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).

To commemorate this week’s Academy Awards, your friends in podcasting offer up this special show all about the history AND future of the Oscars! How might the Academy voting membership change and how should it change? What award categories need to be changed, removed or added? Dean and Phil weigh in on last night’s historic show, offering doffs of the cap and wags of the finger. They also pile into the Chillpak time machine and travel back to the early days of Oscar to analyze how effective the Academy was at selecting “Best Picture” winners that would stand the test of time.

With the Oscars coming up this weekend, the book will finally close on the year in cinema 2019 … The Best Picture nominees are 1917, Ford v Ferrari, The Irishman, Jojo Rabbit, Joker, Little Women, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Parasite. The top performing films at the US Box office released in 2019 (ranked from 1 thru 10) were Avengers: Endgame, Star Wars: Episode 9 – The Rise of Skywalker, The Lion King, Frozen II, Toy Story 4, Captain Marvel, Spider-Man: Far from Home, Aladdin, Joker and Jumanji: The Next Level … Would any of these films make Dean and Phil’s lists of the best films of 2019? Find out this week as your friends in podcasting count down their Top Ten Films of 2019!

After several weeks of special shows, your friends in podcasting are back to doing what they do best, providing irreverent, insightful and occasionally inspiring conversation on a wide array of entertainment topics … In “What We’re Reading”, Dean and Phil discuss Tintoretto and Hillbilly Elegy. In “Live Event of the Week” they discuss The Grammy Museum and a stirring concert featuring Bebe Rexha. In “Celebrity Deaths”, they pay tribute to five musical greats, a character actor, an Oscar-nominated writer, director and actor, the creator of “Ugly Betty”, a groundbreaking member of “Monty Python”, a TV star of the 50’s and 60’s, and an NYPD police detective. All that, plus they begin what will be an ongoing discussion about great monologues in movies delivered by women, AND they tackle the recent SAG Awards.