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. 

Your friends in podcasting begin with an update on what is being done to restore Phil’s eyesight, and the advice Phil has for those dealing with medical and insurance bureaucracies. They then dig into more than an hour of 20th century history, celebrating Doris Day, novelist Herman Wouk, comedian Tim Conway, architect I.M. Pei and the Arizona mining town of Bisbee.

It’s Memorial Day here in the USA, so this episode is coming out about 12 hours later than we like. Nevertheless, Dean and Phil remember a wonderful actress, the artist who designed so many classic movie posters, a pop artist whose sculpted work is iconic, a movie actor and television star from the Golden Age of Hollywood, and a prolific and controversial award-winning novelist. Following “Celebrity Deaths”, your friends in podcasting will weigh in on the criminal charges filed against former mogul Harvey Weinstein and his lawyer’s rather shocking public defense of Weinstein’s actions. Then, it’s time to dig into the latest “Star Trek” news and a handful of recent cinematic releases a half-dozen or more current or recent cinematic releases, including a new “Star Wars Story”, two superhero movies, and an indie comedy. All that, plus a Memorial Day-inspired re-appraisal of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.

 

Recorded a few days early, this week’s show truly has something for everyone, and if anyone claims it doesn’t, we hope they feel better soon! True gentleman and outstanding filmmaker Curtis Hanson is remembered in “Celebrity Deaths”. The Emmy Awards, and especially Jimmy Kimmel’s performance hosting them, are discussed. The Colin Kaepernick National Anthem protest saga is re-visited in the wake of more African-American deaths at the hands of police and in the wake of Kaepernick’s Time Magazine cover being released. And this week, the conversation inspired by Kaepernick’s protest goes in many unexpected, inspired and even hilarious directions – from sensitivity training, to Swedish massages, to the lyrics of “America the Beautiful.” That patriotic tune and the national anthem are far from the only songs discussed this week as Dean and Phil get downright musical while following up on Phil’s tirade from last week about “nostalgia” with a “Live Event of the Week” that features musical acts Hall & Oates, Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews & Orleans Avenue, and the powerful Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings. In fact, they even preview the new album from Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam! Then, Dean and Phil comfort each other in the wake of Brad Pitt’s divorce from Angelina Jolie, and they wonder why the hell anyone cares about it in the first place … Finally, “What We’re Reading” becomes the “Explanation of the Week” as Phil goes all “patronus charm” on an email from a listener like you (yes, YOU) criticizing his critique of the first two “Harry Potter” movies. EXPELLIARUMS! All in all in, it may be one of the best installments of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour ever and after almost ten years, how many podcasts could claim that? Your friends in podcasting, STILL changing the way people listen to the internet …