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"I dare you to do an episode about bearer bonds!" -Fraser Rice, Host, 'Wealth Actually' Podcast CHALLENGE ACCEPTED! Many thanks to my guest, Kiah Lau Haslett for her insightful, funny, and (very important for a guy who counts on his fingers) easy-to-understand bearer bond background.  You can read her excellent piece on the history of bearer bonds here. Also, I've changed the name of the podcast. More on that in a future episode.

In this installment of Sacred Cows, I take a fresh and possibly first look at 'Die Hard', John McTiernan's action classic that I can't remember if I ever actually saw before.   It turns out there is plenty of subversive stuff going on beneath all the action, and it's no wonder that the film did such boffo box office...and also all the more disappointing that it went on to spawn such apparently uninspired sequels; something all the more ironic given the original film's general distaste for Capitalism, greed, and middle-manager icompetence. It ALSO turns out that the love story at the center of 'Die Hard' might just be a little more surprising than the film would at first blush own up to. Join me, won't you?? You know all the famous lines, but let's kick the tires on 'Die Hard' and find out if it's GOATed status is deserved...or deserving of a 40-story free fall off the Nakatomi Tower.

SEQUELS... In this episode, I take a look at one of the most infamous film debacles of all time: John Boorman's ill-advised, poorly conceived, crowd-displeasing follow-up to one of the greatest and most popular horror films ever made. How could it go wrong? From the start, throughout, and even after release. Let me count the ways. Also, a bit on our current moment of performative reclamation of movies that are just demonstrably awful. Resist!

One of the great newspaper movies, a great NYC location movie, a great set-dressing movie, a great acting movie...on and on. The Paper deserves more recognition; it's aged particularly well as a love letter to and from a very particular time in the media business.

Summer's rapidly ending and it's time to get back to the FCAC rhythm and routine.  Some thoughts on the passing of Dolly Parton and some UK crime shows I've been watching of late, notably the Apple TV series 'Criminal Record'.

Joan Micklin Silver's 1988 NYC love-letter/romantic comedy Crossing Delancey is one of the superlative NYC films of all time. And watching it today, it's hard not to mourn the loss of the sense of collective experience as New Yorkers she puts onscreen, given our current situation in the City of so much divisive rhetoric and violence. And this film righteously upends the conventions of its genre and allows a fantastic collage of actors to shine in roles as notable for their refusal to stereotype as they are for their humor and depth of feeling. Rachel Syme's great essay City Girl, about Crossing Delancey

Go and see 'The Odyssey' in the biggest and best theater you can. You won't regret it. A rollicking great epic cinematic event. Historian Tom Holland interviews Actor Tom Holland on The Rest is History. The Rest Is History does The Odyssey (the poem).

Michael Ritchie and Redford's still-searingly satiric and spot-on takedown of political operatives and image crafting, peddling, and pandering in the modern campaign-industrial complex speaks louder than ever, given recent events in our body politic.

On a recent trip through Ireland with my daughter, I unexpectedly got back into The Beatles...this is the story.

Nancy Savoca & Bob Comfort's wonderful jewel-box gem of an American independent film from 1991.

Sidney Lumet and Naomi Foner (and Executive Producers Griffin Dunne and Lisa Robinson) took what in lesser hands would be a family melodrama and allowed it to become an incredibly mature, layered, complicated story resting entirely on the capable shoulders of its cast of wonderful actors...not least 17-year-olds Martha Plimpton and River Phoenix, a couple off-screen and on.

In this weeks [indistinct chatter] episode: Disclosure Day The Social Reckoning Clarkson's Farm Season 5 Next Week's Episode of Movies I I Haven't Seen. Musings, anecdotes, recriminations.

GO AHEAD AND HATE YOUR NEIGHBOR/GO AHEAD AND CHEAT A FRIEND..... The dramatic and soaring vocals of Coven's Jinx Dawson are forever associated with Tom Laughlin's oddball, enduring, sometimes muddled statement on non-violence and the ways of the White Man and the Natives, 'Billy Jack'. How and why this film struck a nerve upon its director-assisted wide release in 1971 is the stuff of Hollywood legend. Upon rewatch, I found the more improvised scenes featuring non-actors surprisingly effective and the film as a whole curiously immune from cynicism.

Rob Epstein and Richard Schmiechen's 1984 documentary about the life and shocking 1978 killing of San Francisco gay activist and Board of Supervisors member Harvey Milk is one of the great American documentaries and a still-vital example of the power of straightforward documentary filmmaking.  Jon Else's brilliant feature on the film.

Watch-along by pressing play when I say, or simply enjoy the auditory delights of listening to me comment along with 'Misery' and fill in the anecdotes, line readings, thoughts and questions that arise.