Dean Haglund is in Stockholm, so for the bulk of the show, this week’s guest co-host, music, arts and culture journalist Yoshi Kato joins Phil Leirness to discuss the death of an all-time jazz great, the implosion of more than one jazz festival and live celebrations of the musical (and movie) legacy of composer John Williams. This leads to a great deal of discussion over the Star Wars franchise, original and recent, including Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu, and several Star Wars-related vinyl records. The summer movie season has come to an end with this Labor Day weekend and it was far and away one for the record books. Will Hollywood learn the right lessons from the big success? Don’t count on it. Yoshi and Phil compare notes on what those lessons might be. They also discuss two current theatrical releases (Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma and Coyote vs. Acme) and the classic, dreamlike French film Last Year at Marienbad, as well as the lasting influence of that film’s star, Delphine Seyrig. Finally, Dean drops in at the end so that he and Phil can pan two films set during World War I, one quite recent (The Choral, starring Ralph Fiennes) and one quite acclaimed (1917).

In what might be a first, Dean will offer up both a point and a counterpoint (all on his own) about the merits and deficits of Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter. Then, Phil will discuss the long career of the great cinematic surrealist Luis Buñuel and take a deep dive into one particular masterpiece of his, the 1950 Los Olividados (“The Young and the Damned”). Buñuel’s famous collaborations with Catherine Deneuve will lead Phil and Dean to discuss this legendary star’s almost unparalleled status as the “face” of 1960s cinema. Jacque Demy’s singular The Umbrellas of Cherbourg gets celebrated as a result. If Ms. Deneuve was NOT the face of global cinema at that time, then that title belonged to the late, great Claudia Cardinale, who gets remembered in “Celebrity Deaths”.