Because Dean is “on assignment” in the UK, he and Phil recorded a very special episode for this week! Dean and Phil pay tribute to their friend Mark Bennett, who died at the end of 2021. Mark was a journalist, a filmmaker, a philosopher, a researcher, and a truly gentle, caring man, who features prominently in Dean and Phil’s The Truth Is Out There, and who last appeared on YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour in March of 2021. He has been described as a “spy from the future” and as such, Dean and Phil’s memories of him segue nicely into an email from friend of the show Jon Lawlor all about time travel movies. Keep pen, pencil or keyboard handy, because Dean and Phil hit you with a bunch of really cool movie recommendations!

Dean is back in the environs of the Motor City, Phil is back in Los Angeles, and they have a lot to discuss on this week’s show … Phil asks Dean about his SoCal travel adventures and about Dean’s grandfather, a truly remarkable man. Dean and Phil preview new seasons from two utterly terrific television series and also discuss a current show you might just want to check out. The box office is, at long last, seemingly revived and there are a lot of movies out! Dean and Phil discuss some of them, but pay particular attention to the return of Ke Huy Quan, a new Chris Pine spy vehicle, a classic 1960s musical from France, an unusually personal 1981 detective film from Peter Bogdanovich, and the movie that features James Stewart’s all-time favorite performance he ever gave. In the return of “Celebrity Deaths”, several sitcom character actors, a beloved stand-up comic and voice actor, and a groundbreaking dancer, all get remembered.

Your friends in podcasting follow up on last week’s conversation about how the response to hatred and violence directed at the AAPI community might shape the current movie awards season and in the second half of the show, they welcome a great friend, journalist and member of the AAPI community, Yoshi Kato, who weighs in on a year of hate crimes, as well as a year of pandemic and the toll it has taken on the music business and on the business of writing about the music business! He also weighs in on Dean’s Doberman, the Paramount Network and both his favorite and least favorite superhero movies! In the show’s first half, Dean discusses a new Korean sci-fi film, and Phil discusses a classic German sci-fi miniseries! There are also 4 vintage movie ads discussed in connection with four “celebrity deaths” as the careers of two great performers, one leading French filmmaker, and a best-selling, award-winning novelist get celebrated.

Your friends in podcasting reconvene to celebrate the lives of three performers (one a beloved star of Broadway, another a musical star of television, and the third a movie star who was part of one of Hollywood’s most celebrated marriages), a roboticist, a news magazine host, an iconic designer, and several truly heroic Civil Rights activists. Dean and Phil then roll up their sleeves to analyze why it is that Netflix episodic series are so often delightful and charming, while so many Netflix original movies are listless and perfunctory. And, oh, yeah, they also discuss why good manners might just be the cure for a lot of the troubles that seem to plague the modern world.

Phil was out late imbibing. Dean has been battling a bad late summer cold. Yet, somehow, they both come out guns blazing! This week’s show begins with several “Live Events of the Week”, ranging from immersive theatre to a Halloween X-Files improv show, from Leif Erikson Day to the first mixed cocktail! Then, it’s time for “Celebrity Deaths” wherein legendary journalists Cokie Roberts and Sander Vanocur, and performers Suzanne Whang, Aron Eisenberg and Sid Haig are remembered. From there, it’s on to the silver screen, where one of the all-time greats gets discussed in relationship to how we consume movies now, and a legendary “failure” gets re-appraised. In fact, the importance of “failuring” (Dean’s term) gets championed! Finally, the Emmy Awards were this weekend, and your friends in podcasting discuss “Fleabag”, Kirsten Dunst, “On Becoming a God in Central Florida”, and season 2 of “Big Little Lies” and the behind-the-scenes chicanery that may have been responsible for the season’s lack of focus.   

As you know, each year, your friends in podcasting celebrate what they think were the best films of the previous year. Well, this year, Dean Haglund and Phil Leirness welcome special guest, film critic and Los Angeles Film Critics Association member Luke Y. Thompson to help them as they discuss the best films AND the worst films of 2015! 

Best and worst in one show?! 

Why, that sounds like two shows! And it almost is. At almost 1 hour and 50 minutes, this is our longest show ever (if you don’t count the 28 hour live “podcastathon” Dean and Phil did to ring in the end of the Mayan Calendar). So, get those Netflix queues handy, power up with the caffeinated beverage of your choice and let’s begin

This week’s installment of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour features the return of special (recurring) guest and free-lance journalist Yoshi Kato! He has recently returned from the Tokyo International Music Market and he offers up a full report on a life-time achievement award for cinema icon “Beat” Takeshi Kitano and two hot bands from Japan: VAMPS and Sakanaction. 

Yoshi joins your friends in podcasting in a spirited discussion on HBO shows, the faults in The Fault in Our StarsFoxcatcherThe Imitation Game and a commemorative stamp of … Dean Haglund?!

A Chillpak Hollywood Hour first! An entire show dedicated to music, the music business, music distribution and music journalism. Eminent music journalist Yoshi Kato has seen a great deal of change in his twenty years of professional writing as well as in his current capacity at iTunes. He joins your friends in podcasting for an hour of fascinating conversation BEFORE turning the tables on Dean Haglund and Phil Leirness and putting to THEM three probing questions. Trust us, you won’t want to miss it! And why would you? It’s YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour, after all!