A surprisingly personal and tender show, dealing with some difficult subject matter comes out of this criminally forgotten 1989 Ron Howard family comedy drama.

It was a staple of my childhood and looking back, it seems like I took on board a great deal of the life lessons experienced by the amazing ensemble cast of the Buckman Megafamily, which include Steve Martin, Mary Steenburgen, Diane Wiest, Rick Moranis, Harleyy Kozak, Tom Hulce, Martha Plimpton, Jason Robards and stellar performances from both a young Keanu Reeves and Joaquin Phoenix.

Whether you're a parent yourself or not, you had someone appointed with the task of looking after you when you were a child, and whether they did a good, bad or mixed bag of a job, chances are you're going to find something in here to relate to. Definitely one to listen to when you can give it time to absorb, and my god, watch this movie!

This is the best thing Marvel have ever made out of X-Men. That is not hyperbole. Stack up every comic, every animated series, every video game and every movie, and only a handful even come close to this level of both crafted quality and ferocious realisation of evolved central themes.

The original X-Men '92 show ran all the way up to September 1997 with the 76th episode "Graduation Day". The show had suddenly plummeted in quality after a really solid first four seasons when the budget was slashed and the animation switched to the lowest bidder studio possible. Marvel were broke and this was a sorry end to their flagship animated series which in the 90s was really only rivalled by Batman and Radioactive Spider-Man in terms of cultural footprint. That theme song lives in our head rent-free and the MCU have been teasing us with the jingle for years now.

However, this follow-up series that requires no prior knowledge to appreciate, hit the ground sprinting with a voice cast that were a mix of the familiar and powerful new performers, stunning hand-drawn animation and an uncompromising, fearless confrontation of the world that hates and fears mutants, holding up a black mirror to our own.

Guest:

Chris Finik @finmonster09

This is a commissioned episode for Chris Finik, and Alejandra Vargas (both of whom guest on this show) as well as Sarah Montgomery and Self.

The remnants of the shattered team at Telltale, seminal adventure game developers of the 2000s and 2010s return as AdHoc Studio with one of the very best of its type. The premise is simple enough, almost rote by today's standards; In a world of superpowered criminals private security firm SDN send out problem-solving metahumans. The A-Team are all Avengers-Level heroes that America can be proud of, but we don't get to interact with them.

Instead, we as the weary Robert Robertson III, last in his family to wear the Mecha Man suit, have been tasked with coordinating the Z-Team, a bunch of grumpy, rude losers circling the drain and all on the cusp of being fired.

What we do and say as Robert, the people we grow closer with, and the jobs we send them out to do will be the difference between a complete disaster and perhaps a group of friends who do something right for once in their wretched lives.

It's fantastic!

Guests:

Alejandra Vargas

Chris Finik

Finally, after twenty years of half-assed attempts (thirty if you count the Roger Corman production never intended to see the light of day) to bring Marvel's First Family to the big screen, they actually nailed it... mostly.

First Steps delivers not just the Silver Age superheroes, but the era itself, in a gorgeous, memorable, hopeful vision of the Kennedy-Era 1960s (one where racism has been dealt with, and women don't struggle to be taken seriously). This alternate Earth of 828 is put in jeopardy when a version of Galactus (who isn't just a big angry CG cloud) comes calling.

Setting aside a dedicated section to air our misgivings over two crucial factors, (wherein Sharon comes up with one subtle but significant story change that blows me away) this episode brings us closer to Doomsday, where these fantastic folks will play prominent roles.

It's not often we talk about audiodramas on here, the last one I recall that wasn't made by me was the phenomenal World War Z in 2011. THESE three were what I needed in order to care about Star Wars again. Scholar Ian Doescher published the first three (of what would expand to nine and beyond) in lovely hardback book form between 2013 and 2014 envisioning how The Star Wars Original Trilogy would have sounded had it been written by William Shakespeare. But the audio versions we had not listened to until recently, and we absolutely love them.

On this show you will be transported to a galaxy far, far away, one dimension over from the version we're all familiar with, where Rebels and Imperials alike speak in iambic pentameter and soliloquise their innermost thoughts and motivations. It's funny as hell, often rather disarmingly touching and helps garner a fresh perspective on these immortal tales.

For this episode we were lucky enough to be able to bring in stand-up comedian and 18th Century history nut Jenny Zigrino. We gave Jenny free reign on the choice of movie to talk about and she went for her favourite; the story of the greatest composer who ever lived, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. This masterpiece, directed by Milos Foreman and based on a 1979 stage play swept the Oscars in 1985 and if you've never had the pleasure you'll soon find out why.

You can find Jenny's standup material easily on YouTube, and check out her website where she is currently fundraising for her next show: https://www.jennyzigrino.com/ It was an absolute pleasure to have her on.

And for fans of irevenrent sexy alternate history I also showcase one of my own personal favourite projects, The Princess Thieves, the audiodrama of which can be found here: https://newcentury.bandcamp.com/

Guest: Jenny Zigrino

The 1994 film that ate The Shawshank Redemption's lunch, dinner, supper, breakfast and second-breakfast at the Oscars. A deeply polarising melodrama recounting several decades of American Boomer history, showcasing cutting-edge face-mapping technology that looked unintentionally unsettling even then, and laying down confused messages along the way.

We attempt to read Gump fairly, consulting the direction the source book took, and taking into consideration Robert Zemekis' own views on the world, in particular focusing on the mostly-glimpsed journey of Forrest's running mate, Jenny.

One of the most passionately beloved movies of the 1990s, and indeed all of film history, it is peculiar that while you will meet people who haven't seen this film, you will never meet people who don't like it and gleefully tell you so. The fact that when Shawshank first emerged it was largely ignored or made fun of for having a convoluted name, and lost almost every award it was nominated for to Forrest Gump (coming next week) is remarkable in retrospect.

It really only hit and became abidingly popular when it reached television screens. Perhaps the story itself does not suit being sat in a cinema with a lot of strangers feeling awkward and emotionally charged over this prison drama, and it in fact calls for a more intimate, quiet level of attention

One thing is for sure, it made for one hell of a podcast, and we were lucky enough to get back Ryan Estrada, our man in South Korea who once again holds a deep connection with this very special movie: www.ryanestrada.com

Guest: Ryan Estrada

Truman Burbank lives a charmed existance, residing on a little island town that is distinctly old fashioned and twee. In reality, Truman's every movement is being broadcast to the viewing planet, and has been since his infancy. But Truman is beginning to suspect something is up, and his unseen father figure Christoph (compellingly played by Ed Harris) is working hard to restore the show to its comforting routine.

A surprisingly abiding dramatic sci-fi classic from the late 90s and one of Jim Carrey's finest (and least irritating) performances. This movie is somehow more relevant today in the era of parasocial fixation on people who broadcast their lives all day and night, than it was in the late 90s when this wasn't possible.

And welcome back to the show, Ryan Estrada, our man in South Korea who has a special attachment to this multilayered film: www.ryanestrada.com

Guest: Ryan Estrada

Next Week: The Shawshank Redemption

'The Lies of Casablanca'. That was going to be my original title for this episode. When I got to sit down and watch this impeccable film on the big screen, it struck me how often the main characters lie; to each other, to themselves, to us... and yet we as the audience are almost always in the advantagous position of being able to clearly discern each lie.

So, Sharon and I delved into a true classic, venerated throughout the second half of the 20th Century, but now somewhat in decline on lists of Greatest Films of All Time, unseated by the works of Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve. However, there is something so very fitting about going back to something powered by nostalgia, its original audience now long-dead, but its central message; 'For the love of god, we must defy Nazis' delivered at a point in history that Hitler still hadn't been beaten, feels more relevent than ever.

One of the greatest thrillers of the 20th Century, we recorded this show on the 30th Anniversary of Michael Mann's crime epic. This is most definitely NOT a film to watch in twenty-minute chunks on your phone at work! It is a masterfully crafted presentation of the tension between professionalism and emotion, punctuated with ferocious gunfire and transcendant, eliptical music.

It is a one-time head-to-head between two of the most celebrated actors of that age, Godfather veterans Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro as a detective and a thief who keep themselves at peak focus to the detriment of their personal lives. It is lightning in a bottle, the kind of career-peak for all involved that you may not instantly adore, but it will linger nonetheless, and whenever you find yourself in a silver-blue pre-sunrise, it will come back to you.

It has been ten years since Disney relaunched Star Wars in the cinema, delivering what felt like a special globally-unifying grand, historical event... that a bunch of Star wars fans complained felt too much like the 1977 original special globally-unifying grand, historical event.

J.J. Abrams has proved over the years that he is far better at restarting big, exciting new worlds off with a bang (as he did with Mission Impossible and Star Trek before this) rather than somehow closing them out with anything approaching that same level of satisfaction (as with Lost and The Rise of Skywalker).

But after all these years with all the Star Wars movies and TV and books and comics and video games that have played out since then, is The Force Awakens STILL my unlikely favourite of the whole series that has been with me since my life began in 1980?

Yes.

Put simply, this film transcends its own oversimplifications to become a joyful celebration of Star Wars, retreading many previous paths with a heartfelt energy the world badly needs again. And in this revisit show, Sharon and I talk about what has changed since we first recorded nearly four hours on it at the end of 2015 along with multiple guests at the opening of the gates to new adventure. That show can be found here, and since we also revisited the third film in the Sequel Trilogy back in 2024 after a serious re-edit allowed me to make peace, that leaves The Last Jedi for some point in the near future.

Jim Carrey plays Ebeneezer Scrooge in this unsettling adaptation (sometimes intentionally so, sometimes not). Here, we get to talk about what was possible in this performance capture version that has been done nowhere else, making it strange and special and awkward and precious.

Continuing our season of going back to the start, we resurrected the Robert Zemekis incarnation of the perennial yuletide Dickens classic (which we covered back in December 2011 in conjunction with Muppet Christmas Carol... the froggy one we subsequently revisited in 2022).

This is also part of an ongoing series analysing the five very uneven performance capture animation films of Image Movers Digital, starting with The Polar Express in 2004, graduating to Monster House in 2006 and closing out with the death-rattle of Mars Needs Moms in 2011. All three of those will be featured on our After School Club over the next few weeks. The remaining oddball adaptation of Beowulf from 2007 is our personal favourite of the quintet and we will finally be talking about it next year. This sub-series is also a part of the overall Zemekis Season we are conducting. Coming next year we will also showcase Forest Gump, Here, The Witches and the riotous Death Becomes Her. Also for Carrey fans, we have his second-finest dramatic performance, The Truman Show, coming very soon (the first-finest being this).

This is another revisit to one of the first films we ever covered, way back on Digital Gonzo at Christmas in 2010. The quintessential Holiday movie for those who want violence and swearing with their jingle bells. But if you go back and watch all five films (the final low-point didn't even exist when we covered this before) you will find some exceptional strengths in this one alone that all relate to precisely how it was constructed.

A creative team that didn't realise they were all at the top of their game, impeccable cinematography, editing, pacing, a red hot screenplay that fleshed out a rich supporting cast, a nervy, brooding score that builds and crescendos along with the perfect pacing, and two actors in the antagonistic lead roles of John and Hans who were hungry to prove themselves and turned in the most memorable big-screen performances on their first try.

But also, it had something the others lack, as did almost all other action thrillers of the era; The story is about a broken argument, and it weighs on estranged husband and wife for the duration. Also, in deciding that the villains be robbers rather than terrorists, director John McTiernan sealed the deal on this story being something it otherwise couldn't; colossal fun!

Guest: Matt Ramsey

Those early Digital Gonzo shows can be found on the School of Movies Archive podcast feed. They are rough as hell, amateur hour on my part and this one doesn't even break the sixty minute mark. The best bits are featured at the end, same as with Back to the Future. Many thanks to my vintage guests, Matt Ramsey, Nikki Taylor of GameBurst and Mike Philips of the Fanboys Lunchcast.

We return to the format of the first film, trapped in a specific, focused time period, lovingly recreated for modern audiences. The big obstacles to be overcome are both based on the ticking clock point-of-no-return, and are unexpectedly and deeply personal for our protagonist.

This one is Emmet's movie. While Marty still has to learn a harsh lesson about whether other people think he's chicken or not, he is on a rescue mission and this third film puts Doc Brown front and centre. This is because being saved from temporal exile and murder-by-Tannen externally pales in comparison to the urgency in which Emmett must save himself internally, philosophically, and in key regard to his until-today strained relationship with the rest of the human race beyond Marty.

Christopher Lloyd brings it, in this sweetly tragic, broken-and-mended love story through time, opposite the luminous Mary Steenburgen as doomed schoolmistress Clara Clayton in the Hill Valley of 1885. This is a bittersweet goodbye that punctuates this madcap, majestic trilogy with a firm and definite full-stop, ending on the highest of notes that defies all modern conventions of the permanent strip-mining of exhausted IPs.

Guest: Jesse Ferguson @TheDapperDM from the Recorded Tomorrow Podcast

Those early Digital Gonzo shows can be found on the School of Movies Archive podcast feed. They are rough as hell, amateur hour on my part and each barely breaks the sixty minute mark. The best bits of all of them are featured at the end of each of these three new shows. Many thanks to my vintage guests, James Batchelor and Nikki Taylor.

A sequel where the plot is hugely influenced by one of the original cast members playing hardball for a higher fee and getting left off the project should not be this great, and yet here we are. Likewise, the whole first act being set in the (then) faraway future of 2015 was almost entirely only there to fulfil promises from the end of the first film (even if Marty and Jennifer being in the timeline twice actually doesn't even make sense). How is it still wonderful?

A second film that utilises time travel to go back to the first from a new angle in such a singular and unique fashion that any subsequent occurrence is shorthand "doing a Back to the Future II", this also presents us with a nightmare dark alternate timeline where a gaudy, dangerous moron becomes so powerful that he pretty much ruins America. Thankfully none of us have to live in THAT reality.

Most of all though, of the three films this is the most lively, taking the form of a time-hopping adventure and allowing the two amazing leads to play off each other and the wildly up-for-it support cast, aging and de-aging across sixty changing years of Hill Valley.

Guest: Jesse Ferguson @TheDapperDM from the Recorded Tomorrow Podcast

Those early Digital Gonzo shows can be found on the School of Movies Archive podcast feed. They are rough as hell, amateur hour on my part and each barely breaks the sixty minute mark. The best bits of all of them are featured at the end of each of these three new shows. Many thanks to my vintage guests, James Batchelor and Nikki Taylor.

Teenager from 1985 accidentally winds up in 1955 and meets his parents as teenagers, endangering his very existence. Bob Zemekis and Bob Gale made time travel immense and exhilarating, yet fun, intimate and personal, wisely choosing to focus (in a way that was rare at the time) on the everyboy hero's family relationships. And to illustrate quite how the alchemy of casting and crew was so key, they got several weeks into the original shoot with a completely different actor for Marty McFly. Things only finally clicked into place when Eric Stoltz exited the project and Michael J. Fox entered the scene, simultaneously filming day-shoots of the sit-com Family Ties.

Three of the greatest movies ever made, and perennial occupants of my most beloved top spots, Back to the Future, both as a trilogy, and as a stand-alone film is so close to perfect that it can be rounded up to perfect with minimal argument. It has been fifteen years since I first recorded a show on each of these, and more than any other previous show, they were in desperate need of a revisit.

Guest: Jesse Ferguson @TheDapperDM from the Recorded Tomorrow Podcast

Those early Digital Gonzo shows can be found on the School of Movies Archive podcast feed. They are rough as hell, amateur hour on my part and each barely breaks the sixty minute mark. The best bits of all of them are featured at the end of each of these three new shows. Many thanks to my vintage guests, Nikki Taylor and Giles Thomas

This is a commissioned episode for our hardworking Pez-loving Discord moderator Mike Hasko. It's a relic from 1993, a period just after the Cold War and not too long before the War on Terror, and the focus is on a middle-aged, white, American, divorced, straight, cis, male office-worker who one boiling hot Los Angeles morning decides that he has had enough.

The man known throughout most of the movie by his personalised license plate as D-FENS (played with vigour by Michael Douglas in this memorable and divisive Joel Schumacher joint) steps out of the car he leaves stuck in traffic, walks across a city that is not designed for pedestrian travel, and clashes with everyone who gets in his way.

The creative team are really trying to have their cake and eat it by making the protagonist also the antagonist and how much they succeed or fail is very much down to the perception of the viewer. Pull up a breakfast 'Whomelette' and an ice-cold, aggressively-priced can of Coca Cola and we shall guide you through this eventful day.

In an unprecedented show-type for us, what we have here began life as an After School Club commission by Tylor Long. Before it could be released it got upgraded to become a full Main Event show after this wonderful, darkly-funny, warm-hearted ghost story got included in our Discord Halloween watch-along.

The premise is familiarly bureaucratic, and simple enough for little kids to understand; In the afterlife ghosts must work to scare the living in order to be remembered. The results are what feels like the Taiwanese Beetlejuice, utilising the trappings of horror movies without ever actually being scary. It also seems to have a hell of a lot of things to say about the attention economy in a world where MrBeast is the highest aspirational figure for so many young people. What Dead Talents Society hints at is that there's so much more to existence than just being talked about by strangers.

Released straight to streaming in 2024, this movie is ironically virtually unseen and unheard of, but you should absolutely listen to this show and track this film down. It's going right at the top of our films of the year list.

Several years ago, Sharon and I recorded an After School Club on this 1994 film, the botched production of which took the life of its young star Brandon Lee. We were scathing and derisory, having never much liked it (and the awful DVD transfer did it no favours) whilst expressing contempt for director Alex Proyas (I, Robot, Knowing, Gods of Egypt).

But this time (actually a year ago on its 30th anniversary) with Willow in tow, in conjunction with watching the appalling remake, we finally took in the 1080p blu ray, and I subsequently brought it to my editing bench to see if I could file off the sharp, jagged corners that bothered us so much and shape it into something worthier of the last screen appearance of the son of Bruce Lee.

And wouldn't you know it... now we LOVE The Crow.

"Adapting is like marrying a widow; You respect the memory of the husband, but at some point you gotta get it on." - Guillermo del Toro.

In preparation for GDTs long-awaited take on Frankenstein we delved into some of the most significant onscreen versions of Mary Shelley's book. Taking our cues from the excellent piece by Overly Sarcastic Productions we recruit Gothic enthusiast Willow and together as a family talk you through the story, referencing different movies regarding how closely they cleave to the source novel, and how and why they choose to deviate. Many of the elements people take for granted, lightning, green skin, bolts in the neck, flat head, tendency to talk like a caveman all seem to stem from the 1931 James Whale film and its 1935 sequel starring Borris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester.

Turns out that the monster, the creation or as he is sometimes called, "Adam" was, as-written a great deal more complex, something some films have expressed in the interim near-century, nearly all of the most significant we talk about, including the 1994 Kenneth Branagh version, the 2011 stage version with Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller, the Hammer Horror versions with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, Frank Roddam's The Bride from 1985, Tim Burton's Frankenweenie, and a surprisingly great two-part TV miniseries from 2004.

Accompanying, we have a Cutting Class episode releasing this weekend with a bunch of other adaptations we talked about here but were trimmed out for time and focus, and we will of course be back to talk about Del Toro's version very soon.

Topping lists for film of the year, this is the first Ryan Coogler-directed film that is his own. Not a comic book adaptation like the Black Panthers, not a legasequel like Creed and not a direct real life account like Fruitvale Station. This one puts Ryan on the map as a genuine visionary and master of his craft.

Clarksdale, Mississippi, 1932. Twin brothers, Smoke & Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) after returning home with stolen money from gangster shenanigans in Chicago, spend the day setting up an illegal juke joint for the local black community. As the sun goes down and the place starts rocking they attract the attention of some covetous vampires.

Rich, bloody, tragic and complex, with otherworldly music, this story will knock your socks off and haunt your dreams.

Guest:

Brendan Agnew from Cinapse @blcagnew.bsky.social‬

Next Week: Adapting Frankenstein

An absolutely blistering black revenge fantasy by a white guy at the top of his game. Aside from the name, some repurposed music and the presence of carnage, this has nothing to do with the 1966 Sergio Corbucci spaghetti western, Django.

What it does present us with is a deep immersion in the ugliness and inhumanity of slavery in the pre-Civil-War American South from the perspective of a freed black man and an increasingly disturbed German gentleman as they hunt bounties together and ultimately quest to rescue Django's beloved Brunhilda from the hellfire of the Candyland plantation, presided over by the hideous Calvin Candy.

The stage is set for some of the most tense standoffs and explosively violent culminations in cinema history. This film is a masterpiece, and has proved wildly influential on my own work.

This episode kicks off a Tarantino Season that will be running throughout the next year. We will be covering the films intermittently and out of chronological release order (and we will be recording a brand new pair of episodes on Kill Bill).

Next Week: Sinners!

This is a follow-up to our 2021 episode on the legendary 1998 original PS1 Metal Gear Solid. This time I have brought in Willow to explore the two major PS2 instalments. We begin with what feels like creator Hideo Kojima answering the impossible question as to how to improve upon his first masterpiece (which goes so far beyond the two MSX games as to leave them feeling like prototypes) by trolling the fanboys who wanted a power fantasy. In the most audacious bait-and-switch of all time, our grizzled hero Solid Snake is snatched away from our control, and instead we are slid into the skin-tight bodysuit of blonde-haired rookie, Raiden. What follows is metatextual in the extreme, frequently absurd, occasionally groan-inducing and at times frighteningly prescient.

Then we go back in time to the mid-1960s with Snake Eater; an epic Cold War crawl through the Russian jungle. This entry in the series houses one of the most memorable and tragic antagonists in video gaming history, coupled with one of the most powerful conclusions. This one, with its overly complex camouflage, foraging and first-aid most definitely warranted its recent Delta remake. In my playthrough the mechanics effected the story in a way that even meta-minded Kojima could not have intended.

(NOTE: These were originally released as barebones, raw footage After School Club episodes. This presentation involved an editorial overhaul with music and game clips finally in place.)

Next Week: Django Unchained

A bold new direction for the transforming robotic life forms. Fully digitally animated, with no need of Shia Lebeouf or Marky Mark, specifically an animated film theatrically released for the first time since 1986, and for the first time neither Peter Cullen nor Frank Welker is lending their voice to proceedings, despite this being an origin story for both Optimus Prime and Megatron.

Instead Chris Hemsworth and Brian Tyree Henry step up to lend unexpectedly Shakespearean weight to the dramatic dissolution of a friendship between these two eternal foes. It's a Transformers movie that's actually about something for a change, rather than just a McGuffin hunt, and Bumblebee won't SHUT UP!

Guest:

Dan Hoeppner  @MightyMegatron0  of Leftover Army Monsters

This one came out of nowhere after seven years of development and production at Sony Pictures Animation. Yet after all that, Sony execs had zero faith in its success, so they sold it (along with all sequel rights in perpetuity) to Netflix for the modest budget of $100 million and then a nominal $20m that they could call profit.

Then it broke the goddamn internet!

For many reasons that we will go into, this one hit just right with a huge audience, and is now the basis for decades worth of sequels and spinoffs and live action remakes. Netflix got more than they could ever have wanted.

At the last minute on this commissioned show (many thanks to Chris Finik, Toby Skeels-Jungius, Tylor Long, Holly Dotson, Nama Chibitty and Tripas) we brought in our buddy Ryan who lives in Busan, Korea, and was able to give us a rich cultural perspective on many details that we as westerners completely missed. Huge thank you to Ryan for being so generous with his time. You can find his many adventures and projects here: www.ryanestrada.com

Guest: Ryan Estrada

Next Week: Transformers One

Time for a surprisingly good Marvel that meant a lot to a great deal of people... and still somehow underperformed. This thing was brewing for years, from as far back as the second Disney Plus show, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, back in Lockdown 2021. The original comic premise was simple enough; have a manipulative scumbag assemble a super-team of disguised villains in the absence of The Avengers.

However, this team is only mildly superpowered, and are wildly unbalanced. They're all either prior living weapons or experiments gone badly wrong, most of them have been being used for shady corporate black-ops and all of them are a hot mess, emotionally speaking. Plus the scumbag decides the best thing to do is kill them all off, rather than get their own Avengers.

What we end up with is a collection of disturbed individuals who have to work together as a team to deal with a very specific, exceptionally dark situation with one of their own. It is DC's first Suicide Squad movie from 2016 done far, far better. Let's peel back the surface and dive into the murk beneath.

Next Week: K-Pop Demon Hunters

This is three After School Club episodes, trimmed and re-edited into one bumper Main Event show. To begin with you have my initial impressions on what is hopefully the last Ant-Man movie, way back in February 2023, then two and a half years rush by in the blink of an eye and suddenly we're in a different kind of place for both Marvel and the world. Revisiting with Sharon, we delve into how this film was positioned and the bait & switch of the final execution.

Then with Captain America 4, AKA The Incredible Hulk 2, we look at a fictional and freshly recast General Thunderbolt Ross who turns into a giant, red rage-monster and smashes up Washington, yet still manages to be not the worst President ever! These are two of the most egregious cases of the MCU aiming for the middle of the road and winding up making something few could love. Fortunately, their future looks brighter, with a couple of bold new entries for 2025.

Next Week: Thunderbolts*

For a long while we hoped this would be a project from the makers of WandaVision that would see hidden villain Agatha Harkness trying to make amends for her machinations during the Westview incident. By the end of the second episode she's unrepentant and off on a whole new adventure, romping down The Witches' Road with an uneasy new coven in tow.

Like many of you, we drifted away and planned to come back once it was finished, but it wasn't until almost a year after that, when we finally sat down and saw the whole thing... and it's one of our unexpected favourite Marvels.

Never would have guessed they would nail this one. That was quite a magic trick.

Next Week: Quantumania & Brave New World

Here is a film we were very excitedly waiting for. We had already been waiting an age for the first Captain Marvel movie in 2019, a project that would have been put into effect had Ike Perlmutter not maintained for years that female-led superhero films wouldn't make money. The thing swept in just over a billion dollars and made a lot of boys on YouTube very cross.

Four years and a pandemic later, two Disney Plus monoseries emerged over that time, the celebrated WandaVision, which featured the returning little girl Monica Rambeaux, now an adult and working for Nick Fury, and then there was the underseen Ms. Marvel, featuring the equally long-awaited first appearance of the endlessly charming Kamala Khan.

Electing to bring together these three ladies in a spacefaring adventure was neat, however, as you'll hear from our extensive talk on the structure and narrative, nobody was well-served by the direction this took, least of all the excellent director of Candymen (2021), Nia DaCosta.

Plus, I've forgotten the name of the villain!

Next Week: Agatha All Along

This film began life before James Gunn was abruptly fired overnight, by Marvel. It languished for years through the triumph of Endgame, then the Pandemic, and Gunn's hiring by DC to direct their Suicide Squad sequel. The man who came back to pick up the script had been changed, and while Superman (2025) shows the sheer optimistic joy he's capable of imbuing his projects with, this farewell to the Guardians is a dark, furious requiem of betrayal, loss, bitter conflict and ultimately redemption.

In choosing to make it all about Rocket Raccoon, the secret weapon of the MCU was taken out of the picture. He is attacked by newcomer Adam Warlock on Knowhere home turf, in a failed act of corporate reclamation. His killswitch is triggered, leaving him in a coma and it is up to the Guardians to investigate the Doctor Moreau-inspired High Evolutionary, and find out how to bring Rocket back. This leaves him absent for much of the present-day movie, stuck reliving his tragic past, and the earliest friends he made. These tragic events would twist his future actions into those of anger and neurotic rejection of even his closest companions.

It is unlike any other MCU film, deeply personal and imbued with such vociferous anger that it actually becomes a mess, half hanging onto what was originally intended, half channelling the mixed, spiking emotions of going back to deal with your monster, saying goodbye to your dear friends and moving on to other and better things. The world is better for the confluence of events that led us to getting our new Superman and a brighter future of the DC Universe, but it was Gunn who took the damage, and this film exemplifies that.

Next Week: The Marvels

This one took a lot of consideration. We wanted to separate ourselves from the ragebait YouTubers who decided before it was even out that this was the worst TV show ever made. Even the thumbnail had to be put together in a way that conveys there are problems, but it's not because of BIG ANGRY WOMAN! (Seriously, what is it with basic dudes seeking attention and thumbnails of ladies mid-shout?)

We liked a lot about this long-awaited debut of the onscreen adaptation of John Byrne's reimagined fourth-wall-breaking sassy jade giantess. And the casting for starters was excellent, as was Tatiana Maslany's firecracker chemistry with Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock.

However, there are some deep-seated issues that go way beyond being so meta that you spend the climax of what would turn out to be your only season making multiple gags about how disappointing it is. It's a big old mixed bag, and we will be both ruthless and warm in our honesty. Ladies, gentlemen and all points in between of the jury, we present to you Exhibit S.

Next Week: Guardians 3

A major milestone in British cinema, pairing up dramatic director Mike Newell with comedy mainstay Richard Curtis. This one is easy to handwave off as fluffy and light, but it is a favourite of one of our psychology-specialising friends Doctor Hunter Mulcare, who joined us for Love Actually and specifically requested that when we covered this film, we have him on as a guest.

The principle is simple, based on Curtis' own experience of attending dozens of weddings for various friends and acquaintances in a very short space of time, being propositioned by a mysterious lady whom he turned down... the afterimage of that road not taken stuck in his head, forming the anxiety of Hugh Grant's lead character, Charlie. And when it comes to this chap and his gaggle of unmarried friends one thing is certain regarding funerals and weddings... we may not get one, but we'll definitely get the other.

This film is frank, hilarious, often painful and an accurately acerbic portrait of the British people. Certainly it struck home enough to make its budget back fifty times over, back in 1995. It remains special and a favourite of our too.

Next week: We begin Marvel Season

Guest:

Dr Hunter Mulcare @realhuntermmm  

This is a BIG one folks, the first major change in direction for silver screen DC comics adaptations since Nolan's Batman Begins in 2005 (though it has plenty of recent tonal forerunners to back it up, including Aquaman, Blue Beetle and the first Shazam! all of which we recommend seeing as well). This is what Warner Bros. were blushingly groping for in 2017 while trying to course-correct Zack Snyder's Justice League in the edit.

But it isn't just a statement of intent for the future and a mission statement for potentially carving out a much more successful, crowd-pleasing cinematic universe, this is, first and foremost a GREAT superhero movie, bringing an even less-compromised version of Clark to the big screen than the classic Donner films. The red outerpants are back, bringing with them an unabashed joy at finally getting to be THIS version of itself, powered by phenomenally talented young stars and balancing humour with heart.

The level of adulation and happiness we've seen exhibited over this one has been nourishing, and while there's plenty who have a bone to pick over decisions made within this flawed and messy movie I'd really like it to be the opposite of Snyder's take, and be a unifying rather than dividing force. So all are welcome, you don't have to agree with us, and maybe we can illuminate the qualities on show here in a way that helps some folks tentatively embrace Superman.

Guests:

From Sequentially Yours  Kaoru Negisa  @moonpanther22.bsky.social‬

and Debbie Morse  @bastet8300.bsky.social‬

Brendan Agnew from Cinapse @blcagnew.bsky.social‬

And you should follow us at @schoolofmovies.bsky.social‬

We return to the Forgotten Realms of Baldur's Gate III and do our best to remember what happened during our games. This time we get to talk about Shadowheart, a cleric who is deeply embroiled in an oppressive cult, in service to Dark Mommy (luckily, she just joined the club). On that note, we talk about character similarities as a strength and a weakness.

We talk Karlach, a towering, flaming, somewhat terrifying Tiefling barbarian who spends most of her time on fire and is in fact sweet-natured, affable and excited to be doing quests with friends. We also discuss the limitations that rear their heads within a game where you can pretty much do anything. Then there's Wyll Ravengard, the Blade of Frontiers, who lost an eye and gained two horns, while in service of another Dark Mommy. And then there's the great big roly-poly bear, shapeshifting elf druid Halsin, who has proved... rather popular.

We also talk about the most insidious villain in Act 1 of the game, as well as our smorgasbord of options when it comes to romancing. We will return with a third part in this series sometime soon, when at least I have finished the game (by which point, Will shall be on their third run!) and we will bring in some seasoned guests to talk about their further experiences.

Once again, thank you to Sarah Montgomery, without whom these BG3 shows would not exist.

One of the most ambitious projects for our podcast to date, this commission required the purchase of a PlayStation 5 and presents myself, Sharon and our teenager Willow with a massive and exceptionally dense and rich 80-hour tabletop-style RPG to battle through... each on our own individual quests.

To that end, this is the first of three shows covering the celebrated 2023 game by Larian Studios. The second is a session the three of us recorded the day after this one, covering more of our extensive notes and experiences, and the third is yet to be recorded at the time of release, but will entail bringing in many guests to talk about their personal adventures and the endgame.

These initial two cover mostly the first act of three, as it makes sense to give us all a big chunky meal to chew over, but save dessert for last. It is relatively spoiler-free, as Sharon and I have no idea what's going to happen in the future and Willow, who has actually completed the game and raced up behind us in a second playthrough, is considerate enough to hold off on blabbing about big impending shifts in character arcs.

To that end you can listen to these first two, having never played the game, and familiarise yourself with the often-daunting range of possibilities that this quite extraordinary game holds. Many thanks to backer Sarah Montgomery, without whom there is no way this trio of shows would have been made.

Maybe THE most American of children's properties from the 1980s, G.I. Joe began life as a big doll that boys could dress up for war, but as public sentiment turned against the conflict in Vietnam, Hasbro nudged their chunky action figure towards more of an adventure brand. Then in Reagan's 80s, Joe was relaunched as A Real American Hero, the first massively successful multimedia campaign designed to sell toys through cartoons and comics.

But following that period of relative peacetime, Joe fared less well in the 90s, and most definitely struggled in the 2000s. In this show we discuss the cartoon and its characters, the 1987 animated film and the 2009 attempt to launch a live action movie franchise with The Rise of Cobra.

Is it really as jingoistic and flag-waving as first impressions convey? Is it gross and macho or actually kind of sweet? We have further listening on this matter with two After School Clubs on the 2013 sequel, Retaliation (the one starring the Rock) and the solo Snake Eyes outing from 2021 starring Henry Golding (plus the best animated show so far, 2010's Renegades)

All the way back in 2013 when Man of Steel was coming out, I covered the four Christopher Reeve Superman movies on a single podcast with dutiful guests Taylor Nova and Paul Gibson. I recently re-listened to it in the run-up to James Gunn's Superman and I was flabbergasted at how much my attitude had changed; specifically to the first two films directed by Richard Donner and steered with confidence and the contributions of an amazing creative team. I was dismissive, persnickety and downright rude.

So, here now is a much-needed revisit, twelve years wiser, and following the life and death (forced-resurrection and death again) of the Snyderverse. Now, in the 2020s the purity and heart and soul on display here are desperately needed. And after watching the exceptional Documentary "Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story" (2024) which is essential viewing and gets a trailer at the end of this show, I realised that going back to his Kal-El was in order.

Joining us this time are two comic nerds we have sorely missed while they went off to become parents.

Guests:

From Sequentially Yours  Kaoru Negisa  @moonpanther22.bsky.social‬

and Debbie Morse  @bastet8300.bsky.social‬

And you should follow us at @schoolofmovies.bsky.social‬

It was a long time coming. The remake itself has been mooted as far back as the early 2000s, and the wait for it was half of my life. But then, when this astonishing game finally landed in 2020, a time when we all needed to escape to other worlds, I found myself paralysed with indecision within the game, unable to move for metatextual reasons.

Finally returning to it in 2025 I was able to play through and savour the experience with Sharon and Willow watching along. It is magnificently chaotic and chaotically magnificent. How could a remake which goes so much further than the simple graphical and musical polish we were all hoping for still manage to knock it out of the park, despite the inherent need to drag old players out of their comfort zones and somehow impress upon new players, the meaning and significance imbued into every moment and character?

On this show, following on from our 2023 episode on the 1997 original, Sharon and I do our best to elaborate on these mountainous strengths. Even if you've never played any version, this may help you appreciate why the game is so beloved. This episode also contains a segment submitted by Hanna Peregrine.

An absolutely fascinating 2018 movie where the challenge for the filmmakers was to confine themselves only to a computer screen and the various apps and websites, embodying John Cho's frantically worried David Kim as a blinking cursor, scouring the internet for any trace of his missing teenager Margot.

None of this would be anywhere near as riveting if they didn't hook you early with a small, personal tale of a fragile, happy family, made familiar in digital home movies. The opening of the film rivals Pixar's UP in terms of soft-hearted appeal and devastating loss until you're fully on board and wholly behind the salvaging of the strained father-daughter relationship that remains. But the formerly exciting information superhighway is now an intimidating labyrinth that devours people's lives whole, and Margot may now be beyond David's reach.

This was a commission for Greg Downing and we firmly suggest you watch Searching before listening to our show. But don't wait, don't put it on hold. Go find it now. Track it down like a cybernetic sleuth and experience one of the most innovative indies of the past decade.

One of the most astonishing action epics in cinema history, and almost nobody who saw it managed to do so in the cinema! At least in the West. This historical epic, popularised by Netflix plays extremely fast and loose with the facts, reimagining the lives of two of India's most celebrated revolutionaries to have intersected.

RRR tells the story of Komaram Bheem, a man of the Gond Tribe who is searching for a little girl taken from his people by despicable English Colonial Governor Scott Buxton. Worried about the human tsunami inbound, Buxton's awful wife brings in Police Officer Raju to intercept and catch Bheem alive. BUT in Shakespearean fashion, the two under assumed identities unknowingly become firm friends, and as it turns out Raju is secretly trying to climb the ranks and gain access to guns for a revolution, and the best way to do that will be to stop his new brother-in-arms and bring him in for execution.

It is a rip-roaring tiger-tale of unbound ferocity, mixed with a refreshingly gentle take on male bonding. It is also of course rather troubling in its political and cultural implications, which we will elaborate upon in this firestorm of a podcast.

Two of the most successful films of the 20s, both of them built on the winning formula of bewildered people from the real world being plunged into an alternate dimension which allows them to encounter pleasingly recognisable elements from the video games that general audiences like, on their way towards assisting with deposing a tyrannical warmonger.

The problem for us is that Super Mario Bros. is a long-running and beloved series of platformers, kart racers and RPGs, whereas Minecraft is a creative building block survival indie hit gone corporate phenomenon, that wound up dominating the 2010s to the point of being used as a teaching aid in schools. These are VERY different kinds of games... so why are their movies the same?

This show combines my 2023 first impressions After School Club on the Mario movie, and new recordings where Sharon and especially Willow (the catchment audience) talk about both of them.

Neurodivergent elf seeks party for spell-gathering, demon-slaying and appreciating life a whole lot more...

Despite our longstanding NO ANIME rule (which nevertheless still allows us to occasionally do shows on the movies we love within that medium, and you folks have been good as gold insofar as overprescribing anime shows when you know it will overwhelm us with volume) this commissions season saw us so in need of emergency funds that we opened the door to not one but two beloved recent series'.

However, while we instantly found Delicious in Dungeon to be captivating, funny, charming, hilarious and nerdy in the most appealing easy-sell way possible, Frieren: Beyond Journey's End was much more of a slow-burn. And while we came out the other side appreciating many of the subtleties there were some glaring creative decisions which actively ruffled our feathers.

So, to ensure this would be talked about with passion and enthusiasm in a way that would help us see the best in it, we brought in a brace of guests who gave us the lowdown on both the show and the manga. Many thanks to our extremely patient backers for this episode; Tylor, Banzai and Painter47

Guests

Alejandra Vargas

Bradford Yurkiw

Chances are you have neither played nor even heard of this 2024 sci-fi indie game. We hadn't, and as we proceeded through a tale of a dystopia where everyone is cloned from the same person, yet has their own distinct name, outfit and personality, we couldn't see exactly why Hollywoo actress Maya Souris commissioned it...

And then we got to Act 3.

The prospect of watching this as a Let's Play went out the window. I have never seen a video game justify its medium so hard and confidently, and I recommend listening to this whole show, regardless of your intention to play.

This is a commissioned show for Chris Finik, The Jonin Monkey, Banzai Tree and Sixblazer. We recruited Willow as a guest, since they were immediately smitten with this 24-episode first season.

We heartily recommend you cast aside your worries and just delve into this podcast episode, regardless of having seen the show or not. While you will find out things that are going to happen, we can't spoil the show for you, only make it richer with more texture to get your teeth into.

The on-paper synopsis is a bunch of misfits searching an underground labyrinth for one of their number, lost to a dragon. The experience itself is a gourmet tour of eating the monsters that attack them. The longer term quest is a better balance of the delicate and deadly ecosystem that abounds in tabletop RPGs. So, grab your cooking knife and your shield reforged into a pot, light the magic circle and let's get to the nosh.

One of the most beloved 90s RPGs, and one of the few on Super Nintendo that was released in the UK. So, while I envied Americans for getting Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy IV and VI, Earthbound and Breath of Fire, THIS ONE was my first actual big console RPG.

And it has problems; real playability issues that make it hard to recommend for everyone in the 20s. You'll find Mana fans who say that these don't matter, but they absolutely do. A fine comparison I came upon while mulling this one over was Breath of the Wild. Absolutely gorgeous, engrossing you in a luscious world dominated by fertile nature, but Link's swords breaking after half a dozen battles are not going to make the game more fun and engaging for everyone.

And yet, there IS that immersion, there is the overwhelming emotional response that Mana fans have to the music and art style, and there's the undeniably satisfying THWACK of the combat. So, come on a journey with us and the three intrepid adventuring kids, Primm, Popoi and Randi, and decide whether playing Secret of Mana is right for you.

After the harsh, oppressive atmosphere of I Saw the TV Glow we turn to an altogether funnier tale of trans discovery with Vera Drew's semiautobiographical, anarchic reshaping of DC's Clown Princess of Crime.

From the painfully normalising cornfields of Smallville, Kansas comes a child who asks their alarmed mother "Was in born in the wrong body?". The only possible response to this is of course sessions at Arkham Asylum with Doctor Crane and a prescription of Smilex to chase that depression and anxiety away.

We follow this confused young person to Gotham, where they find their calling in a thinly-veiled Saturday Night Live setup, doing stand-up comedy alongside The Penguin, Ra's al Ghul and a trans-masc chap named Mr J, riffing hard on both fallen Robin Jason Todd and Jared Leto's Joker. Our hero gives themselves the mantle of Joker the Harlequin... and comedy in Gotham will never be the same!

This movie was pulled together during lockdown, and thrives on a garage-punk, scrapbook style that energetically propels you through the troubled life of someone just trying to be themselves in a loud, chaotic world.

Guests

• Laura Kate Dale

• Alejandra Vargas

• Victoria Luna B. Grieve

As soon as we saw this thickly atmospheric, Lynchian lucid nightmare from 2024, Sharon and I knew we had to do a very particular show on it. Since the entire context is trans-anxiety which the majority of cisgender people may find impenetrably mystifying we needed an all-trans/enby/non-cis cast of guests to walk us through the significance.

On the surface it is a story about a chap named Owen who is lonely and isolated child of the mid-1990s, meeting lonely, isolated Maddy and bonding over a mutual obsession with a cheesy sci-fi TV show for teenagers called "The Pink Opaque". Beneath that surface there is a whole world of uncertainty, denial, distraction and pain. Strap in, because this one is hard, long and has no relief at the end, culminating in a cautionary tale about running from yourself.

Huge thanks to everyone involved with this quite astonishing endeavour. We buttoned our lips and let these good people talk for the majority of the three hour runtime of this thing.

Guests

• Laura Kate Dale

• Alejandra Vargas

• Aquila Edwards

• Victoria Luna B. Grieve

Plus we have a suite of audio submissions from...

• Austin Wilden

• Rosa Ysassi Serata Villarreal

• Holly Dotson

• and Hanna Peregrine

This was an unexpected burst of sheer joy, and we urge you all to seek it out for yourselves. It's a graphic novel, comprising a 7-issue comic book miniseries about wrestling. We had never read a book written by Daniel Warren Johnson before, but now we're hooked and ready to guzzle down everything else this champ achieves.

Lona Steelrose was just a little girl when she witnessed her mother tragically perish in the ring. Now, because of this very tragedy that motivates her to fight, no other wrestler will touch her. This is until a literal demon necromancer offers her a chance in an intergalactic wrestling tournament. The twist; her tag team partner is Cobrasun, the masked luchador who was her mother's final opponent.

This thing is gloriously pulpy and plays out like the best Mortal Kombat you never knew you needed. It was a commissioned show for Tylor, and we are so glad to discover this treasure.

A cult favourite hangout movie about working in a CD shop in the mid-90s. This one was directed by Allan Moyle, who previously helmed another music-centric, coming-of-age teen drama that should have been way more of a hit; Pump Up the Volume (1990).

Statistically almost none of you have seen this, as it's the kind of movie you need a good friend to sit you down with after hearing that you've never seen it, and immediately declared "We're watching this!" Well, we are that friend today, and we are going to detail why this one is worthy of love.

It's painfully white, extremely straight and concerns itself with the now-antiquated dichotomy of MTV marketability versus independent spirit, but considering Spotify Killed the Video Star, the themes are still relevant, and the ragtag cast of teens are quirky enough to make this a breezy, endlessly-quotable rewatch. Damn The Man, save The Empire.

A charming 16-bit style indie adventure game, set in suburban Indonesia in the 1990s. This begins cosy, deliberately evoking the familiar, and swiftly becomes strange and mysterious with a story of loss and grief and loneliness at its core; an ache longing to be relieved.

The gameplay involves exploring the town and getting to know the locals, jumping inside their minds to find out what their abiding internal conflicts are and help them deal with these. There is an impressive, melodramatic sweep to this whole thing and we are gratified and edified to have played the whole story as a commission for Tylor.

A marvellously authentic and creepy modern Survival Horror in the convincing style of a PlayStation One title from the mid-90s conversely featuring inflections of more contemporary scary games. This one is available on Steam and Switch and PS4 and Xbox Series X.

There is an abandoned theme park to explore and mysteries to uncover, as we structure this episode into three sections. GREEN FINE: Means you can hear about the basic setup and still go in completely fresh if you want to know none of the surprises. YELLOW CAUTION: Makes up the majority of the show as we discuss how it goes about itself and what the experience is like. RED DANGER: Is all the juicy endgame material, where we get to fully draw back the curtain.

This was a commissioned show from Maya Santandrea and Selfproclaimed, and we are so glad they chose to set it before us. You will be too.

One of the most beloved, instantly-transformative, replayed, re-released, and critically acclaimed games of all time... and would you believe until preparing for this show, that I wasn't massively fussed about it?

But this year I have been replaying all of the original games sequentially, and after the first era of fixed-camera tank controls transitioned into the action-spectacle of 4 I was blindsided by how many fresh aspects of the gameplay and world that I appreciated. The 2005 GameCube hit is, as it turns out deserving of the historical adulation that has been heaped upon it. Moreover, going back to the 2023 remake, it seems Capcom somehow accomplished the impossible, improving upon (almost) every aspect.

Here now is a hyper-focused discussion with three other lovers of this game. The discussion ran long and meandered, and I elected to divide this show into two, with the second part; 'Blue Medallions' being released on the Patreon bonus feed where you can also find an After School Club on Resident Evil Zero and Code Veronica.

Jason Slate is holding a three-day charity stream in support of Trans Lifeline, from March 21-23 2025 Noon to Midnight each day Eastern Time at Twitch.tv/themanapool There are over a thousand Steam games to give away from his backlog and every $10 donation to this worthy cause gets you a game. Go watch Chewie play and give generously.

Guests:

Jason "Chewie" Slate of The Mana Pool

James Perkins @Mijmeister

Derrick Ritchie @thenewdelboy

All the way back in 2017 I put together an absolutely EPIC musical journey through the first eight years of the MCU, from Iron Man all the way up to Doctor Strange. So much time has passed since then (cue many gifs of Matt Damon drinking from the wrong Grail) and Marvel has not followed my sound advice about allowing each hero (and maybe a villain or two) to retain a theme that reprises with every subsequent appearance. However, that does not mean there haven't been some truly excellent scores composed, which got side-lined in the clickbaity rush to pronounce Marvel as being formulaic, failing or indeed signifying the baleful death of film.

Here for you now is a compendium of themes and sonic explorations as Phase 3 draws to its epic conclusion and Phases 4 and 5 wend their way from the small screen to the big and back again. I look forward to a third volume of these shows sometime in the early 2030s, when the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Secret Wars and whatever happens with Spider-Man and whatever inevitable soft reboot brings us to a new era of superhero cinema.

1.     The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (‘Louisiana Hero’ by Henry Jackman)

2.     Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (‘Dad’ by Tyler Bates)

3.     Spider-Man Homecoming (Michael Giacchino)

4.     Thor: Ragnarok (‘Main Title’ by Mark Mothersbourough)

5.     Black Panther (‘Wakanda’, ‘Warrior Falls’ and ‘Killmonger’ by Ludwig Goransson)

6.     Infinity War (Alan Silvestri)

7.     Captain Marvel (‘Main Theme’ and ‘All Fired Up’ by Pinar Toprak)

8.     Black Widow (‘Yelena Belova’ and ‘Natasha Soars’ by Lorne Balfe)

9.     WandaVision (‘Opening Themes: 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s’ and ‘End Cretids’ by Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Robert Lopez and Christophe Beck)

10. Loki (Natalie Holt)

11. Shang Chi (Joel P. West)

12. Eternals (Ramin Djawadi)

13. Moon Knight (Hesham Nazih)

14. Ms. Marvel (Laura Karpman)

15. The Marvels (Laura Karpman)

16. Spider-Man: No Way Home (‘Forget-Me-Knots’ by Michael Giaccino)

17. Wakanda Forever (Ludwig Goransson)

18. Guardians Vol. 3 (‘Guardians vs Hallespawn’ / ‘Into the Light’ by John Murphy)

19. Thor Ragnarok Reprised (‘Twilight of the Gods’ & ‘What Heroes Do’ by Mark Mothersbourough)

20. Daredevil (John Paesano)

21. Jessica Jones (Sean Callery)

22. Luke Cage (Adrian Younge & Ali Shaheed Muhammad)

23. Iron Fist (Trevor Morris)

24. Werewolf by Night (Michael Giacchino)

25. Quantumania (Christophe Beck)

26. Agatha All Along (Christopher Beck)

27. Your Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man (The Math Club)

28. Deadpool & Wolverine (‘Bye Bye Bye’ by NSYNC & ‘Like a Prayer Battle Royale Mix’ by Madonna)

29. Avengers: Endgame (‘Portals’, ‘The Real Hero’ and ‘Main on End’ by Alan Silvestri)

NOTE: This is an archival episode from many years ago. 

Recently the excellent YouTube series Every Frame a Painting asked members of the public if they could hum any of the music from the Marvel films. Unsurprisingly they couldn't come up with anything. There are a few reasons for this, that I go into on the show, but this presentation right here is crafted to allow everyone to explore the music that has come so far. We laser-focus on the core melodies, the hero themes that were left by the wayside as the series evolved and we showcase the wide range of actually rather brilliant musical moments that have punctuated the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Join me for an epic, three hour musical journey, run through the filter of my brain. By the end, if I've done my job, you'll be able to hum at least one piece of Marvel music.

1.   Marvel Logo (Thor: The Dark World) 2.   Back in Black – AC/DC (Iron Man) 3.   Mark II/Driving With the Top Down/Gulmira - Ramin Djawadi (Iron Man) 4.   Iron Man - Black Sabbath (Iron Man) 5.   Main Titles - Craig Armstrong (The Incredible Hulk) 6.   Thunderstruck - AC/DC (Iron Man 2) 7.   Black Widow Kicks Ass/ I Am Iron Man – John Debney (Iron Man 2) 8.   Shoot to Thrill – AC/DC (Iron Man 2) 9.   Prologue/The Compound/Forgive Me/Thor Kills the Destroyer – Patrick Doyle (Thor) 10.   Walk – Foo Fighters (Thor) 11.   Main Titles/Farewell to Bucky/The Star Spangled Man/Triumphant Return/Captain America March – Alan Silvestri (Captain America: The First Avenger) 12.   Main Titles/Helicarrier/Avengers Assemble/A Promise/End Titles – Alan Silvestri (Avengers Assemble) 13.   Live to Rise – Chris Cornel (Avengers Assemble) 14.   Main Titles/Can You Dig It? – Brian Tyler (Iron Man 3) 15.   End Titles/Into Eternity – Brian Tyler (Thor: The Dark World) 16.   Lemurian Star/Project Insight/The Causeway/To the End of the Line/Taking a Stand – Henry Jackman (Captain America: The Winter Soldier) 17.   Soundtrack Medley (Guardians of the Galaxy) 18.   The Kyln Escape/Groot Spores/Groot Cocoon (Guardians of the Galaxy) 19.   Age of Ultron Theme – Danny Elfman (Avengers: Age of Ultron) 20.   Escape - Roger Ayer (Ant-Man) 21.   Ant Man Theme – Christophe Beck (Ant-Man) 22.   Plainsong – The Cure (Ant-Man) 23.   Siberian Overture/Ancestral Call/New Recruit/Closure/Cap’s Promise – Henry Jackman (Captain America: Civil War) 24.   Sharks Don’t Sleep – Dean Valentine (Civil War Trailer) 25.   New Marvel Fanfare 26.   Strange Days Ahead/The Master of the Mystic End Credits – Michael Giacchino (Doctor Strange)

The second and third parts of the original Trilogy of Muppet movies made while Jim Henson was alive, voicing Kermit and taking a heavily active role in production.

The former from 1981 is a jewel heist that brings the anarchic furry ones to England, populated by only polite people (a trope which causes the two of us endless amusement) and very much concerns itself with pushing puppetry magic tricks on the big screen to their limits. This one, directed by Jim was in the immense shadow of the original Muppet Movie.

The latter, from 1984 brings them back to New York as college graduates who want to put on a big Broadway musical and run up against the gritty realities of real life (along with a cloyingly cute debut for The Muppet Babies. This more grounded take was directed by Frank Oz and for us it is a commissioned show by Dean R.

Guests:

Mackenzie Eastram  @KenziePhoenix of Rainbow Connection @MuppetsPod  

Nathan Eastram @bertnerdtram These two are also part of DiceWeave @DiceWeavePod

We round off Groundhog Month with a time loop movie that explores with even more depth how being stuck in a single day would effect a person's outlook on life, their philosophy and their actions.

Taking its cue from the early script idea for what became the Bill Murray classic, we begin by observing a man named Niles, already locked in his time loop, from the point of view of Sarah. She then gets dragged into a loop of her own and finds herself trapped as Maid of Honour for her sister's wedding every single day, a scenario made so much worse due to Sarah's shameful secret. To make matters worse, Niles is also being stalked by the last person he blunderingly marooned in Today; a steaming-mad J.K. Simmons.

It's blackly comic, filthy and thought-provoking with things to say about our existence, and it makes for the ideal existential closer on this topic (for today at least).

Guest

Jesse Ferguson @TheDapperDM

from the Recorded Tomorrow Podcast

This is not a Horror movie (or rather, it qualifies enough for that genre in terms of certain expected tropes and elements, but that is not its mode of conduct, and for people expecting conventional Horror, there's a lot more there in its place).

That's what should have been on the poster and promotional artwork, and in the trailers, and threaded through the interviews and general marketing speak surrounding this film. Though doing so might have hurt its 25x multiplier as yet another Blumhouse success story.

That misdirection helped it THEN, in 2017, I'm thinking more about helping it NOW in the 2020s, when viewers who do not like Horror genre movies (in particular cruel slasher movies) would almost certainly steer clear of what is actually one of the freshest, funniest star features in recent years, spotlighting Jessica Rothe, an actress of insane range with serious comedic chops.

It is superficially Groundhog Day with a stalking masked killer, but concerns itself less with the gory specifics of womanslaughter and more with the mechanics of trying to get oneself out of a blackly comic and fatal time-loop, as what is built up around the character of college student Tree Gelbman is a much-needed break in her cycle of self-destruction.

And on our Patreon bonus feed this weekend we have a full-length episode on the 2019 sequel; Happy Death Day 2U which leans even harder into the sci-fi, actively forgetting it was pitched as a slasher (and thus only doing seven times its budget at the box office).

Guest

Jesse Ferguson @TheDapperDM

from the Recorded Tomorrow Podcast

One of history's abiding classics, and one of the oldest films we have ever covered on this show, the 1939 Wizard of Oz starring Judy Garland is joined here with several key points of comparison to establish why it really hold up.

We've already recorded a whole episode on the dark, late sequel, Return to Oz (1985) though it does get mentioned here, as well as Jon M Chu's 2024 cinematic adaptation of the first act of the Wicked stage musical.

But we also invoke the original book, written by L. Frank Baum in 1900, reference the tumultuous filming process by MGM, the toll it took on Judy Garland, as seen in the 2019 biopic Judy. And finally we sing the praises of The Wiz (1978) a valiant effort to make this story relevant to black America. One thing is clear, this is the most I've ever enjoyed talking about Wizard of Oz, and a lot of that comes from having the ever-insightful Willow on as a guest.

Next week it's Happy Death Day (2017). You can listen without watching the movie but definitely make plans to see the movie! And we have a rather important announcement to make at the end of this one.

We’ve been holding this episode back for a special occasion and it seems like 2025 'The year of Joy' is the time to finally crack into one of the richest and most universally gratifying films in history. A hundred years from now, people will still be watching this film, It’s a Wonderful Life and The Shawshank Redemption.

Accompanying us in this time loop journey from mundane resentment to confusion, to panic, to exploitation, to emptiness, to the nadir of self-destruction, to the revelation of reflection, to the zenith of living to enrich the lives of others, and thus experience repletion is Jesse Ferguson. Jesse is one of the few guests we know who can comprehend the knottiest of time-travel conundrums whilst fully understanding that the story at the heart of what's being told is far more important than any speculative, temporal shenanigans.

Plus Bill Murray is a hoot, this is his best film, as well as being the finest offering from his friend and director Harold Ramis. It is endlessly memorable, profound, and touches upon a universality of shared experience. We are all alone, and we are all together.

Guest

Jesse Ferguson @TheDapperDM

from the Recorded Tomorrow Podcast

The first Dungeons & Dragons movie emerged in the year 2000, wildly underachieving in every department; characters, story, screenplay, costumes, technical proficiency, directorial flair, casting, scope, music, awareness of what it was adapting, sense of humour and dragons! All of these things were straight-to-video grade. It was, in effect the anti-Lord of the Rings, a year before that masterpiece-containing-masterpieces raised the bar impossibly high.

23 years later, on the 49th anniversary, Honour Among Thieves emerged to empty theatres for various reasons I will be going into in my opening monologue. Among other notions broached, there is an imperative upon us to redefine success.

And our packed adventuring party are all here to do just that, and gush about this hidden gem, this buried treasure that knocks it out of the park in all the departments named above. This is a special episode where we get to talk about exactly why Honour Among Thieves is precious, and the unseen, Lego Movie-style subtext of these events.

Guests:

Hollywoo Actress  Maya Souris @Mayasantandrea

Victoria Luna B. Grieve:  @VixenVVitch 

Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnew of Make Me Watch It

Chris Finik @finmonster09

In the name of joy, this year we are looking back across every Muppet movie we haven't yet covered, starting right here with the original 1979 film. For perspective, Jim Henson had made two successful TV shows up to this point, the well-known Muppet Show, which began in 1976 and was in the middle of its third season when this was being made, but before that, a weird series of little black and white skits called "Sam and Friends" which aired beginning in 1955.

We recruited Muppet experts Mackenzie and Nathan Eastram to delve into the story of how Henson and company got to this place, as well as extolling the copious virtues of this instantly melancholy little tale about fame and dreamers, and money-men, crammed with celebrity cameos, none of which your five year old will recognise. Some of which are legendary comedy figureheads of the 20th century that I had to look up, and I'm in my mid-40s!

Guests:

Mackenzie Eastram  @KenziePhoenix of Rainbow Connection @MuppetsPod  

Nathan Eastram @bertnerdtram These two are also part of DiceWeave @DiceWeavePod

An extremely long-awaited show on a game-changer of a blockbuster movie.

The first Pirates film, released in 2003 before Lord of the Rings had completed brought the world many things: A fantabulous extravaganza of practical effects, combined with a surprisingly light smattering of digital VFX that would be leaned into a lot harder later down the line, The notion that the swashbuckler could still do big business (the hidden caveat was that Johnny Depp being strange absolutely must be present) Keira Knightley as a leading lady, Gore Verbinski as a major director, the supposition that audiences would flock to cinematic adaptations of Disney park rides (they won't, just this one. See above regarding Johnny Depp) and Geoffrey Rush as an all-time iconic big-screen presence embodying the most consistently enjoyable pirate of all time.

But there's more going on, beneath the frothing surface, a fantastically witty, urbane and efficient script by Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott, one of the greatest scores ever composed (in a shockingly short amount of time) and Orlando Bloom's character actually being quite good, especially when held against Jack Davenport's Lawful Neutral Commodore James Norrington.

This was a commission for Lincoln Alpern and features clips from the best audiodrama I've ever composed; Panther Soul, and the first chapter of the brand new Dracula adaptation Castle of the Moon.

Guests:

Hollywoo Actress  Maya Souris @Mayasantandrea

Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnew of Make Me Watch It

We begin the new year as we mean to go on; joyfully. This is a commissioned episode for Alejandra Vargas. Back in 1994 Jim Carrey was having the most amazing year in cinema that he would EVER have, pretty much redefining what people wanted with madcap comedy for that era. Rubber-faced and bellowing catchphrases. This thing should have aged terribly after more than thirty years.

But it hasn't, in fact it feels like a key precursor to the superhero boom round the corner, whilst challenging the contemporary crop of Batman and his imitators. It's also genuinely funny and eminently quotable (with gusto, when you're doing it) and pulls off a neat double-reversal of feminine characters in a way that doesn't feel cynical at all. A 'Nice Guy' story that didn't make us grimace, a bit with a dog... and that flippin'. toe-tappin' swing soundtrack!

You don't need to know a single thing about Ultraman to love this film.

We brought in Kaiju and Sentai expert Dan Hoeppner to educate us along with you, regarding the history and cultural background of this character, but the film itself, viewable on Netflix is an absolutely perfect starting point. It is a smashing standalone story about the son of Ultraman, who grew up to be not especially great in the role himself, and instead pursued his mother's passion, becoming a baseball player. He's selfish and arrogant, not a team player, and has estranged himself from his widowed father, Hayao, with neither of them finding fulfilment.

Then Kenji had an adorable, ginormous baby space dragon dropped into his lap, and he's about to find out that being a Dad is harder than it looks.

It also sits confidently alongside the most gorgeous, dynamic and thrilling animated films of recent years, including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, The Sea Beast and even the hallowed Spider-Verse.

This one was commissioned by Thomas Meehan, and we're so glad he prompted us into tackling it now and not holding back because it felt too intimidatingly special. Sometimes we need that fire lit under us.

Guest:

Dan Hoeppner  @MightyMegatron0  of Leftover Army Monsters

Mostly overlooked when released in cinemas in 1983, it took nearly a decade for Ted Turner to realise this thing was funny as hell, authentic, heart-warming, and a little dark and twisted, only to then screen it hundreds of times on his many networks until America was both in love with the movie and thoroughly sick of it!

Meanwhile the rest of the world is unaware of its existence, and Sharon and I as the only two Brits in on this Yankee secret would like to both illuminate its qualities for the listening world outside of North America and Canada, AND remind you folks who do live there and groan every time you hear that another 24-hour marathon of screening this thing back to back is due, quite how good it really is.

It's not often we cover straightforward comedies on this show. It's tricky to explain how or why something is funny without stepping on the gag itself, so think of this as a testbed for potential future episodes on comedies.

To folks on Patreon; I finished the Winnie the Pooh sequel novel; it's REALLY good, and I'll get it edited with Sharon and send out copies for you folks to read around Christmas Day! Thank you for waiting so patiently. 

A story ripped straight from the pages of Golden Age comic books, as dastardly gangsters and Nazis on the rise seek out a secret rocket pack that has fallen into the hands of a well-meaning, square-jawed chap who accidentally becomes something of a superhero. Starring a moustache-twirling Timothy Dalton, a luminous Jennifer Connelly, along with Billy Campbell, Alan Arkin and Paul Sorvino, this is a favourite of many of our listeners and was commissioned by Sarah Montgomery.

We kick off a Christmas season of commissions, and considering how stressful November was for everyone, we have decided to set the tone for 2025 by seeking out pure joy. They will be movies we will love talking about enthusiastically, and focusing on to bring you folks a measure of weekly happiness in a dark time.

The ones we have chosen for this December all seem to have that joy in common, as well as an old fashioned sensibility. We have A Christmas Story coming up next week, then Ultraman Rising, then at New Year's we have The Mask, and to see in January it's Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl!

This is an exceptionally long-awaited episode for us. One of the very first films discussed on our very first episode, way back in April 2007, mentioned repeatedly in the intervening 17 years, and promised over and over.

Now we finally reach it, one of the most special and meaningful films to us.

It was directed by Danny Boyle after 28 Days later but before Slumdog Millionaire. It very overtly draws inspiration from Aliens and 2001, it stars Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Michelle Yeoh, Rose Byrne, Hiroyuki Sanada Cliff Curtis, Benedict Wong and Mark Strong. It was written by Alex Garland, scored by John Murphy and Underworld, it made one twentieth the box office of Christopher Nolan's Interstellar.

...and it is quite literally BRILLIANT.

[This was originally released in the summer of 2023. We have subsequently seen every inch of Oppenheimer... we stand by what is said here.]

I think this will be the only piece I create about Oppenheimer (2023). You definitely do not have to have seen it and I won't be saying anything that could be considered a plot spoiler.

This is dark, upsetting, heavy and much shorter than our usual Main Event shows. It was intended to be an After School Club, but in the inception it grew and expanded in gravity, density and ferocity, and while there is an aspect that feels self-destructive, I consider it important enough to release to the whole world. Let history decide.

Nolan-Vember comes to a close as we handle possibly his most emotionally-driven film. Drawing heavily from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Contact (two films we've already covered) Nolan presented the most populist blockbuster version of the speculative possibilities of what happens when a human being goes tear-assing into a black hole.

This is very much our wheelhouse when it comes to the philosophical quandary of Stay or Go, regarding an increasingly uninhabitable planet Earth. So, the conclusions reached in this grand, cosmic, time-dilating cathedral of a smash-hit matter a great deal. And there are definitely elements we love about this one... but in consequence of Nolan's handling and points of focus there are also things that drive us crazier than HAL 9000 speed-dating GLaDOS.

Fortunately, there is a film that forms a perfect sparring partner with this one; Danny Boyle's Sunshine (2007). One twentieth as successful with general audiences, but it handles very similar techno-philosophical and theological concepts in a way that hits devastatingly hard with us... and that long-awaited show is coming next week.

I chose to close out this month on the astonishing music of Hans Zimmer, live from Prague with a full orchestra, celebrating his scores for Nolan in this, in Inception and in the Dark Knight Trilogy.

NOTE: This is a reissued episode from over 12 years ago. Please forgive the lower production values and boneheaded things I say.

The epic conclusion to Christopher Nolan’s game-changing Dark Knight Trilogy. It’s definitely not as straightforward as film two in the series because many people hate this film already, and an equal amount adore every inch of it.

It’s a tricky balancing act since so much of the most well-crafted and exceptional elements have already been discussed over three and a half hours reviewing Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Neither did I want this turning into a hail of disproportionate vitriol over perceived flaws.

Guests:

Sharon Shaw of School of Movies

Taylor Nova of TheKiddDogg

James Carter of Cane and Rinse

Jerome McIntosh of GameBurst

Aquila Edwards of Eyrie City

Paul Gibson of Gonzo Planet

Nolan-Vember evolves to a whole new stage of the man's career, as following the billion-dollar success of The Dark Knight in 2008 he became a household name. This 2010 film, after The Prestige, just four years earlier garnered a mere $109m at the box office totally flipped the landscape of possibility in cerebral blockbuster cinema.

It netted an astonishing $839m, signalling to Hollywood that here was an auteur who could open a summer movie that wasn't based on comics or toys, wasn't a remake or a sequel, a reboot or a prequel or even an adaptation of a book, a play, a fable a video game or a TV show. This was a standalone tale written by the director himself, and that a huge audience now wanted to be taken to the places they recognised him as capable of taking them, mentally, emotionally, and in terms of how intense Hans Zimmer's BWAAAAAAAAAAAAA got; physically.

But that doesn't mean that this evolution of Christopher Nolan works for Sharon and I. In fact, from this point on he royally cheeses our onions!

NOTE: This is a reissued episode from over 12 years ago. Please forgive the lower production values and boneheaded things I say.

Part two of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy. Following the powerful set-up of Batman Begins, the production team pulled out all the stops to deliver an epic crime thriller in the style of Michael Mann’s Heat. This is a story of a city in turmoil and a police force struggling to keep order, up against the ruthless mob. At the center are Batman and The Joker, forces of nature representing order and chaos. The only hope for Gotham may in fact be the White Knight, district attorney Harvey Dent.

But you all know this, because everybody and his dog saw this movie back in 2008. I just wanted to set the scene a little. Much is discussed, especially Heath Ledger’s extraordinary performance, but not forgetting the brilliant turns from Aaron Eckhart and Maggie Gyllenhaal and the possible career-high score from Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard.

Guests:

Sharon Shaw of School of Movies

Taylor Nova of TheKiddDogg

Joshua Garrity of Cane and Rinse

Jerome McIntosh of GameBurst

Aquila Edwards of Eyrie City

Paul Gibson of Gonzo Planet

Nolan-Vember continues with Christopher's fifth film. Now, you would think, following the momentous success of Batman Begins, his period piece about feuding magicians that remains one of his best tricks to date would have been a stellar success... Wolverine's Hugh Jackman versus Dark Knight Christian Bale, and for the low, low price of $40 million; this is a recipe for insane box office gross from the man who would eventually go toe to toe with the plastic pink lady and save cinema in 2023. However, it garnered a paltry $109m from a general audience who in 2006 would far rather go see The Da Vinci Code, Night at the the Museum and the dancing penguins of Happy Feet (also Borat was popular; my wife).

This means the odds are a high percentage of our listeners have not seen this film. We would urge you all to do so at once. Spend a proper evening with a big TV in a darkened living rom with the volume high and intense. This is not a film to catch in ten minute chunks on your phone, nor to pass by at Blockbuster on your way to grab Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector.

An atmosphere thicker than a whale-omelette, twin obsessions to be the best conjurer the Victorian era had going, spies, stolen encoded journals, Gothic secrets and tragedy, David Bowie doing a Serbian accent as Nikola Tesla, the wizard on the mountain, murder after murder... this film will stick to you like your shadow.

NOTE: This is a reissued episode from over 12 years ago. Please forgive the lower production values and boneheaded things I say.

Finally we get to Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy. After eight years away from cinema screens, and multiple stalled attempts at relaunching the franchise, Warner Bros knocked the Bat out of the park with the best film so far and arguably the most compelling and mature adaptation of Bruce Wayne and his alter-ego.

Many aspects are discussed and deconstructed including Christian Bale’s intense portrayal, ace cinematographer Wally Pfister’s erotic endeavours and why Hollywood on paper is a senile, avaricious old psychopath.

Guests:

Sharon Shaw of School of Movies

Taylor Nova of TheKiddDogg

Joshua Garrity of Cane and Rinse

Jerome McIntosh of GameBurst

Aquila Edwards of Eyrie City

Paul Gibson of Gonzo Planet

Kicking off Nolan-Vember with a tale of obsession, revenge and the untrustworthy, ephemeral nature of memory. Things play out in nonlinear fashion as Nolan executes his second film with the deft surety of a man who can see the final arrangement within all the misaligned frames.

Guy Pearce plays Leonard Shelby, a man afflicted with a rare brain disorder that resets his short-term memory every five to ten minutes or so, with his mid and long-term memories almost completely blank, following a terrible tragedy.

For those of you feeling alone and scared right now, we will do our very best to keep on making utterly engrossing podcasts over the next few hard years. Whatever helps listeners get through the goddamn day is a job well done.

Guest:

Greg Downing of Through the Wind Door

A perennial Halloween favourite for our family, this was Tim Burton's Sophomore effort, after his debut with Pee-Wee's Big Adventure but before he became a Hollywood Titan with Batman (starring Beetlejuice). And I know we give him a hard time a lot, as a purveyor of populist Goth chic to the masses, but when he hits right you get this movie.

And it really does hold up after three and a half decades. Possibly because it's so much fun and so child-friendly that new generations can embrace this ghostly monster party every few years, giving it an evergreen quality. Certainly Willow has loved it since they were tiny, and goes into why on this episode with us. Each member of the cast and crew are firing on all cylinders. It's visually stunning, wickedly gruesome, wildly quotable and utterly hilarious.

And this weekend we get to visit the messy but enjoyable 2024 sequel for the Patreon bonus podcast feed.

This is a special episode I've been planning for many years, ever since the notion that 'Horror' as we know it is largely a marketing construct, and that stories that deliberately jab at our Fear-response can be found pretty much everywhere.

This is why I decided to go with my favourite metaphor; food) and hone in on the precept that Horror is not a story type, but a spice (or indeed a series of differently flavoured spices with differing properties) that can be sprinkled in lightly or ladled in heavily to produce wildly varying results.

This would be why de facto Horror film series' like Friday the 13th don't frighten me in the slightest, but Shallow Grave, which would be classified as a Thriller in cinematic terms, chilled me to my core, and why the most frightening film I ever saw isn't in the Horror genre at all!

We and our guests work our way up the scary Scoville Scale (the Screamville scale) to establish some genuinely thought-provoking new, fresh and flavourful perspectives, accompanied by some of the greatest and most spine-tingling movie music of all time!

This was a commissioned episode for Dean R who was very keen for us to examine this 1983 follow-up to the 1960 classic. This film brings back Anthony Perkins after Norman has served his time and behaved well in crazy-jail, with the 'Mother' persona seemingly dormant.

But now we, as the audience may find ourselves strangely onside with the mild-mannered, respectful man, seemingly genuinely trying to go straight, and surrounded by people who want to give this multiple-murderer a piece of their mind (knock it off, idiots, it's crowded enough in there!).

Meg Tilly (sister of Chucky's bride, Jennifer) plays Mary, a down-on-her-luck waitress whom Norman really seems to want to help back onto her feet, as this torrid story circles into an operatic and tragic conclusion. We close out with a synopsis of the entirely unrelated book "Psycho 2" by Robert Bloch; a novel so hated by the studio that they made their own sequel here.

For this rather special episode, we firstly welcome to the show for the first time, director Alfred Hitchcock, as we examine his most famous and most revisited film, Psycho (1960). This became the wellspring from which modern-day detective thrillers emerged. But it also has tangled roots in Horror and the grubby stepchild of its sub-genres, the slasher. While other films like Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter (1955) and John Lee Thompson's Cape Fear (1962) -both weirdly starring Robert Mitchum- were also hugely important, Psycho was less about the stalking killer as it was a torrid dive into the swampy waters of their mind.

Deriving from a 1959 novel by Robert Bloch, who lived down the road from Ed Gein as he was being arrested for trying to make a woman-suit, this story, along with Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Thomas Harris' Silence of the Lambs (1988) assisted greatly in the lurid, pulp sensationalism of the twisted deviant killer-man-in-a-dress mythology. Despite quiet, clear, firm, researched and experienced protestations from trans folk and their allies who keep having to remind the world at large that they aren't toilet-lurking monsters.

We also look at the stunningly ill-advised shot-for-shot remake of the Hitchcock film, directed in 1998 by Gus Van Sant. Superficially, these are exactly the same film, but the devil is in the details. Next week we will be returning to Bates Motel with the far less well-known, but actually pretty good Psycho II, which more pronouncedly paints Norman as a victim.

If New Empire is the best Kong film, this one qualifies for us as the best Japanese Godzilla film. Kaiju fans are being blessed with an embarrassment of riches in this era (check out the charming and dazzling animated Ultraman Rising for even more of this) and there has never been a better time to wrap your head around why this enormous nuclear lizard is such an enduring icon in his home country.

Journeying back to the 1954 original Gojira, this film re-stages those events in different ways that even more deeply parallel a nation reeling from the mass-traumatic aftermath of World War II. Right now these people are at zero in terms of ability to cope, and Godzilla is set to slam them back even further to minus one (I didn't come up with that, some YouTube channel obsessing over his toughness stats did, but it's rather good).

And yet, while this could be another funerial and mournful lamentation of death and destruction, and abandonment by our leaders, the disgraced kamikaze pilot at the centre doesn't so much have to regain his honour as recognise the value of his own continued existence. This film is life-affirming and helmed by my favourite Japanese director who isn't Hayao Miyazaki; the magnificently gifted and humane Takashi Yamazaki (Lupin III: The First, Stand by Me, Doraemon 1 & 2, Dragon Quest: Your Story)

Guest:

Dan Hoeppner  @MightyMegatron0  of Leftover Army Monsters

Fixed the title on this one, to both distinguish it from 2021s Godzilla vs. Kong, AND to give the rightful prominence to the Great Ape whose movie this most definitely is. Willow suggested the original title would be as misleading as "Loki x Thor: Ragnarok".

This is my favourite of the new MonsterVerse films, by a narrow margin, considering Godzilla II: King of the Monsters is still absolutely magnificent. Just like that 2019 entry, it's also one of my favourite films of the year, for reasons I will elaborate upon in depth here.

Rejoining us for this Hollow-Earth saga of deposing one of several gorilla dictators we've seen on the big screen this year is the chap who knows more about kaiju films than I know about not treading upon the sensitive tootsies of Godzilla fans, who will hopefully be happy to hear we will be back next week for the incredible new Japanese film, 'Minus One'!

Guest:

Dan Hoeppner  @MightyMegatron0  of Leftover Army Monsters

The initial and glowingly positive reviews are coming in for Transformers One this week. It's the first entirely-animated Transformers movie since the infamous Optimus-Prime-slaughtering 'The Transformers: The Movie' in 1986, and I am happy and hopeful for the future in that regard.

But what of the state of the live action films? The fifth and final Michael Bay-directed mess was The Last Knight in 2017, which did almost HALF the box office of the obscenely successful Age of Extinction in 2014. Then came Bumblebee in 2018, very purposefully different in tone from the leery MacGuffin hunts of the Bay films. It made less again, despite being the only one with heart and soul.

Then in 2023, this seventh entry sought to split the difference with a return to the MacGuffin hunt and big, noisy robot battles of the earlier entries, but with an injection of the humanity and spark of Bumblebee.

This episode contains a bonus; the previously Patreon-exclusive exploration of my re-edits of the five Bayformers. What, if anything can be saved from that towering mountain of extremely lucrative scrap!?

One of the biggest films of the year, and the greatest success for the MCU... which weirdly seems to avoid going anywhere near Earth 616, instead acting as either a swansong for the X-Men series, begun in the year 2000, or possibly a phoenix-cry. It really depends on how Marvel handles the Mutants in the next few years.

However, as a focused distillation of some of the greatest strengths of those 13 movies this one succeeds where so many others fail, not by being eye-rollingly insincere, as many publications have asserted disapprovingly, but by balancing (not always magnificently) the snarcasm and fourth-wall assault and battery of the irrepressible Deadpool, once again using humour to mask his pain and anxiety, and the impeccably serious and authentic Hugh Jackman, playing the ruin this Wolverine's life has become entirely straight.

It's a grower and  a shower. In a year otherwise mercifully cape-free, it straps on the spandex in the most form-fitting of ways.

Guests:

Jesse Ferguson of Recorded Tomorrow @TheDapperDM 

Chris Finik @finmonster09

This one is special on a level I am going to find challenging to articulate in a medium as clumsy as the written word. It is a show that has been promised for well over a decade, it took me four recording sessions and a protracted edit over the month of August. It is so densely and richly layered that I would put it in the same category as our shows on Guillermo del Toro and the Lord of the Rings (ironic, since that was the book the writer/director used to convince his mother Alice Crowe that rock music wasn't all just sex and drugs).

This is the fourth film from Cameron Crowe, after Say Anything, Singles and Jerry Maguire, and you will hear in this show just how much his autobiographical experiences and outlook on the world influenced and resonated with me in the late 90s and early 2000s, in a way that has absolutely informed upon not only my character, personality, writing, editing and philosophy, but the way I engage with music itself. Put simply, this movie goes beyond masterpiece and becomes an experience like no other.

Grab your biggest clamshell headphones, get away from the hustle and bustle of the modern world, and immerse yourself in a time period most of us were not present for. A time between the late 60s and early 70s when art and commercialism were engaged in war for our collective attention. One would nourish our spirit, the other would fixate upon our money. This is the story of a 15 year old boy who somehow convinced Rolling Stone Magazine he was a credible music journalist and went on tour with some of the greatest rock bands who have ever mounted the stage.

And it is, on so many levels... True.

This is a very special episode, and might be a lot of folk's favourite of the year.

What is a “FELLAS…” scenario?

It feels like most of us will have encountered them in the wild as we doomscroll our way through the doldrums of the Misinformation Age. Simply put, it’s when a man asks other men if it is in fact gay to do something in particular, OR it is when a man (and a very cis man at that) makes an empirical statement pronouncing something in particular that a man shouldn’t do as now the act of a gay man. Invariably these somethings in particular are laughably commonplace and the aversion to them is rendered tragicomic as a result.

These turn up in our Discord channel, usually in the 'Bad Reviews Against Humanity' thread. Discord members Tripas, Alejandra Vargas, Chris Finik, Greg Downing, Selfproclaimed, Toby Skeels-Jungius and TransientModeLincoln worked diligently to compile several years worth into one organised list. And we brought in the now-16-year-old Willow Shaw to help us read them all aloud.

This was a commissioned show for Tylor and Chris Finik. It covers the first two seasons of this animated show which can be found on Netflix, Paramount+ and Nickelodeon. You can listen to the whole thing without fear of anything being made worse, and we keep a lot of secrets and surprises under wraps since statistically most of you won't have seen this.

On first inspection it might seem like Star Trek for Babies or Star Trek: Rebels, however, spend some time with it and you'll find a show that is not only a splendid introduction to this seminal mythology, but a fine new way of looking at The Federation from the outside, wrapped around some exceptional and emotionally-driven character-focused science fiction.

The short of it is, seven young misfits on the run in a stolen Federation starship prototype. There's a threat coming from the future and they have to get the warning to Earth in time. What they become is exemplary of what intergalactic peacekeeping could be, in the hands of those who have not yet been morally compromised. It's excellent and you will have fun hearing why.

What is a "hangout movie"?

It's a film that concerns itself far less with telling one grand, overall story of one or two people's development or journey, and far more on literally spending time with the ensemble cast of characters. In this show I draw the comparison between the characters we see here and animals in a safari park, but I don' mean they are simply placed there for our amusement, and don't matter. What I mean here is that we are experiencing a world based on memory and authentic experiences being described to us through the medium of what might be a dopey comedy where nothing happens.

It is the last day of school in Texas 1976, America is at a fragile place and the young people, following the mess of the Vietnam war, the betrayal of their government and under increased scrutiny from adults just itching to banish them from Civilisation if they so much as inhale a wisp of pot smoke. This is Richard Linklater's second film, his first under the critical eye of a studio with financial priorities... and it is a sweltering, comforting place to return to, filled with characters both lovable and scummy, jut trying to party before life breaks them.

It also has one of the top five curated soundtracks of all time.

This is a special show for Chris Finik. It would have been a relatively straightforward endeavour for Sharon and I to delve into this one. It's a story that feels familiar and contains many of our very favourite elements; A betrayed lady thriving on her own untapped resourcefulness with help from a chain of women begun long ago, a dragon with an AMAZING voice and a Royal Family squatting on an exploitative predatory system that all needs to be burned down. Plus, we love Millie Bobby Brown.

But we went one further, twisting around to examine the novelisation by Evelyn Skye, based on the early screenplay by Dan Mazeau. Both versions are lacking in certain departments, which the other compensates for... but there's some crazy business that folks who have only seen the film on Netflix will definitely want to know.

This was a commissioned show for Self AKA Selfproclaimed. Ever since The Legend of Aang wrapped in 2008 there have been comics expanding upon what followed the defeat of Fire Lord Ozai. This, however, was a pair of books; 'The Rise of Kyoshi' and 'The Shadow of Kyoshi' detailing what occurred four centuries prior to the adventures of Team Aang.

And the 2019-2020 release of these two novels, penned by F.C. Yee with consultancy from co-creator of Avatar Michael Dante DiMartino was met with wild adulation. Both books have astronomical five star reviews on Amazon, with more than 9K ratings corroborating that.

What I personally got from the books was a lot more of a mixed bag. There is amazing potential here, however, not all of it was fulfilled. Luckily we also have longtime friend of the show Nama Chibitty on, to counterpoint my hang-ups.

And this episode launches on the same day as School of Movies unveils the second in our series of short story anthologies, written by members of the community. 'Shared Footprints on Crossed Pathways' is the follow-up to 'The Lights from Distant Bonfires' in 2022. This collection sees legendary public domain characters like Sherlock Holmes, Winnie the Pooh, Zorro, The Phantom of the Opera, Captain Nemo, Cthulhu, Minnie Mouse, Don Quixote, Scheherazade, Tarzan and King Kong meeting up and examining one another's worldviews. Each story given a beautiful illustration by Nama's sister Bunny Boughamer.

The paperback is available here

This was a commissioned show for Dean R who just happens to sit at the ideal age to have discovered Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Vale on PlayStation 2 in 2001 as a kid. After it had a profound effect upon him, he went back to examine the original Klonoa: Door to Phantomile on PS1 from 1996.

And while these puzzle-platformers with their poochified, Sonic-looking rabbit/cat thing might on first inspection hold nothing of particular interest I was glad to have been contracted to dig deeper. There's an existential element beneath the surface that left a lot of kids bewildered, introspective, maybe even depressed.

And I played through both games in their Phantasy Reverie Switch remakes (as well as completing the original on PS1, part of the second on PS2 and the ill-fated first remake of the original on Nintendo Wii, that many Klonoa fans HATE for resons we will go into.

So, strap in, grab your ring, and do not trust your friends, they're lying to you!

This is a commissioned show for Chris Finik. And unlike the marketing for this straight-to-Hulu film our show is going to be a little more mysterious about the details, because it definitely was worth going in completely ignorant like we did. I even made some arresting artwork for this episode to better convey that this is not your regular thriller. If you have Disney+ that's your evening.

It's a silent movie, and I say that as A Quiet Place: Day One is doing quite well in theatres, and having watched the Mel Brooks comedy "Silent Movie" (1976) only last night. It keeps us, the audience in a state of tense, breathless isolation along with intense and extremely compelling leading lady Kaitlyn Dever (Booksmart, Justified, Dear Even Hansen) as Brynn.

Directed by Brian Duffield, writer of The Babystitter (2017) and its sequel, both of which we liked, along with Love and Monsters (2020) an under-watched Lockdown gem on Netflix. This gentleman is one to watch.

After many years of thinking about how to tackle these two absolute idiots, we found the best angle for us. Ostensibly this is about the 1996 movie, which still holds up today and makes for an appealing, surprisingly general-audience-friendly and brisk hour and 21-minute comedy. This is an achievement, considering their extremely sketchy first incarnation as a pair of cruelly observed Texas teenagers being horrible to frogs.

What Sharon and I do here is fill out the absence of texture in this rare 2D American-animated adult(ish) film by delving into who the boys are, and their pitiful background, as portrayed in various key episodes of the original show, which ran for only four years, but made two comebacks -both solid- with the current one still ongoing on Paramount Plus (which means most people can't see it, or the 2022 sequel movie which propels them into the 21st Century).

If you HATE Beavis & Butt-Head this podcast probably won't change your mind, but if you have never delved into this grubby world or indeed have some fond memories from their mid-90s heyday we may bring you a persistent giggle.

10 Recommended Beavis & Butt-Head Episodes to Watch

1. No Laughing (S2E12)

2. The Great Cornholio (S4E31)

3. Prank Call (S6E13)

4. Walkathon (S5E7)

5. Butt Flambé (S7E28)

6. Candy Sale (S5E23)

7. Werewolves of Highland (S8E1)

8. Dumb Design (S8E12)

9. It’s a Miserable Life (S6E8)

10. Choke (S5E4)

Cloon June finally comes to a close with a magnificent romantic thriller, written by Elmore Leonard, the author of Get Shorty, 3:10 to Yuma and Rum Punch, which became Jackie Brown. This one hit at the tail end of the 90s, and became a significant landmark in the careers of George Clooney, director Steven Soderbergh and George's co-star, a relative newcomer named Jenifer Lopez.

Deliberately stylised to evoke the crime thrillers of the 1970s, we do time with smooth-talking bank robber Jack Foley, finally hitting a point of realisation that he is going to die of old age in prison. However, in striking out against that eventuality with an audacious piggybacked prison jailbreak he crosses paths with Karen Sisco, a U.S. Marshal with a shotgun and a Chanel Suit. Against all odds, after spending time in the trunk of a getaway car, the two of them wind up separated, with thoughts dwelling on each other. Karen pursues Jack from Miami to Detroit, but does she want to lock him up forever or bed him and find herself a new way of life?

This absolute cherished favourite has been hugely influential on my work, especially The Princess Thieves: Available on Bandcamp.

Initially we were going to cover this 2015 movie as the After School Club to close out Cloon June, but the more we delved into it, the more weighty and disturbingly messy it became.

From the mind of visionary animated filmmaker Brad Bird (Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol) comes a movie based on a themed area of Disneyland from 1955 which envisioned a great big beautiful Tomorrow. Now, 60-70 years later, having arrived at a mild dystopia, how can we reconcile what our grandparents thought the Future would be like, against what we've had building up around us our whole lives?

  The YouTube channels featured in this episode include. (but are not limited to...)

• Jenny Nicholson

• Climate Town

• and Undecided with Matt Ferrell

We recommend you subscribe to all three, and specifically track down those latter two videos featured to get full links to ways that you can proceed with the concepts discussed.

Next week: Out of Sight closes out Cloon-June in Clooni-July.

Cloon June continues with the slickest and arguably best Las Vegas heist movie. This 2001 remake of the underachieving 1960 Rat Pack original is less about establishing characters with any kind of arc and more about setting up the perfect mousetrap with eleven skilled individuals we can have fun with. It's a big old magic trick, with the prestige reveal to us, the audience being the punch that makes it satisfying.

We weren't going to cover the sequels on the main feed, but we got curious and delved back into 12 and 13 for the first time since the cinema in 2004 and 2007, finding most of the best drama in there. And finally, a re-edit of our 2018 After School Club on Ocean's 8, featuring Toby Jungius.

Finally, we round off with a dream-team cast pitch for a rebooted Ocean's 9. Next week, we make an unscheduled stop at Tomorrowland, to see what Brad Bird thinks of the future we wound up in. After that, extending Cloon June into July, Soderburgh and Clooney, along with Jennifer Lopez and composer David Holmes hit their absolute cinematic peaks with Out of Sight.

Cloon June, the month dedicated to George Clooney movies continues apace with his first significant lead part after over a decade of appearances in shonky Z-List horror and then two years of his breakout role in E.R. as eminently desirable paediatrician Doctor Ross. This is a firestorm of a counterpoint to that gentle healer, fugitive thief Seth Gecko is a deeply angry man, though he is a charming picnic next to his monstrous brother.

This episode is also an intersection between two director-seasons we have in preparation, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. Rarely has a collaborative movie been made that is such an appealingly riotous showcase of the distinct styles of two auteurs, whilst being humbly grimy, memorably quotable, and so very excited just to exist.

WARNING: This movie is nasty, and we will be discussing sexual assault, extreme violence, florid language and Quentin being a weird creep.

It's not often we handle romantic comedies, but this one has more going on beneath the surface. With particular emphasis placed on the back and forth script, fast-flowing, overlapping dialogue and highly quotable, this extremely 90s movie showcases one of the most appealing onscreen couples in cinema history; Batman & Catwoman.

Two single parents, one an irresponsible fun-time Dad, the other juggling career and motherhood furiously, find themselves and their kids entangled during a rainy, chaotic Manhattan workday that threatens to drive them all insane..

It also kicks off "Cloon-June", four weeks of George Clooney's early forays into acting on film. Coming up we have From Dusk Till Dawn, Out of Sight and a mystery fourth movie. He's always been one of my favourite actors, he had a lot to prove at this stage in his career, and it ties in with Pride month as he was kind of the celebrity in the 90s that most guys would shruggingly admit to maybe crushing on.

Another unexpected Commission that came out of nowhere. Big thank you to Dean R for requisitioning this. Far less well-known in Wes Craven's body of work than the slashers, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, The Hills Have Eyes, Last House on the Left, this one is going outside his comfort zone.

Starting out like a romantic comedy, an aspect highlighted in the trailer, starring the stunning and wildly talented young actors Rachel McAdams (fresh from Mean Girls and The Notebook) and Cillian Murphy (recently of 28 Days Later, and about to play Jonathan Crane in Batman Begins) this movie turns a corner at the beginning of Act 2 and becomes a taut, tense, claustrophobic, dialogue-based Hitchcokian thriller.

As it happens, this is Sharon's favourite of ALL of Craven's body of work, and you will find out why in this extremely enthusiastic episode.

This was a show that was recommended to us a few times, but then wound up an unexpected commissioned episode. Compounding this, Willow has been a lover of this crazy, twisted, queer-friendly HELL for years, since the pilot surfaced on YouTube. They had already seen all eight episodes of Amazon's 2024 first season, and considering a now maturing and emotionally complex Gen Z is the target audience for this, we got Willow on as our special guest.

For the majority of you that haven't delved into Hazbin Hotel (or its brother-series Helluva Boss), it is an animated musical about the ongoing conflict between Heaven and Hell, with the titular hotel being set up by the wildly optimistic Disney-Princess daughter of Lucifer; Charlie Morningstar. Charlie believes the denizens of damnation have it in them to be redeemed and ascend to Paradise, and the hotel is the site of their rehab. Unfortunately the officials of both afterlives are various degrees of incredulous about this plan.

We talk about the whole thing, but I don't consider this as spoiling the experience for newcomers. It can only help you enjoy the show all the more if you listen to this first, and the toe-tapping, frequently genuinely excellent songs will live in your head from now on. If you like The Good Place Good Omens, The Owl House or even Hades, you will find plenty of similar philosophical musing and humour in here.

Statistically speaking, very few of you have seen this movie. Those who have either detest it with utmost derision or love it so much it makes them cry. Garnering a pathetic 11% on Rotten Tomatoes one would think this an unmitigated disaster, easily summed up as "Grown woman remembers imaginary friend, he returns and wrecks her life."

But look at the run time on this one... two and a half hours. And you know us, if we've talked for that long about something so obscure that literally nobody has ever asked us to cover on the show then it means there's something special below the surface which 89% of professional film critics in 1991 either didn't see or meant nothing to them.

So, for everyone who hasn't seen this movie, come along with us, and find out the extent of what was overlooked.

With the new Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, directed by Maze-Runner helmer Wes Ball emerging this week, we went back to look at a Trilogy that emerged without any overarching grand plan, changing directors after the first instalment, with both men just trying to make the absolute best film they could with the opportunity they had.

And they succeeded! This is one of the best low-key trios of films based on a long-existing franchise that nobody had any real expectations of, and that were easy to overlook in the decade when superheroes ruled the big screen.

You will find out here what the creators' aims were, and the challenges of crafting films like these where the stars won't be in the picture until Weta Digital paint them in, and yet so much of those characters are right there in the human performances. If you ever doubted that Andy Serkis deserved a Best Actor nomination, regardless of digital makeup, this may convince you.

He's responsible for some of the most adored and industry-changing films of all time, and for some of the biggest cases of fan backlash ever recorded. It's maybe a little harder to remember now, after year upon year of Disney's Star Wars being declared the worst thing that has ever been put to screen, but a few years earlier, similar guys were saying similar things about the man that many fans wish had never sold to America's Mousy Spirit of Capitalism.

What we have for you here is a focused collection of monologues drawn from commentaries across all six of the movies he was directly in charge of, bringing you from Star Wars in 1977 all the way to Revenge of the Sith in 2005. The cumulative effect of listening to George say one thing and then seem to contradict himself down the line, regarding what was planned and when gives way to the portrait of a frustrated storyteller hoping to be understood.

These moments are interspersed with monologues from his production teams, including Empire Strikes Back director, his mentor Irvin Kirshner, Empire and Jedi writer Lawrence Kasdan, FX master craftsman Dennis Muren, animation director Rob Coleman, producer Rick McCallum, concept artist Ralph McQuarrie and the irreplaceable Carrie Fisher.

This week, I have put together a presentation utilising footage drawn painstakingly from many, many hours worth of commentaries and archival interviews on the Star Wars movies, all focusing on one man.

I worked until the thumb and index finger and on my mouse hand no longer obeyed commands, in order to do justice to the astonishing amount of our experience of those movies is informed upon by the sounds he composed with. His decades of craftsmanship are as crucial to Star Wars as the sensational scores of John Williams. That's not even mentioning Indiana Jones, Willow, WALL-E or E.T.

You'll hear how the most memorable FX (as well as the ones used so subtly we don't even notice) are recorded in the real world to create that lived-in environmental ambience and audible character forever linked with that Galaxy far, far away. Here for your further movie education is one of the greatest and most ground-breaking sound designers in the history of cinema, Mr Ben Burtt.

When the Roman Empire looted the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, the amount of gold they found inside dropped the price of gold by 50% throughout the Empire. If something like that happened today, it would have caused the collapse of several First World countries overnight.

But that amount of loot pales in comparison to the value of the One Piece; both the fictional mysterious pirate treasure that has everyone in this wonderful waterworld taking to the high seas, but also the third best-selling comic of all time and the phenomenally popular anime, both of which have been running since the late 90s.

For those of us who need to catch up really fast without reading or watching over a thousand things, the new Netflix live action series is the best place to start. Just eight utterly compulsive episodes long, so far, this will give you a grounding in the major characters the same way it did for us in this commissioned episode. And we brought in both the sponsors and two more Straw Hats to fill out the map on this vast, rich and vibrant world. Guests

• Self AKA Selfproclaimed

• Teemu Helasharju AKA Banzai Tree

• Bradford Yurkew AKA Lanodantheon and

• Austin Wilden AKA WC-Wit

[Check out Austin's writing on One Piece here...]

https://wits-writing.tumblr.com/post/690798073331515392/my-favorite-panel-in-one-piece-or-why-ill

[And on Transformers Earthspark here...]

https://wits-writing.tumblr.com/post/721584287457181696/a-wonderful-experience-why-transformers

Our years-long journey through the DC Animated Universe comes to a close, and it is both melancholy as we say goodbye to Kevin Conroy and at the same time wildly enthusiastic for some of the very best episodes across all that we have watched.

It is strange to think that we started this in 2020 when the DC movies at the cinema were on a high note: After years of the only success story being Batman, they had a billion-dollar hit with Aquaman, a cheerful adventure with the original Shazam!, we were moving past the embarrassments of Justice League and Suicide Squad, Wonder Woman was still a shining beacon and even though barely anyone saw it Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey kicked absolute ass... and now as we finish it, Aquaman 2 was a damp squid that made about a third of the original's box office, Black Adam finally appeared after over a decade of development for a "...that was it?" response, Shazam 2 pootled away the goodwill of the original, Justice League came back to satisfy the Snyder Cult... who then demanded more Snyder, James Gunn tried a Suicide Squad, but without Joker there, nobody came (everybody came to Joker), new management stepped in, they locked Batgirl in the dungeon and threw away the key, The Flash ran through time and space and development purgatory, resulting in a big, cringing NOPE! from audiences, Wonder Woman went back to 1984, her beacon puttered out and now she does birthday party cameos, and Blue Beetle kicked absolute ass... even though barely anyone saw it. The only big success story... was the Batman.

I honestly hope James Gunn can rescue ALL the heroes from this turd-fire, but whether or not that is possible, School of Movies can now definitively say that this IS the superhero universe to be held up as that shining beacon again (absence of a much-needed Wonder Woman: the Animated Series notwithstanding).

My personal final rankings are...

1. Justice League Unlimited

2. Batman: The Animated Series

3. Superman: The Animated Series

4. Justice League: The Animated Series

5. The New Batman Adventures

6. Batman Beyond

Between those, a breadth of the DC comic characters and settings was laid out in such a rich and consistent manner that makes this the definitive encapsulation of the mythology. If you've never had the pleasure of watching these in remastered High Definition, you will have your breath taken away by the artistry on show.

Guests:

Toby Jungius @TJungius of Through the Wind Door

Nama Chibitty @namathenerd

The DC Animated Universe marathon reaches its Avengers phase, as the established animated Batman and Superman from their own Animated Series' which had already crossed over, team up with Wally West's Flash (who had guested on Superman) John Stewart's Green Lantern (as opposed to the Kyle Raynor who guested on Superman) Diana Prince who should absolutely have gotten her own Wonder Woman: The Animated Series, J'onn J'onzz the Martian Manhunter (not to be confused with the unrelated Manhunters from the later Green Lantern: the Animated Series, which takes place in the Young Justice timeline) and Shayera Hol, Hawkgirl (not to be confused with Carter Hall, the unrelated Hawkman) of Thanagaria, the bird-people planet. Comics are weird.

The first two seasons, simply called Justice League are an odd fit. It doesn't have an explosive beginning that has all these new personalities playing off each other, and the event of them being revealed and meeting feeling like a special, momentous thing, they're just kind of all there, converging on a bunch of boring aliens to fight. The following episodes are almost across the board two-parters, making it less easy to sit down and just enjoy one. And they are still remarkably coy about getting inside their heads and playing out the drama of being this close to other supremely powerful beings. Making them gods first is always less appealing to me than making them people first.

Fortunately, when those first two seasons concluded we moved onto Justice League Unlimited. Self-contained episodes, even stronger animation and music, really making use of a massively expanded roster of seemingly everyone in the DC Universe, and a deft handling of smaller, more personal stories, with grand overarching umbrella plots. We get into some of that on this episode as there is some intersection between the two very different formats, (as well as a discussion of the Batman-Beyond closing episode 'Epilogue') but the grand finale will come in next week's concluding episode to the entire DCEU.

Guests:

Toby Jungius @TJungius of Through the Wind Door

Nama Chibitty @namathenerd

(And on the Epilogue, originally recorded on our Batman Begins session)

Chris Finik @finmonster09

Kevin Veighey @KevinTimeGeek86

Bradford Yurkiw

This is an idea for a new kind of show that I've been developing. It just so happens to coincide with a period where my voice has been wrecked from illness and I'm trying to limit talking for long stretches so that my vocal cords can heal up.

I've been pulling together an archive of Director's Commentaries from the various discs that nobody seems to want any more. These represent a window of just over a decade wherein we got to hear what was in the heads of the filmmakers. As we move into the era of the vast majority of movies being watched over streaming, with scant few extras or documentaries on their construction, it is even easier to dismiss the works as 'content'. The general public never much cared for these materials, but if you love movies like we do, the bonus features are troves of creative insight to be uncovered.

However, most commentaries are a little bit dry, or might need the film there viewable for context, or the speaker falls back on saying what they're seeing onscreen, and the bigger issue is who has the time in the 2020s to sit down for two hours with one of these? My way forward is listening to them on my iPod as audiobooks. And what I want to share with you is the focused and collected cream the crop I'm studying. This brings our show closer to what it was always meant to be, Sharon and I learning along with you folks, from the craftspeople of film. And who better to start with than my absolute favourite person in this industry?

Now, I need feedback on this show, which is composed of the most fascinating parts to me from his commentaries on Hellboy (2004) and Cronos (1992). How much do you like this format and who else would you like to hear from? Because my archive is growing towards hundreds of hours worth of precious perspective, and to be the curator of that for you would be a literal honour.

The conclusion (for now) to this series of shows on the triumphant return of Star Trek.

Season 2 slaloms between unsettling and dark episodes which would feel more at home in Discovery if they weren't so personal to the characters in this rich ensemble... and some of the most hilarious, touching, light-hearted yet heart-breaking downtime episodes which highlight the comedy strengths and the charisma of everyone in the crew. It's bumpy, but so worth the journey.

Kaoru's recommended episodes of the original 1966 series, AND the redheaded stepchild of Star Trek, the much maligned Enterprise series which ran for 98 episodes from 2001-2005.

TOS S1-24: Space Seed

TOS S2-7: Wolf in the Fold

ENTERPRISE S4-4 to 6: Borderland/Cold Station 12/The Augments

Chris' Suggestion: The Orville - Season 2

Debbie's Suggestion: Talistheintrovert on YouTube with her presentation "PSYCH the best Sherlock Holmes adaptation in existence".

Jesse's Book Pick: This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone.

Sharon's Book Pick: The Truce at Bakura by Kathy Tyers.

The Bad Batch S2-E12: The Outpost.

Guests:

From Sequentially Yours  Kaoru Negisa  @Moonpanther22

and Debbie Morse  @bastet8300

Jesse Ferguson of Recorded Tomorrow @TheDapperDM

Chris Finik @finmonster09

Is this the last true swashbuckler of the 20th Century? It's certainly the Zorro movie so great, and so wildly successful in all of its aims that there hasn't really been a landmark big screen appearance since then (that wasn't the leading man playing a cat). Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta Jones in their prime, and Anthony Hopkins delivering my personal favourite performance of his. 

Here, in this commissioned episode, we go through every department, exploring the multitude of exceptional craftspeople, thespians, stunt coordinators, wardrobe heads, practical FX masters, all the while accompanied by the music of the late, great master of horns, composer James Horner. All of their work blends together into an absolutely magnificent, sweeping romantic adventure of revenge and liberation, with not only the greatest fencing scenes ever filmed, but the sexiest! 

This is the second of a trio of absolutely astonishing films directed by Martin Campbell. We have already covered the third, (twice!) Casino Royale (2006), and we really do need to get around to covering the first, GoldenEye (1995).

Guest:

Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnew of Cinapse

This is one of two commissioned podcasts on the first two seasons of the best Star Trek shows in decades. Refreshingly lacking in cynicism and tapping into the Kennedy-era energy of exploration and endeavour with a tight focus on character development, this one really is worth your time. We spend two and a half hours of spoilerific, textured discussion time really delving into these first ten episodes. 

Kaoru's recommended episodes of the original 1966 series to watch for additional context...

S1-11 & S1-12: The Menagerie

S1-13: The Conscience of the King

S1-14: Balance of Terror

S1-19: Arena

S2-01: Amok Time

Guests:

From Sequentially Yours  Kaoru Negisa  @Moonpanther22

and Debbie Morse  @bastet8300

Jesse Ferguson of Recorded Tomorrow @TheDapperDM

Chris Finik @finmonster09

The late 2010s. It is a period of civil war. The vast Empire of Disney has released four of its five first Star Wars movies, to mixed reception. Critically and financially, The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi have done very well, as has Rogue One. However, the two episodes have divided the smaller portion of the global audience that amounts to the vocal fanbase, between those who are thrilled and those who are disgusted. 

In a vain effort to smooth things over, it is decided that the pitched final film in this nine-episode Saga be made with nothing upsetting or challenging within. Writer/Director Colin Trevorrow is relieved of duty and replaced by the director of The Force Awakens and the writer of Batman V Superman. These two are then given a hard crunch time to get the movie developed, filmed, finished and released by the end of 2019. It must be by then, because a dark period for the cinema has been prophesised for the 2020s. What was released was designed to mildly please everybody, and as a result, felt largely mediocre, and did not become widely beloved. 

Now, after years of living with the pain of this creative fumble, a lone film aficionado sets out into the wilderness of fan edits to see what has been done with the conclusion that left him so disappointed. What he discovered may shock and delight you, or it might induce a powerful rage. One thing is certain, that pain has been put to rest. 

This was originally going to be an After School Club episode, but a combination of the community discourse regarding the X-Men, and an extremely well-timed trailer drop for the '97 reboot, AND a horrendous cold that has ravaged Sharon and I, along with our timetable, we're making this a Main Event.

If you're a little younger than us, you may well have been the exact right age and state of mind for this early-2000s animated series, which in many ways surpasses the much-vaunted '92 show. It is gratifyingly forward-facing, accepting that the Claremont era was thoroughly X-plored by its predecessor. And while its release clearly coincides with the early Fox movies, it holds to a high school relationship drama in a world initially unaware of mutants, and in distancing itself from the big screen, manages to be better, and more focused. 

That said, there are some annoyances and character-handling that ground our claws, but it's in amongst some of the most relatable incarnations of these long-beloved weirdos. We absolutely urge you to track it down and devour the whole thing. 

The infamous animated series with a theme tune you can hear just by looking at stills of it, finally gets a well-deserved podcast. We actually recorded this several years back, to coincide with the launch of the new X-Men '97 animated show on D+, and we're finally seeing images from that now. Whether it's good or bad, THIS ONE is worth watching, at least some choice episodes of.

While often held up with the likes of Batman TAS, this one's strengths lie less in the flawless execution of those DCEU shows, and more in the goofy heart, wild Claremont-era stories and memorably crystallised colourful characters. In many ways, this is the evolution* of several decades of comic book storytelling, coming out to the world at large, at the opening of their most successful and popular decade. Planting a flag in the ground with a big old X on it, to mark the spot.

We elected to focus only on Season 1 here, as after recording we went on to watch all of it, and that show would be five hours long and quite repetitive. But we nailed the salient points and I hope, managed to outline why this cartoon and its crew of kinda-silly characters meant so much, and could mean even more if Marvel play their cards right in future. 

*Oh, and if you were born a little while after us and grew up with the second generation show, X-Men: Evolution, then you're going to love next week's podcast. 

We initially started watching this 2017 Paramount TV series just for some back-story context on a pair of commissioned podcasts we have upcoming on the first two seasons of the sister show about the crew of the Enterprise; 'Strange New Worlds'. As it turns out, after a rocky start, Discovery is really excellent in its own right and we wolfed down the first four seasons. 

So, this is a largely spoiler-free round-table discussion on those seasons, to give you folks who haven't yet watched it incentive to maybe give it a go, along with details and character development to keep an eye on. And if you have watched it you will almost certainly love hearing our take, because, as it turns out, we are now in the middle of an unexpected Golden Age of Trek. 

Guests:

From Sequentially Yours  Kaoru Negisa  @Moonpanther22

and Debbie Morse  @bastet8300

Chris Finik @finmonster09

It's always a risk, setting a sci-fi dystopian movie only a few years from filming. You're going to make predictions about how the world might look and operate, with new technology or sociological and political upheaval within a time period so immediate that it's the difference between the launch of the Sony PlayStation and the PlayStation 2

But we are currently living in a dystopia increasingly left to the devices of the dumbest of AI, and many of us are wondering "How the hell did all this happen between the PS4 and PS5?". Plus, the writer/producer of this one warned us about Skynet before. James Cameron here teams up with director (and occasional wife) Katherine Bigelow to deliver a grimy neo-noir that failed abysmally at the box office when everyone wanted Batman Forever. A disregarded cult favourite with a mysterious and twisted psychopath murdering people in truly stomach-churning ways, the same year Se7en was a massive smash hit. 

The tech is effectively Virtual Reality, only it's recorded, first-person real life experiences that go way beyond mere visual immersion. There are riots on the streets of Los Angeles as a terrifyingly militarised police force close in, and as the clock ticks towards midnight on New Year's Eve in the far-flung year of 1999 a young and twitchy Ralph Feinnes and a statuesque goddess, his long-suffering protector played by Angela Basset find themselves caught up in a dangerous world. 

This show was commissioned by Greg Downing, and we had a blast delving into it.

After decades of very patchy sequels and spinoffs to the 1987 sci-fi classic, Predator, we finally get one that is not only worthy of, but in many ways surpasses its stealthy action-beefcake-slasher source.

So far we've had Predator 2 (1990), Alien vs. Predator (2004), Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007), Predators (2010) and The Predator (2018). But this one takes note of there frequently being a woman of colour on the cast of the previous movies and this time put her front and centre, telling her story, rather than the grizzled guys she's babysitting.

Relative unknown Amber Midthunder (who has nonetheless been acting since 2001 at the age of 4) stars as Naru, a Comanche girl on the great plains of America, circa 1719. Her skills lie in being highly observant and resourceful, and her frustrations stem from the guys  in her group not letting her be a hunter. This of course goes upside down when an outsider touches down in their territory and starts bagging trophies with horrifying ease.  And these French fur-trappers are similarly surprised to find an alien Predator carving them up for his own shelf-candy. 

From Dan Trachtenberg, the director of 10 Cloverfield Lane comes another absolutely riveting tale of a woman who must fight to survive. 

Guest:

Actual Comanche Nama Chibitty @namathenerd

This is one we have been planning and looking forward to for a long, long, LONG time. One of the most significant indie video games of all time, and for our child, maybe their favourite forever (up against Minecraft and Stardew Valley).

In a gaming marketplace overflowing with charming retro-styled games with a dark, absurd sense of humour veiling heart-breaking stories about coping through pain, loneliness and grief, this one shines out as an inspirational beacon. With Earthbound on the SNES as his chief influence, creator Toby Fox set out to make a game that confounded, mocked and disapproved of RPG tropes, but in doing so, made an adventure where you could kill every enemy you meet... or make friends with them. And doing the latter results in profound and deeply memorable connections.

If you've not played it by now, you probably won't. So, throw the notion of spoilers aside and let's get into the juicy skeleton meat on this one, together.

Guests:

Hollywoo Actress Maya Souris @Mayasantandrea

Professional Underteller Willow Shaw

Part 6 of 6

We come to it at last. The final episodes of one of the greatest animated shows ever gifted to TV. And we pulled out all the stops this time, because it's bittersweet to say goodbye again. 

Originally I planned to get this whole season discussed in one sit-down session, considering how much ground we had covered back in Season 1 with two sessions. But in the end a second was essential. What we have here is that unplanned final session with Kaoru & Debbie (joyfully back after a long absence while they brought a small person into the world) blended with segments held over from that first recording to close us out with fireworks. Many thanks to everyone involved in this challenging and rewarding project. You made it special, like it deserved to be. 

Episodes Covered: Dipper and Mabel vs. The Future / Xpcveaoqfoxso / Escape from Reality / Take Back the Falls I / Take Back the Falls II

Guests:

From Sequentially Yours  Kaoru Negisa  @Moonpanther22

and Debbie Morse  @bastet8300

Toby Jungius @TJungius of Through the Wind Door

Hollywoo Actress  Maya Souris @Mayasantandrea

Victoria Luna B. Grieve:  @VixenVVitch 

Theo Leigh of The New Century Multiverse

Part 4 of 6

Back in early 2020 (pre-pandemic even) just as Disney+ had launched, making this show super-accessible to everyone at last, we recorded three podcasts on the first season. Now we are finally back to talk about the second and final season and one of the most satisfying, bittersweet endings of any television series, and I am not being hyperbolic with that statement.

Dipper and Mabel Pines are a pair of tweens who have to spend the summer in the strange Pacific Northwest town of Gravity Falls with their conman Grunkle Stan. Now answers to the big mysteries of the first season finally bubble to the surface, presenting us with both hilarious hijinks and mind-bending sci-fi. It's the kind of smart, emotionally sensitive, poignant and genuinely funny programming for kids that we've seen rise most reassuringly over the past decade.

Episodes Covered: Into the Bunker, The Golf War, Sock Opera, Soos and the Real Girl, Little Gift Shop of Horrors, Society of the Blind Eye, Blendin's Game, The Love God, Northwest Mansion Noir, Not What He Seems, A Tale of Two Stans, Dungeons, Dungeons, & More Dungeons, The Stanchurian Candidate, The Last Mabelcorn, Roadside Attraction. 

Guests:

Hollywoo Actress  Maya Souris @Mayasantandrea

Victoria Luna B. Grieve:  @VixenVVitch 

Theo Leigh of The New Century Multiverse

This is one of the hardest episodes we have ever had to record.

I'm not dealing in hyperbole when I describe the shockwave that rippled through our house when we found out that without the slightest warning Chadwick Boseman passed away in the night. He represented, for want of a better term a great responsibility. And much of these few hours is spent talking about that impact.

On top of that, there were elements of the film that bothered both of us, and our guests, but the undertaking of bringing this movie into existence, soaked in real world tragedy and during a pandemic was so challenging that how could we possibly be critical?

This is why it has taken us a silent year to gather our thoughts. And we are so grateful to our guests for being able to manage the weight and breadth of what gets discussed and land -as intended- in the most human place possible. Special thanks to Maya Souris who was actually IN this movie and gifted us with some precious insight into the filmmaking process.

The charity we are giving to this Holiday Season is Covenant House. They offer unconditional shelter and support for the abused, homeless and trafficked, and are currently willing to 5x match any donations they receive up to midnight on January 31st 2023.

Guests

Maya Souris iMDB Listing 

Jerome McIntosh of GameBurst

Aquila Hope

Greg Downing of Through the Wind Door

Chris Finik @finmonster09

One of only FOUR movies directed by the all-too-soon-departed anime darling Satoshi Kon (along with Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress and Paprika), this is by far and away his most heartfelt, funny, camp and soulful tale, and it is most definitely Christmassy in nature, considering it concerns three impoverished homeless people and their desperate attempts to protect and ferry back to her parents a holy infant, so tender and mild.

But as well as being a fair and compassionate story of the destitute, this film has an exceedingly rare trans heroine in the shape of Hana, a hot mess who nonetheless has the most determined and forthright of dispositions. Together with the alcoholic Gin and the runaway girl Miyuki, they experience a series of unlikely coincidences that require them to do the right thing in order to reverse an interconnected web of hilariously bad situations.

No matter how lonely and depressed a viewer might feel at the beginning there is no way someone can reach the end without smiling from their very core. This somewhat obscure 2003 Holiday parable is deserving of its cult status.

This episode was commissioned by Alejandra Vargas & Joe G.

Guest:

Mackenzie Eastram  @KenziePhoenix of Rainbow Connection @MuppetsPod

Part 3 of 6

The third of three shows on Season 1 of Gravity Falls. Season 2 will be covered in 2021.

We round off the first batch of episodes with a showcase of villainy, as a crazed piglet who holds small-town America in his thrall seeks unlimited power for himself. And on the other side of the reality curtain, a chaotic yellow triangle man hatches his schemes.

There's also a hilarious take on boy bands which was in fact creator Alex Hirsch apologising to his sister Ariel for being such a scornful bounder, admonishing her musical taste when they were tweens. 

Episodes Covered: Boss Mabel/Bottomless Pit/Carpet Diem/Boys Crazy/Land Before Swine/Dreamscapers/Gideon Rises

Guests:

Victoria Luna B. Grieve:  @VixenVVitch 

Theo Leigh of The New Century Multiverse

From Sequentially Yours  Kaoru Negisa  @Moonpanther22

and Debbie Morse  @bastet8300

Part 2 of 6

The second of three shows on Season 1 of Gravity Falls. Season 2 will be covered in 2021.

We return to one of the best animated series' to grace the TV screen. A rich, hilarious, fast-paced puzzle-box of twisty mysteries and subversive, genre-savvy capers. Tween twins Dipper and Mabel Pines are staying with their Grunkle Stan for the summer, at his combination gift-shop and rube-trap. But strange things are both out there in the woods, and inside the wooden walls of the Mystery Shack.

Both seasons are available on Disney+ And if you have already finished it and want something similar but haven't yet sunk your beak into The Owl House, that's what's for dessert. 

Episodes Covered: Double Dipper/Irrational Treasure/The Time-Traveller's Pig/Fight Fighters/Little Dipper/Summerween

Guests:

Victoria Luna B. Grieve:  @VixenVVitch 

Theo Leigh of The New Century Multiverse

From Sequentially Yours  Kaoru Negisa  @Moonpanther22

and Debbie Morse  @bastet8300

Part 1 of 6

Throughout the year we will be releasing episodes covering one of our very favourite animated shows, now available worldwide on Disney+ which is why we waited until now. Most people haven't seen this, so you can watch along with us. We won't spoil any later episodes and the podcasts won't release all at once. Next week the Spielberg Season continues with E.T. The Extra Terrestrial. 

The elevator pitch for this one is "The Simpsons meets Twin Peaks". A pair of twins, one of them fascinated by strange and mysterious things, the other determined to have fun at all times go to stay for the summer with their grotty con-man of a Great Uncle Stan. As it turns out; Gravity Falls, this sleepy Pacific Northwestern Town is filled with both strange and mysterious things and fun!

Episodes Covered: Tourist Trapped / The Legend of the Gobblewonker / Headhunters / The Hand that Rocks the Mabel / The Inconveniencing / Dipper vs. Manliness

Guests:

Victoria Luna B. Grieve:  @VixenVVitch   

Theo Leigh of The New Century Multiverse   

From Sequentially Yours  Kaoru Negisa  @Moonpanther22 

and Debbie Morse  @bastet8300 

If you love Love Actually this show is for you.

If you hate Love Actually this show is for you.

If you consider Love Actually to be kind of a mixed bag and there's actors and/or scenarios in there that you really like and yet some of the characters behave in awful ways that the film doesn't judge as awful, but overall it seems to have its heart in the right place, this show is for you.

And if you've never seen Love Actually... then this show is for you.

What we have done is recruit Doctor Hunter Mulcare from the Two Shrinks Pod and asked him to help us with a challenge (that it turns out Cinema Therapy did last year - though their half-hour show and family audience doesn't allow for anywhere near as much detail or not-safe-for-work content). Join us as we rank the relationships in this 2003 film, written and directed by British institution Richard Curtis, ranging from most unhealthy to out and out life-goals. 

The winner may surprise you.

Guest:

Dr Hunter Mulcare @realhuntermmm 

The first global blockbuster hit in this long-running series from Squaresoft. As we noted before, the excellent Final Fantasies IV, V and VI were not released in Europe (neither were I, II or III) until long after this one, and it was utilising the power of the PlayStation, so this really was the introduction to what a modern-day cinematic RPG video game could be, for an entire generation in 1997.

Playing it today, there are a number of drawbacks, some of which (annoying random battles, slow-progression) are mitigated by Quality of Life additions in  recent remastered versions (the Switch version that Sharon played all the way through this adventure for the first time). However, the blocky, awkward character models and static backgrounds do warrant the glossy Remake that we are still only halfway through, and will not be taking about until it's over... in 2028.

None of these drawbacks of the PS1 original can taint the fact that this really is beloved for plenty of great reasons. We talk at length here about the story and characters, meaning and the manner of how this tale is imparted to us. Powerful bitter-sweetness is a feature, not a bug.

Next Week: Wakanda Forever

Arguably director Hayao Miyazaki's finest hour, and by extension the peak of composer Joe Hisaishi and for Studio Ghibli in general. This one is almost too easy to either sing the praises of, or to dismiss because it was so popular. Disney distributed it in America, and it made $395 million, which might make it the most successful theatrical release for an anime movie. By contrast, My Neighbours the Yamadas two years prior in 1999 made $11 million on three quarters the budget. Spirited away was showered with critical praise and won many awards. It's the popular girl.

But this girl is also endlessly fascinating; stirring, whimsical, intelligent, exciting, funny, and unforgettable. She stays with us, and we return to her again and again for comfort and to feel that sense of quiet awe. It's also noteworthy that this has one of the best American language tracks for any Japanese film; Daveigh Chase (Lilo of Stitch fame, Donnie Darko's sister and the girl from The Ring), Jason Marsden (Max in The Goofy Movie), Susan Egan (Megara of Hercules fame and the Broadway version of Beauty and the Beast) Suzanne Pleshette (The Birds) David Ogden Stiers (Lilo & Stitch and Beauty and the Beast) and Tara Strong (literally every cartoon ever made). On this one occasion you should definitely try Dub AND Sub.

This is the film we chose to close out our 2023 series on the studio (though we still have The Boy and the Heron, along with 'The Imaginary' from Studio Ponoc, and whatever the future brings. We will be there to curate their art.

Guests:

Brenden Agnew of Cinapse  @BLCAgnew

Alejandra Vargas @Plutoburns whose YouTube channel is here

This is the good stuff. Look no further than the 2012-2013 one-season 3D animated show for the absolute best Green Lantern experience. Co-Created Giancarlo Volpe of Avatar and Bruce Timm, one of the key figures in the beloved and critically acclaimed classics of Batman: The Animated Series, along with the connected Superman, Batman Beyond, Justice League Unlimited, all of which constitute a true encapsulation of the DC comic heroes.

What we have here is the archival spoiler-free section from our 2013 Digital Gonzo episode talking about this fantastic cartoon. That is then followed by a 90-minute, spoilerific contemporary discussion about what happens to the various characters. This series is so unappreciated that we actively recommend you listening to this whole thing. It's the NOBODY watching it that's the real spoiler.

• Hal Jordan (Earth's GL lost in space with this tiny crew)
• Razer (A disgraced Red Lantern trying to make amends) 
• Aya (The prototype ship's computer, learning everything about the universe)
• Kilowog (A Bolovaxian GL, big, blunt and kind-hearted)

Many thanks to our guests, both old and new. 

Guests:

Toby Jungius @TJungius of Through the Wind Door

Matt Ramsey of GamerDork

Jerome McIntosh of GameBurst

Alex Eding of Plaid Hat Games

This is a special, re-edited, re-release of a classic episode of Digital Gonzo. Back in 2013 we talked all about Green Lantern, under the impression that Warner Bros. & DC had big plans for superheroes over the next decade. And while they have genuinely given more heroes an airing, audiences seem to only be interested in The Bat and the Joker, (oh, and Aquaman, because he has laser-sharks).

So, what this is is a pared-down and pacier version of the first part of that show with more focus and music. This is then followed by a contemporary take as Sharon and I rewatch the film with the benefit of hindsight to see if it has perhaps improved with age. The second half of the 2013 podcast was all about the extremely good Green Lantern: The Animated Series, and that will be coming next week with an all-new 90-minute full-spoilers discussion to tie into our DC Animated Universe shows.

1. The History of Green Lantern (2013)

2. The Comics (2013)

3. The 2011 Movie (2013)

4. The Movie Revisited (2022)

-------------------

• Who You Callin’ Yellow? by Jamas Enright
• Going Green by Movie Bob, from the Big Picture show on The Escapist
• Weakness and Strength by Nama Chibitty
• Alex Eding a True Lantern Fan’s Rant on the Green Lantern Movie

Guests:

Sharon Shaw of School of Movies

Matt Ramsey of GamerDork

Jerome McIntosh of GameBurst

Alex Eding of Plaid Hat Games

A strange period for Ghibli brings us to the end of our current run, still with the closing triumph of Spirited Away (2000) to cap this body of work off, as well as this year's The Boy and the Heron paving the way for a future tenth instalment.

What we are looking at is the last film from Isao Takahata (who died only five years later) the visually resplendent as well as distinctive Princess Kaguya, which is my favourite of his works, but still has one glaring bad decision inherent to the edit.

Then there's the most astonishing surprise from this entire project, which is quite how I unexpectedly adored When Marnie was There (from Hiromasa Yonebayashi, the director of Arrietty). The most delicate, Gothic tale in their back catalogue.

After that, yet another film that deliberately defies the established Ghibli aesthetic, the first collaboration with a non-Japanese director Michael Dudok de Wit and the wordless caveman-accessible tale of a red turtle (who is secretly a woman, or vice versa).

And then for maximum shame, the definite WORST Ghibli film ever made, or that ever will be made; Earwig and the Witch, directed by Goro Miyazaki. A film so awful it dragged his father out of retirement yet again.

But to end on a pleasant note, we talk about both the RPG video game Ni no Kuni and the freshly established "Studio Ponoc" and their debut "Mary and the Witch's Flower". Truly the child of Ghibli, and a team we hope will continue making beautiful films far beyond our lifespans.

2013: The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (0m 35s)

2014: When Marnie Was There (16m 50s)

2016: The Red Turtle (29m 30s)

2020: Earwig and the Witch (45m 35s)

2017: Mary and the Witch's Flower (1h 4m 20s)

We all knew this would happen eventually. No Intellectual property that has been known to rake in a billion dollars for a single movie will ever be left alone to stand in glorious completion. Whomsoever holds the rights will use them. Some folks expected a (potentially very misguided) attempt at making the entire Silmarillion for television, or for Amazon to do what it seems likely Warner Bros. eventually will with Harry Potter and just re-tread the books we've already seen adapted exceptionally well to film in the 2000s - this time to a 2020s TV series (ostensibly so that they can use the additional time allowed by the format to be truer to the original text, but you KNOW there would be a ton of new stuff in there that would drive the long-time fanbase crazy!)

Instead, Amazon took the first eight minutes of The Fellowship of the Ring, the prologue describing the end of the Second Age, conveyed so memorably and elegantly at the opening of that 2001 film, and cracked that series of decades (and sometimes centuries) of events open to create an apparently ongoing TV show detailing exactly how Sauron the deceiver was able to deceive all the races of Middle-earth quite so skilfully, and get his jewellery side-business booming. 

Maybe the most EXPENSIVE experience ever put to the small screen, let's see if all of those hopes and dreams of cornering the streaming market paid off for Bezos. We've brought back Chris Eason, our running-mate from the original 2012 Lord of the Rings episodes (still some of our very best) and The Hobbit (an exercise in hopes being dashed over a number of years), along with the always-engaging, insightful and smart Brendan Agnew. There's definitely things we like here. But some of us are madder than others. 

Guests:

Chris Eason of GameBurst @Legoftime 

Brenden Agnew of Cinapse  @BLCAgnew

An absolute landmark in terms of stop-motion animation within cinema. Conceived in the early 80s by Disney animator Tim Burton and manifesting first in an 11-minute poem after the style of both A Visit from St. Nicholas by Clement Clarke Moore and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas from Doctor Seuss.

That was developed into this oddball story of a pale loner of an outsider (who is also wildly popular because of course he is, this is Tim Burton). The skeleton king of Halloween town falls in love with the unfamiliar and delightful trappings of Christmas itself. This leads him into drumming up the spooky but hapless monster people of his realm into crafting their OWN Christmas, with all kinds of horrors!

Our guest tonight has literally written a thesis on stop-motion, and we have been waiting for him to record this show. It launches almost exactly at the 30-year anniversary of the movie. Coming this weekend we have a Cutting Class episode on Patreon  with all the material that didn't make this final edit. 

And if you're on the lookout for Halloween reading, my Lady Dracula novel "Castle of the Moon" will be available to buy in Paperback form (as well as the eBook version on Patreon)

Guests:

Toby Jungius @TJungius of Through the Wind Door

For our Halloween Spooktacular episodes we begin with a compilation of three After School Club shows, covering the first three of the eight instalments in the Howling franchise. However, despite two of them being from the same director (Philippe Mora) and two of them involving the writer of the original book (Gary Brandner) I struggle to think of three films that feel less like each other in a series. The incoherence and absence of any connective tissue or even thematic consistency almost seems intentional. And it might be a dismal and disjointed experience if it wasn't so hilarious!

The 1981 original, directed by Joe Dante (Gremlins, Matinee) is most definitely the nastiest, with the Mum from E.T. (Dee Wallace) being stalked by a werewolf, which then leads to a communal retreat that hosts the world's most obvious werewolf cult. But the 1985 second film "Your Sister is a Werewolf" then seems to yank us away to find out what's happening in the former Czech Republic (what's happening is softcore werewolf orgies and an unfortunate dwarf whose eyes explode!).

And then the 1987 third instalment, "The Marsupials" asks the question "What if werewolves... but also kangaroos?" as they drag us, kicking and screaming to Australia for some of the most nonsensical non sequiturs we have ever heard. All told, this is as loosely connected as Cannon's Ninja Trilogy and ultimately just as rewarding to uncover. 

Next week; grab your stockings and pumpkins because it's high time for the Nightmare before Christmas! 

With the grandfather of the studio, Hayao Miyazaki retired and his son Goro not warmly welcomed by the fans, there was now an enormous question mark over the future of Ghibli that persists to this day.

Luckily, there was still amazing talent to be found within their walls. Hiromasa Yonebayashi (better known as Maro) made his directorial debut with one of our faviourites, which positively cries out for watching in HD, The Secret World of Arrietty. It's the tale -adapted from yet another classic children's fantasy book- of tiny people who live unnoticed in our houses, and the perils of their survival. Notable for its different British and American voice actor teams, since over here we got Saoirse Ronan and Tom Holland! 

After this, Goro attempted a second movie about confused teenagers, this time with a more delicate touch which achieves it low-key melodrama qualities. And in the absence of a breakout new direction, his father Hayao came back out of retirement to direct one of his most sobering reflections on aviation and war, with The Wind Rises (which is far more appealing to me than Oppenheimer's handling of similar themes this year). 

2010: The Secret World of Arrietty (1m 55s)

2011: From Up On Poppy Hill  (29m 30s)

2013: The Wind Rises (45m 35s)

There are many reasons why this 1994 instalment in the long-running Square franchise winds up high on lists of the very best RPGs of all time. It is an ensemble piece with an immediately engrossing story and endearing, growing party of misfits, oddballs and freaks. 

The concept of an oppressive, evil empire messing with powerful magic to secure its dominance isn't new at all, but rarely does a single self-contained game tell such a world-spanning tale with no one character standing out as the obvious leader. They are all heroes in their own stories. This, along with Chrono Trigger and Earthbound was the high bar on character-based RPGs that followed in the 90s, and notably during the return to retro style that followed the MMORPG goldrush of the 2000s. Astonishing music from the legendary Nobuo Uematsu gave so many of these memorable characters their own themes, while the superficially simple pixel art and modest map pushed the Super Nintendo to its limits with rich, hidden depths and texture. 

Sharon had to sit this episode out, though she did play and complete the whole game after finishing Final Fantasy IV and then VII, both of which are past and future podcasts for this show. In her place is Maya Souris; smart, dazzling stunt-lady, scuba diver and total nerd. And since this was my first proper play-through and being one of her favourite games of all time, she guided me along the way, and we wound up with a truly engrossing and enthusiastic discussion. So, whether you've played this masterpiece yet or not, you are in for a treat.

Having now won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature Ghibli was facing the retirement of one of their absolute linchpins. Hayao Miyazaki wanted to go out with a bang, so adapted another favourite book of his. Howl was popular, but readers had things to say about changes that were made.

After that, his son Goro Miyazaki tried his hand at being a director in the elder's absence. adapting another treasured childhood fantasy, which was declared the worst Ghibli ever upon launch (we don't think that's fair in hindsight; Goro has done way worse since).

So, the grumpy Dad returned with a sweet little mermaid story about why his grandchild is just as cute as a button. He would later attempt and fail at retirement several more times!

2004: Howl's Moving Castle (1m 35s)

2006: Tales from Earthsea (44m 21s)

2008: Ponyo (1h 3m 35s)

In the middle of our show there is an essay piece from our friend Alejandra Vargas.

(NOTE: Part 6, which will be Spirited Away has not yet been recorded, but we will be releasing that as our finale, because it is our favourite.)

This, folks, is arguably the greatest adaptation of one of Roald Dahl's books made to date. Taking everything that was great about the 1988 book (one of his last, only followed by Esio Trot, The Vicar of Nibbleswick and The Minpins) and one of the abiding favourites for many kids and previously-kids who aren't entirely sure if they have truly grown up yet.

It's about a schoolgirl who develops telekinetic powers that she uses to banish a truly horrific headteacher. But that is merely the skeletal plot, there is so much there about being lonely, being neglected and abused and using your frustrations for something positive (making this the Anti-Carrie). And that was conducted in the beloved Mara Wilson and Danny DeVito film from 1996. 

But in turning this thing into a successful West-End musical Tim Minchin added some truly memorable, frequently brilliant songs, a whole sub-plot about a story Matilda is weaving together, even more significance for the role of Miss Honey (played with astonishing fragility by Lashana Lynch). It's also a little less mean-spirited than a lot of Dahl's work, which makes it more suited to newer generations. 

Alisha Weir absolutely kills it as Matilda, and Emma Thompson is unrecognisably foul as the monstrous Agatha Trunchbull. This film adaptation of the musical play adaptation is a Netflix-funded production, so should be possible to see right now. And with Wonka on the way from the director of Paddington, we hope this is the beginning of a 2020s Dahlaissance.

Many would call this period the crowning glory of Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki in particular. The maturity and refusal to pull his punches that came with the rich, dark and complex Princess Mononoke illustrated that when it came to humankind's strained, abusive relationship with Nature itself, that bloodshed was an inevitability,

He followed this up with a personal favourite of mine, Spirited Away in 2001, but we have a dedicated show on that coming at the very end of this series.

1997: Princess Mononoke (1m 45s)

1999: My Neighbors the Yamadas (51m 30s)

2002: The Cat Returns (1h 4m 30s)

The other two are oddities; Yamadas was from Isao Takahata (of Grave of the Fireflies and Balls of the Raccoon) and it's a significant departure from all other Ghibli movies, in terms of animation style and content, being based heavily on a Japanese comic strip about family life. And following that we have Ghibli's only sequel to date, though tonally quite different from Whisper of the Heart, The Cat returns takes place in the same world.

In the middle of our show there are feature essays from  long-time friends of the show

Brenden Agnew of Cinapse  @BLCAgnew "Living With Miyazaki - Part 7" (34m 10s)

Josh Garrity of Cane and Rinse @CombineHunter with his piece from a short-lived but extremely potent YouTube series "The Animation Archives - Part 4" (44m 30s)

The greatest brawler series in the history of video games. If you haven't yet had the pleasure of playing one of the four Streets of Rage, even if beat-'em-ups aren't your thing you owe it to yourself to investigate the sheer *craft* of these classics. 

Beginning with the original in 1991 and refined to magnificence with the second in 1992. They need to be looked at in conjunction with their contemporaries like Double Dragon (1987) the excellent Final Fight (1989) and Turtles in Time (1992) as well as looking forward down the chain of influence to Scott Pilgrim (2010), Fight'N Rage (2017) the recent Battletoads (2020) and the sublime TURTs nerdgasm Shredder's Revenge (2022).

As we go through the history of how these were made, by surprisingly small teams with focus on sound design, music, rhythm and variety a picture is formed of a creative ethic. They're also colossal fun! 

That is until you hit the North American release of Streets of Rage 3 (1994) which becomes a nightmare slog. We explain what went so horribly wrong there. But you can skip right past that one and move on to the pinnacle of not only the series but the genre; the modern-day masterpiece that is Streets of Rage 4 (2020).

This is one you almost certainly won't have heard of, but will be happy you found it through School of Movies. It's the tale of a young man named James who has grown up in a post-apocalyptic bunker, raised by his loving parents and wondering what's outside. One night a raid by the cops results in his "parents" being carted off to jail, as it turns out they kidnapped him as an infant and hid him here. Now he has to come to terms with the real world and the awkward fit of his new family and potential friends.

Thing is though, he's a colossal nerd for Brigsby Bear. That long-running TV show about a space-faring teddy with a surprisingly deep lore for James to obsess over. However, double-twist... Brigsby was never shown on TV because it was being created by his kidnapper-Father (played by Mark Hamill). Undaunted, James sets out on a personal quest to finish the story for himself.

In an unusual show setup we examine the film through two contrasting lenses. Firstly from a long-time fan whose obscure commission this is, and secondly through a professional expert on mental conditions who has only just seen it.

Guests:

Nama Chibitty @namathenerd

Dr Hunter Mulcare @realhuntermmm 

Impressive, silly or impressively silly? Those are just three of the possible responses to this 1997 theological legal thriller with overtones of several flavours of horror, including paranoia, demonic and financial. 

It's the forked tale of a hotshot Florida lawyer named Kevin who has never lost a case, despite representing cartoonishly villainous defendants. He is recruited by a swanky New York legal firm, headed up by a devilishly charismatic fellow with a deep, dark secret. Can you guess what it is?

This was a commissioned show for Greg Downing and it was great fun finally getting our teeth into this overblown Paradise-Lost-meets-Pelican-Brief panto, starring a wildly overacting Al Pacino, Keanu Reeves and a breakout tormented-wife role for a young Charlize Theron.

The Wachowskis are back! This time in producer capacity with their friend James McTeigue who wend on to direct The Raven, five episodes of Sense8 and (our personal favourite, the critically panned but hugely enjoyable, blood-spattered throwback) Ninja Assassin. 

In an alternate history dystopian Britain, a young lady named Evey Hammond is rescued by a shadowy figure in a mask who calls himself V and seeks to fight back against their tyrannical oppressors. This is an adaptation of one of the most celebrated graphic novels of all time. Alan Moore originally spun this out over several years in the early 1980s, depicting our country as a near-future, fascist police state that was a cautionary tale to those living under the iron fist of the Thatcher regime. Our guest, Victoria has read this book repeatedly and is able to delineate with truly fascinating insight, the powerful changes made for this 2006 movie. 

You will also find out quite a lot about Guy Fawkes and his part in the conspiracy to blow up Parliament in the early17th Century, and why even though he and his companions failed, their bungled plan still has deep, historical significance. 

Guests:

Victoria Luna B. Grieve:  @VixenVVitch 

One of the most significant and influential anime movies of all time. Absolutely instrumental in inspiring a big chunk of The Matrix in terms of aesthetic and pondering, metaphysical philosophy.

This began as a single-volume cyberpunk manga series written by Masamune Shirow between 1989-1991. That was adapted into the 1995 movie which is the focus of this episode. After that came a bunch of television we are not touching, a sequel focused on the character of Batau, named Innocence, which we recommend, a re-envisioned remaster called 2.0 which swaps the janky 90s CG and green aesthetic for janky 2000s CG and amber aesthetic. Then a bunch more movies and TV and manga.

And then in 2017, American studios who always seem to keep making the same mistakes when they adapt anime directly into live action filmed a giant mistake in 2017. The Scarlett Johansson movie is actually better than it could have been, but it makes a fine talking point as comparison between the attitudes and approaches to the presentation of what seems like the same story but is actually quite different.

This is quite an extraordinary case. A Netflix show released in two chunks of five episodes apiece, six months apart, back in 2021. 93% fresh with professional critics. And if you sit down and watch it, this is the best Masters of the Universe story ever told. 

And EVERYBODY HATES IT! 

Seriously, go check YouTube and get bombarded by the scorn and bile. Observe the 38% audience score. Try finding ANY positive analysis from the fans. It might get easier with time, (especially as a lot of folks only watched the first episode and then reacted with outrage, and many did not catch the second half of the series after all those months) but when we put this episode together our decision had to be to NOT second-guess all the people who loathe this show, and their reasons for hatred.

Some cold hard facts about it: He-Man is killed in the first episode. From that point on, Eternia is in trouble, and that could have dire, far-reaching consequences. The focus is on Teela, Prince Adam's former bodyguard, furious at being lied to for years, and with her one job in tatters. But she's the one who has to get the gang back together, form an uneasy alliance with an old enemy, and journey to both Heaven and Hell in order to potentially make things right again.

It has a stunning voice cast, including Mark Hamill, Lena Heady, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Stephen Root, Griffin Newman, Diedrich Bader, Susan Eisenberg, Phil LaMarr, Cree Summer, Kevin Michael Richardson, Tony Todd, Justin Long, Alicia Silverstone, and an all-too-brief cameo from Kevin Conroy. 

It has true character growth, dramatic confrontations, untrodden ground explored, secrets revealed and bittersweet decisions made. It is exceptionally good, and apparently here is the only place you're going to be told about that. 

The 150th episode of Digital Gonzo.

This was a one-off show inspired by the episode of Community 'Advanced Dungeons & Dragons'. It's a sit-down gaming session conducted over Skype with myself as Dungeon Master and my guests as a team of adventurers. For this one we were using the flexible, simple ruleset of Advanced Fighting Fantasy by Graham Bottley which itself stems from the gamebooks of Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone (The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, Deathtrap Dungeon) and detailed in the starter book Dungeoneer. This is the first of the two adventures within that book.

I wanted to bring you guys something different, in the style I have honed over the years so there's music and sound FX as well as a hefty chunk of silliness and getting into character. The lengthier fights have been edited for pacing but you're mainly missing a lot of dice rolls. The team that begins this story comprises of the following.

Thrale Copperhelm: A tough-as-nails dwarf, played by Neil Taylor of GameBurst Lastern Darkfire: An elf fresh out of the forests, played by Mark Reay of The A.I. Bots Kellis Payge: A human mage from the city watch of Chalice, played by Sharon Shaw of School of Movies Harron Brondyn: A sarcastic thief played by Matt Ramsey of Do Try This at Home

Focus is on character and story over action and complex systems, almost closer to an audio drama than the recording of a game. The guest soundtrack for this week is the original World of Warcraft OST by Jason Hayes, Tracy W. Bush, Derek Duke, and Glenn Stafford. Many thanks to my guests, who played brilliantly and went easy on me in my first-time role as Dungeon Master. The combat rules were still being learned by all of us, also Gonzo is an adult podcast and we use adult language in this. 

And thank you all for making this one of the warmest, smartest, funniest communities on the internet for 150 episodes of Gonzo.

The final main feed instalment of our Coen Brothers series goes out with a double-bang of exceptionally gripping Westerns.

No Country for Old Men (2007, written by the recently departed Cormac McCarthy) is a tense game of cat and mouse. Josh Brolin discovers a drug deal gone very wrong and walks off with the money, and Javier Bardem plays the dead-eyed Terminator slowly but surely closing in on him. This whole case is followed by Sheriff Tommy Lee Jones who is scratching at his head to fathom the trail of violence he is witnessing.

And in True Grit (2010) the second adaptation of the 1968 Charles Portis novel, a brand new Hailee Steinfeld, aged 13 commands a grizzled old frump of a bounty hunter played by Jeff Bridges to help her track down her father's killer and see justice done. It somehow manages to surpass the classic John Wayne version in every way. And both of these were influences on my own writing.

If you want to hear what we have to say on the remaining Coen Brothers films you can catch our Patreon-excusive After School Club shows on The Man Who Wasn't There, Intolerable Cruelty, The Ladykillers, Burn after Reading, A Serious Man, Hail Caesar, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and The Tragedy of Macbeth.

2007: No Country for Old Men

2010: True Grit

This was a whimsical period for Ghibli, they tried a few new things, and established one or two absolute mainstays. 

1991: Only Yesterday (1m 50s)

1992: Porco Rosso (11m 50s)

1993: Ocean Waves (25m 10s)

1994: Pom Poko (41m 10s)

1995: Whisper of the Heart (59m 40s)

There's a disarmingly frank and sympathetic story of a schoolgirl hitting adolescence wrapped in a Hallmark movie about returning to your rural home town after the big city has crushed your spirit. Conversely there's a high school romance about a doormat crushing on a girl who thinks only of herself.

Then there's two of the most abiding and beloved of their canon, in the tale of a high school girl who likes a musical boy which winds up being a powerful statement on creativity, and then there's the World War II pilot who was turned into a pig. But he's much rather be porcine than  fascist. 

And finally, an ecological parable starring enormous raccoon testicles! 

Lin Manuel Miranda's first big break into the off-Broadway musical scene. This 2021 movie adaptation, directed by Crazy Rich Asians-helmer Jon M. Chu is a squeaky-clean but heartfelt tale of the upper east side of Manhattan and its proud, passionate, talkative, motivated yet frustrated population of first, second and third-generation immigrants. It's a story of inheriting the dreams of your parents and trying to reconcile forging your own path. 

This one has been a long while coming. We wanted to do a show on it as soon as the cinema release, but since that was just after Lockdown ended it was unlikely many of you folks could safely make a screening. And we wound up recording it last winter, but since it's such a heights-of-summer movie I've waited until now to release it.

This week I needed something to lift my spirits, since Sharon has been confined to the bedroom in a self-imposed COVID quarantine. It made the final show unexpectedly painful to put together, but worth all the blood, sweat and tears. 

Guest:

Nama Chibitty @namathenerd

Follow Nama's sister's art: Bunny_the_Artist

We covered the first film in May 2019 just before the third hit theaters, and since then they have shaped up to be four of the finest action films ever made. They boast laser-focused attention to choreography, physical genius, artfully photographing long, unbroken takes with astonishing lighting and otherworldy music. All of it revolves around a firestorm of a performance from Keanu Reeves, himself experiencing a deserved renaissance.

The fourth film ends on a definitive and deeply satisfying melancholy note. So, while the series itself limbers up for all manner of spin-offs, sequels, prequels, TV shows, video games, reboots and action figures, let us take stock of what made this quartet special. 

'John Wick Turbo' has been a re-editing project, where I sought to trim away a little of the second film's world-building, adjust the third film's pacing and dial back the fourth film's runtime, bringing all of them to the 101-minute sweet spot of the 2014 original. And talking about this process allows us to really get granular about the impressive strengths of each. 

This one was a long time coming. There's a solid argument to be made that to set the tone for the planned DC Cinematic Universe all the way back in 2012, around the time Avengers was doing gangbusters by brazenly copying the Marvel formula by building up the characters the general public don't know yet *before* throwing Superman and Batman at us again.

But since Green Lantern was terrible in 2011 Warner Bros. clearly concluded they needed to establish a foundation of superheroes everybody knows *then* do a Justice League, THEN introduce us to those new superheroes in a way that feels more like a spinoff than a build-up. They did not have the faith that these costumed icons could carry a movie without Batman. So, accordingly this film that now seems to be closing out that first protracted attempt has (at least) two Batmans!

Against expectations, considering the nightmare production, the lead actor's disturbing real life crime spree and the extremely muddled tone and story, I actually enjoyed this well-intentioned mess. Full spoilers of course, but I feel like everyone's level of enjoyment on this movie is going to be the same whether they know what's coming or not.

The DC Animated Universe marathon watch, which began all the way back in 2020 as Lockdown started continues! And this is a show Sharon and I had never sat down to watch before, so it was almost entirely new to us. 

I knew this was pitched as "What if Batman was Spider-Man?" but I did not know the circumstances of how that premise came about. Warner Bros. wanted an animated series about a specifically *young* Batman. Toy marketing indicated that kids would engage more with a teenager than they would with a man in his thirties. The double-bind was that Kevin Conroy's Batman, as established in this continuity didn't don the cowl until well into adulthood. 

It was this information that Bruce Timm and company conveyed at a meeting with the studio heads. Then when asked to think of a way around it "What if Bruce Wayne was old and got a younger person to wear the suit and do all the superheroics?" was put on the table. Then they had to dream up an entire show to fit with that premise.

Guests:

Toby Jungius @TJungius of Through the Wind Door

Kevin Veighey @KevinTimeGeek86 whose Let's Plays on YouTube can be found here

Chris Finik @finmonster09

Bradford Yurkiw 

For many years we have been planning a show or a series of shows on the Disney live action + CG remakes. The plan was to start with the 2015 Cinderella (or even the 1994 Jason Scott Lee version of The Jungle Book, thence to 101 Dalmatians with Glenn Close) and we would watch every single one of them, and talk about the good and the bad. 

But over time, having covered the details of all of the originals in our Disney animated series, the job itself grew insanely huge and exhausting, with so little to say that wasn't already being said by every film pundit on YouTube (because Disney gets you maximum clicks). Luckily this one came along, 8 years into the remake period that boasts both high points and low for the whole concept. 

By absolutely NO means anywhere near the level of the small original 1989 film with its $40m budget and its changing of the world of cinematic animation in a way that would not be matched and diverged from until Toy Story and then Shrek, there are still definitely things to like about Mermaid '23, including the earnest and talented Halle Bailey as Ariel. 

However, with its $250m budget and the remit of adherence to photorealism at the expense of abstraction that Disney seem to have slammed all of these with, it makes for an extensive focus point to talk about many of the elements which have been frying our fishes. Back as a special guest this week is Willow. 

Another ton of fun for the summer as we go back to the most unkillable series of all time. You kill this thing and it will come right back, walking out of the explosion to cool music. If this franchise has any enemies they will be friends the next time we see them. Did I say friends? I meant FAMBLY!

What we have here to start with is an edited, supercharged version of my first impressions of F9 (one of the very first movies I got to see when cinemas reopened in summer 2021). 

After that is my brand new talk about 2023s Fast X which brings Jason Momoa to the barbecue. We look at the recurring issues as the series moves from era to era and zero in on how they may have shot themselves in the foot in terms of the drama that this Nos-Opera hit the big leagues with. 

This is the second and third instalments of the Shazam Trilogy, we covered the first back in 2021. Now The Rock will assure you that Black Adam is nothing to do with Shazam, but we have comics that say otherwise.

We start with my 2022 first impressions of Black Adam having just returned from the cinema, originally put out as a Patreon Exclusive. Then we follow up with a brand new section where I tell Sharon about Shazam's last movie, at least with this cast and format. 

What we said back when we talked about the original still stands, kids grow up, but also grown actors do and say regrettable things that impact the metatext of otherwise simple sci-fantasy action films. 

Coming this weekend to the Patreon bonus feed, we talk about one of my favourite movies starring the Rock, one where he gets knocked all over the place and comes off better for it; The Rundown. 

Most of you will probably already know how much I care about both the comic book character of Hellboy and the magnificent Guillermo del Toro movie adaptations from 2004 and 2008.

However, considering its dismal box office of $55m (on a budget of $50m) and its dismal critical reception (17% RT) statistically speaking most of you did not see the 2019 reboot, and even fewer of you enjoyed it. Directed by Neil Marshal (The Descent, Centurion, Dog Soldiers) and starring everyone's favourite big red violent uncle David Harbour, this as an alternative to the proposed third movie by Del Toro should have been a new beginning. Instead it was a wretched embarrassment and a blight upon the mythology. 

This episode starts with a condensed and abbreviated edit of my 2019 first impressions followed at the 44 minute mark by a very special guest. Not their first appearance on the show but definitely their most impassioned so far, Willow Shaw has entered the arena... and they have things to say about how their beloved Hellboy was treated here. 

The Coen Brothers season continues with Part IV here, and we picked two of the most musically focused for a double-bill of hapless singers wandering America.

The first is arguably the most high-profile and broadly celebrated film, which comes at the end of their golden age. Their eighth movie, O Brother is an ambitious retelling of Homer's Odyssey, set in the 1930s dust bowl and concerning three escaped prisoners on a treasure hunt. It's a screwball comedy, closer in tone to Raising Arizona than something like Fargo. This mix of Americana was received with adulation by the Academy, and the bluegrass music at its core became a brief travelling sensation.

Inside Llewyn Davis however, is from 2013. Thirteen unlucky years after their peak, and by this time they were indie darlings again. It concerns Oscar Isaac's titular character based on the careers and music of certain Greenwich Village folk singers from 60s New York. Llewin is reeling from the death of his singing partner, and his travels take him from conflict to conflict as he tries to find his place. It's a fine example of a grower movie, since when we first meet him he is appallingly selfish and obnoxious and doesn't seem to change, to the point where he seems to circle back around to where he literally started. But as with Lebowski, the more you watch it, the more you listen, the more of an impression this restless, lonely ghost of a man will leave.

2000: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

2013: Inside Llewyn Davis 

The first anime we have ever covered on a Main Event show (if you listen to our 2017 Scott Pilgrim episode you'll find it starts with a lengthy explanation as to why), but depending on how anime fans react to this one we might do more.

It's a simple tale of a little witch who moves to the big city to start her own business. Kiki is goodhearted and well-meaning but faces many challenges along the way. This charming basket of innocence is delivered to us by master director Hayao Miyazaki, and may seem twee and super-sweet on the surface, but there's something to be learned from what happens.

I also talk at length about how in 2010 the American language track was altered by Studio Ghibli themselves for release in HD, and what that did to the film.

This episode was commissioned by our two guests and Aaron Good

Brendan Agnew of Cinapse  @BLCAgnew  

Theo Leigh of The New Century Multiverse   

This is actually the fourth of an ongoing series of Zelda episodes begun all the way back in 2010 when we had a guest-filled clip show covering every title from the NES original to the then-latest instalment, Spirit Tracks on DS. After that came Skyward Sword in very early 2012 after its release on the Wii, then in 2017 when Breath of the Wild emerged, we did a third show covering the remakes and remasters up to Majora's Mask on 3DS. 

And now here, just as Tears of the Kingdom gushes forth, so too do we, about what may in fact be not only my favourite Zelda game of all time... but maybe my favourite game!

We and our guests talk at length and depth about this series high-point for many, only rivalled by one other across many rankings and polls. But absolutely warranting of detractors deeply frustrated by a system of weapons that seem to be made from crackers lightly glued together. We look at the pitfalls and soaring heights of this astonishing achievement in building a world that begs to be explored. My original intention, since the recording ran to over two and a half hours was to trim out 45 minutes or so. I couldn't. It's all simply too good. 

Guests

James Batchelor of the Bond and Beyond podcast @James_Batchelor 

Brenden Agnew of Cinapse  @BLCAgnew

Eric Jones of Waxing Cinematic, FilmCut and Photoflow Terror in the Stars

Nama Chibitty @namathenerd

Derrick Ritchie @thenewdelboy

This episode coincides with the Switch and PS4 release of the Pixel Remasters of the first six games in this legendary, long-running RPG dynasty.

Part 1: Where do you start with a series that has a game called Final Fantasy X and a game called Final Fantasy XII and a game called Final Fantasy X-2 and only one of those is an actual sequel to the other? Not only do we lay out which games to try first, but we divide them all into design eras and let you know what to expect from each. 

Part 2: We discuss the plot and characters of one of the most beloved in the series, Final Fantasy IV. This won't spoil the game, only make it more special to play. But if you really don't want to hear any details whatsoever and intend to play this 1991 game to completion right now, you can hold off at the 57 minute mark. 

Which mainline numbered (non MMORPG) games are playable on the current, running console generations?

PlayStation: 1-10 as well as 12 and 15. 

Switch: 1-10 as well as 12. Plus a chibi version of 15. 

Xbox: 7-10 as well as 12 and 15 and the only current machine you can play XIII on.

Other notable versions: 

PSP: 1,2,3,4 / Game Boy Advance: 1,2,4,5 and 6 / Steam, Vita, Windows, IOS and Android / As well as the originals on NES, SNES, PS1 and PS2

Also: Catch us on the Old Kids Movies podcast this week, talking all about Ella Enchanted with them @OldKidsMovies

This time we go deep and we go long. Tarzan is for me one of the absolute greats of the Disney canon and so rarely talked about with the reverence of Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, so this time that's what we did.

It's been hugely influential on my writing and stands as maybe the crowning spectacle of the marriage between 2D characters and luscious 3D backdrops utilising the "Deep Canvas" technique. 

Daniel Floyd joins us once again to explore the last of the 90s renaisance. After this it was Fantasia 2000 and Dinosaur and while they occasionally put out something amazing, Disney lost their way until Tangled established the new normal. 

Guest

Daniel Floyd of Extra Histories 

A long-planned return to a far-too-often overlooked Disney animated classic released quietly in 1995. A passion project of Jeffrey Katzenberg that wound up being helmed by Kevin Lima, director of Tarzan and later Enchanted.

From the outside it seems like a fun finale to the 78-episode syndicated wacky animated show 'Goof Troop', but as it turns out, this one hit way closer to home than most of Disney's more fantastical fare for a lot of kids who grew up watching it on VHS and DVD and love it intensely. 

I've promised Daniel Floyd of Extra Frames that if we ever covered it he would be there, and thanks to Ryan Estrada of Big Data (who adores it just as much) we have ourselves a fascinating, in-depth dive into a surprisingly emotionally complex road-trip. 

References 

The Enduring Legacy of Disney's Black Millennial Classic 'A Goofy Movie' by Austin Williams 

A Goofy Movie: A Staple of Black Culture | READUS 101 by La'Ron Readus 

The Little Things About A GOOFY MOVIE by ToonrificTariq (feat. AwkwardlyAnimated and Mann of a Thousand Thoughts) 

Guests

Daniel Floyd of New Frame Plus  @DanFloydPlus

Ryan Estrada of RyanEstrada.com  @RyanEstrada 

Part III of the Coen Brothers series. In 1998 they pulled together what might in fact be their most beloved film for fans of their oeuvre. Definitely the most eminently quotable, by virtue of a script that is almost a musical in terms of how often phrases and lines are repeated and reprised, layering absurdity upon each scenario and impeccably delivered by an astonishing cast. It follows a California layabout named Jeffrey Lebowski who is mistaken for a local philanthropist of the same name. Chaos ensues.

Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Julianne Moore, David Huddleston, Steve Buscemi, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Sam Elliott, Peter Stormare, John Turturro and Tara Reid all play eccentric characters in this sly parody of a film noir kidnapping mystery. One where pretty much everyone is far less competent than they are pitching to the world. It's a real "No One Knows What They're Doing" scenario, as FilmJoy might say.

Some folks are baffled as to why it's so vociferously beloved, so we have attempted to convey that here. Sharon and I rambled like crazy over two delirious recording sessions, and I wound up trimming out 45+ minutes of utter crap that isn't worth saving for a Cutting Class. This is why mere synopsising and vaguely commenting on why a scenario is funny does not constitute critique for me. Luckily, what remained in place, and what I was able to editorialise after the fact, I am proud of.

Next time around, a double-bill of period musicals, both of which also contain John Goodman SCREAMING!

We've reached the point of  1985, where Studio Ghibli was officially founded. This episode covers the first three films released under this official new banner. 

1986: Laputa - Castle in the Sky (5m 20s)

1988: Grave of the Fireflies (18m 20s)

1988: My Neighbor Totoro (37m 05s)

The first of these, Castle in the Sky bears a striking, clearly-inspirational tonal and aesthetic similarity with my favourite game of all time, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. We have a main event show on that very game coming soon. Now the middle of these three gets very grim, as it is one of the harshest depictions of child suffering during wartime. By all means skip ahead when it becomes too heavy. 

And big thanks to Joshua Garrity of Cane and Rinse podcast, as I tracked down some never-used archival footage of him chatting with me about why he loves My Neighbor Totoro for very personal reasons. 

Part II of the Coen Brothers series. This 1996 film was the point where they hit the big leagues. Showered with awards and nominations, Joel and Ethan were placed alongside great and classic directors by the establishment.

The story itself is one of a bungled kidnap, a bag filled with cursed money and the needless murders that take place as a result of seeking it. It's a frosty noir, set on the snowbound roads between Fargo, North Dakota and the twin cities of Minneapolis-Saint Paul. A weasel of a car salesman arranges for the kidnapping of his own wife, and from that atrocious act, calamity radiates.  

The local sheriff on the case is Margie Gunderson, played by Frances McDormand, whose genial, mumsy attitude hides a sharp, observant detective brain. And it is from her perspective that we observe with bewilderment the cluttered mistakes of daft, greedy men. 

Next time around we go bowling with The Big Lebowski. More kidnaps, more bungling, more greed, less murder. 

This has been a long time coming. You've all been so good and respectful when it comes to not bombarding us with requests for anime shows that we decided to treat you collectively, and finally push the button on the one studio whose body of work is the first thing most people think of when it comes to prestigious films in this medium.

Studio Ghibli was founded in 1985 and have produced two dozen movies to date. This is the first of a series of shows releasing over this year that will cover all of these. And to do that we have to go back to the source. Hayao Miyazaki was one of the founders, alongside Toshio Suzuki and Isao Takahata, and his is the most singular creative vision, informing upon the direction and philosophy of their art for forty years. 

Most of this first episode is spent discussing what repeating motifs show up across this body of work, and how much of that ties in with Hayao's worldview. We lightly cover Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro which he directed for Tokyo Movie Shinsha in 1979, and then move on to Nausicaa (1984) which was based on a manga book of his. These led up to the actual official formation of Ghibli in 1985. You will definitely pick up on themes that will be coming back around again and again, and we are honoured to be able to talk about these in lengthy depth, even if we do frequently strike an irreverent tone. 

As the new movie approaches, Sharon and I journey back to one of our favourite childhood animated shows. Beginning in 1983, this was a joint collaboration between Toei Animation in Japan, Marvel Productions in America and DND Entertainment. 

It was an attempt to string a loose narrative together of a bunch of teenagers transported to a mythical realm full of D&D scenarios, and being given roles in an adventuring party. It was made at a time when everything was episodic and self-contained, performances were insanely earnest and we all learned valuable morals about not judging by appearances. 

But ultimately, what kept us coming back was a strange sick sort of desperation to see the kids get back home at last... That they never did lends this show a melancholy yet hopeful tone which captured our young hearts. Many thanks to our enthusiastic guest, who is younger than us, but caught the show in reruns in the early 2000s.

Guest:

Nama Chibitty @namathenerd

The first 72 minutes of this one, focusing on the trilogy of feature films from 2002, 2006 and 2010 was originally published on our Patreon bonus feed in early 2020 (the ten year anniversary of seeing them together on the big screen for the last time). Then, unexpectedly filming during the pandemic, the fourth film Jackass Forever emerged, and we were able to follow up with a new section. 

If you've never gotten into this motley crew of cackling, skateboarding imbeciles throwing themselves into dangerous situations, pranking one another and falling about in hysterics you also won't yet have experienced the unexpected pleasure of gut-laughing through their always enthusiastic, inventive, frequently absolutely disgusting, juvenile and sometimes kind of sweet shenanigans. 

If you've enjoyed them in the past then this show is going to be a veritable treat. 

The concluding second part of this detailed puppet exploration. We finally reach Guillermo del Toro's exceptional antifascist version of the story wherein things might not be so cut and dried as "Do everything you're told by adults".

We also get to bring in discussions of all the other movies we watched along the way, in order to get a better handle on the screen life of this Italian legend. Some of them are lost, hidden gems just waiting to be rediscovered, some of which you should avoid like bubonic plague.

You'll also hear about a version from Victoria that even WE didn't know about, in the most surprising of mediums.

Guest:

Victoria Luna B. Grieve:  @VixenVVitch 

The complete Pinocchiae

1. 1940 (Disney Classic, directed by Ben Sharpsteen & Hamilton Luske)

2. 1996 (Adventures, directed by Steve Barron)

3. 2002 (Creepy Manchild, directed by Roberto Begnigni)

4. 2012 (Italian Animated, directed by Enzo D'Alo)

5. 2019 (Italian Live Action, directed by Matteo Garrone)

6. 2021 (Russian "True Story", directed by Vasiliy Rovenskiy)

7. 2022 (Disney Remake, directed by Robert Zemekis)

8. 2022 (Netflix Stop-Motion, directed by Guillermo del Toro)

It seems like 2022 was the year of the little wooden boy, with THREE new Pinocchio movies released. There was the Robert Zemekis-helmed live action remake of the Disney classic, Guillermo del Toro's darker, fascist-challenging Netflix stop motion film, and there was the Pauly Shore dub of the Russian one that gained memetic notoriety.

So Sharon and I went back and didn't only just watch those three... we pretty much watched every significant Pinocchio movie ever made. And then we brought in Victoria Luna B. Grieve to talk about their different approaches. 

In this first of two shows we revisit the 2014 recording of Daniel Floyd talking with us about the 1940 original for our Disney Animated Series. Then with Victoria we look at why so many people angrily *loathed* the new Disney incarnation. 

Next week, Del Toro, Shore, Benigni, Martin Landau, Udo Kier, Napoleon Dynamite, weird noises, strange perverts and the best animated version you've never heard of. 

Guests:

Daniel Floyd of New Frame Plus

Victoria Luna B. Grieve:  @VixenVVitch  

I would say you don't have to watch the film to listen to this show. I go deep into the themes and principles of the story, which means talking about the plot at length, but I don't spoil the details of the grisly, violent and scary scenes, thus hopefully preserving a lot of their impact.

A brilliant engineer, toy designer winds up the sole caregiver for her niece after a tragic accident. Finding it far too difficult to suddenly incorporate a young person into her life she comes up with the idea of developing the child-sized robot she has been working on, turning it into the ideal companion for a lonely little girl. 

Inevitably the irresponsibility of this decision leads to the robot sprog going small-scale Skynet. It's a very enjoyable and extremely popular Blumhouse horror with more going on under the rubbery skin. 

This is a pair of Patreon After School Club episodes, covering the second and third instalments of the Venomverse. 

Back in 2018, after I recorded my initial After School Club on the original Venom movie (which was subsequently released like this on the main feed) I outlined its various strengths and weaknesses and what a messy, daft underachievement it was. But then Venom wound up insanely popular, making more than many MCU entries. $856m versus The Eternals sitting un-prettily at $402m. That doesn't necessarily mean Venom is a better film, just that general audiences warmed to it HARD.

So there was a big question mark over what might happen if they made the sequel into the film they WANTED to make, rather than what felt like a weirdly compromised first instalment which was clearly reshaped from its original R-rated incarnation. What do you suppose happened with Part 2?

And then, the film that nobody wanted with the star that nobody asked for. Quickly bottoming the charts as one of the worst Marvel-adjacent movies ever made, this is a fine example of why the term "Superhero" really shouldn't be applied collectively. They are set in a universe/multiverse of superpowered beings but this is most definitely a science experiment that goes wrong and changes a genius doctor who *used* to help people into a toothy CGI beastie who jumps off rooftops, flies about the city and feels sorry for himself while the investigating police ineptly try to catch him before ultimately giving up. 

This is the first time I've coined the term "The Venom-Verse", because that's what this is. Nothing of Spider-Man, everything of vestigial comic book villains who swear to be antiheroes at some unspecified point in the future if Sony can get their act together. So welcome to Bat-Scientist Begins (and if we're all very lucky, ends).

This is our second attempt at a film that might mean *everything*. We had a go at recording on this 1997 Robert Zemekis sci-fi about attempting to decode alien messages all the way back in 2014. The discussion broke down soon after that opening section which crams a whole universe into our minds. Fortunately for us and you, this became a commissioned show (Many thanks to Executive Producer Matthew A. Seibert) which means we can't set it down or put it off any more.

Jodie Foster puts in an astonishing performance as a woman in the grip of lifelong obsession, searching for answers. When her SETI team at the Very Large Array of radio telescope dishes in New Mexico get a long-distance message the entirety of Planet Earth is thrown into a chaotic conflict to establish meaning. Religion and science are put in opposition of one another, with explosive results. 

Astrophysicist Carl Sagan began conceptualising what would happen to the human race if it came into contact with intelligent life back in the late 70s, which precipitated an eighteen-year production limbo that he would not live to see the end of. Fortunately, Zemekis' film maintained the spirit of what Carl was reaching for.

One of our all-time favourites, so little-seen or talked about that it's debatable as to whether we are looking at a Cult Classic or not. And one of the reasons we've held off for so long on talking about this 1997 black comedy about a hitman attending his ten-year high school reunion is that we were waiting for it to be rediscovered.

And that hasn't happened, neither has it aged poorly, which is always a concern for comedies. But also we love it on such a level of personal resonance that it has always been a challenge to put into words exactly why. The script zigzags wittily through this green Detroit suburb, the offhand delivery with room for improvisation without ever becoming self-indulgent, the exceptional casting, in particular John and Joan Cusack and Minnie Driver at her zenith, the soundtrack that shows a genuine affinity with 80s music rather than simply playing the pop hits. Also very specifically this was released at a time when nostalgia for that decade was barely even a thing yet. 

And this is what Commissioned Shows can sometimes accomplish. they give us an imperative to account for ourselves, and a quest to convey to you all why this one is definitely worth your time. No more ducking and weaving, rather like a litter from your high school summoning you to a festival of pain! So, many thanks to 'Executive Producer' of this episode Greg Downing. 

A commissioned show by Parker. This is our first Paul Thomas Anderson main event show, and it is a grimy, sticky dive into the black heart of the vampiric nature rewarded by pursuing The American Dream to the exclusion of everyone else's success.

Daniel Plainview starts out as a grim, silent nobody scratching for silver in California's dirt. He discovers oil down there and rises in power and influence, buying up land cheaply with the full intention of tearing the resources out from under its inhabitants. Daniel appears wildly successful, only to find himself butting heads with other businessmen who provoke his paranoia, an opportunistic imposter and a zealous charlatan of a local pastor obsessed with keeping everyone else's attention on him.

Through it all his mostly silent adopted son, H.W. remains the tiny speck of purity in an infernal subterranean ocean of oil and blood. 

A Netflix-distributed animated film about bounty-hunting pirate whalers hunting giant ocean kaiju. A plucky girl trying desperately to live up to the great death of her parents whose ship was borne down to the briny depths. A hardworking himbo on the cusp of questioning exactly why all this loss of life seems to be so necessary to keep civilisation afloat. A desperate sea captain on the verge of retirement watching his work of years come undone and blaming it all on one massive red beastie. 

Easy comparisons with How to Train Your Dragon have been made, but you have to get under the harpoon-fletched scaly hide of this leviathan to find that it goes to places Dreamworks and Disney won't. 

This is a Commissioned show for Chris Finik, and it was an absolute pleasure to discover this one on his suggestion.

This is the start of a Director series that will run throughout the year, focusing on the complete works of Joel and Ethan Coen. Now in their mid-to-late-60s these two have been making quirky, dark films about stolen money and mysterious strangers for forty years. 

We begin with their first five stories of philandering spouses, struggling artists, uncomfortable criminals, screwball kidnapping and absurd industry.

1984: Blood Simple

1987: Raising Arizona

1990: Miller's Crossing

1991: Barton Fink

1994: The Hudsucker Proxy

And we will be back in a month or so, to visit Fargo, North Dakota as they hit their heyday.

For years this seminal, game-changing Silver Age comic book has seemed damned-near impossible to adapt into a movie, with all four efforts failing resoundingly at getting major audiences to care about Marvel's First Family. And yet Pixar did it twice with the serial numbers filed off and the clear vision of Brad Bird.

So Sharon and I look back on those movies, two that we've covered in the past just based on their own merits (2005 and 2007) and two others whose productions deserve delving into (1994 and 2015), and we compare them against the comic itself from various periods (Lee & Kirby, Byrne, Simonson, Morrison, Waid, Straczynski, Hickman) and not only speculate on how they could fit into the MCU, but celebrate their characters (along with Doom, Silver Surfer and Galactus) in a way that film has been unable to, at least to date. This episode took a hell of a lot of research and is richly prepared for all of you.

Our shortlist of recommended reading is as follows...

1. FF #48-52 ('The Coming of Galactus', 'This Man, This Monster', The Black Panther debuts)

2. FF #262 ('The Trial of Reed Richards')

3. FF #334-346 ('Into the Time Stream')

4. 1234 (Limited 4-issue series)

5. Vol. 3 #67 - Vol. 1 502 (4-issue 'Unthinkable' arc)

6. #538-543 ('Civil War')

7. #570-572 ('Solve Everything')

This is a movie we covered already, back in the winter of 2011. But back then I was really just getting warmed up, and it was a comparative show with the Robert Zemekis version from 2009. But huge thanks to my guests back then who always bring the insight; Taylor Nova and Matt Ramsey. 

This time we delve deep into both the Dickens book and why the Henson version hits all the notes exactly right, as well as the recent and long-awaited restoration of the 1992 film (with the missing song performed by Meredith Braun now back in place) on its thirtieth anniversary. And accompanying us this time are a pair of veritable Muppet experts who run their own dedicated podcast on these ageless furry anarchist entertainers! 

Settle in for a genuinely epic journey through one of the greatest Yuletides stories ever told, being retold in perhaps the greatest way possible.

Guests:

Mackenzie Eastram  @KenziePhoenix of Rainbow Connection @MuppetsPod

Nathan Eastram @bertnerdtram These two also of Video Game: The Movie: The Podcast  @VGTMPodcast

Perhaps the oldest film we have covered as a Main Event show to date, as well as one of the most significant from that era. Frank Capra's seminal Holiday classic is often dismissed as syrupy fluff by those who haven't yet seen it, or misremembered as light comedy by those who caught it in fragments over the years without sitting down to really take in what it's saying.

It's neither of those things, and the greatest tragedy is how searingly relevant this 1946 post-war exercise in picking up the pieces of a nation still is. Sharon and I have been earmarking it for the SOM treatment for many years, but always putting it off as too heavy or too daunting, and also too beloved to cover in any way that wasn't 200% satisfying for all. 

Luckily Chris Finik came along with a shred choice of Commissioned show, and now you all get to listen to what it sounds like when we pull out all the stops.

We've been planning Narnia shows for many years. This was a very special book series to me as a child, informing on my worldview and writing. It was also the first long-form live action fantasy series I watched on television, as the BBC production which ran from November 1988 to December 1991 adapted four books over three 6-episode seasons. I always wondered why they stopped at The Silver Chair. Later I began to understand the kind of scope and budgets and potentially thorny territory that the remaining three stories would entail. The quaint, very British project was already more ambitious than anyone would have expected. 

After that were many long years of waiting for a cinematic incarnation (not counting the insanely cheap and rushed 1979 animated version). The achievement and success of New Line's Lord of the Rings films at the same time as Warner's Harry Potter imbued Disney with a desire to seek out its own epic fantasy series to bring in all the dollars. 

While compared unfavourably with Weta's perfectly magnificent Rings Trilogy it is frankly amazing that the director of the first two Shrek films was able to achieve something in this 2005 film which both surpassed my experience of reading the book, and even my loftily-soaring imagination of what the events could look, sound and feel like. We will be covering the duet of films that followed in 2008 and 2010 and lingering cancellation of the seven-part series next year. 

Guest:

Nama Chibitty @namathenerd

Following the tremendous critical and commercial success of the first ever dedicated  animated Batman show, the same creative team turned their eyes to his sunny counterpart, the original, archetypal superhero, the last son of Krypton.

It's always more challenging creating a successful, beloved Clark Kent than it is a Bruce Wayne. People like the brooding and the darkness. By contrast it is natural to be mistrusting of someone who purports to be so utterly GOOD all the time. Surely there's an angle. Look how naïve he is. What if he turned bad? Unfortunately this last prospect is the Superman story we keep returning to in pop culture. Because we can understand why someone would wield supreme power as a conquering weapon.

This, however is THE definitive Superman. Christopher Reeve is no doubt the most wonderful, memorable, impeccably performed live-action Kal-El, but this show which ran for three seasons from 1996-2000 is most definitely the place to go to find the *context* for Superman. A world based on the comics that the creative team love and have actually read! A rogue's gallery that aren't all just Lex Luthor and General Zod, and the finest Lois Lane we may ever see.

This Animated Series is a gift. 

Guests:

Toby Jungius @TJungius of Through the Wind Door

Kevin Veighey @KevinTimeGeek86 whose Let's Plays on YouTube can be found here

Nine years after his Chronicles, Richard B. Riddick is sat upon his iron throne, the crown hanging heavy, too many pie suppers since he was at his physical peak and too many wenches left in wordless ecstasy, sloughing around his greasy bedsheets. 

This is the story of how he gets easily tricked, shot in the back, left for dead on a barren planet filled with beasties designed exclusively to kill you, and soon after making a four-legged friend, he becomes beset by not one, but two separate groups of rotten mercenaries. 

Possibly the yellowest film you will ever witness, Riddick (2013) is what happens when one attempts to return to one's roots after an age of hubris. Does it succeed?  

Next Week: Superman - The Animated Series.

After knocking it out of the park on the first try with Pitch Black, David Twohy and Vin Diesel limbered back up four years later with a complete change of pace, scale and even sci-fi sub-genre. If you look at Pitch Black as The Hobbit, then where they took the series next was their Lord of the Rings.

However, there is a world of difference between what went into the expansion and historical goings-on of Professor Tolkein and the Conan-the-Barbarian-in-space that Riddick metamorphosed into. Suddenly, rather than a dangerous prisoner he became the chosen one of a massacred world, destined to avenge his people against a rampaging horde of death-worshipping necromongers! 

The results of these changes were frequently frustrating and marginally absurd!

This one is really rather special and arguably the longest time coming of any of our shows. Pitch Black, released in February 2000 in the USA didn't make it to the UK until November of that year. There's even some confusion in this episode because I wasn't sure if Sharon and I were actually together as a couple when we saw it (turns out we were, just). But significantly, this was our first movie where we left the cinema together on fire with analysis that we were twanging back and forth like verbal badminton.

It's a tight, focused, visceral, planet-survival thriller, drawing from many inspirations but managing to combine them in a way that keeps it continuously gripping, even after all these years.

This is the first of a dedicated three-week series of episodes revolving around the transmedia franchise that sprang from this standalone movie; a handful of very savvy decisions mixed with a bucket of bad ones. 

The chronological order goes...

1. Escape from Butcher Bay (Patreon Exclusive Episode)

2. Assault on Dark Athena (In a double-bill with Butcher Bay)

3. Pitch Black (Main Event)

4. Dark Fury (Patreon with the video games)

5. The Chronicles of Riddick (Main Event)

6. Riddick (Patreon)

See you in a few days for a delve into Vin Diesel's career and the Peter-Chung-animated 30-minute short, followed by the sprawling, pretentious Conan-the-Barbarian-in-Space of "The Chronicles of Riddick" next week. 

This one has been many years in the making. 

Around about the time the pandemic hit, followed by the global chip shortage there was a series of jumps in both quality and quantity of retro gaming machines being manufactured in China and shipped out to folks stuck in lockdown with a serious hankering to revisit a simpler less-apocalypsy past.

At the same time the secondary collector's market for vintage hardware, cartridges and discs also ballooned, and those with the engineering abilities started restoring and upgrading classic handhelds and consoles. 

This show is not a buyer's guide, nor an overly technical breakdown of the processes. It's a focused, historical slice of perspective on gaming; past, present and future. It is an exploration of the fragile nature of what we play and the lengths we will often go to, in order to recapture those memories. It's about the sheer joy of curation, archiving and preservation, and the strangely benign communities that have developed around these principles. 

It's available to buy right now on Amazon and if as many of you as possible buy it at once, talk about it on social media, (and if you want to be extra specially helpful leave us an honest, positive review when you've finished and recommend it to friends) that should help it get some visibility.

It's called "The Lights from Distant Bonfires" and we've been preparing it for many months now. These stories are stirring and spine-tingling and should conjure up haunting images to dwell on this Fall. We are keeping the price low and selling the paperback at cost to get it into as many trembling hands as possible. 

USA Edition

UK Edition 

The 14 Authors: Lincoln Alpern, James Batchelor, Nama Chibitty, Greg Downing, Jesse Ferguson, Chris Finik, Nick Jaragosky, Hanna Peregrine, Alexander Shaw, Sharon Shaw, Willow Shaw, Maya Souris, Alejandra Vargas, Bradford Yurkiw

This is an obscure coming-of age fable from the director of Interview With the Vampire and The Crying Game. It was made on a very low budget in 1984 in Shepperton Studios, England, but it has some of the best werewolf fiction within its toothy confines. 

The framing device is a young girl who has gone to bed with tummy cramps. In her restless dreams she ties together various cautionary tails about Red Riding Hood, the boy who cried wolf, visitations from the Devil himself, wedding-day curses and strange men with one eyebrow and shocking yellow irises. The teller of many of these stories is the great Angela Lansbury, who at the time of release for this show, only just closed the last page of her own book. 

And the whole thing is an allegorical anthology about the girl's growing, changing body, her sense of identity and burning curiosity.

Stay tuned to the end for news about a brand new Gothic Anthology book we've helped to create.

It is a confusing time to be a lover of Ghostbusters. On the one hand you have the long-planned but never-realised Ghostbusters 3 reunion Dan Aykroyd always had plans for. On the other you have the 2016 oops-all-ladies remakeboot which plenty of people enjoyed yet made some guys so mad they burned down half the internet and scared Sony (as well as malignantly harassing several of the stars away from social media).

And on the third hand you have the hot new take that the 1984 original movie is in fact capitalist trash and some compelling arguments about demonising the Environmental Protection Agency in Reagan-era America. And then there's this fourth movie that upon announcement met a storm of derision, perceived as placating those rotten fans mentioned above. And when it finally came out, late in 2021 it was so meek and inoffensive that it barely registered in a year when going back to the cinema was both special and risky.

The prevailing view is that it was also trash. So we brought in someone who helped us talk about the original two movies all the way back in 2013 to detail why it's their favourite! 

Guest:

Taylor Nova of GameBurst @TaylorNova6

NOTE: This episode was recorded almost a year ago, and in an instance of spectacular timing, the final edit emerged within hours of some horrible reports on both Bill Murray and Ivan Reitman. This is why nearly all of my heroes are fictional. Because when you hear Captain America was horrendous to someone, that's on the writer. 

WARNING: This episode contains lengthy discussions on depression, trauma and suicide. 

You do not need to see this movie before listening to the episode. In fact, in a rare instance we actually suggest you *don't* see it, for reasons we will be elaborating on at length.

It has reviewed well, and as with many horror movies based on a simple hook that shakes people up, it has done gangbusters at the box office. That puts it in league with Saw and Paranormal Activity and Insidious. And as you'll hear, on a technical scale, in terms of moment to moment nerve-jangling scenes it ties itself together with a confidence that makes debut director Parker Finn likely to be successful moving forward.

As I watched I became aware that the premise was uncannily similar to It Follows (2014) by David Robert Mitchell, and I've seen many people online echo that similarity. However, my idle brain found nine further films that this clearly draws from, which makes a spread of influences that is either shameless or impressive, depending on perspective. But that isn't the reason not to see it. 

Guest:

Spencer Leeb of The New Century Multiverse

If you have ever felt the need to talk to somebody about this very serious and personal state of mind please bookmark whichever of these is helpful to you.

USA: 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline 

UK Samaritans 

Get Help, Talk Suicide: Canada 

Australia Lifeline 

Find a Helpline: Emotional Support in 150+ Countries 

It is hard to approach the Pixar of the 2020s with the same eye as the Pixar of the 2000s. For a long while this was a barely-interrupted chain of truly excellent and game-changing 3D animated films which signified to other studios that they didn't have to copy Disney in order to attain success, they could get their own Shrek. Their story structure was always reliably potent and they could blindside you with poignancy. 

Then, as with disposable blockbusters, live action remakes of their hand-drawn heritage, unnecessary sequels, spin-offs, Star Wars and now Marvel, Pixar fell into the rhythm of the infernal Disney machine which appears to prize quantity over quality. But I feel uncomfortable even in the act of criticising a megacorporation who I want to see do better because there are so many bad-faith commentators out there getting performatively angry over every release. 

Lightyear is based on a premise which instantly neither works nor makes sense. It is ostensibly a film from 1995, and yet at no point does it NOT feel like Pixar's fifth film release since the Pandemic began. And this is where the missed opportunities only begin!

Our favourite mafia movie, even over the venerated classics, for reasons that will become immediately apparent. This 1999 comedy directed by Harold Ramis was made at almost exactly the same time as The Sopranos first season was developed. Both explore the very real anxiety that comes with a lifestyle that is inherently dangerous, as well as one that involves such a close-knit family and all the loyalties, hopes, dreams, betrayals and disappointments that come with every other family, only this kind whack people for betrayal.

And we knew exactly who to call on for this analysis, our Australian buddies from The Two Shrinks Pod. Together with these professionals we delve into Robert De Niro's disarmingly vulnerable take on a worried father and a still-grieving son, along with Billy Crystal's harangued shrink, positively terrified of winding up sleeping with the fishes, whilst nursing his own paternal resentment.  

School of Movies and Two Shrinks are part of the podcast group Fireside Alliance. Come along and check out the other shows we rub shoulders with. https://www.firesidealliance.com/

Guests:

Dr Hunter Mulcare @realhuntermmm 

Amy Donaldson of @TwoShrinksPod

WARNING: This episode contains foul language and repeated references to very crude sexual situations, bodily fluids and some nasty-as-hell behaviour. Thou art warned!

This began as a simple re-watch of the original 1999 film "American Pie", but it quickly spiralled into a look back on the gross, frat-house movie craze of the early 2000s. We go through each film in turn and mine them for anything even remotely positive, before spanking the living hell out of them for their awful, creepy and sometimes disturbing attempts to wrestle laughs out of an audience that was growing up faster than they were.

American Pie 2 (2001) reunited the gang for spring break, American Wedding (2003) saw two of the more wholesome characters get married, whilst also depicting what I dubbed then and now as the death of comedy, maybe even the death of narrative cinema! And then the one with the most potential for retrospection on our own filthy, mistake-filled youths American Reunion (2012) brought everyone back as adults, thinning hairlines and disappointment all-round. And somehow, despite all the ingredients being present, they managed to bake their most rotten apple pie last! And yet despite all this, we managed to pull together one of the most fun shows we've done. This is going to be a favourite for some listeners. 

Back when this was announced there was all kinds of excitement. Thor, much like his buddy Hulk was a character it seemed like Marvel took a while to get a handle on, relative to the duo of immediate home runs with Iron man and Captain America. The first film was a relative success, he contributed greatly to the chemistry of The Avengers, but then underwhelmed in The Dark World and felt vestigial in Age of Ultron.

But Taika Waititi and Chris Hemsworth's 2017 Ragnarok reinvention revealed a hilarious and savvy rogue still with his roots in the earnest early performances. This was followed by two wildly popular Avengers outings which harnessed a palpable rage and grief (though not without a problematic amount of fat-shaming). This evolving dimensionality made it seem like it was worth a victory lap, bringing Waititi back in. The spotlighting of Jane Foster and Natalie Portman's unexpected returned to the series adapting Jason Aaron's recent comic run. 

It seemed very likely we would get an evolution of what the world saw Thor as. Especially considering the villain this time was largely sympathetic, as a simple man entirely let down by a pantheon of absurdly privileged complacent gods...

And then we watched the movie.

Guests:

Nama Chibitty @namathenerd

Austin Wilden @WC_WIT of Wits-Writing

A truly magnificent film about pondering the nature of existence and being trapped between nihilistic despair and existential motivation.

But also a touching and painful drama about a little, broken Asian family who no longer know what to say to each other any more.

But also a spectacular running battle of martial arts and clownery, nestled inside a high-concept sci-fi about jumping between dimensions and occupying the bodies of the alternate versions of yourself, and borrowing the abilities they honed leading different lives to you.

This was a commissioned show, because there was SO MUCH to talk about that we would have delayed it forever otherwise. But now it's one of our very best shows. And that is due mostly to our guests who had so much to say. Nothing but editorial was cut. We've given you Everything!

Guests:

Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnewof Cinapse

Maya Souris @TheStuntLady

Greg Downing of Through the Wind Door @MightyGregDoge

Alejandra Vargas @Plutoburns

Chris Finik @finmonster09

Our unexpected year of the Wachowskis continues with a 2008 movie that fans feel passionately about, and a strong sense of it never really having a chance, being released the same summer as Iron man and The Dark Knight.

A squeaky-clean blockbuster painted in a dizzying kaleidoscope of primary colours with intense greens, pinks and purples to deliver what was supposed to feel like an anime in live action, but due to its unique and striking editing style of talking heads describing past, present and future events as they transition in real-time it winds up being entirely singular in its cinematic field.

There really genuinely is no other film quite like Speed Racer. Allow us to elucidate why you need to see this on the biggest, brightest screen available.

Guests:

Alexa Vargas @Plutoburns

Nama Chibitty @namathenerd

We venture back to John Carpenter for maybe his least marketable, most angry movies. You are probably aware of all those memes where a guy looks at a sign with sunglasses on and sees something direct and insidious usually masked with advertising. This is the film that's from.

In fact what surprised me after we finished recording was checking out those memes and finding that so goddamn many of them are from dudes who have decided that the liberal media, feminism, and the LGBTQIA+ community are the dominant overlords manipulating civilisation from a place of supreme power. It is tragicomic as a conclusion.

Anyway, this 1988 Matrix prototype starring a charismatic WWF wrestler is all about how alien lizard people control us through brainwashing. It can be a tough pill to swallow, you may have to spend an hour punching your best friend in the junk until he will accept this reality. 

Guest: Maya Souris @TheStuntLady

The Summer Commissions Season continues with an unexpected highlight.

Here we have a brace of films focusing on the same real life event: Man on Wire (2008) and The Walk (2015). The former is a documentary about Philippe Petit the man who walked on a wire between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. The latter is the Robert Zemekis dramatization of that fairly astonishing heist. We recommend you see one or both of them, because they're fantastic in different ways.

The year was 1974, the towers were in the process of being built in Manhattan, and thousands of miles away a French street performer was cultivating a deep longing to traverse the tallest wire in the world. One tiny mistake, one miscalculation and he would plummet to a very public death. But first he had to get up there, and for that he and his cronies were going to need to pull off one of the most extraordinary real life heists of all time. 

Our summer commissions season continues. It's surprising that this show has been going as long as it has only covering a handful of Pixar movies. So this one will be welcome to many listeners.

Putting the original 2004 film in perspective, it was incredibly important as a touchstone for what became the age of superhero blockbusters. It has so many significant elements that Marvel applied to their works (appropriate since this is to date, the best Fantastic Four movie!)

So, fourteen years later the sequel takes place fourteen seconds after the first while we've all gotten a lot older. 

Next week two films focusing on the same real life event: Man on Wire (2008) and The Walk (2015). The former is a documentary about the man who walked on a wire between the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the latter is the Robert Zemekis dramatization of that fairly astonishing heist. We recommend both.

Five years after our show on the 1982 original (which you will now find next to this on the podcast feed) and coincidentally falling on the 40th anniversary of that film, we look at the follow-up, directed by Denis Villeneuve.

Astonishingly, considering its seminal position in film history the Ridley Scott original was treated dismissively by our parents and grandparents. It fell to Gen-Xers to rediscover it on video in the early 90s to really elevate its status. The wonders a Director’s Cut will do for those first impressions.

And 2049 followed suit, garnering a surprising level of disinterest despite being magnificently crafted, insanely scored, impeccably performed and beautifully photographed. But again, in home format, this one has been gaining traction. And if it is the last Blade Runner film, then the duet currently in existence work together supremely well, for reasons we delve into here.

This episode was a commission for Parker. We’ve been wanting to cover it for years, but it has just been so intimidating to attempt that we appreciate the hard nudge and we hope we and our excellent guest did this one justice.

Guest:

Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnewof Cinapse

[Note: This is a re-release of the original Blade Runner to coincide with our show on 2049 this week.]

Here's a short, and by no means exhaustive list of entertainment works influenced by this one movie... 

RoboCop, Akira, Back to the Future Part II, Ghost in the Shell, The Fifth Element, The Matrix, Futurama, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, I, Robot, Minority Report, Serenity, WALL-E, Battlestar Galactica, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Prometheus, District 9, Alex + Ada, Almost Human, Black Mirror, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Dredd, Chappie, Her, Ex-Machina, Valerian and Westworld.

This episode we discuss Ridley Scott's ponderous, flawed, but hugely impactful and striking vision of the future, and musing on the nature of humanity, accompanied by Vangelis, and one of the greatest scores ever put to film.

Guests

Taylor Nova of TheKidDogg

Collin Miller of The Cinema Cephalopod 

The initial trailers for this one had me groaning. We were still pre-Birds of Prey movie so it was easy to assume the touchstone for this one was the first Suicide Squad movie, plus extreme cartoon violence and crudity. Well I was right about the second two!

Turns out this is one of the smartest, most psychologically explorative of DC's vast back catalogue of superhero TV. Primarily because it is framed first as a relationship drama, second as a comedy and third as a DC world. But even with that lowered priority and an emphasis on wild chaos there is still the flavour of authenticity about the vast majority of the characters. This writing and production team have paid attention.

And crucially, after teasing us with an early on meeting and lightning chemistry between Harley and Ivy in Batman: The Animated Series way back in 1993 we finally get to see them cultivate a close friendship onscreen... At least it *would* be ONLY a close friendship if this were Disney. So thank goodness it's not!

For this episode we steer clear of serious spoilers until a dedicated section at the end, so even if you haven't seen any episodes you can listen to this.

This is our second show on Kamala Khan. The first was all the way back in 2017 when we talked about her first comic miniseries. I've re-released that show on the podcast feed so these two can be companion pieces. 

The Disney+ miniseries delivered almost exactly what we had been hoping for all these years. A bright, funny, courageous Pakistani-American girl hero. Instantly iconic and clearly in love with all things Marvel. 

We did not expect the drama to be quite so naturalistic and poignant, the family to be so much more interesting than the interdimensional shenanigans or the gut punch of the 1947 Partition of India which stands as the centrepiece. This real life event created millions of immigrant refugee stories and generational hurt across a cultural divide which exists to this day. 

Also the soundtrack is amazing!

Guests:

Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnew of Cinapse

Chris Finik @finmonster09 who assembles New Century's TV Tropes Pages and who writes fanfic (including a Dark Tower / Tiger's Eye crossover)

Nama Chibitty @namathenerd

This is a reupload of our 2017 show discussing the first series of Ms. Marvel comics. It works as a great companion piece to our show on the 2022 MCU TV series. 

In 2013 a brand new Marvel character was introduced to the world, one who is very reminiscent of classic Peter Parker, a goofy, hapless, sweet-natured teenager who just wants to help people. She's also the world's premier, headlining Muslim superhero, and very much due a movie or TV series to bring her to mass popularity like those who came before her.

In tonight's episode we are joined by Alasdair Stuart, owner of Escape Artists and long-time comic-book expert, to enthusiastically discuss why the younger generations are already loving Kamala Khan, and why she's so important in the grand scheme.

You don't have to have read any of her comics, but by the end of this you will want to. 

Guest:

Alasdair Stuart of Escape Pod

There are two things about Star Wars that seem endemic, inextricable from the process of engaging with the multitude of stories that have emerged over the many years since 1977.

One is that we always seem to return to Tatooine. It ties in with the fact that Star Wars plays on nostalgia. Even as early as 1983's Return of the Jedi they were bringing us back to that sand planet only actually named out loud at the tail end of The Empire Strikes Back. That movie also continued the long procession of Death Stars. But if we accept that these touchstones will mean that many people's first Star Wars will feature Tatooine, we can accept that this nostalgia and going back to that feeling when you were a kid, and could get excited about all sorts of things, that's the source of its power. George's movie was itself based on his own nostalgia for spacefaring adventure, cowboys and samurai. 

The other element that one must accept if one is to be at peace with Star Wars is that as that multitude of stories emerge over the years of our lives we are going to encounter not just one but a cluster over a period of time that disappoint us and make us feel like this saga has lost its way and isn't for us any more. But inevitably if that love was there to begin with, something will come along and surprise us in a good way. 

And for us that was Obi Wan. 

Guests:

Chris Finik @finmonster09 who assembles New Century's TV Tropes Pages and who writes fanfic (including a Dark Tower / Tiger's Eye crossover)

Austin Wilden @WC_WIT of Wits-Writing

This is an exploration on the more personal, less studio-based films of Thor Ragnaraok and Love & Thunder director Taika Waititi. Most of you won't have seen all of them, and that is okay, you should listen to this episode in its entirety anyway. The show will give you more details to look for when you get to watching them.

03m: Eagle vs. Shark (2007)

25m: Boy (2010)

41m: Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)

59m: Jojo Rabbit (2019)

All of them have many factors in common, but the unifying factors are parents not being around, and lonely boys going through a transformative journey.  There is dark, offhand humour, spectacular immaturity, sudden unexpected pain and loss, and resolutions that are as soothingly healthy as they are oddball. Altogether, Waititi is one of the most riveting directors of our time, and it brings us a lot of joy to study his repeating themes along with you. 

This one hit us mere hours after the finale of Moon Knight. It has been six years since the first Doctor Strange hit in late 2016. To the point where the dangling threads of that film are ignored, because Stephen has made four more appearances since then, and been instrumental in deliberately instigating The Snap.

But even that is mostly pushed to the side as this film becomes the follow-up to the first Disney+ Marvel TV show, WandaVision. And the handling of that factor by dream director for many; Evil Dead and Spider-Man-helmer Sam Raimi has caused this to become one of the most polarising of MCU movies. 

We needed several months to think hard about it, and this is what we really wanted to say. Many thanks to our brilliant guests for lending perspective and also putting into understandable words how time and dimensional travel seems to work within Marvel's Earth 616 (movies and TV not comics). 

Guests:

Chris Finik @finmonster09 who assembles New Century's TV Tropes Pages and who writes fanfic (including a Dark Tower / Tiger's Eye crossover)

Jesse Ferguson @TheDapperDM

from the Recorded Tomorrow Podcast

Two films about dinosaurs as a metaphor for our own existential fear of extinction.

We've held back on talking about the second film, released in 2018 because I was waiting on the onscreen consequences of the big decision at the end. While some folks considered Fallen Kingdom to be the worst in the franchise (I even saw a video declaring it the worst movie ever made - clearly somebody who has never seen Swamp Shark) we actually quite like it.

Don't get us wrong, it's dumb as a sack of hammers, but there are qualities that win it points with us that the other sequels don't have, not least of which is the director of the Orphanage, one of the finest ghost stories ever put to film, Juan Antonio Bayona.

After that I tell Sharon all about the third movie (we keep all spoilers for that section). One could say Jurassic Park needed no sequels, but when has NEED ever factored in when the prospect of a billion dollars was on the table?

After the sexy teen rebels of The Lost Boys we delve into the cutthroat underworld of New York big business and the predatory nature of its ambitious executives, hollow inside and devoid of a soul, trying to fill that emptiness with delusions that their success excuses them from the people they hurt to achieve their power.

Listen, when you bring in Nicholas Cage and tell him to just go nuts with a role you're paying for spectacle not subtlety. This began as a Quick Review but quickly became one of the funniest shows we've recorded, centring around one of the weirdest performances we've witnessed. 

The third in the Rage Cage trinity, released less than a month after Con Air, this movie saw our boy Nick set against John Travolta, who was at the time flying high on the success of Pulp Fiction a few years previously. 

The premise of "Good guy wears bad guy's face" is completely nuts for a start, but what it allows us to see onscreen is two extremely intense actors performing as both a wackadoo international terrorist-for-hire and the broken, obsessed FBI agent hellbent on revenge. Science and physics are utterly abandoned in favour of comic book logic, but the proceedings remained nonetheless a slick bullet ballet just oozing with star-power as the two leads try to out-weird each other. 

Action maestro John Woo had only just begun to direct films for a western audience (following Hard Target and Broken Arrow) but this might be the most fondly remembered.

Guests

Hollywoo Actress  Maya Souris @Mayasantandrea

Jason "Chewie" Slate @TheManaPool

The Rage Cage Season continues, as Nicholas transforms himself into a statuesque Army Ranger from Alabama with a mullet (as We Hate Movies would say) to beat the band! It's had to imagine from every movie he was in before and since but here he's a combination of the peace-making soft  tones of Jesus and the spin-kicks of Chuck Norris. 

Handed a severe sentence after defending himself and his pregnant wife from literally the worst man in the world, Cameron Poe is sent home after eight years in jail. Unfortunately he is put on a plane with superstar celebrity convicts renowned for their violent crimes. And when they inevitably take control of the plane, leaving Cameron in a sticky position he is faced with a choice; get off when prompted and get back to his family or stay and try to do something good. The resultant film is riot of explosions, glossy action cinematography and highly memorable, equally quotable dialogue.

For this episode we brought in the Franchise Killer podcast (from our shows on Super Mario Bros and Shazam!) Check out their show.

https://franchisekillerpod.podbean.com/

Guests:

From the Franchise Killer Podcast: @FK_Podcast

David Schmitzer

Irena Schmitzer

Rhys Paine

This is the start of our Rage Cage Season, celebrating the span of twelve months between Summer 1996 and Summer 1997 when Nicholas Cage was somehow the hottest action star of the age. He's quite appealingly low-key in this one, relative to the next two; Con Air and FACE/OFF.

This is Michael Bay's best film. That's not hyperbole, it really is, in terms of how well-executed each set-piece is, how the momentum holds you without wearing you down, memorable performances, sympathetic characters and how the drama and human interaction functions surprisingly well. 

I also consider it Sean Connery's swansong. Not his last film, but his last great film, as well as a backdoor Old Man Bond farewell. In fact, while you're listening to this episode you'll hear how the text of this film actively supports this being quite literally the same guy we saw in Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, all the way up to Diamonds are Forever. 

Guests:

Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnew of Cinapse

From Sequentially Yours  Kaoru Negisa  @Moonpanther22

and Debbie Morse  @bastet8300

A long-awaited visit to the first of Disney's new Star Wars TV shows. Weirdly we haven't had that many requests to talk Mando, but with Obi Wan launching this week and in the wake of the turbulent response to The Book of Boba we decided to journey back to the first and delve into what it did extremely well. 

We divided the eight episodes into three movies, loosely paralleling Sergei Leone's Dollars Trilogy with A Fistful of Beskar, For a Few Credits More and my personal favourite... The Good, The Bad and The Ugnaught. With us are two people who had literally never seen an episode of Mando before signing up for guest duty, so we get their fresh perspective without spoiling what comes later. 

Next week we begin the 'Rage Cage Season' as we explore the very brief period in the late 90s when Nicholas Cage was the hottest new high octane action star around! Three shows over three weeks as he gets madder and madder, The Rock, Con Air and FACE/OFF. 

I have spoken.

Guests

Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnew of Cinapse

From Sequentially Yours  Kaoru Negisa  @Moonpanther22

and Debbie Morse  @bastet8300

Taylor Nova of GameBurst @TaylorNova6

A risky venture on Marvel's part. More than one might imagine. This is a character who is mostly known in the comics as a street-level supernatural vigilante (somewhere between Batman and Blade) and from a meme where that nerd Dracula owes him money.

But more than that, in this TV miniseries, he's a Jewish superantihero played by a Guatemalan, directed by an Egyptian, and penned by the writer of the cursed 2015 Fantastic Four reboot that everyone forgot. And it deals chiefly over everything else, even the mythology... with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).

And when you get to the end, after all the theatrics and horror, after all the mummies and costumes and screaming and creepy cults, the abiding memory is a pair of distinct and sympathetic performances from Oscar Isaac. The Moon Knight is almost incidental! 

Join us now as we talk the ups and downs of this strange journey.

Indiegogo for "The Bludgeoning": https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-bludgeoning-working-title#/

Guests

Chris Finik @finmonster09 who assembles New Century's TV Tropes Pages and who writes fanfic (including a Dark Tower / Tiger's Eye crossover)

Nick Jaragosky: SOM Discord regular and occasional guest on the Commanderin' MTG podcast  

This was my first full-length audio drama. It was designed to be enjoyed by folks who saw the Nolan films the Arkham video games or the Animated Series. I wanted to write something significant, honest and authentic about the Batman legend and with a lot of help from long-time serious Bat-fan, David Hartrick, I was able to shape a bunch of ideas into a hopefully coherent story. It was originally released a week before The Dark Knight Rises.

None of the cast, including myself were professional actors, but we all worked very hard to capture the essence of the characters we portrayed. The writing, organisation and editing all of this together took dozens of hours, and it was equal parts exhausting and rewarding. For comic fans this is an Elseworlds (What If?) tale that takes place after Hush (2002) and Under the Hood (2005). This also fits with the motion-comic/audio drama adaptation of The Killing Joke that I put together the following year in 2013.

Script: Alex Shaw / Story: Alex Shaw & David Hartrick / Editing: Alex Shaw

Cast

Bruce Wayne/Joker/Jason: Alex Shaw Barbara Gordon/Oracle: Leah Haydu Dick Grayson/Nightwing: Taylor Nova Tim Drake/Robin: Daniel Floyd Clark Kent/Superman: James Batchelor Diana Prince/Wonder Woman/Estelle: Tara Nelson Selina Kyle/Catwoman/Bank Clerk: Cassandra Corgard Alfred Pennyworth: Matthew Ramsey Doctor Jennifer Whitman: Sharon Shaw Cops: Matt Whetter/Sharon Shaw/Alex Shaw Thieves: Taylor Nova/Matt Whetter/Alex Shaw

David Hartrick writes for In Bed With Maradona, the award-winning home of World Football: http://inbedwithmaradona.com/

One of the biggest films of the year, celebrated for its dark beauty and mature themes. If you loved Matt Reeves' The Batman chances are the vast majority of moviegoers and critics are in the same boat.

I'm not in that boat. I'm on a tiny little raft made of twigs and optimistic delusion, drifting off towards a whirlpool leading straight down to sea-Hell, surrounded by electric sharks and mecha-jellyfish. For many reasons this was a miserable experience for me, but the last thing I wanted to do was moan about it or tread on anyone's toes for liking it. 

So I crafted what I hope is a really entertaining episode that actually looks back over all of the Batman movies. It gets meta, because that's what this series is; a perpetually shifting cultural statement on how to make darkness, vengeance and crimefighting appealing. And next week, as a companion piece, I have something I made about Batman a long time ago that a lot of you won't have heard.

Daft bunny with amazing wife *may* have dropped a safe on a cartoon-arms dealer...

An absolutely one-time deal, just like Lord of the Rings and Titanic, this perfect melding of live action and beautiful hand-drawn animation convincingly interacting in 3D space, coupled with a whip-quick hilarious script as well as the kind of combination of studio properties that just never happens any more. Disney don't take part in those Ready Player Ones or Space Jams, and it was crucial that the masters of western animation in the 20th Century hand over the keys to their kingdom, circa 1947. 

But even the above description sells short how skilled the actors were, whether painted or not, how they sell the world via dry delivery, and how Bob Hoskins unexpected mastery of physicality in the role stems from Chaplin and Keaton. This thing is a masterpiece containing masterpieces. And we are here with our buddy Dan to talk about the many levels of special you discover revisiting as a sharp-eyed adult.

Guest

Daniel Floyd of New Frame Plus  @DanFloydPlus

I could just have told you folks not to see this one, but the whole world appears to have gotten the memo on that. I could also have just ignored it, but Harry Potter was important to a LOT of us in the past (and still many now) so a reappraisal of where the hell the Wizarding World sits today, and how we got to this place was in order.

It turned into a lengthy investigation as to just how many things can go wrong and how many problematic people have to be involved with your production before you pull the plug. This one delves into what plot is there, but frankly there's nothing to spoil that ain't already wrecked. 

Back at the turn of the century Dreamworks were going after Disney hard. The first lasting challenge to the mouse monopoly of animated cinema in the west involved a similar hand-drawn traditional style to match their 90s Renaissance. Notably that was a period of amazing achievement following mediocrity, thanks in no small part due to Dreamworks very own Lord Farquaad, Jeffrey Katzenberg.  

The four films in this soon-abandoned endeavour were The Prince of Egypt, which did gangbusters, horse-botherer Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, the box office pirate shipwreck, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, and this one, released in 2000, about a pair of ne-er-do-well conmen finding the fabled lost Aztec city against the disturbing backdrop of the arrival in Mesoamerica of Francisco Cortes. But all of these were releasing at the dawn of the Shrek Age, and they themselves represent a now-fading culture conquered by merciless superior technology.  

Guests:

Mackenzie & Nathan Eastram  @KenziePhoenix @bertnerdtram of Rainbow Connection @MuppetsPod and Video Game: The Movie: The Podcast  @VGTMPodcast

A cult British classic made in 1987, set in 1969 and an utter failure at the box office. With the advent of affordable videos in the 1990s this one later became very popular with students who warmed to its story of two out of work actors living in ridiculous squalor. It's insanely quotable and darkly funny if you have the corresponding frequency of humour (I think I'm going to use this term in future. It's not a binary thing and that misconception is used all too often as a limp shield for crappy comedian behaviour).

Richard E. Grant plays Withnail, a persistently drunken, excessively verbose drama queen. Paul McGann play's "I" (whose uncredited name is Marlowe) a mousy, skittish neurotic afraid of being attacked by a hostile world of beefy, aggressive men. 

Together the pair of them borrow Withnail's Uncle Monty's cottage in Penrith and have an impromptu holiday to escape their troubles, only to find they have brought them along too. They are pitiful wretches and we should loathe them, but it's easy to feel sympathy and empathy all the same.

This one deals with some confused issues of unexplored homosexuality and predatory behaviour (fuelled by the writer/director's own unfortunate experiences as a young man), so you may have to bear with it until the full context is unfolded. But it would be entirely understandable if you want to put a pin in this for later. 

A trio of films that are considered by many to be the crowning glories of Don Bluth's oeuvre. He was one of the only serious competitors to Disney in the last two decades of the 20th Century that they had dominated, in terms of what constituted animated cinema in the west. 

We take a documentarian approach to how he started, and cover the flourishing of the next few years, breaking off at their high point, actually beating Disney at the box office. After this it was a slow decline of valiant attempts and disappointing failures, making films that evoked the elegant, classical stylings of Cinderella, Pinocchio and Sleeping Beauty when the public wanted Toy Story, and Disney were experiencing their 90s Renaissance. 

This one gets dark and hard, even more so than you might imagine, if you're familiar with the sometimes disturbing nature of this body of work. But it's utterly fascinating if you can push through that. 

Guest:

Kat Essman @Kat325

Lunatic eats strange fungus, throws reptile carcases and banana peel out of his car. Everyone cheers! 

One of the most beloved of game series, the racing title that prides itself on accessibility (most of the time) and appeal to all ages, with a consistently high bar of quality (imagine if every Sonic game had that) and a lasting appeal that both piques nostalgia and makes us excited for the future.

What began as a multiplayer sequel to vintage SNES launch title F-Zero became a flagship Nintendo showcase of their core Mario-related characters. We look at the development history and how the series has evolved over thirty years, the gambles that didn't pay off, the elements we now take for granted and the key aspects that make it work so well. 

What's abundantly clear is that everyone has a different favourite and everyone has at least one example in the series that they just bounce off. We eschew discussion on the obscure arcade games, the remote control car for your mansion, and the Switch DLC rollout, as that won't be finished for years, but we DO talk about the phone-based Tour (2019) and its microtransaction-plagued experience.

For this epic show we played through every cup, and tried every multiplayer and battle mode in Super Mario Kart on the SNES (1992), Mario Kart 64 (1997) Super Circuit for GBA (2001) Double Dash for GameCube (2003) DS (2005) Wii (2008) 7 for 3DS (2011) and 8 for Wii U and Switch (2014). And yes, we do talk about Tour for phones (2019).  

The other unexpected and fascinating side of the show to pay particular attention to, which didn't become apparent until the edit is how Nintendo advertised each game over three decades. Their approach and audience changes over time and you can really hear that in the commercials. PLUS the whole thing is peppered with music that will evoke good times. 

Guest:

Nama Chibitty @namathenerd 

We continue an unexpected year of diving into the back-catalogue of The Wachowskis. Speed Racer is on the way, and this right here is a dark little neo noir about stealing from murderous mobsters.

It's all claustrophobic labyrinthine interiors, black and white, red and green with overtones of German expressionism. Bill Pope the same Director of Photography as the first three Matrix films, Don Davis who likewise handled scoring detail, and Zach Staenberg as editor *and* Joe Pantoliano playing a total dirtbag makes this in many ways feel more like The Matrix than the fourth movie. 

Also this is a steamy lesbian romance and this is VERY not safe for work! 

Guest:

Victoria Luna B. Grieve:  @VixenVVitch 

This was unexpected... followed by yet more unexpectation.

When I first saw the teaser trailer for the original film, all the way back in 2016 I thought the dancing pig picture would be inane and perpetually irritating, only to find out from trusted critics that there was way more below the surface. And they were right, I loved it immediately. Ever since then we've been promising to do a show.

So, now we've finally got around to it, as the commission escorted to the front of the line this cheery, toe-tapping, occasionally melancholy film about the drive to perform. And we were surprised yet again with what we found. Not all of it fantastic when scrutinised. 

And since the sequel launched in theatres the same week we recorded I followed up with a completely separate section starting at 1h 2m, detailing to Sharon how the sequel develops on the original. Even though everything we found wasn't peachy-keen we still recommend seeing both movies as they are rather lovely. 

Picture the scene; It's late 1994 and young teens who have thrown a thousand hadoukens in arcades and on home consoles throughout the early 90s finally get to go to the cinema and see their favourite characters battling in live action.

The casting seems superficially solid. Jean-Claude Van Damme is at the peak of his career path, Raoul Julia was wildly entertaining in the Adams Family movies and The Locomotion... is a catchy tune performed by Australian soap star Kylie Minogue... and we don't recognise most of the others so they must be accomplished martial artists. Surely this one is an easy win. 

In later years this movie became a celebrated campy classic, its often ludicrous lines quoted ad nauseum. Let's look at the experience of actually sitting down and watching it with a critical eye. 

Guests

Hollywoo Actress  Maya Santandrea @Mayasantandrea

Jason "Chewie" Slate @TheManaPool

Your eyes do not deceive you, we are doing anime this week. Ironically the only other Main Event show we've done of this ilk is Kiki's Delivery Service, which emerged the year after this film and replaced it as the most expensive Japanese animated cinematically-released production of the era. You wouldn't think it, comparing that sweet tale about an enthusiastic girl who gets burnout in Stockholm to this cyberpunk epic.

As striking today as it was in 1988, this is a film of vital importance that is stunning to witness. A harsh, thrilling journey through an alternate 2019 civilisation on the brink of explosion. Roving gangs of biker clowns make war in the streets as wrinkled old psychic children face down a furious, embittered and hellishly powerful teenage boy. 

If you've never seen it, find the highest quality transfer, turn out the lights and switch off your phone. This is one for the ages. 

Bouncing back from What If? Marvel came out swinging with a street-level Christmas crime caper. This served the dual purposes of finally giving the least-loved Avenger some substantial spotlighting, and ghosts of his past to deal with, and introducing us to a brand new Hawkeye in the form of Kate Bishop.

Hailee Steinfeld was offered the role the moment she walked into casting director Sara Halley Finn's office. Kevin Feige had seen her in Bumblebee, Spider-Verse, Dickinson (and hopefully Edge of Seventeen, which is splendid) and knew already that she had the charm and pep and serious acting chops to be a young Avenger.

But is this six-episode miniseries the ideal place for her story, or did it get lost among the scrabble for screen time from some seriously charismatic appearances?

Guests:

Greg Downing of Through the Wind Door @MightyGregDoge

We come to it at last, maybe the final Matrix film directed by a Wachowski. Though this vein of property is worth too much money to the IP-owner to leave unmined.

Representing a refinement and evolution of the philosophies laid down two decades ago. This film was launched a week after Spider-Man: No Way Home and just before Christmas Day, due to a prior arrangement with HBO. This dismal decision, coupled with Lana Wachowski's revised approach to both storytelling and action led to this film being both critically panned and rejected by audiences everywhere. Par for the course on Matrix sequels.

However, some folks absolutely adored the tale that was being wound back on itself and then forward into the future. At the time of recording the only other show that we had in the can was the 2019 one on the original, so this represents a close-out of the series through the lens of diving back in to reassess, as we then proceeded to Reloaded, the Animatrix and Revolutions. 

Next week: Hawkeye

Guests:

Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnew of Cinapse

Victoria Luna B. Grieve:  @VixenVVitch 

Alexa Vargas @Plutoburns whose YouTube channel is here

The least-loved, most-hated, and in consequence least-explored of the Matrix saga finally gets the School of Movies treatment. The 1999 original is turned on its head here, resulting in a film that almost seems the inverse of everything that got us fired up in the first place. But it was a necessary refocusing in order to expand outwards from Morpheus' dogmatic vision of "Us vs. Them". 

Philosophically this lands in a healthier place, even if so much of what we see feels mismanaged, awkward, stalling for time and sometimes downright annoying. We go all-out here to clear away the debris of the original conclusion and lay bare the depth of thought beneath. 

Next week we close out with what might well be the last Matrix movie. Certainly the last steered by a Wachowski. 

Guests:

Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnew of Cinapse

Victoria Luna B. Grieve:  @VixenVVitch 

Alexa Vargas @Plutoburns whose YouTube channel is here

Mackenzie Eastram  @KenziePhoenix of Rainbow Connection @MuppetsPod and Video Game: The Movie: The Podcast  @VGTMPodcast

A very solid argument could be made for this being a movie, and thus being in the "Everything Else" category being erroneous. However, the focus of this episode is the trans-media endeavour that The Matrix series became. 

It straddles four films, a PS2 game named Enter The Matrix, an MMORPG named The Matrix Online and this anthology of nine short animated films, and it is ALL official story canon. The only release which doesn't quite fit this is The Path of Neo, another PS2 game which fills in the blanks of Neo's journey towards fulfilling the prophecy of The One, and while most of it probably happened the end is a direct departure, or at least an abstraction of the narrative. 

So that's what powers this discussion, and The Animatrix is absolutely worth watching now, though as you will hear it is not only surprisingly violent and grim at times, but the shorts vary in depth rather significantly.

Next week we conclude the original Trilogy with the Matrix Revolutions

Guests:

Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnew of Cinapse

Victoria Luna B. Grieve:  @VixenVVitch 

Alexa Vargas @Plutoburns whose YouTube channel is here

Mackenzie Eastram  @KenziePhoenix of Rainbow Connection @MuppetsPod and Video Game: The Movie: The Podcast  @VGTMPodcast

For this one we went all-out. It was an incredibly rich and dense discussion for the initial recording and I have added a ton of extra content, all to the sounds of the eclectic soundtrack and the rarely-heard extended score of Don Davis. 

This is the first part of an evolution of the binary Us vs. Them dichotomy of The Matrix (1999) and was far less successful in ensnaring audiences with expanded perspective. What Film 2 sets up, Film 3 knocks down, and then decades later, Film 4 then ruminates on.

So if you always thought the sequels were trash this may at least convey what they were trying to say. If you've always had a soft spot for them this will be a dream come true. 

Next week we will be focusing on The Animatrix (2003)

Guests:

Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnew of Cinapse

Victoria Luna B. Grieve:  @VixenVVitch 

Alexa Vargas @Plutoburns whose YouTube channel is here

Mackenzie Eastram  @KenziePhoenix of Rainbow Connection @MuppetsPod and Video Game: The Movie: The Podcast  @VGTMPodcast