Dean and Phil have thoughts about the recent assassination attempt on former President Trump and these thoughts bring back memories of John Lennon’s murder and of vigilante films of the 1970s, especially Taxi Driver as well as the American classic on which it was based, The Searchers. On this week’s show, you will hear all that before your friends in podcasting get down to remembering the great Bob Newhart and the singular Shelly Duvall, as well as Oscar-winning producer Jon Landau in “Celebrity Deaths”. The “Live Event of the Week” involves Disneyland on its 69th birthday, the invention of audio-animatronics and how Disney was denied toys as a kid. Two movies have Phil’s attention, one of whose story (Widow Clicquot) was written by a future guest of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour and the other (Bodies Bodies Bodies) an A24 satire on both WiFi culture and Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians. Watching it was part of Phil’s efforts to see everything in which actress Rachel Sennott has appeared. Finally, the Emmy Awards nominations get discussed and Dean’s viewing habits get put to the test!

A brief history lesson: In May of 2007, Dean Haglund & Phil Leirness started changing the way people listen to the internet with “From The Heart of Hollywood”. After a cease and desist from an individual claiming “brand confusion”, the name was changed to (YOUR) YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour. On December 2 2019, after 652 previous episodes, Dean & Phil launched “Season 2” making the move to live streaming on Odysy Radio. Sometime later, “Odysy” rebranded to “Subspace Radio”. Last week, based on math that defies our understanding (100 episode “seasons” now?) was Season 4 Episode 17, and what turned out to be the LAST live streaming episode of this show … For now anyway. This week’s installment is our 17th Anniversary episode and it features Dean and Phil TOGHETHER in Michigan, discussing the future of the show, answering emails from listeners, discussing Alex Garland’s Civil War, Japanese Breakfast’s “Be Sweet”, a forthcoming documentary about Detroit and some of the many charms of the Wolverine State (“Go, Blue!”).

As we approach Halloween, the spooky and the scary are foremost on the minds of Dean and Phil, and we aren’t just talking about the actors’ negotiations with the giant media companies! Of course, your friends in broadcasting and podcasting DO talk about those negotiations, but they also discuss such spooky films as the 1980s vampires-with-great-hair spectacle The Lost Boys, the influential Ingmar Bergman classic The Magician, the beloved modern Japanese masterpiece Ring, Disney’s misbegotten Haunted Mansion, Alex Garland’s fascinating Men, and the “Citizen Kane of horror movies”, 1973’s The Wicker Man. All that, plus two non-scary recent releases, the Guy Ritchie-directed spy comedy Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre and the Ashley Park-starring Joy Ride get reviewed, and the beloved Oscar-nominated character actor Burt Young gets remembered in “Celebrity Deaths”.

 

The Academy Award nominations were announced this week and of the eight films nominated for Best Picture, only five ranked highly with critics (“Roma”, “The Favourite”, “Black Panther”, “BlacKkKlansman” and to a far lesser degree, “A Star is Born”). Only one Best Picture nominee finished in the top ten at the box office (“Black Panther”, which was the biggest hit of the year) and only one other even finished in the top 25 at the Box Office (“Bohemian Rhapsody”). What does it all mean? Only that it’s Dean and Phil’s turn! Your friends in podcasting count down their respective Top Ten Films of 2019 during this week’s 88 minute installment of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour!

Your friends in podcasting ring out the old on the last day of 2018 by tackling the recently announced partnership between iTunes and theatrical film distributor A24, and by looking at the calendar year that was and analyzing week by week how the biggest movie hits and best films of the year were released. They only make it through the end of September, but at least 29 films get discussed, so keep those Netflix queues handy! Thanks for spending some of your year with us and we’ll see you again in 2019!