Box Office GROSS: The Top 50 Hit Films of 2006

This week, the lovely and talented Jourdain Searles joins us to remember remember the 36th highest grossing film of 2006, the dystopian political thriller V FOR VENDETTA! We discuss the film's curiously dissonant relation to its graphic-novel source material, its resonance (or lack thereof) with its original Thatcherite origins vs. its War on Terror traipsings and its strange decision to closely...

Surprise! Rob made a 5-plus-hour drive to New Jersey to attend in person a "stop and start" 20th anniversary screening of Kevin Smith's 2006 release CLERKS II, a film that absolutely did not make the top 50 (or even the top 100!) of the 2006 box office, but it was a film and director so deeply near and dear to his heart, and an experience so worth hearing about, that we had to do an episode on...

FOLKS! Our beloved fellow Cinemasochist Steve Carlson (guest of The Amityville Horror and The Dukes of Hazzard episodes) returns for what is, unexpectedly, perhaps Rob and I's most CONTENTIOUS DISAGREEMENT on a film yet: Tim Allen in THE SHAGGY DOG!We discuss this shambling, wooly franchise, from its unexpected origins in Weimar-Republic-era German literature, to its massive original late '50s...

The great Jeb Lund (It's Christmastime, @Mobute) returns from our Longest Yard episode to cover another movie with an old football player in it, the demented high-concept rom-com Failure to Launch! Rob and I discuss our sharp digressions on the quality of the film: he passionately defines it as a thoughtful and clever film about a man fundamentally out of step with the confines of natural law,...

Our cherished pal Doug Tilley (Cinema Smorgasbord) makes his third appearance (Batman Begins, The Forty-Year-Old Virgin) on our show to cover an even more famous film: EIGHT BELOW, the forgotten Disney survival drama that takes a true story of tragedy and perseverance seminal to midcentury Japanese culture, removes most of the tragedy and all the Japanese people!We discuss this blandly...

The wonderful and talented writer WILL SLOAN (Important Cinema Club Podcast, Ed Wood: Made in Hollywood USA) joins us for an absolute doozy, as we dive deep into the flawed and fascinating three-ring-circus oeuvre of the playwright, filmmaker and mogul TYLER PERRY, and cover his 2006 directorial debut MADEA'S FAMILY REUNION.We dissect his offbeat, auteurism, his violent tonal shifts between...

Our brilliant pal and FOUR TIME B.O.G. Legend TJ Dobbin (Sin City, Batman Begins, Chicken Little) returns to help us inspect the Steve Martin entry in the PINK PANTHER series. We delve into the lengthy tail of the legendary original series (and one of our host's noted dislike for them!), and TJ schools us on the sprawling history of Depatie-Freleng studios and their prolific animated Panther...

We invited our brilliant and funny pal Trevor Strunk (@Hegelbon, No Cartridge) to talk about an equally brilliant and erudite work, Martin Lawrence in BIG MOMMA'S HOUSE 2! We delve into the war crime that is the first film, with its implicit endorsement of sexual assault, and the extremely proto-Blartian second film's official position that starting a family with Nia Long is one of the most...

SEASON 2 BEGINS!This week, after 50 weeks of 2005, we dive headfirst into the wild reeds of *2006*, and we pick up another returning BOG Legend, the great Daniel Gorman (from our Amityville Horror and Sky High episodes) to help us pick apart our first entry, the lugubrious vampires v. werewolves saga of UNDERWORLD: EVOLUTION (#47 of 2006)! We delve into the series' ludicrously overcomplicated...

Our unofficial third host Kevin Gray (from our Pacifier and Forty-Year-Old Virgin episodes!) makes his triumphant return for our SEASON ONE FINALE!!!! We delve into Peter Jackson's grand epic KING KONG! We discuss Jackson's obsession with the material and its complicated rights issues, the film's gargantuan runtime, its beautifully rendered 1930s NYC setting, its incredible lead performances,...