The Good, The Pod and The Ugly

Send us Fan Mail MYSTERY ROAD   It’s the end of the road for Season 14 as TGTPTU’s four White fellas travel across the world to the land down under for host Ken’s 1x1 flick pick and this season’s final film: MYSTERY ROAD (2013), sponsored this week by the Criminal Island’s very own Hoppy Joe Beer (Get Your Hop On!).  Directed by ( and written by and lensed by and edited by and music with sound des...

Send us Fan Mail RISKY Sometimes you gotta say, “What the Fuck” to research, make your move. This week Season 14’s penultimate 1x1 is co-host Ryan’s pick: RISKY BUSINESS (1983). His reason: TGTPTU normally pairs filmographies of a single director or actor, and the writer-director on this film was so triggered by the experience of having his written, shot, and edited original ending replaced in the...

Send us Fan Mail Friends of Eddie The second 1x1 feature rounding out Season 14 and, chosen by Jack, the film is THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE (1973). Directed by Peter Yates, whose career TGTPTU is unlikely to cover in a future 4x4 despite having Krull and Bullitt in his credits, TFOEC is an adaptation of George V. Higgins’ inaugural novel and notable as a unromanticized depiction of crime in artist...

Send us Fan Mail HEDWIG Before we say auf wiedersehen to Season 14 with its eight revamps of the previously covered during the show’s first five years, the boys of TGTPTU reveal their unexpected special little packages: 1x1’s, wherein each host shall choose a single film by its merits of discussion and unlikelihood to be exposed on a future 4x4, creator, or thematic season. The first of these darl...

Send us Fan Mail AMERICAN SNIPER The once distant end of Season 14’s curated rewatched flicks is now in our sights as the TGTPTU crew pulls the trigger on their final movie of the eight enlisted pairs mustering their Redux Season, taking aim at Clint Eastwood’s highest grossing film: AMERICAN SNIPER (2014).   Originally covered early in the pod’s first season (S1, E5 in Year 2020) and chosen by ho...

Send us Fan Mail WHITE HUNTER, BLACK HEART  Episode 7, and you can feel the excitement of the hunt this episode, the first of TGTPTU’s final paired rewatches of the Redux Season (Season 14) and another double Eastwood starting with a bang with WHITE HUNTER, BLACK HEART (1990, originally covered by TGTPTU during Season 3, Episode 9).    As flick curator extraordinaire Ken’s second rewatch pick, the...

Send us Fan Mail The 15:17 to Paris Episode 6, all aboard! TGTPTU rides the Season 14 train to the end of the line of this third pairing of the season. Another rewatch of an Eastwood-directed film, this car was originally hitched to Season 1, Episode 3’s engine and nearly derailed the podcast as it left the station back in the Year 2020, and that movie running again on time and Ken’s first flick p...

Send us Fan Mail HONKYTONK MAN  TGTPTU continues to play its old hits with Episode 5 of Season 14, its redux series season celebrating five years and <cough, cough> don’t you worry about us, hoss, we’ll get through this pairing of Eastwood flicks starting with HONKYTONK MAN (1982).   Originally discussed toward the end of the epic run covering all of Clint Eastwood’s filmography (Season 3, E...

Send us Fan Mail THE WHALE It’s the fourth episode of Season 14, and our hungry boys are still going for seconds with their rewatch of the recently covered THE WHALE (2022), original episode from TGTPTU’s initial pairing that started the epic scarf/Darren Aronofsky season (S11, E2, Airdate 2/17/24).   Jack sits out this first of host Ryan’s two redux picks, leaving Ken and Thomas to rehash the ori...

Send us Fan Mail PIG Season 14 continues serving up second helpings of movies previously covered on TGTPTU with PIG (2021). Jack’s flick picked this week pulls from his, Ken’s, and then recently added host Thomas’s post-Eastwood season CAGE UNCAGED (S4, air date 7/23/21).  As established in the original episode, the Nicolas Cage movie is set and shot in Portland, Oregon prior to it burning to the...

Send us Fan Mail DEATH BECOMES HER (1992) For the second episode in TGTPTU’s Season 14 redux series, the film choice was Thomas’s. As he explains at the top of the ep, he wanted to do a Streep rewatch with recent co-host Ryan, specifically and especially a comedy. His first choice of Adaptation got nixed as it had previously been covered twice, first during the Cage and then again in the Streep se...

Send us Fan Mail High Plains Drifter (1973) TRIGGER WARNING: HPD features sexual assault as a plot point.  Season 14, a new season with a hefty helping of old, comes to town as the TGTPTU hosts return to movies they undervalued and/or missed over the thirteen seasons, beginning with Jack’s pick to rewatch HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER (1973). In that original episode released as S2, E6 in 2020, then hosts K...

Send us Fan Mail BOSS OF IT ALL (2006) Well, as the famous playwright Antonio Gambini once wrote: All good things (and Season 13 of TGTPTU) must come to a close. And what better stage for which our four hosts to give their final thoughts and review of the four directors covered this 4x4 season, as well as their general opinions of Lars von Trier, than with LvT’s office comedy THE BOSS OF IT ALL (2...

Send us Fan Mail 4X4: Lars von Trier #3 Breaking our own arbitrary rules just like Lars von Trier, the enfant terrible final director of Season 13’s 4x4, the TGTPTU crew for our final pairing breaks with release date order <gasp!> to review the later paired film earlier, giving you this week ANTICHRIST (2009).   From the throes of depression, LVT emerged to sink the world into his vision of...

Send us Fan Mail DANCER IN THE DARK (2000) Broadcasting live from 1964, and entirely in song, this week’s very special episode of TGTPTU covers Lars von Trier’s sixth film (but only our second of his covered this 4x4): DANCER IN THE DARK (2000).   It’s been over a hundred episodes, since Season 1’s Paint Yer Hereafter ep during our Clint Eastwood coverage, that TGTPTU has covered a musical. Dancer...

Send us Fan Mail ELEMENT Welcome to a new year and a new director as TGTPTU’s latest 4x4 reaches its fourth of four directors: Lars Von Trier . We start with his first wide-release feature THE ELEMENT OF CRIME (1984). And so begins our wrap-up of Season 13 with water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink…    Set in a post-catastrophe Europe (as will the Dane’s next two films forming his first...

Send us Fan Mail JUROR #2 It’s late-December and, foregoing our usual Christmas-adjacent movie watch, this year TGTPTU has a very special treat for the holidays. That’s right, listener, we bring to you our hot takes on what may prove to be Clint Eastwood’s final film--and even more likely his final theatrically-released film--JUROR #2 (2024) in time for its MAX streaming release so that you might...

Send us Fan Mail 4X4X3: WILLIAM WYLER CONCLUSION: THE COLLECTOR TGTPTU wraps its third director of Season 13’s 4x4 with a discussion of a fourth and final William Wyler film THE COLLECTOR (1965). Like The Big Country, its paired film from last week, The Collector began as a book, this one penned by John Fowles, author whose adapted novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman was covered by TGTPTU during o...

Send us Fan Mail 4X4: WILLIAM WYLER. #3: THE BIG COUNTRY (Note: Don't skip the theme song this week) TGTPTU Host Ryan’s Willie gets a glow-up with THE BIG COUNTRY (1958), the third in our cultivated William Wyler collection. Shot in glorious Technicolor on large-format Technorama to set it apart from the glut of midcentury black-and-white television Westerns, the big-budget film was not a fin...

Send us Fan Mail WILLIAM WYLER: PART 2 OF 4: THE DESPERATE HOURS Paired with last week’s Detective Story , TGTPTU’s Big Willie Winter continues with THE DESPERATE HOURS (1955), another black-and-white film adaptation by William Wyler and a rare feature from the director to not earn a single Academy Award nomination.  Perhaps first home invasion picture, The Desperate Hours was adapted from a book...

Send us Fan Mail DETECTIVE STORY Season 13’s 4x4 has reached its 1/2way point with our 9th of 16 movies and a new director, provisional co-host Ryan’s pick of the 15-time Academy Award-nominated, 3-time Oscar-winning director William Wyler. This week, we cover the first of Ryan’s four curated Wyler flicks DETECTIVE STORY (1951).  Up for four Academy Awards, including Best Director, but winning non...

Send us Fan Mail 4X4 III: TSAI MING-LIANG 4: DAYS TGTPTU’s back to finish (cough) the job handily (cough) with a happy ending (oh boy) for our coverage of director Tsai Ming-liang, coming together (really, dude?) to get every ounce our four gents have to offer, pulling and tugging (grow up) on each’s points and hot takes for this fourth and final 4x4 film of Jack’s offering (was that a pun?) calle...

Send us Fan Mail 2024 HALLOWEEN SPECIAL! NOTE: Approximately 35 punk rock band names are concealed in these show notes. Play along! It’s the end of October, which means the four misfits of TGTPTU are back with a special Birth-/ Halloween/Election Day episode, interrupting their regular Season 13 4x4 programming to bring you a tale fitting this celebratory trifecta: auteur director Jeremy Saulnier’...

Send us Fan Mail This week’s Season 13 4x4 entry is GOODBYE, DRAGON INN (2003) , the third of four films curated by guest host Jack to represent the filmography of director Tsai Ming-liang. The original TPTGTU boys are reunited this ep with the return of host Thomas but divided in their appreciation for what is billed as Tsai Ming-liang’s comedy-drama.  As promised in last episode, this third film...

Send us Fan Mail 4X4 2: TSAI MING-LIANG and "STRAY DOGS" Our four film investigation into slow cinema master Tsai Miang-liang tackles his 2013 masterpiece STRAY DOGS. If you can vibe to a five minute opening static shot of a woman brushing her hair while her children sleep beside her in a charred husk of as bedroom where even the sheets on the bed look like ruin before cutting to a nearl...