Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: The Bill Comes Due
Butch and Sundance couldn’t run forever. Neither could the people of Days of Heaven or Separate Tables.
In Utero: “Teenage Angst Has Paid Off Well”
…and it pays off well to move beyond the teenage angst in some way. Find out how Foxing and My Chemical Romance did just that.
The Silence of the Lambs: Ladies Love a Serial Killer
Murderers most foul wins the fair lady’s heart in Badlands and Shadow of a Doubt.
Ready to Die: Started at the Bottom Now We Here
Biggie never quite got a full grip on his fame and status. Listen in as we discuss how Jay-Z and Kanye West and Eminem wrestle with their own sensational rises.
In the Heat of the Night: The South
Stereotypes of the South abound, obviously. Tim and Matt look at three movies that double-down on some perceptions and subvert others in honest representations of the South.
Emergency & I: Thoughtful, Quirky, Mercurial Young Adults
An episode about Dismemberment Plan, Motion City Soundtrack, and Los Campesinos! is the beginnings of a syllabus on rock bands in their mid-20s depressed about the present and anxious about the future.
Forrest Gump: History Class
Rants impending! Forrest Gump’s employment of history leads to discussion of (good) historicism in Meek’s Cutoff and Zodiac.
Live Through This: F*** the Patriarchy
Matt and Tim talk the legacy of Courtney Love and how Elastica and The Distillers both come out swinging in typically male-dominated genres.
All the President’s Men: Journalism
All the President’s Men is about some famous journalists. The journalists in Reds and Broadcast News are less famous but just as illustrative of the constant challenges of Journalism.
Tim: Drunk and Full of Tunes
The Replacements’ knack for drunken antics and rockin’ tunes lives on in The Hold Steady and Japandroids.
Modern Times: Food for the Machine
Everyone loves confronting their own disposability and the ways in which they service large, malicious systems!
Illmatic: East Coast Streets
NYC Hip Hop titans square off in this episode to decide which best spoke the East Coast Streets in the mid 90s.
The Wild Bunch: Scorpions and Ants
The Wild Bunch makes immediately clear that a few scorpions are no match for an army of ants, a striking visual and metaphor that Tim tracks in The Ox-Bow Incident and Silence.
Dookie: Pop-Punk
A lot of personal favorites for Matt in this one. Green Day’s Dookie prompts discussion of Blink-182’s Enema of the State, Jimmy Eat World’s Bleed American, heartfelt Pop-Punk, the struggles of adolescence, and what it means to be punk.
The Apartment: Blue Christmas
The Apartment shows Christmas going on no matter how blue or ignored someone may be. Tim introduces 3 Godfathers and Three Days of the Condor as other Blue Christmas movies.
Aquemini: The South’s Got Something to Say
Outkast’s Aquemini remains the best Southern hip hop album but the South has much more to say. Matt considers UGK’s Ridin’ Dirty and Juvenile’s 400 Degreez and their corresponding scenes of Houston and New Orleans, respectively.
Deci’s Midnight Runners #2: Shoegaze and Scorsese Oscars
Bonus content! Matt wanted to spend more time with Shoegaze and its many great artists. Tim wanted to take the Oscars to task for their Scorsese hate.
Spartacus: Directors Out of Type
After the requisite Carol Channing doing Spartacus impressions, Tim and Matt discuss a few famously eccentric and distinctive directors working Out of Type in the aforementioned Spartacus by Kubrick, John Carpenter’s Starman, and David Lynch’s The Straight Story.
Doolittle: Abrupt Shifts
Matt introduces the loud-soft-loud legacy of The Pixies’ Doolittle and how that style has been made an emotional weapon in Modest Mouse’s The Lonesome Crowded West and The Mars Volta’s De-Loused in the Comatorium.
Sunrise: Journey to Tilsit
Sunrise prompts this week’s topic of couples taken to the brink, the Journey to Tilsit, in Dodsworth and Before Midnight.