No broken finger can keep Dean Haglund from joining Phil Leirness for another brand new installment of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour! This week, your friends in podcasting talk about what they miss because of Covid-19 (and are certain to be missing for the rest of this year at least). Dean and Phil then explain why there might not be many new movies or television shows for a long while. They will, however, discuss several recent titles like Cats, Alita: Battle Angel and It Chapter Two as well as several under-appreciated, vintage gems like John Frankenheimer’s Seconds, Samuel Fuller’s The Crimson Kimono and the jazz adaptation of “Othello” All Night Long. Plus, Phil has harsh criticism for a couple beloved musicals from the 1950s! In “Lawsuit of the Week”, Dean and Phil discuss a courtroom victory for Jerry Seinfeld. Then, following a mea culpa from Dean about an error made on last week’s show, the Chillpak Morgue opens for “Celebrity Deaths” where a glass ceiling-shattering broadcaster and a world-class independent filmmaker and director of top television are remembered. Finally, Phil shares a story about perhaps the greatest phrase ever uttered before death. 

Dean and Phil discuss Leap Day, tackle the challenges and joys of teaching (improv and acting respectively) and then open the Chillpak morgue to remember a novelist-turned-adventurer, a talk show host-turned-soap opera producer, a quick draw specialist-turned-western star, a psych-rock innovator-turned-dream pop icon, and a mathematician-turned-space program hero in “Celebrity Deaths”. Dean offers up analysis on the “38%” in “Explanation of the Week”. Then, after some appreciation of a Canadian television series (available on Hulu), John Mulaney, David Byrne (and the “Sack Lunch Bunch”), the gents tackle an email from a loyal listener and frequent contributor about the recent practice of releasing “de-colorized” modern movies. Finally, a couple more great movie monologues performed by women get discussed. Something for everyone? We like to think so!

It’s our final show before the start of Season 2! After a week off, your friends in podcasting will be moving to ODYSY Radio Network starting Monday December 2nd. Once there, shows will “air” live at 9 pm eastern (becoming available as podcast a few hours later)! On THIS week’s show, our last EVER to exceed one hour (!), Dean and Phil discuss a Veteran’s Day-themed “Live Event of the Week”, remember an actress who starred in a handful of cult classics and the puppeteer responsible for Topo Gigio in “Celebrity Deaths”, compare notes on their upcoming travels, and weigh in on six new, upcoming, or recent movies: The LIghthouse, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Just Mercy, Judy, Tell Me Who I Am, Spider-Man: Far From Home.

Now that Dean once again lives in the USA, he and Phil will be recording YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour on Monday mornings! This week, they compare notes on the Steve Martin-Martin Short touring stage show, and share thoughts about the recent spate of re-booted television series of yesteryear and those reboots recently announced. The lives of a “swamp rock” legend, a WW II “Monuments Man”, the inventor of green bean casserole, the greatest trumpeter of his generation, and Phil’s all-time favorite baseball player will be remembered in “Celebrity Deaths”. Then, grab the popcorn because your friends in podcasting have a bunch of disparate cinematic offerings to discuss, from horror classics like Nosferatu and The Wolf Man to such contemporary releases as Bohemian RhapsodyBoy ErasedA Private War, and Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind.

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?!

According to Harold Camping, Saturday 21 May was Judgment Day, so all of us who are still here must be damned! Which only seems appropriate as your friends in podcasting, Dean Haglund and Phil Leirness had one HELL of a good time at the US premiere of their film The Truth Is Out There at the Retro Dome in San Jose. After the screening was completed, Dean and Phil took the stage for this LIVE installment of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour … Hilarity, special guests, audience questions, Phil’s tears … It’s the end of the world as we know it!

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!

We begin this week with the results of “homework” assigned to loyal listener (and music journalist) Yoshi Kato, who weighs in on this year’s Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film. That leads into a discussion of a great film that Phil recently studied – Thomas Vinterberg’s 1998 landmark masterpiece The Celebration. Along with Lars Von Trier, Vinterberg was one of the founders and inspirational “leaders” of the Dogme movement. Dean and Phil re-visit the Dogme 95 manifesto and its rules that were designed to even the playing field between big-budget and low-budget, and American and European filmmakers. Phil then reveals how the tenets of Dogme 95 and the motivation behind them is inspiring and informing his approach to the next fictional feature film he will be directing in October of this year. The film will be called Night Falls Fast and Phil and Dean offer a preview.