Ticket Stubs

After a protracted trek through the Planet of the Apes franchise, we finally make our long-awaited return to one-off episodes with See Spot Run, one of many entries into the rich tradition of animal-fueled children's movies! But first...this week's Blue Plate Special has us remembering the life and career of comedy legend Norm Macdonald before speculating on Christopher Nolan's announced J. Robert Oppenheimer film at Universal Pictures; we follow that up with some initial thoughts on the latest trailers for Nightmare Alley and The Matrix Resurrections and some fully formed musings on one of 2021's few unqualified cinematic successes, Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar. Upon finally getting around to today's title subject, we pick from the low hanging fruit that is early 00s kids movies, wonder longingly what David Arquette's leading man career could've been, and applaud the testicular fortitude (see the movie and you'll know what we mean) offered up by screen mafioso legend Paul Sorvino.

Feel free to skip to 2:04:13 for the beginning of our audio commentary.

As always, please like, subscribe, rate, and review us on all of our channels, which include Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube! Contact us at [email protected] with your questions, comments, and requests.

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/see-spot-run-2001

In this week's very special episode, we take time to mourn, reflect, and work through our own feelings regarding the September 11 terrorist attacks. Twenty years removed from the tragedy, we discuss the ways in which it irrevocably informed our childhoods and adolescence, set the stage for our larger understanding of the world and the systems through which we view it, and parse what exactly a two decade anniversary "means" to us. Finally, we survey the numerous examples of film and television who themselves worked to place meaning on an event and its aftermath more infinitely inscrutable than easily digestible.

Above all else, this episode is dedicated to the many brave men and women who not only lost their lives that day but for the living victims as well, whose scars are sometimes scarcely visible but no less traumatic or impactful.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/02/11/the-real-heroes-are-dead

At long last, our apeathon reaches its end with War for the Planet of the Apes, the 2017 conclusion to the most recent reboot trilogy. But first...the Blue Plate Special has us loading up on some recent trailers for forthcoming releases (Spider-Man: No Way Home, Spencer, and The Many Saints of Newark), followed by a discussion of the 1958 film noir classic Touch of Evil. Upon finally reaching the end of the franchise which- you guessed it- once asked us to go ape, we take one last look at what these most recent films added to the series as a whole and what the very existence of these nine entries on a larger level suggest about the sustainability of Hollywood's blockbuster franchise aesthetic.

Feel free to skip to 1:30:09 for the beginning of our audio commentary.

As always, please like, subscribe, rate, and review us on all of our channels, which include Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube! Contact us at [email protected] with your questions, comments, and requests.

Our eighth consecutive trek through the Forbidden Zone finds us excavating, of all places, an overgrown San Francisco which is, you guessed it!, infested with murderous primates. (You'd think we'd have learned our lesson by now but...alas...) Listen to our introduction as we introduce a new recurrent segment of the show: the Blue Plate Special. In this initial offering, we load up on a trio of neo-noirs (Body Heat, Trouble in Mind, and Reminiscence) that has us pondering both past modes of the form and how it might exactly realize itself in the years to come. Upon finally arriving to Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, yet another exploration of chimpanzee-on-human violence is had, this time in relation to how this new age of CGI at once adds to and subtracts from the potential of the series that refuses to go gentle into that good night.

Feel free to skip to 2:04:34 for the beginning of our audio commentary.

As always, please like, subscribe, rate, and review us on all of our channels, which include Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube! Contact us at [email protected] with your questions, comments, and requests.

For our seventh episode studying the film series which once asked us to go ape, we find ourselves in a state-of-the-art- circa 2011 anyways- digital playground with Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the first of the most recent trilogy of reimagined primate action. Listen as we first discuss some recent films we've seen, including Robert Altman's 1979 uncharacteristic bore Quintet and the newly released Don't Breathe 2, which of course sparked a brief conversational revisit of the canny 2016 original. Upon finally getting around to the 2011 simian film, we weigh the various means through which this seventh entry retooled the franchise for yet another new generation, attempt to traverse across the tricky minefield that is James Franco as unscathed as we can, and do our best to come to terms with the likely permanent arrival of computer-generated apes.

Feel free to skip to 1:56:16 for the beginning of our audio commentary.

As always, please like, subscribe, rate, and review us on all of our channels, which include Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube! Contact us at [email protected] with your questions, comments, and requests.

This week, we thought we'd go all out by delivering our longest episode yet (5 whole hours!) on a film that added next to nothing to the careers of everyone involved and the larger franchise that bears its name: 2001's Planet of the Apes! Listen to us lose our collective minds over the recent phenomenon of speed watching, listening, living, etc. before we turn our existential crises into sincere enlightenment. Thankfully, the recent trailers for Ridley Scott's forthcoming films The Last Duel and House of Gucci restored our spirits. Finally, we walk through the nine circles of developmental Hell it took to see our mediocre subject film make its way onto cinema screens. Join us as we express what Tim Burton's varied career has meant to us over the years, defame the toxic existence of one Mark Wahlberg, and find genuine appreciation in this film's iteration of ape makeup while ascertaining no real reason why this movie was made other than the continual questing of Hollywood to make a buck above all else. Toby Keith fans may even find themselves shocked to see a special surprise awaiting them...Trust us when we say it's *all* here in this very special episode, one way or another.

Feel free to skip to 2:43:20 for the beginning of our audio commentary.

As always, please like, subscribe, rate, and review us on all of our channels, which include Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube! Contact us at [email protected] with your questions, comments, and requests.

https://www.vulture.com/2021/08/speed-watching-netflix-tv-shows.html

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/kris-kristofferson-last-outlaw-poet-ethan-hawke-interview-714098/

THE FINAL CHAPTER (not really but bear with us) of the Ape Saga brings us to Battle for the Planet of the Apes, an anticlimactic conclusion to the first five groundbreaking science fiction films that blinded us with promise before fading like a dying star. Listen as we pontificate upon two new releases (Jungle Cruise and The Green Knight) before diving into yet another discussion of the primate franchise's scattershot concoction of philosophy and monkey-fueled mayhem. Have no fear: as Bon Jovi once spewed with melodic mediocrity, we're half way there!!

Feel free to skip to 1:38:48 for the beginning of our audio commentary.

As always, please like, subscribe, rate, and review us on all of our channels, which include Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube! Contact us at [email protected] with your questions, comments, and requests.

Our laborious trek through the Forbidden Zone continues with our fourth entry into the primate parables with Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, quite easily the greatest fourthquel (is that even a word?) ever made. Listen as we examine this franchise's unlikely stamina through its reflection of a contemporary culture jaded by the unfulfilling answers to the weighty promises of the past decade's Civil Rights Movement, some unfortunately subpar makeup from a series that once set industry standards, a litany of ape vs. human violence in the film's thrilling yet indecisive third act, and an appreciation of the great Don Murray.

Feel free to skip to 1:08:17 for the beginning of our audio commentary.

As always, please like, subscribe, rate, and review us on all of our channels, which include Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube! Contact us at [email protected] with your questions, comments, and requests.

Hope you got your favorite monkey suit handy because we're going to a costume party you'll never forget with Escape from the Planet of the Apes, 1971's addition to the franchise that once bravely asked you to go ape. Listen as we walk through this third entry's attempt to put a silk hat on a chimpanzee by time traveling to the groovy early 1970s while inventing new ways to keep a series fresh in its unexpected charting of a dark and gloomy future.

Feel free to skip to 1:14:17 for the beginning of our audio commentary.

As always, please like, subscribe, rate, and review us on all of our channels, which include Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube! Contact us at [email protected] with your questions, comments, and requests.

Got your pick axe and gorilla glue handy? Good, because you're gonna need it! We continue our multi-week trek through the Forbidden Zone with our second exploration of the Planet of the Apes franchise with its 1970 entry, Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Join us as we parse the glorious messiness of this film's simultaneous expansion upon and aping of (no pun intended) the themes and ideas introduced in the previous film, the apocalyptic overtones and shocking ending reflective of the fears and anxieties of the late 60s and early 70s, and the inherent problems of attempting to catch lightning in a bottle twice. Listen to the very end to hear a special tribute to the dearly departed filmmakers Robert Downey, Sr. and Richard Donner.

Feel free to skip to 1:07:00 for the beginning of our audio commentary.

As always, please like, subscribe, rate, and review us on all of our channels, which include Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube! Contact us at [email protected] with your questions, comments, and requests.