From the Couch Hole: Pick Your Path and I’ll Pray

Previously on FTCH, the death of Robin Hood at Camp Crystal at the hands of the Wichita lineman on Friday the 13th was revealed because you can see everything. This week included a train trip into Boston and a trip North to Gloucester to acclimate to the environment. We avoided the first snow of the season, but it’s on the way. This week there was an invite for the gold dust woman to ride wild horse nine. Godzilla continued the legacy of monsters like Oreo continued the legacy of salted caramel. Remember, at FTCH, crave the wave.

Pop Culture Ephemera

• Wild Horse Nine (2026) (Directed by Martin McDonagh): “… sometimes you gotta do a terrible thing for the greater good” – Lee. If you take any lesson from this film, it should be that democracy leads to gay which leads to great cheese. Martin McDonagh has reached that level where I only need to know he has a new film, and I avoid knowing as much about the plot as possible. The trailer does give away a little too much of the first act. Even after a few days, I am still basking in the performances of John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell to figure out what the overall symbolism is of the moths and the wild horses. That’s the attraction and strength of his films, the troubled, unique relationship between two older men. Their antagonism leads into discussion of philosophy and religion among others. When I think about the dinosaur discussion later in the film, that Catholic musings might be related to how Chris treats the moths. It’s a powerful story that is beautifully shot on Easter Island. I don’t want to give away anything else. Put this on your watch list before it gets Oscar nominations.

Buy Wild Horse Nine screenplay

• Monarch: Legacy of Monsters – “Cause and Effect” (AppleTV+) (S.2 E.1) (2026): “It’s that guy’s tattoo. Looks like a sea monster to me.” – Young Bill Randa. It took a little more than the “previously on” to get me back up to speed with the series I last left off with a few years ago. The series still struggles with telling the two parallel stories in 2017 and 1957. The 1957 story is much more of the interpersonal relationships of the current-day elder characters, but it still feels like we are hitting pause too often on the 2017 story. That 2017 story, from the jump, makes a transition from the Godzilla-based monsters to Skull Island and King Kong monsters. There are some great monster effects for an episodic series. The continued expansion of background about Monarch and the way the monsters are brought into the story reminds me of the Alien films. I like the new Kong films enough to stay interested in this for at least a few more episodes.

Buy Fleetwood Mac – Rumours

• Fleetwood Mac – “Gold Dust Woman” (from Rumours) (1977): “And is it over now? / Do you know how? / Pick up the pieces and go home.” The final track on Rumours was never released as a single, but it lives on with almost as much popularity as any other song on the album. It’s a wonderfully written song that’s equally about drug abuse and, like every Stevie Nicks song on the album, the undertone is her painful breakup with Lyndsey Buckingham. The music is hypnotic. It builds to the crescendo ending like the whole album has pointed to this one song. It’s that finally recognition that it’s over and time to go home.

• The Invite (2026) (Directed by Olivia Wilde): “I think we only get a few chances at meaningful relationships, usually we move to different people, sometimes we can have a new relationship with the same people.” – Pina. Sometimes a movie is a play. That’s the case here. Set in Seth Rogen and Olivia Wilde’s apartment where they are having neighbors, Edward Norton and Penelope Cruz over for dinner, It’s like a Mamet version of a Neil Simon play. There’s plenty of unnecessary arguing, cursing, and the sexual content is not for the faint of heart. The first two acts function as a dark comedy about neighbors, society, and marriage. There’s a little too much of the feeling that it drops into relationship counseling when it isn’t making fun of the efforts we make to appear “normal” to people around us. The last act after the “invite” loses some of the humor, but the examination of intimacy and self worth is as truthful as very few films dare to be. I’m not sure that the balance is enough to recommend it to others. The first 15 minutes or so needs another edit because I fear that most distracted viewers will just think “this isn’t for me.” There’s some payoff, but it’s a struggle to get there.

Buy The Invite

• Godzilla Minus Zero (2026) (Directed by Takashi Yamazaki): “This next battle is not one waged to the death, but a battle to live for the future.” – Kenji. When they set out to do the sequel to Godzilla Minus One (2023), I imagine the meeting went something like “We have to turn everything up for the follow up.” Well, this R-rated film (a first ever for a Godzilla film) did exactly that. It’s one of the loudest films I’ve ever seen. The seats rumbled as Ghidorah took every step. The people in front of me plugged their ears as the classic Godzilla March played. There was more gore than usual, and the subplots seemed to double. The film takes place five years after the end of the first film. The post-war version of Japan is not too far removed from some of the post-war Kurosawa films. There’s a dogfight in the middle of the film that’s impressive and makes you wonder what the heck Hollywood movies are doing with 10x the budget. The arrival of King Ghidorah to the reboot leaves them plenty of direction to go if there’s any continuation outside of this cycle. It’s a treat to see these film in the theater, just bring some earplugs.

Buy Godzilla Minus One

Best of the Rest

• Just a year after Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, Waylon Jennings brought “Gold Dust Woman” to the Outlaw Country genre. It’s amazing how easy of a transition it is from that Laurel Canyon sound to the Outlaw Country sound. This is one of my favorite Fleetwood Mac covers ever, and this 1978 album might be the pinnacle of the Outlaw Country movement.

• In 1996, Hole recorded a more angry alternative rock version of Fleetwood Mac’s “Gold Dust Woman.” Produced by Ric Ocasek, it played over the end credits of The Crow: City of Angels (1996). The aggressive version lets Courtney Love absolutely own this cover. It leans more on the drug-use themes behind the lyrics than other versions. I think that Fleetwood Mac is one of the hardest groups to cover, but here have been two absolute banger versions.

• A couple of years after the Hole cover, Sister Hazel, another Alternative Rock band, covered “Gold Dust Woman” on Legacy: A Tribute to Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. I don’t find that these tribute albums often produce more than acceptable copycat versions or terribly thought-out radical versions. The Sister Hazel cover managed to make it almost a guitar-driven pop song, and at the same time, it doesn’t lose the anguish of a relationship that has come to an end.

Sunday Morning Tuneage Flashback

• Sunday Morning Tuneage from 11/28/2010, football was terrible for Michigan and the Cowboys. I had to work that Saturday after Thanksgiving but had a good weekend. The Walking Dead (AMC) was ending the first short season and it wasn’t a cliffhanger (I appreciated that). Boardwalk Empire (HBO) was also ending a first season and just picking up steam. The list of the week is one worth taking a second look because I believe I was overly influenced by films I had recently watched at the time.
  
  My #39 Top TV Show of All-Time was Hill Street Blues (NBC) (1981-1987): It didn’t last he whole decade of the ’80s, but in many ways it defined the decade. There’s a clear marker of police procedurals before and after this show. The use of the handheld camera and the multiple storylines made this a groundbreaking show. I love Barney Miller, but that isn’t the same police show as this, it’s barely related other than the city. It’s important to remember how low rated and misunderstood this show was during Season One. It still is one of the lowest-rated shows to ever be renewed for a Season Two. It would become too much of a soap opera for me in the last season or two, but it’s hard to deny the importance of the series on how shows would look going forward. I think this is a pretty fair ranking, if not a little higher.
  
  BEST SPY MOVIES OF ALL-TIME THAT DON’T STAR JAMES BOND (2010)
  • 10. La Femme Nikita (1990) (Directed by Luc Besson)
  • 9. The 39 Steps (1935) (Directed by Alfred Hitchcock)
  • 8. Charade (1963) (Directed by Stanly Donen)
  • 7. True Lies (1994) (Directed by James Cameron)
  • 6. Our Man Flint (1966) (Directed by Daniel Mann)
  • 5. The Manchurian Candidate (1962) (Directed by John Frankenheimer)
  • 4. The Bourne Identity (2002) (Directed by Doug Liman)
  • 3. North by Northwest (1949) (Directed by Alfred Hitchcock)
  • 2. Three Days of the Condor (1975) (Directed by Sydney Pollack)
  • 1. The Bourne Supremacy (2004) (Directed by Paul Greengrass)
    
• BEST SPY MOVIES OF ALL-TIME THAT DON’T STAR JAMES BOND (2026)
  • 10. Mission:Impossible (1996) (Directed by Brian De Palma): It took me a couple of decades to appreciate this first film that launched such an impressive franchise. I didn’t like any of the casting at the time, but it’s hard to find faults in it now.
  • 9. Munich (2005) (Directed by Steven Spielberg): Steven channels his Hitchcock influences into this thriller/spy film about revenge and the internal conflicts of a spy. It’s terribly underrated.
  • 8. North by Northwest (1949) (Directed by Alfred Hitchcock): Does the spy in a spy movie need to know he’s a spy? This has all of the markings of a spy film, and the story is a perfect entry point for people who want to get to know the genre.
  • 7. Notorious (1946) (Directed by Alfred Hitchcock): Just after WWII ended, Hitch made one of the best espionage/spy films of that Post-War era. He intertwines a romance within the spy tropes to set the tone for some of the more existential spy films of the ’50s.
  • 6. The Bourne Identity (2002) (Directed by Doug Liman): I gave this a high rating on the original list, but I haven’t lost much confidence in it since then. In many ways, this showed the Mission:Impossible franchise what they needed to do going forward to compete in the marketplace. This film is a winner because Matt Damon is more believable to me as a spy than Tom Cruise.
  • 5. Mission:Impossible – Fallout (2018) (Directed by Christopher McQuarrie): I feel like this entry reinvigorated the franchise that refused to die with a tight plot. It’s too hard to keep topping yourself with more crazy stunts (ask the James Bond team), so you have to revert back to what always works in a spy thriller, a good plot. This had a time-based need to solve the mystery that made it one of my favorites.
  • 4. The Lady Vanishes (1938) (Directed by Alfred Hitchcock): He was still finding his directing voice in England despite creating so many popular films. It’s my favorite subgenre of this type of film, the mystery story inside a spy thriller.
  • 3. The 39 Steps (1935) (Directed by Alfred Hitchcock): I don’t know that I’m familiar with any substantial spy films before 1935. This created a subgenre that Hitch would own for decades, the man reluctantly drawn into a spy story that he is attempting to understand.
  • 2. Three Days of the Condor (1975) (Directed by Sydney Pollack): I tend to forget how taut this film is when I go a few years without watching it. I can see so many elements of Hitchcock in the Redford character. It’s got elements of Coppola in that post-Watergate distrust of the government. Any spy film where the main character is stalked by Max Von Sydow is worthy of a watch. This film continues to entertain upon multiple viewings.
  • 1. The Conversation (1974) (Directed by Francis Ford Coppola): The post-Watergate era gave us some amazing spy films. The enemy was no longer a foreign country, but the spy film could be coming from within. It created some introspective and existential elements that hadn’t existed in the Cold War. Francis combines this paranoia with religion and privacy issues to create a movie that still resonates today. This film is lost among Coppola’s masterpieces.

Buy The 39 Steps (Criterion Collection)

1976 in Review

• November – Amazing Spiderman #162 (Marvel Comics): Cover by Ross Andru. Written by Len Wein. Art by Ross Andru. The Punisher has targeted Spiderman and the Nightcrawler thinking one of the two has framed him for sniper crimes. It turns out to be Jigsaw. In typical superhero fashion, the three team up to defeat Jigsaw in the end.
• November 12 – Ballantine Books published a book called Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker. The first ever pop-culture mention of the franchise. Released to generate interest in the movie. Writing credit was given to George Lucas, who wrote the script, but the book was ghostwritten by Alan Dean Foster.
• November 27 – TV Guide. Cover art by Charles Santore. Starsky and Hutch was in the middle of a highly successful second season on ABC. The airwaves were as full of violent police shows as they had been at any point in television history. This show often featured the characters facing moral issues and getting social justice as much as criminal justice. The violence and weekly car chases were part of the argument against violence on television causing later seasons to have very toned-down stories.

What the Hell Did I Put in My Mouth?

“Wake up in the morning
See your sunrise loves to go down, down
Lousy lovers pick their prey
But they never cry out loud, cry out” – Stevie Nicks