Visit JakeAndAmir.com and follow @JakeAndAmir on Twitter!

Follow @peteholmez on Twitter and Like the show on Facebook!

Special thanks to Carvin for supplying us with the equipment we need to record this podcast! Check out Carvin.com for more information on recording equipment, guitars, amps and more!

Support the show and click on the banner to get a 15 day free trial with GameFly!

Follow Jenna’s tweets @JennaElfman!

It’s all for you, Katniss.

HT: Claire Zulkey, WBEZ/Chicago

In the earlier cases I mentioned, the titles, no matter how literal, came as a result of the film itself. The original title for Alien was Star Beast, yet for a movie so blue collar and industrial, Alien better served the tone and could apply to both the creature and the crew of the Nostromo being foreign in outer space. To go a different way with a Ridley Scott movie, Blade Runner is based on the Philip K. Dick novel, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,” which is a little long for a marquee, so it was changed to Blade Runner. Problem is, “Blade Runner” was a book about illegal smuggling of medical supplies in Africa, but Scott liked the title and so optioned the book just to use it in something. Aside from a couple of throwaway lines added to tie it up, Blade Runner has nothing to do with running blades or running on blades or blades at all. If someone asked you to describe Blade Runner the words “blade” and “runner” would never appear anywhere in it, but that’s not the point. The important thing is that Blade Runner is a fucking fantastic title and one that sits in the minds of people forever.

Describe Man on a Ledge. It’s about a man… who’s on a ledge. Other stuff happens, sure, but essentially it’s a man who is out on a ledge. The sequel will probably be Man on a Limb, about a man who climbs a tree and refuses to come down, but I fear it’d be too deep for people. Too many titles nowadays are neither intriguing nor clever; they’re literally just the pitch or general conceit of the film. What’s the concept? It’s snakes on a plane. I know, let’s call it Viper Flight or Cobra Cruise or Venom at 50,000 Ft. No, idiot, we’re calling it Snakes on a Plane because that’s what it’s about. There was a movie a few years ago about fighting and it was just called Fighting. They’re not even trying anymore!  Tyler Perry, the billionaire behind all those movies you’ve never seen, is coming out with a movie called Good Deeds about a guy named Wesley Deeds who does good things. For fuck sake! “See, his name is Deeds and he does deeds, so it works in two ways.” No it doesn’t! It’s the same obvious way twice! What about the new Disney movie John Carter? I’m aware the book series and film are about a guy whose name is in fact John Carter, but he goes to fucking MARS and fights in a gladiator arena with giant monsters and shit. But no, John Carter, that’ll be good.

And it’s not even just that the titles are too obvious. Some of them have zero to do with the movie. Safe House takes place in a safe house, fine, but the movie Lock-Out, about a guy having to rescue the president’s daughter from a prison in outer space, is not about being locked out from anywhere. But, boy, it sure sounds like something they’d do in a prison. Make up your mind.

The following are famous, good-titled movies and what they probably would be titled if they came out today:

Star Wars – Spaceships

The Silence of the Lambs – Fat Women Get Skinned

A Clockwork Orange – A Violent Delinquent Gets Reformed, Kinda

Double Indemnity – Insurance Fraud

Back to the Future – Old Car Time Machine

Reservoir Dogs – Men in Ties

Die Hard – Nothing Lasts Forever (which is the actual title of the novel upon which the film is based)

The Great Escape – Most Of The People Die

So the point of all this is that I’m easily irritated. The End.

-Kanderson wants to remind everyone that not everything needs a point. Follow him on TWITTER

Are you doing anything tonight, Monday, February 6th? If Yes or No, continue reading.

Are you interested in seeing Chris Hardwick perform a full hour of comedy for absolutely free? The answer is Yes. There is no No.

Here’s the deal: You know that Chris is taping his Comedy Central special on February 17th (free tix here). And you know he wants to perform that material in front of live audiences beforehand. The result is that he’ll be doing the material that’ll be included in the special before a live audience at Nerdist Theater at Meltdown Comics in L.A. tonight, and you can be in the audience.

How can you take advantage of this special offer?

Show up.

That’s it. First-come, first-served. No RSVPs necessary. Just come to the venue and queue up. There may not be room for everyone, so come early. The show’s at 9:30 pm Pacific, tonight (Monday, 2/6), at 7522 W. Sunset Blvd. in Los Angeles, California, United States of America, and if you can make it, you’ll surely have a good time and get a lot of laughs. That’s worth a lot more than free, right?

We need a Weird Al Super Bowl halftime show. Seriously, this HAS to happen.

The Super Bowl halftime show needs a truly iconic personality to make it work, but it really works best when the icon’s still relevant. And who’s more relevant than Weird Al Yankovic? He continues to record successful music, he sells out his concerts, and it would be way more entertaining than most of the halftime shows we’ve seen in years. Plus, there’s a strong chance Cirque du Soleil wouldn’t show up, which would be a net plus.  And if Weird Al does it, that means another year we won’t get a return performance by the Black Eyed Peas, so, yeah.

Anyway, I have no idea how to make this a reality. Do we hashtag tweets with #weirdalforsuperbowlhalftime? Do we send politely-worded but passionate emails to the NFL? You guys could probably come up with a way.

Weird Al for Super Bowl Halftime. Like #sixseasonsandamovie, it’s an idea whose time has come.

Leave the answer to the Firsts question (The first race or athletic competition you can remember doing) on our website for a chance to win a copy of Sam Shepherd’s Buried Child (used during the podcast, listen to see how), signed by Drew!

Send your submissions for the guys to test at:

MATES
163 Amsterdam Avenue #135
New York, NY 10023

“For Best Supporting Actor, the award goes to Christopher Plummer, Beginners.”

That announcement has been made at the SAG Awards, the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards, the Golden Globes, and very well might be said at the upcoming Academy Awards. With such an across-the-board track record in awards, one would rightly think that this would be the performance that would everyone would be talking about. One rightly thinking would be wrong, and then “tarred-and-feathered” by uninformed, closed-minded people trolling the Internet.

In fact, more attention is being paid to how and where Bridesmaids get nominated and WHO THE FUCK snubbed Albert Brooks in Drive. The same attitude has been given towards Woody Allen cleaning up in the Best Original Screenplay category for Midnight in Paris.

How is it that when there is consensus agreement on who is the best/funniest/most original, etc., that there is no story to be had? How is no one talking about what everyone was calling great being awarded for being great?

It’s almost as if there is a collective thought that says, “Yeah, we know this is great/hilarious/amazing. We’re over it.” Yet, at the same time, there is a same collective thought posed by the same minds that says, “ROBBED! EVERYONE WAS ROBBED!” and can’t let it go. “That piece of shit should be up for a Razzie.”

This is not an endorsement that everyone should be in agreement on everything. With the SOPA scare, society is close enough to Orwell’s 1984 than it should ever be.

Christopher Plummer as Hal Fields is one of those amazing characters that will live on in the annals of cinema history. He plays a a former director at an art museum that’s dealing with his new identity as an older gay man, but hiding another new identity as a man dying of cancer. It’s one of those enlightening performances that make you question your own sensibilities in a very funny, endearing way. Yet, the “powers that be” that represent the deciding discourse in pop culture would rather focus on who isn’t getting nominated for an award that isn’t them.

Who wants the Oscars to be the “written-in-stone” opinion on the entire canon of cinema anyways? If you’re up for an Oscar or a close relative a person that’s nominated, it should matter. Outside of that, the Oscars are just a big pat on the back of the entertainment industry by the entertainment industry then broadcasted for all to see by said entertainment industry because it just can’t get enough of itself. The voting process for the Oscars itself is flawed to the point that actors who are members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have a considerable influence because they outnumber everyone else in the Academy.

So, instead of asking why Beginners isn’t getting more accolades because the AMPTAS might be biased against comedy, just don’t ask why at all. Tell your friends about it, how hysterical and captivating it is. Go buy it instead of illegally downloading it or even get on Netflix and watch it with other people. You don’t have to make a .gif of your favorite moment unless you want to and REALLY have enough free time. It’s the “word of mouth,” “the talking about,” etc. that supersedes what any organization that can afford a dozen or so metallic statuettes. Hordes of people go out of their way to not only see The Big Lebowski and Rocky Horror Picture Show, but they dress up in the most ridiculous costumes years after either movie had been released. That’s better than a statue.