Ludicrously Specific

38: Beat It, NYC 50s Style

In our latest connections episode, it's time to take two charismatic singers, put them on the streets of New York, give them percussion skills, and watch them squirm their way through very stressful situations, in luminous black and white. It's Frank Sinatra in THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM and Harry Belafonte - *not* Sidney Poitier - in ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW! Spoiler section at end so listen with (relative) spoiler freedom as we deep dive into directors, musicians, and pretty much anything else we can think of. 

37: What We Watched, Q3 Edition

So: it's been a time since adulthood and winter bugs have allowed us to gather And it's only a few moments before the 24th Annual Movie Marathon. So it's a double duty episode: a rave about Auckland's (New Zealand's?) (Australasia's?) (The Universe's?) greatest cinemagoing event that doubles as a chance to shamelessly beg for our dream programming, and the usual onslaught of random things that we've been watching from the sublime to Telly Savalas. 

36: Putting The Team in Flying Guillotines

If it's a secret that one of your hosts loves flying guillotine movies, it's a very badly kept one. So when Steve dug up two flying guillotine movies with what some might call a ludicrously specific connection, it was happy times in podcastland! Come join us as we unpack THE DEADLY SILVER SPEAR and THE HEROIC TRIO - but don't forget to duck and dodge, and also check out S9E17 of MYTHBUSTERS for more info on how you might make your very own flying guillotine!

35: What We Watched, June Edition

Agnes Varda, Ronald Reagan and Kinji Fukusaku walk into a podcast. You expect nothing less, right? 

34: Quadruple Threats Of The Past

One of the most celebrated films of all time joins one of the least celebrated films of all time. What of the many possible possibilities brings these two films together? Well, of the many options, there's the phrase "of the", but there's another connection between SPECTER OF THE ROSE and THE RULES OF THE GAME: their multi-hyphenated creators!

33: What We Watched, May Edition

From Stephen King ripoffs and champagne-drinking birds to art documentaries and dueling werewolf flicks, from Peter Greenaway to Takashi Miike, from Jimmy Stewart to Gong Li, once again, it's a slice of something for everybody as we review another month of viewing in the Ludicrously Specific household! (Note: any resemblance to an actual household is purely coincidental.)

32: Sight And Sound, Streaming, Short, Sfemale directors

With the venerable institution Sight and Sound releasing not only its top 100 list but every last film that got a vote, we decided it was well past time to get classy and choose two feature films to watch. Short ones. Ones available on streaming services in New Zealand. And by female directors. 
And *that* is how you get Valerie Massadian's NANA and Doris Wishman's BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL discussed in tandem, for the first and last time ever, on the same podcast. 

31: What We Watched, April Edition

An existential Bergman classic. A Bible epic. A no-budget creature feature. Can you guess who watched what? If so, you know us better than we know ourselves! Some left-field viewing choices this month also include the second movie we've covered called DETENTION, Ernest Borgnine on a bus, Peter Sellers on a rampage, and a bear ... ON COCAINE?!?!?

30: Not The 80s, Not Action

What do Road House and Raw Deal have in common? If you say that they're 80s action movies, you're clearly not talking about the same film noirs that we are! And that's just the beginning of a long web of commonalities these two crackers share. We've divided this one into non-spoiler and spoiler sections, so if you're curious but averse to having too much ruined, you can safely eject before we give away every last thing (and also, for some damn reason, Skeet spoils Woman on the Run). Until then: enjoy!

28: Cape Fears: The Complete Abridged Collection

It sounded so simple. We thought we'd watch every feature-length version of CAPE FEAR that wasn't CAPE FEAR (1962). Obviously there was Martin Scorsese's CAPE FEAR (1991), and less obviously, FORCE OF EVIL (not the film noir, but something much stranger and made for television), but our holy grail - the Bollywood version - proved elusive, while another version that shan't be named here (let's just say the title has three x's in it) ... well, we're far from prudish, but we have our limits. But nonetheless, we did what we do, and get into a rather robust disagreement over which cape we fear the most.