As we approach Halloween, the spooky and the scary are foremost on the minds of Dean and Phil, and we aren’t just talking about the actors’ negotiations with the giant media companies! Of course, your friends in broadcasting and podcasting DO talk about those negotiations, but they also discuss such spooky films as the 1980s vampires-with-great-hair spectacle The Lost Boys, the influential Ingmar Bergman classic The Magician, the beloved modern Japanese masterpiece Ring, Disney’s misbegotten Haunted Mansion, Alex Garland’s fascinating Men, and the “Citizen Kane of horror movies”, 1973’s The Wicker Man. All that, plus two non-scary recent releases, the Guy Ritchie-directed spy comedy Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre and the Ashley Park-starring Joy Ride get reviewed, and the beloved Oscar-nominated character actor Burt Young gets remembered in “Celebrity Deaths”.

 

Phil just got back from rubbing elbows with the D.C. social set. Dean stayed in town and hit a Hollywood party and hit it hard based on the stories he shares (Fran Drescher? Poop? Three bottles of champagne?). In addition to comparing notes on their holiday hijinx, Dean and Phil discuss the many films they’ve seen during the past two weeks. Phil saw several foreign language films, including a couple of fantastic ones you won’t want to miss. Dean reveals he saw The Spirit. This makes Phil very angry. Truth be told, though, from the Screen Actors Guild to Proposition 8, from people not knowing history to Dean’s viewing habits, Phil really comes out swinging … The boys are back and 2009 can finally begin!