Book and Film Globe Podcast

Book and Film Globe
Book and Film Globe Podcast

Everyone’s favorite literature and pop culture site is now a podcast. Entertaining, enlightening chat about books, film, streaming TV, and more with Neal Pollack, editor of Book and Film Globe and its top writers. Pollack is the author of ten semi-bestselling books of fiction and nonfiction, including Jewball, Never Mind the Pollacks, Downward-Facing Death, and the memoirs Alternadad and Pothead: My Life as a Marijuana Addict in the Age of Legal Weed.

  1. 4 DAYS AGO

    BFG Podcast #186: 'I'm Still Here,' 'Companion,' and 'Severance' Season 2

    It's a typically great show this week as host Neal Pollack welcomes the heavily compromised but still insightful Stephen Garrett, who worked on the trailer for the Brazilian Oscar nominee I'm Still Here. But Stephen would have to have a heart of stone to not like this beautiful and thoughtful movie, and he doesn't. Neal is full of praise for the film's passionate defense of human rights, and its beautiful elegy for a time and place that's no more. And they are both enthralled, as is everyone else, by the lead performance of Fernanda Torres, who, like her character in the movie, has called attention to herself through sheer force of will. A great film. Also great, though much less serious, is Companion, a new Black Mirror-style robot sex thriller-comedy (yes, that's a genre now) from writer-director Drew Hancock. Neal welcomes Pablo Gallaga to the podcast for a chat about Companion, and neither of them can find much to criticize, though Neal, still a relative horror noob, seems to like it a bit more than Pablo. But neither of them have anything negative at all to say about Sophie Thatcher, the film's star, who gives a smashing, star-making performance as Iris, a thinking, murderous sex android with a heart of gold, or at least a heart. No one knows what to think about Severance, now streaming in its second season on Apple+, other than that it's the most interesting show on TV right now. Scott Gold joins Neal on the podcast to talk about Ben Stiller's puzzlebox, to praise the cast, particularly Britt Lower and John Turturro, and to hope against hope that Severance doesn't go the way of Lost and that Stiller knows where he's going with this incredibly surreal, and funny, workplace comedy that is about way more than being a workplace comedy. Your innie will love it, and so will your outie. We will allow you both to listen to this episode. [audio mp3="https://bookandfilmglobe.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/BFG-PODCAST-186-021125.mp3"][/audio]

    42 min
  2. JAN 15

    BFG Podcast #182: 'The Brutalist' and TV Crossovers

    From the highbrow to the lowbrow, it's a veritable brow rollercoaster on this week's podcast. First, we go high. Neal Pollack welcomes in Stephen Garrett to discuss Brady Corbet's 'The Brutalist,' the most fun you'll have at a three-and-a-half hour movie about architecture and Holocaust trauma this year. Neither Neal nor Stephen have a cross word about this thoroughgoing work of art, starring, according to Nikki Glazer, "two-time Holocaust survivor" Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce, giving a signature performance as a weird Pennsylvania industrialist. Neal also points out that, in this era of heightened antisemitism, it's nice to see a movie that pays respect to the trauma of Holocaust victims and that treats the founding of the state of Israel as something that was politically good and necessary. It's a great film, with great music, and it includes a 15-minute intermission! Now our brows dip low as Neal welcomes Paula Shaffer to discuss the recent crossover episode between 'Abbott Elementary' and "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia,' which surprisingly go together as well as chocolate and peanut butter. Paula and Neal then go down the rabbit hole of TV crossover history. She introduces him to Poobala.com, the rabbit hole of rabbit holes. Did you know that Mr. Carlin from 'The Bob Newhart Show' was also a patient on 'St. Elsewhere?' That's correct. And since St. Elsewhere, we later learned, existed only in the imagination of an autistic middle schooler, that means that The Bob Newhart Show, along with Cheers, Frasier, and hundreds of other shows, also only existed in his imagination. To further tangle the web, it was later revealed that 'Newhart' was just a dream that existed in the world of The Bob Newhart Show. So was Newhart also in Tommy Westphall's imagination? Or was St. Elsewhere part of Bob Newhart's dream life? Are we nothing but a dream ourselves? These are the kinds of questions we try to answer on Book and Film Globe. Enjoy the show!

    34 min
  3. JAN 8

    BFG Podcast #181: 'Squid Game 2' and 'Pop Culture Jeopardy!'

    Games take the podium on this week's edition of the BFG Podcast. Show host and perennial game-show contestant Neal Pollack welcomes Jessica Babbitt, who was recently his opponent (or at least their teams faced each other) on Amazon Prime's 'Pop Culture Jeopardy!' This is a unique view into the sick and twisted minds of game-show contestants. Just kidding, it is about as wholesome a conversation as you'll ever hear. But you will learn how to prepare for a quiz show, how to work with a team on a quiz show, and how impossible it is to ring in on the buzzer in Jeopardy when you're up against eight other players. Neal and Jessica are two of the most delightful dorks you'll ever meet, and this is a nice audio treat for people who love Jeopardy! and want to someday realize their Jeopardy! (or Pop Culture Jeopardy!" dreams. But only the sickest and most desperate among us would want to play 'Squid Game,' which is kind of the point of the mega-hit Netflix show. Season 2 of Squid Game is now available. Omar Gallaga joins Neal on the podcast to talk about the many ways in which the sequel to one of the most popular streaming shows of all time follows up, and even improves on, the original. There hasn't been a drop-off in quality at all, which is kind of amazing. Squid Game 2 heightens the stakes, ramps up the tension, and adds even creepier and more original games than the first season. We offer no advice to surviving Squid Game other than: Stay alive, and hide under your bed at night. Come to think of it, that might be decent advice to succeeding at Jeopardy! as well. But Jeopardy! is more fun, and you can usually grab drinks with your opponents after the taping. Enjoy the show! [audio mp3="https://bookandfilmglobe.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/BFG-PODCAST-181-010725.mp3"][/audio]

    36 min
  4. JAN 3

    BFG Podcast #180: A Complete Babyratu

    Movies are back. Even though for some of us they never went anywhere, now they are really back. The holidays were a buffet of filmgoing fun. But at BFG, we mostly ignore the children's fare and focus on what the grownups like. No one is more grown-up than Count Orlok, Nosferatu himself. He's a real oldy-moldy. Two night dwellers themselves, Neal Pollack and Stephen Garrett find a lot to admire in Robert Eggers's atmospheric take on the vampire legend. But Stephen finds the movie kind of silly and not very scary, and neither of them are really down with Lily-Rose Depp's literally convulsive performance as the vampyr's eternal love object. But then Willem Dafoe shows up and seems realize what kind of movie he's in, and things get kind of fun anyway. A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan biopic, is pretty fun from the outset. Jim Arndorfer joins Neal on the podcast to pick some nits at the Dylan legend as James Mangold tells it, but even the crankiest Dylanologist has to admit that the movie hums along on a vibe of good feeling and great music and really magnetic performances from pretty much the entire cast. Neal thinks it's going to be Best Picture. It's hard to argue. It's always hard to argue with him. Things get pretty sexy when Stephen Garrett returns to the Pod Dome to talk about 'Babygirl,' a sort-of comedy starring Nicole Kidman as a robotics CEO with some pretty repressed kinky desires. A foxy intern shows up and gives her what she wants and then some. The move is sort of provocative but also kind of ridiculous. In the end, it's thin characters stuck in a fun conceit, but the screenplay never quite delivers and the sex, frankly, isn't kinky enough to carry the premise So sayeth our male critics who always satisfy every desire. Enjoy the show!

    40 min
  5. 12/27/2024

    BFG Podcast #179: The Best Movies of 2024

    Let's have some real talk: This was not the best year ever at the movies. When you combine lingering production delays from the pandemic with the very real aftereffects of the Hollywood strikes, you had pretty slender pickings when it comes to big-studio pictures. That said: BFG still went to the movies, all year long! We covered all the film festivals, and saw every film we could, major-release and indie. There are still directors giving us intense personal visions and entertaining us with giant tentpoles. The world of entertainment is changing, but this year's relatively weak crop could still be just a blip. Stephen Garrett, who sees every movie in the world, and Sara Stewart, who used to but has backed off to attend graduate school and pursue an actual career, join perpetual cinephile Neal Pollack to talk about their picks. Everyone loved Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, and Stephen and Sara try to persuade Neal that Dune 2 is great. Sorry, Neal finds Dune 2 boring. Neal himself loved The Apprentice and Challengers. For his art-house pick, he went with La Chimera. Stephen loved The Brutalist and Queer. Sara goes hard in the paint for Dev Patel's Monkey Man. And because this is Book and Film Globe, Jewish-themed movies came up. Sara was a big fan of Between the Temples, which we've discussed exhaustively on this site. Neal and Stephen went for the more Oscar-friendly 'A Real Pain.' Other movies, selected by our critics but not discussed on this episode, include 'I Saw the TV Glow,' Dahomey,' 'Eno,' and 'His Three Daughters.' Finally, Neal gets real squeamish about 'The Substance.' Sara and Stephen both loved it, but Neal cannot tolerate movies where things come out of other things. It's a lot for him. And if movies in 2025 feature things coming out of other things, he'll assign them elsewhere. Enjoy the show!

    36 min
5
out of 5
6 Ratings

About

Everyone’s favorite literature and pop culture site is now a podcast. Entertaining, enlightening chat about books, film, streaming TV, and more with Neal Pollack, editor of Book and Film Globe and its top writers. Pollack is the author of ten semi-bestselling books of fiction and nonfiction, including Jewball, Never Mind the Pollacks, Downward-Facing Death, and the memoirs Alternadad and Pothead: My Life as a Marijuana Addict in the Age of Legal Weed.

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