Merry Krampus, listeners! We’re celebrating Christmas by dipping back into the horror well with Daniel Lackey of The Nightmare Gallery and Ele Matelan of Our Fair City and WildClaw Theatre, as we dig into the Finnish horror flick Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale! A micro-budgeted curiosity from 2010, Rare Exports follows the travails of a small rural community in Finland who runs afoul of the historical Santa - now a homicidal, mute old man who’s more Hannibal Lecter than Kris Kringle.
From herds of nude old men to dozens of children in rucksacks to defensive use of gingerbread, this movie’s got quite a bit of charm to it, and we highly recommend it if you’re not just gonna be watching The Interview on Christmas Day. Check out our custom cocktail to lighten up your holidays, not to mention our drinking rules!
Harry Connickuh, listeners! For our fourth celebration of O He With the Golden Voice, we (along with Kat and Michael of Burning Brigid Media) bring you a drinking game, cocktail and perplexed review of 1995’s Copycat, starring Sigourney Weaver and Holly Hunter as an agoraphobic psychologist and a cop trying to track down a copycat serial killer. Connick Jr. is in it way less than we thought, playing a grubby hick serial killer whose presence haunts Weaver and inspires the film’s main villain, but his chipped-tooth slurring and overacting is certainly one of the more memorable elements of this gimmicky, derivative thriller.
While Weaver and Hunter are both great in it, the characters are stuck in an unfortunately workmanlike thriller that can’t quite get over its own sloppiness. We also delve into a variety of subjects, including poopsocking, ancient Chinese racial slurs, and a ukulele-based Connickuh carol for all to enjoy!
Konnichiwa, listeners! This week, we take on our first Japanese anime (on the show) with Grant of Chip & Ironicus and James of Geekspotting with Satoshi Kon's Paprika! This incredible, fascinating film follows the search for a stolen dream device, which is being abused to 'hack' into people's dreams and causing them to disappear and blur the lines between fantasy and reality. As the walls of the dream world begin to warp and collapse, it's up to the sprightly, powerful dream-warrior Paprika (and her more sedate real-life alter ego Chiba) to save the day.
It's a tremendous work of animation, with an incredible, fluid visual style and plenty of thematic material to unpack - we do our best in the episode, along with our custom cocktail and drinking game!
Relevant Links:
Every Frame a Painting's Video on Kon's use of space in time in his films, including Paprika
Radioclub.jp (click on the GUEST BOOK to find our secret message)
ANNOUNCEMENT: We recently contributed to a book on the Thin Man series of detective comedies, called Thoughts on the Thin Man, which you can find in print and Kindle form on Amazon!
This week on Alcohollywood, Mark Soloff of Blastropodcast and Ryan Bond of Our Fair City join us to slog through the three hour apocalyptic Western-y flop The Postman, starring/directed by Kevin Costner! In this follow-up to his other sci-fi flop Waterworld, Costner plays a rugged drifter in a desolate, apocalyptic Oregon, who takes up the mantle of “Postman” in order to deliver mail to these post-apocalyptic shantytowns and rebuild America. While there are some neat ideas behind it, the film’s bloated budget, languid pace, and miscast lead results in a three-hour snoozefest that even we have a bit of trouble putting into words. Luckily, we've got some help thanks to our drinking game and custom cocktail, so check those out below!