Film Junk Podcast Episode #557: Pee-wee’s Big Holiday

Posted by on March 22nd, 2016   Filed under: Featured, Film Junk Podcast

podcast557

0:00 – Intro / Frank’s 4K Problems
32:30 – Review: Pee-wee’s Big Holiday
59:55 – Headlines: Indiana Jones 5 is Happening, Sausage Party Trailer, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children Trailer
1:22:10 – Other Stuff We Watched: Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Big Top Pee-wee, Finders Keepers, Man of Steel, The Survivalist, Pineapple Express, Zootopia, Universal Soldier, Love, Jafar Panahi’s Taxi, Dragon’s Den
2:03:45 – Junk Mail: Letterboxd App, Chumlee’s Arrest, Best Steve Martin Films, Comedies That Get Lost in Translation, Cult Movies, Is UHD the Future?
2:35:10 – This Week on DVD and Blu-ray
2:40:10 – Outro

» Download the MP3 (76 MB)
» View the show notes
» Rate us on iTunes!

Subscribe to the podcast feed:
RSS iTunes

Donate via Paypal:




 Recurring Donation $2/Month:


  • Flo Lieb

    30 minutes of 4k problems? Holy moley!

  • Indianamcclain

    Wait, no conversation about the X-Men trailer?

  • GiveUsDoctorJay

    I know this podcast exists mostly outside the realm of video, but a live recording of Dr. Jay going to BullFrank’s to diagnose his AV setup would be something I’d love to watch

  • Sam

    About bringing back Short Round for the next Indiana Jones, one of the Mamo Matts pushed forth an interesting idea. He likened it to the Creed scenario in passing the torch to someone younger that could theoretically hit a larger/different demographic. They proposed bringing someone like Stephen Chow (coming off a huge hit in China with The Mermaid) to play an older Short Round.

    I don’t think it would ever happen, but I think going a slightly different direction with someone like Chow could be interesting.

  • devolutionary

    Yeah I hear ya. You’d assume Dax Gordine would want Ernie Reyes Jr in the role (Keeeno!) but I hear he currently has health issues.

  • I don’t think Frank wants to risk confirming his 1D10T errors.

  • Jason

    This is a great idea. They could even shoot it in 4K (I’m assuming Jay has the capabilities to do this ;) )

  • devolutionary

    Or PEBFAT (problem exists between Frank and technology).

  • parapa

    You guys seriously need to watch Universal Soldier Regeneration and Day of Reckoning, waaaay better than the original, heavy John Carpenter vibes. It would be way up Jay’s alley.

  • Jr

    Strange Brew isn’t just a Canadian thing. I’m from the southern US and everyone who has seen it has found it hilarious.

  • Sam

    Saw Strange Brew for the first time right before the episode to follow along and enjoyed it a lot. I’m from California (Orange County)

  • Carlos Gonzalez

    I like to imagine Frank buying a bag of chips and then just going wild on them like a bull in a china shop.

  • Adam C.

    Just as a quick correction… Frank kept talking about “Tom Skerritt” during his talk about ‘BIG TOP PEE-WEE’. If I’m not mistaken, I believe that it was actually Kris Kristofferson that he meant to refer to.

  • gordzilla

    Jay having an evil twin documtarian named J.Clay Tweel had me dying.
    I also love when Jay throws a little shade on Campea and his crew

  • Andrija

    Frank doesn’t give Tarantino automatic five stars? What a joke.

  • Anyone else thinking that maybe Frank’s A/V setup was boycotting him?

  • Lori Cerny

    And I loved every minute.

  • JC

    I dont think Frank is the problem at all, why the hell cant TV manufacturers come up with a decent interface that recognizes whats attached to it and let you decide what you want to watch.

  • I’ve never ever heard of having to switch both the input on your TV and the receiver. Everything should switch with one click of a button.

  • Nobody

    Jay, you may not own any movies from Taiwan, but adding Edward Yang’s towering 4-hour masterpiece “A Brighter Summer Day” would be a beautiful addition to anyone’s Criterion collection, no doubt.

    If anyone has the slightest bit of interest in Asian cinema and isn’t familiar with Yang, one of its greatest filmmakers, do yourself a favor and consider picking this up. It’s something of a miracle that it’s finally received a proper home video release after 25 years. Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Foundation restored and screened it, but even then some years passed before the Criterion gods announced it was coming out. It’s both epic and intimate and fully justifies its long runtime (same thing could be said for Yang’s “Yi Yi”).

    Sadly, Yang still seems somewhat underappreciated,or at least underexposed. The last project he was working on was an animated movie with Jackie Chan, which seemed like a very surprising but intriguing collaboration.

  • Nobody

    In a number of respects, I wish big Hollywood action movies were more like those two John Hyams “Universal Soldier” sequels and some of the other VOD work from Scott Adkins, Michael Jai White and Isaac Florentine. It may not sound like high praise, but I think Dolph Lundgren’s finest performance can be found in “Universal Soldier: Regeneration.”

  • Sam

    Come on now. He’s only given 8 of Tarantino’s 9 films 5 stars!! Definitely not automatic.

  • Jared from Subway

    Completely agree with this sentiment. Yang has such a beautiful filmography it’s great to see it getting the treatment it deserves. If anyone enjoys A Brighter Summer Day, I highly recommend his all his other works, specifically The Terrorizers, all are masterpieces though.

  • Mark

    Was I the only one hoping Frank would burst into song while discussing his 4K problems?

  • Kenneth Serenyi

    Film Junk has a Youtube channel where they used to film things like this. They also used to film their podcast on ustream.

  • Frank, I have to ask, are you losing uncompressed audio when you run the HDMI to the TV then pass the audio from the TV to the receiver? If this turns out to be the case I have to disregard ALL of your blu-ray manifesto comments.

    Please let us know how you get the audio from your blu-ray player (old or 4k) to your receiver. If I’m off base in my thinking you can hit me with a MIB ‘Puh-leeese’

  • Kenneth Serenyi

    Did you guys mention which Premiums you were leaning towards? I would love for you guys to do a show on Jackie Chan films with ‘Police Story’ being an accessible series with some “trilogy cred”.

  • LordAwesome

    Do a Noir premium. You know you want to Sean.

  • Nobody

    I was able to find The Terrorizers on DVD, but I have no idea if it’s even possible to track down his other films, unfortunately.

  • DatNiggaDave

    I still buy and prefer CD’s. I listen to CD’s in the car. I listen to CD’s at home. Streaming or whatever has it’s place; it’s useful to try out albums I might want to buy for a start. But why would you want to pay for a lower quality thing to download and have to keep on a phone or hard drive in hopes that it never breaks when you can own an actual product in your hands that will last for decades if taken care of properly. I do get why people have moved on from CD’s but Frank is right in that the people who still buy physical media are essentially doing so for the same reasons people will buy Ultra HD or Blu-ray.

  • schizopolis

    For me, thumbs up on the FJ newsletter. Would’ve been nice to have a “click here” for the FJ 500 usb stick.

  • Bill
  • parapa

    Regeneration also has some of the best action of Van Damme’s entire career, not to mention great direction and an awesome synth score

  • Jay Cheel

    Vinyl.

  • Lisa

    A Jackie Chan premium could be pretty great.

  • Sean

    Jackie Chan is definitely on the docket for this year, maybe whenever Skiptrace comes out.

  • DatNiggaDave

    I agree and I buy a lot of vinyl too but my car doesn’t have a record player and I have a very nice car with a very nice stereo. Streaming some shit off my phone or spending forever constantly ripping and loading/deleting albums isn’t the best way for me to appreciate my music when I can just pop a CD in. I get your point of course but there is absolutely a market for physical media still and the idea of just dumping it all because I can rip it to a HDD which can break at any time is kind of insanity to me.

  • DatNiggaDave

    I saw that too and I was very happy. Just like I was happy when Adele, who I have no appreciation for musically, refused to allow her latest album on streaming services and as a result sold a fuckton of CD’s. It’s far better for the artists if they pursue physical media and makes their music a far less disposable commodity.

  • scoobydelite

    Just want to echo what parapa & Nobody said about Universal Soldier Regeneration and Day of Reckoning, both are very good action films. One could watch them without seeing the previous films also, they stand on their own.

  • Sam

    How about for April, to tie in with The Jungle Book, the long talked about classic Disney animated films premium? A lot of them are incredibly short so you could do a decent chunk, if Jay is up for it. Dax could be all in.

    Trouble is there’s so many damn movies. So you could do early classics and then future down the line do up the 70s-90s. Though I would also would like to see a premium of the mid-tier ones like Great Mouse Detective, Adventures of Ichabod, Black Cauldron, Sword in the Stone, Oliver & Company, etc…

  • Lior

    I still buy CD’s very rarely, but not because they’re CD’s but because I buy albums rarely. Owning music on physical media has the same advantages of owning movies on physical media: It’s an actual product you can put on your shelf to represent your taste. It has artwork and liner notes. I sometimes buy albums on itunes and while it’s remarkably easy the downside is your new album is just a yellow folder. While I do rip almost every CD I buy, and I’ll listen to it on a physical player at least a couple of times, I mostly like to know I have a physical version of it sitting on a shelf for the reasons mentioned above.

    Having said that, If I could get a nice vinyl set-up I will definitely focus on buying vinyl when possible.

  • Lior

    Two great Steve Martin flicks I can think of are LA Story (which he also wrote) and All of Me, where he plays Lily Tomlin. No, really.

  • Jonnie123

    Agree with Frank about Bowfinger! Eddie Murphy crossing the freeway was genius ‘Heavenly father, HEAVENYLY FATHER!’

  • Matt the Kiwi

    Thank god it’s not just me. I’m a self confessed dinosaur who likes to collect things so still buy quite a lot of CD’s. It does border on obsession (as with my blu-ray confession) so I have a long list of justifications but even I’m not sure how genuine they are. I do know that love to sit with the case in my hand when listening to an album from start to finish (so much the better if the lyrics are in there) so it is a totally different to consume music for me. And yes, would love it if I could switch all those CD’s to vinyl AS WELL (not instead of) but I don’t have the money. Other people ditching CD collections has played havoc with my shelving space!

  • Jared from Subway

    Most of them of tough to find, but all of them are posted to download online on various blogs and random sites if you have the time to look.