The Patreon episode intended for the previous month was released in two main parts plus an archive prologue and epilogue.
Listen to PUBLIC Episode 99 prologue - Zeitgeist Fiction (10s Archive)
(readings on Lady Bird, Get Out, The Dark Knight & Frozen + excerpts on Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers, Her, Guardians of the Galaxy, Inside Out, La La Land, Black Panther)
All That Heaven Allows (capsules on Jailhouse Rock, Sweet Smell of Success, Shane, From Here to Eternity, Bell, Book, and Candle, The Manchurian Candidate, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Departed, Mystic River, The Descent, Saw, Idiocracy, Anchorman, Zoolander, Fahrenheit 9/11, archive readings of Some Came Running, Kiss Me Deadly, Funny Face + feedback/media/work updates including A Goofy Movie & more)
Under the Skin (capsules on Jurassic World, Knives Out, American Sniper, Mad Max: Fury Road, It Follows, Personal Shopper, The Phantom Thread, Fahrenheit 11/9, Uncut Gems, Gravity, Straight Outta Compton, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, The Big Short, Joy, Mother!, Fruitvale Station, Carol, The Witch, Hereditary, The Love Witch, Looper, 13th, Snowden, Birdman, Bridesmaids, Baby Driver, The Great Gatsby, John Wick, archive reading of The Force Awakens & more)
Listen to PUBLIC Episode 99 epilogue - A Decade of Olympics (10s Archive)
(readings on documentaries about 2010 / 2014 / 2018 Winter Olympics & 2012 / 2016 Summer Olympics + 2022 Winter Olympics broadcast)
Introducing the episodes
Six months after initiating the decades series on my Patreon podcast, the project has (mostly) concluded. Begun with the eighties, it spread out to encompass capsule reviews in either direction - with light offerings from the earlier eras and heavier catalogues from the later ones. The episodes also incorporated archive readings and films in focus, at least one for each decade. These included: the eighties for August (anchored by Desperately Seeking Susan and Top Gun); finishing the eighties and beginning the nineties and seventies for September (anchored by Red Dawn, Do the Right Thing, Hail Mary, Pulp Fiction, and Klute); continuing the nineties with a Halloween special in October (anchored by Bram Stoker's Dracula); finishing the nineties and seventies and beginning the zeroes and sixties in November (anchored by Southland Tales - in discussion with guest Andrew Cook - and Jean Luc Godard's Weekend); and continuing the sixties with a Christmas/New Year's special in December (anchored by The Apartment). Along the way I added over a hundred titles to my library of podcast capsules - nearly doubling the total. You can browse all of my capsules in these directories, organized several different ways. This is the last time I'll be offering podcast capsules...but more on that in a moment.
Like earlier entries, my January podcast was delayed into the following month and presented in multiple parts (a couple of those parts were longer than any single audio file I'd uploaded previously). This collection concludes the zeroes and sixties, while taking us into the teens and fifties. From 2013, it's anchored by Under the Skin, Jonathan Glazer's riveting, avant-garde sci-fi starring an unforgettable Scarlet Johansson as a disguised, van-driving extraterrestrial hunting men in Glasgow and the surrounding countryside. (My discussion of the film expands to include the very different novel on which it's based.) And from 1955, it's anchored by All That Heaven Allows, Douglas Sirk's moving, old-fashioned romance between a lonely widow (Jane Wyman) and her free-spirited gardener (Rock Hudson). A record forty-five capsules further explore these and other themes: five dabbling in the fifties, a whopping twenty-eight recalling the recently passed teens, eight to round out my previous zeroes coverage, and a couple to wrap the sixties. And then there were a couple random Disney viewings with my nephew which tie into their own zeitgeists, with Mickey Mouse lionizing Lindbergh in the very twenties Plane Crazy and Goofy's road trip leading his moody teen son to a rock concert in the very nineties A Goofy Movie. (I also, after this was published, added a few more details to a discussion of Daisy Visits Minnie which make it a full-length capsule instead of just a fleeting mention.) Between this post's full title, the individual episode titles, and the line-ups listed below, the rest of the capsules are already laid out three different times on this page, so I won't repeat myself any further. Episode 99 is bracketed by archive prologues and epilogues as well, the first sharing full and partial reviews written by me about (and often during) the past decade, while the second dips into my Olympics documentary coverage which ended a year ago (plus a bonus covering that year's winter broadcast).
Aside from the enveloping decade theme, nearly an hour and a half of the episode ties up my five-year update system, where I'd offer podcast recommendations, recaps of my general TV/film viewing, and listener feedback. I'm ending this main Patreon podcast with the next episode - #100, a free-floating non-monthly reward which will probably publish in mid-March. However, that will consist almost entirely of full-length film in focus reviews, so this is the last time I'll be checking in on other topics, at least in this format. I would like to continue updating patrons on my work behind the scenes in the coming months and even years, but those audio offerings would probably just run ten minutes or so. This and the next episode represent the end of an era, one which began back in 2018 (you can explore all the subjects covered on the Politics and Random Topics directory pages). Throughout the spring, the main $1/month reward will be the advances of the TWIN PEAKS Character Series. Speaking of which...
The January previews round up three women, each a bit mysterious in their own ways. As always, their identities will remain a mystery - the public pieces aren't scheduled until late March and early April - for those who are not patrons. You can unlock their names and the full entries on each for $1/month...
(become a patron to discover their identities)
(Meanwhile, the next advances actually went up in the midst of the belated January podcasts; I'll wait to link those in the February cross-post in a couple weeks, though you can find them on Patreon - update 3/6: they were accidentally linked here in lieu of the January rewards, but I've now corrected that above.)
Finally, February saw me join forces with Blue Rose Task Force host John Bernardy for the first time, aside from a panel we shared with several other podcasters last summer. I used the opportunity to survey the history of both his own and the more general Twin Peaks fandom, a journey included in the exclusive Part 2 of this podcast, for the $5/month tier...
Podcast Line-Ups for...
