Sub Titles

Meryl Streep acts the hell out of Sophie’s Choice in a way few could. See if that’s enough to warrant kind words from Tim who discusses two other movies driven by women making choices in dire straits. Sub Titles darling If Beale Street Could Talk and the multi-dimensional chess game that is A Letter to Three Lives present Women on the Verge and having to make often impossible choices.

Do you like Pavement? Do you even remember Pavement? If you’re of a certain age you might. Otherwise, join Matt in slagging and dragging Pavement for their grating aloofness. While Pavement does the whole “it’s ironic, get it” shtick, Matt turns focus to two bands where the shtick is the Form: Ween and Art Brut.

Goodfellas (somehow only 91 for AFI!) ends with Henry Hill eating egg noodles with ketchup like a schnook. While it's hard to sympathize with a Henry Hill, the moment probably feels real to many of us, as do the events of two other films following schnooks, The Crowd and Wendy and Lucy. Join us in this episode to hear Tim sing the praises of Goodfellas and then lead us through the somber, affecting lives of those who barely scrape by and who simply blend in with the rest of us schnooks. 

Endtroducing….. remains a masterclass in hip-hop production and sampling, and is an ode to DJ Shadow’s record store and collection. An album recorded on a simple four-track, Endtroducing….. prompts this episode’s discussion of Home Recording in which Matt discusses Iron and Wine’s The Creek Drank the Cradle and Jay Som’s Turn Into as exemplars of taking potential recording limitations and making that at-home feel a powerful tool and theme.

I have but one thing to say: suicide condors. Okay fine, I’ll say more. Join us to hear Tim discuss the Eye-Popping and shocking nature of The French Connection while I make jokes about Gene Hackman’s hat and see how we get to screwball war acting troupe turned screwball actual war resistance group and aforementioned divebombing condors along with random shootings of main characters.

It seems impossible at this point to talk about a Kanye West album without first reckoning with Kanye West the person. This is particularly true of the deeply personal, often immensely self-aware, and always uncompromising My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye’s gargantuan classic. As Kanye pulls out all of his tricks on MBDTF, so too do Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and Anthony Gonzalez of M83 on The Fragile and Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, respectively. Matt talks about the vital connection between emotion, and often emotional distress or mental illness, and Maximalist music before Tim decides which of these heavyweights is the heaviest.

Tim and Matt discuss the eternal allure and rot of Los Angeles as Tim guides us through two movies that share absolutely nothing besides presenting L.A. in all it’s toxic glory: Speed and My Brother’s Wedding. Join us, also, in attempting to figure out the best scene in Pulp Fiction, a movie that still thrills all these years later.

The highest entry on the Spin list from a woman! Perhaps surprising but well-deserved for Liz Phair's sexually evocative and uncompromising Exile in Guyville. Matt discusses Exile's wit and power before introducing two other examples of Whip-Smart Women in the righteous fury of Alanis Morissette's immortal Jagged Little Pill and Courtney Barnett's literary and guitar shredding Sometimes I Sit and Think, Sometimes I Just Sit. As an extra treat, prepare to mark your bingo cards for the most pedantic moment yet on this podcast. 

Tim takes us through rampant contagion and people wearing masks, people too afraid to live in the world, a "great" man only concerned with himself, and questions of legacy. Movies from the 1952, 1971, and 1994, so sort of a meta Cold Comfort that we've been dealing with these problems for decades. After introducing the overshadowed yet crucial film The Last Picture Show, Tim offers Safe and the The Bad and the Beautiful as movies where comfort can only be had with serious compromise. 

The episode Matt has been preparing for for years, really. The one where he discusses the beautifully apocalyptic tones of OK Computer and Radiohead's prescience and then talks about, and even slightly defends nu-metal. One band, System of a Down, is one many of us agree is good. The other, Korn, is a poster child for a genre many of us hate. So get excited for talk of the best song on Toxicity, why Korn is better and more important than you remember, and how both show different sides of the mobius strip of our category, All the World is F*****.