sound of Music. Next episode: A very special Clint-mas Ep for the wintertime, then back in the new year with the fourth of our four directors, the Danish Darling also known as Lars von Trier. THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @mrkoral.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a text4X4: WILLIAM WYLER. #3: THE BIG COUNTRY(Note: Don't skip the theme song this week)TGTPTU Host Ryan's Willie gets a glow-up with THE BIG COUNTRY (1958), the third in our cultivated William Wyler collection.Shot in glorious Technicolor on large-format Technorama to set it apart from the glut of midcentury black-and-white television Westerns, the big-budget film was not a financial success despite winning one, after being nominated for two, Academy Awards and starring at the time four-time Oscar nominee Gregory Peck in the lead role of James McKay, a stranger who comes into town (thanks, Ken! 50-50 odds on this plot by your own estimation), who reunites with his fiancée out on the American frontier only to be hazed by her father's foreman Steve Leech played by Charlton Heston (no Oscar noms at the time but a big win the next year on Wyler's next film Ben-Hur, which, btw, did you hear someone died filming the chariot race?) and later to fall in love/respect/mutual ownership of property with school teacher and Big Muddy landowner Julie Maragon played by Oscar-nominated Jean Simmons (not that one, it's spelled differently, Thomas). The voice and the eyebrows, the legendary singer and thanks to this film an Oscar-winner, Burl Ives plays Rufus Hannassey, the patriarch of a rival company of cowpunchers who also uses the Big Muddy and gets into a scuffle with Peck character's father-in-law-to-be. This spat spirals out of control, Peck's character presents the view with a confident pacificist, and there's a good plot summary on Wikipedia and elsewhere. What you can't get elsewhere is Ryan's special intro with lyrics and deep cuts even more deeply researched for you cineasts, Thomas's pun on seamen, re-ranking the Major, a Hal Ashby connection, and a surprise new ghost guest added to the pod's lore and collection when Charlton Heston's noncorporeal agent visits the studio. The four hosts on this 4x4 do their best to discuss performative masculinity and the connection to war while ensuring they get their f*cking auto-assigned EXPLICIT CONTENT WARNING from their AI censors.  “Now tell me, you: what did we prove?"  THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @mrkoral.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a textWILLIAM WYLER: PART 2 OF 4: THE DESPERATE HOURSPaired with last week's Detective Story, TGTPTU's Big Willie Winter continues with THE DESPERATE HOURS (1955), another black-and-white film adaptation by William Wyler and a rare feature from the director to not earn a single Academy Award nomination. Perhaps first home invasion picture, The Desperate Hours was adapted from a book that itself was inspired by tragic, real events (bonus fact: Richard Nixon would become involved in a lawsuit defending Time Magazine against the real-life victims who hadn't agreed to a photo shoot in questionable taste at their former family home). Playing the lead heavy, Humphrey Bogart who with his character's younger brother (played by Dewey Martin who, fun fact, was first married to a woman from Portland, Oregon and subsequently singer Peggy Lee) and a lug with more muscle than smarts on the lam take over a suburban home (bonus fact: the fictional house where the story takes place would later be used for the television show Leave It to Beaver) and soon butt heads with head-of-the household Daniel Hilliard, played by Fredric March, after seeing a bicycle left outside, a key indicator of a family with kids or, as those on the run know, prime hostage material. Wyler shows his mastery as a director getting an amazing performance from a child actor playing March's son and providing depth and gravitas to all the characters. Oddly cast from the script and the book, Bogart at age 56 was significantly older than the original story would have his Glenn Griffin (Paul Newman, who would play the role on stage before the film was released, was only 30 years old). But the performance is nuanced, perhaps measured by Bogart's at the time being diagnosed with the cancer that would soon kill him. During the course of The Desperate Hours (bonus snark: perhaps more accurately entitled The Desperate Afternoon Leading into that Night and on into Late the Next Day), Wyler ties in his recurring themes of pacifism, masculinity as performance, and the dangers of the police state in this film that, while feeling set-bound, it should be recalled that the play was written and performed after. All the same, a truck flips, a person is run over, and March has to pretend he's drunk to disgust a visiting schoolteacher and save his family. Good stuff.  So give up sixtyish minutes for respite, ours will discuss it: flowers for Wyler, service ages for WWII vets, the elusive reality that started the Boomer Generation, and perhaps try a Bogart impersonation or two.  THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @mrkoral.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a textDETECTIVE STORYSeason 13's 4x4 has reached its 1/2way point with our 9th of 16 movies and a new director, provisional co-host Ryan's pick of the 15-time Academy Award-nominated, 3-time Oscar-winning director William Wyler. This week, we cover the first of Ryan's four curated Wyler flicks DETECTIVE STORY (1951).  Up for four Academy Awards, including Best Director, but winning none, Detective Story was Wyler's 22nd talkie and his earliest we're covering the for the pod (the directorial powerhouse also shot about thirty silent films prior the talkies and two documentaries during WWII when he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces). Like many of Wyler's works, the picture was adapted from a successful contemporary play and stars Kirk Douglas (Spartacus nine years later) in the main role of Detective Jim McLeod with stage roles reprised both by Joseph Wiseman (Dr. No eleven years later) as a booked burglar who goes (SPOILER) for a gun and by Lee Grant (featured on TGTPTU seventy-two years later and amazing always) as a flighty shoplifter in a performance that would win her Best Actress at Cannes.   As a play adaptation, Detective Story is staged almost as a bottle movie, escaping its second-floor New York City precinct set only to introduce main characters in the opening minutes and for an aborted car ride. Speaking of abortion, the film's creative team couldn't under the Hays Code. This silencing through censorship changed a major component of the play when adapted, namely when Detective McLeod who sees in black-and-white (morally, not just because of the film stock) confronts the messiness of the gray world in his pursuit of a doctor's medical malpractice manslaughter during a birth gone bad and, subsequently, upon learning of his wife's secret life prior to knowing him when she'd used the same doctor's services for... So join the boys as they kick off Big Willy Winter with Ryan parodying the Fresh Prince lyrics; Ken maps Inspector Harold Francis Callahan (a.k.a. “Dirty Harry”) onto Det. McLeod; Tom gets thirsty for Lee Grant; and Jack stays awake. And keep subscribing and following for next week's pairing with The Desperate Hours. THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @mrkoral.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a text4X4 III: TSAI MING-LIANG 4: DAYSTGTPTU's back to finish (cough) the job handily (cough) with a happy ending (oh boy) for our coverage of director Tsai Ming-liang, coming together (really, dude?) to get every ounce our four gents have to offer, pulling and tugging (grow up) on each's points and hot takes for this fourth and final 4x4 film of Jack's offering (was that a pun?) called, in its English release (are you serious?), DAYS (2020).  If you like washing your vegetables in your bathroom or the feel of burning paper during your non-erotic electroshock massage sessions and also like to take things slow, boy-howdy do we have a film for you. Or if you like your massage erotic, well, this possibly sad, possible love story might be up your rainy, post-apocalyptic Bangkok alley (or busy street). And for fans of the previously covered Goodbye, Dragon Inn who enjoyed its minimal subtitles due to its paucity of dialogue, get excite: There is even less talk and zero subtitles in this latest Tsai Ming-liang joint. Naturally, actor and muse Lee Kang-sheng returns. Also billed, Anong Houngheuangsy in his debut film. Lee Kang-sheng plays an older dude who goes to the city for an obscure medical treatment for his back. Anong Houngheuangsy plays a younger guy on his grind (and occasionally Grinder?). About an hour into the film, these two hook up, a gift is exchanged, and the two have a quiet, postcoital meal outside a restaurant. Then they return their separate, silent ways after about forty-five minutes of shared screentime. And with just minutes to spare in this movie just over two hours long, we watch Anong Houngheuangsy's character at a bus stop as he sits and waits and waits and waits until, wait for it, what appears in BMI and skin tones to be a herd of Americans passes by.  Listen along as the foursome wraps up (and Thomas declines to rank) Tsai Ming-liang's four covered movies. EPISODE SPOILER: Ken reveals for perhaps the first time to English-speaking audiences the sitcom origins of Tsai Ming-liang's films. Next ep, we begin the first pairing of the four William Wyler films chosen by Ryan: Detective Story (1951) and The Desperate Hours (1955). THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegoodthepoda1YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a text2024 HALLOWEEN SPECIAL!NOTE: Approximately 35 punk rock band names are concealed in these show notes. Play along!It's the end of October, which means the four misfits of TGTPTU are back with a special Birth-/ Halloween/Election Day episode, interrupting their regular Season 13 4x4 programming to bring you a tale fitting this celebratory trifecta: auteur director Jeremy Saulnier's punk-horror-antifascist classic GREEN ROOM (2015). As a low budget, mostly practical, minimally computer effects (dare one say “NoFX”?) horror/suspense movie, Green Room follows a gang of four bouncing souls in the fictional band the Ain't Rights as they tour by van the Pacific Northwest, stealing fuel and perhaps sick of it all when they find themselves less than jake at the end of their bankroll. In desperation, they take on as the replacements a gig at a club full of laces and braces.  Unlike the typical band road trip setup where their fan base may begin to lag, wagon might break down, or they become pennywise and pound foolish, the members of the Ain't Rights' world turns upside-down after playing for that crass, bad religion of white supremacy, i.e., those subhumans we call skinheads, when, post-show gathering their gear, the green day of these four adolescents turns rancid upon discovering a murdered young woman in the titular green room.  Like World War II's Op Ivy, Ain't Rights' members no doubt scheme and raise a black flag of no surrender to escape the compound, but these youths prove only a minor threat and their plan all fugazi when it encounters the racists' experienced violence. Even when these four self-ascribed “misfits” are helped by a violent femme (played by Imogen Poots, friend the one found murdered), the stooges are outclassed and outsmarted.  Soon the joy division occurs, rending the group who has bandmembers played by Anton Yelchin (rest in power), Alia Shawkat, Joe Cole, and Callum Turner come face to face with real murderers and violence, including a skinhead band's strung out lead singer but also a stone-cold bearded Patrick Stewart in charge who has attack dogs sic viciously the youths with a sloppy, realistic violence unlike one sees on the television. The clash is epic as the Ain't Rights soon accept without fear suicidal tendencies to try to get out of the jam. And unlike other movies in the horror genre, these youth of today are lack raging hormones (a.k.a. “ramones”?). Yes, Saulneir's, a.k.a. Jay Dawg's, film lacks onscreen intercourse. But while no sex, pistols and violence galore. And for those sensitive to cussing, little guttermouth language is used.   So join us, if not for Halloween, then for Birthday XXI of descendent/offspring Jack and/or Election Day (R.I.P. all the dead Kennedys) for our discussion of this film not part of an AFI list.  Also throughout the ep, Ken, Jack, Thomas, and Ryan explore themes of coming of age and of guilt for accepting money/work/recognition in the face fascism, but describing these are harder for yours truly to conceal punk band names here within show notes, except perhaps to say it's one big, repeated love fest for the flick, or, hmm, might one be permitted to say “circle jerks”?THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegoodthepoda1YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a textThis week's Season 13 4x4 entry is GOODBYE, DRAGON INN (2003), the third of four films curated by guest host Jack to represent the filmography of director Tsai Ming-liang. The original TPTGTU boys are reunited this ep with the return of host Thomas but divided in their appreciation for what is billed as Tsai Ming-liang's comedy-drama. As promised in last episode, this third film by the Taiwanese slow cinema director takes on a lighter tone than his previously discussed movies, a tone that at times even borders on, or some might and do argue achieves, comedy. It's a movie that allows the viewer to watch others watch a movie, to question the dimensions and positioning of moviegoers in this old Taiwanese movie theater showing its final film before closing, or to observe with mirth a Japanese tourist subtly cruise other males by switching seats and wandering the theater's halls and bathrooms, or to observe a woman with a limp bring her coworker a bun to eat after cleaning out urinals and stalls. For those who do not speak Mandarin and are uninterested in reading subtitles, good news! There are only about a dozen lines of dialogue, mostly at the end between one of the elderly actors who starred in the titular 1967 martial arts movie Dragon Inn and some other movie patron lingering in the theater lobby after the movie's final showing. Actor Lee Kang-sheng, a.k.a. Tsai Ming-liang's heterosexual muse, returns as the movie's film projectionist in a role with no lines but in one climatic (sarcasm) scene determines with the help of fortune teller machine whether he is a Cold Fish or a Casanova (for you Simpson's fans). Is this film a comedic experience playing off cinematic expectations garnered from Western films? An endurance test? An homage to earlier cinema? A reminder to all filmmakers to not show a better film in their film? Or some awkward chimera of the above? Listen as the hosts take up positions awkwardly close to each other for long periods of time with their wee-wees out. Unfortunately, the pod's best film critic ceded their seat at the table to Thomas back from his Western European tour. You are missed, Annabel. WARNING I: Do not approach this film expecting laugh tracks or comedic buttons. WARNING II: Do not operate heavy equipment while watching Tsai Ming-liang films. WARNING III: Do not allow the dissenting voice to write an episode's show notes. THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegoodthepoda1YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a text4X4 2: TSAI MING-LIANG and "STRAY DOGS"Our four film investigation into slow cinema master Tsai Miang-liang tackles his 2013 masterpiece STRAY DOGS. If you can vibe to a five minute opening static shot of a woman brushing her hair while her children sleep beside her in a charred husk of as bedroom where even the sheets on the bed look like ruin before cutting to a nearly ten minute long shot of a depressed homeless man in the lashing rain of Tai Pei holding a sign at a busy intersection, we have the movie for you! It also includes: cabbage desecration, alcoholism, abandonment of buildings and humans, and a house built inside of a nightmare's nightmare (this is NOT a comedy).Joined by guest Annabel once again, Ken, Jack and Ryan get into a fairly dense and deep convo about Stray Dogs. Co-host Thomas is once again absent due to his covert foreign work as a CIA super spy (who we just outed?) and he is missed. Slow Cinema is an important part of international film and we are delighted to discuss one of the contemporary greats this month. THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegoodthepoda1YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a text4X4 III: TSAI MING-LIANG: REBELS OF THE NEON GODIt's the beginning of our four film dive into Queer Asian New Wave master Tsai Ming-liang. Released in 1992 and made shortly after Taiwan's "quiet revolution" from a dictatorship to democracy, Rebels of the Neon God stars the director's muse, Lee Kang-sheng (who would go onto being in every one of his films and the two live together in... interesting circumstances) as a Cram Student who becomes obsessed with a small time hood after a brief act of violence in the street, who drives around on a scooter in Tai Pei, smoking cigarettes, playing video games, walking around his partially flooded apartment and being on the outside of polite society. It sounds like a crime film but, trust us, it is not. Tsai Ming-liang has the eye of an artist and the patience of Rip Van Winkle in holding some of his compositions - something he will go deeper into as his career grows.  Picked by S13 guest host Jack, we get a tutorial on Taiwan, Tsai Ming-liang's career and antecedents to his slow cinema masterpiece before next week's STRAY DOGS.  WARNING: Due to the difficulty of being able to see Rebels by a few hosts, we do talk about access to foreign or obscure films in the streaming era (spoiler: we are not fans). WARNING II: Co-host Thomas is not on this episode because he was in Europe legally watching Matthew Barney films at the Louvre when we recorded. He will return in two weeks.Special guest Annabel also shows up and slow cinemas us all. THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegoodthepoda1YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a textTHE LONGEST YARDThis week, the TGTPTU boys return to prison for more fun and games, this time stopping this 4x4 season's first round drafted director Robert Aldrich's run with inches to go. For the final film of the first four and to cap the Aldrich coverage, Ken drafted THE LONGEST YARD (1974). Following Ryan's fumbling the intro and benched as provisional cohost, this season's four host run the tape back to explore Aldich's plays in prototyping the sports underdog movie and somehow manage to avoid speaking too ill of the Sandler 2005 remake.   The first of the four initial films of Season 13 not to be based on a novel, The Longest Yard was a smashing success and a standout in an era of cinema that defined both the sports underdog and spirited prisoner genres. As Ken and Thomas cover this ep, Aldrich needed the win after the failure of Aldrich Studios (introed last episode).  For your amusement this episode, Ken spits fresh lyrics during his Burt Reynolds Rap (hopefully not censored by the parole board) before providing summations on Aldrich's career and films accompanied by odd ambient squeaks this week provided by Thomas's dog.  Note that next week will not be the start of four films by Lars von Trier but will instead be Rebels of the Neon God (1992), Tsai Ming-liang's feature film directorial debut. THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegoodthepoda1YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a textTHE DIRTY DOZENSeason 13's 4x4 marches on with the most ill-mannered, ill-disciplined hosts that it's ever been you're your displeasure to meet, sergeant. That's right, the dirtiest voices in the TGTPTU's army are getting filthier covering Robert Aldrich's THE DIRTY DOZEN (1967). It's a story of twelve convicted army men, who don't bath, until they do and the man chosen to whip them into shape: Corporal Lee Marvin fresh off an Oscar win in the role of Major Lee Marvin a.k.a. Major Alcohol a.k.a Major John Reisman. Their mission: to kill Nazi officers, women, and, if you got them, children and cute puppy German Shepherds too.  The WWII picture was immensely successful for Aldrich. Wade through episode commentary and takes about the movie's plot structure and whether this is secretly a sports movie and how Aldrich recast around actors who were leaving the film and declining scenes to get to a teaser at the end of the episode for a further discussion of Aldrich Studios, the endeavor this film allowed Robert Aldrich financially when he sold his stake in The Dirty Dozen for an endeavor that will run (and run into the ground, spoiler!) in the interval between, and be cause for, next week's film, The Longest Yard. And then wait a week for more information. (Or use the internet, ya geek. Or get a book from your local library {shout out}!)  For those familiar with the bit, famously Francophobic Jack takes exception to the line “free the French, kill the Germans.” Meanwhile, the boys snicker and make references to Ernest Borgnine's secret to eternal youth (available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I_PeLNzxNQ). And for major stans of the cast, Ken pulls back the curtain to reveal the pre-record ritual rhyme the hosts chant as a mnemonic to execute a perfect show.  And where is Donald Duck?THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegoodthepoda1YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a textWhat Ever Happened To Baby Jane?TGTPTU Season 13's 4x4 continues with the second half of its first Robert Aldrich pairing, WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962). Like last week's entry, WEH2BJ is another black-and-white film adaptation of a novel, this one truer to the source material, at least to cohost Thomas who read Henry Farrell's 1960 novel of the same title (in other words no changing out a briefcase of drugs for a nuclear weapon or the star of your book series an unlikeable asshole as had happened in Aldrich's adaptation of Kiss Me Deadly). Outside minor changes in date and storytelling, both novel and film follow the story of the two sisters in their autumn years: Jane Hudson, a child actress of stage fame whose star dimmed well before her sister Blanche Hudson's movie career was on its meteoric (to keep with astronomical idioms) ascent until a car accident with a drunk Jane driving left Blanche in a wheelchair and in her sister's care. While acrimonious, their relationship turns horrific when reruns of Blanche's films lead to fan mail and her sottish sister Jane to exact a lifetime's worth of revenge on her housebound sibling. Yet the meta story of the film separates it inexorably from its source material as Aldrich casts, and to his credit completes a film, with both divas alive with both eyes, most their hair, and out of jail: Bette Davis as the nostalgic Jane and Joan Crawford as Blanche. TGTPTU hosts cover the Oscar shenanigans and personas of these two great ladies of early cinema. Speaking of, WEH2BJ was nominated for five Academy Awards. This was Davis's tenth nom, and at the time she would have had the most Oscar wins for Best Actress if the picture had won her her third. Unfortunately, the film won only for an obsolete category (Best Costume Design, Black-and-White). And (strikethrough as appropriate one of the subsequent adverbs after listening to the discussion) deservedly/somehow garnered Victor Buono a nomination as Best Supporting Actor.  Stans of the pod are forewarned that a Season 1-3 bit returns thanks to the evils of Davis's character's choice of dishes to feed her sister. Other listeners are forewarned that there will be much discussion of the can't-believe-it-exists films Trog (1970) and Who Slew Auntie Roo? (1972).  THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegoodthepoda1YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a textKiss Me DeadlyWelcome back to TGTPTU, and welcome back in Season 13 to both former cohost Jack and to the 4x4, the latter making its third season appearance! For TGTPTU stans reading this, able to recite the following explanation by heart, go ahead and save yourself half-a-minute and skip the rest of this paragraph. But for you sad majority of population Earth, a 4x4 is where the crew of TGTPTU covers four films (two pairings) by four different creatives. Simple. And with the return of Jack and the recent promotion of (although still provisional) cohost Ryan, for this season each host will be selecting one director to (strike as appropriate: introduce to / impose upon / reunite / endear) the other three hosts (to / with).  This third iteration of the 4x4 kicks off with Ken's choice of director Robert Aldrich, pairing this episode's KISS ME DEADLY (1955) with next week's What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (whatever happened to our style guide? should I end this sentence with a second punctuation mark after the question mark? when did “what ever” become one word? Ken, cut all this out. Thanks, buddy. Editor of the Year.). Liberally adapted from the Mike Hammer novel of identical title by A.I. Bezzerides (yes, AI was writing fiction before ChatGPT) that doesn't even include a nuclear device, Aldrich's version of KMD helped put the nail in the noir era's coffin by giving the viewing public an unsympathetic protagonist driven by greed and the need to break things. This film relatively early in Aldrich's career would earn the respect of, and help inspire, Aldrich's contemporaries in the French New Wave, although the all-American, not-quite-nepo baby Aldrich would balk at their reasoning why the film he made was important. Listen to this inaugural episode's rough start as last season's bits are retired, Thomas confronts Ryan on his pronunciation of “noir,” Ken remembers fondly when this talkie came out while Jack finishes watching the film during mic check, and Ryan lists off an impressive amount of homages to KMD before the foursome debate whether the “h” is silent.  THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegoodthepoda1YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a Text Message.PAPRIKAFor the final episode of Season 12 Nolan Void, the TGTPTU gents get timey-wimy as they repeat last season finale with another film from anime director Satoshi Kon also allegedly plagiarized by the season's director, this time Kon's final flick PAPRIKA (2006) and Nolan's Inception rather than Black Swan stealing from Perfect Blue (Kon's first film, almost as if TGTPTU were considering a temporal pincer movement on the Japanese director who tragically died far too young after only four films).  This week, rookie host Ryan tries his hand at his first 60-second summary of this simple, straight-forward, extremely grounded plot of Paprika based on the 1993 novel of the same name. In short, the film takes place in an unexplained near future with technology that allows its cast of characters to share dreams and their experience therein blurs the waking world with a plot involving corporate espionage and a Japanese CEO, but in all the ways that Nolan's Inception does not.  After their PAPRIKA discussion finding no merit in the accusations of Sir Chris ripping off Kon, TGTPTU roundtables to rank Nolan's dozen flicks from folly to finest (although all four find all twelve quite good). Former host Jack returns from hammer murder accusations to join in the fun, counterbalancing fellow aspiring-Zoomer Thomas's rankings with an alt take for their entire generation. Ken has the boys contemplate future Nolan franchises, Ryan offers an astute comparison between Miami Vice vs Heat for two of Nolan's films, and we get the first mention of Mike, Thomas's side piece. And if that weren't enough, the “you may know us from other podcasts” bit gets officially retired.  Oh, and there's more: Weird AI presents its original Oppenheimer composition two weeks past deadline and the next season of the pod is announced (which, if no one promises to listen, will cover Bryan Singer's oeuvre; otherwise, we'll return later in the summer for another 4x4). THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegoodthepoda1YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a Text Message.The One With The Dream Stuff Inside Oppenheimer INCEPTIONThis week TGTPTU reaches the timey-wimey center of Season 12 as the Nolan Void temporal pincer pairing movement ends with INCEPTION (2010), Sir Chris's studio-backed super-successful non-supes cinema experience and his first Oscar nom for Best Picture--and finally winning pod-fav Wally Pfister his Best Cinematography trophy after being nominated for his previous three Nolan flicks. Inception tells the story of blah-blah-blah, some (too many?) rules, not really all that dreamy, but hella cool. And to tell that story, Nolan brought in no one. Just himself, his first (and his second Oscar-nominated) solo screenplay since Memento and, since guerilla shooting on the mean (and friendly) streets of London for Following, his first property that's entirely original (not based on another's idea, unless the late-80s, two-season TV series Freddy's Nightmares counts).   Fall asleep with cohosts Ken and Ryan as Thomas's synopsis goes too long, wake up with their proposed needle-drops, trace when DiCaprio's Dom isn't wearing a wedding band, and wonder at the terror posed by the children's song with the eternal question of Row-Row-Row-Your-Boat: What if life is but a dream?  Just like Dom's ageless kids, we'll be lurking around for a dramatic conclusion next week, which we welcome you to join us for discussion of Paprika as we wrap Season 12 like we did Season 11.THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegoodthepoda1YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a Text Message.TGTPTU reaches the beginning of the end of Season 12 as the team covers THE DARK KNIGHT (2008), the penultimate NOLAN VOID film in our temporal pincer pairing movement.  Rebounding from the only moderate success of The Prestige, Sir Chris creates a mega-blockbuster with The Dark Knight, his follow-up to Batman Begins and a film that compresses at minimum two movie's worth of story into one film in order to prevent promising Warner Brothers another sequel. (Spoiler for last week's episode, Nolan makes a third Batman film that 75% of TGTPTU hosts think is great.) The Dark Knight is also a film that changed how the Academy compiled its Best Picture Oscar category. Oddly, this season's final pairing matches last season's release years for Aronofsky's pincered final middle pairing with The Wrestler released the same year as The Dark Knight and Black Swan the same as Inception. (No comment back from Darren's people on his feelings for having developed so much of Batman Year One for the Warners only to be led into making his The Fountain for the Bros in 2006.) Unfortunately, further research this episode was stymied by Jack stuck in France fighting extradition back to the States and unable to make our final The Dark Knight trilogy episode. Fortunately, our three consistent hosts are pretty good about guessing facts about flicks, like this pairing the first the entire season both shot by the great Wally Pfister (what? hardly even know her) with The Dark Knight being Nolan's first film with scenes shot on Imax (but ignore Thomas's misinformation about Inception also being shot on Imax; he's like a dog chasing a car or a British colonialist burning down a jungle or brunch.) Listen close, take lots of notes, and discover what words The Joker finds funny; how to make visual art summaries for an auditory medium; and why TGTPTU remains the Pacific Northwest's still least listened to film podcast. Why so serious? THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegoodthepoda1YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a Text Message.This week, the TGTPTU's untrademarked “temporal pincer movement” catches up with the boys as THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (2012), Sir Christopher Nolan's conclusion to his Batman trilogy, gets covered before his penultimate The Dark Knight. Sir Chris has been quoted as saying, “There are no good third sequels, basically—Rocky III maybe,” and this week Ken, Ryan, and returning former host and editor Jack gang up to defend the film against Thomas's lackluster appreciation for the film that ends the Nolan franchise.  Additional to Sir Nolan and Dame Emma Thomas expressing feelings that they were content with where and how The Dark Knight ended, production of a sequel was complicated by the death of Heath Ledger as Joker, a major draw of the preceding film and the basis for a rough idea Sir Nolan had if he decided to make a third film. Instead of whatever might have been, the Brothers Nolan wrote a movie about Batman's retirement inspired by the French Revolution as told by Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities that brought us Nolan-versions of Catwoman (Anne Hathaway who will star in Interstellar, Nolan's next film and part of TGTPTU's previously pairing) and Robin (Joseph Gordon-Levitt who had starred in Inception, Nolan's previous film covered in TGTPTU's next and final pairing).  It's a race against the calendar clock as Batman/Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has to heal himself from a back broken by big baddy Bane (Tom Hardy) in order to escape an underground prison-hole in the desert by making a leap of faith and back to Gotham before an atomic bomb set to explode in a mere five months can go off and destroy the city he's sworn to protect, a city with the majority of its police squad trapped underground, a city judicially administered by a kangaroo court presided over by Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy) while Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) is laid up in a hospital bed working with the Boy Wonder who consults the Gotham permitting office and discovers Bane's nefarious plan. Or, as Jack suggests, the plot is simply a proper British gentleman with stiff upper lip seated cross-legged on the plush carpet of his country manor smashing action figures together.   Listen for technical difficulties band-aided on mic by the show's former editor Jack; to Ken lose his cohosts with American football jokes; and bat scrotum. Also for your ears' pleasure, each host cycles through their impersonation, allowing the listener to judge who does the best Bane impression… for you.  See you next week for the exciting concluding pincered pair of Dark Knight and Inception. Same Bat time, same Bat channel.THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegoodthepoda1YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a Text Message.TGTPTU Book Club returns this week with Sir Christopher Nolan's first and only adaption, i.e., THE PRESTIGE (2006), with bookworm and repeat guest Shannon joining from The Bunker.   Post-Batman Begins, Sir Nolan returned to his love of puzzle-box stories to bring to life the work of another Chris (Christopher Priest) while casting a third Chris (Christian Bale) as a rival magician to a non-Chris (Hugh Jackman) to make one of top three magician rivalry movies wide-released in 2006.   Sir Nolan omits the present-day framing story around Priest's novel to focus on the period and the rivalry between magicians Angier (Jackman) and Borden (Bale) as the former seeks revenge on the latter for his wife's death (yes, it's another rare Nolan movie with a dead wife but you actually get two dead ladies—BOGO (Bury One, Get One)—for your money ). Keeping with the novel, each magician has a secret that allows him to perform a teleported man trick, with Borden's secret seeming to be the anticipated, singular trick of the movie until the rug-pull at the end when the Great Sir C. Nolan the Magnificent abracadabras Angier's clone-killing conclusion for a prestige of his own .  Uncontroversially, Scarlett Johansson is poorly used as the rivalling magicians' assistants while David Bowie gets one of the best entrances in cinema history portraying Nicholas Tesla, a man with his own bitter professional rivalry and a last name that is impossible to say 18 years after this movie premiered without thinking of the car, much like what once beset my great-grandmother Edsel and our uncle PT “Cruiser” Koral.  Listen along as Jason Statham pops in, award-winning thespian Michael Caine is put on blast by our special guest, and the hosts break down why this might be the most “Nolan-y” Nolan film Sir Chris has made.  THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegoodthepoda1YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a Text Message.INTERSTELLARIn this week's episode of TGTPTU, director-writer-producer Sir Christopher Nolan adds space to his repertoire of time-bending narratives as we venture deeper into The Nolan Void with INTERSTELLAR (2014).  The Nolan brothers return with cowriting credits, Nathan Crowley on production design, and Lee Smith as editor on this tale of global dust bowl devastation and human hope through American derring-do as the U.S.'s secret space program saves the planet (or at least itself, or perhaps only some of its elite, it's not clearly defined) by reaching again for the stars (celestial bodies, not celebrities). But new this time to the Nolan crew (at least in this entropy-forward timeline of your hosts' dimension, that being the same in which these notes are composed), the making of Interstellar brings on a new cinematographer, replacing pod fav Wally Pfister who'd been part of the creative team since Memento with the bear of a man and no slouch himself: Double Hoyte (aka Hoyte van Hoytema). Hoyte will stick with Nolan from this film on through the remainder of the later films already covered this season (again, frame of reference being an entropy-forward continuum) and who'll provide this week's Nolan innovation to shooting on IMAX when he lifts the somewhere just short of 100 lb (45 kilo) camera to film handheld.  With Interstellar, Sir Nolan becomes the marketing of the flick and a multidimensional threat as he joins hard-ish science fiction with his timey-wimey narratives. His rewrite of Jonah's script, which was owned by Paramount and originally set to be directed by Steven Spielberg (a notable, still-living, Boomer American director; see our Season Six for further info on this influential movie brat), introduced into the story sacrifices of duty and fatherhood, the vagaries of time, and Matt Damon and omitted the original version's People's Republic of China robots and the discovery of fractal alien creatures who absorb sunlight to instead have its protagonist Cooper return to his daughter (and their farmhouse rebuilt as a museum on a spaceship playing unused Ken Burn's documentary footage, it's a whole thing) as a man-out-of-time with his robot (actually, Sir Nolan prefers the term “machine”) ex-soldier buddy TARS. Oh, and possible predestination with interdimensional book-nudging and coded dust.  Special for this week's ep, listen to hear first-time pod guest Champlain Amy's hot takes before they're censored by the alphabet soup of the deep state; host Ken's longest Tarantino rant to date; other host Ryan fake it ‘til he makes it; and third host Thomas stump hard for CASE in that ongoing, friendship-ending, family-shattering, international debate between Team CASE or Team TARS.   THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegoodthepoda1YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a Text Message.BATMAN BEGINSCast aside your Batnipples! As a certain Patrick Bateman lookalike once said, “Well, a guy who dresses up like a bat clearly has issues,” and this week, TGTPTU tackles these issues in Sir Christopher Nolan's entry into the franchise that would define his middle career with BATMAN BEGINS (2005). Former cohost Jack returns from France to talk Bat and comics with a Gen Z take. Meanwhile, Ken, Thomas, and Ryan grapple and claw and melee in difficult to parse action sequences to control the mic and effuse about this first of the three Batman films covered this season of NOLAN VOID.After Insomnia, Sir Nolan's efforts to get his and Jim Carrey's project (a Howard Hughes' late-in-life insanity film) off the ground (or out the hotel penthouse) were stymied by Michael Mann developing The Aviator, a film that would take off with Scorsese as captain. Without a script of his own or film in development, Nolan would meet with the Warner Bros (and maybe their sister Dot) to launch a “reboot” of the Batman franchise with Hollywood's resident comic book aficionado David S. Goyer.Together with production designer Nathan Crowley who'd worked with him on Insomnia for Warner Brothers, Sir Nolan worked to create a realism beyond what had come before in comic book films. In fact, per Nolan, “Everything we did was about being in massive denial that there was such a thing as [a comic book movie].”Casting Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne (Batman takes nearly an hour to appear onscreen) and making use of his split persona from American Psycho, Bale is joined by a series of heavy hitters, including Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Cillian Murphy, Rutger Hauer, pod-fav Ken Watanabe, the estimable Mark Boone Jr (back from Memento), and, perhaps oddly cast and not-to-return to the franchise, Katie Holmes.Exclusive this week! Hear the Batman Baggins summary delivered by Ken but written by our guest director, someone really famous and from New Zealand and whose name rhymes with Jeter Packson, who may have confused Nolan's film with his own take on rebooting the Dark Knight as so many directors took a stab at the reboot post-Schumacher Schumacher Schumacher (hopefully you weren't reading this aloud before a mirror). Also, enjoy this week an experimental sound mix to cover for Thomas's brief absence from the mike as he deals with a dog releasing mind-altering gas.So listen and continue to download and listen through the remainder of Nolan Void, for there will be a Batman in the pairing for all remaining episodes. What, you ask? Will the hosts this season get caught by their very own temporal pincer movement by reviewing The Dark Knight Rises before The Dark Knight? Stay tuned to upcoming and exciting (perhaps, anything's possible, but most at least one of the following four episodes will be moderately amusing) episodes to find out.Now please forgive us. We have to return some videotapes. D-FENS.THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegoodthepoda1YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a Text Message.NOLAN VOID 3.5: WET 'N WILD WWII  Join TGTPTU for an hour, a day, a week—the approximate runtime of, how long it feels listening to us talk for, and the delay in releasing the episode due to internet issues, respectively—as we respectfully cover Sir Christopher Nolan's DUNKIRK (2017) as part two of our third pairing in our NOLAN VOID season.  Surprisingly his shortest major release film, Sir Chris employs his time bending chops to retell the heroic(question mark) story of England's bravely running away, away, bravely turning their tails and fleeing from the Nazis and the French through three intercut and overlapping tales with a cast strictly from the British Isles: young WWII soldiers played by mostly unknowns (with one notable Millennial icon exception) over a presumable span of a week try evacuating the French beach; cutie Barry Keoghan on a civilian boat sent to help evacuate Dunkirk over a day tries surviving a head wound caused by shell-shocked Cillian Murphy while Mark Rylance keeps a stiff upper lip and carries on; and, finally, over an hour of flight due to leaking fuel, Tom Hardy (Bane on a plane) provides air support shooting his machine gun from his Spitfire: pew-pew-pew (and if the movie feels like a run-on sentence, then perhaps this verbose paragraph is justified).    At approximately half the cost of INTERSTELLAR (preceding film yet to be discussed this season), Dame Thomas considers this a low-budget production of only $100M that used real equipment from the era for an air of verisimilitude. As mentioned last episode, experiences gained shooting on water will prepare the Nolan team for the wet work in TENET (subsequent film already discussed). Despite or because of this historical piece's bending the war genre with little dialogue and absence of enemy combatants (Germans) portrayed, Dunkirk earned Sir Big Daddy Time his first Oscar nom for director but (spoiler for our second episode) not his last.  TGTPTU recommendation: Dunkirk is best watched in IMAX if you're gonna. THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegoodthepoda1YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a Text Message.NOLANVOID FIVE!For the first in our third set of NOLAN VOID pairings this week, TGTPTU hosts Ken and Thomas take on the surprisingly linear INSOMNIA (2002) with newly appointed co-host Ryan to introduce a new drinking game guaranteed to kill any participant: take a dose of an alcohol every time Kenneth says something about not wanting to compare Nolan's adaption to the 1997 Stellan Skarsgård-starring Norwegian original… and then does exactly that. Perhaps one reason for the linearity of Nolan film starring three previous Oscar-award winners (Al Pacino, Robin Williams, and Hilary Swank) was it has the unique distinction of being his only film without a screenplay credit by. Rather, scripting the adapted Insomnia was the work of Hillary Seitz who is also credited with writing a grand total of three movies: a never-released dark comedy Early Bird Special (small role with Jon Hamm), Eagle Eye (starring Indiana Jones' son later of Transformers fame), and, in 2021, The Unforgivable (starring Sandra Bullock, Viola Davis, Vincent D'onfrio who we all know as Thor in Adventures in Babysitting), which received limited release and was Netflix top film for two weeks before being bumped by a film starring Mother!, Margaret Thatcher, Madea, Willy Wonka, Howard Hughes, and Hellboy (yes, of course, we're mentioning the unmentionable Don't Look Up). Returning from Memento are both Wally Pfister as cinematographer (and will stay with Sir Chris until DK Rises) and Dody Dorn as editor (who leaves for Ridley Scott flicks after this) while old-timer David Julyan scores again (having done so previously for both Following and Memento).  This week, along with Ken gripes regularly comparing Nolan's to the original, in a surprising twist Ryan and Thomas find themselves aligned in enjoying this Americanized thriller. That Chris Nolan, don't sleep on him.THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegoodthepoda1YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a Text Message.This week TGTPTU goes deeper into Season 12's NOLAN VOID with TENET (2020), a title spelled the same forward and backward, and the progenitor of TGTPTU's “temporal pincer movement” description of our podcast's episode pairing methodology.Instead of spoiling the episode with notes, here's a transcript spoiling cohost Thomas' plot summary:We're following one main person, played by John David Washington, who gets his guy but when he returns to get rid of bombs, he himself is saved by someone who is not from his crew nor the police nor of the terrorists but has a noticeable red charm like for identifying airport luggage on his pack.Unfortunately when he gets back to the van, Washington's undercover character appears to have been made, and so he's getting his teeth pulled out at a train depot and is unable to take his cyanide pill but his buddy is able to slip him his and our protagonist is not dead but awakens with new teeth and has passed his test as the suicide pill was not real. Instead, it was all test; he's now considered dead and can pursue a deeper danger that is only known as “Tenet” (and interlocking fingers).Because of arms dealing or something, Protagonist meets his handler Neil (Robert Pattinson) who knows all about Protagonist, including that he prefers cola to soda water. They slingshot themselves onto an impenetrable building to meet an arms dealer who informs Protagonist the real baddie is a Russian oligarch who's getting info from the future.Protagonist travels to brunch with Michael Caine who plays Michael Caine to inform Protagonist that his entry point to the oligarch is his wife Katherine “Kat” Barton (Elizabeth Debicki) who had an art scam she's being blackmailed for by her husband, so she meets Protagonist for dinner and husband oligarch (still unseen) isn't happy and his goons arrive to take Protagonist into the kitchen to rough him up but instead get the business end of a cheese grater from Protagonist.So now we're at like Minute 40 and it's a two-and-half-hour movie.Oh, Branaugh's got a fitness tracker, the radioactive material from heist is really the final piece from the future's doomsday device that might not be set off in the future as Branaugh now has all the pieces and that fitness tracker is a deadman's switch so Washington's Protagonist and an army with turnstyle technology on a boat and Pattinson's Neil get divided into two teams (one going forward, one backward) to raid the facility with the device while Debicki's Kat is on a yacht with Branaugh to keep him from suiciding, although she wants to kill him.Neil swaps sides between forward and backwards during the attack to save the day and, after saving the day because it hasn't happened yet from one timeline maybe, needs to go back to the past—and his likely death (although Protagonist keeps this information compartmentalized).Neil lets Protagonist know they will be friends in the future because that's where he's from and Protagonist notices a red doohickey we saw from the Opera scene. Movie continues because there was a cell phone and we find out that Protagonist appears to have mastered timey-wimey things because he saves Kat from being killed by the arms dealer from earlier to protect the Tenet secret by killing the arms dealer first, and everything's fine and there are no repercussions. Yay!Oh, spoilers. But you already knew that. Or you will.THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegoodthepoda1YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gB

Send us a Text Message.MEMENTOOur Nolan Void Season continues with the first of our second pairing MEMENTO (2000). Many of you might suspect we would try writing these show notes in reverse, but, as that'd be too meta for us, we'll leave that to some other aspiring writer with memory problems we know.  Speaking of self-referential memory problems, Memento was actually the film that couldn't find distribution that Steven Soderberg claimed could be the bellwether of the death of the 90's indie cinema wave (see our erroneous show notes for FOLLOWING, Season 12, Episode 1).Listen past the awesome intro song for a surprise guest giving the plot synopsis this week, dogs barking not on command, and, to the eagle-eared listener, the return of the squeaky chair. Sir Nolan upon reflection stated there was a greater leap between his first feature Following and Memento than any between project. He had to trust another behind the camera (Wally Pfister, who'd shoot this and the next six Nolan films and win an Academy Award for INCEPTION) and had union rules and budgeted shooting schedules (losing some days when relocated from Canada to the States). Eventual Dame Emma Thomas would not be the executive producer as she was working at a different company. Memento also would star professional actors, a stellar lineup perhaps thanks to the early interest of Brad Pitt in the role of the Leonard instead played by the amazing Guy Pearce and costarring two actors hot off the success of the MATRIX: Carrie-Anne Moss and Joey Pants.Written concurrently with his younger brother (no “Sir”) Jonathan Nolan who'd develop his premise into a short story “Memento Mori” published in Esquire, the movie Memento follows an amnesiac and heavily tattooed protagonist Leonard (the former attribute part of but latter absent from the short story) as he pursues seeking revenge on his wife's mysterious killer, having himself somehow contracted a condition similar to Sammy Jenkins, a man who allegedly retain all of his memories up to a specific moment of trauma but afterwards could form no new memories. But is there more similarities between Jenkins and Leonard than his memory triggered by the tattoo “Remember Sammy Jenkins” allows?To unravel this story told backwards and to find a deeper understanding as its paired with next week's TENET, cohosts Ken and Thomas are again joined by the provisional host Ryan, who also recorded the intro/outro music. THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegoodthepoda1YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a Text Message.Season 12, Episode 2 continues TGTPTU's paired exploration of the films of Sir Christopher Nolan with his most recent film OPPENHEIMER (2023). Running the risk of being considered by critics a “bomb,” Sir Nolan boldly moves away from genre pictures for his first biopic of a man who'll/'d (pardon the time-wimey-ness) get mention in Sir Nolan's preceding film (and anteceding in our season of NOLAN VOID coverage), namely, TENT: Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy) who led the development of the atomic bomb in Los Alamos but also may have stolen a fellow professor's alcoholic wife (Emily Blunt) and had an affair with a murdered Communist (Florence Pugh) all the while really getting caught in the craw (as they say in New Mexico) of Rear Admiral Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.). This cast is supported by a murderers' row of actors, including Matt Damon, Benny Safdie, Jason Clarke, Kenneth Branagh, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, Gary Oldman, and over a dozen other familiar faces. Having left Warner Brothers, his home since INSOMNIA, after its handling of the release of Tenet, Sir Nolan's first and only subsequent feature was released in the Summer of 2023 during the cultural portmanteau phenomena of BARBENHEIMER. Continuing a tradition that has not yet started in the podcast's coverage (due to the nature of its temporal pincer movement), the film was shot largely (in dual senses of the term) on Imax, which because of the noise associated with these massive cameras meant Nolan would pull again from his experiences of his first film FOLLOWING to record dialogue separately at the time of the shoot. For flashback scenes of Strauss, special black and white Imax film stock had to be created.Listen as in real time host Ken finds effective storytelling tips, co-host Thomas discovers his new drag name, and provisional host Ryan learns how to engage the mute button. THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegoodthepoda1YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

CHRISTOPHER NOLAN SZN!FOLLOWING *SEASON PREMIERE*For Season 12 *Nolan Void*, TGTPTU continues its iconic practice of pairing bookended movies from a director's filmography, first and last until we pair the middlemost. This season we cover the twelve movies of the granddaddy/infant son of the temporal pincer movement himself Christopher Nolan, starting with his inaugural feature: the independently-made, London-shot B&W film FOLLOWING (1998) Initiating a series of noir films leading to greater projects, the technically-minded Nolan leans into his budget limitations, writing a script whose three timelines will allow him to edit around missing or unusable footage filmed on weekends with novice actors (excepting his uncle and future Wayne Enterprises board member professional British actor John Nolan) and crew from University College, London where young Nolan studied English Literature (and met his future wife). Aside from working fulltime for a commercial film agency creating corporate videos, the other reason for weekend shoots was the self-financing pool of limited funds available after each paycheck to purchase and develop more 16mm B&W film with Nolan operating the camera and his wife Emma Thomas serving as an extra in addition to her professional role as producer. Sensitive to budget and realism, Nolan states in Criterion Collection commentary that the choice of a hammer instead of gun was due to fake guns when wielded in indie films often looked fake but a fake hammer has right weight.Nolan would end up moving to the States to enter Following into festivals where it received much buzz but no distributors, leading Steven Soderbergh at the time to comment: “And I watched it and came out of there thinking ‘That's it. When a movie this good can't get released, the [the 1990's independent movie wave is] over.”Special thanks this week to Ryan for returning to the podcast to discuss this film (and less so for its paired OPPENHEIMER coming next week) as well as extra editing by co-host Ken for splicing back into linearity other co-host Thomas's bit of jumbling up his commentary into three styles of slurred speech: his normal, as he's increasingly intoxicated, and after biting (literally) his tongue while making a “Stop, Hammer time” joke. THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegoodthepoda1YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Our Darren Ssarfinale!Season 11 of The Good, The Pod, and The Ugly concludes on an odd note, both mathematically and colloquially, as the boys wrap up their Darren Aronofsky season with Episode 9 covering PERFECT BLUE (1997), joined by frequent guest Ryan.The debut film of famed anime and short-lived director Satoshi Kon released one year prior to Aronofsky's debut (PI), Perfect Blue is an adaptation of an edgy YA thriller novel popular in Japan. Taking liberties with plot, Kon deepens the twists of the source material, adding in his own layers of the nascent internet anxieties and troubling the idea of identity visually and thematically, and in so doing turns what was meant as a Japanese OVA into a feature released worldwide. TGTPTU takes on directly the movie scuttlebutt sites posting slander since Requiem for a Dream (with a resurgence after Black Swan) and claims Kon himself on occasion supported (although he would die at age 46 months prior to Black Swan's release), that The Scarf lifted shots and scenarios directly from Kon's first masterpiece, and the strident conclusions the hosts and guest reach are definitely not going to stun and probably won't impress you, our listener. But stay tuned afterward for Ken, Thomas, and Ryan's rankings of Aronofsky's eight-film filmography, a teaser for next season, and this season's bestowal of the much-coveted Squeaky Chair Award. THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegoodthepoda1YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken Koral

DARREN ARONOFSKY CH. 4 E2: THERE'S A LITTLE BLACK SWAN ON THE SUN TODAYSeason 11's temporal pincer movement by The Good, The Pod, and The Ugly draws to a close with tricky reflections on BLACK SWAN (2010). Listen to our opinions double, pirouette, and morph during Chapter 4, Episode 2, covering our final Darren Aronofsky movie but not our season's finale, with No-Longer-Special Guest Ryan and his squeaky chair understudy. Long-time Aronofsky collaborator and pod-fav cinematographer Matthew Libatique returns to shoot this tale that'd be like if Dostoevsky's “The Double” mated with Tchaikovsky's “Swan Lake” and their kid was kept in a Barbie-pink child's room as her mother painted her portrait and put mittens on them to keep them from scratching at the feathers erupting from their skin when they won the part of Odette and Odile.Reality fractures (as do opinions during the pod) for Natalie Portman's Nina Sayers in her Oscar-winning performance, causing consternation for one host and glee for others. Ambiguities extend and multiple as Aronofsky claims the ending tragic while Portman believes it triumphant and Host Thomas in front of a car. Is this a story about womanhood and autonomy? The dangers of obsession? The need for a well-balanced meal?Trigger warning for hangnails and those who have allergies to shattered glass. THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegoodthepoda1YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken Koral

SCARF SEASON: ARONOFSKY 7Alright, brother. It's the smackdown, drag-out matchup you've been waiting for all season long as THE WRESTLER (2008) jumps into the ring with The Good, The Pod, and the Ugly for Chapter 4, Episode 1. In this final chapter, we watch with teeth and sphincters clenched tight on the edge of our folding chair seats as the subject of Season 11, director Darren Aronofsky, make his comeback with a comeback star.For the first and only time in his professional career, Darren “The Scarf” Aronofsky tags in a new camera partner, cinéma vérité cinematographer Maryse Alberti. The Scarf also sets aside pen and paper, giving the writing credit to another while allowing for script punch-ups from his main star, the long thought retired leading man, the ex-professional boxer, the small dog aficionado, the one, the only, Mickey “Whiplash” Rourke.But Aronofsky's not done building his veteran team of newbies. For the wrestler's love interest, he'll recruit Marisa “My Cousin” Tomei, a former winner of the big belt (the Academy Award), garnering her a nom again as well as Rourke. And starring as Rourke's estranged daughter, Evan “Once & Again” Rachel Wood.And just you wait, all you wrestling fans, all you who appreciate watching performers go a little crazy, who want to see athletes going to the mat and love the choreography of the ring, for The Wrestler is only Part 1 of this final chapter. Next week, it'll go head-to-head, round-after-round with pod fav: Black Goose.Are you ready to rumble?!!!!!!THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegoodthepoda1YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken Koral

ARONOFSKY SEASON! NOAHChapter 3, Episode 2: So the Voice of Kenneth spake unto The Good, The Pod, and the Ugly, and it sayeth: Let there be NOAH (2014); and all the peoples then of the world rejoiced for Darren Aronofsky for his blockbuster that bringeth forth He of the Scarf his firsteth and onlyeth picture to be No. 1 opening weekend at the box office.As the temporal pincer movement winds down, guest Ryan returns with an extra squeaky chair to discuss this bold and big-budget entry into the Aronofsky canon. According to research by Thomas, Paramount's marketing budget for Noah was over $100M, nearly as much as it cost to shoot the film, airing advertisements during commercial breaks in the Super Bowl and the 2014 Winter Olympics. This Easter weekend release would also have YA and graphic novel tie-ins.Russell Crowe, who as offered the lead role of The Fountain, plays the titular Noah, Anthony Hopkins plays his grandfather Methuselah, and Logan Lerman is a joke to Ken's begats for some reason. Ari Handel returns to produce and puts quill to parchment with Aronofsky for their second corroborative writing credit (their first being Chapter 3, Episode from last week's The Fountain), Matthew Libatique shoots, and Mark Margolis plays a Watcher (a stone angel fallen from Heaven during the Creation that lusted for Earthly women and would father the Nephilim because—you know what? not worth your time reading). And Jennifer Connelly returns (last seen in Requiem for a Dream).  Listen closely for the glee in Thomas's voice as the hosts comb through repetitious verses of Genesis desperate for the dry ground of understanding after being flooded with Lord of the Rings-style imagery for 2 hours and 18 minutes. Stay awake for when his dogs reacting to Ken's fond desire to adopt an armadillo dog. And hear Ryan suggest that Tubal-Cain had some good ideas. THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegoodthepoda1YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!):Ken: Ken Koral