Book and Film Globe Podcast

Pop goes the podcast this week as Neal Pollack welcomes Scott Gold to talk about two very different comic book shows now streaming. First up, there's 'The Penguin,' starring Colin Farrell and Cristin Milioti. Scott was curious as to whether or not a Gotham-set show without Batman would work. But both he and Neal have totally bought into The Penguin's gritty mix of street-level action, car chases, mob intrigue, and endless F-bombs. "It's dark, even for a Batman show," Scott says. But it's also crisply-written, well-paced, and brilliantly acted. It comes with our highest stamp of approval.

'Agatha All Along,' the Halloween-themed witch show from Marvel, also gets extremely high marks from Neal and Scott. Unlike 'The Penguin,' this show, a spinoff of the groundbreaking 'Wandavision,' doesn't take itself too seriously. But it does delve deep into witch lore, and subsumes witchcraft into the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe framework. Kathryn Hahn hams it up to great effect, and Marvel has surrounded her with a harmonious supporting cast that includes Aubrey Plaza, Sameer Zamata, Debra Jo Rupp, and, in an incredible casting coup, Broadway megastar Patti LuPone. It's a star-stuffed ensemble even by Marvel standards, and the show is fun, a little scary, but still light enough to watch with your eyes fully open.

We can't say the same thing about 'The Substance,' the new feminist body horror movie from French director Coralie Fargeat. Neal couldn't actually watch this movie because he hates things coming out of other things. But Stephen Garrett is mercifully not so squeamish, and he appreciated the over-the-top metaphor about female aging and how our society treats women over 50. Demi Moore gives a signature performance, Margaret Qualley plays a villain with unhinged vigor, and Dennis Quaid gorges on shrimp in the most disgusting way. And this is the year's most disgusting movie, but people are digging it so we give it high marks even though Neal Pollack is a total coward.

Enjoy the show!

It's a podcast ripped straight from the headlines this week, or at least the extremely-online headlines. Elisa Albert joins Neal Pollack to discuss the recent cancellation of a book panel at the Albany Book Festival. Two young writers didn't want to appear with Albert because she's a "Zionist." This is the latest and most appalling act of antisemitism yet in the literary world. Even though Albert admits that she is "very much a Zionist, and proudly so," the panel was about coming-of-age novels. Pollack and Albert call out this act of disgusting cowardice. "It's a lot of ignorance and a lot of performativity," Albert says. "There are a lot of opportunists. You can really fake it as an artist in many ways...this year has exposed a lot of garbage behavior from a lot of garbage people."

Writer Meghan Daum, the founder of the Unspeakeasy community for women who have dangerous thoughts, joins Neal to talk about the dangerous-thinking movie 'Am I Racist?' a documentary from conservative online personality Matt Walsh that takes on the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion industry. Neal has his criticisms of Am I Racist? as a movie, but neither he nor Meghan can find much fault with his taking the piss out of DEI hustlers. Meghan has actually interviewed Saira Rao and Regina Jackson, two of the people that the movie calls out, and she has some insider-baseball insight about why they're successful. It has something to do with the "weaponization of female rage," or maybe grievance, which Neal knows nothing about but Meghan does.

This is a great episode, the reason we do what we do, featuring two of the smartest and most contrarian thinkers in the literary world. If this doesn't put our podcast at the top of the conversational board, then nothing will. Enjoy the show, and share it with Zionist friends.

This week, our hero and host, Neal Pollack, welcomes back Greg Ford to the podcast to talk about 'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.' It's the second season of The Rings of Power, and the makers of that show have doubled down on what was bad about the first season: Boring characters, slow storylines, and nonsensical world building. For resident Tolkien fans, it's a real disappointment, though the show does look terrific despite the extremely mediocre acting and lame fan service. We cannot recommend it with good conscience.

But Stephen Garrett can recommend many of the films coming out of this year's Toronto International Film Festival with good conscience. There was tons of crowd-pleasing Oscar bait this year, including the Papal succession movie Conclave, Babygirl, starring Nicole Kidman on all fours, a documentary about Pharrell Williams where everyone is a Lego figure, and a biopic about Robbie Williams where the star is played by a chimpanzee. You heard it here first! Listen up and get your fall movie viewing calendar ready. It should be fun.

Why does this new Ronald Reagan biopic feature a narrator, played by Jon Voight, who's an ex-KGB agent? If you're trying to turn nonbelievers into Reagan fans, this is not the way to do it. Contributor Adam Hirschfelder joins Neal to talk about the strange trip that is 'Reagan.' Dennis Quaid plays Ronald Reagan, a good bit of casting. Apparently, Ronald Reagan single-handedly defeated Communism and had nothing to do with the Iran-Contra Affair. Is that true? It's not up for this podcast to decide. But we can certainly decide that 'Reagan' is a silly film, an unintentional comedy that plays like a sketch-show parody of a Reagan biopic.

OK, that's all we wrote. We thank you for listening, this week and every week!

BFG Podcast! BFG Podcast! BFG Podcast! Host Neal Pollack once again summons up the world's finest pop-culture critics to talk about culture high and low this week. First up is Stephen Garrett, appearing from the film-critic underworld to discuss Tim Burton's new hit sequel 'Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.' It's messy and too stuffed with exposition, but both Neal and Stephen think it's kind of fun, even if they don't like Justin Theroux in it at all. The major point of dispute comes over Willem Dafoe, who plays a TV cop in the underworld. Neal found it hilarious, Stephen thought it was stupid and unnecessary. Let's remember, after all, that this is a 'Beetlejuice' movie. Let's not overthink it.

It's possible, however, to overthink 'Strange Darling,' now playing at a grind house near you. Neal saw 'Strange Darling' at the Vista Theater in Los Angeles, appropriate since JT Mollner's film owes such a huge debt to Quentin Tarantino. Pablo Gallaga, who has seen Strange Darling TWICE, has nothing but praise for the film, for first-time cinematographer Giovanni Ribisi, and especially for the film's star, Willa Fitzgerald. Both he and Neal agree that Fitzgerald is a major actor in the making, and that this odd serial killer love story with an unconventional narrative structure could be her signature role.

Then there's Jeff Goldblum as Zeus in the Netflix show 'Kaos.' Critic Samuel Porteous joins Neal to deconstruct this "very British" take on the Greek gods. Sam enjoys the "world building" of the show, but wishes there were more grandeur and less overtly, or at least less obvious, political posturing. It all tries a little bit too hard and is a little bit less fun than it should be. Kaos is less of a "masterpiece" and more of an interesting failure, he says.

Unlike the BFG Podcast, which is always a success. Enjoy!

It's a Jewish-themed episode of the BFG Podcast this week. What else is new, you're asking, and you will be right to some extent, but that's just how the dreidel fell, content-wise. First up, host Neal Pollack visits the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, and finds the Jewish content extremely wanting, particularly in the 'Hollywoodland' exhibit, which purports to be about the Jewish founders of the eight major studios of Hollywood's golden age but quickly descends into stereotypes, calling the studio heads "predators" and tyrants" and not spending any time interested in their actual Judaism. Neal laments the lack of pride in Jewish identity in the exhibit.

Special guest Michael Kaplan, a former writer for Roseanne and Frasier (not Friends), part of a group of L.A. writers who have protested the exhibit, laments the obvious tokenism of the museum display, as well as its smallness and lack of consequence. Not once, he points out, does the exhibit celebrate the Jewish tradition of storytelling that led the founders to establish the movie business in the first place. The exhibit is a cryin' shame, and both Neal and Michael worry about the imprint it will have on the many thousands of schoolchildren who march through the museum every year.

Speaking of Jewish storytelling, Rebecca Kurson drops in to talk to Neal about 'Between the Temples,' a new movie that celebrates ordinary Judaism in all its messy glory. Becky saw Between the Temples on the date that we learned Hamas had murdered six Jewish hostages, and boy did she need this tonic, which depicts American Jewish life and celebrates it as not only normal, but necessary. Carol Kane, in full Ruth Gordon mode, is an older lady who decides, late in life, to become a Bat Mitzvah. Despite some twitchy direction, this is one of the best and most accurate depictions of Jewish devotional life in recent memory. If only the Academy Museum would have done the same.

If you're listening this week, then Mazel tov!

We’re charting! Did you know that this podcast regularly earns a spot on the lists of top entertainment podcasts in several countries, including Sweden, Gambia, Poland, Australia and Canada? It’s true. The Book and Film Globe podcast has even cracked the Top 200 in the US a couple times, as well as UK. We are grateful to all our fans, everywhere—thanks for listening.

We’ve got a shortish episode this week as Neal Pollack, our site’s fearless editor — and this podcast’s host — embarks on an odyssey of non-trivial consequence. But as Peter Parker's uncle said, with great brevity comes great wit. Or something like that.

Neal speaks about Alien: Romulus with Pablo Gallaga, who feels that the Fede Alvarez installation to the series can’t quite make up its mind about what it wants to be.

[caption id="attachment_25944" align="alignright" width="269"] Photo of Jennifer Shirk courtesy of the author.[/caption]

Next up is Laura Roberts, who gets into it about It Ends with Us, the new Justin Baldoni-directed romantic drama with Blake Lively based on the novel by Colleen Hoover. If you’re wondering where to buy Colleen Hoover’s books, you’ve come to the right place -- our indie book store The Book House sells a ton of It Ends With Us and all of Ms. Hoover’s considerable output. With just a few weeks left of summer, head to Millburn or Long Branch to stock up on this prolific author’s paperbacks.

And speaking of The Book House …

When you finish The Book and Film Globe podcast, please give our new podcast a spin. The Book House podcast is hosted by journalist and author Liz Alterman, who every week opens a window on the business of publishing, interviewing a different author or editor. In this week’s episode, Liz talks to Jennifer Shirk, the USA Today bestselling and award-winning author of 12 sweet and funny romance novels. Jennifer’s latest, Resorting to Romance, was released on July 2. The South Jersey author actually got her bachelor's degree in pharmacy and was contemplating a doctorate before turning to fiction. Listen to The Book House podcast on Apple or Spotify.

And don’t forget to like, review and follow the Book and Film Globe podcast, also on Apple and Spotify.

Podcast host Neal Pollack revisits his roots this week as he interviews his old friend Arthur Bradford, the director of 'To Be Destroyed', a new short documentary about the efforts of the school district of Rapid City, South Dakota, to ban a bunch of books, including the novel 'The Circle' by Dave Eggers.

If you mess with Dave Eggers, you'd best not miss. And they did miss. Arthur was once a writer but is now a documentary filmmaker. He and Eggers had been talking about doing a documentary, but this was the obvious topic. Eggers went to South Dakota and met with students, and Arthur accompanied him. A crusade against injustice ensued. Neal and Arthur talk about the film and the issues at hand, and also about Neal's "psychological issues" surrounding his former colleague and mentor Eggers. A revealing conversation ensues about the realities of book banning and why Neal wants a camera crew to "follow me to Trader Joe's."

A more conventional but still insightful segment follows. Contributor Greg Ford joins Neal to talk about the strange new adaptation of Giovanni Boccaccio's 'The Decameron', now airing on Netflix. They both enjoyed the performance of main character Tanya Reynolds but also found the adaptation to be overly long and needlessly silly. Greg, who has actually read 'The Decameron,' also notes that the show isn't nearly as bawdy as the book itself, which was controversial in its time for its overtly sexual and anti-clerical content, two issues that are not a problem today.

Enjoy the show!

The fourth-most-popular entertainment news podcast in The Gambia returns this week with a great dog days of summer episode. First up, host Neal Pollack welcomes Sharyn Vane for another important eat-your-veggies segment. Apparently, the literary world has decided that apolitical writer Gabrielle Zevin, author of the bestselling 'Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow' is a "Zionist" because her novel features an Israel character and she once gave an interview to Hadassah magazine. This is annoying at the least, and quite dangerous at the most, and Book and Film Globe will continue to stand strong against forces in the literary world that insist on marginalizing and discriminating against Jewish authors. We should be long past this as a society.

But we are not long past M. Night Shyamalan movies, and JonPaul Guinn joins our Rotten Tomatoes-approved editor-in-chief to discuss M. Night's wacky new locked-room serial-killer movie 'Trap,' which is almost a comedy, and is quite a lot of fun. JP way prefers Trap to Longlegs, and both he and Neal way prefer it to the previous Shyamalan movie A Knock At The Cabin, which collapsed under the weight of its own pretentiousness. There's nothing pretentious about Trap, it's fun. You will have fun. Have fun at it.

There's also nothing pretentious about the Apple+ TV adaptation of Time Bandits, though Scott Gold, our resident Time Bandits effort, admits that showrunners Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement lack the artistry of Terry Gilliam, who made the original Time Bandits. But for men of a certain age, which Scott and Neal most definitely are, a Time Bandits reboot is nostalgic catnip. Scott says the show is funny, if not a surrealist masterpiece like the original. A little warm glow of time-traveling nostalgia. No pop-culture product ever really dies, and the new Time Bandits is no exception.

Enjoy the show!

We discuss the most popular movie in the world on this week's podcast, and also discuss two...books. We are BOOK and Film Globe, after all. You can't pigeonhole us.

Frequent sci-fi and fantasy reviewer Dan Friedman joins Neal Pollack on the podcast to discuss 'The Bright Sword,' a very modern retelling of the Arthurian legend from Lev Grossman, who wrote The Magicians series. Did you know Sir Bedivere was gay? Lev Grossman does! In any case, The Bright Sword is quite engaging and fun to read, and both Dan and Neal reserve praise for this book, which injects fresh life into a moldy mythology.

'The Book of Elsewhere,' by China Mieville and, we guess, Keanu Reeves, is a bit more of a lift, despite being half the length. Based on an ultra-violent comic book series by Reeves, this is the story of 'B,' an 80,000-year-old immortal warrior who cannot die, or who at least comes back to life after he dies. Think John Wick meets Highlander. It's not as much fun as it sounds, if it sounds fun at all. Mieville fills the pages between grisly action sequences with philosophical rumination on the meaning of identity, approach at your own risk. Both Dan and Neal found this book to be a bit much.

Stephen Garrett crosses over from another realm in the multiverse to discuss 'Deadpool & Wolverine' with Neal. They both found this meta-entry in the MCU to be kind of cheap and a load of fun. There's not much else to say about the #1 movie in the world, other than "Marvel is back," and nothing is going to stop it from reasserting its dominance over the pop-culture landscape. They also discuss, along those lines, the return of Robert Downey Jr. to the MCU. The years of Dr. Doom are in front of us. It's Marvel's multiverse, and we just live in it.

Enjoy the show, people of The Gambia!

Politics and culture intersect bigly on this week's podcast. Adam Hirschfelder, a pundit-in-the-wings, joins host Neal Pollack to talk about the J.D. Vance phenomenon. Specifically, they discuss how 'Hillbilly Elegy,' Vance's memoir, was once the publishing-industry standard bearer for understanding Appalachia and the "Trump voter." "This book was embraced by liberals across the country," Adam says. Boy, have times changed. Neal points out the irony that a memoirist is potentially one step away from the Presidency. Neal compares Vance to Barack Obama, but Obama's memoirs, while well-written "actual books" were clearly part of a political strategy. No one saw Vance coming at the time in 2016. Maybe Vance did.

"It's as if one of my memoirs had become a huge best-seller, and then I became a Senator from Texas, and now was Kamala Harris's Vice-President." That would be quite a multiverse timeline. Meanwhile, 'Hillbilly Elegy' is "off the chains." "Those houses in the Hamptons don't build themselves," Adam says.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump cannot stop invoking "the late, great Hannibal Lecter" on the campaign trail. Not much to say here other than it's hilarious and ridiculous. Also, Hannibal Lecter is a fictional character. And he's not dead even in his fictional universe.

Jake Harris joins the podcast to talk about 'Twisters.' He saw it in a screening in Dallas with a bunch of meteorologists. Talk about a receptive audiences! 'Twisters' has a strong female protagonist, weather porn, lots of trucks and red-dirt country music, beautiful Oklahoma landscapes, and a realistic rodeo scene. It's the perfect summer blockbuster to appeal to Red and Blue America alike, the film that will bring us all together. Neal refers to costar Glen Powell as the "emotional support dog" for the protagonist, played by Daisy Edgar-Jones. If you feel it, chase it!

Adam Hirschfelder returns after 10 minutes in the green room to talk about his favorite subject, Kevin Costner. Why did Costner leave 'Yellowstone' to make 'Horizon,' a 12-hour Western epic? We don't know. Adam sat through the first three hours in a theater, the second three hours remains unreleased, and the fate of the saga's back end is unknown. Does 'Horizon' do anything differently than 'Centennial,' 'Lonesome Dove,' 'Dances With Wolves,' 'Unforgiven,' 'Deadwood,' or any other modern Western. It does not. Kevin Costner, you have broken Adam Hirschfelder's heart.

It's a great episode. Please enjoy!