Overlapping Dialogue

In our final installment of the first annual edition of Spooktober Spooktacular, we get lost trying to catch our bearings within the shoestring labyrinth of Herk Harvey's single feature film, Carnival of Souls. But before we get there...this week's Blue Plate Special finds us digging through the sugar, *spice*, and everything nice associated with the recently released adaptation of one of science fiction literature's crown jewels, Dune. After digging our way out from under the sandworms, we gleefully plunge ourselves into the inviting abyss of our 1962 subject film, a haunting cult classic that should've been the beginning of a long and fruitful career for its director but instead slowly found its audience amongst late night channel surfers and the midnight movie faithful. As fate would have it, its haunting aura is one that's endured for six decades now: good luck exorcising its power anytime soon. Feel free to skip to 1:55:10 for the beginning of our audio commentary. As always, please like, subscribe, rate, and review us on all of our channels, which include Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube! Contact us at huffmanbrothersproductions@gmail.com with your questions, comments, and requests.

The fourth edition of this year's Spooktober Spooktacular finds the hosts with the most conjuring the known universe's preeminent bio-exorcist: Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice! Being our second discussion involving director Tim Burton (listen to an earlier episode where we mulled over his 2001 Planet of the Apes remake for the first), we find joy in exploring the filmmaker's breakthrough hit that help solidify his place as one of 80s Hollywood's brightest new talents. But first...this week's Blue Plate Special loads up on a host of new trailers- ranging from Home Sweet Home Alone to forthcoming spandex spectacles The Flash and The Batman- before we discuss the studied mediocrity of the most recent additions to the never-ending Michael Myers saga: 2018's Halloween and the recently released Halloween Kills. We miraculously escape the cold, dead clutches of The Shape to rightly celebrate our titular subject of the week, the 1988 cult classic which provided audiences with an iconic Michael Keaton performance, a signature blend of the macabre and the farcical, the rich musical combination of Danny Elfman and Harry Belafonte, and the culmination of a star's oeuvre that ends up landing them as the second inductee into the Overlapping Dialogue's Hall of Fame (aka The Immune). It's a jam packed episode honoring one of our very favorites so dig out your copy of the Handbook for the Recently Deceased and get to studying! Feel free to skip to 2:40:07 for the beginning of our audio commentary. As always, please like, subscribe, rate, and review us on all of our channels, which include Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube! Contact us at huffmanbrothersproductions@gmail.com with your questions, comments, and requests.

Whoever said a little bit of traveling never hurt anybody's clearly never found themselves evading a certain family from Texas with a troubling dual interest in chainsaws and massacres. The latest edition of October's Spooktober Spectacular has us tackling Tobe Hooper's at once exploitative and memorable 1974 descent into the southern fried abyss. But first...this week's Blue Plate Special finds us discussing the unconventional theatrical distribution strategy of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's recent festival darling Memoria before we work through our feelings on No Time to Die, the latest in the never ending 007 franchise, and its place in the canon of all things James Bond. We finally get to the scorching and downright pungent BBQ shack that is our subject film, one of the very heights of the horror genre that has us masochistically coming back for seconds again and again. Feel free to skip to 2:01:00 for the beginning of our audio commentary. As always, please like, subscribe, rate, and review us on all of our channels, which include Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube! Contact us at huffmanbrothersproductions@gmail.com with your questions, comments, and requests.

Queue up the subtitles because we're tackling our very first foreign language film in Overlapping Dialogue's (admittedly short) history! This month's Spooktober Spooktacular takes an unexpected detour with an episode dedicated to Michael Haneke's psychological horror thriller Funny Games from 1997, a movie that's by no means for the faint of heart. But before arriving to the metatextual mayhem...this week's Blue Plate Special has us diving in headfirst with our takes on both the trailer for (spiritual) friend of the pod Paul Thomas Anderson's forthcoming film Licorice Pizza and the simultaneous theatrical and HBO Max release of The Many Saints of Newark, the highly anticipated prequel to the landmark television drama The Sopranos. Eventually, we get around to punishing ourselves with a discussion on the many ways in which our subject film produces maximum discomfort and where it falls in the pantheon of the gleeful nihilism of the 1990s, all while questioning the narrative and aesthetic impulses exercised by Haneke and company. Where such efforts successful, indulgent, or something in the middle? Spoiler alert: go ahead and place your bets on the final option... Feel free to skip to 2:18:00 for the beginning of our audio commentary. As always, please like, subscribe, rate, and review us on all of our channels, which include Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube! Contact us at huffmanbrothersproductions@gmail.com with your questions, comments, and requests.

Hope you brought a flashlight and ironclad will because things are about to get...spooky. This October, we'll be spending time with the wide-ranging spectrum of horror cinema, from the lightly-accented to the outright terrifying. Our first entry has us visiting the welcome 1982 collaboration between horror icons George Romero and Stephen King, Creepshow! But first, this week's Blue Plate Special finds us mourning the loss of independent film legend Melvin Van Peebles, questioning the announcement of a partnership between the Roald Dahl estate and Netflix, and finding delight in the Criterion Collection home video release of Deep Cover. Upon reaching the old dark house at the end of the abandoned driveway, we delve into the delights and pitfalls of the anthology horror genre, rank the various segments both ahead of time and throughout the movie, and in general have fun with the goofy and almost bygone chills such an enterprise works to inspire. Feel free to skip to 1:35:56 for the beginning of our audio commentary. As always, please like, subscribe, rate, and review us on all of our channels, which include Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube! Contact us at huffmanbrothersproductions@gmail.com with your questions, comments, and requests.

After a protracted trek through the Planet of the Apes franchise, we finally make our long-awaited return to one-off episodes with See Spot Run, one of many entries into the rich tradition of animal-fueled children's movies! But first...this week's Blue Plate Special has us remembering the life and career of comedy legend Norm Macdonald before speculating on Christopher Nolan's announced J. Robert Oppenheimer film at Universal Pictures; we follow that up with some initial thoughts on the latest trailers for Nightmare Alley and The Matrix Resurrections and some fully formed musings on one of 2021's few unqualified cinematic successes, Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar. Upon finally getting around to today's title subject, we pick from the low hanging fruit that is early 00s kids movies, wonder longingly what David Arquette's leading man career could've been, and applaud the testicular fortitude (see the movie and you'll know what we mean) offered up by screen mafioso legend Paul Sorvino. Feel free to skip to 2:04:13 for the beginning of our audio commentary. As always, please like, subscribe, rate, and review us on all of our channels, which include Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube! Contact us at huffmanbrothersproductions@gmail.com with your questions, comments, and requests. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/see-spot-run-2001

In this week's very special episode, we take time to mourn, reflect, and work through our own feelings regarding the September 11 terrorist attacks. Twenty years removed from the tragedy, we discuss the ways in which it irrevocably informed our childhoods and adolescence, set the stage for our larger understanding of the world and the systems through which we view it, and parse what exactly a two decade anniversary "means" to us. Finally, we survey the numerous examples of film and television who themselves worked to place meaning on an event and its aftermath more infinitely inscrutable than easily digestible. Above all else, this episode is dedicated to the many brave men and women who not only lost their lives that day but for the living victims as well, whose scars are sometimes scarcely visible but no less traumatic or impactful. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/02/11/the-real-heroes-are-dead

At long last, our apeathon reaches its end with War for the Planet of the Apes, the 2017 conclusion to the most recent reboot trilogy. But first...the Blue Plate Special has us loading up on some recent trailers for forthcoming releases (Spider-Man: No Way Home, Spencer, and The Many Saints of Newark), followed by a discussion of the 1958 film noir classic Touch of Evil. Upon finally reaching the end of the franchise which- you guessed it- once asked us to go ape, we take one last look at what these most recent films added to the series as a whole and what the very existence of these nine entries on a larger level suggest about the sustainability of Hollywood's blockbuster franchise aesthetic. Feel free to skip to 1:30:09 for the beginning of our audio commentary. As always, please like, subscribe, rate, and review us on all of our channels, which include Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube! Contact us at huffmanbrothersproductions@gmail.com with your questions, comments, and requests.

Our eighth consecutive trek through the Forbidden Zone finds us excavating, of all places, an overgrown San Francisco which is, you guessed it!, infested with murderous primates. (You'd think we'd have learned our lesson by now but...alas...) Listen to our introduction as we introduce a new recurrent segment of the show: the Blue Plate Special. In this initial offering, we load up on a trio of neo-noirs (Body Heat, Trouble in Mind, and Reminiscence) that has us pondering both past modes of the form and how it might exactly realize itself in the years to come. Upon finally arriving to Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, yet another exploration of chimpanzee-on-human violence is had, this time in relation to how this new age of CGI at once adds to and subtracts from the potential of the series that refuses to go gentle into that good night. Feel free to skip to 2:04:34 for the beginning of our audio commentary. As always, please like, subscribe, rate, and review us on all of our channels, which include Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube! Contact us at huffmanbrothersproductions@gmail.com with your questions, comments, and requests.

For our seventh episode studying the film series which once asked us to go ape, we find ourselves in a state-of-the-art- circa 2011 anyways- digital playground with Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the first of the most recent trilogy of reimagined primate action. Listen as we first discuss some recent films we've seen, including Robert Altman's 1979 uncharacteristic bore Quintet and the newly released Don't Breathe 2, which of course sparked a brief conversational revisit of the canny 2016 original. Upon finally getting around to the 2011 simian film, we weigh the various means through which this seventh entry retooled the franchise for yet another new generation, attempt to traverse across the tricky minefield that is James Franco as unscathed as we can, and do our best to come to terms with the likely permanent arrival of computer-generated apes. Feel free to skip to 1:56:16 for the beginning of our audio commentary. As always, please like, subscribe, rate, and review us on all of our channels, which include Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube! Contact us at huffmanbrothersproductions@gmail.com with your questions, comments, and requests.

This week, we thought we'd go all out by delivering our longest episode yet (5 whole hours!) on a film that added next to nothing to the careers of everyone involved and the larger franchise that bears its name: 2001's Planet of the Apes! Listen to us lose our collective minds over the recent phenomenon of speed watching, listening, living, etc. before we turn our existential crises into sincere enlightenment. Thankfully, the recent trailers for Ridley Scott's forthcoming films The Last Duel and House of Gucci restored our spirits. Finally, we walk through the nine circles of developmental Hell it took to see our mediocre subject film make its way onto cinema screens. Join us as we express what Tim Burton's varied career has meant to us over the years, defame the toxic existence of one Mark Wahlberg, and find genuine appreciation in this film's iteration of ape makeup while ascertaining no real reason why this movie was made other than the continual questing of Hollywood to make a buck above all else. Toby Keith fans may even find themselves shocked to see a special surprise awaiting them...Trust us when we say it's *all* here in this very special episode, one way or another. Feel free to skip to 2:43:20 for the beginning of our audio commentary. As always, please like, subscribe, rate, and review us on all of our channels, which include Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube! Contact us at huffmanbrothersproductions@gmail.com with your questions, comments, and requests. https://www.vulture.com/2021/08/speed-watching-netflix-tv-shows.html https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/kris-kristofferson-last-outlaw-poet-ethan-hawke-interview-714098/

THE FINAL CHAPTER (not really but bear with us) of the Ape Saga brings us to Battle for the Planet of the Apes, an anticlimactic conclusion to the first five groundbreaking science fiction films that blinded us with promise before fading like a dying star. Listen as we pontificate upon two new releases (Jungle Cruise and The Green Knight) before diving into yet another discussion of the primate franchise's scattershot concoction of philosophy and monkey-fueled mayhem. Have no fear: as Bon Jovi once spewed with melodic mediocrity, we're half way there!! Feel free to skip to 1:38:48 for the beginning of our audio commentary. As always, please like, subscribe, rate, and review us on all of our channels, which include Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube! Contact us at huffmanbrothersproductions@gmail.com with your questions, comments, and requests.

Our laborious trek through the Forbidden Zone continues with our fourth entry into the primate parables with Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, quite easily the greatest fourthquel (is that even a word?) ever made. Listen as we examine this franchise's unlikely stamina through its reflection of a contemporary culture jaded by the unfulfilling answers to the weighty promises of the past decade's Civil Rights Movement, some unfortunately subpar makeup from a series that once set industry standards, a litany of ape vs. human violence in the film's thrilling yet indecisive third act, and an appreciation of the great Don Murray. Feel free to skip to 1:08:17 for the beginning of our audio commentary. As always, please like, subscribe, rate, and review us on all of our channels, which include Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube! Contact us at huffmanbrothersproductions@gmail.com with your questions, comments, and requests.

Hope you got your favorite monkey suit handy because we're going to a costume party you'll never forget with Escape from the Planet of the Apes, 1971's addition to the franchise that once bravely asked you to go ape. Listen as we walk through this third entry's attempt to put a silk hat on a chimpanzee by time traveling to the groovy early 1970s while inventing new ways to keep a series fresh in its unexpected charting of a dark and gloomy future. Feel free to skip to 1:14:17 for the beginning of our audio commentary. As always, please like, subscribe, rate, and review us on all of our channels, which include Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube! Contact us at huffmanbrothersproductions@gmail.com with your questions, comments, and requests.

Got your pick axe and gorilla glue handy? Good, because you're gonna need it! We continue our multi-week trek through the Forbidden Zone with our second exploration of the Planet of the Apes franchise with its 1970 entry, Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Join us as we parse the glorious messiness of this film's simultaneous expansion upon and aping of (no pun intended) the themes and ideas introduced in the previous film, the apocalyptic overtones and shocking ending reflective of the fears and anxieties of the late 60s and early 70s, and the inherent problems of attempting to catch lightning in a bottle twice. Listen to the very end to hear a special tribute to the dearly departed filmmakers Robert Downey, Sr. and Richard Donner. Feel free to skip to 1:07:00 for the beginning of our audio commentary. As always, please like, subscribe, rate, and review us on all of our channels, which include Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube! Contact us at huffmanbrothersproductions@gmail.com with your questions, comments, and requests.

This week's episode marks the beginning of a nine episode trek through the Forbidden Zone into one of the oddest, most influential franchises in the history of Hollywood with our look at 1968's opening entry, Planet of the Apes! We follow the breadcrumbs towards our own destruction by discussing a variety of topics, including the script's sizable pedigree with Michael Wilson and the one and only Rod Serling, the timely yet elusive themes this film and its successors came to represent, the timelessly ham-fisted choices of Charlton Heston, and the larger off-kilter brilliance that combines John Chambers's legendary makeup, Jerry Goldsmith's eerie score, and the panicked precision of Franklin J. Schaffner's direction into a piece of pop art brilliance which remains one for the ages. Feel free to skip to 1:29:34 for the beginning of our audio commentary. As always, please like, subscribe, rate, and review us on all of our channels, which include Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube! Contact us at huffmanbrothersproductions@gmail.com with your questions, comments, and requests.

In this week's bonus episode, we wade our way through the imminently rote but nonetheless fascinating cinematic spectrum of the remake: what nature do they play in recontextualizing or expanding upon past works and how do they function as art in of themselves? This discussion includes an examination of the modern strategies franchises employ in "updating" or "adapting" "intellectual property" in "fun and exciting" ways (that's a lot of quotes but hey, it feels entirely appropriate, right?). Which ones work and which ones don't? Tune in to find out! We even get around to pitching to one another some ideas we each have for remaking past films so yeah, we're just as creatively bankrupt as the most cynical studio executive, as it turns out. As always, please like, subscribe, rate, and review us on all of our channels, which include Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube! Contact us at huffmanbrothersproductions@gmail.com with your questions, comments, and requests.

In honor of our 20th episode, we decided to trek back to our old stomping grounds, Hamunaptra (famed City of the Dead), with a thorough discussion of all things The Mummy, Stephen Sommer's 1999 action-horror romp for the ages. Listen as we celebrate the film's ascension from run of the mill blockbuster to generational touchstone, weigh its place in the career and stardom of Brendan Fraser, stan the possibilities of a Jonathan (John Hannah) and Beni (Kevin J. O'Connor) spinoff movie/franchise, and induct the very first member into the Overlapping Dialogue's Hall of Fame (aka The Immune). Feel free to skip to 1:44:04 for the beginning of our audio commentary. As always, please like, subscribe, rate, and review us on all of our channels, which include Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube! Contact us at huffmanbrothersproductions@gmail.com with your questions, comments, and requests. https://www.gq.com/story/what-ever-happened-to-brendan-fraser https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXCFea2669Y

Was it Mrs. White with a lead pipe in the conservatory? What about Professor Plum with a revolver in the kitchen? Ooh, I know, it was Mrs. Peacock with a rope in the library, right?? In all actuality, it was Jonathan Lynn and (gasp, two killers!!) John Landis with a pair of scissors in the editing room, attempting to splice together a coherent and entertaining yarn out of a popular board game. Listen as we examine the scene of the crime with 1985's Clue, where we breakdown the joys and pitfalls of board game cinema, the cinematic ethics of creating multiple endings, the parameters for what exactly constitutes a cult movie, and the oddly influential footprint this film left on the landscape of popular storytelling. Feel free to skip to 1:30:53 for the beginning of our audio commentary. As always, please like, subscribe, rate, and review us on all of our channels, which include Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube! Contact us at huffmanbrothersproductions@gmail.com with your questions, comments, and requests.

Hop on the tour bus and make sure the banjos are tuned and ready to go, loser: we got a Bear Hall to save! Take a journey with us as we survey the many sights and sounds associated with The Country Bears, Disney's 2002 roadshow revue at once ahead of its time and forever out-of-touch. Listen as we struggle to place this cornball jamboree within the larger trend of theme park cinema while simultaneously puzzling over a great many larger questions: just what sort of alternate universe is taking place that allows bears to not only speak human languages and wear clothes but also desire to play country music to capacity crowds? Why has it taken our "hero" Beary Barrington *so* long to discover he is, indeed, not a human and why does he show absolute zero interest in tracking down his literal parentage, as he instead takes solace in a group of no account, mediocre musicians (though they are, admittedly, bears)? What manner of blackmail did Walt Disney Company CEO Michael Eisner have on screen legend Christopher Walken to entice an appearance, all too briefly we might add, in this dreck? Though we in no way guarantee to provide any sort of conclusive answers to these or other questions, you have our word we do our best to meet them all head on. Feel free to skip to 1:37:54 for the beginning of our audio commentary. As always, please like, subscribe, rate, and review us on all of our channels, which include Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube! Contact us at huffmanbrothersproductions@gmail.com with your questions, comments, and requests.