After a series of setbacks, including changing the film we were going to do twice and rescheduling with a different slate of guests (one of whom then had to drop out because we took too long working out technical problems), we finally caught the metaphorical polka band tour van and made it home for the holidays for this year's special: the Coen brothers' fifth film, The Hudsucker Proxy.

While one end of year holiday - New Year's - is symbolically important to the film's time motif, every gift-giving holiday of the winter season takes place uncommented on in the background of this movie that is explicitly about a best-selling toy. And that's not the silliest aspect of this silly film!

The last week notwithstanding, we had a good year this year! We kicked off 2022 with Jeanne Dielman, a film that by the end of the year was declared the best movie ever or something. Well, it's certainly up there. We were introduced to the wonderful works of Mira Nair this year, and took a way too long working through the second By Brakhage Anthology, sorry! We talked Z and Hunger and Che and we sure do love it when Criterion gives us a political film to sink our teeth into, even when the director claims their obviously political film isn't political at all (looking at you Pedro Costa and Josef von Sternberg!) Oh, and we got to watch another Antonioni film we didn't like, but at least we enjoyed talking about it this time!

Hope your year's been as good as ours! We've been doing this podcast for a full decade now! Wow. Next week we're going to have a special retrospective episode, looking back at a film from the first 100 Spines of the Criterion Collection that our Patreon supporters voted for us to revisit. Can't wait to share that with you!

For now though, happy all the holidays!