WUH: Welcome back, Begley

Wake Up Heavy is a media podcast. Mister Carton, Welcome to Wake Up Heavy, the world's greatest horror movie podcast. In this episode, my weird dad will be talking about welcome Back, your Dreams, your Ticket, Hello, and welcome back to Wake Up Heavy recollections of horror. This is Mark Begley, your host. And it has been quite some time, or it feels like it's been quite some time since I did one of these episodes, and this isn't even really one of these episodes.

I'm not going to go through my watch list for the past five months. The last one of these I did, or the last watch list episode I did, was back in December for November's watches. Cleo did not join me for that one, and there was a bunch of stuff going on at that time that ended up not forcing but creating this need to take a break which I was fighting against for a while. I kept thinking about doing the December watch episode with Cleo since she was on Christmas break, and we just watched movies instead. So anyway, I haven't done one of these in a while.

There's a lot of reasons why I haven't done a lot of other recording as well, and I'm going to get into all that stuff on this So if that doesn't interest you, maybe stop this episode and go watch a movie or something. I do have some very basic movie recommendations and favorites from last year and from the past four or so months to get into at the end. But this is really just a catch up episode. So some of the stuff that started, damn it, I'm going to get notifications on here from my fucking phone and it's going to drive me nuts. I'm recording a little differently these days, and that's part of the stuff that I'm going to get into.

But starting in November, that is when Mike, Chris and I started recording from the files of police squad shows. We had it spaced out real nicely, weekly recording, way far enough in advance to where I was not going to get jammed up with editing. I took on it was my idea for the show, so I took on the editing responsibilities for it. Those weren't going to be released until January. They're all out now if you have missed that somehow, and I will link that in the notes for this episode, So all ten episodes are out.

We started with Airplane did all the episodes of Police Squad and then went into the Naked Gun series. We did a special episode for the Projection Booth on Top Secret, which was the movie from Zaz that came in between the show and the movies. All that stuff is available check it out if you haven't already. And so there was enough time I felt where I wasn't going to get overwhelmed with the editing, and that is basically how it turned out. I got a little jammed up towards the end and maybe put off editing as quickly as I could have.

But you know, stuff started piling up. At the same time my friend Ronnie and I were prepping for the start of our show. Came Bridgen was Sean again. If you don't know about that, it is available as well on wardingwaymedia dot com, as is from the files of Police Squad and is this show. So if you look that up, it'll take you to the spreaker page for the network and you can find all of those shows and a bunch of other stuff on there, which gets mentioned on nearly every episode of every show these days.

Hey, if anybody hears if you listen to a weirding Way show like Projection Booth or Culture Cast or even any of my shows. Let me know if you hear an ad for either Wake Up Heavy or Cambridgem Was Sean. They're supposed to be playing on there in those ad breaks supposed to get preference, but I happened yet to hear one. Back to Cambridgem Was Shan. That is a monthly show.

We record it sometime the month prior, which goose me up because all of my watch list stuff is always the month before. I guess I like confusing myself. But anyway, that also started in January. We're up to episode five now and give it a listen. Jena Sean is a weirding Way media podcast.

If you want to support me, Those episodes also get put up on my Patreon page add free and early, generally a week before the release. Cambra Jena Shan releases every first Tuesday of the month, barring any unforeseen circumstances, which hasn't happened yet. The shows, and then my workload, it felt like I was and this is my real job, my real work felt like I was taking on aspects of about three other employees work during that time and I still feel that way and I really don't like that because I ain't getting paid for those three other people's jobs that became a source of stress. I've just been busy, really hard to find a chunk of time during the day to carve out to record anything. And then I've always had a pretty even keel outlook on life.

Haven't really been fortunate to not really suffer from major stress or anxiety or mental health issues. But man, since the pandemic and just stuff recently in the news, all these politicians trying to revoke rights for people, the mass shootings, it's taking a toll. And I mean, my god, yesterday, I think this week there have been I don't know two or three or four mass shootings already, two back to back in Texas. And I unfortunately saw the video that circulating of the latest shooting in Texas and all in Texas of bodies piled up at this outlet. I'm absolutely horrifying, hideous stuff.

And I don't understand what is going on in our country, and it's sickening and saddening. That's been weighing on my mind. Since the move to Spreaker, the plays for Wake Up Heavy have decreased significantly and there's a lot of reasons for that, and it could be disinterest in what I'm putting out, it could be quality of show I'm putting you know, I don't know what audience members are thinking about things. Spriaker is set up a lot differently than SoundCloud, and I would get a lot of erroneous plays via SoundCloud. The issue with iTunes is still a problem.

If you have ad blockers on your computer, you're not going to be able to listen to any of my shows on iTunes because of security reasons. They block shows with ads, or your ad blocker will block a show with ads. And every single ing Away Media show opens with an ad. That was disheartening. So that kind of all that stuff just jumbled up to say, hey, take a break, and I did.

It's been nice. So I mentioned that Cleo wasn't really interested in doing our December watches, and I can't blame her because I thought we might do it the day after New Year's because my wife was back at work that day and we had watched a bunch over Christmas weekend. But I didn't even bring it up again. I do, like I said earlier, let's just watch movies to set her up to set me up to record and edit. It's just it's starting to feel when something starts to feel like homework or work work, then I generally take a step back.

And that's also why I didn't do any of my best of stuff just online. Like I didn't create a list on letterboxed of my top watches for twenty twenty two. I saw a ton of people doing that on Twitter, and every time I saw one, I was like, I just don't have the energy to do that. I don't have the energy to look through my letterbox list and pick those movies out. I don't have the energy to create a music mix like I did last year on Spotify.

Doing that stuff felt like homework to me, or work work, real work, and my brain just was like, no, fuck that, You're not getting paid for this. If it's not immediately feeling like fun, then don't do it. I just had to follow my brain on these things. The other thing that happened, which I'm a little surprised about, well maybe not so surprised, is I got burned out on horror movies. That doesn't sound right.

After god, at least ten years of watching a horror movie, almost every single day of the week, I was finding myself with watching other things. Some of that is due to the other shows, because I was watching, of course all the police Squad stuff, all the movies, so that was five movies, the show, and other stuff dealing with Cambridge IM was Sean. I got hooked on Saturday Night Live because all of that show is on Peacock and I realized, oh, I've never really watched those first four or five seasons in total. Talk about that on that episode of Cambridge IM was Sean where I discussed my childhood obsession was Saturday Night Live, and so I was doing that during the day while I was working, and even when I wasn't working.

That's slowed down a little bit, but I'm up to the end of season two. I do plan on getting those first seasons with that original cast watched by the end of the year, and again looking for new stuff to watch that I haven't seen before that I was interested in felt like a chore. And that's another thing. I hate his yardwork. So if you're reminding me of yardwork, real work or homework, I fuck it.

I don't want to do it. So I just yeah, I got a little burned out on horror and had a few ideas bumping around in my head for single episodes, to do shorter episodes, not the full length, in depth stuff, but more like the why didn't I rent this? Or new to me discoveries, and again just didn't feel like putting the work in. It's good to take a break if you feel that way about something, and sometimes those breaks just keep going. I don't anticipate that there's already a few things on Shutter right now that I'll get two towards the end here that I'm very interested in and may generate the thought of doing an episode about them.

So the only thing I really did was look at my letterbox for the highest rated movies new movies of last year and picked three of them. So these are my three top new twenty twenty two watches from last year. I've talked about all three of these films in one way or another. The first is, of course, Peter Strickland's Flux Score mat Let's continue our investigation into an array of inteconry disciplines, which I believe is still on Shutter and might be available elsewhere, like on t B or something. I saw it pop up on one of my searches recently on another platform, So if you don't have Shutter and it's on t B, watch it, man, what are you waiting for?

And then Jordan Peel's Nope, which ended up being an episode with culture Cast. I believe I released that one too. We talked about all three of Jordan Peel's films, and then Crimes of the Future Cronberg's Return quote unquote to Horror, which was also a culture Cast crossover episode and is available available on both of our shows. The other thing I discovered is well I didn't discover it, I saw people posting about this on Twitter. Letterbox has some new categories for your watch history.

My watch history is a little funky. I started Letterbox in twenty nineteen, but I didn't log films. I just created lists, so you have to log films in your diary for them to generate stats. I think it was last year that I finally went pro with letterbox because it's relatively cheap and it generates all kinds of stats for you, which of course I didn't use at the end of last year. But the new things that I found interesting were they show how many weeks in a row you've watched at least one movie a day.

And I saw people post in this and they had over well over like five years or something like that. So I had one hundred and eight weeks a little over two years where I watched a movie every year. I believe Mark ment every day. I think if that went back to twenty nineteen, it would be closer to four years, and of course if I had Letterbox prior to that, it would probably be more. But that's two full years of a movie at least one movie every day uninterrupted, and I know that that's gone down as of recently.

And then the other stat that I found interesting was three hundred and seventy four days of watching at least two films. Again, that would be more if my stats included twenty nineteen or twenty eighteen when I started Wake Up Heavy. I mean, that could be in the six hundreds. But still that's a full year of watching at least two movies a day, not back to back necessarily. That's the other stat.

I did log four hundred and sixteen diary entries. My watch list for twenty twenty three says three hundred and eighty nine films. I believe Mark mid twenty twenty two. So I believe that means, you know, there's twenty or so movies and probably fewer than that that I watched multiple times. I can't add those to my list.

I can add them to the diary. But once you add a film to a list like this is what I watched during the year, it won't keep adding it. And that's more than the prior year. So I did do a lot of movie watching last year, it was just a little bit, maybe more varied than strictly horror. My top watches so far of this year from January to Verity recently, maybe just the end of April.

Maybe I included some may watches. I'm not sure. This is rewatches, new watches, stuff that I've been meaning to watch or trying to watch for a while. And the two biggies, these two have been on my list for years are Cruising, William Friedkin's controversial and extremely confusing movie with Alpaccino as an undercover cop exploring the leather bar scene in New York City because of these murders that have been happening. I think most horror fans know this, but if you don't know, there is a really weird connection between this film and the Exorcist.

Look that up. It's fascinating because there is a person in the Exorcist who is a convicted murderer. And it's not what Cruising is based on, but there is still an interesting connection there. Not Friedkin's best, but it was pretty fascinating. I can understand the controversy as well as the confusion, and I think some of the confusion is on purpose, but a lot of it isn't because it got hacked to pieces.

Oh that was a bad choice of words. That's tacky. That's really tacky. The other one that I've been wanting to watch for a long time is My Bodyguard. Both of these are on HBO Max, so I was going to include that in my programming alert, but there you go.

I may reiterate that a little bit. Alan ormsby scripted high school kid standing up to bullies. It's got Matt Dillon, Chris makepeace. Oh, I forget the guy's name that's in Full Metal Jacket. I'll have my AI assistant fix that.

That actor's name is Adam Baldwin. Love that movie. Ruth Gordon's in it. Martin Mole used to watch it all the time when it would show up on TV. Probably rented it later on when we got a VCR and or saw it on HBO.

Love it level, love it. Haven't seen it in years. Totally holds up. Great stuff. It is still on HBO Max possibly HBO as well.

Watch it, Moody, I'd like you to meet my bodyguard. And then because of all the Saturday night life stuff for Cambridge and was Sean and watching the show, I had to watch nineteen forty one. Found it. It was streaming on Crackle, my favorite platform, got a lot of ads. It looked great.

I still loved that movie. I think it totally holds up. I don't care when anybody says the critics lambasted it when it came out. It just really really works for me. Probably the first movie that I saw any Saturday at Live people in But yeah, I mean, go listen to that episode if you want to hear me talk more about it.

I didn't double check to see if it was still on Crackle, but I've never seen it, and I have avoided it because you've heard bad things about it. Ignore that and go watch it. Tracking a Jets quarter for a day and a half somewhere of a Fresne. A couple of new films that topped our list, and these were family watches. The Menu with Anya Taylor Joy a favorite of mine, very good.

Also on HBO Max I believe we watched Puss in Boots, the new one together and one of the best animated films I've seen in a great deal of time. We all loved it. That is streaming somewhere currently Peacock or Paramount. I get the two pee streaming services confused. I did watch Skin, a marine that created a lot of buzz when it was playing festivals.

Means it's a fascinating exercise in filmmaking. I wouldn't call it necessarily experimental, but it's pretty interesting. I would only suggest watching it in the middle of the night with all of the lights out to get the full effect, which I didn't do. But yeah, it's interesting. I don't can't really say that I liked it necessarily.

I don't know when I'll get back to it, but it is a fascinating film to experience as a family. We watched the new Christmas horror film Violent and I think we actually watched it after Christmas. Enjoyed that quite a bit so Cleo and I watched Sick, which I don't know if that came up on the last one of these I did or not. I don't think so. I think we watched that during Christmas break and it was good.

I liked it. It's from the guy that wrote the first couple of Scream films. It takes place at the beginning of the pandemic, so that plays a part in it. Ended up really enjoying it. We've watched Megan twice because the first time we watched it it was just the PG thirteen version, and then Peacock or Paramount Plus I'm not sure which one released the unrated version, so we were like, yeah, we'll watch it again, let's see the extra gore and a few things were cut out as well, which was odd.

So I'm not really sure which version I prefer. I'd have to watch him back to back, I think, or in close succession. I caught Coolly High, which I've seen little bits and pieces of TCM plays it pretty regularly. Caught that, and I think my wife and daughter got home and we just ended up finishing out the movie. My wife got inspired by the soundtrack.

I really enjoyed it. During one of our teen movie watches that we seem to have every once in a while, we watched Can't Buy Me Love, and then I suggested Lucas, which was a favorite of mine that played constantly on cable back in the day. You know, if I was you, I wouldn't stick around to see the movie, do you understand? Mean? Luca Plagia early, Corey Hame and Charlie Sheen roles one of those underdog teen movies.

We watched some Wes Anderson and the only one that was new to me was Isle of Dogs, his second stop motion film. I'm ub Wes Anderson Stan. I love his stuff and we've watched I think most of his films as a family, and the new one looks amazing. If he's not your bag, I get it. I get the whole style thing.

The very twee aspect of his films can be off putting for some people, but man, oh man looks like the ship to me. We also watched Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, which was a delight if you want to feel good film, I don't know that you can find much better in recent memory. I believe it's playing on Showtime. And then We also watched as a family Boston Strangler on Hulu with Kira Knightley and Carrie kon Love. Carrie kN it was good, but they cop a lot from Zodiac.

Came singing. That's all I kept thinking about when we were watching it. I want to watch Zodiac, which we did as a family, talk about a perfect movie. And then one other film that I've been trying to watch forever, trying to track down it's never streaming anywhere is The Vanishing with Jeff Bridges and Key for Sutherland. This is a remake and I have seen the original.

It's even harder to track down. I think that might be on Criterion. The American version is, of course americanized with a happy ending. This is one of those interesting cases I think, like Funny Games and maybe some of the Japanese horror films where the original director helmed the American remake as well. I like it because Jeff Bridges is really fucking weird in this, and I really like what they do with the anti Travis character in this.

She has a lot of agency at the end of the film and flips the tables on Jeff Bridges, and I don't recall if that's how the original goes or not. It's been so long since i've seen it. Key for Sutherland's kind of not great in the film, but other than that, I enjoy it. I know that I prefer the original in this case, which isn't always the case. Yeah, it's just been so long since i've seen it.

Okay, Well, that should wrap this up. I don't want to go too long. I'm sure this isn't the most exciting episode that I've ever done, and that's fine if you made it this far, thank you. I mentioned the programming alert at the beginning. So there are a few things out now streaming that I think people should check out well streaming, and then one physical release that people should definitely check out.

So Martin, the Georgia Merrow film is on to be and I decided to check it out yesterday. I didn't watch it, but this is a movie that's on my list of episodes to do, and I actually have guest hosts for it, just haven't gotten around to setting that up. My recording schedule is a little more restrictive right now, and most people that I record with can only record in the evenings, and that's just become very tough for me introduced anyway, that is on my list. That is one of the things that I had written down back when I first started thinking about Wake Up Heavy. Actually, so it is streaming on to be.

It got a release in the UK and I think other territories recently. I don't know when it will ever be released in the US on Blu Ray because the rights holders just want too much money to license the film out here. So it's on t B but it's not in the correct aspect ratio. It's actually supposed to be the four to three aspect ratio like your old TV set. Well for some of you, some of you it may not have been alive when we had Square TVs, but that's the original aspect ratio.

Might still be on YouTube though, because there is no actual release in the States, and this is a case where I would say just go ahead and watch it there, man, I mean, no one's making any money off this here anyway. But it is also on to be. I'd almost I think now that I'm thinking about it, suggests the YouTube version since it is in the correct aspect ratio. Fear No Evil showed up on Shutter probably at the end of last year maybe more recent. This is a movie that I brought up in the past.

It is a movie that I wanted to do a spotlight episode on because it is extremely interesting. I often pair it with Evil Speak as part of that eighties satanic panic where bullied teens summon the devil, or in this case might be the devil or the son of the devil. It's featured pretty heavily in the Queer for Fear documentary series on Shutter. I think shortly after that show came out, Shutter got it because I was thinking, oh, you know, you're showing this pretty extensively on this show, it must mean it's coming back, and it did. I haven't watched it again yet, which is why there's no episode on it, but I planned to, and Evil Speak is still on Shutter, so watch that double feature like I always suggest, Fear, No Evil, It Wicked are coming soon.

And then just today two films popped up. One that I talked about just a little bit less than a year ago because I watched it a little less than a year ago, Poison for the Fairies, a Mexican film. If you want to hear me kind of rave about that, I'll link that may episode from last year another film the same director, Darker than Night. Those both showed up on Shutter today and I started the Poison for the Fairies because I wanted to see if it was the correct aspect ratio, and it is and it looks like a pretty good copy. So I don't know if those were recently released on a new Blu ray or something, but they've got both of those, and I plan to watch Darker than Night.

It's been on my IMDb checklist watch list for I don't know how long. If it's half as fascinating as Poison for the Fairies, then I will most likely dig it. Poison for the Fairies, though, is great. Well, go listen to that and you'll see kind of what I compare it to. I already mentioned The Cruising and My Bodyguard or on HBO Max The Vanishing, if I didn't say that, is also on HBO Max.

Watch all three of those, maybe not at the same time. My Bodyguard and Cruising are very different in tone, and then the big news they're it had been plans for Simon FitzJohn and I to get together again to talk about this. I announced it, I believe on the last Watchlist episode that November episode I did, The Haunting of Julia finally has a physical release. After seven years of Simon trying to sort out the rights issue, that finally came to Fruition last October. They were working on their restoration for it already, so it has a physical release Blu Ray and four K, so in the States it's from Shout Factory.

In the UK it's put out by BFI and in Australia Imprint who did that great bar Fly set that I probably mentioned on that episode, They have it. I don't know what territories each one of these covers. I know that Shout Factor is probably US Canada. I'm not sure how far they extend, if it's just the UK or if it's Europe. So you have multiple opportunities.

If you've got a region fully free player, you can buy all three. I think some of the extras are exclusive to each disc. Each one of the disc comes with a lot of great stuff, and Simon and director Richard Longcrane do a commentary which is available on all three and then all the extra stuff. I know Simon and the director had a showing in the UK, and I'm not sure where it took place. But a showing of the film, so and it'll probably start popping up in theaters.

The restoration wasn't just for getting it out on Blu Ray, but to get the film out to theaters. So it'll be interesting to see where that starts popping up. If you're in a big city that has a great repertory cinema, you might get the chance to see it on film. That would be awesome. I frecking might even make a trip LA if that happens.

Probably not, you know, big plans, but I generally never do anything like that. Do you know what murder is? Oh? The one thing that I forgot to mention early on that has been really frustrating me is the sound of my show. And I have been talking about this on camera Jon was Sean.

I did a little test this past weekend to see how far back it extends. And I'm not just talking about my scratchy voice, because it's already getting scratchy right now and gets gunky and stuff when I talk for too long. There's been this cracking that happens, and I discovered that it pretty much goes all the way back to when I started using Audacity to edit the show. Did figure out what the problem is. I'll get into that on the next episode of Camera Jon was Sean.

I hope I've solved it. That was another thing that was really frustrating me, and that kind of stopped me from wanting to do a lot of recording. Fully, this sounds much better than most recent stuff that I've done, and I would notice that I sounded fine when I was on somebody else's recording, so I was like, Oh, what am I doing that they're not. I figured it was the crappy microphone, the gamer headset that I was using for ease of use. I'm back on my blue snowball, which wasn't the problem but should sound better as well.

Did a couple other things didn't solve it. I solved it immediately after finishing up the last episode of cambridgeon was Sean, and going forward, everything should hopefully sound a whole hell of a lot better. If not, I apologize, but I think that covers kind of what I wanted to talk about this go around. Wish I could say I had something specific planned. If you're craving content.

I did record some episodes with Chris over at the Culture Cast for two Kevin Smith films Red State and Tusk Tusk, which I enjoyed much more this second time watching it. So those are over on the Culture Cast, and it hasn't been like months and months. We did the Knock at the Cabinet episode. I've done those with him. We have the Murder My Death episode that came out in February.

I feel like I've been absent longer and more than is probably really true. There's stuff out there. Go listen to Cambridge and with Sean. Please, I'd love it if we could get some subscribers. We have not even hit two hundred plays across five episodes.

It's fine. It's maybe too niche for a wide audience, but we talk about some fun stuff. Ronnie's a good co host and we have a lot of fun talking together. A new one will be out in June, first Tuesday of June. We should be recording that soon.

Other than that, stay safe, be smart, be careful, and have a great twenty twenty three. Thanks as always for listening, and don't forget anything can happen when you wake up heavy. Oh good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I welcome to the Universal Lampi Theater. Well here it is the late nineteen seventies going on nineteen eighty five.

You don't go into The music we hear today is three programmed electronic disco. We never got a chance to hear master bluesman practicing their craft anymore. By the year two thousand and six. The music known today is the blues willis only in the classical records department of your local public library. So tonight, ladies and gentlemen, while we still can't let us foco from a rock play in Illinois, a Bluesman of Chilly and Tape and Hell Blues, the Blues Brothers Wake Up Heavy is a weirding Way Media podcast.

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