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The famous addition to the movie version of Sound of Music, "Something Good" speaks to that (realized) hope of doing something, anything helpful for others. Tim tracks that theme of I Must Have Done Something Good through Crossing Delancey (Joan Micklin Silver) and Manhunter (Michael Mann) and how that sentiment often lives somewhere between exhausted relief and neurotic yearning.

We love a good genre episode and here’s a big one from the 90s, which has influenced everything from Bjork to the theme song of House. Portishead’s Dummy sets the stage for the forlorn, downtempo, psychedelic mix of jazz, dub, and soul that is Trip-Hop. Neither Massive Attack nor Lamb has the secret ingredient that is Beth Gibbons, but both offer unique, compelling visions of Trip-Hop’s range with the former’s demented house beats in Mezzanine and the latter’s insistent break-beats in Lamb.

Tim is here doing serious things and giving some love to the old studio model of movie making along with the peak and power of MGM. Meanwhile, Matt is being a nudnik and subjecting Tim and everyone else to a ranking of Butt Rock songs. Where else can you hear about Naughty Marietta, Breaking Benjamin, various Mickey Rooney joints, and Staind all at once? Where else would you even want to?!

“It was beauty killed the beast.” So ends King Kong (1933), whom Matt and Tim love very much. A memorable last line goes a long way in establishing a film’s legacy, especially when it encapsulates the spirit of the film so perfectly. Tim looks at Back to the Future and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang as other instances of movies that tie a perfect bow on their journeys. (As a bonus, see how much Matt can annoy Tim with that Pretenders song.)

p.s. This episode was recorded before our hiatus, please ignore any dated references.

Matt is feeling his oats in this one and ready to confront you all with the legacies of Mumford and Sons and Nickelback. Vampire Weekend feel like a Matt band, but they aren't. What they undoubtedly are is a King of 21st Century Rock, emblematic of a larger genre movement. So, too, were Mumford and Nickelback. Love them or (most likely) hate them, they allow us to track the ebbs and flows of popular rock in the current century.

p.s. This episode was recorded before our hiatus, please ignore any dated references.

Though I would have appreciated the bit of running La La Land into this for no reason, Tim has standards. He's looking at the classic crime film as a Three Decade Period Piece. In other words, the movie released roughly three decades after the bit of history it covers. We're going to small town Indiana and big, seedy L.A. as we discuss Hoosiers and Farewell, My Lovely and consider the significance of time difference the same as our ages.

p.s. This episode was recorded before our hiatus, please ignore any dated references.

We're back after a long but necessary hiatus. And what better way to return than with....oh no. Welp, Kanye is back on the podcast, and even more treacherous than last we talked about him. Which is a shame, because College Dropout is a genuinely fun, and funny, album. With a clear potshot at Ye's recent history, Matt talks some albums that try to Make Hip-Hop Fun Again in Del tha Funky Homosapien's Both Sides of the Brain and Madvillain's Madvillainy (which also means this is the second pod appearance for the late, great MF DOOM).

p.s. We actually recorded this one before our hiatus, so ignore any dated references.

Tim loves a good chance to slag the AFI for choosing not actually American movies but we have a bit of nuance on that theme this episode. Tim looks at John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy as a prime example of a non-American director bringing some foreign style to American cinema. Consideration of two directors with highly distinct, and maybe even iconoclastic, styles follows with F.W. Murnau (Tabu) and Sergio Leone (Once Upon a Time in America).

Matt keeps the rock theme going and checks in on life after the extinction (read: reunion tours) of the dinosaurs. Sleater-Kinney lambast and reinvigorate rock all at once in The Woods, a totemic and virile nearly-closing statement from the band. Rock is always on the verge of death in the magazines yet forever vital in our hearts, and Matt looks to Queens of the Stone Age and The Darkness that, like Sleater-Kinney, carry the perpetually fading torch of rock music in the 21st century.

The Philadelphia Story, in addition to being an interesting early rom-com, reflects well on one of the great mid-century movie titans, MGM. Tim tracks the story - the rise and fall, the palace intrigue, the style and viewpoint - of MGM through the momentous The Philadelphia Story and two smaller features in Love Finds Andy Hardy by George B. Seitz and Tea and Sympathies by Vincente Minnelli. Tim also official declares himself a leading scholar of Andy Hardy studies, while he and Matt would both like short men to calm down and realized that miniscule Mickey Rooney was once married to Ava Gardner.