Welcome to a truly great episode and it all starts with an alternately touching and hilarious cold open! In “Celebrity Deaths”, Dean and Phil remember a jazz music pioneer, an actor who was an important influence on Dean, and a versatile, prolific, Oscar-winning filmmaker. Last week’s Oscar nominations get analyzed, as does the ensuing anger surrounding supposed “snubs”. After the break, the great film critic Luke Y. Thompson joins the fun, discussing how critics, like performers, can get “pigeon-holed”. He offers up thoughts on the Oscar-nominated The Zone of Interest and the underrated Beau is Afraid, and hips you to a black and white sci-fi comedy that is well worth your 68 minutes! He even talks about toy reviews and toy photography! And trust us, this episode offers a lot of laughs! Find links to all of Luke’s articles and reviews at https://linktr.ee/lytrules. And learn about his work as a toy collector, photographer and reviewer at https://www.eql.com/media/adult-toy-collecting

 

A lot of post-production work went into making this one of our best shows of the year! Dean regales with stories of drinking and jury duty, Phil remembers dear friend and true iconoclast Konrad Monti. Dean and Phil discuss Amazon’s “The Boys” (a show Dean might have actually influenced!) and the dire future of movie-going in the wake of James Bond and “Black Widow” being pushed again, which led to the 2nd largest U.S. theater chain closing, while the first largest still hasn’t fully re-opened! A terrific, and highly musical “Celebrity Deaths” involves celebrations of a great jazz musician (and subject of an awesome Netflix documentary), songwriter-singer-turned-actor Mac Davis, and 70’s-pop-queen-turned-therapist Helen Reddy! Finally, we transport you back to a certain rooftop in the historic L.A. neighborhood of Los Feliz for the conclusion of Dean and Phil’s ruminations on what filmmakers might make the list of their all-time favorites.

From the inner space of quiet, self-quarantine lockdowns, to the outer space of “Star Trek: Picard”, Dean Haglund and Phil Leirness take you on quite the journey this week! It starts with their latest observations about themselves and others in the wake of another week of isolation. Sadness, quiet and dehumanization are on the thematic menu! They then compare notes on their respective Easter celebrations, which leads to a discussion of a couple of classic musicals: 1934’s Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers vehicle The Gay Divorcee and 1948’s seasonal staple Easter Parade, starring Astaire and Judy Garland. The recent, modern classic, Uncut Gems gets championed by Phil, who tries to get Dean to overcome his trepidation surrounding Adam Sandler performances (and yet, Dean once championed You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, so go figure!). The second half of the show consists of Dean and Phil comparing the years in cinema 1973 and 1974, discussing all the notable films from those two halcyon years, in hopes of determining which year might challenge 1962 as the greatest year in cinema. Finally, your friends in podcasting beam up to the La Sirena to discuss and debate what went right and what went wrong in season one of “Star Trek: Picard”, a show so successful that a big-screen movie version is already in the planning stages.

Your friends in podcasting are one day late in delivering this week’s hearty serving of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour, so they reward your patience with an extra 16 minutes of show!Phil and Dean follow up on last week’s conversation about empathy to analyze the ways we consume movies now and what those ways do for us, or TO us!  They preview the forthcoming Joker and Doctor Sleep. They examine the use of de-aging technology in movies. They analyze the evolving differences between the DC vs. Marvel cinematic universes. They review the current theatrical releases Ready or Not and The Peanut Butter Falcon, the recent home video releases Long Shot, Gloria Bell and Men in Black: International. All that, plus they will celebrate the lives and legacies of two music icons, a best-selling novelist, a Broadway trailblazer and a television character actor. 

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!