Theme Song: "Live Oak" by A Giraffe
Happy holidays, listeners! For our Christmas episode this year, Shannon Campe of the Stage of Fools podcast joins us once again to dig into the 90s cult Christmas classic Home Alone, starring Macauley Culkin and directed by Chris Columbus!
(Thanks to our sponsor Cards Against Humanity as part of the Chicago Podcast Coop!)
Related Links:
Buy Alonso Duralde's book Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas!
Harry Connickuh everyone! Every year, the week before Christmas, we celebrate the life and works of Sir Harry Connick, Jr. - this time around, returning guest Jane Dempsey joins us to talk about William Friedkin's Bug, adapted from the Tracy Letts play! Here, Connickuh plays third fiddle to Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon as a pair of co-dependent strangers who shack up in an Oklahoma motel room to hide from the world, only to find themselves dealing with a strange bug infestation - that may or may not be real. Check it out along with our custom cocktail and drinking rules!
(Thanks to our sponsor Field Notes as part of the Chicago Podcast Coop!)
This week, Julia Rohed of Mercy Street Theatre Company joins us to squeak about the 2003 remake of Willard, starring the ever-creepy Crispin Glover as an eccentric mama's boy who starts doling out his own brand of justice against those who wrong him - with the help of a few friendly rats. It's a surprisingly eccentric, Raimi-esque dark comedy with a wicked sense of humor, and we take it all in with our custom cocktail and drinking rules!
Related Links:
Get tickets to Mercy Street Theatre Company's Merry Christmas, Mulch Pile, running December 8-11 at the Chicago Actors Studio!
(Thanks to our sponsor Jackbox as part of the Chicago Podcast Coop!)
This week, Patrick O'Rourke of Pat Trek joins us to kick off December with the Jean-Claude Van Damme action film Sudden Death! Basically "Die Hard in a hockey stadium," Sudden Death features a disgraced fire marshal (JCVD) who has to save the Vice President and his own daughter from the clutches of a madman (Powers Boothe) holding them hostage during a Hawks-Penguins game. Featuring kick-fights with henchmen in penguin suits and the most industrious MacGyvered weapons, Sudden Death is a total blast - especially with our custom cocktail and drinking rules!
Related Links:
Get tickets to VStheUNIVERSE's Holiday Geek Show (feat. Alcohollywood!)
Get tickets to Mercy Street Theatre Company's production of Merry Christmas, Mulch Pile (feat. Clint!)
(Thanks to our sponsor Iron Galaxy as part of the Chicago Podcast Coop!)
This week, fellow Chicago film critic Jacob Oller joins us to unpack the pure-strain craziness of 1978's The Manitou! When a woman finds a rapidly growing fetus-tumor on her back, her tarot card-reading boyfriend (Tony Curtis) and the Native American guy who hates it when you litter (Michael Ansara) join forces to exorcise an evil 400-year-old demon. Space lasers, noble savage stereotypes and earnestly goofy special effects abound, and we talk about it all with our custom cocktail and drinking rules!
(Thanks to our sponsor Know Your Company as part of the Chicago Podcast Coop!)
This week, we lean into the everlasting arms of special guest Adam Kempenaar of Filmspotting as we discuss the Expressionistic style and intriguing moral center of Charles Laughton's acclaimed 1955 noir thriller The Night of the Hunter!
ANNOUNCEMENT: For the month of January 2017, we'll be pre-empting new episodes of the podcast in favor of bringing you our long-awaited full-cast radio drama Indiana Jones and the Monkey King! Don't worry, our spinoff shows Twin Cinema and Alcohollywood On Tap will run as scheduled.
Related Links:
Get your tickets for Filmspotting, Filmspotting: SVU, CinemaJaw and The Next Picture Show’s live podcast performances at the Chicago Podcast Festival!
Clint’s guest spot on the Kill By Kill Podcast (Episode 14)
Get Tickets for VStheUniverse’s Holiday Geek Show (featuring Alcohollywood!)
PUNCH Drink's article on movie drinking games, feat. Alcohollywood
(Thanks to our sponsor Basecamp as part of the Chicago Podcast Coop!)
This week, Theo Estes of our spinoff web series Twin Cinema (subscribe to our Youtube channel for new episodes every other week) joins us to get artsy with Todd Haynes' 1995 independent drama Safe, starring Julianne Moore!
ANNOUNCEMENT: Look out later this week for the launch of our biweekly spinoff podcast, Alcohollywood: On Tap, which will cover new releases, independent films, and offer interviews and festival coverage! Subscribe on iTunes!
(Thanks to our sponsor Cards Against Humanity as part of the Chicago Podcast Coop!)
This week, Allison Shoemaker of The AV Club, Consequence of Sound and Podlander Drunkcast joins us to talk the 1996 Sylvester-Stallone-in-a-tunnel thriller Daylight!
(Thanks to our sponsor Cards Against Humanity as part of the Chicago Podcast Coop!)
In our second minisode covering the Chicago International Film Festival, Clint tells Jared about the latter batch of films he caught at CIFF 2016, including Park Chan-wook's latest The Handmaiden (with help from Consequence of Sound's Dominick Suzanne-Mayer), the Jim O'Heir-starring dark comedy Middle Man, and more! Also, Clint sits down for an interview with Kaleidoscope writer/director Rupert Jones about working with his brother Toby Jones, and the visual rhythms of psychological horror.
We finish out our month-long breakdown of 'versus' horror movies this week with Consequence of Sound's Dominick Suzanne-Mayer, as we discuss the 1993 horror mish-mash Dollman vs. Demonic Toys! A sort of half-movie cobbled from stock footage from three different movies in the Full Moon Entertainment catalog - Dollman, Demonic Toys, and Bad Channels - along with a bit of new footage, this film sees Lilliputian space cop Brick Bardo (Tim Thomerson) and a human nurse shrunk down to 11 inches (Melissa Behr) teaming up with a full-sized policewoman (Tracy Scoggins) to take down a cabal of laser-spewing, rape-happy toys. It's only an hour long, but it's just as ridiculous as that synopsis implies! Check it out along with our custom cocktail and drinking rules!
(Thanks to our sponsor Cards Against Humanity as part of the Chicago Podcast Coop!)
This week, Grant of History Honeys and Chip & Ironicus joins us once more for Horror V. Octorbor, continuing our month-long breakdown of 'versus' movies with Alien vs. Predator! Paul W.S. Anderson's limp, ill-advised match-up movie combining Fox's biggest sci-fi monsters forgets what made the other two series good in the first place, basically remaking Resident Evil in an ancient Mayan-Aztec-Antarctican(?) temple, complete with paper-thin characters and dated effects. Still, we have a good time with our custom cocktail and drinking rules!
(Thanks to our sponsor Basecamp as part of the Chicago Podcast Coop!)
In this special minisode, Clint breaks down his coverage of the 52nd Annual Chicago International Film Festival for its opening weekend, including capsule reviews of A Quiet Passion, I, Daniel Blake, Paterson, The Autopsy of Jane Doe, and his most anticipated films of the fest!
This week, we continue our month of 'versus' horror movies with the 2010 horror comedy Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, along with special guest Matt Kubinski of CinemaJaw! Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine star as a couple of rednecks who are mistaken for hillbilly killers by a group of college kids when they accidentally kidnap college girl Allie (Katrina Bowden), resulting in a gut-busting sendup of horror tropes centered around an adorable pair of comedic buffoons. Check out our episode, along with our custom cocktail and drinking rules!
(Thanks to our sponsor Cards Against Humanity as part of the Chicago Podcast Coop!)
All month, we're celebrating our fifth Horror Octorbor by taking on a slew of 'Vs.' horror movies! To start off, actor Andrew Saenz (of the upcoming indie film El Algun Lugar) joins us to talk about Ronny Yu's 2003 sloppy horror mash-up Freddy vs. Jason.
(Thanks to our sponsor Field Notes as part of the Chicago Podcast Coop!)
This week, Eric Garneau of the Nerdologues comedy group and the podcasts Your Stories and Blank Cassette (and the manager of the comic book/games store Pastimes in Niles, IL) slaps on his cape and cowl to discuss the 1993 DC animated film Batman: Mask of the Phantasm!
(Thanks to our sponsor Cards Against Humanity as part of the Chicago Podcast Coop!)
This week, returning guest Derek Jarvis rides with us as we ride into the sunset to watch the 1976 Clint Eastwood Western The Outlaw Josey Wales! One of the more interesting revisionist Westerns of the 70s, Josey mixes up the white-hat do-goodery of the Old West with morally grey characters, vicious anti-heroes, and a frontier constantly beset with treacherous government officials and hordes of banditos who try to stop the titular outlaw (played by Eastwood) from just escaping the war and living his life. One of Eastwood’s earliest directorial efforts, we get a glimpse at the acclaimed director he would become. Check it out along with our drinking game and custom cocktail!
(Thanks to our sponsor Cards Against Humanity as part of the Chicago Podcast Coop!)
This week, Keith Phipps of Uproxx and The Next Picture Show comes back to the show to help us make sense of the 1970s John Boorman/Sean Connery mindscrew Zardoz! Set in the year 2293, Zardoz tells the tale of Zed (Connery, wearing a red diaper and thigh-high leather boots, and nothing else) a brutish Exterminator who finds himself in an isolated community of decadent immortals who can't die, and suddenly want his seed to make babies. The whole affair is a series of big, bold choices, many of which don't work, but that's part of the charm of this bizarre little filmic artifact. Even so, it's still fun to break it all down for you, along with our custom cocktail and drinking rules!
(Thanks to our sponsor Basecamp as part of the Chicago Podcast Coop!)
This week, we're joined by friend of the show (and Actual British Person) Ben Kaye to review one of our most frequent requests - Edgar Wright's 2007 action-comedy Hot Fuzz! Wright's followup to Shaun of the Dead offers even more elliptical comedy and impeccably sharp visuals, as top cop Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) is transferred to a sleepy British hamlet that is more sinister than it seems. Take a listen as we sing the praises of Timothy Dalton and make a few too many swan puns! (Oh, and check out our custom cocktail and drinking rules too.)
(Thanks to our sponsor Cards Against Humanity as part of the Chicago Podcast Coop!)
This week, Ele Matelan of WildClaw Theatre and Our Fair City joins us once again to talk about the Wes Craven home-invasion thriller The People Under the Stairs! One of those rare socially-conscious 1990s horror movies, Stairs follows a young boy named 'Fool' as he tries to rob his price-gouging landlords, only to learn they're leather-wearing psychopaths with a horde of vampiric zombie hostages in the basement. It's a curiously fun mixture of camp and creeps, and we've got a custom cocktail and drinking rules to get you through the night!
(Thanks to our sponsor Iron Galaxy as part of the Chicago Podcast Coop!)
This week, our friend Jane Dempsey joins us to talk about the notorious 1990 flop The Bonfire of the Vanities, directed by Brian De Palma and (inexplicably) starring Tom Hanks and Bruce Willis! An adaptation of the biting satirical novel by Tom Wolfe, Bonfire opts to dull the edges off any salient points it wants to make about the uncaring nature of the bourgeoisie and make it a big, campy comedy about rich, adulterous Tom Hanks trying to beat an assault rap against a poor black youth. Oh, and Bruce Willis is in it sometimes too, though he doesn't look like he knows that. Check out our breakdown along with our custom cocktail and drinking rules!
(Thanks to our sponsor The Second City as part of the Chicago Podcast Coop!)
This week, it's Christmas in August as Grant of Chip & Ironicus (and the new history podcast History Honeys) joins us once again to talk about another anime - Satoshi Kon's Tokyo Godfathers! This hard-to-find holiday masterpiece follows a trio of charismatic hobos who stumble across a baby in the garbage, and the antics that ensue as they figure out what to do with it. The result is a fantastic blend of Kon's wry, dark humor and stunning animation, with a great big beating heart in the middle. Get in the holiday spirit a little early this year as we give you our custom cocktail and drinking rules!
Related Links:
Tickets to I Am No Bird, directed by Scout Tafoya, at 8pm on 8/20 at Chicago Filmmakers
(Thanks to our sponsor Iron Galaxy as part of the Chicago Podcast Coop!)
This week, Consequence of Sound: Film editor Dominick Suzanne-Mayer joins us to break down the mind-bending time travel microbudget indie Primer! Directed by auteur Shane Carruth with a budget of $7,000, Primer offers a twisty, inscrutable and compellingly sparse tale of two budding entrepreneurs who end up building a time machine, and the looping, branching timelines they inadvertently create with it as they increasingly try (and fail) to understand what they have constructed. It's one of the great independent success stories, and we do our best to figure out the damn thing along with our custom cocktail and drinking rules!
(Thanks to our sponsor Basecamp as part of the Chicago Podcast Coop!)
Related Links:
Get tickets for Consequence of Sound's Friday night midnight screenings at the Music Box Theatre!
This week, Patrick O'Rourke of the Peaches and Hot Sauce podcast network joins us to talk about the independent timeline-jumping thriller Run Lola Run! The breakout film of director Tom Tykwer (Cloud Atlas), the film features a twenty-minute ticking-clock scenario in which Lola (Franka Potente) has to wrangle 100,000 marks to save the life of her boyfriend. Whenever she fails, she just says 'No!' and starts again, creating a whole new set of circumstances she has to overcome. The result is frenetic and fun, and we dig into it with our custom cocktail and drinking game!
(Thanks to our sponsor Cards Against Humanity as part of the Chicago Podcast Coop!)
This week, returning guest Theo (whose film review webseries Twin Cinema will be coming soon to the Alcohollywood Youtube Channel!) joins us to disassemble the cinematic mind-screw that is Shinya Tsukamoto's Tetsuo the Iron Man! Somewhere between the surrealism of Lynch and the body horror of Cronenberg, Tetsuo follows a terrified salaryman as his body is slowly supplanted with strange metal growths. We chat about the film's striking 16mm photography, the surrealist plot, and drill-does, while offering you our custom cocktail and drinking rules. Check it out!
(Thanks to our sponsor Cards Against Humanity as part of the Chicago Podcast Coop!)
Related Links:
Get tickets here for the Music Box's midnight screening of 2014's The Guest (hosted by Clint!) on July 29th in Chicago!
This Week in Academia:
"A Cyborg Manifesto" by Donna Hareway
“Dead Channel Surfing: The Commonalities Between Cyberpunk Literature and Industrial Music” by Karen Collins
“Magical Girls and Atomic Bomb Sperm” by Annalee Newitz