Frame Work

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Brendan Leonard joins us to discuss Fincher's satirical thriller.  We're talking media satire, marriage as a fraud upon the public, where Fincher and author/screenwriter Gillian Flynn's real allegiances lie, and the ultimate battle of the sexes as Kim Dickens faces off against Tyler Perry.

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Chris Prentice returns to discuss the meteoric rise of possibly the biggest, most unlikely and unique star in the history of Hollywood:  Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger.  No one did it like him.  Is that because he is a one-of-a-kind talent, or because he is just an inhuman brick that can only play cyborgs believably?   And is KINDERGARTEN COP actually better than PREDATOR? 

No. It's not. But it might get more love in this episode.

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Elisabeth Rappe joins the guys to talk about Fincher's opening to an aborted trilogy, which somehow operates as a triptych of films unto itself.   Rated "S" for Stellan Skarsgaard, Serial Killers, Sexual Assault, and Superfluous Swedish-ness.  

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It's all accents, ACAB and antiheroes as the guys sit down to talk about HBO's latest prestige murder mystery, and slip quickly from fooling around with "wudder" and "hewgies" to Jean Smart's septuagenarian play for total dominance of TV to how MARE seems to have  completely sidestepped the debates around "copaganda" despite Mare herself being one of the dirtiest cops we've ever seen.

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In this episode, the guys contemplate an alternate reality where the Oscars are biased toward broad, capital-C Comedies rather than stately costume dramas and respectful biopics.    Which is very important cultural commentary, and definitely not just an excuse to talk about how incredible Bill Murray is in KINGPIN.

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If you are trying to be an asshole, is it even possible to fail?

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The guys welcome old internet friend Brad Millette to begin the long journey through the catalogue of epic single player RPGs the Bioware company has produced over the last quarter century.  First up is the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons port, Baldur's Gate, which we find to be something of an beta test for what the Bioware model we will come to recognize in the future.

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Joon Kim makes a triumphant return to help try to crack the case of BENJAMIN BUTTON.  Who thought this movie needed to be 3 hours long?  What drew Fincher to material so spectacularly ill-suited to his talents?  Where did the sudden godlike omniscience in Benjamin's narration come from, or disappear to?  Why did Eric Roth turn in a script without having cracked the nature main character, purpose of the main conceit, or checked the math on his defining moral decision?  When did Al cry at a movie he loathed?

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As a sort of counterpoint to all the fawning they did over Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy, John and Al look at another adaptation of an epic fantasy series that fell flat on its face.  Both have some intense love for Stephen King's magnum opus, despite wildly different views of the ending stretch.  Where they agree is that the 2017 film version is enough to make even the most devoted fan wonder if the series is fundamentally unadaptable to film.

Be forewarned, spoilers begin flying hot and heavy around 57:30

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Fincher hit an artistic high and commercial low with the epic serial killer docudrama ZODIAC.   We look at the exacting period detail, the protean versions of the Avengers and True Crime genre it represents, murderer's row of character actors, the off putting squirreliness of Jake Gyllenhall, and whether there is actual closure to be gleaned from this movie about the lack of closure.