For what it’s worth, awards season in Hollywood is firmly upon us and on this week’s show, your friends in podcasting examine the top ten 2024 releases at the U.S. box office, the top ten films according to critics, and the ten films selected by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the Best Picture Oscar nominations. They analyze the surprises, the snubs and the meaning behind the Oscar nominations, before taking a deep dive into Gladiator II, Wicked: Part One and A Complete Unknown. And speaking of the Academy, Phil had a terrible experience at an Academy Museum screening – so terrible, he might never return. He fills Dean in on the details and they share memories of a colleague about whose death in 2020 they just learned.

Your friends in podcasting have a great deal on their minds … Cold weather in the nation’s capital, the hell of home renovations, fire and long-term unhealthful air and the Olympics in Los Angeles … And they discuss it all on this week’s show. They also remember the late David Lynch, suggesting that no artist has ever loved Los Angeles more than he did. They discuss the latest in the Justin Baldoni-Blake Lively (and now Ryan Reynolds!) lawsuits, and this leads to a discussion of the “abuser’s playbook”. The programming glories of the Detroit Film Theater (at the Detroit Institute of Arts) and the Renzo Piano-designed Academy Museum (at the L.A. County Museum of Art) get celebrated and lead to a discussion about “old school” wide-screen filmmaking, and big screen “pacing”, as well as cyber punk and yacht rock! Finally, analysis will be directed onto the Directors Guild and Producers Guild awards nominations and what they portend for this week’s Oscar nominations. Oh, yeah, and the show opens with an epic Dean Haglund meltdown!

If any week warranted an episode of epic length, it was the week that was. With Phil Leirness coming at us from the beaten and battered City of Angels and Dean Haglund coming at us from an air mattress on a hardwood floor not far from the Motor City, this week’s show covers a lot of terrain in a little more than 68 minutes. Your friends in podcasting discuss Copenhagen wedding plans and the role that city played in our understanding of quantum physics. They talk about the cold of New York City, the importance of heeding one’s intuition and the horrifying, almost unbearably sad events still ongoing in Los Angeles. Fires, bad behavior and the need for us to stop breaking things all get discussed before Dean and Phil finally put the “Hollywood” into Chillpak Hollywood Hour, briefly revisiting last week’s “Lawsuit of the Week” (involving It Ends With Us director Justin Baldoni and star Blake Lively). They re-visit (and double down on) their praise for Netflix’s “A Man on the Inside”, Dean sings the praises of both “So Help Me Todd” and “Elsbeth” before the discussion turns to recent big-screen efforts by Guy Ritchie and Clint Eastwood. Finally, in the return of “Celebrity Deaths”, Phil quizzes Dean about a former U.S. President, a billionaire businessman, a Shakespearean movie star, the Gold Leader from Star Wars, a Broadway legend turned sitcom star, and a folk music icon, before setting his sights on and saying good riddance to a notorious bigot. Trust us, if you have ever enjoyed our free weekly show that has been “changing the way people listen to the internet” since May of 2007, you won’t want to miss this one!

The first show of 2025 find Dean and Phil in good form and discussing a wide array of topics including the landscape and geography of NY’s Central Park, nature photography, the It Ends With Us controversy and lawsuit, and the near future of motion picture distribution both theatrically and via streaming. The truncated nature of this year’s mad dash Awards Season will get analyzed before the Netflix series “Man on the Inside” gets reviewed. Then, your friends in podcasting roll up their sleeves to re-examine Netflix’s 2018 film The Christmas Chronicles and offer their thoughts on the Ralph Fiennes-Juliet Binoche starrer The Return as well as the brilliant Nickel Boys and the reviled (and misunderstood?) Joker: Folie a Deux. Finally, thoughts regarding the suicide of filmmaker Jeff Baena are offered and Ralph Fiennes closes the show by being very “demure”.