2006, Ep. 5: "EIGHT BELOW" (with Doug Tilley!)
Box Office GROSS: The Top 50 Hit Films of 2006
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 professional but subtly disrespectful story of abandoned sled dogs and the people who purported to care about them. We get into Doug's experience caring for huskies, my completely disreputable dislike of animals broadly, and this film's extremely American sense of obsessive dog worship and sanitized half-measures, a film too intense for kids but too stupid for adults, that presents a sort of bastardization of a real feeling, a movie that wants you to care about dogs beyond the realms of all sense, and also unexpectedly wants you to care about if Jason Biggs is getting laid, beyond the realms of all sense.
This episode was a complete blast, and we had way, way more fun than I anticipated we could with such a moribund film, a credit to Doug, a true pro who always enlivens any conversation he participates in. Check this puppy out!
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Cinema Smorgasbord: https://www.cinemasmorgasbord.com/
The Dreamcast Files, episode 85 - Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHTmdt2ZJVc
Theme Song: "Any Day Can Be Bicycle Day" by Ether Driver ( https://etherdiver.bandcamp.com/ )