Podcasts about stephen garrett

In the past on this podcast, host Neal Pollack and guest Scott Gold have occasionally steered listeners awry, we'll admit it. After watching the first couple episodes of genre shows like The Acolyte or Daredevil: Born Again, they've encouraged people to watch the shows, and then had to sit back and cringe for weeks as the shows not only failed to stick the landing, but flopped entirely. With pretty good confidence, we can say that's not going to be the case with Season 2 of 'Andor,' which will surely be one of the best TV shows of the year when all is said and done.While it may sometimes be a little too "grownup" for its own good, 'Andor' is still thrilling and intelligent entertainment, a Star Wars not really for kids, with great action scenes, a skilled cast, nuanced writing, and gorgeous costumes. It's about the best you could hope for out of a TV show, particularly a Star Wars one. Neal and Scott feel no shame.Stephen Garrett pops into the pod-dome to discuss the surprisingly popular 'The Accountant 2,' which Stephen didn't really like much. It takes a brotastic genre turn away from the moody character piece that was the first 'Accountant' movie several years ago. While Stephen admires it when a sequel breaks so far from the original source material, he found this one just plain goofy.Unable to comment on 'The Shrouds' from David Cronenberg because of a professional conflict of interest, Stephen mostly lets Neal have at this film, which is weird and awkward and stiff and throws away cool ideas and amazing future tech on a weird conspiracy plotline about sinister Chinese doctors helping the CCP throw a surveillance blanket over the entire world--by using dead bodies. It's not a bad conceit for the movie, but there's lots of telling, not showing. Stephen breaks character to say he thinks The Shrouds is a profound meditation on mortality and grief. That's true, but it buries its depth beneath six feet of plot exposition.Meanwhile, Neal and Stephen are celebrating, because the box-office is through the roof. It's a glorious time to go to the movies, and to be a movie fan. At last, movies are back. We never lost faith at the BFG podcast. Just please keep your devices silent and out of sight, and no talking unless you're at a special screening of A Minecraft Movie.Enjoy the show!

No half-measures on the podcast this week as we cover some of the year's best content. On the movie side, we talk about 'Sinners,' Ryan Coogler's mind-blowing 1930s historical Delta blues movie–with vampires. Stephen Garrett hadn't even heard of this movie until about two weeks ago, and it was a five-star shocker for him. Neal Pollack, equally skeptical, equally and totally blown away. Coogler delivers a show-stopping musical number at the movie's midpoint, at which point a ton of vampire mayhem sets in and completely transforms the narrative. But it's testimony to how amazing Sinners is that the movie is perfectly entertaining even before the vampires take over.And then, once they do, it's as thrilling a horror movie as you'll ever see. Michael B. Jordan gives a career-defining performance as the twins at the center of the narrative. Hallee Steinfeld absolutely steams off the screen as a femme fatale for the ages. Jack O'Connell is one of the most sinister and compelling movie villains that we've seen in a long time, and Delroy Lindo lands a sure Oscar nomination as an old Delta bluesman who's comic relief, except when he's not. This is one of the best American movies in a long while, and it will be certain to be a huge contender for an awards season that doesn't start for another nine months. Sinners gets the BFG podcast's highest recommendation.Also heavily in the plus column, though maybe not quite as heavily, is the new season of Black Mirror. Omar Gallaga swoops into the pod dome to talk to Neal about the seventh season of Charlie Brooker's tech dystopia sci-fi anthology show. By this point we're all comfortable enough with Black Mirror's twists and tropes that they've ceased to be shocking, but there are few things on TV as satisfying as a well-executed Black Mirror episode. And this season is well-executed even by Black Mirror standards. Omar thinks that some of them run a bit long, but there are still plenty of twists and and thought-provoking ideas about tech, as well as some dark laughs and plenty of Easter eggs for true fans.It's a great week to be a fan of pop culture, and to listen to the BFG Podcast!

BFG film critic Lani Gonzalez saw 'A Minecraft Movie' at 4 PM on a Friday with her kids, and it wasn't one of the more raucous Minecraft screenings. But it definitely doesn't surprise her that the movie made a tremendous amount of money. Minecraft is the most popular game in the world right now. "The youth of America and the world are bringing energy to the theater," she tells Neal Pollack on this week's podcast. "It gives me hope," Neal says. That said, Lani tells Neal, it was not the best possible movie they could have made, despite Jack Black's tremendous energy. Strangely, Jared Hess, who also made Napoleon Dynamite, directed A Minecraft Movie. What an unusual culture phenomenon.Meanwhile, in the real world, American museums are facing tremendous budget cuts from the Trump Administration. Sharyn Vane joins Neal to talk about this disturbing trend, and highlights the struggles of a basically apolitical children's museum in Madison, Wisconsin, which, like so many other people and institutions, is finding itself caught up in the winds of massive political change. It may not be as dire as we think, or it might be more dire.Val Kilmer died last week at age 65, and Stephen Garrett joins Neal to talk about the work and legacy of one of our more eccentric and talented screen actors. Neal, as is his tendency, pretty much just talks about Top Secret! the entire time, but Stephen broadens the scope a bit and discussions Kilmer's unique filmography and his life as a truly strange and beautiful man of California. RIP Val Kilmer, the world will miss and remember you.This episode is pure BFG: cinematic history, a little politics, a little light pop culture. If you listened to this show, you'd understand everything that's going on. So listen! Thank you very much.

TV, movies, and politics get the full BFG Podcast treatment this week. First up, Omar Gallaga stops by the podcast dome to talk with Neal Pollack about 'The Studio,' Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's terrific Apple+ satire about Hollywood and the movie business. Neal calls it "the best constructed TV comedy since Veep.' Omar compares this "ongoing panic attack" to The Larry Sanders Show and Curb Your Enthusiasm. It's a fine lineage, and it features the best Martin Scorsese cameo you'll ever see. Omar points out how "cinematic" the show is, and it's hard to disagree. This is peak streaming. What will the 'Kool-Aid Movie' look like.Death of a Unicorn does not reach peak cinema. Stephen Garrett pretty much hated this horror comedy about, well, killer unicorns. Neal saw Death of a Unicorn at South By Southwest, whose audience responded to it as though they were seeing Ghostbusters for the first time. Well, this is not Ghostbusters. It is Death of a Unicorn, and it is a huge bomb. Stephen found himself sympathizing with the so-called "villains". Sometimes you have to kill a unicorn, he says. Neal is a little less heartless. He just doesn't much like Jenna Ortega. Death of a A Unicorn is a footnote. A unicorn-shaped footnote.Bill Burr is on a tear lately, boosting the legend of accused healthcare CEO murderer Luigi Mangione, giving the business to Elon Musk, and generally excoriating billionaires even though he himself is quite wealthy. Bobby Hilliard is all about Bill Burr. He calls him the heir to George Carlin. Whereas Neal thinks that though Burr is a top-end comedian, he also thinks that Luigi is a murderer. Therein lies the debate. Bobby is an avowed socialist. Neal is an avowed not socialist. Bill Burr and his magic helicopter are getting rich all the way to the banking app, and on the way back, too.Enjoy the show!

Has Steven Soderbergh retired? Because his retirement looks an awful lot like making two movies a year. BFG Chief film critic Stephen Garrett, who knows more about film on Tuesday than you'll know in a lifetime, has interviewed Soderbergh several times and says that "retirement" is really more of a euphemism for DIY filmmaking. With 'Black Bag', an admittedly $50 million studio picture, he brings the DIY mentality to a star-studded spy drama that's loaded with wit and sexiness and everything else that's missing from movies for adults these days. Stephen and Neal Pollack liked it somewhat, even though it's really a condensed version of a clever streaming show about spies.Stephen feels like the stars, Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender, have zero sexual chemistry, but Neal feels the heat from Rege Jean Page and especially Marisa Abela, who plays a horny young surveillance analyst. It's a clever, fun, tight thriller. And modest. Enjoy.South By Southwest (SXSW) is in the past now, and despite what you might hear, it's not dead. But the Austin-based cultural festival has trimmed back the bloat somewhat, condensing the struggling tech and music festivals and placing the booming film and TV festival more front and center. That's certainly not a problem for veteran SXSW heads Neal Pollack and Pablo Gallaga, who between them saw more than a dozen movies and waited in more than a dozen lines.Tune in for Neal and Pablo's comprehensive breakdown of where SXSW is going, and where it's been, and also a very detailed breakdown of the new Tim Robinson movie 'Friendship.' They liked it, maybe they wanted to like it more. If you meet Neal anywhere in public after May, when the movie comes out, you will have to have a similar conversation. That's why you need to follow BFG. You'll be able to talk about anything in the culture.Enjoy the podcast!

We lead off this week's podcast with a detailed discussion of what works and what doesn't work in Bong Joon-ho's sci-fi satire 'Mickey 17.' On the one hand, it's a Bong Joon-ho movie, his first feature since winning the Oscar for 'Parasite.' This film, says Stephen Garrett, is well on the spectrum with his other over-the-top sci-fi satires, 'Snowpiercer' and 'Okja.' It's a big swing. Neal Pollack really disliked Mark Ruffalo's villain performance, and really didn't care for the excessive voiceover by Robert Pattison, though he agrees with Stephen that Pattinson carries the movie as Mickey, a poor schmuck in the future who allows himself to become a corporate clone slave. This movie is the definition of a "March release," somewhere between Oscar bait and summer blockbuster. They don't always hit.Daredevil is on Disney+ now, but this is no Disney-friendly show. 'Daredevil: Born Again' is the most violent and brutal content the Marvel Cinematic Universe has yet produced, which is actually completely necessary. Daredevil is a violent character, trying to protect a violent city. Scott Gold joins Neal to break down all that's good about 'Born Again,' which is a lot, but in particular they single out Charlie Cox, as Matt Murdock/Daredevil, and Vincent D'Onofrio, once again owning his role as Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin. If you're Marveled out, you're Marveled out, but this is still peak Daredevil.Enjoy the podcast!

This is how good the Book and Film Globe podcast is: five days before Sean Baker stood in front of the world and used his glorious Oscar moment to urge people to see movies in the theaters, host Neal Pollack and guest Jacob Harper discussed Sean Baker's campaign to get people to see movies in theaters. It was also a great relief to hear Neal say that Anora was the "favorite" to win Best Picture, because obviously it did. But the quest to return people to the theaters–and to have them behave themselves once they get there–continues. We will continue to support a push for a 90-day theatrical window. It will help us arrange our schedules.In addition to his great conversation with Harper, Pollack welcomes in Stephen Garrett, as he does almost every week. Pollack and Garrett discuss the amazing career, and very strange death, of the actor Gene Hackman. Hackman was one of the greatest of the Greatest Generation, a paragon of gruff, realistic acting in an era where film actors feel more plastic than ever. The celebration of his life, and the mourning of his death, gives us some hope.Our hope is a bit more muted for James Bond, now the intellectual property of Amazon. But contributor Jamie Mason isn't quite as worked up as the rest of the world. Bond has become a bit too self-serious over the years, and maybe this changing of the guard will give us all a chance to rediscover what is fun and kitschy about Bond. We can get some period pieces. The spinoff shows won't necessarily be a disaster. James Bond is not George Smiley, and Sir Ian Fleming was not John LeCarré. Make James Bond fun again, that's what we say.Enjoy the podcast!

This week on the BFG podcast, Stephen Garrett is stateside to offer his totally objective opinion on this year's Oscar nominees. He and Neal Pollack get into it right away because Stephen insists that 'Emilia Perez' is an actual Oscar contender. Neal insists that there has never been a more canceled movie in Oscar movie. Everyone hates Emilia Perez. Neal is convinced that Timothée Chalamet is going to win best actor, though Stephen asks him to throw on the brakes. They both think that Demi Moore is going to win Best Actress, the closest we get to a sure thing this year. The Oscars are actually kind of a tossup, Neal and Stephen know more than the average person but also no more than anyone else. Get in your bathrobe, pour some wine, and watch along with us.A couple of Max (HBO?) shows are on the table this week. Matthew Ehrlich is here to dish with Neal about the incredible Season 3 from 'The White Lotus'. Who is going to die? What's up with Patrick Schwarzenegger's abs and Parker Posey's accent? What is Lisa from BlackPink doing here? Where did Greg get all his money? Why do we talk about this show like these are real people? The White Lotus is so back!As far as real people go on TV, they don't get any realer than the people on 'The Pitt,' Max's hit medical drama that is so much like ER, it stars Noah Wyle and was basically created by the same team, minus Michael Crichton. Paula Shaffer, sounding fabulous, joins Neal on the podcast to discuss this new frontier of "competence porn." It is gripping and emotional. They have their favorite doctors. Paula likes Noah Wyle, who doesn't, but is also partial to intern Trinity. Neal is considering spraining his ankle or something just to have a few minutes getting to know Dr. McKay. This show is so realistic, it almost makes you want to go to the emergency room. In Pittsburgh. Almost.Enjoy the podcast!

It's a typically great show this week as host Neal Pollack welcomes the heavily compromised but still insightful Stephen Garrett, who worked on the trailer for the Brazilian Oscar nominee I'm Still Here. But Stephen would have to have a heart of stone to not like this beautiful and thoughtful movie, and he doesn't. Neal is full of praise for the film's passionate defense of human rights, and its beautiful elegy for a time and place that's no more. And they are both enthralled, as is everyone else, by the lead performance of Fernanda Torres, who, like her character in the movie, has called attention to herself through sheer force of will. A great film.Also great, though much less serious, is Companion, a new Black Mirror-style robot sex thriller-comedy (yes, that's a genre now) from writer-director Drew Hancock. Neal welcomes Pablo Gallaga to the podcast for a chat about Companion, and neither of them can find much to criticize, though Neal, still a relative horror noob, seems to like it a bit more than Pablo. But neither of them have anything negative at all to say about Sophie Thatcher, the film's star, who gives a smashing, star-making performance as Iris, a thinking, murderous sex android with a heart of gold, or at least a heart.No one knows what to think about Severance, now streaming in its second season on Apple+, other than that it's the most interesting show on TV right now. Scott Gold joins Neal on the podcast to talk about Ben Stiller's puzzlebox, to praise the cast, particularly Britt Lower and John Turturro, and to hope against hope that Severance doesn't go the way of Lost and that Stiller knows where he's going with this incredibly surreal, and funny, workplace comedy that is about way more than being a workplace comedy. Your innie will love it, and so will your outie. We will allow you both to listen to this episode.

At the Book And Film Globe podcast, we rarely take a particular political stance–with the exception of campaigning to keep movie theaters open during COVID and decrying all kinds of censorship. We'll be encouraging you to read books, watch movies, and enjoy streaming TV as the nuclear winter hits. Culture marches on.Therefore, it's with complete neutrality that we report that Donald Trump has taking charge of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, along with taking charge of America, The Gulf of America, and, to some extent, the rest of the world. Neal Pollack welcomes Michael Washburn to discuss the cultural implications of Trump taking over the Kennedy Center. Michael says "there are other voices out there in America" that have not had the opportunity to appear at the Kennedy Center. Neal is unsure about what those voices might be. "What is a Donald Trump-run cultural center going to look like?" he wonders. We'll spend the next four years trying to unravel the answer for that question.It's not that mysterious, on the other hand, what the MCU is going to look like the next four years. It will look exactly the same as it always has, and will continue to make hundreds of millions of dollars a movie no matter how inconsistent the narrative or the quality of its movies. Neal and Stephen Garrett don't make any claim that 'Captain America: Brave New World.' This "very non film-festival movie" kicks off the MCU's 2025. Neal wonders why they changed the name from "New World Order" to "Brave New World." "Oh no," he says. "You might make Donald Rumsfeld's ghost mad.""This is a new movie and there's a brave new hero," Stephen says. We guess that's technically true, though as Neal points out, it's really a stealth sequel to a 2008 Hulk movie that happens to feature a new Captain America. Anthony Mackie is actually kind of a dour new hero, and the movie continually moves away from potentially interesting storylines to focus on Harrison Ford turning into a Red Hulk. Spoiler alert, it's in every trailer and on every poster. And it features a villain who has a cauliflower head.Enjoy the podcast!

It's a typically great show this week as host Neal Pollack welcomes the heavily compromised but still insightful Stephen Garrett, who worked on the trailer for the Brazilian Oscar nominee I'm Still Here. But Stephen would have to have a heart of stone to not like this beautiful and thoughtful movie, and he doesn't. Neal is full of praise for the film's passionate defense of human rights, and its beautiful elegy for a time and place that's no more. And they are both enthralled, as is everyone else, by the lead performance of Fernanda Torres, who, like her character in the movie, has called attention to herself through sheer force of will. A great film.Also great, though much less serious, is Companion, a new Black Mirror-style robot sex thriller-comedy (yes, that's a genre now) from writer-director Drew Hancock. Neal welcomes Pablo Gallaga to the podcast for a chat about Companion, and neither of them can find much to criticize, though Neal, still a relative horror noob, seems to like it a bit more than Pablo. But neither of them have anything negative at all to say about Sophie Thatcher, the film's star, who gives a smashing, star-making performance as Iris, a thinking, murderous sex android with a heart of gold, or at least a heart.No one knows what to think about Severance, now streaming in its second season on Apple+, other than that it's the most interesting show on TV right now. Scott Gold joins Neal on the podcast to talk about Ben Stiller's puzzlebox, to praise the cast, particularly Britt Lower and John Turturro, and to hope against hope that Severance doesn't go the way of Lost and that Stiller knows where he's going with this incredibly surreal, and funny, workplace comedy that is about way more than being a workplace comedy. Your innie will love it, and so will your outie. We will allow you both to listen to this episode.[audio mp3="https://bookandfilmglobe.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/BFG-PODCAST-186-021125.mp3"][/audio]

The entertainment world doesn't stop moving just because of political upheaval. It marches on! On this week's podcast, host Neal Pollack talks with contributor Stephen Macaulay about the ever-changing world of AI and how it's affecting Hollywood productions. Topics covered include The Brutalist AI language-enhancement "controversy" and a new ruling from the U.S. Copyright Office that will influence how Hollywood uses AI going forward. Nuance is good when it comes to issues like this, and few entertainment business reporters are more nuanced than Macaulay. A great conversation, well worth your ears.Our other Stephen, one Stephen Garrett, went to the Sundance Film Festival this year, like he does every year. It's the second-to-last Sundance, and it was a cold Sundance to boot, so there's a kind of wistfulness to his report. Some of the Sundance content will be coming to TVs and movie theaters soon, and Stephen is on top of what you should see, or shouldn't see. But mostly, you should see everything. That's kind of the BFG mantra.Enjoy the podcast!

This week, the BFG Podcast pays tribute to David Lynch, of whom there is nothing bad to say. Stephen Garrett's wife and daughter may not be into Lynch, but Stephen and Neal Pollack (and Neal's wife Regina) loved him, and so does most of the rest of the world. Stephen buries the lead and talks about the time he interviewed Lynch at a film festival, and the story is as idiosyncratic as the rest of Lynch's work. We cover as many bases as we can, from 'Mullholland Drive' to 'Dune' to 'Wild at Heart,' spending some time lingering on Lynch's relationship with Steven Spielberg. It's a great conversation about a great American artist.Not so great is 'Wolf Man,' a sad horror dud from Leigh Whannell, who made the entertaining 'Invisible Man' reboot in 2020. But this is not entertaining, says Pablo Gallaga, despite decent performances and good visual effects. It's just not entertaining, and not scary enough. And Neal continues to warn the world that werewolves are real and should not be used for our amusement. But is the world listening? No!Enjoy the podcast. And for god's sake, watch a David Lynch movie!

From the highbrow to the lowbrow, it's a veritable brow rollercoaster on this week's podcast. First, we go high. Neal Pollack welcomes in Stephen Garrett to discuss Brady Corbet's 'The Brutalist,' the most fun you'll have at a three-and-a-half hour movie about architecture and Holocaust trauma this year. Neither Neal nor Stephen have a cross word about this thoroughgoing work of art, starring, according to Nikki Glazer, "two-time Holocaust survivor" Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce, giving a signature performance as a weird Pennsylvania industrialist. Neal also points out that, in this era of heightened antisemitism, it's nice to see a movie that pays respect to the trauma of Holocaust victims and that treats the founding of the state of Israel as something that was politically good and necessary. It's a great film, with great music, and it includes a 15-minute intermission!Now our brows dip low as Neal welcomes Paula Shaffer to discuss the recent crossover episode between 'Abbott Elementary' and "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia,' which surprisingly go together as well as chocolate and peanut butter. Paula and Neal then go down the rabbit hole of TV crossover history. She introduces him to Poobala.com, the rabbit hole of rabbit holes. Did you know that Mr. Carlin from 'The Bob Newhart Show' was also a patient on 'St. Elsewhere?' That's correct. And since St. Elsewhere, we later learned, existed only in the imagination of an autistic middle schooler, that means that The Bob Newhart Show, along with Cheers, Frasier, and hundreds of other shows, also only existed in his imagination. To further tangle the web, it was later revealed that 'Newhart' was just a dream that existed in the world of The Bob Newhart Show. So was Newhart also in Tommy Westphall's imagination? Or was St. Elsewhere part of Bob Newhart's dream life? Are we nothing but a dream ourselves?These are the kinds of questions we try to answer on Book and Film Globe. Enjoy the show!

Movies are back. Even though for some of us they never went anywhere, now they are really back. The holidays were a buffet of filmgoing fun. But at BFG, we mostly ignore the children's fare and focus on what the grownups like.No one is more grown-up than Count Orlok, Nosferatu himself. He's a real oldy-moldy. Two night dwellers themselves, Neal Pollack and Stephen Garrett find a lot to admire in Robert Eggers's atmospheric take on the vampire legend. But Stephen finds the movie kind of silly and not very scary, and neither of them are really down with Lily-Rose Depp's literally convulsive performance as the vampyr's eternal love object. But then Willem Dafoe shows up and seems realize what kind of movie he's in, and things get kind of fun anyway.A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan biopic, is pretty fun from the outset. Jim Arndorfer joins Neal on the podcast to pick some nits at the Dylan legend as James Mangold tells it, but even the crankiest Dylanologist has to admit that the movie hums along on a vibe of good feeling and great music and really magnetic performances from pretty much the entire cast. Neal thinks it's going to be Best Picture. It's hard to argue. It's always hard to argue with him.Things get pretty sexy when Stephen Garrett returns to the Pod Dome to talk about 'Babygirl,' a sort-of comedy starring Nicole Kidman as a robotics CEO with some pretty repressed kinky desires. A foxy intern shows up and gives her what she wants and then some. The move is sort of provocative but also kind of ridiculous. In the end, it's thin characters stuck in a fun conceit, but the screenplay never quite delivers and the sex, frankly, isn't kinky enough to carry the premise So sayeth our male critics who always satisfy every desire.Enjoy the show!

My guest on this episode of the College Faith podcast is my colleague Dr. Stephen Garrett, Vice-President of Curriculum at Global Scholars. Steve is uniquely qualified to help us understand the benefits and challenges of students taking a semester or year to study abroad, having taught in Lithuania as a “receiving” professor of study abroad students and being a “sending” parent of a son who studied abroad. In this podcast we discuss: Steve's perspective as a "sending" parent: How Steve and his wife first began considering with his son the possibility of studying abroad The value of studying abroad How much parents should be involved in the process The importance of realizing that every school offers different study-abroad programs  Three different models or ways to study abroad  Benefits and cautions about third-party study abroad companies  Who might studying abroad not be for Other considerations such as the language of the host university and country, the status of the host university, the weather, etc. What he wishes he knew as a parent before sending his son off to study abroad Allaying parent's fears of security and safety for students studying abroad The importance of registering with the US Embassy in the host country Concerns about connecting and making friends in the host country The value of the inevitable “failures” while studying abroad Steve's perspective as a “receiving” professor: What helps students have a good study abroad experience The role understanding different cultures plays in a good experience What will ensure the student has a very bad study abroad experience Resources mentioned during our conversation: Your university's Study Abroad Office (or similar title) US State Department's website The Red Cross T. S. Eliot, Christianity and Culture: Essays The Culture Company's Country Comparison Tool Andy Crouch, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling

Let's have some real talk: This was not the best year ever at the movies. When you combine lingering production delays from the pandemic with the very real aftereffects of the Hollywood strikes, you had pretty slender pickings when it comes to big-studio pictures. That said: BFG still went to the movies, all year long! We covered all the film festivals, and saw every film we could, major-release and indie. There are still directors giving us intense personal visions and entertaining us with giant tentpoles. The world of entertainment is changing, but this year's relatively weak crop could still be just a blip.Stephen Garrett, who sees every movie in the world, and Sara Stewart, who used to but has backed off to attend graduate school and pursue an actual career, join perpetual cinephile Neal Pollack to talk about their picks. Everyone loved Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, and Stephen and Sara try to persuade Neal that Dune 2 is great. Sorry, Neal finds Dune 2 boring. Neal himself loved The Apprentice and Challengers. For his art-house pick, he went with La Chimera. Stephen loved The Brutalist and Queer. Sara goes hard in the paint for Dev Patel's Monkey Man.And because this is Book and Film Globe, Jewish-themed movies came up. Sara was a big fan of Between the Temples, which we've discussed exhaustively on this site. Neal and Stephen went for the more Oscar-friendly 'A Real Pain.' Other movies, selected by our critics but not discussed on this episode, include 'I Saw the TV Glow,' Dahomey,' 'Eno,' and 'His Three Daughters.' Finally, Neal gets real squeamish about 'The Substance.' Sara and Stephen both loved it, but Neal cannot tolerate movies where things come out of other things. It's a lot for him. And if movies in 2025 feature things coming out of other things, he'll assign them elsewhere.Enjoy the show!

As we lurch toward 2025, our podcast continues to cover the waterfront of 2024's pop culture. First up, Scott Gold joins Neal Pollack to talk about 'Dune: Prophecy.' Neal wonders, why does this Max show have to take place 10,000 years before the Dune movies. That seems like a long time. Scott says it is but a grain in sand in the vastness of the universe. How would he know that? But he's also definitely right. And the show is not boring, full of palace intrigue and creepy space witches and genuine moments of horror to go along with the incredibly expensive and vivid set design and Shakespeare-level performances. Dune: Prophecy will not be for everyone, but it's definitely Game of Thrones set in space.Decidedly not Game of Thrones in space, but almost as weird (in a different way) than Dune: Prophecy is Queer, the new William S. Burroughs adaptation from director Luca Guadagnino, who's never afraid of a challenge. Stephen Garrett joins Neal on the podcast to talk about Daniel Craig's radiant performance as a midlife seeker who desperately wants love, and also drugs. There is plenty of unrequited love in the film, and plenty of requited drugs. The really amazing part is that everyone in 1948 could just afford to kind of hang out and do whatever they wanted. This is the dream, really, and also kind of the nightmare. A brilliant adaptation of an unadaptable book.And that's all of the podcast for this week. Isn't that enough?[audio mp3="https://bookandfilmglobe.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/BFG-PODCAST-177-121024.mp3"][/audio]

We go big on the podcast this week as the biggest movie week of the year is upon us. Neal Pollack and Stephen Garrett, childhood best friends turned mortal film-critic enemies, come together to discuss 'Wicked,' the blockbusteriest blockbuster of the year. Battle lines draw immediately as Neal favors the performance of Ariana Grande, a theater kid who is clearly playing her dream role. Stephen prefers the more nuanced performance of Cynthia Erivo, who Neal finds a bit pretentious. They both agree that there's no reason on Earth why this needs to be two movies, and that there's a lot of filler set in a "Hogwarts without magic." But some of the musical numbers are lavish and fun. Neal is also disappointed that the monkeys do not wear diapers.There's no such disappointment when it comes to 'Gladiator II.' Stephen thought the sequel was fun but unnecessary. Neal, on the other hand, really appreciates a movie that features CGI baboons, sharks, an angry rhino, Denzel Washington, and a monkey wearing a diaper. He calls star Paul Mescal an "angry barista". An instant camp classic, that's what we say.Bobby Hilliard joins Neal to discuss something very disgusting, the 'Terrifier' movies, which Neal is too scared to see. Bobby worries, and with good reason, that the antics of Art the Clown are desensitizing audiences to the worst possible violence imaginable. There are things in the 'Terrifier' movie so horrible, you couldn't begin to imagine them. Bobby warns Neal that there's nothing even remotely humanizing about Art the Clown. He has no Freddy Krueger, Jason Vorhees, or Michael Myers backstory. It's irredeemable gore, with absolutely no reason to exist other than to make audiences go "ewwww". Terrifier 3 made more than $80 million at the box office. Someone is digging it.Our podcast is unlimited. Enjoy, and Happy Thanksgiving!

As we continue to process the cultural fallout from the 2024 Presidential election, writer and podcaster Meghan Daum stops by the pod-dome to talk to Neal Pollack about the strange phenomenon of writers and creative people leaving Twitter for Bluesky, seeking a safe space from the MAGA storm. But there's no escape, Meghan and Neal conclude, and then proceed to talk shit about people getting MFAs, and about how the world has labeled them ideological traitors. But whatever the trend is, Neal concludes, he's going to miss that train and fail to cash in. That's the one constant in life.Meghan and Neal pivot to talking about the rise of Justine Bateman, who Meghan thinks is doing witty work right now on Twitter, providing "director's notes" for liberals having crying meltdowns over the Trump election. But let's be clear, Meghan says, Justine is one phone call away from being on Joe Rogan. She is not our friend. She has moved far beyond our reach. That's another important lesson to glean from recent weeks.Onward to less self-deprecating topics. Stephen Garrett appears to discuss 'Anora,' which both he and Neal agree is a funny but also serious modern take on the hooker with a heart of gold motif, a kind of hyper-realistic Pretty Woman set in Coney Island. Neal considers this an Oscar contender, Stephen is maybe a little more reluctant to hand off the statuette. But they both agree that Anora is a real crowd-pleaser.As is 'A Real Pain', from writer-director-actor Jesse Eisenberg. Neal takes the lead on this one, saying it's nice to see a movie that takes generational Holocaust trauma seriously, yet is also still funny and meaningful. And both he and Stephen agree that Kieran Culkin steals the show and deserves the praise that's about to rain down on him for the next few months.Justine Bateman does not then make a surprise appearance on the podcast.Enjoy the show!

It's October, that special time of the movie year where quality awards-bait shares space with horror flicks and other genre fare. We have space to write about it all on BFG, but barely have enough time to talk about it. So this week chief film critic Stephen Garrett joins Neal Pollack for a kind of speed-round to catch each other and all of you up on what's in theaters and also on the way out of theaters.First up is 'Conclave,' a pulpy not-quite-murder mystery set in the Vatican. Apparently there's more intrigue surrounding the election of a new Pope than there is surrounding the selection of the new head of a Mafia crime family. Maybe they're actually the same thing, Conclave posits. Stephen calls Conclave director Edward Berger the king of "empty prestige" pictures. Neal sort of agrees with him but still enjoyed Ralph Fiennes's campy lead performance as a Cardinal-detective who's undergoing a crisis of faith.On a less serious note, we have 'Venom: The Last Dance,' which Stephen points out has the same creator as the previous two Venom movies, both of which he also reviewed for us. While he absolutely hated the first Venom, Stephen has warmed to each subsequent installment, and he's almost a fan. At this point, we have to wonder if a Venom symbiote isn't inhabiting his body, or at least his reviews.Parker Finn, the creator of Smile 2, is almost like a horror auteur at this point. The sequel is flashier than the first installment, and it's also a huge hit. Stephen found it a bit too long and maybe a bit too full of itself, but it's also genuinely creepy and also has some deliciously nasty ideas about how deep-seated psychological trauma can haunt people, and even kill them. But even if it doesn't, the franchise is a hit and it's here to stay.With the election approaching, The Apprentice should be required viewing. Neal calls the Donald Trump origin story, set in the 1970s and 80s, "one of the best movies I've seen all year." Stephen won't go that far, but he has nothing but praise for Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn and Sebastian Stand as Donald Trump. This movie is more popular overseas than in the U.S. Neal thinks it's not pro-Trump enough for MAGA types and not anti-Trump for people who are anti-Trump. But for people who love good movies, it's perfect.We can't say the same about 'We Live In Time,' a completely dopey romantic drama about cancer and chefs and who knows what else. Stephen calls this Florence Pugh/Andrew Garfield movie "so dumb," and Neal and Stephen both marvel at the millennial uber-beta-male who is Garfield's character. Then there's the non-linear narrative, a curse on the world that hopefully this movie will end. But we wouldn't count on thatEnjoy the show!

Art the Clown from 'Terrifier' three could not join host Neal Pollack for this week's BFG podcast because of various disgusting commitments, but Stephen Garrett is always available. He stops by the Pod Dome to talk about 'Saturday Night,' Jason Reitman's ode to the opening night of Saturday Night Live. Stephen liked the film, he enjoyed its ramshackle "let's put on a show" vibe and has warm, fuzzy memories of the early days of watching the program. Neal found the movie twitchy and annoying and overly reverential, though he did admire some of the celebrity impersonations and loved the cheap shots at Milton Berle. It's a film that celebrates something that doesn't really need to be celebrated.'English Teacher,' now streaming on Hulu since its initial run on FX has ended, is one of the best-reviewed and least-watched shows of the year. Critic Matthew Ehrlich takes time out from digging a swimming pool in his backyard by hand to praise the show and its creator Brian Jordan Alvarez for one of the best and least woke depictions of gay life ever put to screen. Neal also really digs the show and the Texas setting and finds the side characters charming and delightful. Above all else, the show is funny, and it's also short, and it's something you really should watch.Your opinion about 'Megalopolis' will vary from frame to frame. Neal and Stephen Garrett have a blast picking apart the weird phenomenon of a $100 million boondoggle made by Francis Ford Coppola, an 85-year-old man. Coppola is doing things that we haven't seen in movies since the 1930s. Whether or not that's a good thing will widely depend on the viewer. But we can all agree that Aubrey Plaza knows exactly what kind of a movie she's in, and boyo, does she deliver the goods as a character named Wow Platinum.Thanks for listening to the BFG Podcast, with your new host, Wow Platinum.

"I have never been so happy to see a film flop at the box office," host Neal Pollack says of 'Joker: Folie a Deux,' which he discusses on this week's podcast with film critic Stephen Garrett. Stephen is a little kinder to the film than Neal is, but he agrees that not much in this movie works. Neal finds the courtroom sequences boring and cliched, the musical sequences uninspired, and the dark romance completely incompetent and unbelievable. Both Neal and Stephen agree that this deeply unpleasant movie deserves everything that's coming to it, and that Joaquin Phoenix can't sing even if Lady Gaga can. Todd Phillips should go straight to movie jail for this crime against cinema. So sayeth we.Rabbi Pollack (not an actual rabbi) invites Rebecca Kurson on the podcast to talk about 'Nobody Wants This,' the Netflix sitcom about a sex podcaster, played by Kristen Bell, who falls for a Jewish rabbi, played by Adam Brody. Boy, did Becky hate this show. It depicts a Judaism where no one talks about October 7, Israel, or the Holocaust. Neal argues that this is a Netflix sitcom about a sex podcaster so no one wants to hear characters talk about those things. Fair enough, Becky says, but this is still a morally questionable show about horrible people who don't deserve love. Neal just likes watching Brody and Justine Lupe, who plays Kristen Bell's sister, and also feels like it is a somewhat accurate depiction of a certain type of bourgeois Angeleno who he knows too well. This show does not hate Jews, Neal concludes. Maybe it's just kind of dumb.It is a contentious week on the BFG podcast! Give us a listen and find out why host Neal Pollack calls it "the number 4 rated entertainment news podcast in The Gambia."

BFG Podcast! BFG Podcast! BFG Podcast! Host Neal Pollack once again summons up the world's finest pop-culture critics to talk about culture high and low this week. First up is Stephen Garrett, appearing from the film-critic underworld to discuss Tim Burton's new hit sequel 'Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.' It's messy and too stuffed with exposition, but both Neal and Stephen think it's kind of fun, even if they don't like Justin Theroux in it at all. The major point of dispute comes over Willem Dafoe, who plays a TV cop in the underworld. Neal found it hilarious, Stephen thought it was stupid and unnecessary. Let's remember, after all, that this is a 'Beetlejuice' movie. Let's not overthink it.It's possible, however, to overthink 'Strange Darling,' now playing at a grind house near you. Neal saw 'Strange Darling' at the Vista Theater in Los Angeles, appropriate since JT Mollner's film owes such a huge debt to Quentin Tarantino. Pablo Gallaga, who has seen Strange Darling TWICE, has nothing but praise for the film, for first-time cinematographer Giovanni Ribisi, and especially for the film's star, Willa Fitzgerald. Both he and Neal agree that Fitzgerald is a major actor in the making, and that this odd serial killer love story with an unconventional narrative structure could be her signature role.Then there's Jeff Goldblum as Zeus in the Netflix show 'Kaos.' Critic Samuel Porteous joins Neal to deconstruct this "very British" take on the Greek gods. Sam enjoys the "world building" of the show, but wishes there were more grandeur and less overtly, or at least less obvious, political posturing. It all tries a little bit too hard and is a little bit less fun than it should be. Kaos is less of a "masterpiece" and more of an interesting failure, he says.Unlike the BFG Podcast, which is always a success. Enjoy!

We discuss the most popular movie in the world on this week's podcast, and also discuss two...books. We are BOOK and Film Globe, after all. You can't pigeonhole us.Frequent sci-fi and fantasy reviewer Dan Friedman joins Neal Pollack on the podcast to discuss 'The Bright Sword,' a very modern retelling of the Arthurian legend from Lev Grossman, who wrote The Magicians series. Did you know Sir Bedivere was gay? Lev Grossman does! In any case, The Bright Sword is quite engaging and fun to read, and both Dan and Neal reserve praise for this book, which injects fresh life into a moldy mythology.'The Book of Elsewhere,' by China Mieville and, we guess, Keanu Reeves, is a bit more of a lift, despite being half the length. Based on an ultra-violent comic book series by Reeves, this is the story of 'B,' an 80,000-year-old immortal warrior who cannot die, or who at least comes back to life after he dies. Think John Wick meets Highlander. It's not as much fun as it sounds, if it sounds fun at all. Mieville fills the pages between grisly action sequences with philosophical rumination on the meaning of identity, approach at your own risk. Both Dan and Neal found this book to be a bit much.Stephen Garrett crosses over from another realm in the multiverse to discuss 'Deadpool & Wolverine' with Neal. They both found this meta-entry in the MCU to be kind of cheap and a load of fun. There's not much else to say about the #1 movie in the world, other than "Marvel is back," and nothing is going to stop it from reasserting its dominance over the pop-culture landscape. They also discuss, along those lines, the return of Robert Downey Jr. to the MCU. The years of Dr. Doom are in front of us. It's Marvel's multiverse, and we just live in it.Enjoy the show, people of The Gambia!

The Book and Film Globe podcast returns this week with another fantastic episode. The world of American politics may be roiling, but we continue to cover the culture, because politics is downstream from culture, or something along those lines.First, we travel north of the border, where Canadian literary society is in crisis after the Nobel Prize-winning writer Alice Munro finds herself posthumously embroiled in a terrible scandal. She essentially attempted to cover up the alleged sexual abuse of her own daughter. Host Neal Pollack and contributor Michael Washburn in no way condone Munro's actions, but they wonder why the literary world is so quick to pass judgment on someone who, when she died a couple of months ago, they hailed as the greatest short-story writer of all time. What are we actually doing here? The BFG podcast wants us all to slow our roll.Stephen Garrett stops by to talk to Neal about the lousy space-race comedy 'Fly Me To The Moon,' though he balks when Neal refers to co-star Channing Tatum as a "himbo." It is highly unlikely that the government would have been able to set up a fake moon landing in an empty hangar on the site of the Apollo 11 launch. Neal spends a lot of time pointing out the outfits of Scarlett Johansson and her assistant, which is a real problem when you're talking about a movie about the moon landing. What a turkey.However, we do recommend 'Longlegs,' or at least Pablo Gallaga does. Neal gets scared easily at movies, and Pablo tells him that Longlegs is, in fact scary. But it's scary in the way that 'Zodiac' is scary. Neal does not find Zodiac scary. Look, who knows, this is a horror movie. Pablo likes it. It's a huge hit. And we're on top of things here at BFG.Enjoy this episode!

It's six degrees of Kevin Bacon and J.K. Rowling on this week's podcast, as we discuss two movies that feature Kevin Bacon and one online controversy that definitely features J.K. Rowling.First up, special guest Kat Rosenfield, a columnist for the Free Press, appears to talk about her recent column on last week's ridiculous online tumult that went down after a millennial on X discovered an old Rowling interview where Rowling called Vladimir Nabokov a "love story." That's about as stupid as it sounds, but Kat and host Neal Pollack pick it apart quite intelligently. The conversation is a riff on Rosenfield's take: "People, in their fervor for recreational hatred, are rendering themselves functionally illiterate." Amen to that.Stephen Garrett shows up on the podcast like he does nearly every week. This time, he and Neal discuss 'MaXXine,' the "thesis" movie from director Ti West, if a thesis movie can be an artsy riff on 1980s direct-to-video horror movies and also the sleaziness of the 1980s porn industry. Needless to say, this is not a family film. Stephen thinks it's a little cold, studied, and pretentious, but there's no denying that MaXXXine is true to its pulp sensibility, and it really captures a certain kind of 1980s vibe. Highly recommended, or not, depending on your sensibility.Eddie Murphy is back, not on the podcast, but in 'Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F'. Resident Beverly Hills Cop JP Guinn joins Neal to sass-talk the ultimate cinematic sass-talker. JP places this new Netflix number somewhere between Beverly Hills Cop 2 and the disastrous Beverly Hills Cop 3 on the Axel Foley timeline. There's not much good to say here, though "Neutron Dance" remains a fun song for a dumb action sequence, even if that action sequence involves a snowplow destroying downtown Detroit. "What are we really being nostalgic for here?" Neal asks. Good question.From high to low, we cover it all on BFG. Enjoy the show!

BFG serves up an unpretentious meal of pop-culture criticism in this week's podcast. Stephen Garrett enters the room quietly to talk to noisy host Neal Pollack about 'A Quiet Place: Day One.' After dodging brief accusations of misogynoir, Stephen admits that the prequel is well-made and that Lupita Nyong'o is beautiful and talented, but he just cannot get around how stupid the aliens are in the movie. They don't eat anything. They just hate noise. It's a jump-scare franchise and nothing else. If you like that sort of thing, you will like this flick. Stephen does not like this sort of thing.Greg Ford doesn't like The Bear at all. He tried, oh he tried. Neal also really wanted to like The Bear, but in Season 3, the show is clearly high on its own supply, over-enamored with its own artistry and gorging on self-importance. We are not alone in taking on The Bear here. Critical opinion has flipped quickly. Our beloved new TV restaurant changed its menu, and people don't like what it's serving. Neal and Greg certainly do not.But Neal and Stephen DO like Kinds of Kindness, the new film from Yorgos Lanthimos, starring a "fearless" and occasionally naked Emma Stone. Neal likens the film to a short-fiction anthology, sort of a sexy Kafka set in Louisiana, with sex cults. It's kind of a great film, Neal and Stephen agree. Willem Dafoe also gets naked.Enjoy the podcast!

Host and editor Neal Pollack has returned from the World Series of Poker, where he did pretty well, not great, but pretty well, to deliver steaming-hot pop-culture takes on a new episode of the BFG podcast.Neal came home from Las Vegas and immediately started mainlining as much TV as possible. The first priority was a new season of House of the Dragon, now airing on Max. Omar Gallaga, the world's greatest House of the Dragon recapper, joins Neal to talk about season 2. Neal loves HOD, he finds it reminiscent of the early seasons of Game of Thrones, when we were all much younger and the world was a happier, more innocent place. Omar is entertained, in the classical sense, but he also sees HOD as more of a faux-Shakespearian history and less of a faux-Shakespearian tragedy. It's based on a fake history book by George RR Martin, as opposed to GOT, which was a novel adaptation, so Omar regrets that the characters don't have the rich interior lives they need to make this show great. Neal just wants dragon fights.William Schwartz joins Neal to talk about the new season of The Boys. They parse the "controversy" surrounding the show. The right-wing expresses outrage that The Boys satirizes the right wing, which it always has. But stupid liberals also come under the microscope. As do corporate diversity programs. The Boys takes the piss out of our superhero-saturated culture like no other cultural property ever could, and any critique of it is essentially invalid. Season 4 is just as wild and gross and outrageous as ever, and Neal and William both love it.Meanwhile, at the movies, The Bikeriders has opened Stephen Garrett saw this film a year ago and barely remembers it, but Neal saw it last week and found it surprisingly effective. Jodie Comer is as Midwestern as a British woman has ever been, and Tom Hardy and Austin Butler give filthy greaser biker-guy star turns. As Neal said in his review, The Bikeriders is a 1960s Village Voice article, but in movie form, and it's one of the entertainment year's most pleasant surprises.Enjoy our show!

On this week's podcast, guest host and site contributor Scott Gold discusses some of the biggest pop-culture recent releases from the big and small screen.First up, Scott and fellow Star Wars nerd, author and TV writer Rob Kutner discuss whether the latest Disney+ series to tap into a galaxy far, far away, The Acolyte, gets far enough away from the Skywalker saga to make things interesting again. Does switching the tone and theme to something darker and more mystery focused shed fresh light on what makes Jedi the way they are? And it it all enough to make casual fans as excited about this show as we all were when The Mandalorian exceeded expectations?Next, film critic Stephen Garrett gets in our heads with a discussion of Pixar's much-anticipated sequel Inside Out 2, which continues the story of Riley Andersen as puberty brings a whole new set of personified emotions including Anxiety and Ennui. How does it measure up the the beloved original? Did you happen to catch that Bing Bong Easter Egg?Last but not least, Sharyn Vane explores Netflix's wildly popular true-crime story Dancing for the Devil, a three-part docudrama about the 7M TikTok cult. Sharyn talks about the internet rabbit hole she fell down getting to know these personalities long before Netflix came to the party with its own twisty take on the church that was producing popular dance content.Enjoy the show!

BFG goes to the movies this week even if no one else is. We cover three recent releases with the comprehensiveness they deserve.Stephen Garrett is back from Cannes to review 'Furiosa' with host Neal Pollack. He calls it "one of the great prequels ever made," and Neal can't really disagree. Yet there's an element of surprise missing from this 'Fury Road' origin story that has left it somewhat high and dry with audiences. Chris Hemsworth really chews the scenery, Anya Taylor-Joy does a lot of grunting, and there are plenty of exploding glider attacks on truck convoys if you like that sort of thing. We do!Gillian Gear returns to the show to talk with Neal about 'Back to Black,' the Amy Winehouse biopic. Gillian was bored by the movie. Neal said it pales in comparison with any Amy Winehouse documentary from a decade ago. It's a minor film trying and mostly failing to capitalize on the massive success of Bohemian Rhapsody from a few years back. The music isn't as central to Back in Black as it should be. Though Neal liked the two leads, Gillian was too bored to really care about them. This movie should go to rehab, HEYO.Saving the best movie for last, Omar Gallaga stops in to talk to fellow Austinite Pollack about 'Hit Man,' the years most Austin movie even though it takes place in New Orleans. Richard Linklater directs a script by himself and the movie's star Glen Powell, adapted from a Texas Monthly article. Powell and Adria Arjona steam up the screen in the hottest comedy crime-romance since Clooney and Lopez hooked up in Out of Sight, and that was a long time ago. It's a small-screen Netflix project in a lot of ways, but it still warrants a big-screen viewing if that's available to you. Highly recommended by us at BFG.Enjoy the show!

It's the end of the world and the end of an empire on this week's podcast. We know that sounds heavy, but host Neal Pollack and his guests, BFG contributors Omar Gallaga and Stephen Garrett, keep it relatively light.First up, Omar Gallaga joins Neal to talk about 'Nuclear War: A Scenario,' a book by Annie Jacobsen that scared the hell out of him, and will scare you, too. Jacobsen posits what would happen if a "Mad King," like, say, the one currently in North Korea, decided to test the limits of their nuclear arsenal. The answer: nothing good. There will be no hope. The only positive takeaway, Omar says, is that the Earth will regenerate without us. So let's all get on with our days, shall we?We could, for instance, watch 'Fallout' on Amazon Prime, which is based on a post-nuclear apocalypse video game and is a lot more fun to watch than the war-room scenarios depicted in Jacobsen's book. Omar was totally hooked on the show, which BFG recommends highly.As for Francis Ford Coppola's 'Megalopolis,' which debuted this week at Cannes, well, god bless him, Stephen Garrett says. The 40-year-old script is the equivalent, he says, of a pool shot that rips the fabric of the table and sends the ball flying into the wall. But it's also big and fun in a campy sort of way. Megalopolis is Coppola's moonshot, and at a press conference in Canness (which Stephen attended), he said he'll still be making movies in 20 years, which would make him 105 years old. Sure, why not? Go for it!Other highlights of Cannes include a new movie from 'Poor Things' director Yorgos Lanthimos, and a bunch of other stuff that sounds very depressing. Stephen will be spending the week seeing many more movies and drinking lukewarm rosé at beach parties. This is how he suffers for his art.Enjoy the show!

It's hard to imagine, but the BFG Podcast celebrates its 150th episode this week. We started out by recording it on a party line on Clubhouse, an app that people thought had potential back in 2021. Then for a while host Neal Pollack interviewed people via Skype. That's why, in its earliest iterations, the show sounds like we recorded it through tin cans at the bottom of a submarine. Gradually, Neal got some decent equipment and learned how to plug in his microphone properly, and we now use Zencastr, an easy-to-apply podcasting platform that only occasionally gives us problems. And what do you know? We are huge in Albania and Poland and Switzerland, and have even made the podcasting charts in countries where English is the primary language. We're so proud of our show, thank you for staying with us.Now, onto this week's podcast fare. Stephen Garrett is here as always, first to talk to Neal about 'The Fall Guy,' which Stephen found fun and charming. He bought into the popcorn-movie vibes entirely. Neal is a grouchy old man and hated the screenplay and didn't actually think Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling had good chemistry. Too much cutesy-pie insider Hollywood baseball, not enough stunt mechanisms. Stephen thought the whole thing worked pretty well.Neither Neal nor Stephen liked 'Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.' Where are the cool ape houses and the groovy leather jackets? Whither Dr. Zaius? Why is the story taking so long to develop? Why does May's skin look like she just visited Sephora? What the hell is William H. Macy doing there? So many questions, and this movie is so dumb.Not particularly dumb is 'Sugar,' on Apple+ TV. Chris Farnsworth joins Neal to discuss the Colin Farrell detective series that actually looks like it's a stealth Martian Manhunter series. Neal and Chris are apparently both huge nerds, and they buy into the detective series-ness of it all and definitely are buying into the John Sugar Is An Alien twist. That definitely gives the series a little something extra, makes it iconic, even.At this point, we're determined to get to episode 200. Why not 300? Why not indeed? There will still be books and films and streaming TV in three years. That's our prediction. Enjoy the show!

Host Neal Pollack is full of self-righteous and justified rage this week at the actions of his fellow PEN America members, who absolutely refuse to participate in awards ceremonies or the World Voices Festival until the Zionist menace is eradicated from this Earth. Pollack and BFG contributor Sharyn Vane go off on PEN members in this week's podcast episode, as writers are more concerned with trendy social-justice concerns than freedom of speech, which really should be their primary concern. They sound like college sophomores, not published authors. It's an outrageous trend that needs immediate correction.Pollack also reviews 'Knife,' the new memoir from Salman Rushdie about his near-fatal stabbing at the hands of an ignorant jihadist. While Pollack admires Rushdie's description of the attack and the resulting medical trauma, and has much respect for him as an outspoken defender of free speech, he also thinks Rushdie isn't hard enough on his fellow PEN America members, who are a real menace to the values that Rushdie supposedly stands for and holds so dear. Maybe you're seeing a theme to this week's show.But for dessert, Stephen Garrett joins Neal on the podcast to discuss 'Challengers,' the new tennis melodrama from director Luca Guadagnino. Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O'Connor burn up the screen as a racket-based love triangle. Neal and Stephen both love the script, the performances, and the general adult-drama vibe of the picture. Neal, as always, has trouble with the non-linear narrative structure. Stephen got a little tired of the aggressive musical cues. But you can forgive Challengers its little sins, because overall, the movie is a lot of fun, and allows us to forget for a while that contemporary "writers" hate freedom of speech and sound like a bunch of Maoist propagandists.Enjoy the tennis movie! Enjoy our show!

As part of the legendary first-ever Book and Film Globe Festival, we recorded an episode of our legendary podcast at The Book House in Long Branch, New Jersey, the hottest new bookstore on the Jersey Shore. Host Neal Pollack traveled thousands of miles to talk to some of his favorite contributors about the important cultural products of the day. It was delightful, and we drank much Pelican Punch.Stephen Garrett and Neal reunited on a couch to talk about Alex Garland's 'Civil War.' Neal appreciated the aesthetics of the movie but despised its politics. Stephen didn't mind the politics but didn't really think the story works. Neal says the movie is an absolute projection of liberal neurosis about the possible re-election of Donald Trump. Neal likens it to 'Red Dawn,' which Stephen thinks is vaguely ridiculous, but the comparison is apt. What kind of American are you? Hopefully not the kind of American who thinks 'Civil War' is a documentary. Does this movie imagine what a Civil War would be like in modern America? Sure. But it's still a paranoid fantasy.On the opposite end of the cultural spectrum is the fun and funny Girls 5Eva. we suppose your mileage may vary on this Tina Fey comedy about an aging 90s girl group. Contributor Matthew Ehrlich journeyed from New York City to the Jersey Shore to have a delightful conversation with Neal about the Tina Fey comedy factor, the fabulous Renée Elise Goldsberry, and who sings the Fuck the Police parody, "Ducks Are Mean Geese."Thanks to Stephen and Matthew for making the trip, and thanks for Sea of Reeds Media for operating such amazing bookstores. This will not be our last live recording ever. Thanks for listening at all times, and in all formats!

It's a vibrant BFG podcast this week, as host Neal Pollack just keeps on having opinions about things. Stephen Garrett pops into the scene to discuss 'Monkey Man,' directed, written, and starting Dev Patel. They both find the movie stylish, fun, and exciting, but maybe Dev Patel could have used someone telling him no, and could have used an editor, and could have given some of his characters name. But for everything that's wrong with Monkey Man, there's a lot that's right, and Neal, who went to yoga school, reads a lot into the serious critique of Indian society that Patel offers up. It's not just a John Wick-style knockoff. If only it didn't have so many flashbacks.Rachel Llewellyn appears to talk with Neal about 'Ripley,' the new eight-hour black-and-white adaptation of 'The Talented Mr. Ripley,' now airing on Netflix. Neal finds the new 'Ripley' way too self-consciously literary. A lot of people have been asking Neal if he's been watching Ripley, and he has been watching Ripley. Though he finds the black-and-white cinematography quite gorgeous, and has no issues with Andrew Scott's performance as Ripley, this "Ripleyist Ripley" ever made might be a little too much. It's a TV show for people who still subscribe to the New York Review of Books. Our memories of the 1990s 'The Talented Mr. Ripley' loom large. The new one looks gorgeous, but lacks glamour.'X-Men '97' also likes glamour, but it's not supposed to be glamorous. It's supposed to bring back a classic 1990s Marvel Saturday morning cartoon. Scott Gold joins Neal to wax geekily about this fantastic reboot of a very influential show. The new X-Men cartoon is so true to the old X-Men cartoon that it feels like a direct continuation. But in a lot of ways, it's better, telling classic comic-book stories in a way that old cartoons just simply couldn't. If you like weird comics lore, this is the show of the year.And this is the podcast of the year! Enjoy.

Neal Pollack is recovering from gout but still delivers a whopper of a podcast this week, with three familiar guests and a great variety of topics. Stephen Garrett comes in to chat about the bizarre 'Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,' which features his new favorite scene in a movie: King Kong using Baby King Kong as a club to beat up some other super underground apes. What a weird movie this is, perfect for a 10- year-old boy, essentially a Transformers movie starring King Kong and Godzilla (and Mother!) and Dan Stevens as the world's coolest animal dentist.Not as good or as fun is '3 Body Problem' on Netflix, which guest William Schwartz describes as being about how great scientists are but not really actually caring about what science does. That sums up a big problem in our culture, and in the show, which is about a super-team of super-scientists who get together to be attractive and stop a global threat, but does not even begin to approach the philosophical depth of the Chinese novel series on which it's based. We consider this a shallow disappointment over at BFG.We talk about food on the podcast, as we often do. Robert Dean stops by to praise and also make fun of 'Guy Fieri's Tournament of Champions,' which both he and Neal find entertaining, but they also find themselves wondering: What are we doing here? Why are we watching this? No one actually has the skill to cook like this in real life? Why is cooking now a sport, and not a daily activity for nourishment? And what's with all the nicknames?We ask the important questions on the BFG podcast. Thanks for listening.

Spring is here and we have a fun and light spring menu this week on the podcast. Stephen Garrett hops into frame and tries to answer host Neal Pollack's question: Why do we need a Ghostbusters: The Next Generation? Stephen says that 'Frozen Empire' is far better and more fun than the previous maudlin Ghostbusters reboot, but there are too many busters, too much lore, too much reverence. Neal makes the point that the original Ghostbusters was irreverent and almost conservative in its middle finger to the liberal Hollywood establishment. Stephen points out that it was a shit-talking working-man hangout movie. 'Frozen Empire' is awash in nostalgia for culture it doesn't even begin to understand.'Top Chef' has managed to reboot itself without its host Padma Lakshmi, replacing her with former champion Kristin Kish. Rachel Llewellyn joins Neal and they basically have nothing but nice things to say about Kish's vibe on the show, about the production quality, and about the quality of the cooking, the competition, and of its narrative abilities. In a food-media world oversaturated with cooking competitions, Top Chef remains state of the art, and we're glad to have it back.Magically, Stephen Garrett returns to the podcast to wax enthusiastically about the reboot of 'Road House.' Neal points out that the movie basically has no plot and no real character development, but Stephen doesn't seem to think those things are necessary in a movie. He argues that we should accept Road House on its own terms and just let the dumb wide-angle action carry us along. They agree to disagree, then bash each other over the head with a chair.Enjoy the show!

It's an excellent and thoughtful podcast this week. Host Neal Pollack welcomes Sharyn Vane and Michael Washburn to discuss their recent articles about questionable attitudes toward Israel and Jewish people in general in the literary world. Sharyn discusses the cancellation of actor Brett Gelman's recent book tour, tying it to how progressives don't want to approach the Israel-Hamas conflict with anything even close to nuance. Michael, who wrote about a South African writer returning a prestigious literary medal in protest of the German government's support of Israel, says that antisemitism on the left is a real problem. Neal is just concerned about anti-Jewish sentiment in general among writers, who have, at least in his lifetime, been strong allies of the Jewish people. That calculus has clearly changed, and we will continue to cover this change on Book and Film Globe.We will also continue to cover lesbian road-trip crime movies if they make any more, which they probably won't. Regardless, Stephen Garrett is here so he and Neal can be two straight guys talking about lesbian road-trip crime movies. Stephen makes the interesting point that 'Love Lies Bleeding' and 'Drive Away Dolls' both take place in the past, because only in the past would gay female relationships be an issue that would create any kind of dramatic tension. They both praise Katy O'Brien's magnetic performance in Love Lies Bleeding, and Neal liked the ironic ending, but Stephen found the movie too self-satisfied and didn't really admire the empty artistic flourishes.'Drive Away Dolls' from Ethan Coen, on the other hand, is the kind of embarrassing lesbian movie "grandpa" would make, Stephen says, though, like Neal, he found the central relationship sweet and Margaret Qualley's lead performance really compelling. Both these movies suffer from script problems and relevance problems, though they're relevant enough for us to talk about.Enjoy our show, which is always relevant!

One pop-culture phenomenon blots out the sun over Arrakis this week, and Stephen Garrett joins Neal Pollack on the podcast to talk about Denis Villennueve's 'Dune 2'. Not surprisingly, Stephen likes 'Dune 2' much more than Neal does, though Neal grudgingly admits that you're not going to get a better adaptation of Frank Herbert's 'Dune' novels than this. It is a monumental achievement of pop culture and is the best sci-fi epic of our time. That doesn't mean it's not pretentious and boring in places. Neal likes Léa Seydoux's cameo as a witch-spy, and Austin Butler as a charismatically weird bald antagonist. Stephen makes apologies for Timothée Chalamet's stiff performance, Neal has no time for that. Regardless, the spice is flowing, the worms are zooming through the sand, the interstellar political intrigues are intriguing.Bonus: Neal complains at great length about the eating habits of the woman who sat next to him at the Alamo Drafthouse during his screening!Finally this week, Michael Washburn enters the podcast dome to school Neal on the historical realities behind the excellent FX miniseries remake of Shōgun, currently running. The series, to its credit, doesn't shy away from some of the more ethnocentric aspects of feudal Japanese culture, and paints both its Asian and Western protagonists as complicated and flawed. For straightforward historical drama, you don't get much better than this. It's an epic saga of the world on the brink of modernity, and it's well worth your hours.Enjoy the podcast!

The Oscars are still a month away for some reason, but it's time for us to offer up our annual Oscar podcast preview episode. Stephen Garrett joins host Neal Pollack to admit that 'Oppenheimer' is going to run rampant over the major awards, though Neal offers up 'The Zone of Interest' as a value upset Best Picture picture and he and Stephen posit that maybe Sterling K. Brown's abs will defeat Robert Downey, Jr. for Best Supporting Actor. They also give love to Da'Vine Joy Randolph from 'The Holdovers' and Neal sort of persuades Stephen that Lily Gladstone will win Best Actress. In other news, 'Godzilla Minus One' got a nomination for best visual effects, but in a just world, it would have been nominated for Best Picture or at least Best International Feature.But that's not all! We also talk about the amazing Netflix narco crime drama 'Griselda.' First-time guest Jenny Parrott joins Neal to praise Sofia Vergara's amazing performance, her amazing jewelry and lipstick, and all the amazing narco gun-battle action on the cruel streets of 1970s Miami. It's a top-notch drug melodrama with more than faint echoes of 'Scarface, and it gets the BFG podcast's highest signal of approval.Enjoy the program!

Some weeks on the podcast, we discuss things that we love. Other weeks, we discuss things that we do not love, and this is one of those not-love weeks.First, Michael Washburn does not love the way SAG-AFTRA is trying to run cover for Alec Baldwin in the shooting case on the set of the movie 'Rust.' New Mexico brought new charges against Baldwin last week, and Michael breaks down the nature of the charges and the nature of how the Hollywood elite is trying to protect one of its own in one of the most tragic on-set disasters in Hollywood history.Matthew Ehrlich does love, or at least likes, the new 'True Detective' series 'Night Country,' but host Neal Pollack pretty much disagrees with him, as does the rest of the Internet. But Matthew has found himself drawn in by Jodie Foster's performance and by the puzzlebox nature of the show. He's on Reddit discussing Easter eggs with fellow obsessives, and maybe you will be too after listening to his take on the show.No one is on Reddit discussing 'Argylle,' least of all Stephen Garrett, who just despised the Matthew Vaughn action-spy comedy, which he found "exhausting," and he has no interest in spending any more time with that "damn expressionless cat in a backpack." Don't worry, Stephen, the cultural drought of January and early February is almost over. Movies and TV will get good again soon, and we'll be here soon enough to talk about things we love.Hope you love our show!

On a packed episode of this week's podcast, host Neal Pollack welcomes Sara Stewart to discuss the "snub" of Barbie director Greta Gerwig by the Academy. Neal plays devil's advocate, or maybe just the devil, and points out that Barbie DID get eight nominations. Sara recognizes that but also makes the strong point that only eight woman have been nominated for Best Director in Oscar history, and maybe the director of one of the biggest box-office hits of all time deserves a nod. But they both agree that the discourse went far off the rails when Hillary Clinton, always culturally tone-deaf, tweeted about it.Stephen Garrett is back from Sundance, and is feeling extremely inconvenienced! He had to wait for buses, sometimes for 20 minutes, to take him to his next movie. How inconvenient! He recommends films like 'A Real Pain,' directed by Jesse Eisenberg and starring Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin, and 'Love Lies Bleeding,' a "lez-ploitation" bodybuilding and crime movie from director Rose Glass. Sounds good, as do documentaries about Devo and Brian Eno.Rachel Llewellyn stops by the Blue Zone to talk about the Netflix docuseries 'You Are What You Eat,' which she slams as an advertisement for the processed vegan-food industry. A hot take from the BFG Dietary Institute. Neal recommends a diet comprised of 80 percent movie-theater popcorn. It works for him!Enjoy the show.

On this week's vital BFG podcast, host Neal Pollack welcomes Stephen Garrett to be two white guys talking about a black-directed movie making fun of liberal white people reacting to a black-written book. We're talking, of course, about 'American Fiction,' and while Stephen loved the warm, neurotic upper-middle-class black family saga that the literary satire was hiding, Neal wanted more satire and less family saga, because the trailer promised satire. Neal also wonders if the satire is a little dated, and they didn't even really talk about the ambiguous ending of the movie, which may or may not have worked brilliantly. Anyway, 'American Fiction' is definitely an NPR discussion piece, this is Fresh Air, I'm Terry Gross.Kristin Clifford shows up to discuss the somewhat less discussable 'Mean Girls' musical adaptation, which both she and Neal agree is fine but kind of a weak cash grab. It can't compare to the original 'Mean Girls' in terms of star power, and the songs, which are OK, take time away from some of the original movie's best jokes, and even end up kicking certain characters to the curb. It's kind of like a pretty good community theater production of 'Mean Girls,' fine if you like that sort of thing. We didn't, really.Neal is a mega-nerd, and so is Paula Shaffer, so their discussion of the 60th anniversary special episodes of 'Doctor Who' reach nerdy podcast heights. They both feel relief to have Russell T. Davies back in the showrunner chair instead of Chris Chibnall, are thrilled to see the brief return of David Tennant, and both have high hopes for the charming Ncuti Gatwa in the TARDIS for a few seasons. It's not the nerd-hip thrill of 1976 or 2007, the peaks of Doctor Who in popular culture, but the show has successfully regenerated for Gen Z, and we're here for it.And we're definitely here for you. Enjoy the show!

This week on the BFG Podcast, we have a classical-music picture, a car-racing picture, and a wrestling picture. It's not like the 1930s where the studios would crank out dozens of movies in each genre every year, but regardless, these movies fold right into traditional genres. They are pictures, and on the podcast, we present the big picture.First up, darling, Steven Garrett joins host Neal Pollack to discuss 'Maestro,' Bradley Cooper's love letter to Leonard Bernstein. Steven liked this picture more than Neal did, admiring the over-the-top passion that Cooper brings to his larger-than-life subject. Neal found the movie pretentious and Oscar-baitey. But they both liked the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Snoopy balloon cameo.Steven Macaulay, no relation, pops in next to school Neal on a little automotive history. Neal liked 'Ferrari,' he found the racing scenes exciting and admired Penelope Cruz's performance as Enzo Ferrari's wife, Laura. And, as it turns out, the history that the movie depicts is pretty accurate. A stylish Michael Mann outing, a must for any car buff, a maybe not for any car non-buff.Stephen Garrett returns to the ring to discuss 'The Iron Claw', Sean Durkin's wrestling tragedy about the battling Von Erich family of Denton, Texas, one of the most headline-grabbing wrestling acts of the 1980s. Stephen found the whole wrestling milieu a little ridiculous, but Neal admired the passion that Durkin brought the subject, and also the "secret weapon" of Jeremy Allen White, in his first major motion picture role. "It could have been directed by Richard Linklater," Neal says, delivering a high compliment almost as powerful as the Iron Claw itself.Plenty of pictures to watch and to discuss. Enjoy the show!

It's the last BFG podcast of the year, and we wrap it up with a year's-end roundtable with Omar Gallaga and Scott Gold, who offer their TV-watching perspective with host Neal Pollack, who watches TV 18 to 20 hours a day. Best shows include 'Reservation Dogs,' 'Succession,' 'Scavenger's Reign,' and a sitcom called 'Primo' which Neal has never heard of but which you should watch. Worst shows include Season 3 of 'The Witcher,' 'Squid Game: The Challenge,' and Omar's controversial selection of the final season of 'The Other Two.' The critics also did not like the reboots of 'Frasier,' 'Night Court,' or 'That 70's Show' which is now 'That 90's Show.' Essential listening about essential viewing.Neal also spends many minutes talking to film critic Stephen Garrett about 'Poor Things,' a surrealist horror sex comedy that's in theaters now, just begging for Oscar nominations. Neal and Stephen admired Emma Stone's fully committed performance, and the movie's odd syntax and sex design, but both found its extended scenes in a French brothel to be kind of gratuitous and weirdly exploitative. Your mileage may vary. That's why God made critics and Book and Film Globe.Happy New Year!

It's a magical, fantastical, confection-filled week on the BFG podcast. Host Neal Pollack welcomes in always-guest Stephen Garrett to talk about 'Wonka,' starring Timothée Chalamet as a truly child-friendly young Willy Wonka, who the movie re-invents as a gee-whiz paragon of goodness and light. Stephen liked the movie more on the show than he did in his review. Neal found it cloying and cynically calculated. They were deeply split on Hugh Grant's Oompa-Loompa, who Neal enjoyed but Stephen found weird. In general, 'Wonka' seems to have generated more debated among our two critics than it deserves. Listen up, and see it for yourself, and join the conversation.There is no split, however, about 'Godzilla Minus One,' which Neal proclaims one of the year's best pictures. Our critic London Faust isn't quite as enthusiastic, but does appreciate how GMO manages to create some human-scale characters worth caring about, even while it does deploy a somewhat hammy Japanese acting style. Neal appreciated the historical depth of the screenplay and frankly found Godzilla himself quite terrifying. You must see this film.'The Boy and the Heron', on the other hand, is only for Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli complete list. Critic Pablo Gallaga and Neal both admire the movie's beauty and off-kilter character design, but agree the world-building and the story just aren't up to the usual snuff. This film feels more serious and message-y than Miyazaki's previous animes, and it suffers from the old master trying to teach us a lesson.But we're not trying to teach you a lesson at BFG, we're just trying to present the best pop-culture podcast on Earth. And we succeed, every week. Enjoy the show!

Happy holiday podcast from all of us at BFG! This week is the podcast of your dreams. First up, contributor Robert Dean joins host Neal Pollack to talk about the Max biopic series 'Julia,' all about the early years of Julia Child, TV chef. It's a delight in troubled times, and Robert assures us that Julia's boeuf bourguignon recipe still holds up. Consume voraciously!Stephen Garrett steps out of Neal's dreams to talk to him about 'Dream Scenario,' which Stephen found "delightful." Neal won't go so far as to proclaim the Nicolas Cage movie, made by a Danish director, a "delight," but it is original and funny and thought-provoking, kind of a modern take on 'Adaptation' or 'Being John Malkovich,' which clearly are part of its DNA.Rachel Llewellyn parks her sleigh at the door to discuss with Neal the ironic millennial and Gen-Z appropriation of cheesy Hallmark Christmas movies, which have found a new audience with younger viewers who enjoy clowning on the clichés of the genre, though we suspect that they, too, want to meet a handsome amnesiac royal who is wearing a nice Christmas sweater in a small town. Who doesn't?Ho ho ho, it's our podcast! Give us a listen.

Two provocative new movies get the BFG podcast treatment this week. Host Neal Pollack begins the show with a wicked audio rendition of his piece excoriating stupid pundits who say that Hollywood has a new "Blacklist" because some people are expressing dumb opinions about the Israel-Hamas conflict. Spoiler alert: there is no Blacklist, not even a show starring James Spader Let's lay that discussion to rest.JP Guinn appears on leave from his semester at Oxford to discuss 'Saltburn' with Neal. They both agree that this move is "very horny" and that it's fun to watch it in a theater with people who it makes uncomfortable. Neal thinks it's more than a bit of a Talented Mr. Ripley knock-off, while not as good as The Talented Mr. Ripley. JP says it's a huge leap forward for Emerald Fennell as a filmmaker. And they both love Rosamund Pike and Richard E. Grant. It's a real talking-piece of a film, which is why we're talking about it.But we're really talking about Todd Haynes's 'May December', which Stephen Garrett and Neal give their highest recommendation. Neal reads it as a comedy, Stephen as a tragedy, but why not both? Regardless, it's "peak Todd Haynes," which is saying something in a career that has already had so many peaks. Both Stephen and Neal agree that this Netflix release about Hollywood exploiting people involved in childhood sex-abuse scandals is one of the year's best films.Enjoy our show!

This week's BFG podcast is a feast for the brain. Michael Washburn engages host Neal Pollack in a discussion of Sandra Newman's provocative and "very raunchy" novel 'Julia', a brilliant and extended riff of the world of Oceania in George Orwell's '1984.' Neal somewhat wondered what Newman was getting at, but Michael found her extension of the world extremely compelling and disturbing, a fresh warning about the dangers of totalitarianism. BFG book club recommends it!'Napoleon' has finally arrived in theaters, and Stephen Garrett stops by to talk with Neal about the ultimate dad movie. They both really enjoyed the battles of Austerlitz and Waterloo and some of Joaquin Phoenix's campier lines. Stephen would like to see more of the charisma that made Bonaparte so beloved to the French people. Totally fair. But Neal will brook no criticism of Ridley Scott's Napoleon, the movie of the year if not even close to the best movie of the year.'The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,' the Hunger Games prequel, took both Neal and contributor Sara Stewart by surprise. They both enjoyed the gritty early days of Panem vibe, both appreciated the good-quality country-style music, and found the performances persuasive. There's a reason it's a hit, though the love story is unconvincing and the act 3 coda goes on a bit too long. Still very much worth watching, just as the show is very much worth listening to.Enjoy!