This week’s episode is a grab bag of what you’ve come to expect from YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour. A broadcasting legend, perhaps the greatest record producer ever (though also a convicted murderer), a chart-topping early rock and roll star, and many others get remembered in “Celebrity Deaths”. Phil and Dean discuss a review given to their film The Lady Killers (now available to rent or to own everywhere in the world). Phil once again quizzes Dean on movie ads from the 80s and 90s before they analyze the latest Covid-19 fallout to theatrical movie releases and to theaters themselves. Then, Phil regales with details of his “Drive-In Movie Adventure”, Dean reviews Wonder Woman 1984, and your friends in podcasting close with “What We’re Reading”, including an hilarious and disturbingly relevant book from 15 years ago that arrived to Phil by mistake!

After two weeks of special “theme” shows, your friends in podcasting return to what they do best this week: Making sense of a world gone wild! From absurdities to atrocities, from freedom of speech to bad behavior, from consciousness to conspiracy theories, Dean and Phil will offer up a hearty and healthy helping of insight, irreverence and inspiration. Then, in “Celebrity Deaths”, they will remember a prolific movie director, a British Invasion star, a World War II hero, the last Civil War widow, a “Charlie’s Angel”, a castaway on “Gilligan’s Island”, a break-dancing superstar, a controversial educator immortalized on film, a pioneer of Space Age style design, and the father of fiber optics. Finally, Dean and Phil celebrate one of the best miniseries of all time before celebrating that at long last, English-speaking viewers outside the USA can enjoy their disturbing, dark comedy feature film The Lady Killers! 

 

This week’s proceedings begin with an in-depth appreciation of the cinematic legacy left behind by Sean Connery and on the most thorny aspect of his public life. That leads into the judge’s ruling in a Johnny Depp “Lawsuit of the Week”. Then, Dean and Phil compare notes on their Halloween festivities. Phil will share thoughts sent to him by his new pen pal about conversations in recent episodes involving comic book culture and superhero movies and will compare the genre to the most classic of movie genres, the western. Finally, the show closes with a tribute to one of the last great Beat poets.

A lot of post-production work went into making this one of our best shows of the year! Dean regales with stories of drinking and jury duty, Phil remembers dear friend and true iconoclast Konrad Monti. Dean and Phil discuss Amazon’s “The Boys” (a show Dean might have actually influenced!) and the dire future of movie-going in the wake of James Bond and “Black Widow” being pushed again, which led to the 2nd largest U.S. theater chain closing, while the first largest still hasn’t fully re-opened! A terrific, and highly musical “Celebrity Deaths” involves celebrations of a great jazz musician (and subject of an awesome Netflix documentary), songwriter-singer-turned-actor Mac Davis, and 70’s-pop-queen-turned-therapist Helen Reddy! Finally, we transport you back to a certain rooftop in the historic L.A. neighborhood of Los Feliz for the conclusion of Dean and Phil’s ruminations on what filmmakers might make the list of their all-time favorites.

This week’s show will be action-packed and an especially fun show for movie-lovers. In “What We’re Reading”, Dean will update us on his Da Vinci-esque “Mind Maps”. In “Celebrity Deaths” a chart-topping singer and an iconic TV star of the 60s who went on to star on-screen and on-stage for more than 60 years will be remembered. Cinemas are re-opening in the U.S., but should they? Not according to filmmakers whose movies are actually going to play in those theaters! Dean and Phil will discuss, and they will analyze both the controversy surrounding Netflix’s “Cuties” and the changes the Oscars will be making to its “Best Picture” category to promote greater diversity in front of and behind the camera. Finally, a whole mess of great films will get celebrated, with a particular emphasis on the greatest British filmmaking team of all time. And if that’s not enough, there’s even a new Chillpak Hollywood Hour drinking game!

It’s all classic comedy, classic television and classic movies on this week’s show! The truly legendary Carl Reiner gets celebrated. Then, Dean and Phil compare the years in film 1982 and 1974 with 1962 to see which year they think was the best year ever for movies!

From the inner space of quiet, self-quarantine lockdowns, to the outer space of “Star Trek: Picard”, Dean Haglund and Phil Leirness take you on quite the journey this week! It starts with their latest observations about themselves and others in the wake of another week of isolation. Sadness, quiet and dehumanization are on the thematic menu! They then compare notes on their respective Easter celebrations, which leads to a discussion of a couple of classic musicals: 1934’s Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers vehicle The Gay Divorcee and 1948’s seasonal staple Easter Parade, starring Astaire and Judy Garland. The recent, modern classic, Uncut Gems gets championed by Phil, who tries to get Dean to overcome his trepidation surrounding Adam Sandler performances (and yet, Dean once championed You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, so go figure!). The second half of the show consists of Dean and Phil comparing the years in cinema 1973 and 1974, discussing all the notable films from those two halcyon years, in hopes of determining which year might challenge 1962 as the greatest year in cinema. Finally, your friends in podcasting beam up to the La Sirena to discuss and debate what went right and what went wrong in season one of “Star Trek: Picard”, a show so successful that a big-screen movie version is already in the planning stages.

A true prodigy, singer-songwriter EmiSunshine earned national attention before she was ten years old. Now, still shy of her sixteenth birthday, EmiSunshine is a skillful and soulful purveyor of the music genre known as Americana. After playing one of her brand new tunes, Dean Haglund interviews her in the first half of this week’s show and she even shares a ghost story! In the second half of the show, Dean reviews Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man and Phil shares with Dean a hilarious story about a mutual friend’s adventures in screenwriting. Finally, Dean and Phil celebrate the peerless cinematic legacy of the great Max Von Sydow. Something for everyone? We like to think so!

In “Live Event of the Week”, Dean previews an interview with a very musical guest coming up on next week’s show, and Phil reviews a stage show he first spoke about in episode #265! After that, they tackle the coronavirus, and how it’s affecting movie-going, film distribution, family travel and handshake lines! A ground-breaking, and little-known trailblazer of the movie industry gets championed 25 years after his death and that leads into “Celebrity Deaths” wherein a chart-topping singer, a beloved TV mom, a jazz great and the creator and longtime host of “Inside the Actors Studio” get remembered. All that, plus we get MUCH better acquainted with Dean (and a little bit better acquainted with Phil)!

With the Oscars coming up this weekend, the book will finally close on the year in cinema 2019 … The Best Picture nominees are 1917, Ford v Ferrari, The Irishman, Jojo Rabbit, Joker, Little Women, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Parasite. The top performing films at the US Box office released in 2019 (ranked from 1 thru 10) were Avengers: Endgame, Star Wars: Episode 9 – The Rise of Skywalker, The Lion King, Frozen II, Toy Story 4, Captain Marvel, Spider-Man: Far from Home, Aladdin, Joker and Jumanji: The Next Level … Would any of these films make Dean and Phil’s lists of the best films of 2019? Find out this week as your friends in podcasting count down their Top Ten Films of 2019!