Podcast Like It's ...

Phil and Emily are joined by entertainment journalist, critic, and editor Amelia Emberwing to wrap up their Guillermo del Toro mini series with Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008). Ron Perlman's red-skinned demon (with Selma Blair and Doug Jones as Liz and Abe) goes up against an elven prince (Luke Goss) who wants to wake an unstoppable mechanical army and end the truce between humans and everything that lives in the shadows. It's bigger, stranger, and a lot more crowded with trolls, fairies, and tooth-hungry swarms than the first one, and it opened right into The Dark Knight.

The three dig into why these movies feel like a Hellboy comic instead of a Marvel or DC film, David Hyde Pierce as the voice of Abe Sapien (and what that says about Frasier fanfic), Luke Goss, the changing voice of Johann Krauss, and the one story beat they can't quite buy. VFX houses, wrestling, and a Lord of the Rings tangent all make an appearance. There's a real case here for reading The Golden Army as del Toro finally making it up to Abe Sapien. Loud, tender, and a little goofy same as the movie.

Follow the show & guest:
Podcast Like It's... - https://www.instagram.com/podcastlikeits
Phil Iscove - https://www.instagram.com/pmiscove
Emily St. James - https://www.instagram.com/emilystjams
Amelia Emberwing - https://www.instagram.com/thatwitchmia

💜 Patreon (bonus episodes & video): http://patreon.com/Podcastlikeits

Phil and Emily are joined by critic Sonia Saraiya, back for the first time since Charlie Wilson's War, for Pan's Labyrinth (2006), the fourth stop in the October Guillermo del Toro mini-series. In 1944 Spain, eleven-year-old Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) arrives at a rural outpost with her pregnant mother to live under Captain Vidal (Sergi López), a Francoist officer hunting the last Republican guerrillas, and finds a faun in the ruins who tells her she is a lost princess with three tasks to complete. It earned six Oscar nominations and won three, got four stars from Ebert and a 98 on Metacritic, and lost Best Foreign Language Film to The Lives of Others, which Phil is still relitigating.

The three dig into why Vidal works as a fairy-tale monster who happens to be a real fascist, the idea that fascism is itself a fairy tale about making the world what it "should" be, the Pale Man (Doug Jones under the most painful prosthetics of his career, and a critique of the Church del Toro has been explicit about), and the mandrake root as the film's whole thesis in one wriggling prop. Emily debuts her Oscar-nominated song "Monster With the Eyes in His Hands," Stephen King squirming in his seat gets ranked alongside the Oscar as del Toro's proudest moment, and the ending gets argued from both sides: is Ofelia going home to the underworld or dying in the dirt at peace with what she chose? There's a real case here for Pan's Labyrinth as the movie where everything del Toro tried in The Devil's Backbone finally lands at once. Brutal, tender, and certain the fairies are real. Same as the movie. Next week: Hellboy II.

Follow the show & guest:
Podcast Like It's... - https://www.instagram.com/podcastlikeits
Phil Iscove - https://www.instagram.com/pmiscove
Emily St. James - https://www.instagram.com/emilystjams
Sonia Saraiya - https://www.instagram.com/soniasaraiya

💜 Patreon (bonus episodes & video): http://patreon.com/Podcastlikeits

Phil and Emily are joined by author and journalist Lin Codega, co-founder of Rascal News, to continue their Guillermo del Toro mini series with Hellboy (2004). Ron Perlman plays a demon raised by the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense (John Hurt, Selma Blair, Rupert Evans, Jeffrey Tambor), and when Rasputin is dragged back from the dead to bring on the apocalypse, the world's most reluctant harbinger of doom has to decide who he wants to be. Doug Jones is Abe Sapien, and yes, the panel has opinions on that.

The three dig into steampunk and who it was really for, Abe Sapien's place in the del Toro monster-crush canon, and what 2004 casting could have made the love triangle work. Tom Hardy gets pitched. So does Noah Wyle. Tabletop games come up more than once, including the Hellboy-flavored RPG Apocalypse Keys. There's a real case here for reading Hellboy as a movie about a guy handed a destiny he decides to tear off along with his own horns. Weird, warm, and a little nerdy same as the movie.

Follow the show & guest:

Podcast Like It's... - https://www.instagram.com/podcastlikeits
Phil Iscove - https://www.instagram.com/pmiscove
Emily St. James - https://www.instagram.com/emilystjams
Lin Codega - https://www.instagram.com/lincodega

Phil and Emily are joined by Vulture TV critic Roxana Hadadi for the second stop in the October Guillermo del Toro mini-series, Blade II (2002). Wesley Snipes's half-vampire Daywalker teams up with the Bloodpack, an elite vampire hit squad built to kill him (Ron Perlman and Donnie Yen among them), to hunt the Reapers, a mutant strain that feeds on vampires and humans alike. It opened March 22, 2002 against Ice Age and the E.T. re-release, made $155 million on a $55 million budget, and got three and a half stars from Ebert, who called it a brilliant vomitorium of viscera.

The three dig into how del Toro took a David Goyer script and a New Line paycheck and used them to build the Reaper design that changed what a movie vampire's mouth could do, Snipes shooting three other movies during production so the crew shot around him with doubles and over-the-shoulder angles, the blood rave that opens the whole franchise's imagination, and why the Bloodpack getting wrecked is the most satisfying thing in the movie. Roxana makes the case that Luke Goss's Nomak is the hot vampire prince the genre owes her, the three poke at Ebert's soft spot for del Toro, and everyone agrees the last shot (sword, head, credits) is a flex. There's a real case here for Blade II as the movie where del Toro proved he could work inside the studio machine without filing down a single tooth. Gnarly, silly, and gorgeous about it. Same as the movie. Next week: Hellboy.

Follow the show & guest:

Podcast Like It's... - https://www.instagram.com/podcastlikeits
Phil Iscove - https://www.instagram.com/pmiscove
Emily St. James - https://www.instagram.com/emilystjams
Roxana Hadadi - https://www.instagram.com/roxana.z.hadadi 

💜 Patreon (bonus episodes & video): http://patreon.com/Podcastlikeits

Phil and Emily are joined by Monica Castillo, film critic for The A.V. Club, to open a Halloween-season mini-series on all five of Guillermo del Toro's 2000s films with The Devil's Backbone (2001). In the last week of the Spanish Civil War, twelve-year-old Carlos is left at a remote orphanage run by Carmen (Marisa Paredes) and Dr. Casares (Federico Luppi), where an unexploded bomb sits in the courtyard, the groundskeeper Jacinto (Eduardo Noriega) is hunting for hidden Republican gold, and a drowned boy named Santi is still whispering in the halls. It opened against Harry Potter and Monsters, Inc. and made $6.5 million on a $4.5 million budget, and Phil is watching it for the first time.

The three dig into why del Toro's ghosts are sad rather than shock machines (Ebert's line that ghosts should have their reasons comes up more than once), the Carlos-and-Santi chase at the midpoint as one of the scariest sequences in his whole filmography, and the film's argument that the real monster is the man with the keys, not the boy in the water. They also get into the limbo-water fetus jars, the 19th-century ghost story bones under the Civil War setting, and how this movie sets up Pan's Labyrinth five years early. There's a real case here for The Devil's Backbone as the purest version of what del Toro does: a haunting where the injustice is the point and the ghost is just asking for it to be seen. Mournful, beautiful, and quietly furious. Same as the movie. Next week: Blade II with Roxana Hadadi.

Follow the show & guest:

Podcast Like It's... - https://www.instagram.com/podcastlikeits
Phil Iscove - https://www.instagram.com/pmiscove
Emily St. James - https://www.instagram.com/emilystjams
Monica Castillo - https://www.instagram.com/mcastimovies 

💜 Patreon (bonus episodes & video): http://patreon.com/Podcastlikeits