The Arts Hole

Untamed Heart

Christian Slater has the heart of a baboon - or does he?! - in this bizarre ape-themed romantic drama from 1993. Bea half remembers this from an old VHS tape and Luke has questions...seriously, 90s movies gave us some weird ideas about 'romance'. 
 
SHOW NOTES: 
Our friend Adam and his excellent rock'n'roll furniture business, Broken Neck:https://brokenneck.co.uk/shop/empire-2-lamp/  
Become a patron! www.patreon.com/theartshole 
Arts Hole Movie Bingo Book:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Arts-Hole-Presents-Movie-Bingo/dp/B09MYTML9H Arts Hole Merch! Now available:http://teespring.com/arts-hole-logohttp://teespring.com/new-desk-crowhttp://teespring.com/confusing-nerd-joke 
 

Avatar

James Cameron's 2009 mega blockbuster was once the most successful film of all time. How has it faded from view so quickly? A film with this many blue CGI cat people should never be so forgettable...
 
SHOW NOTES: 
Once again, our oft-used "Community" clip about whether Nicolas Cage is good or not. It's weird how often this crops up...
https://youtu.be/F1XCUo_Uu8M
 
Hana Shams Riazuddin's article "Why Avatar is a truly dangerous film" - https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/why-avatar-is-a-truly-dangerous-film/ 
 
Excellent Rich Hall documentary, "Inventing The Indian," which deals with (among other things) the cliché of a white man being so smart that he becomes a better native than any of the other natives with only a few weeks practice:
https://youtu.be/dmP3gGj9yjM 
 

Top Picks for 2022 & Listener Mail

An end of year / start of year episode in which we answer some questions, make some recommendations, look back on the good and the bad of 2021 and make some predictions about the upcoming year. 
 Predictions are limited to movies, books and TV since the last time Luke predicted anything he accidentally started the Omicron variant. Sorry about that. 
 
SHOW NOTES: 
Our friend Adam and his excellent rock'n'roll furniture business, Broken Neck:https://brokenneck.co.uk/shop/empire-2-lamp/ 
Brilliant Youtube Channel exploring the art of the soundtrack: Sideways - https://www.youtube.com/c/Sideways440 
Jezebel article on 'Love Actually' by Lindy West  - https://jezebel.com/i-rewatched-love-actually-and-am-here-to-ruin-it-for-al-1485136388 
'Home Alone' America's Favourite Child Soldier article - 
https://www.vice.com/en/article/8gkbjg/americas-favorite-child-soldier-home-alone-25-years-later Long lecture from Kevin Smith on how Hollywood producers work, referenced part about Barbra Streisand's hairdresser starts about 5:25: https://youtu.be/Wo2KB1dEDdk Arts Hole Movie Bingo Book:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Arts-Hole-Presents-Movie-Bingo/dp/B09MYTML9H Arts Hole Merch! Now available:http://teespring.com/arts-hole-logohttp://teespring.com/new-desk-crowhttp://teespring.com/confusing-nerd-joke 
 

Boxing Day Special: EVERY Rocky movie

 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 

A Castle For Christmas

 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...

Masters & Disasters: Home Alone (1990) vs Home Sweet Home Alone (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 

Deck The Halls

 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 

Last Christmas

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 
 

Crossroads

 
 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 

Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot

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