We have to talk about Woody Allen now which also means we need to talk about romance in the city. New York City, that is. Tim guides through different eras figuring out what makes love in the Big Apple a trope all its own. Annie Hall prompts us, of course, then Tim introduces The Age of Innocence and Marty which lead to talk of Edith Wharton, imagining Ernest Borgnine as any age younger than 60, Italian mothers, and Michelle Pfeiffer's immensely interesting early 90s.
Drugs and music go together like this podcast and hating on The Magnetic Fields. We as millennials remember well the lessons of D.A.R.E. (and are also very boring) but others have a more open attitude to a life of drugs. Ghostface Killah's Fishscale covers the highs and lows of drug peddling, usage, and culture and has Matt thinking, what if we 'Just Say Yes' instead? Cypress Hill and Spiritualized ask a similar question and measure the nuanced impacts of drug culture on one's health, art, bank account, and more.
The episode Tim and Matt were made for, explaining movies via Dril tweets. If you don't know Dril, go open Twitter and have yourself a reading session. We rattle off a bunch of favorites, and Tim relays how this David Lean classic is really just a Dril gem, as are The Insider and The King of Comedy. Lean, Mann, and Scorsese makes this a heavy hitter directors episode, but have they captured the spirit of their times as elegantly as Dril?
Belle and Sebastian produced a truly marvelous set of mournful yet sweet songs on If You're Feeling Sinister, a niche that they still loom over 30 years later. You might call it earnest, or even (and Matt might fight you) twee, but we call in New Sincerity. Matt and Tim talk the David Foster Wallace of it all then focus on some other breathtakingly vulnerable and poignant albums by artists in their feelings, Broken Social Scene's You Forgot it in People and Cat Powers' Moon Pix.
The movie title announces but Tim questions, are these really The Best Years of Our Lives? What makes the years best or even meaningful? How do we live out our lives as best we can? It's freshmen philosophy time, baby, but with two unrelenting cynics who, nevertheless, believe in the power of narrative. Tim brings Groundhog Day and Meet Me in St. Louis for consideration, the former with it's one-liners and latter with some immortal tunes.
Another one of those episodes where Matt pretends to know anything about electronic music. Some fun ones here though, all classics of that late-90s shooting star genre Big Beat, which is blessedly straightforward in name. Chemical Brothers make it on the Spin list with Dig Your Own Hole, and Matt talks Fatboy Slim's You've Come a Long Way, Baby and Propellerheads' Decksanddrumsandrockandroll as progenitors and exemplum of the Big Beat sound and era.
At their cores, the guys (particularly Tim) exude Dad Energy. That's surely been evident this entire podcast, but it's heightened here when they get to talk about early 19th century American history, specifically the Monroe Doctrine. See how the West was metaphorically won, or vaguely claimed, in Missing and The Mosquito Coast.
Actually okay timing here with Drake having just released a new album. Matt won't "get" that one just like he doesn't "get" Take Care...or Lana Del Ray's Ultraviolence or Father John Misty's Pure Comedy. Decade defining artists of the 2010s all, and unequivocally absent from any of Matt's personal playlists or rankings. Listen to Matt and Tim embrace their inner Abe Simpson as they ponder how they once had "it" but then "it" changed under their feet.
Dr. Strangelove is as much a movie of incredible sight gags and one-liners as it is profound political commentary. Tim and Matt share their favorites, naturally, before Tim frames the film as the more successful Twin to a similar, proximate movie. He then considers William Wyler’s Jezebel and Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street in a similar vein, wondering what makes them more popular, successful, and ultimately lasting.
A whole host of albums on the docket in this one! Matt gives Tim the choice of two sets to be considered alongside Eric B. and Rakim’s stone-cold classic Paid in Full. (If you haven’t heard Eric B. and, especially, Rakim directly, you’ve heard them in other artists.) Tim chooses the DMX and Busta Rhymes route as Matt outlines their cases as foundational, formative acts in hip-hop.
The famous addition to the movie version of Sound of Music, "Something Good" speaks to that (realized) hope of doing something, anything helpful for others. Tim tracks that theme of I Must Have Done Something Good through Crossing Delancey (Joan Micklin Silver) and Manhunter (Michael Mann) and how that sentiment often lives somewhere between exhausted relief and neurotic yearning.
p.s. This episode was recorded before our hiatus, please ignore any dated references.
We love a good genre episode and here’s a big one from the 90s, which has influenced everything from Bjork to the theme song of House. Portishead’s Dummy sets the stage for the forlorn, downtempo, psychedelic mix of jazz, dub, and soul that is Trip-Hop. Neither Massive Attack nor Lamb has the secret ingredient that is Beth Gibbons, but both offer unique, compelling visions of Trip-Hop’s range with the former’s demented house beats in Mezzanine and the latter’s insistent break-beats in Lamb.
p.s. This episode was recorded before our hiatus, please ignore any dated references.
Tim is here doing serious things and giving some love to the old studio model of movie making along with the peak and power of MGM. Meanwhile, Matt is being a nudnik and subjecting Tim and everyone else to a ranking of Butt Rock songs. Where else can you hear about Naughty Marietta, Breaking Benjamin, various Mickey Rooney joints, and Staind all at once? Where else would you even want to?!
p.s. This episode was recorded before our hiatus, please ignore any dated references.
“It was beauty killed the beast.” So ends King Kong (1933), whom Matt and Tim love very much. A memorable last line goes a long way in establishing a film’s legacy, especially when it encapsulates the spirit of the film so perfectly. Tim looks at Back to the Future and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang as other instances of movies that tie a perfect bow on their journeys. (As a bonus, see how much Matt can annoy Tim with that Pretenders song.)
p.s. This episode was recorded before our hiatus, please ignore any dated references.
Matt is feeling his oats in this one and ready to confront you all with the legacies of Mumford and Sons and Nickelback. Vampire Weekend feel like a Matt band, but they aren't. What they undoubtedly are is a King of 21st Century Rock, emblematic of a larger genre movement. So, too, were Mumford and Nickelback. Love them or (most likely) hate them, they allow us to track the ebbs and flows of popular rock in the current century.
p.s. This episode was recorded before our hiatus, please ignore any dated references.
Though I would have appreciated the bit of running La La Land into this for no reason, Tim has standards. He's looking at the classic crime film as a Three Decade Period Piece. In other words, the movie released roughly three decades after the bit of history it covers. We're going to small town Indiana and big, seedy L.A. as we discuss Hoosiers and Farewell, My Lovely and consider the significance of time difference the same as our ages.
p.s. This episode was recorded before our hiatus, please ignore any dated references.
We're back after a long but necessary hiatus. And what better way to return than with....oh no. Welp, Kanye is back on the podcast, and even more treacherous than last we talked about him. Which is a shame, because College Dropout is a genuinely fun, and funny, album. With a clear potshot at Ye's recent history, Matt talks some albums that try to Make Hip-Hop Fun Again in Del tha Funky Homosapien's Both Sides of the Brain and Madvillain's Madvillainy (which also means this is the second pod appearance for the late, great MF DOOM).
p.s. We actually recorded this one before our hiatus, so ignore any dated references.
Tim loves a good chance to slag the AFI for choosing not actually American movies but we have a bit of nuance on that theme this episode. Tim looks at John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy as a prime example of a non-American director bringing some foreign style to American cinema. Consideration of two directors with highly distinct, and maybe even iconoclastic, styles follows with F.W. Murnau (Tabu) and Sergio Leone (Once Upon a Time in America).
Matt keeps the rock theme going and checks in on life after the extinction (read: reunion tours) of the dinosaurs. Sleater-Kinney lambast and reinvigorate rock all at once in The Woods, a totemic and virile nearly-closing statement from the band. Rock is always on the verge of death in the magazines yet forever vital in our hearts, and Matt looks to Queens of the Stone Age and The Darkness that, like Sleater-Kinney, carry the perpetually fading torch of rock music in the 21st century.
The Philadelphia Story, in addition to being an interesting early rom-com, reflects well on one of the great mid-century movie titans, MGM. Tim tracks the story - the rise and fall, the palace intrigue, the style and viewpoint - of MGM through the momentous The Philadelphia Story and two smaller features in Love Finds Andy Hardy by George B. Seitz and Tea and Sympathies by Vincente Minnelli. Tim also official declares himself a leading scholar of Andy Hardy studies, while he and Matt would both like short men to calm down and realized that miniscule Mickey Rooney was once married to Ava Gardner.
