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It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.

You believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being.

We may be true with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Welcome to the next picture show, a movie the week podcast devoted to a classic film

on how it shaped our thoughts on a recent release. I'm Scott Tobias here

with Genevieve Kosky and Keith Phipps. Tasha Robinson is out busting a few kneecaps, but we suspect her

days of freelance gangsterism may be short-lived. For our next two episodes, we're talking about two

films about gamblers who are in way over their heads with a criminal element. These movies

really hit home from me right now. Let me tell you. What's wrong, Scott? I'm in big trouble. Remember our producers episode when I said I was going to write the worst feature ever written in order to collect a kill fee? That didn't work out too well. So I decided to bet everything I had on the New York Knicks making the playoffs this year. Oh, God, Scott. Why? They're one of their worst teams in basketball. They haven't made the

playoffs in seven years. Well, you know, I figured they're in the Eastern Conference. Pretty

much everybody in the Eastern Conference makes a playoffs, right? Orlando made the playoffs last year.

But they've got four power forwards and no point guards. The best you can say about

the Knicks is that their lottery pick is fitting in well with the team because he sucks. This is

definitely knowledge that I have. Hey, I thought they were due and I got great odds. Now unless

Marcus Morris shoots them out of the gutter, I can lose everything. My house, my checking account,

the kids college fund, my Mike husband Vinnie Blu-ray. I'm really hoping Vinny the Shark will be reasonable about this. Vin the Shark is not a promising name, Scott. Yeah, you know, truth be told, he has been a little moody lately. But I have a plan to win it all back. If this week's next picture show episodes top WTF with Mark Marin and the iTunes ratings,

then I get to keep my face. So we really have to lead with a box office sensation. Genevieve, what's the first movie on this week's pairing? Uh, the killing of a Chinese bookie. Was that a big hit? It was pulled from distribution after a week. Is it at least connected with this bit we're doing? Oh, indeed it is. Bad bets with bad people are a running theme of our next two episodes about gamblers at the end of their rope. In John Cassavetti's The Killing of a Chinese bookie, Ben Gazzara stars as a sunset strip nightclub owner, who settles a seven-year debt to the mob and immediately goes deep in the hole again. With his Berlus cows at risk, he's pressured into settling his new debt by pulling off a hit that's far more treacherous than he realizes. The life or death urgency of Gazzara's situation is mirrored by Adam Sandler and uncut gems, the new film by Josh and Benny Safdi. With his own fate in the hands of shady criminals, Sandler's jewelry store owner scrambles to dig himself out of a hole, much like the brilliant opal that's been dug up from a mine in Africa. He's hoping the opal, along with a couple big bets, will spare him a grim fate. This week, we'll look at the killing of a Chinese bookie, John Cassavetti's cult favorite about a self-styled ladiesman and nightclub artist artiste who sent on a doom-filled odyssey.

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