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”.

 

Dean Haglund is down under, enjoying his new home in Sydney, Australia. And if this show is to be believed, Phil Leirness is on his way to visit Dean via “swim” (is that a new mobile app?). So, talented, funny, and razor sharp ladies Karen Forman and Lily Holleman step in to help your friends in podcasting change the way they “change the way you listen to the internet”!

There is the familiar – Live Events of the Week, movie reviews, the Bechdel test, appeals for racial and age diversity in mainstream media, and an appeal for more opportunity for women both in front of and behind the camera. Bottom line: “Shame on you, Hollywood!”

Karen and Lily also celebrate the Tony Awards, Lifetime Movies, and “Game of Thrones”.

All in all, it’s an “outward display of inner self-love” and it just might save Christmas!

One day late, but well worth the wait.

Am I right, ladies?