Sub Titles

Journalism has long been a pressurized and risky endeavor, not just in the era of Fake News. All the President’s Men stands as a look into a profession and the unique ideological challenges involved as much as a glimpse of a historical moment. Tim offers Warren Beatty’s Reds and James L. Brooks’ Broadcast News as two other films presenting some seemingly eternal political challenges and other unique questions of medium and entertainment, both of which speak to Journalism writ large.

The Replacements brand of heart-on-sleeve heartland punk is well established and adored. Also well established is their legendary drinking and raucous behavior (banned for life from SNL!). Matt talks two albums that continue in Tim’s Drunk and Full of Tunes legacy in The Hold Steady’s woozy yet bitchin’ Almost Killed Me and Japandroids’ blaring and nostalgic Post-Nothing.

Chaplin’s riotous Modern Times has several incredible sight gags, including two scenes of characters traversing the “guts” of machines. Of course, Modern Times is also a film about how industrialization and alienation of labor make us disposable cogs for a larger, more nebulous machine. Tim tracks more (mostly) metaphorical visions of individuals being disposable objects and Food for Machines in David Lynch’s Eraserhead and Jordan Peele’s Get Out.

East Coast Hip Hop in the mid 90s doesn’t need me to make its importance evident; the names made themselves important. Illmatic gets the shaft on the Spin list but it’s due respect in this episode. Nas’ brilliant poetry vividly captures a place, Queensbridge, as a microcosm of NYC and the East Coast Hip Hop scene in the mid 90s. Matt presents Mobb Deep’s The Infamous and Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt as two other vital entries for understanding the scene, place, and lives of artists.

The Wild Bunch’s famous, and visceral, opening becomes the theme this episode as Tim offers movies that make clear the power of many ants over just a few scorpions. The Ox-Bow Incident and Silence are two movies in which sheer numbers overwhelm staunch individual conviction, forever altering worldviews in the process.

An episode Matt has been eyeing up since the beginning, full of music he can remember listening to as long as he has listened to music. Listen to Matt and Tim giggle like children at Dookie and then more seriously consider its legacy, one Green Day still has a tough time living down. Dookie’s brilliant, fun Pop-Punk set the stage for a generation of bands speaking the concerns and troubles of adolescence one raucous sing-a-long at a time. Matt offers two massive personal favorites in Blink-182’s Enema of the State and Jimmy Eat World’s Bleed American as replacements for Dookie’s outwardly immature and surprisingly perceptive Pop-Punk.

Jack Lemmon plays an all-time sad sack in The Apartment, someone with little to look positively on even when it’s Christmas. Tim offers two other movies that have similarly Blue Christmases in 3 Godfathers,  a John Ford allegory of the three wise men, and Three Days of the Condor, a Sydney Pollack film wherein Christmas rolls on unperturbed as Robert Redford becomes increasingly paranoid and perturbed.

Outkast’s magnum opus ends with audio of their infamous Source Awards acceptance speech, Andre barking at a booing crowd “The South’s got something to say.” And with that, the theme of our Aquemini episode, an album Matt thinks Spin has far too low. Outkast still have heavy influence on Atlanta specifically and hip hop in general; in this episode Matt discusses two other footholds in Southern hip hop: Houston and New Orleans. UGK’s Ridin’ Dirty epitomizes the languorous, chopped-and-screwed ethos of Houston while Juvenile’s 400 Degreez builds on New Orleans’ bounce music scene to craft the scariest party album ever.

We’re 20 episodes in! Which is exciting, and also means it’s time for another bonus episode. Our cups runneth over with takes and Deci’s Midnight Runners is our chance to dig further into something that piqued our interest from the ten prior episodes.

It’s hard for Kubrick to not make a movie feel like him but he was working Out of Type with the swords-and-sandals epic Spartacus. Tim guides us through two replacement titles by other beloved directors with hyper-unique styles. John Carpenter plays it straight and even sweet on Starman and David Lynch’s vision of a twisted America take a back seat in the warm, heartfelt action of The Straight Story.