Book and Film Globe Podcast Book and Film Globe

This week, special guest Richard Rushfield, columnist for 'The Ankler' and one of the sharpest observers of the entertainment business, joins host Neal Pollack in the pod dome to discuss this summer's "catastrophic" box office. "What is Garfield to you?" Richard challenges Neal. "Is it not entertainment?" It is, but the summer box office performance for the adult-facing movies has been bad. But, Rushfield posits, in an average summer 'The Fall Guy' and 'Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes' wouldn't be considered disasters, they would be filler movies between blockbusters. But there are problems in the pipelines, studios are consolidating. The "ecosystem" depends on 120 movies a year, but will fall way short of that number.
But the studios have only themselves to blame, Rushfield says. You can't blame the strikes. "It's like saying, I had to do my homework but went to the beach instead, so of course I didn't do my homework. What do you expect?"
Later, Rushfield has praise for Michael Douglas as Benjamin Franklin and for 'Masters of Air,' and says that he is hate-watching Season 3 of 'Hacks,' though he does like Jean Smart essentially playing Joan Rivers. He finds the rest of the show "amateurish." His aesthetic judgment is golden. Neal also forces Rushfield to talk about 'For All Mankind' on Apple+, which hasn't aired new episodes since January but which Neal has been bingeing much to the chagrin of his wife. Rushfield considers For All Mankind one of the top 5 shows of the streaming era, and Pollack agrees.
Two grumpy old Jewish dads discussing the entertainment industry. It's why podcasts exist! Check it out.

BFG goes to the movies this week even if no one else is. We cover three recent releases with the comprehensiveness they deserve.
Stephen Garrett is back from Cannes to review 'Furiosa' with host Neal Pollack. He calls it "one of the great prequels ever made," and Neal can't really disagree. Yet there's an element of surprise missing from this 'Fury Road' origin story that has left it somewhat high and dry with audiences. Chris Hemsworth really chews the scenery, Anya Taylor-Joy does a lot of grunting, and there are plenty of exploding glider attacks on truck convoys if you like that sort of thing. We do!
Gillian Gear returns to the show to talk with Neal about 'Back to Black,' the Amy Winehouse biopic. Gillian was bored by the movie. Neal said it pales in comparison with any Amy Winehouse documentary from a decade ago. It's a minor film trying and mostly failing to capitalize on the massive success of Bohemian Rhapsody from a few years back. The music isn't as central to Back in Black as it should be. Though Neal liked the two leads, Gillian was too bored to really care about them. This movie should go to rehab, HEYO.
Saving the best movie for last, Omar Gallaga stops in to talk to fellow Austinite Pollack about 'Hit Man,' the years most Austin movie even though it takes place in New Orleans. Richard Linklater directs a script by himself and the movie's star Glen Powell, adapted from a Texas Monthly article. Powell and Adria Arjona steam up the screen in the hottest comedy crime-romance since Clooney and Lopez hooked up in Out of Sight, and that was a long time ago. It's a small-screen Netflix project in a lot of ways, but it still warrants a big-screen viewing if that's available to you. Highly recommended by us at BFG.
Enjoy the show!

It's the end of the world and the end of an empire on this week's podcast. We know that sounds heavy, but host Neal Pollack and his guests, BFG contributors Omar Gallaga and Stephen Garrett, keep it relatively light.
First up, Omar Gallaga joins Neal to talk about 'Nuclear War: A Scenario,' a book by Annie Jacobsen that scared the hell out of him, and will scare you, too. Jacobsen posits what would happen if a "Mad King," like, say, the one currently in North Korea, decided to test the limits of their nuclear arsenal. The answer: nothing good. There will be no hope. The only positive takeaway, Omar says, is that the Earth will regenerate without us. So let's all get on with our days, shall we?
We could, for instance, watch 'Fallout' on Amazon Prime, which is based on a post-nuclear apocalypse video game and is a lot more fun to watch than the war-room scenarios depicted in Jacobsen's book. Omar was totally hooked on the show, which BFG recommends highly.
As for Francis Ford Coppola's 'Megalopolis,' which debuted this week at Cannes, well, god bless him, Stephen Garrett says. The 40-year-old script is the equivalent, he says, of a pool shot that rips the fabric of the table and sends the ball flying into the wall. But it's also big and fun in a campy sort of way. Megalopolis is Coppola's moonshot, and at a press conference in Canness (which Stephen attended), he said he'll still be making movies in 20 years, which would make him 105 years old. Sure, why not? Go for it!
Other highlights of Cannes include a new movie from 'Poor Things' director Yorgos Lanthimos, and a bunch of other stuff that sounds very depressing. Stephen will be spending the week seeing many more movies and drinking lukewarm rosé at beach parties. This is how he suffers for his art.
Enjoy the show!

It's hard to imagine, but the BFG Podcast celebrates its 150th episode this week. We started out by recording it on a party line on Clubhouse, an app that people thought had potential back in 2021. Then for a while host Neal Pollack interviewed people via Skype. That's why, in its earliest iterations, the show sounds like we recorded it through tin cans at the bottom of a submarine. Gradually, Neal got some decent equipment and learned how to plug in his microphone properly, and we now use Zencastr, an easy-to-apply podcasting platform that only occasionally gives us problems. And what do you know? We are huge in Albania and Poland and Switzerland, and have even made the podcasting charts in countries where English is the primary language. We're so proud of our show, thank you for staying with us.
Now, onto this week's podcast fare. Stephen Garrett is here as always, first to talk to Neal about 'The Fall Guy,' which Stephen found fun and charming. He bought into the popcorn-movie vibes entirely. Neal is a grouchy old man and hated the screenplay and didn't actually think Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling had good chemistry. Too much cutesy-pie insider Hollywood baseball, not enough stunt mechanisms. Stephen thought the whole thing worked pretty well.
Neither Neal nor Stephen liked 'Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.' Where are the cool ape houses and the groovy leather jackets? Whither Dr. Zaius? Why is the story taking so long to develop? Why does May's skin look like she just visited Sephora? What the hell is William H. Macy doing there? So many questions, and this movie is so dumb.
Not particularly dumb is 'Sugar,' on Apple+ TV. Chris Farnsworth joins Neal to discuss the Colin Farrell detective series that actually looks like it's a stealth Martian Manhunter series. Neal and Chris are apparently both huge nerds, and they buy into the detective series-ness of it all and definitely are buying into the John Sugar Is An Alien twist. That definitely gives the series a little something extra, makes it iconic, even.
At this point, we're determined to get to episode 200. Why not 300? Why not indeed? There will still be books and films and streaming TV in three years. That's our prediction. Enjoy the show!

Host Neal Pollack is full of self-righteous and justified rage this week at the actions of his fellow PEN America members, who absolutely refuse to participate in awards ceremonies or the World Voices Festival until the Zionist menace is eradicated from this Earth. Pollack and BFG contributor Sharyn Vane go off on PEN members in this week's podcast episode, as writers are more concerned with trendy social-justice concerns than freedom of speech, which really should be their primary concern. They sound like college sophomores, not published authors. It's an outrageous trend that needs immediate correction.
Pollack also reviews 'Knife,' the new memoir from Salman Rushdie about his near-fatal stabbing at the hands of an ignorant jihadist. While Pollack admires Rushdie's description of the attack and the resulting medical trauma, and has much respect for him as an outspoken defender of free speech, he also thinks Rushdie isn't hard enough on his fellow PEN America members, who are a real menace to the values that Rushdie supposedly stands for and holds so dear. Maybe you're seeing a theme to this week's show.
But for dessert, Stephen Garrett joins Neal on the podcast to discuss 'Challengers,' the new tennis melodrama from director Luca Guadagnino. Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O'Connor burn up the screen as a racket-based love triangle. Neal and Stephen both love the script, the performances, and the general adult-drama vibe of the picture. Neal, as always, has trouble with the non-linear narrative structure. Stephen got a little tired of the aggressive musical cues. But you can forgive Challengers its little sins, because overall, the movie is a lot of fun, and allows us to forget for a while that contemporary "writers" hate freedom of speech and sound like a bunch of Maoist propagandists.
Enjoy the tennis movie! Enjoy our show!

As part of the legendary first-ever Book and Film Globe Festival, we recorded an episode of our legendary podcast at The Book House in Long Branch, New Jersey, the hottest new bookstore on the Jersey Shore. Host Neal Pollack traveled thousands of miles to talk to some of his favorite contributors about the important cultural products of the day. It was delightful, and we drank much Pelican Punch.
Stephen Garrett and Neal reunited on a couch to talk about Alex Garland's 'Civil War.' Neal appreciated the aesthetics of the movie but despised its politics. Stephen didn't mind the politics but didn't really think the story works. Neal says the movie is an absolute projection of liberal neurosis about the possible re-election of Donald Trump. Neal likens it to 'Red Dawn,' which Stephen thinks is vaguely ridiculous, but the comparison is apt. What kind of American are you? Hopefully not the kind of American who thinks 'Civil War' is a documentary. Does this movie imagine what a Civil War would be like in modern America? Sure. But it's still a paranoid fantasy.
On the opposite end of the cultural spectrum is the fun and funny Girls 5Eva. we suppose your mileage may vary on this Tina Fey comedy about an aging 90s girl group. Contributor Matthew Ehrlich journeyed from New York City to the Jersey Shore to have a delightful conversation with Neal about the Tina Fey comedy factor, the fabulous Renée Elise Goldsberry, and who sings the Fuck the Police parody, "Ducks Are Mean Geese."
Thanks to Stephen and Matthew for making the trip, and thanks for Sea of Reeds Media for operating such amazing bookstores. This will not be our last live recording ever. Thanks for listening at all times, and in all formats!