Now We Know

Bring out your dead! African or European? Elderberries! A shrubbery!? All this and more can be yours as Chris and Kevin dive headlong into one of the most tragically run-into-the-ground comedies of all time: Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which turns 50 this year. We are the knights who say ekki-ekki-ekki-pitang-zoo-boing!

SnOOooOOooOOpy / SnOOooOOooOOpy / come home Snoopy come home (come home come home)... Ring any bells? This time Kevin has brought Chris an all-time sad kids' movie to be reassessed. Not as well-known as the holiday fare and no Vince Guaraldi songs but this Peanuts movie has some toe-tapping, melancholy-inducing tunes of its own. Sometimes kids, adults, and even Snoopy himself can need a good cry! 

Imagine this: you buy a house, and it's a ridiculous steal, at just $200k for like a 15-bedroom mansion! The catch: it's really run down, and you'll have to tap your monied friends and professional contacts for loans to fix it up. And so you do, and you hire some contractors who get it all ship-shape, and now you have a million-dollar home. Sounds like a living nightmare, right? So, we are apparen...

Finally, they're doing the real one! Kevin and Chris are joined yet again by their pal Miranda, who was once a Titanic-obsessed tween, and in this case the wreckage didn't sink far from the iceberg. Chris considers it the Greatest American Romance, will you too fall in love?

With a new "photo-realistic" prequel to its 2019 "photo-realistic" remake in theaters at time of recording, Kevin and Chris round out the year with The Lion King, the 1994 Disney animated hit starring Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Matthew Broderick, Jeremy Irons, James Earl Jones, and many more. Happy New Year everyone! (Also, if you'd like to hear our thoughts on that aforementioned prequel, Mufasa: Th...

Hi-ho hi-ho (gremlin voice) it's off we go to Kingston Falls, where the titular gremlins can be found. Kevin has seen this one plenty but for Chris it's brand new! Will he find the little fellas adorable or does he agree with Stripe "Gizmo caca"? Listen and see!

Ho, ha, ho! To kick off the holiday season, we look back at a pair of those inimitable Rankin/Bass Christmas specials, rendered in beautiful stop-motion "animagic!" The specials in question: The Year Without a Santa Claus (of Heat Miser and Snow Miser fame), and The Life And Adventures of Santa Claus, frequently mentioned on these airwaves as "the weirdly pagan one," but maybe even weirder still.

Kevin and Chris are joined by Joe Wolohan (Kevin's cousin, for the unitiated) for a dive—a submerging, if you into—into The Hunt For Red October, the "thinking man's thriller" that bravely answers the question: who has more screen presence? Alec Baldwin or Sean Connery?

With the haunted confines of October in the rear view mirror, but the warm, glowing dinners of Thanksgiving still weeks away, we decided to split the difference with a children's animated classic that's equal parts warm and bleak, jokey and disconcerting—All Dogs Go To Heaven, the 1989 Don Bluth feature starring Burt Reynolds, Dom DeLuise, and Judith Barsi (rest in peace, gone too soon).

Roger roger it's Trollfighter 1 knowwhatImeanvern*???   *Vern does not appear in this film

This time, Chris offers up a twofer of animated Halloween specials, the latter a towering classic of the genre, the former an oft-forgotten footnote to its Christmas counterpart: Halloween is Grinch Night, and It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Suffice to say the broad approach to the Halloween cartoon doesn't get much further apart than these two, but who cares when the weather's so cozy*? *I...

It's Beetlejuice cartoon time, 'know what I mean babe? Huh huh huh I'm the ghost with the most [repeat sequence until funny]

This time Chris takes the wheel for Commercials of the 80's and 90's Lucky Number Volume 7! Dive in with us as we sift through wine ads that stigmatize male pattern baldness, pre-internet "party lines," and the cosmic horror of the Wendy's buffet bar.

With a legacy sequel on streaming now, Kevin and Chris look back at the 1980's comedy/action classic—emphasis on the comedy and de-emphasis on the action—Beverly Hills Cop. Starring Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold, and the pitching coach from Little Big League, among others. Join us for a deep dive into all the pranks, tricks, endless Axel F needle drops, and the effortless charisma of young Eddie.

Kevin and Chris are joined by first-time guest (and alleged former caller to the Now We Know hotline) Andrea Bloom, here to dish on all things Captain Planet. Join the Planeteers in their pitched battle for the survival of earth against Hoggish Greedly, Verminous Skumm, the sultry Dr. Blight, and more!

Kevin and Chris are joined by friend of the show Rachel Fisher (Hollywood Crime Scene) to revisit, in honor of the passing of the late, great Shelley Duvall, her classic 80's children's passion project: Faerie Tale Theatre. Specifically, the merry trio look back at Hansel and Gretel, starring Paul Dooley, Joan Collins, and young Ricky Schroder and Bridgette Andersen as the titular children.

PROGRAMMING NOTE: Want to choose what we cover for our next Patreon episode? Check out our listener poll on Twitter or Instagram , @nowweknowpod. Although Chris is technically the host of this episode, both he and Kevin are about as diehard fans of this flick as one can be — it's Disney's Robin Hood, released in 1973 to muted/mostly negative reaction, now an oft-cited source of sexual awakening fo...

From the annals of long-forgotten animation, Kevin presents, for your consideration: Bionic Six, a  1987 cartoon starring a family of cyborg heros taking on the nefarious Dr. Scarab. Directed by Osaka Dezaki—the man behind such animes as Space Adventure Cobra, Takarajima (Treasure Island), and the Golgo 13 movies—this show looms large in Kevin's memories, despite being largely forgotten.

Evan Tognotti joins the show to dig into 2002's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, an infamous big budget flop (or "disappointment," if you prefer Chris' classification) which had huge ramifications not just for the superhero genre and Hollywood icon Sean Connery's career, but for the Tognotti family's own personal fortunes.

Here he comes to save the day! Kevin, that is, bringing with him six entries (three episodes' worth combined) of Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, the 1987 Mighty Mouse reboot (not to be confused with 1980's The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle). Listen as Kevin gingerly guides Chris through a slate of first season episodes, produced by Bakshi studios under the eye of (now expose...

Nowadays, America's Culkinheads are all Kieran this, Kieran that. But back in 1994, we were still living in the Macaulay Epoch—though not for much longer, with that year's film adaptation of Richie Rich serving as the final childhood role for the darling young movie star. Nowadays you've probably only heard of this for the scene where Richie has a private McDonalds in his mansion, but fear not, as...

Once agIan, we're called to the mat by that most predictable and ignoble of occasions—the modern remake. The new 2024 version of this movie dropped back in April, so Kevin decided the time was ripe to revisit the 1991 original:  Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead.

They're finally gettin' married! Following the conclusion of the Aladdin animated series—which itself was kicked off by an earlier straight-to-video sequel—Disney rolled out a final VHS installment headlined by the return of Robin Williams as the Genie. Also featuring Jonathan Rhys-Davies and Jerry Orbach, this movie bravely asks: am I really better than The Return of Jafar?

Throwing back to the classic (if slightly underheralded) animation of our youths, Kevin brings forth Visionaries: Knights of the Magical Light, yet another Hasbro-backed vehicle reverse-engineered to sell toys. And, like the far more popular G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, this show was made by Sunbow Productions. Has lightning struck twice?

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