Episodes

  • 99@25 #008 - April 21-30 1999

    99@25 #008 - April 21-30 1999
    May 2 2024
    We continue our celebration of the 25th anniversary of 1999 with our eighth installment, April 21-30 1999! In the last ten days of April we got: The premiere of WWF Smackdown on UPN! Jay Leno goes HD! The Dawson's Creek soundtrack! Aerosmith! Election! eXistenZ! Idle Hands! And some other fun diversions, including the horror that was pan and scan movies! CageClub icon Mike Manzi joins John for a short look at the end of one of 1999's worst months, and the Star Wars content yet to come!
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    44 mins
  • BLAST FROM THE PAST: "Adam & Eve" - with Samm Levine

    BLAST FROM THE PAST: "Adam & Eve" - with Samm Levine
    Apr 29 2024
    Blast from the Past was 75th highest-grossing movie of 1999, opening at #4 at the box office on Valentine’s Day weekend and going on to take in $40 million worldwide on a $35 million budget. The first of two 1999 collaborations between director Hugh Wilson and star Brendan Fraser, Blast from the Past included a stellar supporting cast, including Alicia Silverstone, Christopher Walken, Sissy Spacek, Dave Foley, Nathan Fillion, Joey Slotnick, and the legendary Jennifer Lewis. Critics were pretty even split on it - partly because it was inevitably compared to 1998's Pleasantville - and none were especially effusive in their praise, but it went on to find a charmed audience on home video and has emerged as the quintessential "hidden gem" in the years since. One if its fans is actor Samm Levine, who graced the small screen in 1999 in the beloved (and prematurely canceled) television series Freaks and Geeks. He joined John and Jenn to talk Walken, swing dance, and his most famous creation, the beloved character Zoot Suit Ryan.
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    2 hrs and 16 mins
  • 99@25 #07 - April 1-20 1999, the Columbine Episode

    99@25 #07 - April 1-20 1999, the Columbine Episode
    Apr 20 2024
    We're taking a slightly different approach to this one, covering 20 days of April 1999 instead of 15, and, frankly, we're focusing mostly on the 20th, because that's when the Columbine massacre occurred. Columbine was not the first school shooting, but it was - at the time - the most unthinkable one in terms of scope and scale. 25 years later, it has become significantly less unthinkable, as so many instances of gun-based mass murders in schools have occurred in the meantime that it's difficult to name them all. But Columbine is also a hotbed of misconceptions and misinformation, and since Jenn works in true crime and John works in a high school they couldn't not talk about it. But they do sandwich their thoughts on this horrific tragedy with SOME fun, including John's rant on Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine and a brief chat about Tal Bachman's "She's So High". Here is the essay John references in the episode: Retrospective: 20 Years Later, "Bowling for Columbine" is a Disgrace to Documentary Filmmaking
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    1 hr and 27 mins
  • PUSHING TIN: "Control" - with Joe Kwaczala

    PUSHING TIN: "Control" - with Joe Kwaczala
    Apr 15 2024
    Pushing Tin was the 135th-highest grossing film of the year, grossing 8.4 million dollars on a 33 million dollar budget, opening April the 23rd, 1999 as the #4 movie at the Box Office behind The Matrix, Life, and Never Been Kissed. Directed by Four Weddings and a Funeral and Donnie Brasco director Mike Newell and written by Cheers co-creators Les and Glen Charles, Pushing Tin felt like a sure thing, especially given its very of-the-moment core cast of John Cusack, Cate Blanchett, Billy Bob Thornton, and Angelina Jolie. But it never left the runway (get it) with audiences or critics. What went wrong? And is Pushing Tin a forgotten gem, or was everyone right about it 25 years ago? This week, John and Jenn are joined by comedian Joe Kwaczala to talk about this weird, uneven, confused, and very pre-9/11 romcom-dramedy thing! You can find Joe on most of the socials @joekjoek
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    1 hr and 42 mins
  • 99@25 #06 - March 16-31 1999

    99@25 #06 - March 16-31 1999
    Apr 4 2024
    We continue our celebration of the 25th anniversary of 1999 with our sixth installment, March 16-31 1999! In the second half of March, we got: The Oscars! Roberto Benigni jumping on chairs! Harvey Weinstein buying the Best Picture Oscar for Shakespeare in Love! The premiere of Futurama! Jack Kevorkian! Ricky Martin unleashes La Vida Loca upon an unsuspecting world! Fabio gets hit by a goose! The Melissa Virus 10 Thing I Hate About You! The Matrix! and more! John and Jenn also accidentally create a true crime podcast and wonder if they've pinpointed the moment Gwyneth Paltrow came up with GOOP.
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    1 hr and 26 mins
  • MICKEY BLUE EYES: "Gid Ouda He" - with Meghan Leigh Paulk

    MICKEY BLUE EYES: "Gid Ouda He" - with Meghan Leigh Paulk
    Apr 1 2024
    Mickey Blue Eyes was just the 61st-highest grossing movie of 1999. The only major US release of the weekend of August 20, 1999, Mickey Blue Eyes opened in third place while The Sixth Sense continued to dominate the box office. It would go on to make $54 million on a $75 million budget. Directed by Kids in the Hall alum Kelly Makin and written by Robert Kuhn and Adam Scheinmann, it was ostensibly a romcom vehicle for Hugh Grant and Jeanne Tripplehorn but works better as a romcom between Hugh Grant and James Caan. Critics were iffy, with most still praising Grant for carrying the movie with a pitch-perfect performance playing to all his strengths as both a comic and dramatic actor and acknowledging the fun of the premise as well as the strength of the jokes but faulting it for failing to carry those things through. Many also pointed to the fact that, upon release, Mickey Blue Eyes was already the inferior Hugh Grant movie after Notting Hill, and the inferior mob comedy after Analyze This. Joining John and Jenn to talk about it this week is writer Meghan Leigh Paulk. You can find out more about Meghan on her website.
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    1 hr and 29 mins
  • QUIET ON SET - A Very Special Episode

    QUIET ON SET - A Very Special Episode
    Mar 25 2024
    We take a quick detour to discuss the 1999-adjacent Investigation Discovery series QUIET ON THE SET, which looks into the toxic, harmful atmosphere at Nickelodeon in the 90s and 2000s under showrunner Dan Schneider, as well as the subsequent instances of child sex abuse as detailed by DRAKE AND JOSH star Drake Bell. You can find Jenn's coverage of the documentary and some of its fallout on Distractify, including this breakdown of what's been going on with Dan Schneider of late: https://www.distractify.com/p/where-is-dan-schneider-now
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    1 hr and 9 mins
  • SHE'S ALL THAT: "Kiss Me" - with Chase Mitchell

    SHE'S ALL THAT: "Kiss Me" - with Chase Mitchell
    Mar 18 2024
    This week, we take a look at one of 1999’s biggest surprise hits, the 38th-highest grossing movie, which took in a very impressive $103 million on a budget of just $10 million, She's All That. She's All That opened at #1 on January 29, boosted by being nicely timed around Valentine’s Day and by coming out in one of the least-competitive box office periods of the year. Directed by Robert Iscove and written by friend of the show R. Lee Fleming Jr, She's All That boasts one of the most incredibly deep casts of 1990s icons, as well as launching the career of the titular "she" Rachael Leigh Cook. It is the very definition of the nostalgic favorite, and it finds charm and humor in places not typical of the teen rom-com genre. So this week, we invited comedy writer Chase Mitchell to join us down by the broken treehouse to talk all about it, so bring your flowered hat as we see if, all these years later, this ugly duckling is still a swan. You can find Chase on Twitter @ChaseMit
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    1 hr and 51 mins