Tag: Warner Bros.

Chillpak Hollywood Hour – Year 20 Episode 23

Posted on by PHIL19

Is this brand new show “an action-packed crowd-pleaser”? Give it a listen and find out! It sure is long, we’ll guarantee you that! The cold open deals with the year 1939. Then the show officially starts with all the news you can use coming out of Canada – the good, the bad and the so-called ugly! Your friends in podcasting then go deep into fine art and discuss the works of many great artists, before returning to the business of show and analyzing the current Disney lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission and the record-setting 2026 box office performance by a beloved leading lady. Dean saw the 1953 sci-fi comedy The Twonky (if you have been listening regularly, you understand), and Phil follows up the brilliant horror double-bill he described last week with another logical pairing: Nicolas Roeg’s 1973 Don’t Look Now and Dario Argento’s 1977 Suspiria (with a little bit of Hitchock’s North by Northwest thrown in for good measure).

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Chillpak Hollywood Hour – Year 20 Episode 22

Posted on by PHIL19

Despite being recorded later than we like, and despite one of your friends in podcasting definitely “playing hurt”, this installment certainly proves to be a delight. Much hilarity starts the show, in no small part thanks to an email from a loyal listener like you (yes, YOU!), before Dean and Phil get into a fascinating conversation about the court-approved settlement terms for the merger of Paramount/Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery. The “Live Event of the Week” returns, thanks to the launch of Phil’s own monthly stage show! He and Dean discuss, and Phil reveals he busted up his ankle falling down a flight of stairs many weeks back. Dean has begun his homework for the next “Deep Dive” into (neo) noir, and has thoughts about François Truffaut’s 1960 New Wave crime drama Shoot the Piano Player. Finally, since “spooky season” has begun, Phil does an in-depth comparison of John Carpenter’s 1982 The Thing and Ridley Scott’s 1979 Alien.

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Chillpak Hollywood Hour – Year 20 Episode 21

Posted on by PHIL19

If we know anything after almost 20 years of podcasting, it’s that people love hearing “production meetings on the air”! If that’s true, then what a show we have for you, with not one, but THREE production meetings – two of genuinely hilarious varieties and the third pertaining to movies like Backrooms, Exit 8, Universal Language and the television series “Severance”. In between those meetings, Dean and Phil share the thoughts of a loyal listener and roll up their sleeves to roast almost everybody involved in the “will they or won’t they” Paramount/Skydance merger with Warner Bros. Discovery. The glory of the once great Paramount Pictures gets re-visited using the all-time Hollywood classic Sunset Boulevard and the just-released season finale of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” season 4 as the gateway for this exploration. Come for the analysis, stay for the story about Phil stealing something! As if that all weren’t enough, Dean and Phil go deep on a perplexing television movie from 1974, its famous writer, its all-star cast, and its legendary cinematographer. Finally, Stop! That! Train! gets fully appraised.

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Chillpak Hollywood Hour – Year 20 Episode 20

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Hindsight, like this episode, is 20/20 (Year 20 Episode 20, get it?) and so Dean and Phil begin this week’s show with a clip from the long-running ABC news magazine show “20/20” from the mid-1980s and remark upon just how contemporary those clips sound! From there, the upcoming “Blade Runner 2099” television series gets previewed and the latest in the lawsuit surrounding Paramount’s on-hold merger with Warner Bros. gets analyzed (and laughed about). Phil wants to know why Dean isn’t watching the terrific “Lanterns” on HBO. The brilliance of director Zach Cregger and the success of his new Resident Evil get appraised. Then, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s The Samurai and the Prisoner (just in time for its return to cinemas, this time in black and white) and DC’s Supergirl both get reviewed. Finally, the great Ang Lee and his landmark Sense and Sensibility get reappraised (just in time for a new adaptation to get released).

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Chillpak Hollywood Hour – Year 20 Episode 19

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Dean Haglund is back from Stockholm and he has brought tales of family mysteries with him! Because Dean is also jet-lagged, Phil Leirness figured this show was the perfect time to ask him about the science of combatting jet lag, about Melbourne, and about wildlife in Australia. Wildlife in Los Angeles, from bears to coyotes to one famous mountain lion, gets celebrated as well. Phil’s suspicions surrounding the lawsuit currently blocking Paramount’s merger with Warner Bros. get discussed. The recent “Deep Dive” Dean and Phil did into 1950s film noir gets re-visited and in the process, the work of writer A.I. Bezzerides, and the early works of Stanley Kubrick get dug into, while an email from Maurice Terenzio about an early work by great noir director Joseph H. Lewis gets shared. Dean watched a whole bunch of current or recent releases on his long flight back from Europe (3BHK, F1, Michael and Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die) and Phil shares his thoughts about the current documentary about the late, great poet Mary Oliver. Even more movies than this get discussed, corrections get made and mea culpas are offered!

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Chillpak Hollywood Hour – Year 20 Episode 7

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There are two Carolinas in the USA. North and South. Phil is exploring both of them. So, this week’s show was pre-recorded quite a few days earlier than usual. In it, Dean and Phil discuss The Actor’s Gang, a well-respected theater company and training ground for talented performers (like their pal, Steve Benaquist). Dean and Phil continue to talk about the late, great artist David Hockney, his love of smoking, and the ways in which he taught the world to think of Los Angeles, namely as it pertains to light. Light and its interplay with shadows is absolutely top of mind for your friends in podcasting and they go deep into film noir, talking about such great actors as George Raft, Humphrey Bogart, Burt Lancaster, Edmond O’Brien, and Edward G. Robinson, and such great directors of noir as Fritz Lang and Robert Siodmak. The movies They Drive by Night, The Killers and Scarlet Street all get appraised. Finally, Phil holds court about the 1980 neo-noir The First Deadly Sin, which was the final motion picture produced by Frank Sinatra, and the final lead performance for Sinatra as an actor. It was supposed to have been directed by Roman Polanski, which has Phil asking, “What if it had been?” He also suggests another young director (at the time) who would have been a better choice than the film’s eventual director, Brian G. Hutton. Nevertheless, Hutton did director a couple of Dean’s favorite movies, so Phil shares the quite interesting details of Hutton’s career.

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Chillpak Hollywood Hour – Year 20 Episode 6

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In a rather shocking cold open, Phil reveals not only that he has World Cup Fever, but also that he is genuinely thrilled about the early tournament achievement accomplished by Team Canada! Brief remembrances of artist David Hockney and journalist Gene Shalit (both of whom died during the past few days) are offered. Then, things turn dark, as Dean and Phil explore some of the shabbiest corners of show business, with the latest on the impending Paramount merger with Warner Bros. and the return of the It Ends With Us lawsuit between director Justin Baldoni and star Blake Lively. Last week Dean and Phil talked about actress Ann Savage, who starred in Dean’s all-time favorite My Winnipeg. This week, Phil reveals to Dean that the Academy Museum will be hosting a “Weekend with Guy Maddin” featuring four of this master filmmaker’s greatest works. Dean convinces Phil to attend the entire weekend. A couple weeks back, Dean and Phil discussed the all-time classic Some Like it Hot and in so doing, Dean made some comments about that film’s indelible supporting player Joe E. Brown that inspired friend of the show Maurice Terenzio to hunt and peck his way through a lengthy, fascinating and rewarding missive about this great comic actor (and humanitarian). Film noir has been foremost on Phil’s mind of late, and he offers detailed appreciations for two of his all-time favorite actors: Sterling Hayden (in the process analyzing the revered Nicholas Ray-directed and Joan Crawford-starring western Johnny Guitar and the classic John Huston crime procedural The Asphalt Jungle) and Veronica Lake (with particular attention paid to the Raymond Chandler original The Blue Dahlia). Finally, it’s no secret that Dean loves action, and he offers a full report on the just-released action film The Furious.

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Chillpak Hollywood Hour – Year 20 Episode 5

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Phil was actually worried he and Dean wouldn’t have enough to discuss to fill this week’s show and wow was his worry unfounded! The gentlemen get the conversational ball rolling with the return of “What We’re Reading” wherein four quite fascinating and quite disparate works get covered, leading to in-depth discussion about such topics as painting watercolors, epistolary novels, the comedic genius of Norm Macdonald, and life in Austria-Hungary of the early 1900s. All the major prizewinners at Cannes 2026 get discussed, and the early summer U.S. box office gets celebrated. Then, however, the tone turns darker, as the need for a full-on boycott of Paramount and its properties gets expressed, and the ramifications of waiting for the Warner Bros. merger to launch said boycott get explored. Dean saw The Sheep Detectives and shares his thoughts. Phil watched the classic 1945 film noir Detour and spills the dirt on its director’s fall from grace, hails the film as a must-watch for aspiring filmmakers, and regales Dean with a delightful fact about the career of the film’s lead actress, Ann Savage.

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Chillpak Hollywood Hour – Year 19 Episode 50

Posted on by PHIL19

After a cold open wherein Phil gives everyone the lay of the land, outtakes from last week’s show are picked up off the cutting room floor, dusted off and used, revealing an obviously drunken Dean and (a perhaps tipsy) Phil continuing their discussion of commuter trains before delving into Project Hail Mary and a couple of vintage James Bond films. Then, after a midpoint musical interlude that allows Dean and Phil to become sober as judges, good pal Jon Lawlor joins the conversation for analysis of the Live Nation and Ticketmaster court case and the pending Warner Bros.-Paramount merger. During the show, Phil learns the difference between a Japanese bathhouse and the Alamo Drafthouse, and the difference between the words “vacillate” and “oscillate”.

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Chillpak Hollywood Hour – Year 19 Episode 44

Posted on by PHIL19

After comparing notes on their forthcoming respective travel plans, Dean and Phil roll up their sleeves and discuss the 25th anniversary of “The Lone Gunmen” series. Then, in what will be a multi-week exploration, they begin to delve into Time Out’s list of the 100 Greatest Movie Theaters in the World that are still in operation. The movie business is foremost on their minds these days, and they pose some of the big, perplexing questions regarding the possibly sinister and definitely nonsensical merger of Paramount with Warner Bros. Then, because it’s STILL awards season, they tackle the really odd, almost desperate nature of the recent SAG-AFTRA “Actor Awards” on Netflix. As a bonus, you will learn what the following phrases uttered by Dean Haglund in this episode actually mean: “We made the Ramones cry!” and “funky, artisanal whatever”.

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