The Arts Hole
A long stare into the pop culture abyss as one award winning script writer and one unemployed drunk try to take films, TV shows and books apart and work out what‘s gone wrong.
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Episodes
Sunday Dec 26, 2021
Sunday Dec 26, 2021
A thirty year cinematic saga, telling the story of a slow-witted but kind-hearted boxer from the slums of Philadelphia, his wife, his brother in law, and then somehow Mr. T, a robot and a Russian giant. Strap in for a long, strange ride as we cover every Rocky movie.
SHOW NOTES:
The Movies Made Us Do It, co-hosted by Luke's friend Rich who crops up with some borrowed points:
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkLnBvZGJlYW4uY29tL2R1cnNwcm9kdWN0aW9ucy9mZWVkLnhtbA/episode/ZHVyc3Byb2R1Y3Rpb25zLnBvZGJlYW4uY29tLzA2ZjAwNDRlLTU4YjUtMzkxNS05YmUxLTcyZWY2MzhjNGI3YQ?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjIipS_8Pz0AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQCg&hl=en-NL
The deliberately crap driving montage from Garth Merenghi's Dark Place:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OO-ZGP68-3w
Our Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/theartshole
Our new merch store!
https://teespring.com/arts-hole-logo?pid=46
Wednesday Dec 22, 2021
Wednesday Dec 22, 2021
Christmas Bonus! Brooke Shields and Cary Elwes - the dream team of late eighties cinema - finally come together thirty years too late in a perfectly adequate Christmas movie. Dodgy Scots accents aside, and the fact that it's formulaic ay eff, it's... fine. Bea enjoyed it. Luke less so. Apologies to the people of Scotland for our terrible accents, although unlike Cary Elwes, we know that they're bad...
Sunday Dec 19, 2021
Sunday Dec 19, 2021
One features the Wet Bandits and one is just a damp squib, despite the CGI pyrotechnics. In this special Christmas edition of Masters and Disasters we unpack why 1991's 'Home Alone' is a festive classic but this year's 'Home Sweet Home Alone' is definitely not sweet and best left alone. Child trafficking, OJ jokes, the institutional racism of American police - how is this movie not a beloved family classic already?!
SHOW NOTES: Just one of the many, MANY tracks on Bob Dylan's album "Christmas In The Heart," which you can have in your heart but which isn't recommended for aural consumption: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWd-IsevG_A
Home Alone & Joseph Campbell's 12 stages of the hero: https://youtu.be/wnlpo5n7x5Q
The Black Knight showing no pain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRwCPUEND1U
Steve Martin TRYING not to show pain in his consultation with Caine's fake Doctor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXUI7bb2wLc Free Christmas Bingo game! Link takes you to our Patreon, too, if you feel generous...
https://www.patreon.com/posts/59476770
Neither free nor Christmas related all-genre year-round bingo book:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Arts-Hole-Presents-Movie-Bingo-ebook/dp/B09N1T35KG/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+arts+hole+presents...+movie+bingo&qid=1638698382&s=books&sr=1-1
Sunday Dec 12, 2021
Sunday Dec 12, 2021
Matthew Broderick and Danny DeVito star in a Christmas comedy, which sounds like it should be formulaic but adequate.
Turns out it's one, but not the other.
Join us as we plumb the depths of a laugh-free and often surprisingly unpleasant holiday effort from one actor who everyone likes and another who killed two people. SHOW NOTES:
Matthew Broderick's car crash - the actual one, not this movie:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Broderick#1987_car_crash Free Christmas Bingo game! Link takes you to our Patreon, too, if you feel generous...https://www.patreon.com/posts/59476770 Neither free nor Christmas related all-genre year-round bingo book:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Arts-Hole-Presents-Movie-Bingo-ebook/dp/B09N1T35KG/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+arts+hole+presents...+movie+bingo&qid=1638698382&s=books&sr=1-1
Sunday Dec 05, 2021
Sunday Dec 05, 2021
Not Last Christmas but the Christmas before last, we watched the movie 'Last Christmas.' Two years later, we're still fuming...
In the season of goodwill, Bea came to this movie with high hopes of an irreverent, Christmas feminist romcom romp from Emma Thompson and Bryony Kimmings and those hopes were dashed, through the snow. And the terrible plotting.
Don't forget we are launching our free give-away Christmas Movie Bingo! You can also find new, exclusive bonus episodes on our Patreon page. The first one is about Dean Cain, fascism and talking dogs - no, really.
Details in the show notes below!
SHOW NOTES:
Patreon where you can download our Christmas Movie Bingo for free and support the show, if you choose to - www.patreon.com/theartshole
Tom Waits' beautiful 'Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis' - https://youtu.be/mxVo5mjK4eg
Email us at artsholepodcast@gmail.com or say hello on Twitter @artsholepod
Sunday Nov 28, 2021
Sunday Nov 28, 2021
It's not a feel-good tween movie, not yet a grown up drama. We take a look at the wreckage of Britney Spears' movie vehicle, kick the tyres, suck our teeth and tell you it's going to take a lot to get this thing running smoothly.
Filmed at the height of Britney's pop princess power, why did this road movie take her and the audience nowhere? Recorded in 2020, before the fallout from #FreeBritney, we take a look at this weird little movie and ponder what forces were in play behind the scenes.
SHOW NOTES:
Ralph Macchio's "Crossroads," which is at least a less depressing and more musically competent movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntrCbhQw8yg
An article on a new documentary charting just how weirdly, scuzzily obsessed the tabloids were with Britney Spears' sex life: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/the-feed/sexist-treatment-of-britney-spears-retold-in-new-documentary
"BookSmart," a much better and much more uplifting "Girls want to have fun before they graduate" film: https://youtu.be/Uhd3lo_IWJc
Sunday Nov 21, 2021
Sunday Nov 21, 2021
In this episode, recorded in the depths of 2020, we re-litigate the famously awful action comedy starring Sly Stallone and Estelle Getty. One of them is a meddling old lady, and one of them is a tough cop!
It would have been a lot more interesting if the casting for those roles wasn't the way around you're thinking, but sadly, as with a lot of this film, things are done prosaically by the numbers.
What's a McGuffin? How do capers work? Are Stallone's jeans literally sprayed on?! All this and more on this week's Arts Hoooooole.
SHOW NOTES:
Why was Hulk Hogan cancelled? Trigger warning for startling racism:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jul/26/hulk-hogan-wrestling-racism-gawker
What was that about billionaires getting hair plugs?
https://pagesix.com/2018/07/25/its-highly-likely-elon-musk-spent-over-20k-on-hair-transplant-surgery-doctor-says/.
[NB: Musk has evidently increased his value tenfold in the last couple of years. Tax the rich, people...]
Online second hand books so you don't have to use Amazon:
https://www.wob.com/en-gb
Sunday Nov 14, 2021
Sunday Nov 14, 2021
Musical superstars Cher and Christina Aguilera team up for a gritty tale of addiction, revenge and corporate greed in this hard hitting, edge-of-your-seat thriller from 2008. We're just kidding; it's glittery and fabulous and there are lots of campy dance numbers. It's also, as Luke is forced to admit, better than you might expect.
Recorded in 2020.
SHOW NOTES:
Todd in the Shadows video essay on Burlesque - https://youtu.be/3tItp0JA_wU
Sunday Nov 07, 2021
Sunday Nov 07, 2021
Released in December of 1989, "Tango & Cash" was the last and most eighties of the eighties action movie trend. We do our best to explain a complex and meaningless plot, and try to fix a film that is at once brilliant and terrible in equal measure.
Originally recorded 2020.
SHOW NOTES:
The scene in Jackie Chan's Police Story that VERY loosely inspired this movie's opening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFo_NjgwJbQ
Bea mentioned the Bechdel test, which is a way of watching scripted media to see how sexist it is. In order to pass the Bechdel test, two women who have named characters need to have a conversation about something, and that something can't be a man. A staggering number of films, plays and TV shows can't manage this.
Gun Boot! https://youtu.be/K6r5vGVmEM0?t=49
Sunday Oct 31, 2021
Sunday Oct 31, 2021
Based on a movie based on a book based on a true story that was made up, "The Conjuring" is the latest iteration of the "Amityville Horror" legend. In this case, it's the story of a family who move into a haunted house. If that doesn't sound very original or interesting, maybe trust that instinct...
SHOW NOTES:
The surprisingly sweet "Poltergay" : https://www.amazon.com/Poltergay-English-Subtitled-Julie-Depardieu/dp/B00KV89C8W
The surprisingly harrowing Ryan Reynolds comedy "The Voices" : https://www.amazon.com/Voices-Ryan-Reynolds/dp/B00T9DFQCQ
A more skeptical take on the Amityville "haunting" : https://www.oxygen.com/martinis-murder/amityville-horror-hoax-the-true-crime-story-behind-lutz-family-famous-haunted-house