Welcome back, listeners! Theresa's birthday is this month, and so in honor of that, she wanted to cover one of her favorite actors in our next series. After much deliberation, she settled on Bill Murray, and we're kicking off the season with the blockbuster smash, Ghostbusters (1984). One of the defining Hollywood entertainments of its era, it is also the film that really solidified the cooler than thou Bill Murray persona, and defined what audiences expected from the actor for the next 20 years - before he upended that persona by introducing a middle-aged melancholy into it (but more on that later!). So join us as we begin our investigation into the career of a national treasure.

Hello listeners! We're wrapping up our season on romantic films with a movie about a couple who have been together for decades and remain happily in love. In Mike Leigh's Another Year (2010), a group of lonely and unhappy people take refuge in the company of Tom and Gerri, a couple who has known each other most of their lives and radiates warmth to everyone around them. Their happiness, apparent throughout in the smallest of gestures, makes a striking contrast with the melancholy permeating the lives of those around them, and Mike Leigh captures all of it in his trademark observational, naturalistic style.

For the third part of our season on romantic films, we wanted to explore the concept of unfulfilled love. And since nobody captures the spirit of romantic longing better than Wong Kar-wai, we're discussing his breakthrough film, 1990's Days of Being Wild.

Against a sultry, humid backdrop of 1960 Hong Kong, a network of love-starved people all orbit around one enigmatic playboy, who is by equal turns heartless and deeply sensitive. The first of what became an informal trilogy, Days of Being Wild is regarded as one of the greatest Hong Kong films ever made, and it immediately established Wong's career-long thematic obsessions, along with his idiosyncratic, evocative style.

In the second installment of our season on love in the movies, we wanted to cover a film that explores themes of "First Love" and sexual identity. We decided on Lukas Moodysson's debut feature film, Show Me Love (1998), which captures the pangs of first love and sexual confusion with aching tenderness.

Agnes, a 14-year old social outsider, has an intense crush on Elin, the prettiest girl in school. Elin is only faintly aware of Agnes' existence at the beginning of the film, and seems blindly assured of her own heterosexuality. But both of those details soon change, and she suddenly finds herself grappling with how to navigate her new feelings and the reactions she expects from the friends and family surrounding her.

A sharply observed coming of age drama and a portrait of youth that permeates with authenticity, this film immediately announced Moodysson as a major presence in world cinema, and remains beloved nearly a quarter-century after its original release. So please join us as we discuss Show Me Love and try to tease out just what makes the film so special.

Today we're kicking off our season of romantic themed films with Richard Linklater's 1995 Before Sunrise, the first installment of the Before trilogy. Both an ambling romantic reverie and a celebration of the art of conversation, this film finds Linklater capturing budding romance with a naturalism one does not typically associate with Hollywood.   So take a stroll with us as we discuss the birth of Jesse and Celine's relationship.

We've arrived at the end of our Humphrey Bogart season, and we're using the opportunity to take a look at a different side of the famed actor. In John Huston's 1948 classic, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Bogie plays Fred C. Dobbs, a down on his luck drifter who's found himself bumming for lunch money in Mexico. He happens upon a grizzled prospector who affords him the opportunity to go mining for gold, which leads to a tense adventure in which our heroes battle the elements, violent bandits, and their own creeping paranoia. A caustic rumination on the corrosive effects of greed, Treasure of the Sierra Madre is one of the towering Hollywood films of its era, and a fitting end to our month-long celebration of this larger-than-life actor.

This podcast is intended to be educational any audio clips are utilized with gratitude under the fair use copyright law.

You have read an intro before haven't you, hmmmmm?

For the penultimate episode of our Humphrey Bogart season, we're discussing arguably the best and most iconic of the "Bogie and Bacall" pairings. Bogart, at the height of his effortless cool, plays the unflappable Philip Marlowe, trying to put together the pieces of a puzzle that don't seem to fit. So pour yourself a brandy and join us as we try to figure out who killed who and what the hell happened in Howard Hawks' 1946 masterpiece, The Big Sleep.

This podcast is intended to be educational any audio clips are utilized with gratitude under the fair use copyright law.

1st Clip: The Big Sleep. Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc, 1946

This week, we're continuing our season of Humphrey Bogart films with the immortal first meeting of "Bogie and Bacall" in Howard Hawks' To Have and Have Not.

This podcast is intended to be educational any audio clips are utilized with gratitude under the fair use copyright law.

Clip 1: To Have and Have Not. Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc, 1944

Clip 2: Bacall to Arms. Merrie Melodies. Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc, 1946

Join us as we dive into a brief history of one of the transcendent Hollywood films, along with our personal feelings about it. This is a film with special significance to us, as we named our daughter after the leading lady, Ilsa.

This podcast is intended to be educational any audio clips are utilized with gratitude under the fair use copyright law.

1st Clip: Casablanca. Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc, 1942

2nd Clip:  The Simpsons. Season 4, Episode 15, Fox, 1996