Middlebrow Madness

Recorded on 23 February 2024 Derek must’ve angered one or another of the Computer Gods, because part of this episode was garbled beyond recognition. But never fear, sports fans! Thanks to Isabelle’s considerable skills as an editrix, the seams on the episode are nary audible. So you will hear in the highest fidelity our intrepid […]

Recorded on 24 November 2023 Sports fans, Isabelle brought the thunder with her reading this week, which threatened to swallow this episode whole, so to speak. But as all episodes must, we eventually get to the matter at hand, which in this case includes one of the most whiplash-inducing matchups in the bracket thus far. […]

Recorded on 15 September 2023 Well that goofball Derek up and forgot to upload the new episode last week, so can chastise him via your medium of choice. Sorry about that! But here it is, one week late but no worse for wear. Sports fans, we invite you to take a trip back in time […]

tap tap Is this thing on? Your eyes and ears do not deceive you, sports fans! We are back from our long hibernation, but instead of overwhelming you with takes so hot they break the Scoville scale, our intrepid hosts return with a super-sized life update spectacular, filling you in on the details of what […]

Now I’m not one for boasting, sports fans, but this one is a corker. We have an instant-classic opening bit, a huge upset (wink), and an all-time difficult opening round matchup pitting two masterpieces that have a surprising amount in common despite the 75 years that separate them. Also Isabelle makes her co-horst laugh the […]

NOTE: This episode contains discussions of suicide. Sometimes the Universe gives you a gift, and sometimes that gift is a poisoned chalice. Sports fans, I have to tell you, our second matchup in this episode has no business happening in Round 1. But the Bracket Gods are capricious, and they will do as they please. […]

Sports fans, as we being a-tumblin’ down towards the end of round one, we encounter in these matchups a couple of mirrored pairs. We have two movies that our intrepid hosts revisit for the first time in a long time, and two masterpieces of their form, each close to one host’s heart. Who will gracefully […]

In the words of the great American philosopher Jon Bon Jovi, we’re halfway there! Well, we’re halfway through the first round of this white elephant we call the Middlebow Madness bracket, which means we’re really only a quarter of the way there. In any case, our intrepid hosts take a load off and contemplate the […]

It was bound to happen sooner or later, sports fans: we finally cracked two hours. Naturally, this episode is packed to the gills with tangents about crawdads and Twitter Jail and Derek’s dubious acting career. Not that there isn’t any movie talk at all: Isabelle has a galaxy-brain take to end all galaxy-brain takes regarding […]

Sports fans, a good podcast episode is only as good as its digressions, and this one has several (shocking, I know). What do out intrepid hosts talk about that isn’t the four movies listed below? Isabelle’s corny jokes! Derek’s pet theory about musical theatre! One of them reads a little Faulkner! Which host, you ask? […]

Sports fans, we nominally talk movies about on the show, but you know what else crops up a lot in this, our landmark 30th episode and our first missive of 2021? Racism in Hollywood, and piss. Lots of it. Not necessarily in that order. We go short on some masterpieces and long on what Derek […]

Sports fans, you are getting four podcasts for the price of one this week! In addition to the usual movie bracket-based shenanigans, we have a QAnon-skewering politics podcast at the top, a short true-crime missive in the middle, and a full-on miniature games podcast to close the whole thing out. Digressive? Us? Perish the thought. […]

Running parallel to our intrepid hosts’ quest for the Greatest Movie of All Time* is their quest to make each episode of the show longer and more digressive than the previous one. And sports fans? Both quests are humming along quite nicely. So what treasures does this episode contain? The residual evils of pandemic capitalism! […]

A little bit of inside baseball for you, sports fans: when Isabelle sent Derek the edited version of the show, she titled it “The One Where It Goes Off the Rails.” What could possibly have made the longest episode of the show to date disintegrate in such a way? Could it have something to with […]

It’s been a long, long six months, sports fans, but the show is in fact back from the dead! We pick up right where we left off, which is to say we have a long X-rated digression right at the top and then remember that there are movies to talk about. Four movies to be […]

We’re a little late, but no worse for wear, sports fans! This time around, our intrepid hosts ponder whether the crew of Sunrise actually got a pig drunk, the concept of audience manipulation in cinema, and contend with Derek’s wild, earth-shattering take about Ridley Scott. Plus, a new chapter in the Untitled Isabelle Arf Fan […]

Hot off our viewing of Judgment at Nuremberg, Isabelle schools us on the work of German political theorist Carl Schmitt and how they intersect (or don’t) with Stanley Kramer’s film. NOTE: It was raining during the recording of this episode, so please forgive the sound quality. And yes, Isabelle knows that “Weimar” is pronounced with […]

Sports fans, this one’s got everything you can ask for: weird bits, charlatanry, amphibian Messiahs, v i b e s, nostalgia, smart stuff, dumb stuff, and what is probably the single most shocking scene in any film we’ve covered so far. Here’s a hint: it has something to do with the movie with the word […]

Sports fans, Derek knows he fucked up the number of the show in the intro, don’t worry about it. But despite that rocky start, our intrepid hosts navigate between the twin poles of Wild Digressions (conspiracy theories! the recorded output of the Decemberists!) and Hard-Hitting Film Criticism (the lingering effects of propaganda! agreeing in bad […]

We’re back with a vengeance, sports fans! We talk about the why of the dudebro canon, director market correction, the funny side of Ingmar Bergman, and the motion picture with the credits that have perhaps aged the worst of all the movies we’ve covered so far. Plus, Isabelle introduces a new node in her increasingly […]