Send us a text

The Yards

A family crime drama set in New York City with a sick mother, ambivalently abusive father figure, and nudity along with a role for Domenick Lombardozzi (The Wire’s Herc)? Get out your James Gray bingo cards, because Season 16 Gray Poop On (working title) persists with TGTPTU continuing in Episode 3 its temporal pincer movement covering the auteur’s second film THE YARDS (2000).

Filmed on film in the spring and summer of 1998 but due to studio delays and reshoots not released until the fall of 2000, The Yards stars the still up-and-coming Mark Walburg as Leo Handler just out of jail and being led back into a life of crime by Joaquin Phoenix as Willie Gutierrez, the guy dating and soon betrothed to Leo’s cousin and possible love interest Erica Soltz played by a pre-Monster Charlize Theron. This trio of rising stars is supported by a trio of 70s hall of famers (James Caan, Ellen Burstyn, and Faye Dunaway) in a story about NYC train maintenance, government corruption, family loyalties, and the need for proper bannisters.

Cowritten with Matt Reeves (opinions vary) and shot with multiple POV characters, Gray would find the story in the editing room (and subsequent reshoots) by winnowing it down to Walburg’s singular perspective only to have that story mollified (or straight-up mauled from Gray’s perspective) by a studio-noted happier ending.

This ep, you won’t be getting Ken’s half-hour discussion with Ryan about Theron’s surprising nude scene, but Thomas will provide context for international and homeschool listeners in the U.S., Myanmar, and Liberia.

Thank you for choo-choo-choosing to listen.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTU
Instagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0
Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.social
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-g
Letterboxd (follow us!):

Podcast: goodpodugly
Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a text

Armageddon Time

This week in Season 16’s Going Gray (working title), Episode 2 will cover the writer-director’s 2022 autobiographical film about his Jewish American assimilative upbringing and formative childhood events slightly beyond his ken that will have the potential to lead him to become the legendary director we know today, that same director whose film we are—

Wait, no, you’ve not heard TGTPTU cover this one. Seriously, no, sorry to contradict, but you’re wrong. TGTPTU is not redux-ing the previously covered The Fabelmans (that was Season 14’s gimmick). This is Season 16, if you’ll let your no-so-humble scribe finish, which covers the directorial work of Gen X filmmaker James Gray, including his deeply personal film that was a stupendous box office failure ARMAGEDDON TIME (2022).

Gray’s most recent film is somehow even more personal than his first (just covered in the season’s inaugural episode as part of TGTPU’s temporal pincer movement), with Armageddon Time set historically in 1980 in time for the election of Ronald Reagan to the U.S. presidency, which may or may not factor more largely into the narrative. With a few noted exceptions by the pod’s purist contingent, Gray’s focus remains with his POV character Paul. Played by child actor Banks Repeta who, along with Jaylin Webb as his friend Johnny, brings an amazing performance alongside heavyweights Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, and Anthony Hopkins as Paul’s mother, father, and grandfather respectively and who each will, in their own ways, help the sixth-grade Paul’s insights into social inequity and struggles.

Note: Despite its MPAA R rating and the many similarities in plot as raised during the podcast, Gray’s most recent film is not a Requiem for a Dream retelling and there is zero ass-to-ass.

This week, Ken has all the feels and appears, despite his graphic novel’s striking similarity to Gray’s film, to not be pursuing the Harlan Ellison legal route for residuals; Tom’s lukewarm; and Ryan’s meh. Discussion of these disparate reactions leads to comparison with and exploration of The Fabelmans (2022), Mid90s (2018), and other nostalgic, coming-of-age films by writer-directors in recent years.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTU
Instagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0
Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.social
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-g
Letterboxd (follow us!):

Podcast: goodpodugly
Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a text

LITTLE ODESSA (1994)

A new season (Season 16) in a new year (2026 CE), and The Good, The Pod, and The Ugly returns to its roots with its unpatented temporal pincer movement covering the directorial filmography of American auteur James Gray. And in keeping with this homecoming, we begin our Touch of Gray Season with the Gen X filmmaker’s first feature endeavor LITTLE ODESSA (1994).

Made at the unripened age of twenty-three after being recruited out of USC film school, Gray’s inaugural film is a mixture of the highly personal (reflecting his own mother’s terminal brain cancer, father’s temper, and family’s Slavic Jewish émigré origins) with trappings of the crime genre (hitman with ice cold blood in his veins returns to the one place he promised never to return, viz. New York City, i.e. Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach a.k.a. Little Odessa), each and together building to a profoundly unhappy ending.

Thanks to Brit producer Paul Webster who recruited Gray for this first film, Gray was able to bring on Tim Roth fresh from his acclaimed performance in Reservoir Dogs who was able to attract Edward Furlong, Vanessa Redgrave, Maximilian Schell, and Moira Kelly. Gray and team worked around losing a week to a record-setting blizzard in NYC, some days with only four hours to shoot, to create this two-hander crime+family (but not “crime family”) drama with the dominant hand played by Roth as the older brother hitman and other hand by Furlong as the younger brother under his father’s thumb and regularly truant from school. Redgrave and Schell play their parents. Kelly, two years removed from The Cutting Edge and Fire Walk with Me, plays Roth’s love interest. And fewer of these characters will be alive by the end of this film than you might expect outside of a Greek tragedy.

This week, additional research by Ken who watched the film within the film (Vengeance Valley, 1951), Ryan who explored Jewish funeral rites, and Thomas who on mic clarifies the actual size of Little Odessa.

Oh, and in a callback to the preceding Season 15, there are some satisfyingly strong squibs.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTU
Instagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0
Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.social
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-g
Letterboxd (follow us!):

Podcast: goodpodugly
Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias