In a cold open, Dean and Phil share how impressed they are with an animated short made by the college student son of one of Phil’s high school classmates. In the return of “Lawsuit of the Week”, the most recent threats and developments surrounding Paramount’s desired merger with Warners get fully explained and analyzed. Phil shares sadness surrounding the impending departure of longtime favorite son of Los Angeles, Gustavo Dudamel, who is leaving the L.A. Phil to take over the New York Philharmonic. A great story about Lily (Holleman) Leirness’ encounter with Dudamel gets shared. Dean has started watching “Diarra from Detroit” at Phil’s urging and loves it! A loyal listener has a slight correction to something Dean said on the recent, epic episode of “Deep Dive” exploring 1940s Film Noir. Phil follows up on a couple of films discussed in that show, offering greater context to the writing of The Stranger (1946) and Sidney Greenstreet’s performance in The Maltese Falcon (1941). Chris Carter’s “director’s cut” of the 2nd “X-Files” movie has been released and … Dean and Phil have thoughts. Phil re-watched Citizen Kane, which inspires in-depth discussion of that film’s continued greatness and resonance, and which inspired his watching the recent Japanese psychological suspense film Exit 8, a film Dean is now ready to reappraise!

It was a big weekend, and your friends in podcasting have a lot of big topics to discuss, from the World Cup to the art of Caravaggio, from a masterpiece of German literature to the creation of synthetic life that demonstrates most of the hallmarks of actual life, from the ten films that best define America to a couple of the all-time greatest film noirs. Finally, Dean and Phil go long singing the praises of, and asking questions about, the independent film dominating the global box office, Obsession.

There are two Carolinas in the USA. North and South. Phil is exploring both of them. So, this week’s show was pre-recorded quite a few days earlier than usual. In it, Dean and Phil discuss The Actor’s Gang, a well-respected theater company and training ground for talented performers (like their pal, Steve Benaquist). Dean and Phil continue to talk about the late, great artist David Hockney, his love of smoking, and the ways in which he taught the world to think of Los Angeles, namely as it pertains to light. Light and its interplay with shadows is absolutely top of mind for your friends in podcasting and they go deep into film noir, talking about such great actors as George Raft, Humphrey Bogart, Burt Lancaster, Edmond O’Brien, and Edward G. Robinson, and such great directors of noir as Fritz Lang and Robert Siodmak. The movies They Drive by Night, The Killers and Scarlet Street all get appraised. Finally, Phil holds court about the 1980 neo-noir The First Deadly Sin, which was the final motion picture produced by Frank Sinatra, and the final lead performance for Sinatra as an actor. It was supposed to have been directed by Roman Polanski, which has Phil asking, “What if it had been?” He also suggests another young director (at the time) who would have been a better choice than the film’s eventual director, Brian G. Hutton. Nevertheless, Hutton did director a couple of Dean’s favorite movies, so Phil shares the quite interesting details of Hutton’s career.

This week, year 17 gets underway in style with the first part of a special two-part theme show where Dean and Phil discuss the cinematic legacies of two of the biggest stars of all time: Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster. This episode focuses on these famous actor-producers’ careers though the year 1960. And it also involves discussions of many other notable screen artists, from filmmakers like Billy Wilder, to performers like Barbara Stanwyck. So keep those chosen “watchlists” and/or “queues” handy as you will doubtless learn about a title or two (or a dozen) of movies you will want to enjoy or re-visit!

Dean and Phil start the show by answering a question they posed last week about The NeverEnding Story. A question about Dean’s painting leads into a deep-dive discussion about scheduling, energy management, and the time of transition in which we all find ourselves. In “Celebrity Deaths”, a character actor-turned-acting instructor gets remembered, as does a true renaissance man known primarily for playing gangsters! Olivia Newton-John’s career also gets examined at great length, including her starring role in a 1970 science-fiction film and how history could have been different had that film been a hit. Phil is more than a little bit grumpy about a “Live Event of the Week” and he and Dean wonder if Amadeus might be the most mediocre movie ever to win Best Picture. Mediocrity itself is discussed as a business model, and Netflix is in the crosshairs!

Because he’s been driving all over California, Phil tackles the insane, apocalyptic weather racking the Golden State, and Dean updates on the building of his steam room and his graphic novel (both of which are long-awaited) on this week’s installment of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour. The madness of America is addressed through the oddly appropriate lens of Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ and speaking of Scorsese, his mentor, John Cassavetes is very much a subject of discussion, from his directing of the under-seen classic The Killing of a Chinese Bookie to his acting in such crowd-pleasers as the 1964 version of The Killers and The Dirty Dozen. And one of the “Dozen”, the great music star-turned-actor Trini Lopez gets remembered in “Celebrity Deaths”. Robert Altman’s penultimate film, The Company, receives some fascinating analysis. And speaking of fascinating analysis, somehow a discussion of TV’s “Columbo” and “Law and Order: Criminal Intent” allow Dean and Phil to figure out once and for all why the Back to the Future sequels are so bad! At the close, your friends in podcasting preview next week’s show when they will be discussing the series nominated for the Emmy in the “Best Comedy” category and the dire circumstances threatening SAG-Aftra in the wake of the union’s health plan implosion.