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This week on Fabulous Film & Friends, have we got a treat for you!

We’re talking 1985’s To Live and Die in L.A., directed by the legendary William Friedkin and starring William Petersen, Willem Dafoe, John Pankow, Darlanne Fluegel, Debra Feuer, John Turturro, and Dean Stockwell. And if you look closely, you’ll notice Gary Cole as a credit-card-forging stooge. But he was not listed in the credits of the movie.

Speaking of not listed in the credits, joining me today is a guest we haven’t had on the Triple F since 2022, Cinematographer, AC, Handyman, Grandpa and all-around terrific friend and colleague, the one and only Vance Piper.

Before we hit the freeway driving the wrong way doing 90, the synopsis:

In To Live and Die in LA, Richard Chance, a cocky, take-no-prisoners, rule-flouting Secret Service agent vows to take down Rick Masters, a dangerous counterfeiter, after the artist-turned-forger kills his partner. Chance drags Vukovich, a by-the-book colleague into the hunt that quickly stops looking like law enforcement and starts increasingly appearing like a personal vendetta crossing the line into the criminal. Masters’ trail runs through fake money, small time hoods, big time power players and dirty deals within a gritty and hauntingly unforgettable Los Angeles of the mid 1980’s.

What secrets will we uncover about the making of this beguiling film?

Find out!

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This week on Fabulous Film & Friends we still have a touch of spider mania after reviewing Brand New Day, so we’re swinging full-time into what I consider the best Spider-Man films, we’re talking 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man and the 2014 sequel The Amazing Spider-Man 2, both directed by Marc Webb and starring Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Sally Field, and Denis Leary, with Martin Sheen and Rhys Ifans rounding out the cast in the first movie with the addition of Jamie Foxx, Dane DeHaan, and Paul Giamatti in the second.

Before I begin, I have a bit of a super villain-ish monlogue to rant at y’all.


As a lifelong Spidey fan, I hated the Raimi /Maguire films, while the rest of the world flocked to them and gushed, so I felt alone in preferring the second film.

When I first saw ASM 2 in 2014 I argued it was the best representation of the character to date, then I bought the blue ray disc and noticed every awkward story beat and flaw on the rewatch, and quietly forgot about it… until I put it on again recently and was inspired all over again because of Garfield, Stone and Field’s human and believable takes, as well as with that red-hot swinging web action. Turns out there’s a vocal chunk of fans online feel the same way, so let’s dig into both movies and figure out why this version still has such a fierce little cult.

My guest today is the always dependable Professor Joe Fields, a reminder, Joe’s not only a college teacher, author and deep thinker, he’s the nephew of the owner of one of the flagship comic book shops in the San Francisco Bay area and country at large. So he knows his comic book crap.

Before we take a three-story leap up towards the heights of Spidey-dom, the synopes:

In the The Amazing Spider-Man, loner, skateboarding smart kid and high-schooler Peter Parker investigates the mysterious disappearance of his parents and ends up bitten by a genetically altered spider at Oscorp, gaining superhuman abilities. As he learns to control his new powers he becomes Spider-Man, then must stop his father’s former partner, a one-armed scientist Dr. Curtis Connors, aka The Lizard, from unleashing a serum that threatens to turn the entire Big Apple into a city of lizards. Along the way Pete falls for classmate Gwen Stacy, the daughter of Police Captain George Stacey, while grappling with the cost of responsibility.

Two years later, in the Amazing Spider-Man 2 Peter has just graduated high school and is operating full-time as Spider-Man, who has now become as big a NY institution as the Naked Cowboy, balancing daily street-level heroics with his on-again, off-again relationship with Gwen Stacy. Oscorp’s secrets continue to surface as a series of accidents creates new threats: Electro, a former employee who gains electrical powers; Harry Osborn, Peter’s childhood friend whose search for a cure turns him into the Green Goblin; as well as the armored Rhino. As Peter confronts these villains a larger conspiracy surrounding his parents and Oscorp grows increasingly clear.

Are these the best Spider-Man adventures to be put on the silver screen? Find out!

Watch the video podcast on Youtube:

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Mid-2026: it was a Tom Holland and Zendaya summer and now we’re left in its wake, pondering two of the year’s most anticipated cinematic spectacles starring those marvelous newlyweds and their intensely motor-mouthed friend Jon Bernthal where each film was tasked with living up to enormous hopes and sky-high expectations and we’re wondering if those impossible expectations were met.

We’re talking about Christopher Nolan’s IMAX epic, The Odyssey starring Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Zendaya, Jon Bernthal, John Leguizamo, Samantha Morton, and Charlize Theron.

And Sony Marvel’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which came out two weeks after The Odyssey, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton and starring Tom Holland, Zendaya, Jacob Batalon, Jon Bernthal, Sadie Sink and Mark Ruffalo.

My guests today are series regulars Roseanne Caputi, Dr. David Johnson DMD, and after nearly a year-long hiatus from the Triple F, Professor Joe Field,

Before we remove our critical inhibitors, the synopses:

In The Odyssey, Troy has fallen, and a battle-weary king Odysseus sets sail for home — only to be thrown into a decade-long nightmare of cyclops, sirens, giants, gods, and spells, every sojourn testing how far a man will go to see his family again. Back in Ithaca, Odysseus’ wife Penelope and his son Telemachus fight a losing battle against the suitors who have overrun their palace, as the two desperately cling to the idea that Odysseus will one day finally return.

In Spider-Man: Brand New Day, it’s been four years after the world forgot Peter Parker ever existed, and he swings through New York as Spider-Man full-time with no one left who knows his identity. Stressed induced loneliness cause his Spider-Powers to accelerate and he seeks the help of both Bruce Banner aka The Hulk and Frank Castle aka the Punisher to keep his powers under control and to keep the city safe as a terrifying new force arrives — a threat so powerful and so personal it may be the greatest foe Spider-Man has ever faced.

Do these films speak to each other on a deeper level — or are they simply two big summer movies that happened to star the same people?

Find out!

Watch the vido podcast on Youtube:

https://youtu.be/9s-kY8IIGnQ