Send a text

With Episode 8, our hosts put their Gray Days behind them, wrapping the short Season 16 with THE IMMIGRANT (2013), or as it was a.k.a.’ed during its short development and prior to its delayed release “Low Life” and “The Nightingale.”

James Gray teams back up with cowriter Richard Menello to write a period drama role explicitly for Marion Cotillard whom Gray met through her then-partner director Guillaume Canet during their work together on the oft-mentioned Blood Ties also released in 2013. The story follows the hard luck of Cotillard’s titular immigrant as her likewise Polish emigre sister is confined to a medical ward on Ellis Island during immigration while Cotillard’s Ewa Cybulska is offered an opportunity to remain in the States through the kindness of Joaquin Phoenix playing a pimp and former child immigrant named Bruno Weiss in the actor’s fourth and to-date final Gray film role. Cotillard’s immigrant forms a brief love triangle with Jeremy Renner’s magician and brother-to-Bruno character Orlando The Magician until he ***SPOILER*** runs off to Iraq to defuse bombs as one of the Avengers who just shoots arrows or something. J/k. It’s a Gray film. You know someone is going to die. Maybe it’s the magician. Maybe it’s the sister. Maybe both. Stay awake to find out, or give this episode a listen.

This episode, Harvey Weinstein returns; Ken tries renaming the podcast; Ryan and Thomas are spot on in their estimation of the film; and our boys rank the eight-film oeuvre on The Gray Scale.

Next week, we’re on smoko but will return with Hacks (mild pun intended; Surgeon General’s warning: do not consume the first episode of Season 17 if you’re preggers).

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTU
Instagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0
Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.social
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-g
Letterboxd (follow us!):

Podcast: goodpodugly
Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias

Send a text

TWO LOVERS (2008)

For Season 16, Episode 7, writer-director James Gray gets geometric with TWO LOVERS (2008), his third of four collabs with Joaquin Phoenix whom he puts into a love triangle with Gray’s only film to-date starring Gwyneth Paltrow or Vinessa Shaw.

Gray leaves his crime trilogy behind with this contemporary piece focusing on the family and loves of Phoenix’s Leonard Kraditor, a manic-depressive pixie dream boy working for and living with his parents after a suicide attempt. Leonard finds himself caught between his id (depicted by Paltrow’s equally pixie Michelle Rausch) and superego (depicted by Shaw’s Sandra Cohen). Isabella Rossellini in a relatively (slight pun intended) quiet performance plays Leonard’s mother while Israeli actor Moni Moshonov reprises his father-figure role from We Own the Night to play Leonard’s father.

For those enjoying the home version this season, the following Gray Bingo squares may be covered: 1) silent opening, 2) NYC, 3) Jewish family, 4) bare breast, 5) club scene, and 6) failed plan to escape to warmer climates.

Guest Andi joins to betray her Southern roots by speaking when she has nothing polite to say as she ranks the half of Gray’s filmography she’s watched. Host Ken this episode does extra credit, having not only watched two prior film adaptations of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s short story “White Nights” but also researches cowriter Richard Menello and charts multiple love triangles in this film and throughout the films TGTPTU has covered. Cohost Ryan reveals his odd sense of humor. And cohost Thomas provides a list of terms defining people and what they love.

These four on mic this week are split in half for their enjoyment of the film.

Next ep, the stunning conclusion to Going Gray (working title) and the genre reveal of Season 17.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTU
Instagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0
Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.social
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-g
Letterboxd (follow us!):

Podcast: goodpodugly
Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias

Send a text

THE LOST CITY OF Z

Before James Gray hung Brad Pitt on wires and took him to space, he first brought a different blonde to the Amazon (the rainforest) to encounter snakes, torrential rains, and an insect extracted from his ear during the shooting of he writer-director’s first Amazon (the company) Studios distributed film THE LOST CITY OF Z (2016).

Charlie Hunnam is that blonde, the -e is intentional as that’s the more common British spelling and despite an American accent convincing enough to fool Gray, a man of many impersonations, Charlie’s a bloke. His Percy Fawcett protagonist is joined by fellow Brit and future Batman Robert Pattinson as the pair of British explorers (and WWI soldiers) map out the Bolivia-Brazil border in an adaptation of the nonfiction bestseller of the same name (although the Americans, per its author, say the final word-letter as “zee” instead of “zed”). Also cast and a contemporaneous Spiderman is Tom Holland as Fawcett’s son Jack Fawcett, who will take the place of Pattinson’s composite character Henry Costin in Percy’s final voyage back into the jungle to seek the titular lost city.

For this sixth of eight Gray episodes, guest Shannon returns, host Ken stays ill, co-host Ryan gushes, and the lone Gen Zedder Thomas has read the book. Opinions are mixed this week, with guest Shannon believing the proper title of the film should be The Lost City of Zzz (snooze sound) while Ryan’s been Zed-pilled into believing it an amazing film.

Next episode, potentially a very special guest who might have watched that week’s film.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTU
Instagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0
Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.social
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-g
Letterboxd (follow us!):

Podcast: goodpodugly
Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias