Dean will be heading to Los Angeles this week and plans to deal with a “haunted vacuum”? Paramount Pictures (and its parent company) are for sale. Dean and Phil discuss the ramifications of this. Many great films premiered in competition at the recent Cannes Film Festival. Dean and Phil examine the award-winners. A film festival favorite available now on Netflix is Richard Linklater’s dark romantic comedy Hit Man. Dean and Phil discuss it. Then, they take a deep dive look at three “art house” films of recent vintage and use that dive as the vehicle for exploring the function, importance and failure of critics. The films in question are Joanna Hogg’s ghost story The Eternal Daughter and Jane Schoenbrun’s coming-of-age psychodramas We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and the current theatrical release I Saw the TV Glow.

An action-packed hour if ever there was one! Dean and Phil discuss the reading of Phil’s new screenplay, compare notes on their Thanksgiving adventures, weigh in on the SAG strike authorization vote, preview more than a dozen early December film releases, and discuss the Spirit Award Nominations ( indie film’s “Oscars”). They also send out birthday wishes to Phil’s collaborator on Karl Rove, I Love You, Mr. Dan Butler (”Bulldog” on TV’s “Frasier”), who turns 54 years young today (check out the interview we did with Dan Butler in Chillpak Hollywood Hour #63). And if that weren’t enough, they offer several bits of practical advice for indie filmmakers. And Phil gets spanked.