Sub Titles

Years from now, when historians and cultural anthropologists analyze the vital impact of Sub Titles, they’ll look to this episode for the self-evident truth of Tim’s proselytizing for Nashville as well as the origins of our then world famous band Musie and the Beef. It’s all business as usual, I guess I’m saying, to the point that here comes the lit crit terminology too as Tim discusses Diegetic M...

Have you, too, been wondering why Matt isn’t talking about more 90s Grocery Store Rock canon bands? Lucky for you he’s got just the stuff you need this episode! After talking M.I.A.’s Kala , how it holds up almost 15 years later, and the inescapability of “Paper Planes,” Matt moves to talk about two bands with some equally pervasive hits with famous movie connections. That’s right, it’s time for D...

Part 1 of this episode is sad and heavy. Part 2 is funny and, ahem, zany. Matt and Tim talk the brilliant irreverence of the Marx Bros and Duck Soup   (as with all screwballs, thorough discussion of favorite gags ensues). Tim introduces two romance screwballs in The Palm Beach Story and What’s Up, Doc?, both of which pay homage to and, fittingly, muck up the typical genre formula with some he...

Matt has teased with the philosophy before but this episode is all-in with a somehow not too literal reading of the title of Elliott Smith’s heartbreaking 1997 album, Either/Or . After giving a quick foundation for Kierkegaardian analysis - out of care for your intro to philosophy course as well - Matt traces the legacy of Smith and the presence of Kierkegaard’s existentialism through two (massive...

We’re all about pivotal years in this set. After Matt covered 2000 and hip-hop, Tim looked to 1941 and some of that year’s pivotal, most accomplished films. 1941 is a precipice year historically and cinematically, and Tim talks us through Sullivan’s Travels before considering the historical, cultural, and technical significance of The Devil and Daniel Webster and The Little Foxes .

We’re back to sing the praises of Outkast. After the smooth perfection of Aquemini , Andre and Big Boi dropped the at once massively accessible and obtusely futuristic Stankonia . You know “Ms. Jackson,” “B.O.B.,” and “So Fresh, So Clean,” all of which her major hits in 2000 (and far beyond). You know who else was huge in 2000? Ludacris and Nelly. Like, absurdly so. Matt talks those three artists...

Matt and Tim are up to their old shenanigans with a bracket and a alternate history choose your own adventure game in this bonus episode of Sub Titles. On the music side, Matt is running his way through a bracket of some choice 80s metal tunes, as inspired by the Master of Puppets episode. And over in movies, Tim is imagining how things could have gone differently for George Lucas after American G...

After looking at 2000 in Part 1, Tim shoots us back to 1941 for Part 2. We begin with Sullivan's Travels , a satire of trying to make it in Hollywood and trying to be socially relevant. It's a movie, to some degree, about breaking type, as are The Devil and Daniel Webster and The Little Foxes . Tim takes us through matters of pie stealing, Bette Davis, murderous intent, and old Mr. Scratch in our...

"Ms. Jackson," "So Fresh, So Clean," "B.O.B." You know Stankonia. There's a great chance you started humming one of those songs upon reading the title. There's also a great chance you start humming Nelly's "Country Grammar" and/or Ludacris' "Southern Hospitality" when I write those. What binds all of those together? The year 2000, an absolute monster year for hip-hop crossover hits and artists. Em...

You might think that if Tim and Matt, those cynics, are talking about Nostalgia then you’re in for a pretty negative episode. But we really like American Graffiti ! So no hate here, just good vibes and directors looking back on when they were younger and maybe less sad. Tim talks a couple big shots in Raoul Walsh and Orson Welles with The Roaring Twenties and The Magnificent Ambersons , respective...

Burial’s Untrue (which, amazingly, we only reverse once in this podcast) is a seminal electronic album but Matt is rude and still not really digging into electronic music. Instead, he’s talking about how engrossing and generous the world of Untrue is and how well Burial brings listeners in. Such an Intimate experience with music is incredibly powerful, and Matt presents Julien Baker’s Turn Out the...

Cabaret is a movie of many wonderful moments funny and somber. Standing tall among them is when everyone realizes they can’t control or stop the rise of the Nazis. Tim guides us through The Towering Inferno and Ace in the Hole , two movies that also upend any sense of control the protagonists might feel whether that’s via some human element or some element of nature.

You, dear listener, may well have staunch Beyoncé, and/or Beyoncé , opinions. Matt does not. Still he ventures on, chatting with Tim about the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Queen’s self-titled album (there are more of one than the other and you can guess which…) and how it functions as a sort of reset in her career, one in which Beyoncé defines Beyoncé for all to hear. Matt looks to oth...

We recorded this episode before the passing of Ned Beatty, and now an eerily prescient movie is even more sadly topical. Tim and Matt talk just how prescient Network , a movie regularly labeled as such, is, and for reasons you may not expect. Then Tim introduces Speedy and All That Heaven Allows as two other movies with similarly biting and pressing commentary on Modern Times, whenever they may be...

An album with more fun emphasis points in the title than fun songs! More seriously, Achtung Baby was a big reset moment for U2 in the midst of their global domination and did signal some stylistic shifts for the band. Matt and Tim talk how Achtung Baby is and isn't different from prior U2 affair, the respect we have for a band that just shoots their shot, and the importance of Berlin and Hansa Stu...

The real story here is how well can Tim and Matt resist doing the Toto bit. One of them fares better than the other. Also they discuss The African Queen , its precipitous fall between AFI lists, grungy Bogart, screen chemistry, and Africa. Tim then presents two films with African settings that are vital to the primary romance plot, John Ford's Mogambo and Anthony Minghella's The English Patient ....

Matt and Tim looked at the significance of Public Enemy back in the Fear of a Black Planet episode and they re-up that discussion here in the context of the predecessor, 1988's It Takes a Nation of Millions . That album was released during a quietly, and as we discuss catastrophically, consequential year. It also topped 1988's Pazz and Jop list. Matt presents two other top five albums from that po...

After Tim and Matt discuss the sheer joy of Raiders of the Lost Ark and how to basically hush and have fun, Tim starts to target Matt and call out his graduate exploits. Really he’s looking at Indiana Jones as the ultimate Poindexter Come Alive, a character type he traces in Ball of Fire and Losing Ground . Are you the type of academic who mugs at the camera in Peruvian temples, fights crime, or g...

If you’ve been pining for Matt to explain more philosophy here’s the episode you’ve been waiting for! Pulp’s Brit Pop staple, Different Class , regales with withering and genuinely funny tales of class relations, hipster posturing, and love as class warfare. Matt introduces two albums with similar preoccupations with class and revolutionary politics in Rage Against the Machine’s The Battle of Los...

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (I am, George) features one of the most compellingly uncomfortable arcs of any movie as we watch George and Martha destroy their entire imagined world. Other married couples crack-up much less metaphysically, including the mental and emotional fracturing of A Woman Under the Influence and, well, the fracturing of nearly everything in the coldly violent The Shining .

I’m not sure a metal band will again reach the heights that Metallica has. Their finest statement is Master of Puppets , a pummeling and tight 55 minutes of metal at its most populist. Matt presents albums by two highly respected and beloved metal acts from the last 20 years, Leviathan by Mastodon and Blue Record by Baroness, in a battle of Georgia bands. If you’re looking for your way into metal...

A lot going on in this episode. Tim gets to talk Westerns for a minute, so you know he’s excited, then he and Matt fuss about Unforgiven and talk about the nature of legends and who gets to print them. Tim offers two even more recent examples as the Malickissance continues with the visually marvelous The New World , and then one person gets real feisty about The Social Network . Tune in to find ou...

As fond as music critics are of praising Radiohead - more than deservedly so for the monumental Kid A - they’re almost more fond of identifying the next Radiohead. Matt assesses why that might be, landing on a general yearning for a specific brand of popular rock music, and offers Tim two albums by classic “The Next Radiohead” bands: Travis and Muse. That’s right, kids, it’s the Muse episode. Buck...

If you live for Tim’s impressions, here’s an episode for you. Dustin Hoffman realizes misogyny is a thing in Tootsie and Tim guides us through two other movies where maybe, hopeful a resident macho man realizes he’s being a s***head. Tune in to hear how the "‘Guy You Hate Might Have a Point' and ‘Lusty Moralist’ types fare and if they feel any shame in Hud and Sadie Thompson , respectively.

The Low End Theory is a high-point in hip-hop generally, and has a strong claim to being the pinnacle of the Native Tongues movement, a collective of early 90s artists with special love for jazz, Afrika Bambaataa, and a playfulness out-of-step with the burgeoning gangster rap scenes. Matt contextualizes Native Tongues, then gives Tim the choice of Queen Latifah’s assured and bouncy All Hail the Qu...