A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode thirty-one — SILVER STREAK with Ronald Young, Jr.

Pop some vitamin E before listening, because it's gonna be hug 'n' munch all the way to Chicago! Solvable host Ronald Young, Jr. joins Glen and Chris to examine Silver Streak, ostensibly a hybrid romantic thriller / buddy comedy that gave the world the long-running Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor screen partnership and was a huge hit upon its release in 1976. America's bicentennial anum was a great a year for movies, more despite Silver Streak than because of it, but hey, the movie features a loveably smarmy Columbo-era Patrick McGoohan as the despicable villain. Along with a lot of trite and, by contemporary standards, deeply offensive comedy. Choo choo!

Silver Streak

Written by Colin Higgins

Directed by Arthur Hiller

Released December 8, 1976

Cheer is the Mind-killer (Side B) Cometh

In this second half of my XVIth senses-shattering installment in the apparently unkillable Yuletunes Eclectic & Inexplicable series, I attempts penance for appropriating the podfeed of A Degree Absolute! to give listeners an album they never asked for, U2-style, by roping in my co-host Glen & our theme song singer-arranger Casey in for some festive preamble before we get to the damn tape. I beg your forbearance.

Cheer is the Mind-killer (Side A) Cometh

My 2021 holiday mixtape, Cheer Is the Mind-Killer, has arrived. It’s the sixteenth installment in what has become a venerable holiday tradition that invariably makes me feel unhinged in the final couple of months of each year. Sixteen! They grow up so fast. The Yuletunes Eclectic & Inexplicable compilation series, most installments of which remain available to stream via the Christmas Mixtapes drop-down menu at the top of the page, is now as licensed to drive as any Cory. In the chronology of the EON Productions James Bond film series, it is Licence-d (sic) to Kill.

Side B TK!

"A Strange Loop" at Woolly Mammoth, reviewed.

Jaquel Spivey (in red) is the member of the Strange Loop cast new to Woolly’s production. (Marc J. Franklin)

“A Strange Loop” would be a pretty good way to describe the sensation of rather suddenly attending and writing about theatre again. My Washington City Paper review of Woolly Mammoth’s terrific production of Michael R. Jackson’s self-aware and semiautobiographical musical A Strange Loop—which won a Pulitzer in 2019—is here.

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode thirty — BRAVEHEART with Alexandra Petri

Edward the Longshanks as embodied by the inimitable Patrick the McGoohan.

It's primae noctis for your ears because we can put it off no longer: The quintuple-Academy Award-winning a-historical epic Braveheart is the most widely seen and, your hosts agree, best latter-day expression of undiluted Patrick McGooted. The Washington Post's Alexandra Petri returns to discuss her journalist doppelganger, the New York Times' Alexandra Petri, and to share with Glen the virgin Braveheart experience. Freeeeeeeeeeeedommmmmmm!

Given the volume of Star Wars talk that seems to follow (the Post's) Petri around, it's a wonder we forgot to mention that Braveheart was produced by Alan "Laddie" Ladd, Jr., who 20 years earlier had been the guy preventing the board of 20th Century Fox from firing George Lucas off of the weird, expensive kiddie movie he was making and/or shutting the production down. 

Braveheart

Written by Randall Wallace

Directed by Mel Gibson

Released May 24, 1995

Pop Culture Happy Hour: "Red Notice" and What's Making Us Happy

Ryan Reynolds, Gal Gadot, and Dwayne Johnson pose their way through a greenscreened globetrotting caper. (Frank Masi/Netflix)

Red Notice! Linda Holmes, Margaret H. Willison, Ronald Young, Jr. and I watched it! Others will likely insist upon doing the same.

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode twenty-nine — Our Top Six Twos

THERE CAN BE ONLY TWO(s) as Chris & Glen rank their top six on this week’s exciting episode!

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode twenty-eight — MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS

It’s the Notorious V.R.G. v. the founder of the Jackson Fivehead in this 16th century showdown among two dope queens—and we don’t mean Timothy Dalton & Ian Holm! PLUS: Jimmy Stewart! Current Release Corner! Dispatches from the French of Liberty, Kansas! This episode is a royal rumble.