Even we are impressed at the ground covered in only 74 minutes this week by your friends in podcasting! They start by going deep into the improvisational jazz of Sun Ra and dissecting comments Sonny Rollins made in a podcast about jazz being “ a music of freedom”. The Coen Brothers’ 1991 masterpiece Barton Fink gets revisited at 35 and is found to be better than ever. The film genre of neo-noir gets analyzed, and the all-too-overlooked Hickey & Boggs (directed by Robert Culp and co-starring Culp and Bill Cosby) gets championed as an outstanding exemplar of that genre. The death of certain kinds of horror tropes are foremost on Dean’s mind after seeing Scream 7, whereas Phil is intrigued by the new generation of horror exemplified by the current box office sensations Backrooms and Obsession. Then, Dean and Phil switch genres yet again, and examine cinematic comedy through two documentaries (Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man! and Marty, Life is Short), one all-time classic (Some Like it Hot) and two current releases in theaters (I Love Boosters and The Sheep Detectives).

Welcome to Year 20 (“the year we get it right!”). On this, their overall 988th installment, Dean and Phil really put the “Hollywood” into “Chillpak Hollywood Hour” with showbiz news, analysis, previews and reviews. It starts with a discussion of the long-running series “Supernatural”. Then in the “Lawsuit of the Week” the supposed end of the It Ends With Us lawsuits gets discussed. The surprising details of the SAG-AFTRA deal with the AMPTP get analyzed and the fact that it (most likely) means no labor stoppage for the next four years gets celebrated. Some fascinating rules changes for next year’s Oscars get dissected, and some seemingly terrific, but certainly intriguing, news regarding Greta Gerwig’s “Narnia” movie for Netflix gets hailed. The Cannes film festival gets previewed. As does the American Cinematheque’s Bleak Week festival. Finally, two current theatrical releases get hailed as modern masterworks and the plans for a new episode of “Deep Dive” get finalized.

Your friends in podcasting discuss Netflix’s (perhaps misleading) embrace of movie theaters, they celebrate the resurrection of Todd Hayne’s seemingly dead but now forthcoming detective film (with Pedro Pascal replacing Joaquin Phoenix), and an upcoming movie starring Simon Pegg, Sofia Boutella and Quentin Tarantino. Nia DaCosta’s Hedda gets analyzed, as does the Thai comedy A Useful Ghost and the Charlie Chaplin masterpiece Modern Times. More upcoming movies get previewed and the outstanding discodelic soul of Say She She gets celebrated in the return of “Live Event of the Week”.