ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 7/24/24:

Today marks the 26th anniversary of one of the true low points of 1999 and pop culture in general - the human rights disaster that was Woodstock 99.

Dan Colón, of CageClub's very own The Monsters That Made Us podcast, joined John to talk about the greed, mayhem, and madness that defined Woodstock 99.

The Woodstock that was just so great that it convinced everybody to never Woodstock again, 1999's 30th anniversary festival (inspired by the relative success of the 25th anniversary Woodstock 94) was...a lot of things. But mostly it was an epic disaster that somehow managed to take bad situations and terrible ideas and make them much worse.

What went wrong?? Well, aside from everything, John and Dan explore some of the specific problems that sent Woodstock 99 into a fiery tailspin, and discuss why this is such and important milestone in how our culture got to where it is today.

Muppets From Space was the 95th-highest grossing movie of 1999, opening in 4th place behind juggernauts American Pie, Wild Wild West, and The Phantom Menace.

Directed by Tim Hill, the co-developer and longtime director of Spongebob Squarepants (which debuted 3 days later!) and written by longtime Muppet writer Jerry Juhl alongside Joey Mazzarino and Ken Kaufman, Muppets From Space was the third of the 1990s cinematic Muppet revival (following Christmas Carol and Treasure Island)

Unlike the two other films released that year, Muppets From Space was an attempt to get back to basics - less music and more mayhem, and not an adaptation of a classic literary work.

The results, however, fell flat, and the Muppets would not get another theatrical release for more than a decade.

This week, John and Julia talk to author and Muppet fan Ethan Warren about what went wrong and what the future of the Muppets might be.

Galaxy Quest was one of the great summer movies of 1999. Except it was released, for some reason, at Christmas.

Lovingly sending up television sci-fi of a certain era - and heavily grounded in Star Trek - Galaxy Quest was a modest success as 30th highest grossing movie of 1999

The second feature film, both overall and in as many years following the Vince Gilligan-penned Home Fries with Drew Barrymore and Luke Wilson in 1998, from accomplished television director Dean Parisot, and witten by David Howard and Rob Gordon, Galaxy Quest stars Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Enrico Colantoni, Tony Shaloub, Sam Rockwell, Darryl Chill Mitchell, Robin Sachs, Patrick Breen, Missy Pyle, Jeb Rees, and Rain Wilson and Justin Long in their film debuts.

Galaxy Quest has gone on to become one of the great cult films (and most enduring comedies) ever. So we invited culture writer Annie Berke to see how it holds up a quarter century later.

Oh, and we basically write the sequel!

Annie is on Bluesky @sayanniething

August 1999's The 13th Warrior was (mostly) directed by legendary Predator and Die Hard director – and occasional felon – John McTiernan, and released just three weeks after his other (far more successful) 1999 film The Thomas Crown Affair.

Based on the 1976 novel "Eaters of the Dead" by Michael Crichton (who also took over to direct several scenes), The 13th Warrior stars Antonio Banderas, Vladimir Kulich, Dennis Storhoi, Diane Venora, Richard Bremmer, Tony Curran, and Omar Sharif

It took two decades to finally get Crichton’s reimagining of "Beowulf" to the screen, and the film is best remembered as a fascinating failure – a $160 million epic that earned about $100 million shy of that globally, making it the biggest flop of the year.

But over the years The 13th Warrior has achieved cult status, with many defenders arguing that, while imperfect, what actually winds up on the screen is still very worthwhile.

We took that theory to task with writer/critic Peter Raleigh, who you can find on Bluesky at @petreraleigh

You can also listen to Graeme Revell's vastly superior original score to The 13th Warrior here, thanks to YouTube user deavonw: The 13th Warrior (Rejected Score)

We are kicking off the summer by returning to the box office top 10 for the first time since Runaway Bride with one of the 1999’s big summer blockbusters, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me!

Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me was the 4th-highest grossing movie of 1999, behind Toy Story 2, The Sixth Sense, and The Phantom Menace, opening on June 11 and taking in $55 million that weekend, going on to make $206 million at the domestic box office on a $33 million budget.

Directed by Jay Roach and written by Mike Myers and Michael McCullers, The Spy Who Shagged Me saw Heather Graham stepping in to the Powers Girl role, replacing Elizabeth Hurley. The hugely anticipated and hyped sequel to the 1997 original, the movie came in with sky high expectations.

The results were, well...mixed.

But there's no question that Austin Powers was a huge cultural milestone, so we wanted to see how it held up.

Helping us get the summer off to the most shagadelic start possible is actor, writer, podcaster, and activist Siri Dahl!

Joe the King was the directorial debut of long-time career supporting actor and occasional indie leading man Frank Whaley, who also wrote the script based partly on his own life.

It stars Noah Fleiss in the title role, Karen Young, John Leguizamo, Whaley’s friend and frequent collaborator Ethan Hawke, Camryn Manheim, Max Ligosh, a very young Kate Mara, and Whaley’s The Doors co-star, the late Val Kilmer. as Joe’s abusive alcoholic father.

Critics were kind of all over the place about Joe the King, a film very much of its time, although the performances, especially those of Fleiss and Kilmer, were widely praised.

Joe the King was given a very limited release on October 15, going on to gross just $60,000, but a few those dollars once belonged to our guest for this episode, Zaki Hasan, who actually saw it in a movie theater 26 years ago.

Zaki is is a professor, award-winning writer, and film critic for, among other things, the San Francisco Chronicle.

You can find him on Bluesky @zakiscorner

The Limey was 170th highest grossing movie of 1999, finishing just one spot ahead of cult favorite Jawbreaker

Released October 8th in just 17 theaters and going on to make $3.2 million on a $10 million budget, The Limey was directed by Steven Soderbergh, just on the verge of his first major commercial successes (Erin Brokovich and Traffic, both released on opposite ends of 2000) and following another acclaimed crime caper, 1998’s Elmore Leonard adaptation Out of Sight.

Featuring a tour-de-force performance from Terrence Stamp,  The Limey crosses genre boundaries, it also straddles the line between Soderbergh's smaller, more risk-taking films (like sex, lies, and videotape and Schizopolis) and his bigger, more ambitious ones (like Traffic and Ocean's 11).

In this episode, John and Julia are joined by filmmaker, podcaster, and Steven Soderbergh fan Devan Scott joins John and Julia to discuss 1999's best crime thriller/comedy/tone poem.

Devan is on Bluesky @dagscott.

Actor Val Kilmer died on April 1st of this year, after a long battle with throat cancer. He was 65.

Kilmer's film career began in the 1980s with iconic turns in the likes of Top Gun and Real Genius, but it was in the 1990s where be became an icon in a decade known primarily one dominated by iconoclasts, starting with his portrayal of Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone's The Doors, and including memorable bit roles in movies like True Romance, replacing Michael Keaton as Batman in Batman Forever, and what man consider his greatest role as Doc Holiday opposite Kurt Russell's Wyatt Earp in Tombstone.

Kilmer was an avid documentarian of his own life and was rarely without his camcorder. His own video tapes were repurposed to tell the story of his life and career in the moving and insightful documentary Val, directed by Ting Poo and Leo Scott, which captures a man who seems to know his time is almost up reflecting on the lessons of a life extraordinarily lived.

That film formed the basis of this conversation between John and Julia discussing the strange life and career of this remarkable actor.

Sweet and Lowdown opened on December 3rd in just 3 theaters and taking in an impressive 31,562 dollar per screen average

Written and directed by Woody Allen, it stars Sean Penn as fictional jazz guitar legend Emmet Ray alongside Samantha Morton and Uma Thurman, Brad Garrett, John Waters, Anthony LaPaglia, and Brian Markinson, among others.

Sweet and Lowdown was a welcome end to what many saw as a mid-90s slump for Allen, who had released a string of movies who that had been received with mixed or sometimes scathing reviews, like 1995’s Mighty Aphrodite, 1996’s Everyone Says I Love You, 1997’s Deconstructing Harry, and 1998’s Celebrity.

It's also difficult to not see in light of revelations of Allen's darker behaviors throughout his career, to say nothing of Penn.

But it can also sweet and charming, and its jazz-age nostalgia is as hard to resist as Morton's acclaimed, Oscar-nominated silent performance.

Joining John and Julia to talk through Sweet and Lowdown's ups and downs is actor, writer, and director Liz Whitmere, who has some thoughts on toxic behavior in the entertainment industry.

Liz is on Bluesky @lizwhitmere

57th on the 1999 box office chart, For Love of the Game marked director Raimi’s first foray into big-budget, mass-market filmmaking (which would ultimately pave the way for being handed the enormous task of finally bringing Spiderman to the screen in 2002)

But love and baseball was very different territory for Raimi, and his inexperience in the realm of pop movie making (as well as in directing romance) proved to be a hindrance.

For Love of the Game is, unofficially, the third and final entry in Kevin Costner's baseball trilogy, following 1989's Field of Dreams and 1988's Bull Durham.

The film tries to balance its dual nature as a romance and a straight sports movie, and while it occasionally hits the mark, most critics agreed: For Love of the Game is pretty great when it's about the game, and not so great when it's about the love.

But it's baseball season, and this was by far 1999's biggest baseball-themed movie, so we asked friend of the show - and White Sox diehard - Jacki Krestel to help us call some balls and strikes on this one!