Book and Film Globe Podcast

On this week's vital BFG podcast, host Neal Pollack welcomes Stephen Garrett to be two white guys talking about a black-directed movie making fun of liberal white people reacting to a black-written book. We're talking, of course, about ' American Fiction ,' and while Stephen loved the warm, neurotic upper-middle-class black family saga that the literary satire was hiding, Neal wanted more satire a...

It's comedy and muscle this week on the BFG Podcast, why not? Host Neal Pollack leans heavily on the expertise of standup comedy expert Robert Dean to discuss the wildly popular new specials from Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais. Robert loves Chappelle but agrees with Neal that he's gotten so famous that he doesn't really need to work out new materials anymore, compared with, say, Joe Rogan, who s...

This week on the BFG Podcast, we have a classical-music picture, a car-racing picture, and a wrestling picture. It's not like the 1930s where the studios would crank out dozens of movies in each genre every year, but regardless, these movies fold right into traditional genres. They are pictures, and on the podcast, we present the big picture. First up, darling, Steven Garrett joins host Neal Polla...

It's the last BFG podcast of the year, and we wrap it up with a year's-end roundtable with Omar Gallaga and Scott Gold, who offer their TV-watching perspective with host Neal Pollack, who watches TV 18 to 20 hours a day. Best shows include 'Reservation Dogs,' 'Succession,' 'Scavenger's Reign,' and a sitcom called 'Primo' which Neal has never heard of but which you should watch. Worst shows include...

It's a magical, fantastical, confection-filled week on the BFG podcast. Host Neal Pollack welcomes in always-guest Stephen Garrett to talk about 'Wonka,' starring Timothée Chalamet as a truly child-friendly young Willy Wonka, who the movie re-invents as a gee-whiz paragon of goodness and light. Stephen liked the movie more on the show than he did in his review . Neal found it cloying and cynically...

Happy holiday podcast from all of us at BFG! This week is the podcast of your dreams. First up, contributor Robert Dean joins host Neal Pollack to talk about the Max biopic series ' Julia ,' all about the early years of Julia Child, TV chef. It's a delight in troubled times, and Robert assures us that Julia's boeuf bourguignon recipe still holds up. Consume voraciously! Stephen Garrett steps out o...

Two provocative new movies get the BFG podcast treatment this week. Host Neal Pollack begins the show with a wicked audio rendition of his piece excoriating stupid pundits who say that Hollywood has a new "Blacklist" because some people are expressing dumb opinions about the Israel-Hamas conflict. Spoiler alert: there is no Blacklist , not even a show starring James Spader Let's lay that discussio...

This week's BFG podcast is a feast for the brain. Michael Washburn engages host Neal Pollack in a discussion of Sandra Newman's provocative and "very raunchy" novel 'Julia' , a brilliant and extended riff of the world of Oceania in George Orwell's '1984.' Neal somewhat wondered what Newman was getting at, but Michael found her extension of the world extremely compelling and disturbing, a fresh war...

The culture goes up, and the culture goes down, and the BFG Podcast covers it all. On the downward slope this week is the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has suffered its first genuine bust with ' The Marvels .' The world is not entirely sure how to handle this phenomenon but host Neal Pollack and guest Scott Gold tackle it. They both agree that Iman Vellani is quite delightful as Kamala Khan/Ms....

On this week's special episode of the BFG Podcast, host Neal Pollack indulges his nerdy childhood fantasy of hosting a Siskel and Ebert-like movie review show. Frequent contributor Stephen Garrett joins Neal to review four new, or relatively new, movies. The only thing that's missing from the equation is disagreement and mutually despising each other, but that will come in time! First up, Neal and...

We get political this week on the BFG Podcast. Guest Rebecca Kurson joins host Neal Pollack in condemning Hamas, sure, but also offering a lot of disdain for Western intellectuals and actors who refuse to condemn Hamas . Neal is especially angry at a coalition of writers, his former peers perhaps, like Jonathan Lethem, Michael Chabon, and Ben Lerner, who published an open letter in the Guardian ca...

This week's BFG podcast starts serious, stays serious, and gets a little less serious by the end, but we cover the cultural waterfront like no one else. Sharyn Vane opens the proceedings by talking about her recent article on Scholastic Publishing's recent decision to segregate various "diverse" titles at book fairs to try and work around conservative state government attempts to restrict access t...

This week's BFG Podcast is a nutrient-rich stew of content, sure to appeal to young and old alike. Nothing could be more relevant than the opinions of two middle-aged men regarding Taylor Swift. Stephen Garrett actually saw the Taylor Swift "Eras" concert movie, and while he admires the music and the songwriting, found the stagecraft to be a little managed and almost cold, while acknowledging that...

Host Neal Pollack is all-in on streaming TV this week. He welcomes Michael Washburn to the BFG Podcast to discuss four new short films by Wes Anderson that adapt classic, if lesser-known, Roald Dahl short stories. Michael is less sold on Anderson's cinematic style, but he admits that these short Netflix films really do justice to Dahl's work. Both he and Neal are happy that this 20th Century humor...

Much to celebrate this week, even as we say goodbye to our beloved friend and contributor Daniel Cohen . The WGA Strike is over! Rob Kutner, BFG strike captain, stops by the virtual studios to talk to host Neal Pollack about the deal the Guild secured. The studios were "fighting the last war," as Rob put it, and the WGA got just about every concession for which it asked. Neal is most impressed abo...

In this week's episode of the BFG podcast, Jamie Mason joins host Neal Pollack for a segment on Canadian politics. Yes, that's right, Canadian politics! In particular, the actions of one school district in Ontario to clear library shelves of any book published prior to 2008 to meet amorphous "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" standards. Jamie is a closer watcher of the leftward authoritarian creep...

Since Jake Harris and host Neal Pollack recorded their segment of this week's BFG Podcast, both Drew Barrymore and Bill Maher have made the decision not to resume production of their respective talk shows without writers. Barrymore got a ton of public pressure to rescind her decision, and Maher says that since the WGA and the AMPTP are going back to the table, he's willing to wait a few more weeks...

This week's BFG podcast has a strong international flavor. For some chichetti, how about a visit to the Venice Film Festival? Kaveh Jalinous made his annual pilgrimage to the Lido and is here to talk to Neal Pollack about what he saw . In particular, he saw 'Poor Things' from Yorgos Lanthimos, which he describes as the pinnacle of Emma Stone's career. That's saying a lot. On the negative side of t...

In this week's excellent edition of the BFG Podcast, host Neal Pollack calls up Daniel Cohen to talk to him about ' Telemarketers ,' the three-part Max docuseries about phone scams that Neal calls "one of the best shows of the year." If you want a time-capsule depiction of what America was really like in the early 21st century, you could do a lot worse than this show by and about loser New Jersey...

This week's BFG podcast is a load of fun! Host Neal Pollack invites Scott Gold in to talk about 'Ashoka,' yet another Star Wars offering from Disney+. Scott is about as much of a Star Wars nerd as we could possibly have on retainer, so he has consumed all 104 hours of The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels, animated series that will give you the advanced degree required to understand everything that...

The dog days of August content are here, and we're featuring a movie about talking dogs, among other topics. Host Neal Pollack brings all the podcast fun as usual. Here's what we offer:• Pablo Gallaga stops by our professional podcasting studios to discuss 'Blue Beetle.' As a certified Latino, Pablo appreciates the DC superhero film's Mexican-culture deep cuts, including Maria del Barrio, El Chapu...

In this dog days edition of the BFG podcast, host Neal Pollack welcomes new contributor Chris Lambert to discuss the most important issue of our time: People taking photos of movies while they are in movies. This should be a crime, though Chris remembers a time when movies used to be "more chill." He recalls going to see 'Saw' with his friends in a year when Neal was already a full-blown adult. Re...

With Barbenheimer receding, our podcast host Neal Pollack turns his pop-culture eye to what comes next. And this week, that's ' Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem ,' the animated offering that critic Pablo Gallaga calls the best on-screen version of TMNT ever. Neal knows little about the Ninja Turtles, as he wasn't a kid even when they debuted, but Pablo is the adult target audience for t...

Rebecca Kurson, who was host Neal Pollack's literary agent nearly 25 years ago, joins the show to discuss "bloodletting" in the publishing industry, as Penguin Random House has cut loose editors with decades of experience. Rebecca and Neal lament what this means for publishing. It's getting harder and harder for editors to champion literary writers who may not have a ton of commercial potential, b...

Barbenheimer has arrived at last, a cultural moment more significant than anything we've experienced this decade, and BFG is ON IT.Neal Pollack welcomes Josh Flanders and Sheri Flanders to talk about Greta Gerwig's Barbie . Both Neal and Josh, while they enjoyed the movie, felt a bit like strangers in a strange land among the pink-wearing influencer audience in Barbie World. Sheri, on the other ha...