Your friends in podcasting (AND broadcasting!) have quite the week to discuss! As the holidays approach, and Covid-19 dashes Dean’s travel plans, Awards Season in Hollywood gets underway. The National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle announced their winners of the best in cinema for 2021, and a consensus has begun to form through critics Top Ten lists about the best of the year in television. Dean and Phil discuss it all. They also try to make sense of the latest in the accidental shooting on the set of “Rust”. A whole lot of classic films get discussed, including which films may have best depicted what life in America was really like in the mid-1980’s. A new documentary series about The Beatles from Peter Jackson gets reviewed and four actors and a musician get remembered in our penultimate installment of “Celebrity Deaths” for 2021. If nothing else, you will learn that the movie Beau Geste is NOT the movie Gunga Din and director Wim Wenders is NOT director Werner Herzog.

Year 15 of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour gets underway with a free-wheeling installment that has your friends in podcasting, Dean Haglund and Phil Leirness, demonstrating much of what they do best, tackling such a wide array of topics as fear, hypocrisy, and irony before sharing stories about non-celebrities being “mistaken” for famous show biz individuals. Some of these stories are hilarious. Some are disturbing. Some are both! With news of the Coen Brothers “breaking up”, Phil and Dean begin a deep dive into appreciating the brothers’ output and legacies. This includes hilarious stories involving Brad Pitt and George Clooney. It also includes a Coen-themed round of the Vintage Movie Ad game. Finally, Phil shares thoughts about two very interesting films released in 2020 that might have slipped under your radar and Dean offers up his review of a brand new film that Amazon hopes might launch an action-franchise starring the great Michael B. Jordan.

The first half of this week’s show is all about the art and craft and future of podcasting! Storyteller Dave Pickering joins us from his home in Lancaster in the north of England to talk about his brilliant podcasts (“Getting Better Acquainted”, “Down to a Sunless Sea”, “The Family Tree” and more), about college lectures he gives about podcasting, about where he sees the art form at present, and what he thinks the future might hold. Actress Lily Holleman drops by in the second half of the show to reveal her Screen Actors Guild Awards ballot and to discuss what she looks for in performances. A whole bunch of great movies and performers get discussed. Great podcasts and great movies – truly two of our favorite things!

Year 13 of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour gets underway with Phil providing an update on his battle to regain his vision. He and Dean discuss some press they recently received for their film The Lady Killers  as well as the latest progress on part 2 of their documentary The Truth Is Out There. Doris Day gets a few words of remembrance, though Peggy Lipton, Barbara Perry and Jim Fowler get the full “Celebrity Deaths” treatment. David Lynch gets debated (again), especially in light of how much he and Dean have in common! Some news and views on Avengers: Endgame and one excellent, Oscar-nominated film, and two really disappointing 2018 releases get reviewed. Join the Chillpak Mod Squad for year 13!

On this week’s brand new installment #609, your friends in podcasting discuss the adventures they are looking forward to in 2019. From an update on a certain graphic novel, to an X-Files convention in Illinois in June where the Lone Gunmen will reunite, from Phil’s wedding weekend, to the three or four feature film projects they will be working on, Dean and Phil point the compass of their brains to a journey on the map of the entire infinite! Then, they welcome a special guest, producer and host of Succotash, Tyson Saner! And if you can’t get enough of hearing Dean and Phil, or hearing ABOUT their film, The Lady Killers check out this interview Tyson did with them all about the movie!

In the second of two face-to-face episodes recorded this past week while Dean was in Los Angeles, your friends in podcasting discuss two “Celebrity Deaths” and three current cinematic releases. The creator of “SpongeBob SquarePants” and the woman who co-wrote “American Graffiti” and who gave Princess Leia her fighting, courageous spirit are the celebrities remembered by Dean and Phil. The documentary “They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead” (about Orson Welles’ 15 year-long effort to make the unparalleled “The Other Side of the Wind”), the heist thriller “Widows” from director Steve McQueen (“Shame”, “12 Years a Slave”) and “If Beale Street Could Talk” from director Barry Jenkins (“Moonlight”) are the movies Dean and Phil go into great depth discussing. on YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour.

When does one planned show become TWO shows? When Dean and Phil are recording in person in Los Angeles! Dean stopped by the historic building Phil calls home (where Oscar-nominated filmmaker Adam McKay once resided) and on this episode they discuss such wide-ranging topics as the death and life of U.S. President George H.W. Bush, the forthcoming film Vice (from Adam McKay!) about former vice-president Dick Cheney, some good news coming out of the recent California fires, the live variety stage show Phil produced on his 50th birthday, Dean’s efforts to pack up his L.A. abode and his recent Michigan adventures. All that plus a plug for their dark comedy The Lady Killers in the wake of the #MeToo moment for Neil Degrasse Tyson, and an Oscar-winning filmmaker and a legendary magician turned character actor are remembered in “Celebrity Deaths”.

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”!

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!

We’re only two episodes away from the end of year 8 and only five episodes away from Dean Haglund’s move to Australia, yet your friends in podcasting have more to discuss than ever before! From a full report on the preview screening of their new dark comedy, to the latest news regarding Sci-Fest, from the latest rumblings about the return of The X-Files to Phil’s heartfelt thank you and farewell to a film critic who played a major role in his development as an artist, this week’s installment is quite personal to Dean and Phil.

There is a ton of talk about current television (like Mad MenDaredevil, and the countdown to David Letterman’s final show) and future television (an Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. spin-off, the Twin Peaks reboot, and perhaps the most exciting new show to be announced in AGES!). There is also much attention paid to forthcoming movies, including ill-advised remakes and reboots, and maybe a film or two worthy of optimism!

Dean and Phil follow up on their (enormously popular) discussion of female-driven films (episode #413), with a discussion of two emerging female musical artists. All that, plus the latest dirt Phil has learned about Scientology AND not one, not two, not three, but FOUR emails from listeners like you! Want to learn about IMDb? Want to learn about Dean and Phil’s favorite cookies? Then, stop reading and start enjoying this thrilling installment of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour!