Bald Move Prestige is where the best of the best come to shine. In the Prestige podcast, we talk about serious dramas, excellence in filmmaking, and everything in between; on television or on the big screen. Prestige doesn’t cover sci-fi, but if that is your thing, you might be looking for Bald Move Pulp.
We’re watching the 1993 movie Groundhog Day for 24 hours, starting on February 2nd, 2018 @ 12:01AM EST.
Please support the National Alliance to End Homelessness during our marathon by donating here! Donating at that link ensures that our goal progress will be tracked properly, and you’ll get an onscreen credit when you give!
Today’s podcast was commissioned by Rylan, by virtue of his victory in the famed Bald Move Fantasy Football league. To the victor go the spoils, and Rylan has claimed the 2000 slasher/satire/thriller, American Psycho. Directed by Mary Harron and starring Christian Bale, the movie is dark, disturbing, hilarious in places, and provoked a lot of thoughts and opinions from Jim and I. What does it mean to be a sociopath, how much of this film is reality and how much is fantasy, what does it say about society and the conflict between our stated and actual values?
Special thanks to Sean Ray (previous commissioner of the Insidious series, and Blood Simple) for commissioning this late 80’s Ridley Scott crime thriller, Black Rain. Michael Douglas plays a cop alongside Andy Garcia that gets mixed up in a gang war between the Yakuza and a rival upstart over counterfeit US currency. The film explores the intercultural exchange as Douglas’s corrupt and brash NYC cop runs into the brick wall of Japanese police decorum and honor, but how successful it is in that exploration is an open question. The film is great looking, has some solid action sequences, and hilarious Michael Douglas hair, and it’s concepts don’t quite stand the test of time. But Andy Garcia’s chest hair is magnificent.
We saw The Post tonight, the star-studded retelling of The Washington Post’s decision to publish the Pentagon Papers, the internal history commissioned by the Dept. of Defense that detailed the long list of failures in America’s involvement politically and militarily in Vietnam, risking financial ruin and jail time. Told from the perspective of the owner of the Post, Katharine Graham (Meryl Streep), and her editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks), as they wrestle with their own cozy relationships with previous and current presidential administrations and the legal, financial, and ethical risks of defying the government. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more impressive cast, the film is gorgeous and extremely well written and tells a powerful and important story of how vital a free press is to the health of our nation.
Today’s commissioned podcast is one for the pantheon, Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 masterpiece of satire, Dr. Strangelove. Kubrick set out to make a nuclear thriller, but instead decided to lean heavily into the existential absurdism that was and still is the world’s nuclear weapon deterrent, mutual assured destruction. Hey, it’s worked for sixty years, let’s keep the streak going! Special thanks to our committee of commissioners, “Breaking Bad Fest” Jennie, Gulleen, Manoj, Flash Gordon, Anthony, leaplizard, hiroprotagonist2002, tingudu, Don M, Zack Z, Sean R, and Alex K for making this happen. We loved revisiting this film and it’s as funny and relevant today as it was back in ’64. Enjoy!
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Merry Culkin Keatmas begins its third act with the mostly beloved Tim Burton Christmas classic (not that one…), Batman Returns. Does a 1992 Batman movie starring Michael Keaton, Michelle Pfeiffer, Danny Devito, Christopher Walken and Paul Reubens hold up in 2017? There’s only one way to find out and it’s nearly going to kill one of us.
Jim and I have seen Star Wars: Episode VIII: The Last Jedi: No More Subtitles, We Promise, and surprise, surprise! One of us like it and one of us wanted to like it more than they actually felt the love. On the other hand, the film is receiving almost universal praise so don’t let that dissuade you from seeing and enjoying The Last Jedi. Haha, as if wild falthiers could drag anyone away from seeing a new Star Wars.
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Merry Culkin Keatmas! This is of course our follow up podcast to the LiveWatch of Home Alone, in which we take issue with our old pal Roger Ebert’s dour review of the film, trade trivia about the film, and in general talk about why it’s one of our very favorite Christmas films. We’re not done! Not by a long shot. Come back next week as we put the Keaton back in Keatmas with Batman Returns!
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Merry Culkin Keatmas! Our second movie is the 1990 holiday classic / child torture porn flick Home Alone. We think it’s awesome and holds up like a champ, others who are wrong disagree. Use our LiveWatch to sync up our commentary with your copy of Home Alone and laugh and groan along with us!
We have seen The Disaster Artist, the behind the scenes look at the creation of The Room, which is quite possibly the worst film ever made. Based on the book of the same name, the brothers Franco play Tommy and Greg in a way that manages to feel honest, sympathetic, and most of all very funny. It is frustrating that there is so little there, there. There is no big revealing answers that make any sense about the deeply weird and enigmatic Tommy, and the friendship between him and Greg also feels like the barest sketch possible to make the film work. But it does work, and like Ed Wood before it, manages to make an amazing movie out of a dog turd. It’s an amazing alchemic work, spinning gold from lead. Go see it, regardless of how familiar you are with the source material. You’re going to be in for a good time.
