This week’s show picks up right where last week’s show left off with Dean and Phil revealing which films topped their lists as the best of 2022! Dean regales (?) with tales of his recent adventures in the nation’s capital before he and Phil compare notes on their respective Valentine’s Day plans. Phil then takes Dean to task about two films on his Top Ten list – The Kitchen Brigade from France and All Quiet on the Western Front from Germany. Dean then takes Phil to task about the Edgar Allen Poe mystery on Netflix, The Pale Blue Eye. Dean and Phil will then tackle the controversy that swirled around the Academy Award nomination for To Leslie star Andrea Riseborough, and the latest troubling reports coming out of the prosecution of Alec Baldwin. Loyal listeners like you (yes, YOU!) have concerns about the variable frame rates in Avatar: The Way of Water and the proposed variable seat-pricing plan at AMC Theaters. Your friends in podcasting and broadcasting will weigh in on both topics, as well as on the “Lawsuit of the Week” involving breakfast cereal and an indie rock band.

Last week, Dean and Phil discussed the ten films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, the ten films released in 2022 that earned the most revenue at the domestic U.S. box office, and the ten (or twelve) or so films the critics have come to consensus on as the best of the year. This week, it’s Dean and Phil’s turn! They will revel their Top Tens, as they count down what might be the films they consider the best, the most groundbreaking, the most important, or just their favorites of the year. 

Your friends in podcasting and broadcasting start the show with a “cold open” about some greats of Italian cinema and the genius of Jennifer Coolidge and the cinematographer of “The White Lotus”. Then, after Phil regales with tales of a one-day, 650 mile road trip to Turlock and back, Dean and Phil spend the bulk of the show doing a deep dive into analyzing the year in movies 2022. They take the 10 nominees for the Best Picture Oscar and compare/contrast that list with both the critics’ choices for the top dozen or so films of the year and the top ten box office releases of the year. What emerges is an analysis of the present, and perhaps the near future of moviemaking and movie-going.

This week’s show begins with Phil trying to surprise Dean with details of a very famous person who lived in what is now Dean’s hometown of Birmingham, Michigan, and then, Phil tries to stump Dean with a vintage movie ad (from 55 years ago!). Then, because they have been falling behind in discussing “Celebrity Deaths”, Dean and Phil will open the Chillpak morgue to discuss the huge amount of notables who shuffled off their mortal coils in the past week! In part 2, Dean and Phil discuss Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, the latest awards season news (including the SAG, DGA and Producers Guild nominations), and then they conclude with reviews of several films including The Kitchen Brigade, After Yang, Crimes of the Future and Bones and All.

Recorded late last week from a certain “historic building in downtown Los Angeles”, this episode begins with Phil doffing his cap about what Dean got right in discussing Sarah Polley’s Women Talking a few weeks back AND wagging his finger at what Dean got wrong while discussing Netflix’s “Wednesday” this past week. Phil then hails Joel de la Fuente (of “Man in the High Castle” and most recently “The Mysterious Benedict Society”) as his favorite actor. At that point, Dean and Phil switch gears for a show ten years in the making, analyzing the just-released, decennial Sight and Sound poll of all-time greatest films! What Dean and Phil were expecting and what surprised them leads to what promises to be an ongoing conversation about re-contextualization and the importance of learning how works of art resonate with different groups and different cultures.

A cold open about a … melon festival (?!) … inspires a story about racial hostility in Turlock in the early 20th century. From there, Phil is inspired to pick up on a brilliant observation Dean made last week about Mike Nichols’ Working Girl and apply that observation as a potential thru-line for this celebrated director’s career. Alec Baldwin gets into hot water for tweeting support for Anne Heche and Salman Rushdie gets stabbed on-stage right before hailing the USA as the last bastion of freedom of speech. Dean and Phil try to make sense of both of these events. The return of “What We’re Reading” sees Dean learning how to sketch people’s hands and Phil learning what the next World War will be like! In “Celebrity Deaths”, a good friend and frequent collaborator of Stanley Kubrick, a popular and inspiring painter, a legendary French movie star, and the composer of one of the most indelible theme songs of all time all get remembered. Finally, Dean and Phil discuss the finely-tuned instincts Marlon Brando possessed as a great entertainer, and Phil hails the allegorical storytelling on display in Jordan Peele’s Nope.

This week’s show runs the gamut culturally, from a production of “Uncle Vanya” in “Live Event of the Week” and a discussion about whether the play is a comedy, to stories of jury duty prompted by a “Lawsuit of the Week”, from an excellent documentary recommendation by a loyal listener like you (yes, YOU!) to a deep dive analysis of the U.S. box office (including a quiz!). The success of Where the Crawdads Sing gets paid particular attention, as does the “Mission: Impossible” franchise. The once-every-ten years Sight and Sound poll of the greatest films ever made leads to a discussion of the Daniels, Edgar Wright and Roy Andersson. Finally, great stories about the making of David Lynch’s Dune, Blue Velvet and The Straight Story get shared.

12 years ago this week, your friends in podcasting were recording their first show in stereo (rather than the two channel mono that was absolutely bonkers) and were discussing Gary Oldman’s sex appeal and The Last Mimzy. A clip from that discussion opens week’s show before Phil provides an update on his recovery from AND preparation for eye surgery, and Dean provides an update on some very interesting live comedy shows he is doing. One is his improv episode of “The X-Files” and you can see it this month in Detroit! Then, the gents move this week’s episode into the Chillpak morgue, where a maverick U.S. Presidential candidate, an all-star pitcher who became a controversial author and a successful actor, one of the greatest character actors of all time, a legend of Italian cinema, and a star of the original “Willy Wonka” all get remembered in “Celebrity Deaths”. A couple more thoughts related to last week’s discussion of what approach will most likely lead to creating great television get shared. Then, Dean and Phil discuss the controversy surrounding the American Cinematheque and the landmark Egyptian Theatre. Finally, they compare notes on Alfred Hitchcock’s fascinating Rope and the recent releases Us from Jordan Poole and Under the Silver Lake from David Robert Mitchell.  

Following up on one of their best episodes ever, your friends in podcasting return with the latest installment of Dean’s Down Under Bucket List (before he moves to Detroit)! Then, after a discussion of the visual symbolism of watching Aretha Franklin and John McCain memorialized in back-to-back days, Dean and Phil tackle the current season of “Better Call Saul”, the upcoming season of “Man in the High Castle”, the new movie from Spike Lee (BlacKkKlansman) and the Spike Lee joint Do The Right Thing (at almost 30!). Then, an actress with a once-promising, high-profile career who was shot and killed by police and the writer with the most ever combined Tony and Oscar nominations are remembered in “Celebrity Deaths”.