Episode Collection: Year 6

The Muppets meet Sesame Street. A set of Jim Henson and Frank Oz classics. An unedited bit on Scientology. The Muppet Movie is not The Muppets (2011). Keeping a sense of timeless-ness. Celebrity appearances and musical numbers. A variety act. Representing The Muppets. A symptom of core values. Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird! Differences between the Muppets and Sesame Street. Subversive child programming. Great news – civil rights are inevitable! Being with your own kind. Taking the conversational bait. Opening a conversation on the evils of tribalism. A different take on tribal mentality. What Follow That Bird shares in common with South Park. The longest running thread on Double Feature. Not such a bad journey. The seedy carnival. A long awaiting up-next. Continue reading →

A mundane workplace pair for all the Zachs out there. An exploration of all things Mike Judge. Someone please cast Aubrey Plaza as Daria. A higher-brow look at King of the Hill and Beavis and Butthead. Your life as a fantasy epic. Special effects in a vanilla world. The low-brow surface of a commentary laced package. Everybody wants to talk about Idiocracy! A passing dismissal of hypnotheaphy. Someone does a Rebecca Watson impression. An extra careful treading of the suspension of disbelief. Combing the best of humanity. Strip the subtlety, then add another layer. Where you see respect for the audience. Revising a Richard Riehle classic. If Office Space really a parody of the office? The intersection of Clerks and cynicism. Cynical misunderstandings. Does Office Space create offices? Why do people cartoon cutouts exist in the real world? The common exercise in relativism is mostly useless. The Wages of Fear. Things that happen before the driving part you remember. Life before the oil company. Trapped and trying to get out. The infamous tension. Your looming fate. Continue reading →

A modern look at two classic Victor Flemming films. Brienna Krueger almost brought you a very different pair. One man’s involvement in two colossal cinema juggernauts. Gone With the Wind as an epic. Defining popularity in gross international profit adjusted for inflation. Maintaining precision and care for each individual scene. The color palette in Gone With the Wind. Scarlet O’Hara fights for independence – but will she know what to do with it when she gets it? Attempting to find themes in an epic. Independence, southern culture, and the evolution of struggles for equality. Ladies and land ownership. The imagination of the Wizard of Oz. The part no one talks about (but should). Creative first. Ignorance of the impossible. Painted backgrounds, practice effects, and a legacy still untouched today, the Flickchart problem. The perverse and dark humor. Munchkins! A perfect grindhouse film. The man behind the curtain. George Orwell meets Objectivism. Help your friends through a common cause by empowering yourself. Continue reading →

Franchises be damned! The one-off slasher films. Michael does an awful thing. No one understands Double Feature. Joseph Zito. The Roger Corman Marvel films. Keeping the lights on (and other excuses to make art). World War 2. Advertising after the war. Parties? Not in my town! The identity of the slasher. How to not have a slasher franchise. The Prowler as a proper noun. Weapons. The look of The Prowler. When a Stranger Calls. The call is coming from inside the house, again. Karol Cane answers the phone. Implications of the camera. A breakdown of one of the most memorable and influential slasher scenes in the genre. A breed of scary films without scares. Alice finds yet another source of anxiety. Please, no one ruin vibration. When a Stranger Calls and genre-bending. The slow creep. Learning about your killer. Children return to ruin everything, but are thwarted the psychopathic anti-hero. The old cop and the sequel. Continue reading →

Strange worlds via animation. The various versions of Alice in Wonderland. Inventing icons: how does Disney do it? Defining classics. The vault. Everything is a musical. Yesterday’s animation today. How escapism was once represented in animation. Former conventions in modern times. Franz Kafka. Being surrounded by death at all times. Building your blueprint around encounters. The pointlessness of living. Growing into adolescence. Appeasing a tyrant. American McGee’s Alice. Alice: The Madness Returns. Don Hertzfeldt’s It’s Such a Beautiful Day. Resistance to identification. The medium and the message. Do things with stick figures. Simplify! The intersection of minimalism and animation. What minimalism demonstrates. Changing perception instead of content. Continue reading →

Independent comedies with no Internet presence. Kids are the fucking worst. Casper, Frank, and Klown. Dirty men and dirty things. The Danish sitcom. Getting away with things in films. When is it so awkward that you might as well just end your own life. Crossing the lines. Safety Not Guaranteed. Some meme background. The tonight show, filling space, and the creation of a legend. That thing we’re not supposed to talk about. We’re all wondering. Enter Aubrey Plaza. Sincerity has become more unique than irony. Orchestrating a comedy without errors. Other films, please take note. Continue reading →

2011 Canadian exploitation films The FP and Hobo with a Shotgun. Robocop, Blooddragon, and 1980. An early thing Alice was wrong about. Trailers and comedy. Do it for the ducks. Reservations about The FP. The most impressive terrible dialogue. One intense asian hype man. Rambo, Rocky, and real fans. Grindhouse and Hobo with a Shotgun. A trailer unlike Machete. The Rodriguez inspiration. The Plague. Alternate history. Continue reading →

Troubled individuals who can’t help be mix things up. Jonathan Parky, Herman Melville, and Bartleby the Scrivener. What’s the deal with Moby Dick? Phrases in American English. How was your weekend: I’d prefer not to. The office of Dead Letters. Dead letters as a metaphor. Forcing thought experiments into reality. Double Feature finally finds a real ghost. Crispin goddamn Glover. Morality, responsibility, and those that can not help themselves. Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause – or, as it is perhaps better known – James Dean’s Rebel Without a Cause. Making friends in new places. Influence on everyone’s favorite road-based exploitation sub-genre, Roadsploitation. Dennis goddamn Hopper. A speculative conversation regarding the work of Robert Rodirguez. Playing chicken, even in Fast and the Furious. The parental units. Police and the general role of authority. Considerations of the 1950s. A quick word on repressed memories – you don’t have any. Continue reading →

Bottle films. In fact, fluorescent bottle films. Not the Triangle miniseries! Project MK-ULTRA. The Men Who Stare at Goats. The unwilling participant. Drugs, torture, and LSD. Clea Duvall, at it again. Double Feature reunites with Peter Stormir and Cloe Sevini. Once you’re in, there’s no way out. The test inside the bottle. An appeal to minimalism. Puzzle pieces. The differences between this and other bottle films. Standing out in a genre. Mystery over characters vs mystery over plot. An elaborate excuse. Increasing the feeling of mystery. Going into Triangle without knowing anything. Just what kind of Triangle is this? Unseeing what you’ve seen. A familiar film like no other. Hitchcock, but also The Shining! Corridors and mirrors. Piles of Sally. Record players, metaphors, images and more piles. Repetition and revisits. Birdies. Where the fuck did Heather go? Greek myth. What’s happening in Triangle. A chronological breakdown. All 70 something. How many loops, and which loop is which? Continue reading →