Hot Date with Dan and Vicky – Details, episodes & analysis

2000's Born Romantic is a little seen British comedy about dating in the Y2k era.  Chock a block with UK stars including Craig Ferguson, Catherine McCormack, Jimi Mistry, Adrian Lester, Olivia Williams, David Morrissey and Jane Horrocks, the film follows a group of lonely hearts finding love and laughter with a London salsa club as the center of their romantic universe. 

Dan and Vicky discuss the rarely seen film and how we find love and romance in the modern world.  They also talk about some recently seen items like The Rule of Jenny Penn, Freaky Tales, Hell of a Summer, The Amateur and MAX's medical drama The Pitt. 

Listen for their thoughts on finding community at the movies, remembering 9/11, and King Lear in Delaware!

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Based on the Stephen King short story, Oz Perkins The Monkey tells the story of a wind up toy monkey that haunts the lives of twin brothers Hal and Bill.  Christian Convery plays the twins as teen boys and Theo James plays them as adults.  Produced by James Wan, the film also stars Tatiana Maslany, Sarah Levy, Adam Scott, Elijah Wood and Perkins himself in the role of the boys' eccentric uncle.

Usually dipping back in time to find films, Dan and Vicky choose a Hot Date from 2025 to offer a look at a recent release.  They also discuss lots of recently seen like The Penguin Lessons, Snow White, Death of a Unicorn, Opus, Peacock series The Americas, the TCM series The Power of Film, and Dan's poignant reaction to Ru Paul's Drag Race. 

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The 2002 film Home Room imagines the unlikely friendship between two survivors of a school shooting - women from very different backgrounds united in tragedy.  Busy Philipps and Erika Christensen play Alicia and Deanna respectively and Victor Garber is the police investigator hoping the two will help answer questions about the deceased shooter.  With Columbine fresh in the world's memory, director/writer Paul F. Ryan attempts to examine the effect a mass shooting can have on the community and the people in it. 

Dan and Vicky discuss the little seen Home Room along with lots of recently seen like Salem's Lot 2024, The Wild Robot, Rosemary's Baby prequel Apartment 7A, Joker: Folie a Deux, Exhibiting Forgiveness, Civil War and The Substance.

Watch, like and subscribe to the pilot for Dan's web series West 40s below.  

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The Me First Decade.  The Decade of Greed.  The Yuppie Decade.  There are many names for the 1980's.  But the decade also represented an eclectic one for movies.  It was the decade that Hollywood really leaned in to the blockbuster after the successes of Jaws and Star Wars in the 70's.  It was the decade of bad hair and bad fashion.  It was the decade the film tastes of your Hot Date podcast hosts took hold.  

So for their next Top Ten episode, Dan and Vicky countdown their lists of their favorite movies of the 1980's.  No surprise, Dan's list is horror heavy and Vicky's list is heavy on nostalgia for 80's music, fashion and style.  

Have a listen and leave us some feedback or star rating.  Check out our website at www.hotdatepod.com.

For 1972's Baron Blood, director Mario Bava brought together the talents of some of the era's greatest genre stars and designers.  German actress Elke Sommer played the female lead and would do so again in Bava's Lisa and the Devil.  Future Oscar winner Carlo Rambaldi provided the gory make-up.  Bava fave Stelvio Cipriani composed the sometimes jaunty, sometimes dramatic music.  And American Joseph Cotten stepped in when Vincent Price turned down the pivotal role of Alfred Becker. 

Dan and Vicky discuss the 1972 campy Italian horror film along with lots of recently seen like Hamilton on Disney+; docs I'll Be Gone in the Dark and Scream, Queen; films Eurovision Song Contest, Blow Up, The Yakuza, The Alphabet Murders, Come to Daddy and The Hunt.  

Listen to Hot Date 109: Baron Blood and leave us some feedback.  Check out www.hotdatepod.com. 

For it's assured visual style and performances from Ray Liotta and Jason Patric, Joe Carnahan's Narc was the talk of the 2002 Sundance Film Festival, winning the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and putting Carnahan securely on Hollywood's radar.  The film, co-produced by Liotta and his wife and snapped up by Tom Cruise and partner Paula Wagner for distribution, was set in Detroit but shot mostly in Toronto.  

Dan and Vicky look at the gritty procedural along with an eclectic mix of recently seen including Soylent Green, Lady Sings the Blues, 2019 slasher Haunt, 1937's Topper, Saturn 3, Amicus thriller And Now the Screaming Starts and a whole bunch of early Hitchcock. 

Give Hot Date 108: Narc a listen and leave us some feedback.  Check out our website at www.hotdatepod.com. 

Our original episode 107 was lost to the sound gods so we've kept the Hot Date chosen at the end of that podcast and move forward with the Vanity Fair adaptation Becky Sharp from 1935 starring Miriam Hopkins and directed by Rouben Mamoulian.  The film was the very first to employ the three strip Technicolor process which allowed for the full spectrum of color to be represented on film. 

Your podcast hosts, recording remotely after weeks of sound issues, check in on each other during the continued pandemic and recent social uprisings.  In addition to Becky Sharp, they share their thoughts on things they've been watching including the Young Vic production of Streetcar Named Desire with Gillian Andersen, documentaries on Roger Vadim and Jane Fonda, and films including Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Get In, League of Gentleman, The Crimson Kimono, Tea and Sympathy, and The Lovebirds.

Hot Date 107: Becky Sharp.  Have a listen and leave us feedback on our social media.  Check out our website at hotdatepod.com.

Please excuse our sound issues during this episode.  We hope it doesn't detract from your enjoyment of it.

Not your typical romantic comedy, director Goran Dukic's Wristcutters: A Love Story, based on Etgar Keret's short story "Kneller's Happy Campers," imagines an afterlife reserved for suicide victims trying to find meaning and acceptance.  Starring Patrick Fugit, Shea Whigham, Shannyn Sossaman and Tom Waits, the film was the darling of the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and was released nationwide in October of 2007.

Still in social isolation, Dan and Vicky discuss this eccentric film along with plenty of recently seen including Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, The Rise of Skywalker, Sounder, The Mind's Eye, Swingers, Mad Love and The Act of Killing.  

Stay home and stay with us.  Listen to Hot Date 106: Wristcutters and leave us some feedback.  Check out our website at www.hotdatepod.com. 

Despite the success of his Daphne Du Maurier adaptation Rebecca, Alfred Hitchcock thought the film too sentimental and romantic and longed to return to the type of sharp thriller that had made his reputation around the world.  With 1940's he found that film in Foreign Correspondent, a globe hopping World War II adventure that starts with a horrifying murder on the steps of the Amsterdam Parliament and ends with one of the most visceral plane crashes ever captured on film.

Dan and Vicky get another crack at discussing one of their favorite directors and it's pretty much a love fest.  In addition to Foreign Correspondent our socially isolating hosts pick over some of their recently seen including Color Out of Space, Autopsy, Lisa and the Devil, The World, the Flesh and the Devil, Dragged Across Concrete, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Key Largo, The Platform and some Shudder horror exclusives.  

You can't go anywhere so travel with us to 1940's Europe with Hot Date 105: Foreign Correspondent.  Check out our website at www.hotdatepod.com and leave us some feedback on your favorite podcast feeds.

It's hard to imagine any cast being better than the one director Jean Cocteau eventually assembled for his 1950 loose film adaptation of the Orpheus myth.  But there are stories that Cocteau offered the part of the princess, played to icy perfection by Maria Casares, to Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. Both turned him down.  French actor Jean-Pierre Aumont also claimed that Cocteau had him and his wife Maria Montez in mind for the leads, a claim that the director refutes.  And there must have been some question how the casting of Jean Marais as Orpheus and Edouard Dermit as Cegeste would work since they were, respectively, Cocteau's once and current lovers!  

Dan and Vicky discuss this classic of the French New Wave along with some of their social distance viewing including Star Wars movies on Disney +, Briarpatch on USA, lots of TCM movies like Badlands, Bullitt, All That Heaven Allows and Autumn Sonata and and the plays One Man, Two Govunors and Much Ado About Nothing.  

We're locked down for another Hot Date so let Episode 104: Orpheus transport you to the Underworld and beyond.  Leave us some feedback and check out our website at www.hotdatepod.com.