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SPECIAL NOTE: SEASON 15 OF THE GOOD, THE POD AND THE UGLY CELEBRATES THE USE OF THE PRACTICAL AND DIGITAL EFFECT KNOWN AS THE SQUIB. IRL GUN VIOLENCE IS INTOLERABLE AND RENOUNCED BUT... CINEMATIC VIOLENCE WILL BE CELEBRATED IN A WAY THAT MAY DISTURB SOME LISTENERS.

What’s the rumpus? This week TGTPTU gives the Coen Brothers movie classic MILLER’S CROSSING (1990) the treatment as part of its Squib Season, see.

Lensed by Barry Sonnenfeld in his last frolic as the brothers’ cinematographer, Ethan Coen told the man with a golden eye that Miller’s Crossing should be a handsome film about men in hats, and Sonnenfeld delivers the goods with one spectacularly shot period piece from the Prohibition Era.

The picture stars Gabriel Byrne as Tom Reagan, the hard-drinking, harder-gambling Irish consigliere who knows all the angles, who’s having an affair with his boss’s skirt Verna Bernbaum (played by Marcia Gay Harden, who shortly after filming would originate the role of Harper Pitt in Tony Kushner’s two-part play Angels in America, see Season 7 of TGTPTU for more!).

Pod favorite John Turturro plays her brother Bernie, a conniving low-life crook who causes the friction in the ranks and can turn on the waterworks when needed. Jon Polito plays a loving dad allergic to the high-hat and with his right-hand J. E. Freeman playing the Dane (same year he’d star in Wild at Heart, see Season 4) they plan to take over the town from Albert Finney in one of his two roles as Tom’s boss Leo (the other appearance uncredited, spoilers during the episode for this Easter egg). Also, director and occasional second-unit-for-the-Coens-director Sam Raimi (and, can you believe it, brother of actor Ted Raimi from Hard Target covered earlier this Squib Games season!) shows up to plug a speakeasy patron grabbing air before himself getting gatted. And if you still haven’t had your fill, at this buffet of talent we even get a smattering of Steve Buscemi delivering ratatat dialogue for a scene.

This ep, Jack brings the book report, Thomas the Danish facts, Ken reenacts the experience of watching Miller’s Crossing with him by dropping movie quotes throughout the episode, Ryan brings up Gabriel Byrne’s acting chops, and all four hosts harmonize on the greater good.

Now get outta here. You’re stinking up the joint.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
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Podcast: goodpodugly
Ken: Ken Koral
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SPECIAL NOTE: SEASON 15 OF THE GOOD, THE POD AND THE UGLY CELEBRATES THE USE OF THE PRACTICAL AND DIGITAL EFFECT KNOWN AS THE SQUIB. IRL GUN VIOLENCE IS INTOLERABLE AND RENOUNCED BUT... CINEMATIC VIOLENCE WILL BE CELEBRATED IN A WAY THAT MAY DISTURB SOME LISTENERS.

Squib Games Season (S15) continues with an 80’s cable classic and special effects extravaganza, the eponymous F/X (1986).

Director Robert Mandel best known for his 1992 drama School Ties had no major studio film to his credit when he was hired to direct the two top tiered Bryans: Aussie sexpot Bryan Brown as the Hollywood special effects guru Roland “Rollie” Tyler, an immigrant framed by crooked law enforcement in an intricate double-fake out murder leaving him a marked man, and Brian Dennehy (returning to the action genre, see First Blood from earlier this season) as Detective Leo McCarthy who plays by his own rulebook and likely soon up for retirement who suspects Rollie might be innocent. Pod favs Diane Venora (Bird, Heat, The Insider) has a minor role as the aspiring actress love interest and Tom Noonan (Manhunter this same year) plays a tall goon. Surprisingly for an action-intrigue movie set in the 1980s, there are a pleasant number of professional women getting the job done, although those who pop most on screen are Rollie’s and Det. McCarthy’s respective sidekicks.

Mixing reveals on how effects are done in real life with FX in the reality of the movie’s world provides a great primer for this season’s gun play as well as lets the movie’s hero exact lethal revenge without having to hold a gun. Such a fun concept, the premise spawned a sequel five years later starring the two Bryans and five years after that a forty-episode, two-season Canadian TV series starring neither Bry/i/an.

The hosts this ep spitball alternate castings for turning F/X from a action-thriller into a b-movie gorefest; Ken’s feels safe to share his big glasses frame fetish; Ryan’s presents a theory on why straight women wore out copies of their VHS’s; and Thomas gets the opportunity to mention both The Rage: Carrie 2 and Psycho III in nearly the same breath.

Jack, this season’s visiting guest host and inspiration for Squib Season, is off again this week on some continental op but will return for next episode with the book report for Miller’s Crossing.

Fun final fact: F/X is the first movie since TGTPTU Season 4’s Cage/Uncaged to have a forward slash (or a “stroke” for our speakers of British English) in its title. That prior movie, of course, was our first John Woo film covered.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTU
Instagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0
Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.social
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-g
Letterboxd (follow us!):

Podcast: goodpodugly
Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a text

SPECIAL NOTE: SEASON 15 OF THE GOOD, THE POD AND THE UGLY CELEBRATES THE USE OF THE PRACTICAL AND DIGITAL EFFECT KNOWN AS THE SQUIB. IRL GUN VIOLENCE IS INTOLERABLE AND RENOUNCED BUT... CINEMATIC VIOLENCE WILL BE CELEBRATED IN A WAY THAT MAY DISTURB SOME LISTENERS.

This week TGTPTU covers the film Elephant, no not the 2000s school-shooter mood piece by Gus Van Sant filmed in Portland, OR and covered previously and paired with Scarface (1983, not the earlier, black-and-white 1932 Howard Hawkes version) in Episode 8 of this Squib Season (it’s Season 15 after all, not Season 14’s Redux where the hosts covered films already covered) but, rather, the 39-minute, made-for-British-TV short film directed by Alan Clarke also entitled ELEPHANT (1989).

Chosen by host Thomas for its un-celebratory violence, the film tracks with Clarke’s influential, wide-angle following shots (camera, not bullet) people who shoot other people (with bullets, not cameras) in mostly silent milieus but for environmental sounds, mostly very bloody. (As mentioned by cohost Ken, and for more on this camera placement and its effects and influence on Van Sant, see this video essay on the Film & Media Studies’ YouTubeTM channel: https://youtu.be/Z5B8_IDhJQo.)

Produced and defended by Danny Boyle, Elephant’s unspoken (again, mostly silent with dialogue barely heard in just one scene between four blokes kicking around the football toward the middle of the flick) subject is The Troubles in the UK. In what is either bravery or foolery (callers into the network after this movie aired were split), working class and Brit-born Clarke--by then a celebrated veteran of the medium of the British TV issues film--stripped the original screenplay of dialogue when making the film in order to focus on the act of gun murder as was then currently occurring. With one un-notable exception, each of the eighteen scenes of gun violence has the shooter followed into the setting where the homicide is to occur, shoot his victim, leave followed by the camera/audience, and then cut back to silent moments of each murdered man filling the frame with his recently un-lifed corpse.

Elephant would be Clarke’s penultimate work, with The Firm (no, not the adaption of the John Grisham novel that gave Holly Hunter the nom for Best Supporting Actress the same year she won Best Actress for The Piano as The Firm you’re thinking of is by Sydney Pollack) also shot for British television and aired in 1989 as his final. Clarke would cross the pond to see if he could sell out in America (according to Ken) and die in 1990 at the age of 54.

The film resoundingly fails the Bechdel test.

Host Ryan calls Clarke a coward.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTU
Instagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0
Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.social
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-g
Letterboxd (follow us!):

Podcast: goodpodugly
Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias