The Good, The Pod and The Ugly

Send us Fan MailEpisode 5 of TGTPTU’s Season 18 Déjà View breaks from its coverage of Mark Wahlberg’s run of 2000s remakes to celebrate All Hallows’ Eve (and former cohost Jack’s b-day, Hi, Jack! (and, yes, we know after your countless on-air admonitions not to say this at an airport)) with a special double-sized ep covering SUSPIRIA (1977) and SUSPIRIA (2018). And happy special occasion to us all at TGTPTU as we celebrate our 250th episode!   The original 1970’s Italian Suspiria was directed and cowritten by Dario Argento, starring Jessica Harper as Suzy Bannion, an American dance student who goes to Germany to learn dance at a prestigious academy only to learn its origins of and ongoing management by witches, or so we’ll have to assume, not having our resident Italian giallo expert and horror aficionado Erik Van Der Wolf on this very special episode. Instead, the TGTPTU gents are joined by a real-life American international student of dance who’s attended European institutions Annabel for insight into the seedy world of the occult/Europe/choreography (strikethrough as appropriate). The 2018 Amazon Suspiria was directed by pod fav Luca Guadagnino, known at the time for Call Me By Your Name and subsequently for Challengers and Bones and All, and stars Dakota Johnson as Suzy Bannion, copy and paste from preceding on her whole deal. The remake also boasts Tilda Swinton in at least three roles in the film.   This ep, guest Annabel and hosts Ken, Tom, and Ryan explore the great unanswered question: How long does it takes following your last trick before you can be considered an ex-prostitute? Also, auteur director, star, editor, Nevadan, writer, producer, and architect Neil Breen returns to wreak revenge for TPTGTU’s canceled season meant to cover his then six feature films; Ryan requests that Ken pick a lane; Thomas cribs Erik Van Der Wolf’s notes on Argento’s production on Suspiria; and Ken explains both the Goodfellas Rule and the Sean Young Bladerunner Test to the younger generation before admitting that he finds staying alive embarrassing.   Happy Halloween to all who celebrate. THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I .Email: [email protected]: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gLetterboxd (follow us!):Podcast: goodpoduglyKen: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us Fan MailGTPTU’s Season 18 Déjà View doubles down on its Off-the-Marks with Episode 4’s coverage of the Monahan-penned, Wyatt-directed, Marky Mark-starring THE GAMBLER (2014).   Originally offered to Scorsese, then to Todd Phillips, the roulette ball of the remake came to rest on director Rupert Wyatt after his successful relaunching of the Planet of the Apes franchise. In the same year the multi-tabling Mark Wahlberg would buddy up to a semi-truck robot refugee leader in Transformers: Age of Extinction, the Bostonian also stepped into (and maybe onto) the shoes of one of his idols James Caan in playing an updated version of the latter’s Axel Freed. Renamed Jim Bennett and relocated from NYC to LA, the titular Gambler maintains the original’s occupation (literature professor), background (scion with estranged father), and driving force and resolution (gambling debt owed to bookie and using a student athlete to fix a college basketball game) and still somehow goes bust.   For audiophiles and other eagle-eared listeners, host and episode editor Ken this week replaces former cohosts Jack and Squeaky Chair with the detracting sounds of paper notes; for stylists and trichophiliacs, host Thomas bags on Wahlberg’s hair; and for diagnosticians, host Ryan’s unresolved on whether his recent illness was from COVID or a Wahlberg allergy. And for those of you who like perfume ads and criminal variety, boy howdy do the TGTPTU boys have a perfect gambling den for you.     As these first two re-Marks have seemingly taken a toll on Ryan’s health, TGTPTU will take a break next week from Wahlberg remakes to cover a horror movie and its remake. What, a classic horror movie has had a remake? Indeed! Surely such a clue shall narrow the field. THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I .Email: [email protected]: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gLetterboxd (follow us!):Podcast: goodpoduglyKen: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us Fan MailKenny Rogers fans, hold your horses. We know you’re chomping at the bit, but this week as Episode 3 of Season 18 Déjà View’s remake season, we’re covering a stallion of a different color, that being the James Caan-starring, sex-pest written, Czech-born Brit directed Seventies classic THE GAMBLER (1974).   Semiautobiographical and originally drafted as a novel, James Toback’s first produced work follows the downward spiral of Axel Freed (Caan), its titular gambler, as a bad night’s debt has him burn bridges with his mother, girlfriend, idolized furniture baron grandfather, bookie bestie, and all-star student athlete as the literature professor spirals to a 1970’s cinematic freeze-frame ending. Small roles filled by the big soled shoes of Paul Savino (Bruce Willis character’s dad in Moonlighting) as the bookie; Burt Young (Rocky’s brother-in-law Paulie in the Rocky franchise) as a collector for a loan shark; M. Emmet Walsh (the uncle in The Odd Life of Timothy Green) as a rando gambler at a bar in Las Vegas; and James Woods (Meryl Streep’s artist husband in NBC’s 1978 Holocaust: The Story of the Family Weiss miniseries) as a bank clerk when Professor Freed convinces his doctor-mom to pay off his debt.   This week host Kenny not Rogers recites standup bits from The Monkey (aka London Lee), host “I am Ryan” learns that not all female doctors are nurses, and host Thomas makes sure Mission Impossible lore and Quentin Tarantino enter the chat.   Next week The Gambler gets a new vibe and face with an emaciated Mark Wahlberg.   THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I .Email: [email protected]: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gLetterboxd (follow us!):Podcast: goodpoduglyKen: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us Fan Mail  TGTPTU’s back and so too is THE ITALIAN JOB (2003), now with 98% less British. For Episode 2 of Season 18 Déjà View, your professional hosts with awesome backstories tackle the studio passion project that took all the wrong lessons from Soderberg’s 2001 hit Oceans 11 remake.  Opening in Italy, Donald Sutherland (“Big D” to those in the know) as Mr. Bridger (no relation to the 1969 original) on a cell phone promises his chastising straight-and-narrow daughter Stella Bridger played by Charlize Theron that he’ll definitely live to see the end of the movie and not be remembered by a fancy necklace he’s going to mail her bought with money he’s not yet stolen and then converses in-person with Mark Wahlberg’s Charlie Croker (no relation to the 1969 original) both barely audible over loud jazz music about handing over the reins for this one last job. This first heist plays well onscreen with a boat chase through the canals of Venice but will end with a double-cross (no relation to the 1969 original’s Italian mob plot) killing Papa Bridger and leading the heist team to leap one year into the future and to Los Angeles but not before recruiting Daughter Bridger from her honest safecracking work for law enforcement in Philadelphia. The team’s double-crosser is Steve Frazelli played alternately by Edward Norton and his moustache, and the tight-knit crew that will seek revenge (but never with much violence) on the vapid Frazelli (who doesn’t even have a nickname) includes Jason Statham, Seth Green, Mos Def, and someone named Franky G who all, say it with me, have no relation to the 1969 original.   But there are Minis. And they drive in places they shouldn’t. And this time there’s an onscreen helicopter that chases. They go vroom and explosives go boom and the team gets their heisted gold back and Frazelli gets tortured to death off-screen by the Ukrainian mafia while Stella and Charlie live happily ever after.   This ep, host Thomas—pardon, Handsome Tom—has The Booyah Tribe and Napster’s Shawn Fanning explained to him by Gen X co-host Ryan while Ken continues fuming about how The Fast and the Furious franchise went to space.  Chin up, mate: Only three more early 2000s Wahlberg remake pairings to go, not counting The Departed later this season. Next up, The Gambler.   THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I .Email: [email protected]: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gLetterboxd (follow us!):Podcast: goodpoduglyKen: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us Fan MailBuckle up, mates, the lads at TGTPTU are going to blow the bloody doors off the idea of a Hollywood remake this season (Season 18, Déjà View), starting with THE ITALIAN JOB (1969).   Above the title on this one, Sirs Michael Caine and Noël Coward, but the real stars of this heist caper are Swinging London and the Mini Cooper. Caine as Charlie Croker, an ex-con who upon leaving prison after time served is ready to get back to crime-ing after a few good shags and reclaiming his Aston Martin. Croker soon finds himself inheriting quite the caper after his friend dies at the hands of the Italian mafia, leaving behind the details on a nicely edited film for Croker to watch. Croker needs financing, so he breaks back into jail off-camera to interrupt UK kingpin Mr. Bridger, played by Coward with a Her Majesty kink, during his private potty time. When Mr. Bridger learns the gold in Turin that Caine wishes to steal will cripple the Italian economy, thus helping make England great again, he finances the gig’s dozen-some drivers and heavies and its assortment of Minis for test runs before an iconic car chase scene through the streets of Turin and onto a roof of a building and other places cars aren’t meant to go before a literal cliff-hanger ending. Also in this film, comedic actor Benny Hill as a boffin who likes his women big… BIG.    During this inaugural ep, Ken manages to bring up MacGyver without mentioning MacGruber while also diving deep into the film’s writer and that dude’s brother’s backgrounds; Ryan brings up the Mission Impossible franchise and how Caine was once the cockney James Bond; and Thomas saves the pod by working in (take a shot) a Quentin Tarantino reference.    Next week, well, The Italian Job (2003). (See how this works, then? THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: [email protected]: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gLetterboxd (follow us!):Podcast: goodpoduglyKen: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us Fan MailBEHOLD!  A between season rerun! Next season is all about remakes and the  movies that got remade. In prep we are shamelessly sifting through 6 years of episodes to find ones that fit! Last week we re-ran Frankenheimer's Manchurian Candidate episode from 2022 and this week is Demme's remake rerun, an episode also from 2022 (yeah, we peaked that year, we know).  Below are the OG show notes:  THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE & THE IRON LADY Our Streep season begins! In 2022 Streep is an untouchable icon, as beloved as any actor in the modern era. You know what? To get there it took a whole lot of work in a whole lot of movies. Streep was once (we're talking the 1980s here) seen as a too-serious actress, good with accents, dismissed for solely making hoity-toity films with awards aspirations. The cultural movement of the 1980s toward stupid stuff gave her that silly reputation for a minute. Crazy, right? Streep kept following the roles that interested her with filmmakers she wanted to work with and, slowly, built as varied a filmography of either straight-up good films or, at the very least, films that looked good on paper, as any actor the last fifty years.  And she did it all while continuously working through middle age and beyond when Hollywood generally tends to toss out actresses for younger models. Hopefully her career will be a beacon to change all of that. She is one of a kind. In THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (2004) Streep plays a senator who's son may become president through slightly unorthodox means in Jonathan Demme's ill-advised remake of John Frankenheimer's 1962 paranoid classic (covered on our season 7 premiere!). Denzel Washington plays a PTSD-ridden veteran who thinks Streep's son (played by a baby-faced Liev Schrieber) is not the war hero he remembers and may be part of a scheme of a large company to install a puppet president (thank goodness this kind of thing never happens in real life). Streep has the daunting task of filling the late Angela Landsbury's legendary shoes in a role heavily changed to reflect the early 2000s along with being expanded to suit someone of Streep's stature. Does it work? Listen and find out!THE IRON LADY (2011) is Streep's turn as controversial UK PM Margaret Thatcher. Streep disappears into the role as one would expect, and won an Oscar, as was deserved. But the film itself? It's timey-wimey with a fascinating structure and framing device. It has a less-than-stellar reputation and we'll discuss that between marveling at Streep's effortless, beautiful, and nuanced performance that almost makes you forget who she is playing. BONUS: Super Streep fan Andi is joining us all season to quickly strike down any negative Streep talk.BONUS 2: We begin a new feature this season: WHAT WOULD MARGARET THATCHER THINK OF THIS MOVIE? Prepare to roll your eyes so hard they get stuck.THEME SONG(S) BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: [email protected]: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gLetterboxd (follow us!):Podcast: goodpoduglyKen: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us Fan MailIn preparation for season 18 we are rerunning a few of our older episodes that have either been remade or are remakes themselves. This episode is four years old. Next week we'll reurn our coverage of the MC remake. THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE & THE TRAIN OG SHOW NOTES:John Frankenheimer (1930-2002) was one of the hardest working A-list directors of his generation. From early work at the forefront of the golden age of live TV to a series of classic films in the 1960s, he continued working through the 1970s and 1980s with up-and-down box office success, box office disappointments, some head-scratchers and a much-diminished star in the auteur pantheon he once seemed poised to be a permanent addition. Then a surprising return to TV in the early 90s made him a multi-Emmy-winning  wunderkind in his 60s and led to one last masterpiece in his return to the big screen (which we watch next episode). Co-host Ken chose Frankenheimer for his 4x4 director and chose the four films we'd watch and why. Anything missing, blame Ken.   PART ONEThe Manchurian Candidate (1962) and The Train (1964) start our 4xFrankenheimers off with a bang or two.The Manchurian Candidate was a feature Frankenheimer was deeply involved with from the get-go and his still-startling visuals resonate sixty years later.  That brainwashing sequence! The press conference! The deep focus! The kiss! It's all so impossibly good. Generally regarded as his masterpiece, our next feature may have a word or two about that.The Train was a film Frankenheimer was brought into late, after its original director was fired following the first day of shooting (harsh). Frankenheimer reworked the script considerably and designed an action movie of such uniquely powerful verisimilitude, it stands as a towering achievement as the best black and white action movie ever made (according to Ken, who won't shut up about this movie).Ken, Jack and Thomas all bring their A game this week (sorry, other weeks) in one of the best pairing we've ever had on the pod! THEME SONG(S) BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: [email protected]: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gLetterboxd (follow us!):Podcast: goodpoduglyKen: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us Fan MailHere, kiri, kiri, kiri! TGTPTU wraps Season 17 with return of former cohost Jack with his pick for a 1x1: Takashi Miike’s Tokyo extreme adaption of Ryu Murakami’s book of the same title AUDITION (1999).   Miike’s film follows the journey of a TV producer and widower played by Japanese horror legend Ryo Ishibashi who, after nearly a decade of grieving and with the encouragement of his teenage son, decides to proverbially dive back into the dating pool with an inventive method for selecting a date: the casting couch. There he finds the love of his life, a former dancer turned aspiring actress played by model Eihi Shiina in her acting debut. After a few dates and a hotel getaway with this woman closer to his son’s age, the movie turns subjective and hallucinatory when, *** SPOILERS*** upon the TV producer unable to track down his missing girlfriend who has been untruthful about her past, he is reunited with her and she with him and his foot with a bone saw and eyes and bodies with needles after she’s administered a nerve agent. What’s real and unreal is lost as the TV producer unconscious with pain remembers or reimagines their previous dates and his sexual transgressions and/or fantasies with the aspiring actress and other women seen through the film. ***SPOILERS OVER*** And their dog dies.   This ep, Jack gives zero facts; Ryan and Thomas swap roles and possibly bodies; and Ken reveals his fetish for feet and Billy Crystal.   The hosts also reveal the theme for Season 18, and Season 18’s theme is revealed. (No, it’s only redundant if you don’t get the clue, meaning, the redundancy and repetition of the original statement are the clue, not to repeat ourselves like the films next season will do. Goddammit, okay. ***SPOILER*** for Season 18 we’re doing remakes.)   THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: [email protected]: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gLetterboxd (follow us!):Podcast: goodpoduglyKen: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us Fan MailZOMBI 2 Guest sadist and host of the Blood and Popcorn podcast Erik W. Van Der Wolf joins the boys of TGTPTU with his 1x1 choice. On brand, it’s a horror film. On Van Der Wolf brand, it’s got gratuitous female nudity and Italians. That film that starts the final pairing of Season 17 is Lucio Fulci’s ZOMBI 2 (1979).*  Staring store-brand Mia Farrow and at least one British actor who, due to the Video Nasties in England, was unable to see the film for years after its retitled release as Zombie Flesh-Eaters in the UK.** The flick begins and ends in New York City with permit-less guerrilla filmmaking, and while its gory middle occurs on a Caribbean island where a plague ship leads a reporter and daughter*** in search of the doctor/father (and boat owner) who has been White-manning on the island. The reporter and daughter’s search unites them with a White couple owning a boat and a underwater zombie and a shark, the latter two famously fight. Things go pear-shaped when another White woman on the island gets an up-close look at a jagged piece of wood and the outbreak of medical or mystical or who-cares origin brings back the dead, including conquistadors, while killing those infected, like the island’s population. The reporter-daughter pair, now likely a romantic couple at the end of the film, narrowly escape the plague island before returning to the archipelago of NYC where <<<spoiler>>> the Twin Towers still stand.****    This ep, Erik tries to backdoor into the end of the recording an episode of his own podcast; Ryan finds a way to bring up Tarantino; Ken defends shaking fists and crying; and Thomas learns about the 1970s bra allergy pandemic.*****    Next week brings Season 17 to a fortunate close with the return of Jack.    FOOTNOTES:*There is no Zombi 1. Yet. **In the U.S., the film was released as Zombie. In the Netherlands (hi, Shannon!), it was released in English as Zombie 2. ***Two different characters played by actors, the former male and the latter female. ****And zombies have overrun one of the city’s bridges. Oh, yeah, and there was a weird autopsy scene earlier in the film with a very condescending medical examiner. *****We’re trying something new in the show notes where I’m getting paid by the footnote. Hopefully this format pans out!!! †   †Spoiler for next episode’s show notes: It will not. -Ken‡ ‡Or will it? -Thomas  THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: [email protected]: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gLetterboxd (follow us!):Podcast: goodpoduglyKen: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

Send us Fan MailRESURRECTION  Season 17 of the TGTPTU enters the final half of its 1x1 coverage with a flick picked by host Ryan that might count as five films: RESURRECTION (2025) written and directed by Chinese auteur Bi Gan.   Covering the Buddhist classification of six senses (with the wrapping narrative doubling as vision and mind), the anthology movie occurs under the pretense of a man’s dream lasting a hundred years, a comp for cinema, especially apparent when in its opening silent film sequence an opium-addicted Nosferatu-esque man’s hunchback gets loaded with a film reel (don’t worry, it doesn’t make a lot of literal sense in the film either). That dreaming, dying junkie deliriant (don’t worry, this term is explained in the film (although your mileage from its definition might vary)) will become a variety of ages and male characters within his dream, all portrayed by the same actor, one Jackson Yee apparently of former boy band fame. These disparate characters include someone pursued by an intelligence agent in a detective story trying to get the bottom of a musician’s murder (hearing), a hungry looter cum amateur dentist inside a Buddhist temple (taste), a con artist magician who brings on a girl accomplice (smell), and a virginal thug on NYE 1999 in love with a vampire (taste).    Ryan was stoked for the film’s release, and both he and Ken bullish on Bi Gan after watching the allegedly amazing Long Day’s Journey into Night (as unrelated to the Eugene O’Neill play as Bobby Drake’s brief foray into porn is to O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh). And while Resurrection’s opaque anthology style has its detractors, it too contains an amazing long-take during its NYE 1999 sequence.   This ep, host Thomas beefs with Multnomah County Library and offers a rare peek before the curtain for how he curates the commonalities between film pairings; host Ken does the plot summary and, later, his noir voice (removed by editor); and host Ryan’s non-host cat joins the pod.   Next week, The Cranberry’s/Erik Van Der Wolf’s/Lucio Fulci’s Zombie (or Zombi 2 or Zombie Flesh-Eaters) as S17 draws to a merciful close.   THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: [email protected]: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gLetterboxd (follow us!):Podcast: goodpoduglyKen: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias