Have You Seen This?

Subscribe at the $5 tier on Patreon to hear the full episode and get two bonus episodes every month and access to our Discord!Tim and Jen have a mild and cordial disagreement about Truman Show screenwriter Andrew Niccol’s flop first feature: Gattaca.The Cinemaholic has an explainer for the ending, just in case you’re stupid.The studio attempted to sell the film as a sci-fi thriller, going by the trailer. See it in 4K over at YouTube. Am I crazy, or is that Richard Kiley narrating for a touch of educational-television believability? Guess they spared no expense!In an interview snippet, Gattaca cinematographer Slawomir Idziak talks about working on an episode of Krzysztof Kieślowski's televised masterpiece, Dekalog.Finally, if you want to hear our episode on George Romero’s Martin, stop by our website!  But first come to our Discord and talk to Tim about Traveler. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jen and Tim welcome @bitterkarella to talk about a tWisTeD comic book movie, the Spawn before Spawn, Faust: Love of the Damned!Read an interview with director Brian Yuzna to learn more about Fantastic Factory, the production company that brought you that titty inflation scene. He also talks about The Guyver!If you found yourself confused by our reference to ”Two Wet Bears,“ you can watch it on YouTube. It’s an attempt to pass off a pencil test as a finished animated short, and features almost every year at Jerry Beck's Worst Cartoons Ever panel at Comic-Con. (Also listen to our episode with Jerry about the Monkees’ sole feature, Head!) This is the Sara Matthews Bitter Karella was talking about, by the way. Apparently she was uncredited in Repossessed, in spite of her memorable appearance. For shame! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tim and Jen scratch their heads over a Japanese musical that’s positively infested with cats, Cats on Park Avenue. It has nothing to do with New York or the musical Cats.Complex has the story on how Disney literally killed five golden retriever puppies while making Snow Buddies, a direct-to-video follow-up to Air Bud.Marty Stouffer became popular with his Wild America series on PBS. A few of his ex-employees alleged that he staged many scenes in the show, which he denied.You can watch the scene from Sledge Hammer! that Tim mentioned, and after that you can watch the whole series on YouTube, because it’s right there and it’s a great show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Paul Jay returns to talk with us about Warren Beatty’s greatest love! No, not women— by all evidence it’s Dick Tracy. Also, we are interrupted by a dog.View one of Beatty’s rights-maintaining Dick Tracy specials, in which he’s interviewed by Leonard Maltin while in character as his favorite comic strip detective.We’ve talked about Warren a couple of times before on the show— once with beloved recurring guest Sean Morris for Bulworth, and once to inagurate the whole dang podcast with our Ishtar episode! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With Tim AWOL (Absent With Overabundant Lego), Jen invites wrestling expert Darren Herczeg to discuss a half-assed wrestling comedy, Body Slam!You can read Dirk Benedict’s idiotic whining about the female Starbuck over at the Internet Archive. For a peek into the primordial soup of reactionary mass media, read this piece about Wally George and his UHF televison show, Hot Seat. More proof that the worst place God created is not the Nefud desert, but Orange County, California.Speaking of shock TV, watch a representative clip of The Richard Bey Show! Bey later claimed that his show was cancelled because he aired an interview with Gennifer Flowers, one of several women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault. #ClintonBodyCountFinally, don’t forget to follow the world’s greatest Instagram account, a veritable museum of weird gimmicks and jobbers, @hamandeggers. Our special guest Darren does, so shouldn’t you? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jen and Tim talk about a truly weird musical fantasia from the mind of beloved children’s author Dr. Seuss— The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.So much of this episode wouldn’t exist without the superlative work of Seuss biographer Brian Jay Jones. His book Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisl and the Making of an American Imagination highlights Geisl's creativity and enduring legacy in popular literature. Jones talked in depth about the life of Dr. Seuss on the Our American Stories podcast (listen to our show first though lol).The charming animated short Gerald McBoing-Boing may be viewed on YouTube.Jen mentioned the Australian child murderer (and worse) Mr. Cruel— see the legitimately terrifying police sketch of the suspect at Wikipedia, but don’t say we didn’t warn you.And yes, we highly recommend that calendar Rifftrax short we mentioned, whether you like to laugh, or if you’re just genuinely confused about how to use a calendar! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tim and Jen discuss a beloved epic whose time has come, the Peter Weir masterpiece Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World!The GQ article mentioned appears to be yet more proof of the widespread affection for this film. The doctor who pioneered sanitary practices in medicine was Ignatz Semmelweiss, although these ideas didn’t take hold until the time of Joseph Lister. Additionally, other medical men (like Oliver Wendell Holmes, for one) arrived at similar notions independent of Semmelweiss. The latter, in fact, refused to publish anything about hand washing because he believed these practices to be “self-evident.”If you want to read about Grover Cleveland getting surgery at sea and see some icky-yet-illumunating photos, the New York Academy of Medicine has a good blog post about it. If you want more, the book Jen mentioned is called The President is a Sick Man, and author Matthew Algeo answered questions about it in this C-SPAN presentation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jen is defeated by the ostensible low point of Lindsay Lohan’s onscreen career, I Know Who Killed Me, while Tim cuts right through the Gordian knot that is the movie’s storyline. Also Jen vents her disappointment over a director she actually likes(?), sorta.Someone actually tracked down the screenwriter, Jeff Hammond, and got him to open up a little about the production: I avoided reading most of the reviews; however, it was impossible not to be aware of the negative consensus. I forced myself to read the ones that mentioned me by name (linked from Google notifications). That made for a handful of ugly reads. It’s a difficult thing for a writer to be accused in print of being tone-deaf. His account is interesting, but there’s no revelatory info about the “themes” or “story,” because these things are about as one-dimensional as you might have guessed.Charles Bramesco also made a case in the Guardian for the movie. You can probably chalk that up to personal preference more than a love of great cinema.

Tim and Jen host steadfast friend of the show mugrimm to talk about a pervasively influential TV movie that spawned the cult series Kolchak: The Night Stalker. Also, in this episode you can learn more about Pervy the Clown…if you dare.If you love Kolchak’s sad little hat, you can get one! The Slate article quibbling about Fletch (the 1985 film starring Chevy Chase) may be read here, if you enjoy the Slate brand of whiny crap.For mugrimm's previous appearance on the show, check out our episode on the M.A.N.T.I.S. TV movie!  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jen and Tim jack freely over a rote 1992 sci-fi action thriller, Freejack, starring Emilio Estevez and Mick Jagger. Your hosts kind of forget to talk about Jagger, but Tim does reminisce fondly about Four Loko.Jen says “Psycho Ninja” when she was actually thinking of Psycho Kickboxer. The latter film is absolutely delightful, by the way.If you’re curious about the gory details of Denise Richards’ divorce from Charlie Sheen, you can read them here, directly from the court document. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tim and Jen remain in the 90s for a look at a dire courtroom drama leavened with gauzy sex scenes, the 1992 Madonna vehicle Body of Evidence.There are no page numbers in Madonna’s book Sex, but it doesn’t take long to flip through on the Internet Archive if you want to see her eating pizza in the nude!The Mystery Science Theater 3000 writers beat Jen to it with a panoply of fake erotic thriller names during the credits for Outlaw [of Gor], episode 519. A personal favorite: “Murder Most Moist.”The Julianne Moore face Tim was talking about  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jen and Tim nineties nineties nineties nineties Denzel Washington nineties nineties virtual reality, nineties Russell Crowe nineties, nineties nineties nineties Virtuosity nineties!Read the AV Club interview with Kelly Lynch where she describes Denzel’s motive for doctoring the script for Virtuosity, as mentioned in the episode.Per Tim’s recommendation, you could do a search on the World Wide Web, or you can check out an article about Kai’s Power Tools if you’d like to see some screenshots of that bonkers interface! Also, if you missed it the first time around, listen to our episode about The Lawnmower Man, another cheesy 90s film from the director of Virtuosity. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tim and Jen enlist animal expert Emma Bowers (Hyenas and Gin on YouTube) to explain why the fascinating story of two man-eating lions resulted in a boring movie called The Ghost and the Darkness.Watch a 1996 documentary about the man-eaters of Tsavo, which includes brief interviews with stars Kilmer and Douglas and director Stephen Hopkins. One interviewee theorizes that the local lions’ taste for human flesh stems from generations of slave traders who left injured or dying captives to their fate in the bush.This 1996 Entertainment Weekly article sums up how bad Val Kilmer’s reputation got to be in Hollywood.As Richard Stanley, who directed Kilmer for three days in The Island of Dr. Moreau before being fired, recalls, “Val would arrive, and an argument would happen.” Says John Frankenheimer, who replaced Stanley: “I don’t like Val Kilmer, I don’t like his work ethic, and I don’t want to be associated with him ever again.” And Batman Forever director Joel Schumacher calls his onetime star “childish and im

Jen and Tim welcome returning guest Darren Herczeg to go to bat for an almost universally loathed Netflix feature, Blonde. Naturally, the trio revel in the film’s grotesque and overt misogyny while twirling their mustaches.Jessica Kiang’s review of Blonde over at Film Comment sums up the critical reaction well:Dominik’s film is a technical marvel, but it’s cold and not a little sinister. It’s also an utterly heartless hoodwink.There’s no word on whether or not the French documentary that revealed the identity of Marilyn’s biological father will screen in the US. However, according to Variety, an English-language version exists and has been sold to international distributors Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tim and Jen try and fail to recall the name of Olympian swimmer Michael Phelps as they discuss Olympian gymnast Kurt Thomas’s sole feature film, Gymkata.Jen’s half-assed inaccurate anecdote about Phelps being considered to play Tarzan is actually true, albeit not the way she told it. Producer Jerry Weintraub (no relation to Gymkata producer Fred Weintraub) believed that he’d found the new Johnny Weissmuller in Phelps. However, the swimmer’s appearance on SNL in 2008 immediately disabused him of that notion, as Phelps appeared to Weintraub as little more than a “goon.” Seven-time Olympic gold medalist Mark Spitz has only five minor credits on IMDb, incidentally, none of which involve starring in a feature film. In case you were wondering. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jen and Tim welcome Speed Racer evangelist Paul Jay to talk about, uh, the 2008 flop Speed Racer.Over at culture blog The Sundae, Dean Buckley makes a case against Speed Racer as “art film” and for the Wachowskis as purveryors of schlock (in a positive way). Agree or disagree, it’s a thoughtful piece.The Daily Beast has details of Emile Hirsch’s attack on a Paramount executive at a Sundance party, although the headline’s assertion that he “starred” in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a slight exaggeration (he had a small part as man-about-town hairdresser and murder victim Jay Sebring).The documentary Riding Balls of Fire: Group B, The Wildest Years of Rallying presents a nice overview of that brief era of rally car racing, plus it’s free on Tubi! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

They just can't stop witchin'! Tim and Jen continue the unending spooky season with a franchise entry that pleased no one, Halloween III: Season of the Witch!Chris Evangelista defended the movie over at SlashFilm, as part of that site's The Unpopular Opinion series.Let’s all thank Sean for his partial preservation of hotep public access show Spearman’s Addiction.Watch Barbariana on Youtube!  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jen and Tim attempt to purge the lingering memory of a certain occult-y art film with a viewing of an early George Romero work, Season of the Witch.In case you had no idea what he was getting at, Tim’s latest thing is calling Chantal Akerman’s feminist classic Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles “the Jean Teasdale movie.” Marxist art critic John Berger’s analysis of western media, Ways of Seeing, is available on YouTube. He casts a critical eye on the depiction of the female nude in European oil painting in the second episode. Men dream of women, women dream of themselves being dreamt of. Men look at women, women watch themselves being looked at. Women constantly meet glances which act like mirrors, reminding them of how they look, or how they should look. Behind every glance is a judgement. Sometimes the glance they meet is their own, reflected back from a real mirror. - John Berger, Ways of Seeing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Your hosts range widely and freely on the topic of horror: specifically, found footage horror. The films discussed are The McPherson Tape, The Blair Witch Project, Backrooms, and Horror in the High Desert.Watch The Backrooms short we talked about here on YouTube.Director Dean Alioto talked with the Found Footage Critic about UFO Abduction and Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County, aka The McPherson Tape:In 1989 Dean Alioto shot his first film, UFO Abduction, for a meager budget of $6,500—the master copy of the film was subsequently destroyed and thus the movie was never widely released. Ten years later Dean Alioto pitched UFO Abduction to Dick Clark Productions, who picked up the idea and gave Dean Alioto a $1.2 million budget to shoot a remake for television. In 1998, the remake was released entitled Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County (a.k.a. The McPherson Tape).Over the years the names of these films has resulted in a great deal of confusion. Even to this day, both UFO Abduction and Alien Abdu

Tim and Jen are dumbfounded by a universally praised and vacantly pretty auteur statement, The Love Witch!Rotten Tomatoes shows The Love Witch to be a darling of critics with a rating of 95% (audiences were more lukewarm, with their rating sitting at 61%). One of the few negative reviews calls it “dawdling, hollow and kind of awful, really:"Some of the movie comes close to camp or just falls in, as when Elaine is assaulted by former friend Trish (Laura Waddell in the film’s only genuine performance), whose husband Elaine has stolen. “Skank! Whore!” Trish yells, slapping Elaine while wearing a wig cap — the movie helpfully provides its own drag-show re-enactment. A sequence in which Elaine is confronted in a bar by a mob of superstitious goofballs (“Burn the witch!”) is frankly terrible and staged with incredible clumsiness. The Love Witch will be worshipped as a fetish object by a certain breed of film nerd who luxuriates in its DIY retro aesthetic, but it isn’t really a movie — it would have to move first, a