Seven important notes about this week’s show:

1) It’s our 600th episode!
2) It features a brand new version of the theme song appropriate to Dean’s relocation to the Motor City.
3) A horrible recording problem leads to a few choppy transitions at the start of the show and to an extremely bad electronic hum during the first 25 minutes or so of the show.
4) We have done the best we can to get rid of the hum and to at least make these first 25 minutes listenable, and you will want to bear with us as those minutes contain very personal conversation between Dean and Phil about things they love lost in the current SoCal fires, what they love that is seriously threatened by those fires, and about a great Canadian actor of Dean’s acquaintance who died this month. There is also a great story about baby diapers!
5) Several amazing movies get discussed – including the Sandra Bullock starring post-apocalyptic, action-horror vehicle Bird Box, the Coen Brothers rather amazing Western anthology feature The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Alfonso Cuaron’s seminal black-and-white memory piece Roma and Dean and Phil’s very own The Lady Killers, which Dean has finally seen!
6) The show is 72 minutes long, with about 45 minutes of that boasting clean audio!
7) We wish you all a “Malkovich Hug”!

Dean Haglund stopped off in Los Angeles for a couple days and while he was there, he recorded a special 2 part installment of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour. Put on your walking shoes and join and Phil Leirness as they take an audio stroll through some of the most historic parts of downtown Los Angeles! The adventure begins in the iconic Union Station, continues through the original location of Chinatown, includes a stop at Olvera Street and ends high atop City Hall. Through it all, your friends in podcasting will discuss Blade Runner, Harvey Houses, It Happened One Night, classic Hollywood dirt, a controversial and long-lost mural, the challenging art of portrait painting, a bizarre piece of Americana, the history of L.A.’s mayors, Phil’s fear of heights and much more on part 1 of this movable feat for the ears, the spirit and the funny bone!

As they approach the final few shows of the Australian, intercontinental and trans-pacific era of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour, your friends in podcasting have really been ramping up with great episodes. And those episodes have led to an overflowing “mailbag”. On this week’s installment, Dean and Phil will finally get to several of these missives, which range in content from corrections about things Dean and Phil have said to questions about the dubbing of movies and TV into different languages, from a question about mysterious sounds to one about the ineffable art of casting the right performers for the right roles. Of course, Dean and Phil will comment upon the latest show biz and media news, including the controversy surrounding Nike, the latest charges leveled against CBS head honcho Les Moonves, and the Academy’s major about-face for this year’s Oscars. All that, plus Dean updates his Down Under Bucket List and he and Phil remember the late, great Burt Reynolds.

This week’s episode of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour is a lot of fun. A hockey great and a beloved 80’s sitcom star get remembered in “Celebrity Deaths”. The news concerning the real-life “Brady Bunch” house in Studio City and major changes to the Oscars telecast get reported and dissected. A recent hit-man thriller, a current, hilarious and suspenseful indie comedy-drama, a classic 1970 comedy war film and a current Lionsgate “digital” release starring Guy Pearce and Pierce Brosnan all get discussed. All that, plus there is on-air planning of Phil’s upcoming bachelor party!

This week, your friends in podcasting complete their epic 2-part celebration of the all-time greatest comedy movies! Boasting films from (almost?) every decade of feature filmmaking, this week’s installment covers Dean and Phil’s respective Top 5’s! There are bound to be crowd-pleasing favorites, silent classics, independent gems and studio blockbusters. So, keep those Netflix queues handy!

Your friends in podcasting have been teasing episode #568 for weeks! They had really been looking forward to counting down their all-time favorite Mystery films and the final results prove to be a lot of fun. So, get those Netflix queues handy, because Dean and Phil will hit you with more than two dozen movies they discuss at length with four films actually finding a place on both their Top Tens. There are comedy “whodunits” from the 1930’s, foreign language allegories from the 2000’s, independent films that launched careers, classics from international masters that launched entire sub-genres, mysteries based on books, mysteries based on plays, mysteries set in the farthest reaches of space, mysteries full of post-war romance and cold war anxiety. The biggest mystery of all is after almost eleven years, how do Dean Haglund and Phil Leirness keep managing to provide an hour (plus) of free audio entertainment each week?!

It’s a special Top Ten show! Your friends in podcasting count down their all time favorite War Films! It’s amazing how many different sub-genres of war films, Dean and Phil discover and more than thirty films actually get discussed. Trust us – It’s totally awesome.

Dean is travelling, so he and Phil won’t be able to celebrate the lives of a couple amazing women who died this past week until they get together in L.A. to record several shows this week. In the meantime, they pre-recorded this, their third “Top Ten” show of the ten they have planned to commemorate year ten of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour. This week, in anticipation of La La Land opening, your friends in podcasting count down their Top Ten All-Time Favorite Movie Musicals! This episode has it all: Singing, dancing, comedy, romance AND the firestorm of a great debate as Dean and Phil get into a heated, and hilarious, argument over the merits of Baz Luhrman and his post-“Moulin Rouge” career. It’s 80 minutes of podcasty goodness featuring some of the greatest talents to grace the silver screen!

Today is the day the annual movie awards season comes to a merciful conclusion and your friends in podcasting stick the final nail in its coffin with their annual review of the Oscars telecast wherein they reveal who they predicted would win in all 24 categories. As always, there’s a wager involved and for the 2nd year running, you’ll be treated to some classic clips from Academy Awards presentations past. And now, the envelope, please …

A day late, but now available on Stitcher (you can get the Stitcher app and rate and review the show!), your friends in podcasting are back at it, battling back the forces of darkness with their lethal wits and their irreverent bon mots!

Dean Haglund and Phil Leirness discuss the snubs in the recent Oscars’ “In Memorium” tribute, Dean’s upcoming live comedy shows, MesoAmerican art, Chris Carter’s new show, their ongoing search for the TRUTH and much, much more …