Welcome to a truly great episode and it all starts with an alternately touching and hilarious cold open! In “Celebrity Deaths”, Dean and Phil remember a jazz music pioneer, an actor who was an important influence on Dean, and a versatile, prolific, Oscar-winning filmmaker. Last week’s Oscar nominations get analyzed, as does the ensuing anger surrounding supposed “snubs”. After the break, the great film critic Luke Y. Thompson joins the fun, discussing how critics, like performers, can get “pigeon-holed”. He offers up thoughts on the Oscar-nominated The Zone of Interest and the underrated Beau is Afraid, and hips you to a black and white sci-fi comedy that is well worth your 68 minutes! He even talks about toy reviews and toy photography! And trust us, this episode offers a lot of laughs! Find links to all of Luke’s articles and reviews at https://linktr.ee/lytrules. And learn about his work as a toy collector, photographer and reviewer at https://www.eql.com/media/adult-toy-collecting

 

Last week, Dean and Phil discussed the ten films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, the ten films released in 2022 that earned the most revenue at the domestic U.S. box office, and the ten (or twelve) or so films the critics have come to consensus on as the best of the year. This week, it’s Dean and Phil’s turn! They will revel their Top Tens, as they count down what might be the films they consider the best, the most groundbreaking, the most important, or just their favorites of the year. 

This week’s show begins with Phil trying to surprise Dean with details of a very famous person who lived in what is now Dean’s hometown of Birmingham, Michigan, and then, Phil tries to stump Dean with a vintage movie ad (from 55 years ago!). Then, because they have been falling behind in discussing “Celebrity Deaths”, Dean and Phil will open the Chillpak morgue to discuss the huge amount of notables who shuffled off their mortal coils in the past week! In part 2, Dean and Phil discuss Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, the latest awards season news (including the SAG, DGA and Producers Guild nominations), and then they conclude with reviews of several films including The Kitchen Brigade, After Yang, Crimes of the Future and Bones and All.

We hope this finds you having enjoyed a happy and healthy New Year. Twelfth Night is a festival that takes place on the last night of the Twelve Days of Christmas, marking the coming of the Epiphany. Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” (or “What You Will”), is a romantic comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written around 1601–1602 as a Twelfth Night’s entertainment for the close of the Christmas season. On this week’s brand new Season 2 Episode 109 of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour, Dean and Phil celebrate both the holiday season AND the immortal Bard of Stratford on Avon by counting down each of their 12 all-time favorite cinematic adaptations of Shakespeare! Brevity might be the soul of wit, but your friends in podcasting (and broadcasting) have an hour to fill!

The USA celebrated its independence this weekend, but the fireworks continue on this brand new installment of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour! Dean shares a hysterical story about the making of a film he did many years back. Then he and Phil discuss in detail a wide array of movies, including a silent classic from Hitchcock, a current horror sequel, a masterpiece of surrealism from a Swedish filmmaker who has emerged as a titan of world cinema, and a low-budget sci-fi film from last year that was among 2020’s best. Plus, Phil wants to talk about a new TCM neo-noir series and a classic from 1967 starring Lee Marvin, but even more than that, he wants to talk about a conversation he had with longtime TCM host Ben Mankiewicz at a memorial for 106 year old legend Norman Lloyd. Phil also shares anecdotes involving many of the notables in attendance, including an Oscar-winning director, and the great grandson of one the most famous artists of all time, and Elliot Gould! All that, plus Dean is doing a show about haunted houses?!

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.

From the ridiculous to the sublime, from the heartfelt to the hilarious, prepare to point the compass of your brain to a journey on the map of the entire infinite during this week’s installment of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour! Phil shares heartfelt thoughts about “Star Trek” and “Star Trek: Discovery” and then, he and Dean have a ball unpacking the desire on the part of an Oklahoma Lawmaker to declare a “Bigfoot hunting season” in his state! Two of the greatest actresses of all time get celebrated, as Phil shares touching remembrances of Cicely Tyson and hilarious first-hand accounts of Cloris Leachman. Dean has championed filmmaker Christopher Nolan for conveying different perceptions of time before, and longtime listeners of this show will remember that the very first time Dean and Phil welcomed a guest, it was the late, great Philip Newby who wanted to discuss how time gets depicted in movies. So be warned, as Dean and Phil discuss 2020’s Tenet, it gets mind-blowing! And when they get into celebrating one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most underrated masterpieces, the show becomes a master class on the subjects of suspense and tension!

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!

Phil’s unexpected need to spend summer away from Los Angeles took another turn on Friday when his father died. On this week’s show, he shares memories of his dad. He and Dean also celebrate the lives of the director of numerous box office blockbusters, a giant in animated filmmaking, a legendary comic book artist, and an influential novelist. They will discuss a couple great television series that may be worth your time. Finally, they champion the absurdist cinema of Roy Andersson. From the heartfelt to the absurd, we trust there will be something for everyone on this week’s installment of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour!

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.