Everything is awesome this week, as we go down familiar territory with a FULL EPISODE treatment of Fresh Pour favorite The LEGO Movie ! Geek Girl Chicago herself joins us to talk about this past spring’s surprisingly-great kid’s flick/Danish brick product placement, in which dopey Emmet (Chris Pratt) is dragged into an improbable and genre-savvy adventure to save the many realms of LEGO from the nefarious schemes of Lord Business (Will Ferrell). Along the way, we discuss our personal LEGO experi...
Jun 26, 2014•1 hr 33 min
This week on Alcohollywood, we get in touch with our primitive side with returning guest Theo as we check out the stark prehistoric film Quest for Fire ! A strange blend of speculative historical documentary and hero’s journey, the film follows a small group of Neanderthals (including Silver Bullet ’s Everett McGill and Bunraku ’s Ron Perlman) who must travel to find a new source for fire after it is lost. Along the way, they encounter apelike homo erectus, advanced homo sapiens (including a mes...
Jun 20, 2014•1 hr 3 min
This week on Alcohollywood, we’ve got a very special guest: Nathan Rabin, former head writer for The Onion AV Club and current contributor to The Dissolve ! He joins us to talk about the the samurai western gangster musical film mash-up Bunraku ! In a post-apocalyptic world without guns, a drifter (Josh Hartnett) and samurai (Gackt) must team up with a saloon owner (Woody Harrelson) to defeat a mob boss (Ron Perlman) for unknown reasons. What follows is a stylish, but ultimately schizophrenic ex...
Jun 12, 2014•1 hr 11 min
This week on Alcohollywood, we take a break from video games, space cats and gangster lizards to take on something a little more sensitive – the 1979 Peter Sellers film Being There . One of his last roles, Sellers plays an unassuming, exceedingly ‘simple’ gardener named Chance, whose sheltered lifestyle is changed forever when his benefactor dies. Entering the harsh outside world, his tenuous grasp on reality and the nature of things manages to exert incredible influence on the people around him...
Jun 05, 2014•1 hr 16 min
For the month of May, we’re kicking off Video Game Movie Month, where every week we take on a new film adaptation of a video game! This week, we (along with guest Ryan Bond) wrap up Video Game Movie Month with the infamous film Super Mario Bros. The Movie ! A completely wackadoo adaptation of the Nintendo game series featuring everyone's favorite plumbers, this film sees Mario (Bob Hoskins) and Luigi (John Leguizamo) becoming lost in a Blade Runner -esque dystopian dimension full of weird fungus...
May 29, 2014•1 hr 17 min
For the month of May, we’re kicking off Video Game Movie Month, where every week we take on a new film adaptation of a video game! This week, Matt K from CinemaJaw joins us to talk about 1984’s video game-related film Cloak and Dagger ! This one’s a bit different, as it’s not so much a video game adaptation as it is a tie-in for a failed Atari video game from the’80s, but we still think it counts. Young Davey ( ET ’s Henry Thomas) immerses himself in the imaginary world of Cloak and Dagger , onl...
May 22, 2014•1 hr 20 min
For the month of May, we’re kicking off Video Game Movie Month, where every week we take on a new film adaptation of a video game! This week, we've got a rogue's gallery of guests (from recurring guest Julia to playwright Dusty Wilson, to Grant of Chip and Ironicus ) to talk about the 2006 horror game adaptation Silent Hill ! When Rose (Radha Mitchell) steals her adopted daughter Sharon (Jodelle Ferland) away to the abandoned town of Silent Hill to try to solve the mystery of her nightmares, the...
May 15, 2014•1 hr 18 min
For the month of May, we’re kicking off Video Game Movie Month, where every week we take on a new film adaptation of a video game! This week, we head into space with House -guest Nick Ostrem to talk about the 1999 space-sim adaptation Wing Commander ! Based on the 90s space dogfight games of the same name, the film follows the fight to win a deadly future space war between the humans and the Kilrathi, a race of space cats so deadly they live in dense green fog to hide the shoddiness of their rub...
May 08, 2014•1 hr 8 min
For the month of May, we’re kicking off Video Game Movie Month, where every week we take on a new film adaptation of a video game! To get us started, Chris from the Nerd Outcast Podcast joins us for Paul WS Anderson’s debut feature, Mortal Kombat, based on the bloody fighting game of the same name! Telling the tale of three warriors forced to enter a martial arts tournament that will decide the fate of the world, this film is cheesy as hell. However, it goes about its business in a recklessly ch...
May 02, 2014•1 hr 9 min
This week on Alcohollywood, recurring guest Derek joins us as we check out one of the more unconventional listener requests we’ve been given – 2009’s Japanese dramedy Fish Story ! The tale of an obscure punk song that ends up saving the world from a deadly comet, Fish Story is an anthology film featuring vignettes from 1975 all the way to the apocalyptic world of 2012, showing the different ways in which the song (and the story that inspired it) dramatically affects people’s lives. It’s quirky a...
Apr 24, 2014•1 hr 3 min
This week on Alcohollywood, Clayton Faits of Our Fair City and Chicago actor Andrew Saenz joins us to take a look at the Robin Williams science fiction vehicle Bicentennial Man ! Adapted from the short story and novel by author Isaac Asimov, the film follows two hundred years of a robot butler (Williams) who strives to be human. This includes falling in love with the granddaughter of his original charge (Embeth Davidtz). Directed by Chris Columbus, the film is a bit of a sentimental slog of weep...
Apr 17, 2014•1 hr 14 min
This week on Alcohollywood, we saddle up with Our Fair City writer (and friend of the show) David Rheinstrom to take a look at Silverado , the 1985 ensemble Western written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan! The film stars Kevin Kline, Danny Glover, Scott Glenn and Kevin Costner as a ragtag band of gunslingers who help each other deal with their personal demons and long-standing rivals, including Brian Dennehy as a corrupt sheriff and Jeff Fahey as an unhinged outlaw. Silverado has a great, fun en...
Apr 10, 2014•1 hr 21 min
In the wake of a horrifying kidnapping, Clint must go Jared-less for this week’s episode of Alcohollywood! Joined by grizzled detective (and previous guest) Max and special guest, comedian Kris Flanagan , the trio attempt to keep Jared alive by enduring and drinking to The Watcher , the 2000 serial killer thriller starring James Spader and Keanu Reeves (who was under duress for the making of the film, his signature literally having been forged on a contract)! This film, in which grizzled ex-cop ...
Apr 04, 2014•1 hr 15 min
Come and get it, listeners – Nick from Consequence of Sound comes back to continue our exploration of cinematic Beatles efforts with the strange, bizarre creature that is The Magic Christian ! Based on a novel by Terry Southern, the film is a hippie-tastic, Pythonesque journey in which Peter Sellers’ obscenely rich social prankster adopts homeless Ringo Starr and takes him through one ham-fisted counterculture prank after another. The result is the kind of disjointed experimental film we saw a l...
Mar 28, 2014•1 hr 14 min
This week on Alcohollywood, James and Ruben (our resident geek experts from the Geekspotting podcast) join us to check out Terry Gilliam’s feature-length debut, Time Bandits ! Fed up with his dreary, gadget obsessed parents, young Kevin falls in with a group of dwarf thieves using a time map from God to steal riches throughout history. We’ve covered Gilliam before with our Brazil episode, and Time Bandits has just as much of Gilliam’s dark whimsy as many of his other early classics. Join us for ...
Mar 20, 2014•1 hr 10 min
Erin go bragh, listeners! It’s St. Patrick’s Day weekend, and Alcohollywood (along with guest Jeffrey Gardner of Our Fair City ) has decided to buck the trend by talking about a good movie about Irish mythology – the animated film The Secret of Kells ! A fictionalized account of the story of the Book of Kells (an illuminated account of the Four Gospels that is an integral part of Irish history and culture), The Secret of Kells utilizes a fascinating animation style that evokes traditional Irish ...
Mar 13, 2014•1 hr 7 min
This week on Alcohollywood, Mark (from the classy science-y comedy podcast Blastropodcast ) joins us with our look at Disney’s attempt to cash-in on the Star Wars craze, The Black Hole ! A group of hapless scientists and astronauts exploring a black hole find a haunted house-ship occupied by Dr. Hans Reinhardt (Maximillian Schell, channeling Captain Nemo) and a bunch of robots. Once there, they find betrayal, mystery, laser gun fights and surprisingly un-Disney disembowelings – elements that mak...
Mar 06, 2014•1 hr 1 min
It’s Oscar season this week, and on Alcohollywood we’ve got Ry from our friends at CinemaJaw to help us talk about Best Picture nominee Gravity ! Acclaimed director Alfonso Cuaron ( Children of Men ) gives us this simple-yet-strong tale of survival and faith in space, as astronauts Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) find themselves stranded in space after a cloud of space debris destroys their shuttle. The two must overcome obstacle after obstacle, as Cuaron sends his...
Feb 28, 2014•1 hr 8 min
This week on Alcohollywood, we dig into the grit and grime of Joel Schumacher’s 1993 thriller Falling Down ! On a sunny Los Angeles day in the early 90s - in the face of poverty, scalding heat, and the boiling pot of post-Rodney King race relations – Bill “D-Fens” Foster (a powerful Michael Douglas) finally snaps and starts a long walk home, taking out his frustration on societal ills in the process. Meanwhile, an easy-going cop on his last day (Robert Duvall) finds himself the only one able to ...
Feb 20, 2014•1 hr 9 min
Happy Valentine’s Day to all you lovers out there! Check out our drinking game and custom cocktail for 1970’s classic romantic film Love Story ! It's the classic tale of a rich white kid (Ryan O’Neal) and a poor, spunky college student (Ali MacGraw) who fall in love and deal with the melodrama that ensues. Our regular Valentine’s guest Julia joins us for discussions of Ali MacGraw’s deadly disease, father/child relationships, and the ins and outs of Harvard Law. Love means never having to say yo...
Feb 13, 2014•1 hr 2 min
This week on Alcohollywood, we head for the land of the lost with the found footage flick The Dinosaur Project ! Equal parts Cloverfield and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World , the film follows a group of experts who head for a mysterious African island, hoping to find dinosaurs. Well, guess what they find? Despite the goofy premise, we actually had quite a bit of fun with The Dinosaur Project , since it commits itself quite well to the found footage gimmick and has a fair bit of visual st...
Feb 06, 2014•55 min
This week on Alcohollywood, Clue guest Theo returns to us to check out the 2001 Japanese thriller Ichi the Killer ! One of the most violent movies of all time, this film by acclaimed director Takashi Miike follows two violent men living in a depraved world of rape and violence – the stylish yet sadistic Kakihara ( Thor ’s Tadanobu Asano) and the emotionally unstable killing machine Ichi (Nao Omori). The film’s long for its subject matter at 130 minutes, and its narrative gets confusing, but it’s...
Jan 30, 2014•1 hr 8 min
Welcome back, friends! We took a week off to rest, revitalize, and let Clint open his show ( which you can see if you’re in the Chicagoland area ) – now we’re back with the Tina Fey cult high school comedy Mean Girls ! Recurring guest Lise ‘Kat’ Evans joins us as we dive into this well-regarded time capsule of 2000s culture and metahumor, featuring a pre-mummy Lindsey Lohan as a sheltered homeschooled girl entering the jungle of high school cold turkey at 16. There, she must contend with ‘mean g...
Jan 23, 2014•1 hr 6 min
This week on Alcohollywood, we delve into the complex Godzilla mythology with 1964’s Mothra vs. Godzilla (aka Godzilla vs. The Thing )! This film pits the famous lizard against mystical island god Mothra over control of Mothra’s giant egg! Part of the great Toho tradition of weird rubber monsters fighting each other, it’s certainly an interesting, crazy ride to endure. Grant of Chip & Ironicus joins us as we talk about miniature ladies, noble savages, and the hard world of investigative jour...
Jan 10, 2014•1 hr 4 min
Happy New Year, listeners – it’s the start of another year for Alcohollywood! To kick off 2014, we (along with guest Derek) try to solve the mystery of 3.14 with the Darren Aronofsky film Pi . Pi follows Max (Sean Gullette), an obsessive New York recluse who dedicates his life to the pursuit of a numerical value that just might explain everything from the stock market to the nature of God. Or, is he just going insane from cluster headaches and auditory hallucinations? Aronofsky’s debut film is a...
Jan 02, 2014•1 hr 11 min
Happy holidays, everyone – the Alcohollywood Christmas special episode is here! This time, guests Julia and Todd join us as we take on the 1996 Arnold Schwarzenegger stinker Jingle All the Way , in which Arnold flexes his comedy muscles as a workaholic dad whose son’s love is contingent on the acquisition of the hot new Turbo Man toy. This ends up leading him on a merry last-minute chase through the Twin Cities, while crazy post office worker Sinbad is hot on his heels. The movie actually has it...
Dec 24, 2013•1 hr 20 min
This week on Alcohollywood, we hit the high seas once again for the Robert Altman directed musical flop Popeye: The Movie ! This 1980 mess of a film sees Popeye (a mumbling Robin Williams) enter the idyllic world of Sweethaven, only to fall in love with the wide-eyed Olive Oyl (Shelley Duvall), adopt the adorable Swee’Pea, and fight off the blustering Bluto (Paul L. Smith). Altman’s signature cinematography, with its muted backgrounds and emphasis on wide shots, has its similarities to the origi...
Dec 19, 2013•50 min
Zdravstvuyte tovarisch! This week on Alcohollywood, we’re taking all you comrades for an Eastern bloc party with the 2010 Russian superhero flick Black Lightning ! Produced by Timur Bekmambetov (of Night Watch and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter fame), this Russian love letter to blockbuster superhero movies sees Dima, a down on his luck college student, suddenly inherit a flying Volgo automobile modified by Cold War scientists using magic fuel. Slowly learning its powers, he uses it to become t...
Dec 12, 2013•1 hr 3 min
All aboard this week on Alcohollywood, as we (along with guest Max) continue our double dose of dolphin movies with the George C. Scott vehicle The Day of the Dolphin ! A sensitive story about a man and his dolphin masquerading as a '70s political thriller, this Mike Nichols film is the most dour treatment of a movie about talking dolphins anyone could expect. Scott plays Dr. Terrell, a grumpy marine biologist who develops a system for dolphins to understand and speak basic English, only for nef...
Dec 05, 2013•1 hr 2 min
Harry Connickuh everybody! This week on Alcohollywood, it’s our favorite time of the year, where we (along with Jeff Award-winning composer Trevor Watkin) celebrate the life and career of everyone’s favorite slack-jawed crooner, Harry Connick Jr.! This time, we’re heading into the drink with the 3D family event of 2011, Dolphin Tale. This film tells the true story of Winter (herself), a dolphin who lost its tail in a crab cage and must be given a robot tail by master inventor Lucius Fox (Morgan ...
Nov 28, 2013•1 hr 10 min
