On this week's BFG Podcast, we welcome in our friend Richard Rushfield, who takes time away from his deli-going schedule from time to time to stop by to talk to host Neal Pollack about issues and trends in Hollywood. Richard is recently back from Cinemcon, the annual Las Vegas convention for theater owners, who always have one question: "Does your movie star Dwayne Johnson, or does it star Ryan Reynolds?" Headier artistic questions don't concern them. For the first time in many years, Richard says, major franchises had no representation at Cinema Con. There was no Fast and Furious movie to tout. Even superhero offerings seemed kind of muted. The idea of a 90-day theatrical window went out the, well, window during COVID, and now they're trying to claw back a 45-day theatrical window. That seems highly unlikely. Finally, the conversation turns to what all of America has been waiting to hear about: Richard Rushfield's sleep apnea. It's a major problem for, we assume, his wife, but also for theatergoers around him when he takes his traditional nap an hour into a turkey. Neal and Richard try to find a workaround. BFG has also given near round-the-clock coverage of 'Drop,' an unserious thriller about cell phone misuse and bad dates that has been bombing at the box office since it released two years ago. Pablo Gallaga joins Neal to talk about 'Drop,' as the two of them continue to try to sell the public on the fact that this is the genre of the moment, the blood-soaked violence picture with a bit of cheeky comedy. We will write retrospectives about this genre, if not songs. Drop is pretty bad, they both agree, and it also accelerates a trend in modern pictures of extreme violence against women played as entertainment. How many females slammed into coffee tables do we really need to see? These are the important questions we ask at the BFG Podcast. Enjoy the show!
BFG film critic Lani Gonzalez saw 'A Minecraft Movie' at 4 PM on a Friday with her kids, and it wasn't one of the more raucous Minecraft screenings. But it definitely doesn't surprise her that the movie made a tremendous amount of money. Minecraft is the most popular game in the world right now. "The youth of America and the world are bringing energy to the theater," she tells Neal Pollack on this week's podcast. "It gives me hope," Neal says. That said, Lani tells Neal, it was not the best possible movie they could have made, despite Jack Black's tremendous energy. Strangely, Jared Hess, who also made Napoleon Dynamite, directed A Minecraft Movie. What an unusual culture phenomenon. Meanwhile, in the real world, American museums are facing tremendous budget cuts from the Trump Administration. Sharyn Vane joins Neal to talk about this disturbing trend, and highlights the struggles of a basically apolitical children's museum in Madison, Wisconsin, which, like so many other people and institutions, is finding itself caught up in the winds of massive political change. It may not be as dire as we think, or it might be more dire. Val Kilmer died last week at age 65, and Stephen Garrett joins Neal to talk about the work and legacy of one of our more eccentric and talented screen actors. Neal, as is his tendency, pretty much just talks about Top Secret! the entire time, but Stephen broadens the scope a bit and discussions Kilmer's unique filmography and his life as a truly strange and beautiful man of California. RIP Val Kilmer, the world will miss and remember you. This episode is pure BFG: cinematic history, a little politics, a little light pop culture. If you listened to this show, you'd understand everything that's going on. So listen! Thank you very much.
TV, movies, and politics get the full BFG Podcast treatment this week. First up, Omar Gallaga stops by the podcast dome to talk with Neal Pollack about 'The Studio,' Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's terrific Apple+ satire about Hollywood and the movie business. Neal calls it "the best constructed TV comedy since Veep.' Omar compares this "ongoing panic attack" to The Larry Sanders Show and Curb Your Enthusiasm. It's a fine lineage, and it features the best Martin Scorsese cameo you'll ever see. Omar points out how "cinematic" the show is, and it's hard to disagree. This is peak streaming. What will the 'Kool-Aid Movie' look like. Death of a Unicorn does not reach peak cinema. Stephen Garrett pretty much hated this horror comedy about, well, killer unicorns. Neal saw Death of a Unicorn at South By Southwest, whose audience responded to it as though they were seeing Ghostbusters for the first time. Well, this is not Ghostbusters. It is Death of a Unicorn, and it is a huge bomb. Stephen found himself sympathizing with the so-called "villains". Sometimes you have to kill a unicorn, he says. Neal is a little less heartless. He just doesn't much like Jenna Ortega. Death of a A Unicorn is a footnote. A unicorn-shaped footnote. Bill Burr is on a tear lately, boosting the legend of accused healthcare CEO murderer Luigi Mangione, giving the business to Elon Musk, and generally excoriating billionaires even though he himself is quite wealthy. Bobby Hilliard is all about Bill Burr. He calls him the heir to George Carlin. Whereas Neal thinks that though Burr is a top-end comedian, he also thinks that Luigi is a murderer. Therein lies the debate. Bobby is an avowed socialist. Neal is an avowed not socialist. Bill Burr and his magic helicopter are getting rich all the way to the banking app, and on the way back, too. Enjoy the show!
Reality TV, or at least TV that vaguely resembles reality, takes over the podcast this week. First, Neal Pollack welcomes in Rick Ellis, from the Too Much TV sub stack, to discuss Neal's thesis that TV food competitions have reached their "decadent endgame." Rick doesn't quite agree. His thesis is that Jeffrey Zaslav and the other Warner Brothers Discovery executives who run the Food Network have just realized they can make more profit by producing fewer episodes. They both criticize, somewhat lightly, that Top Chef has become little more than a feeder ramp for bad Food Network shows. Rick, much to Neal's surprise, has little bad to say about 'House of Knives,' which Neal considers to be the absolute nadir of the food competition genre. Neither of them are willing to offer any praise to 'Wildcard Kitchen,' which feels phony and derivative. Regardless, this is the deepest dive into the politics and machinations of food competition TV as you're ever likely to hear anywhere. More discussed in the zeitgeist is 'Love Is Blind,' which recently concluded its 8th season with a couple of high-profile jiltings, one at the altar itself, because the betrothed couldn't agree on politics. In both cases, it was liberal women rejecting conservative or at least apolitical men. Neal and guest Rachel Llewellyn parse what this actually portends for society. It used to be the case that people in romantic relationships could disagree on politics, at least as regards some issues. Love Is Blind is really just a symptom of a larger societal illness where people are no longer allowed to disagree. Many of them simply exist in different realities entirely. These are sad times, especially if you're competing in a cooking show against someone who you might want to marry but cannot because you hold different political opinions than they do on important issues of the day. Enjoy the podcast!
Has Steven Soderbergh retired? Because his retirement looks an awful lot like making two movies a year. BFG Chief film critic Stephen Garrett, who knows more about film on Tuesday than you'll know in a lifetime, has interviewed Soderbergh several times and says that "retirement" is really more of a euphemism for DIY filmmaking. With 'Black Bag', an admittedly $50 million studio picture, he brings the DIY mentality to a star-studded spy drama that's loaded with wit and sexiness and everything else that's missing from movies for adults these days. Stephen and Neal Pollack liked it somewhat, even though it's really a condensed version of a clever streaming show about spies. Stephen feels like the stars, Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender, have zero sexual chemistry, but Neal feels the heat from Rege Jean Page and especially Marisa Abela, who plays a horny young surveillance analyst. It's a clever, fun, tight thriller. And modest. Enjoy. South By Southwest (SXSW) is in the past now, and despite what you might hear, it's not dead. But the Austin-based cultural festival has trimmed back the bloat somewhat, condensing the struggling tech and music festivals and placing the booming film and TV festival more front and center. That's certainly not a problem for veteran SXSW heads Neal Pollack and Pablo Gallaga, who between them saw more than a dozen movies and waited in more than a dozen lines. Tune in for Neal and Pablo's comprehensive breakdown of where SXSW is going, and where it's been, and also a very detailed breakdown of the new Tim Robinson movie 'Friendship.' They liked it, maybe they wanted to like it more. If you meet Neal anywhere in public after May, when the movie comes out, you will have to have a similar conversation. That's why you need to follow BFG. You'll be able to talk about anything in the culture. Enjoy the podcast!