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RESURRECTION

Season 17 of the TGTPTU enters the final half of its 1x1 coverage with a flick picked by host Ryan that might count as five films: RESURRECTION (2025) written and directed by Chinese auteur Bi Gan.

Covering the Buddhist classification of six senses (with the wrapping narrative doubling as vision and mind), the anthology movie occurs under the pretense of a man’s dream lasting a hundred years, a comp for cinema, especially apparent when in its opening silent film sequence an opium-addicted Nosferatu-esque man’s hunchback gets loaded with a film reel (don’t worry, it doesn’t make a lot of literal sense in the film either). That dreaming, dying junkie deliriant (don’t worry, this term is explained in the film (although your mileage from its definition might vary)) will become a variety of ages and male characters within his dream, all portrayed by the same actor, one Jackson Yee apparently of former boy band fame. These disparate characters include someone pursued by an intelligence agent in a detective story trying to get the bottom of a musician’s murder (hearing), a hungry looter cum amateur dentist inside a Buddhist temple (taste), a con artist magician who brings on a girl accomplice (smell), and a virginal thug on NYE 1999 in love with a vampire (taste).

Ryan was stoked for the film’s release, and both he and Ken bullish on Bi Gan after watching the allegedly amazing Long Day’s Journey into Night (as unrelated to the Eugene O’Neill play as Bobby Drake’s brief foray into porn is to O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh). And while Resurrection’s opaque anthology style has its detractors, it too contains an amazing long-take during its NYE 1999 sequence.

This ep, host Thomas beefs with Multnomah County Library and offers a rare peek before the curtain for how he curates the commonalities between film pairings; host Ken does the plot summary and, later, his noir voice (removed by editor); and host Ryan’s non-host cat joins the pod.

Next week, The Cranberry’s/Erik Van Der Wolf’s/Lucio Fulci’s Zombie (or Zombi 2 or Zombie Flesh-Eaters) as S17 draws to a merciful close.

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I do say, it’s been a week of Sundays since last we here at The Good, The Pod, and The Ugly last heard from our fairer counterparts, but don’t you worry your pretty little head holes, listener, Season 17’s concluding 1x1s will remedy this sad misfortune with a movie celebrating all the major Christian holidays of the South along with its beauty parlor culture, that is, to let the proverbial cat out the bag or to shoot a literal arrow strapped with fireworks into a tree, STEEL MAGNOLIAS (1989) to be commented on by pod regulars without one ounce of Y-chromosome in either of their bodies: Andi and Meg.

Joined by regular host Thomas after his first-time watch, these three explore the teased up big and modishly short hair of the movie’s six main ladies who span the three generations of womanhood, and determine whom among their present friend group fits to each character. There’s the two-time Academy Award-winning Sally Field as M’Lynn, mother to then-nearly-unknown Juila Roberts’ diabetic but baby-crazy character Shelby whose relationship will provide the main drama. But also in M’Lynn’s and Shelby’s respective age brackets, Dolly Parton as the salon owner and logistically-challenged Easter egg mogul Truvy and her young new hire, the desperately abandoned-turned-holly-roller convert Annelle played by a two-eyed, samurai-swordless, and purposely figureless Daryl Hannah who will also get herself hitched and preggers after Shelby’s corresponding life milestones during the flick. And rounding out the six, as the matriarchs, the feisty friends Clairee and Ouiser (not to be confused with the homophonous California rock band Weezer), the former who cares about Olympia Dukakis when we can talk about how Shirley MacLaine who played the latter didn’t wear makeup for the role in order to appear more age appropriate and how the playwright who adapted his play for the screen said he was afraid the locals from his hometown upon which this mildly fictionalize account derives (his diabetic sister died from ongoing complications after childbirth) would identify and be upset when in fact many of the older women vied to claim herself as the basis for the Ouiser character.

The film is directed by someone who got his start as a Broadway choreographer and, reportedly, was less than gentlemanly toward the actresses in the movie. It was shot on location by John A. Alonzo, the lenser of such greats as Harold and Maude, Scarface, The Bad News Bears, and Chinatown.

This episode is no lead petunia. Our two guest-hosting, real-life Southern belles this week explain the movie’s title, the phenomena of home churches, and the veracity of a groom’s cake; take the listener on a food tour of the movie; spill tea from the town where the events of the play and later film occured; and overquote the movie from memory, all this after Meg gives the shortest plot summary of this, and perhaps any prior, season.

Spoiler, there might be cannibalism in Fried Green Tomatoes.

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Friendly greetings, pod listener and follower of the TGTPTU. Stay excite: Season 17’s concluding 1x1s of very special one-off movies cultivated by show regulars continues this week with host Tom’s pick of a fellow Tom’s directorial debut, that being distant relative of Al Green and the rapper, the writer, the MTV’s late-90’s darling with a hit show and #1 single, the Tom of all trades, Ontario Canada’s very own (and once Drew Barrymore’s very own before she made what has to be the greatest regret of her life, I mean, even more than dancing on David Letterman’s desk or falling for the two killers in Scream or being Steven Spielberg’s goddaughter or in that third Adam Sandler movie, even if it meant she could later date Justin Long, that regret being her amicable divorce from…) Tom Green and his co-written and lead role in his romantic-inspirational-comedy magnus opus, FREDDY GOT FINGERED (2001).

The film that help give rise to the American indie wave of small-budget (under $15M) studio comedies at whose crest would launch the careers of such luminaries as Todd Phillips, Adam McKay, and David Gordon Green (no known relation to Tom) follows the trials and tribulations of a misunderstood, aspiring cartoonist Gordon “Gord” Brody (played by Tom Green) as he, through increasingly charming and absurd antics, reconnects with this father (played by Academy Award-winner Rip Torn), re-earns the love of his paraplegic girlfriend (played by Marisa Coughlan), and, by believing in himself and his slanted view of the world so strongly, wins over the head of an animation studio head (played Anthony Michael Hall) with a marginally fictionalized version of his life experiences and thereby elevates himself out of the grind of service industry and factory work and is able to vacay with his daddy.

This seminal and often overlooked work of the early 00s was the wellspring for new types of movie humor and visual storytelling. It is alleged that Al-Qaeda delayed their deadly attacks until after film had its worldwide release so they could catch it as an inflight movie. They had rightly suspected that their attacks on 9/11, originally commissioned by the Bush Administration for 4/11 (MIHOP), would shut down theaters and movie exports. Unfortunately, these same attacks would irrevocably change the face of comedy in the 00s, altering the tenor of the humor landscape, as discuss this episode. Given its highly personal nature of the film and its excellent cinematography by the great Mark Irwin, it’s little wonder that Freddy Got Fingered would appear as #2 on American-born auteur and skateboarding enthusiast Stanley Kubrick’s Sight & Sound list for the Year 2001, a year that he and best-selling author Arthur C. Clarke co-invented.

This ep, Xennial host Ryan explains TRL (and pre-streaming television) to Thomas; Thomas comes dangerously close to almost nearly agreeing partially with Ryan; and Ken makes a Seinfeld comparison (take a drink), concurs that Tom Green is the Pavement (a popular 90s band) of moviemaking, and does in fact want some sausages.

As mentioned during the show, Netflix (as DVD.com) shipped hard media even after the two world-shattering events of early 2020: start of the global COVID-19 pandemic and of TGTPTU: https://about.netflix.com/en/news/netflix-dvd-the-final-season

Japan4.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com
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Letterboxd (follow us!):

Podcast: goodpodugly
Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias