Drink For...

Joined this week by Kyle Turner (Paste Magazine, GQ, New York Times), for a quarantine double bill: EVENING PRIMROSE (1967) and INTO THE WOODS (2014). A huge fan of the composer/ lyricist, Kyle gently leads me through this amazing duo of musicals. The first, a television play starring Anthony Perkins as a poet who takes refuge from the world inside of a closed department store; the latter, Rob Marshall's much more well known Hollywood musical boasting a cast of stars including Emily Blunt and Meryl Streep. Join us on our intoxicated journey through these larger-than-life cultural critiques, and sing your hearts out.

Last week I sat down with, Jason Quinn from the Know Your Cinema Podcast to watch one of the most pleasantly surprising films covered on this podcast to date, THE VELOCIPASTOR (2017). Quickly falling in love with this 70-minute stunner, we turned the hyperbole up to 11, so that in our drunken minds, listeners would seek this out ASAP. My sober self agrees wholeheartedly. 

Turns out my wife, Zoe Anderson (aka DJ Shabbee Chic from the T-One Collective), has never seen Die Hard. This is terrible news, even in these difficult times, so we corrected that glaring error with this episode that mostly just loves on Alan Rickman, muscley action men and those sweet late-80's vibes. Using her background in sound design as a means of force-educating my audience on the subtleties between sound mixing / sound editing, I think we pulled it off despite getting a lot drunk. 

A little late and a little scant on content, this bonus episode is an unfiltered look at one man's utter amazement that Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness somehow exists. And while we, in no way, deserve this level of entertainment, our gracious lords in the Netflix programming department have for whatever reason* blessed us with it. Praise be!

*Money. They did it for money. 

Meta March concludes with this action-packed piece and a couple'a guests from London. Andrew AP Clarke and Dr. George Crosthwait join me for some self isolation revelry, gratuitous action and what, as it turns out, was too much drinking. Veering slightly off topic, but always coming back round to why Arnold was/is the perfect action movie star, we has us a time. 

This bonus episode will give you all the rules you need to thoroughly enjoy "any" Shaw Brothers' film. The output of this legendary studio served as the spark for my obsession with movie drinking games, and doing so alongside friends eventually turned into this thing. So without spending a month (say, the September of Shaw) detailing all my favorites, I've just come up with a standard set of rules that will surely get you through this mess that we're currently in. 

Finally, a fun one. Meta film doesn't have to be all academic or all scary. Sometimes it comes in the form of the madcap nonsense of Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker's punny films. The trio behind the similarly punctuated AIRPLANE! (1980), THE NAKED GUN: FROM THE FILES of POLICE SQUAD! (1988) and HOT SHOTS! (1991), the penchant for exclamatory titles extends far beyond into the total silliness contained within these films. And hey, if you don't want to watch Top Secret!, my rules will get you plenty tuned up while watching any of their movies.

In partnership with the Ultra Dogme Virtual Film Festival's first installation, "From a Distance", I've given the world its first social distancing episode of Drink For.... In this short bit of bonus content, I've focused on Chantal Akerman's 1972 LA CHAMBRE. A self isolation masterpiece, this breezy ten-minute gem will help you feel slightly less alone as you sit in your room pondering just how weird this all is. 

The second in our Meta March series, this brisk 28 min episode provides everything from Hollywood scriptwriting basics, comfort in the ubiquitousness of self doubt, and the unique darkness of drinking alone while watching a fat Nicholas Cage. Only half as bleak as that sounds, I'm sure we can get through this if we just work together. 

Adaptation. specific drinking rules:

We're gonna Drink for... 

It's drinking, it's horror, it's everything you need for the weekend. This marks the first in a month-long series on "meta" films, because, 1: alliteration is important; and 2: I want to sound smart. As I will never succeed at the latter, it was important for me to set the very achievable standard of picking a theme that started with the same letter as the month. Life is about the small victories. And podcasting, that's about whispering into the void hoping to hear an echo.