Drat Pack

Ladies and gentlemen! We have gathered you all here in the accusing car because there has been a murder! Thankfully, we only lost Johnny Depp, so… don’t strain yourselves trying to work out who may have done it. Leigh, Brendan, and Chris don their mustache guards to discuss 2017’s Murder on the Orient Express, directed by / starring / production designed within an inch of its life by Kenneth Branaugh. We discuss the bizarrely convoluted mystery (which is dependent upon 13 people from various countries and relations to a criminal case being assembled in the same place at the same time and all ready to get stabby), the generally great performances, and the reconfiguration of Hercule Poirot into a character who could actually run short distances without getting winded. As always, subscribe or review on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher, and remember that any potential murders you may want to commit are more fun when you invite a bunch of casual acquaintances to join in.

As a prelude to our Mystery March episode (which is a thing we just made up now), Leigh, Brendan, and Chris talk about detectives in pop culture, be they Sherlock Holmes or, uh, other. Also there’s some stuff about whether or not you should be able to solve a mystery while watching / reading it and a lot of stuff with TV procedurals. Anyway, you’ve got two weeks to start growing a ridiculous mustache for our next episode’s mystery movie.

What could possibly be more charming than having a late 19th century duke show up in your Manhattan apartment, offering you all of that 1870s class with none of that 1870s misogyny / racism / chauvinism? Very little aside from perhaps the scent of warm brioche smothered in marmalade and fresh creamery butter, posits James Mangold’s 2001 romcom Kate & Leopold. Leigh, Brendan, and Chris watch their annual Valentine’s Day movie with a drink worthy of a mid-tier budget television commercial and discuss the vague logistics of time travel, the challenges of making a romantic comedy where the guy is from an era before civil rights were a thing, and a case when a director’s cut makes a movie horribly unsettling. We all hope that you out there have a Valentine’s Day less objectionable than this movie, and with 100% less time travel-induced incest.

Because we spent our last mini episode doing our customary new year nothingness, we bumped a discussion about Shakespeare adaptations to this mini episode instead. It still works! Anyway, Leigh leads a group discussion about the various movie versions of Shakespeare plays, be they mostly faithful to the text and setting or something set in a high school with the great sounds of the 90s permeating throughout. We also determine our Valentine’s Day romcom and an appropriately dairy-based drink to go with it, and there’s a lot of bird noises.

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Finally, a film adaptation that combines the quiet contemplations of William Shakespeare’s final play with the visual goofiness of Julie Taymor! Taymor brings her trademark sense of “how many effects can you add in post before the screen melts” to this 2010 take on The Tempest, most notable for casting Helen Mirren in the gender-bent role of Prospera and maybe also for covering a naked Ben Whishaw’s junk with a flat Ken doll-esque mound. Leigh, Brendan, and Chris discuss the changes that result from the gender swap, the Caliban problem, and what the fuck is the scene where Ariel is enormous and playing with a ship in the sea while setting it on fire and wait now there’s like three of him??? As always, you can like us at facebook.com/whywatchpodcast and rate us on iTunes and Stitcher. HELL IS EMPTY AND ALL THE DEVILS ARE HEAAAAHHHHH

SOLEMN CURFEW ‘N’ MURDEROUS WINDS

Make cranberry-infused rum by pouring one bottle of gold or black rum into a large, clean container with a seal. Take 2 cups of cranberries and crush them slightly before adding them to the container. Tightly close the lid and store in a cool place for at least 24 hours (and preferably over a week) before using. Pour the rum over ice in a glass, taking care not to pour any cranberries along with it. Add ginger beer and lime juice, then stir until mixed.

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As is our wont, we were feeling very lazy at the end of the calendar year and just recorded us talking about our favorite and least favorite movies and drinks of 2018. Two weeks from now we’ll be ready to work again, we promise. Happy New Years!

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Now that December is well upon us, there’s little better to do than make some sort of hot alcoholic drink and watch pleasant Christmas nonsense while your brain goes into a stupor until 2019. Keeping that in mind, we decided to pick some new vague Christmas nonsense to cover for our annual holiday episode, the Netflix original movie The Christmas Chronicles, which has Kurt Russell as Santa and that’s about all that’s noteworthy here. Leigh, Brendan, and Chris sip their piping-hot Santa Daddies (no, it’s a drink) and discuss Kurt Russell’s admirably entertaining performance, the problems of the Santa mythos in a movie, and those ungodly CGI elves that will forcibly replace the visions of sugarplums dancing in our heads for many a Christmas to come. Anyway, you all might as well relax and drink until Christmas too. Happy holidays!

HOT SANTA DADDY

Add lemon juice, honey, and bourbon to a mug and fill with hot water. Stir with a cinnamon stick until honey is dissolved. Hit with a dash of orange bitters for ultimate merriment.

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Now that it’s well past Thanksgiving, we’re at the glorious time of year where Christmas movies are being thrown at the you like some festive, pleasantly bland spaghetti against a wall. Be they movies about journalists who meet a prince on Christmas or bakers who meet a prince on Christmas or kids who meet a fuckable Santa on Christmas, the options abound and yet for the most part aren’t all that good. SO, we said to ourselves, why not try to come up with a pitch for our own Christmas movie and share with the group??? So we did. We’ve got a contemporary follow-up to The Nutcracker, a story about a magical advent calendar that is certainly NOT the same as that Netflix one, and a bunch of people spending the Christmas holiday at a fancy hotel where hijinks ensue. Join us again in two weeks for our festive Christmas special where we’ll tackle one of the aforementioned holiday movies. Start counting down on your magical, life-altering advent calendars!

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In a world where supernatural young adult series were flying off the shelves of a Borders near you, your dad’s second-favorite airport novelist thought “Hey, why not more money for Dean Koontz?” Then the director of The Mummy and Van Helsing had a similar thought with the name “Stephen Sommers” in place of Koontz’s, and that’s how we got the underwhelming 2013 supernatural mystery movie Odd Thomas. Leigh, Brendan, and Chris continue their trend of doing semi-spooky movies each November by drinking an Odd Thomas Collins and discussing the movie’s use of translucent snot-demons, the worst-written female character yet encountered, and how the deeply-missed Anton Yelchin was even good in this somehow. As always, you can go online to rate us, like us, and validate us. We promise to be less offensive to your ears than the dialogue in this movie. STUFFIN’!

ODD THOMAS COLLINS

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It’s November, and as all these posters of Keira Knightley topped in cotton candy indicate, the Christmas movie season has well and truly begun! When Leigh, Brendan, and Chris sat through The Nutcracker in 3D two years ago, they mentioned a Disney adaptation of the story currently in pre-production. Now, in 2018, this movie has somehow become The Nutcracker and the Four Realms and boy is it somehow both exactly what you’d expect and also not really at all. Fresh out of a screening, the crew try to gather their thoughts as best as they can to discuss the handful of things that did work (Keira Knightley’s bizarre acting choices, the basic idea of the story, the physical production design) and the many things that did not work (uh, most everything else). Join us in two weeks as we dip back into some spooky Autumnal nonsense with a Dean Koontz adaptation and an odd drink. Très chic!