Drat Pack

When an amnesiac woman and a hardboiled detective with a very heightened American accent discover through the magic of hypnosis that they were married in a past life (until a grisly murder by scissors cut things short), how long will they be able to maintain a relationship until one of them is dead… AGAIN? The answer, mercifully, is about 90 or so minutes. Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they watch the 1991 neo-noir (?) gothic romance (??) mystery thriller (???) Dead Again, directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh, which affords him the luxury of going over-the-top in two separate roles. What’s the deal with all the lame pop psychology? What the hell is this movie going for in terms of tone or plot? Could anyone have taken this post-modern puree of Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles and made it into something consistent and entertaining? Well… we try to! Also our good friend Faith is back AND she brought cookies to accompany our cocktail, so hey, at least this has that going for it!

As the weather starts to heat up, the temperature of our takes go right with it! Get all warm and toasty with Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as we present a deeply-held opinion in the form of an absurdly hot take, and then attempt to defend it calmly and rationally. Slip on your oven mitts before you pick up your phone after listening to this, because these takes are… rather hot!* Also as per usual there’s a new drink recipe to accompany our next movie, so be sure to listen to that far more lukewarm bit before you scald yourself on these takes, babyyyyy!

*Editor’s Note: These takes may be less hot than previously stated.

Fourteen years ago in a city not very far away.…

BRIDE WARS

Episode I
THE FEMININE MENACE

Turmoil has engulfed the nuptials of Emma Allan and Olivia Lerner. After a minor clerical error results in their separate weddings being booked on the same day at the same venue, their friendship is in dispute.

Hoping to resolve the matter with a series of trite and vapid pranks, the two would-be brides have stopped all semblances of judgement and maturity.

While their two-dimensional friends and boring fiancees endlessly debate this humorless chain of events, CHRIS REVELLE has secretly dispatched his fellow Why Did We Watch This? hosts, LEIGH DELAHANTY, and BRENDAN DRISCHLER, to discuss the lamentable 2009 romantic comedy (?) Bride Wars, much to the chagrin of all parties….

It sure seems like video games, the hot new trend among today’s youths, are here to stay! In fact, it seems that these have become so popular, they’ve started to transform motion pictures into video games! It’s true! Granted, some of these adaptations have been… questionable in quality, to say the least. Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they think back upon some of the video games we’ve played based on movies, and then have a discussion about what video games based on movies we’ve covered for this podcast might be like. How many of these shitty rom coms could have been mildly more interesting dating sims? Find out! And speaking of shitty rom coms, we kind of have one of those coming up next, and trust us, you’ll want to be drunk for this one.

How do you keep your franchise going when the lead actor has no interest in reprising the main character and you don’t want to recast them? Well, you simply shift focus to another character who has never been shown or mentioned before and has similar abilities to your former main character but got them through science and magic rather than practice and training. Feeling sweaty yet? Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as we watch 2012’s The Bourne Legacy, a tangent with big hopes and dreams that does all of the above and sadly much more. Perhaps if you watched any of the previous Matt Damon outings and wished that there had been less punching and more middle-aged white men yelling while looking at computers, you’ll find yourself in this movie’s heretofore undiscovered target audience. If not, well, at least we had a pretty good martini to drink while we tried to make sense of everything.

For our latest mini episode, we present part two of a part two mini episode. No, just go with it, it’s okay. Rather than cover all of our second Looking to Score discussion from four weeks ago as one long episode, we decided to do it in two for your listening convenience. This time, we’re ostensibly covering a piece of orchestral dance music by Stephen Sondheim and a ballet piece reconceived in a wildly different context for an animated movie. Also, we bullshit a lot about our next movie without having even seen it and introduce a cocktail that (much like said movie’s protagonist) should undergo a fascinating transformation as you watch it! Please, sip slowly for full effect.

In our latest episode, we return to that fertile well of 1980s fantasy movies and pull out a big sloshy bucket of Willow, George Lucas’s long-gestating story about a little person who wants to be a wizard and some other magic shit as filtered through the generically-competent lens of Ron Howard. Listen in as Leigh, Brendan, and Chris talk about a movie that we were all dimly aware of but had never seen before, despite being made of a lot familiar tropes that we have, indeed, seen many many times before. Topics for discussion include the ambitious and occasionally confusing world being featured, the sheer amount of acting that’s going on, and why Sorsha is one of the worst female characters we’ve encountered in quite a while (and we’re watched a LOT of terrible rom coms). And of course, despite having to record this episode virtually thanks a to grab bag of illnesses, we enjoy a lovely purple cocktail to temper things slightly. Remember, please don’t drink if you plan to STEAL A BABAAAYYYY.

Our oft-featured discussion on film music (and music from other forms of media) returns with a mighty vengeance in our latest mini. LISTEN, won’t you, as we discuss some scores used in both movies and video games and try to avoid having this episode taken down for copyright infringement by talking over the music. It’s hard! Also, next episode will tackle a movie that seems to be a beloved cult classic in some way but none of us had actually seen until recently. Naturally, we’ll be drinking a themed cocktail to help us get through a potentially-messy 80s fantasy world.

It’s time for our annual Valentine’s Day rom com episode, and nothing says romance like two duplicitous people enacting horrific deceptions upon each other in an attempt to advance their positions at work. This horrific web of deceit is the plot that forms the backbone of 2003’s How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, starring Kate Hudson, Matthew McConaughey, and a bunch of supporting actors in thankless roles. Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they revisit this beloved (?) romantic comedy that’s just slightly heightened enough to be mildly interesting but just unpleasant enough to leave you slightly loathing everyone involved here. Take your shoes off and breathe out as we discuss the state of the rom com in 2003, the cinematic forefathers of a romance built entirely on a horrible foundation of lies, and our continued reevaluation of Kate Hudson’s career. Perhaps fittingly, our themed cocktail this month is almost entirely alcohol, so get ready to frost yourself pretty hard.

Look, Valentine’s Day is fast approaching and we couldn’t think of any rom com con(versation)s to have, so Leigh very kindly whipped up yet another round of our patented (patent pending) game where we have to decide what titles are real and what ones are fake. But THIS time, there’s an eastern Asian twist to it, as all the titles are for K-Dramas (or J, or other countries, there’s fertile ground here). As Brendan and Chris know not a lot about this topic, it becomes a real guessing game and so anyone could win! Not that there’s anything to win here, but still, bragging rights are something. Also, our re-evaluation of the Kate Hudson canon continues with our upcoming February rom com episode.