Filmspotting

PV & FRANNY A girl with a glockenspiel. A boy with a guitar. A high school full of weirdos, mascots who may or may not be unhinged, and a mystery that isn’t what anyone thinks it is. A dead-serious love story… that refuses to behave like one. One flier turns into a band. One band turns into obsession. And before they ever play a real set, everything is already ridiculous. ACT TWO If Act One is about starting a band, Act Two is about what happens when everything immediately gets in the way. Franny does what any rational person would do. He writes a love song. Which would be fine… except for the rule. No romance. Ever. And PV means it. What follows is a series of perfectly logical decisions that somehow make everything worse. A love song that says too much. A date that shouldn’t exist. A plan to fix things that only complicates them further. Because if PV won’t date a bandmate, there’s only one solution: Make the competition part of the band. Which works. Until it doesn’t. As alliances shift, rules get enforced, and Franny finds himself deeper in a situation he cannot control, the band becomes something else entirely. Not just music. Not just friendship. Something closer to a test. Of loyalty. Of identity. Of whether you can separate what you create from how you feel. And in the middle of it all, the stakes quietly expand. A school competition that suddenly matters. A partnership that feels more intense than anything either of them expected. And a realization that success might not look the way they imagined it. Act Two is where the band takes shape, the lines get blurred, and the consequences of those rules start to land. Because sometimes the only thing more complicated than love… …is trying to avoid it. 🎭 CAST NARRATOR – Ty Burrell AJAY – Rahm Braslaw JUDY – Samantha Morelos MARIAN – Eileen Fogarty PV – Kensington Tallman RYUZO – O’Neill Monahan FRANNY – Liam Richardson GROUNDSKEEPER – Fred Armisen DALE – Ruben Ray TAP WATER BOTTLED WATER JINGLE – Chris Mann 🎬 PRODUCTION Written by Tommy Wallach Directed by Mark Knell & Jack Levy Executive Produced by Shaan Sharma, Jack Levy, and Mark Knell Table Read is a Manifest Media production. Find The Show: Table Read Podcast See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It’s a strange world.

This is the girl.

Alexander Ullom's It Ends is a daring little piece of microbudget drama about four friends at transition points in their lives, who find themselves in a place where life and death no longer hold any meaning. Whether it’s a film about despair, about the afterlife, about the human condition, or all of the above, is up for discussion this week, as well as how It Ends fits into this current moment in independent horror cinema. After that, we bring Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris back in for Connections to discuss these two films’ respective existential journeys, the baggage their characters are bringing with them, and how each movie uses its genre premise to explore a big central metaphor. Then for Your Next Picture Show, we take a quick look at how Steven Soderbergh’s 2002 version of Solaris compares to Tarkovsky’s. Please share your thoughts about Solaris, It Ends, or anything else in the world of film, by sending an email or voice memo to [email protected], or leaving a short voicemail at (773) 234-9730. Next Pairing: Padraic McKinley’s The Weight and William Friedkin’s Sorcerer This episode is presented by⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Regal Unlimited⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, the all-you-can-watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself in just two visits. Use code NEXTPIC26 for 15% off. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pop, lock, laughing stock.