The Good, The Pod and The Ugly

Send us Fan Mail SCARF SEASON CONTINUES WITH THE WHALE! Thar she blows, Part II of our initial Darren Aronofsky pairing for Season 11 of TGTPTU: THE WHALE (2023). Special guest Ryan returns to continue cohosts Ken and Thomas’ temporal pincer movement of working our way from first and last films sequentially inward and he provides a dissident and dissonant voice to the cohosts’ The Whale love song....

Send us Fan Mail Aronofsky Chapter One Pt. One: Pi TGTPU SEASON 11 returns to form with our classic (or outdated) temporal pincer movement to cover the entirety of (yes, all eight) wide release films of director Darren Aronofsky. Hosts Ken and Thomas with guest Ryan - pause, pop pills, make a note - kick off the inaugural episode of the new season with Aronofsky’s first feature film, PI (1998), a...

Send us Fan Mail SEASON FINALE! SIDE HUSTLE 15: WARREN BEATTY! SHAMPOO and DICK TRACY! Our epic tenth season comes to a close in a flurry of bug hair, blow dryers, primary colors and the horror of Madonna acting with Hollywood legend Warren Beatty. Most legendary actor/directors we might talk about from his era (Beatty was born in 1937) need a separate Wikipedia page for their filmography and biog...

Send us Fan Mail THE COLOR OF MONEY and SEA OF LOVE Directors with a day job for season 10? What about the most important person behind the scenes NOT the director? The writer. RICHARD PRICE was a renowned author before trying his hand at screenwriting, which resulted in a "calling card" script that everyone loved but no one wanted to make into a movie. Classic Hollywood. As we discuss g...

Send us Fan Mail CHRISTMAS ADJACENT 4: QUADRUPLING DOWN ON OUR LEAST POPULAR SPECIALS! Happy Holidays from all of us at The Good, The Pod, and The Ugly! We bring you three films that reference Christmas a few times but are in no way "Christmas Movies" filled with the spirit of the season and all that shot. Nope. It's "Christmas Adjacent" and, given our downloads for these,...

Send us Fan Mail SIDE HUSTLE 13. Norman Mailer: TOUGH GUYS DON’T DANCE and CREMASTER 2 Every ranking must have its worst, and this week’s episode aims to shoot to the bottom of the Season X bucket with Norman Mailer as our chosen actor-director. TGTPTU welcomes back its junior cohost Jack after a long hiatus to join us on this atrocity to good sense as we cover two unwatchable films: the first, TO...

Send us Fan Mail SIDE HUSTLE 12: RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH AIN'T NO DUMMY Only four episodes left in our epic season ten, talking side hustles. While we mostly have discussed directors better known as actors, this week we talk Richard Attenborough, who, if not for Jurassic Park, would probably be better known as a director today. But he was a great actor! And not just when playing billionaire soft...

Send us Fan Mail SIDE HUSTLE XI: Tom Savini, Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Night of the Living Dead (1990). Spooky season episode! We are joined once again by screenwriter and horror expert Erik to talk some Tom Savini, an icon to generations of horror fans for his legendary makeup work along with his larger-than-life persona that has made him and his mustache instantly recognizable. We chose two fi...

Send us Fan Mail SEASON X EPISODE X: SIDE HUSTLE: UNDER THE CHERRY MOON and TRUE STORIES. Kierkegaard said: "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." Such is the tale of Prince, hot off the heels of starring in Purple Rain (1984), taking directorial duties on UNDER THE CHERRY MOON (1986) a black and white historical musical romance that must be seen to be be...

Send us Fan Mail SIDE HUSTLE 9: FARMER HOGGETT’S VOYAGE HOME Travel across the cosmos and back in time this week with TGTPTU and the crews of two starships Enterprise. Special guest Martin Harries from the Film vs Film podcast joins Capt. Ken and his number one Thomas this week to boldly go where numerous podcasting Trekkies have gone before as they explore two Academy (Starfleet) Award-winning ac...

Send us Fan Mail SALMA HAYEK: ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO & THE MALDONADO MIRACLE Salma Hayek is a justifiably iconic actress, personality, celebrity and turned it all into getting hitched to a soulless billionaire. Good for her! But there was a time where she was an up and coming hyphenate pursuing passion projects like Frieda and balancing those with commercial films. ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXI...

Send us Fan Mail SIDE HUSTLE 7: LEE GRANT. FROM INGENUE STAR TO BLACKLISTED RED TO A SECOND LIFE WHERE SHE WON AN ACTING OSCAR AND THEN A THIRD LIFE AS AN OSCAR-WINNING DOCUMENTARIAN. Who is Lee Grant? Read the all-caps above! One of the most remarkable people we've covered this, or any season. We are joined by Charlie to discuss Grant's work as actor and director this week! Born on Hall...

Send us Fan Mail SIDE HUSTLE 6: JAMES FRANCO: WE KNOW HE IS CANCELLED, STOP TEXTING US ABOUT IT We live in an era where  men are being held accountable for being awful (not nearly enough of them but it's a start). This is a good thing. Most of these men are older, however, and in the creative sphere most are past their Best By date. So it is unusual to have someone like James Franco, literall...

Send us Fan Mail SIDE HUSTLE V: Charlie's Brother,  Martin's Sane Son - REPO MAN and MEN AT WORK Nepo-babies are not new! Tell your crazy uncle, who thinks they are ruining Hollywood, that they have been around since he wore crop-tops and had a mullet. And so we put the spotlight on 1980s Short King, Emilio Estevez. First we talk about one of the all time great cult films of the 1980s, 1...

Send us Fan Mail SIDE HUSTLE IV: DeGOOD, DeBAD & DeVITO Danny Devito is a beloved actor and, in 2023, a justifiably beloved American institution. Mostly known as a comedic actor from Taxi onward, DeVito turned success as a pinch-hitting comedic character actor into a brief, but stellar, time as an A-list film director. Speaking of director's, Ivan Reitman certainly has numerous screen cre...

Send us Fan Mail SIDE HUSTLE III: C IS FOR COSTNER, GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME: UNTOUCHABLES AND THE POSTMAN  Kevin Costner had a special run of films in the 80s and 90s. If you weren't there, trust us! He did. He turned small roles into leading roles and used all of the cachet to make Dances With Wolves , which grew so out of hand that trades referred to it as Kevin's Gate. It made a gajillion...

Send us Fan Mail SIDE HUSTLE II: BANKS SHOT Celebrities! They are just like us! Except when they get the urge to try something new, they get studios or shady global investors to give them millions to make movies! That's their side hustle. This week we talk the lovely, hilarious and brilliant Elizabeth Banks. Her main gig as an actor starts us off with WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER (2001), where she...

Send us Fan Mail *SEASON X PREMIERE* SIDE HUSTLES AND HYPHENAUTS #1: BEN AFFLECK Celebrities! They are just like us! Except when they get the urge to try something new, it isn't the new taco  truck up the street, it's getting studios and money-men to invest millions of dollars in a movie they feel the urge to direct. This has resulted in many an actor finding second creative life as impo...

Send us Fan Mail 4X4: SERGIO MARTINO II: TORSO AND THE SUSPICIOUS DEATH OF A MINOR W/ERIK VANDERWOLF In part two of two on Italian filmmaker Sergio Martino, we are joined once again by Screenwriter Erik Vanderwolf as he picks two 1970s  classics (?) that show a little  of Martino's range. TRIGGER WARNING: BOTH FILMS CONTAIN SCENES OF SEXUAL ASSAULT AND IT IS DISCUSSED TORSO (1973) , is, to Er...

Send us Fan Mail 4X4 II: SERGIO MARTINO 2: THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH & YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY W/ERIK VANDERWOLF! In part one of two on Italian filmmaker Sergio Martino, we are joined once again by Screenwriter Erik Vanderwolf, an avowed Giallo superfan and he picks two classics in the genre starring all-time great Edwige Fenech to get things started. TRIGGER WA...

Send us Fan Mail PAUL WS PART DEUX: THE THREE EVILS/FAREWELL TO JACK In part one of our Paul WS Anderson two parter, we discussed two early classics that offered two very different paths young WS could take: The silly and bombastic effects-laden video game adaptation  Mortal Kombat or the grim space-horror classic Event Horizon . Kombat was successful and Horizon was not and so, four years after A...

Send us Fan Mail 4X4 2: PAUL WS ANDERSON PT. 1: MORTAL KOMBAT & EVENT HORIZON It's the OTHER Paul Anderson in the spotlight for our third 4X4 this season. This is the guy that's married to, and works with, Milla Jovovich, not the guy who has kids in some kind of common law deal with Maya Rudolph and made a few of the best movies of the last two decades. We start with two early banger...

Send us Fan Mail 4x4 JOHN FORD PART TWO: THE SEARCHERS & THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE  W/RICK PATT Last week we talked about a few seminal Ford films that weren’t westerns (The Informer and Grapes of Wrath). This week, get them saddles secure and oil them there spurs (??) because we have two of Ford’s most famous collabs with John Wayne (the actor, not the airport). Their most enduring of...

Send us Fan Mail JOHN FORD: THE INFORMER & GRAPES OF WRATH W/RICK PATT! Our two-part John Ford series begins with Ford fan and podcast pal Rick Patt joining us and curating the films! For part one we watched two Oscar winning award-winning Ford films made before he and John Wayne became entwined in their classic western collaborations (that's next week). THE INFORMER (1935) won Ford a Bes...

Send us Fan Mail OSAMA BIN WAITIN' FOR NEW YEARS: STRANGE DAYS and ZERO DARK THIRTY W/ BIGELOW CURATOR RYAN! We conclude our four film sweep through the filmography of Kathryn Bigelow with one of her notorious failures and one of her triumphs. 1995's STRANGE DAYS was a big budget summer movie that took place in the far-flung future of (checks notes) 1999! It's mix of contemporary so...