LNC With a Twist

Ariel and Jonathan talk about twists in films, the musical Six, the Fallout series, why Jonathan really didn't like Wonka very much, plus tons of stuff about geek news!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Hey, everybody, Welcome to the Large Nerdron Collider podcast, the
podcast that's all about the geeky things happening in the
world around us and how very excited we are about them.
I'm Ariel Caston, and with me, as always is the
ever delightful, wonderful friend of mine with Jonathon Stream.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
What a twist?

Speaker 1 (00:28):
What a what a twist that you're wonderful and my friend.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
I mean, let's just be giving some foreshadowing for one
of the many stories we're going to talk about today. Yeah,
or trailer, because that's that's the quote they always gave
in Robot Chicken for m Night Shamalan. And we have
a new M Night Shamalan movie trailer to talk about.
But that's that's for later. That's jumping way ahead. But

(00:52):
you know, you got a foreshadow if you want to
reveal a twist and spoiler alert, the twist is there
is no twist.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Okay anyhow, Yeah, we're here.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
He was dead the whole time, is what I'm trying
to say. He was dead the whole time.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
You am I shayam alone?

Speaker 2 (01:14):
No, no, Bruce Willis oh sixth sense?

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Oh you know, I don't think I've ever watched that
movie all.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
The way through. Oh I think I just spoil it
for you.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
I mean I knew.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
I just I think it's impossible to get through, like
to be like alert and alive in our pop culture
and not know that unless you're just young enough where
you missed that movie, right, Like maybe you were a
little kid when the movie came out and you just
never saw it. Maybe then you would have it would
have passed over your head, you wouldn't know. But otherwise, yeah,

(01:46):
I'm lucky I got to see it before it got
spoiled for me. Honestly, I was. I was actually surprised
in the theater. I'm not ashamed to say it that
that that twist legit took me by surprise because I
did not see it coming, and I know all the
clues were there and I should have known. Like friends
of mine were like, oh I knew, I'm like, good
for you, I didn't you know.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
I wonder if that's the problem with like m Night
Shamalon's general mo O and why his movies have gotten
less popular is because if you're always expecting a twist,
like the first couple of movies, you didn't necessarily know
there was a twist, and so you went in and
you were surprised, And then after that every movie of his,
you go to Last Airbender aside, you go in anticipating

(02:29):
the twist and trying to figure out what it is
ahead of time. So maybe you just aren't enjoying the ride.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
I'm sure that's part of it. Yeah, And like he
did kind of move away from some of the more
twisty stuff, although like even more more recent films have
had some of those, Like Old definitely has a kind
of a twist. It's a reveal anyway, maybe not so
much a twist as a reveal. And then like even Split,

(02:56):
which you could argue there was nuts again not so
much as a twist as a reveal at the very
end of the movie, which is when you discover, oh,
this is in the Unbreakable Universe, right, Like you didn't
know that until the very end.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
I feel like I feel like that was determined before
the movie even came out. What's like I heard people
that it was a part of the Unbreakable Glass Universe.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
See when I heard when I remember that coming out,
I remember that being a big surprise to folks, like literally,
because it's only in the last like thirty seconds of
the movie where you even get that, And so, like,
I guess some people might argue that maybe it could
exist in the same universe, but then arguably so could
a lot of his other movies which don't deal with

(03:47):
like any sort of super heroic stuff or whatever. But
but what do I know? Like, I just know that,
Like again, I didn't realize it was going to be
part of the Unbreakable, which makes me want to go
into Kimmy Schmidt. It just made me. But yeah, I
just I was, like, I was surprised when I got
to the end. I actually actually really liked that movie too.

(04:08):
But then again, it also you know, it has one
of my girlfriends in it. Oh, which one, Onya Taylor Joy?

Speaker 1 (04:14):
Gotcha? Yeah, I saw Unbreakable and I enjoyed it at
the time. You know, it was kind of I feel
like it was pre MCU.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
Yes it was.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
Yeah, time is Time is.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
A flat circle?

Speaker 1 (04:28):
Yeah, uh and uh. I enjoyed it, But I never
ended up seeing Glass or Split. I kind of wanted to.
They got mixed reviews, but I know the first one
did too, so and I like some movies that very
like most of the population doesn't enjoy so well.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
I would say that Split is really entertaining, and it
gets very tense because you know, you've got some great
actors in that movie, and that really helps the film
a lot. Like the premise itself is a pretty it's
pretty wacky, and some some of the character choices go
real extreme, but they sell it like even as you're
watching it, like you might even laugh when you first

(05:08):
encounter certain of the I mean, you know, it's about
split personality character, Like when you encounter some of those personalities,
you might laugh initially because they're so over the top,
But the performance is so sincere and so committed that
pretty soon you're just like riveted, or at least I was,
so I really enjoyed it.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
James macvoy is very good at that.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
He is phenomenal. He's very good, yes, almost as good
as he is at the game Tequila Slaps. You'll have
to look it up on YouTube to learn more about
what that is. So we'll talk more about m Night
a little bit later. Before we do that, though, we
wanted to start off, as we have typically in recent episodes,
talking about stuff that we have seen or experienced that

(05:54):
kind of falls into the geek sphere and Ariel. Now
the listeners at home can't see this, but I can.
Ariel is wearing some merch from a show that she
saw this week.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
Yeah, the musical Six about the six wives of Henry
the Eighth came to the is at the Fox currently
in Atlanta, and I saw it a couple of nights ago.
My my dear friends and I all bounded as different wives.
And there were some other people doing that too, which
was really cool. Not as many people dressed up as

(06:28):
they did for Beetle Juice, but there were still some
people and a couple of people in like pretty accurate
costume recreations too, which was amazing to see, but also
like probably not comfortable to sit in in a Fox.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
I was just about to ask if you went, if
you went full renfair for your for your stuff, or
if you did something a little more comfortable.

Speaker 1 (06:49):
We all did. We all just bounded, So if you're
not familiar with bounding, it's wearing like a kind of
normal outfit, normal ish outfit that evokes the character. So
I wore like I went as Catherine of Aragon, and
she wears like a little like bikini bottom with a
split peplam skirt and fish nets, and that's not really

(07:13):
like I don't necessarily want to have dinner downtown and
then sit in a theater like that all night. So
I wore like black shiny pleather leggings with a gold
tank top, and then I had a black blazer over
top of it that buttoned in the middle, so it
still gave that kind of like v gold peplam look.
And then I had on like a gold chain necklace

(07:33):
and spiky hoop earrings and a spiky headband and like
some gold makeup and accessories and chunky, funky boots. So
it was evocative of the character, but it wasn't a
full on costume.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
Right like see for me, I just think back. So
this is this narrow casting again. But at student Days
at the Georgia Renaissance Festival, one of the many little
stage productions that we do as an educational outreach for students,
like this would be during the week as opposed to
on the weekend, and we would have classes from all

(08:09):
over the Southeast come into the Renaissance Festival and we
would do little historical presentations, one of them being the
Wives of Henry the Eighth and so in my mind
when you said bounding instead of bounding, I immediately just
thought of all the actresses I've known who have been
in that production, dressed in their wives of Henry the

(08:30):
Eighth costumes, and thinking that, I mean, it wouldn't be torture,
but it would not be comfortable.

Speaker 1 (08:36):
You know. I don't think I was ever in that.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
I was never a wife really. For some reason, I
thought you were the I thought you were Catherine Howard
and at least one of them.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
No, I don't think I was.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
Golly, yeah, I was never in that either. Because it
was a production, it was a little show that only
had a few characters in it. I did help out
a couple times, kind of almost like crew, so I
gotten to see it, but I, uh, you know, it
was really just Henry and then the actors who were
playing the various wives.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
I mean, maybe maybe I did, and I'm forgetting it
might have been one of those ones where you just
kind of step up and you don't really do anything.
You're just there.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
Well, yeah, because you would usually on student day, you
would usually do a Shakespeare the presentation, which was much
more involved.

Speaker 1 (09:21):
But I did where I did so one of the
actresses who usually played Lady to Winter also did play.
Had had a black and gold dress and did play
I think one of the other wives, and so I
do like I borrowed that dress. And I don't know
if I was filling in for the Winter or if
I was filling in for one of the wives, or

(09:42):
it was for something else, so I could have done it.
I did eleven years of re infest. It's hard, and
it was a long time ago. It's it's hard to
remember everything.

Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yeah, it all, Well, what did you think of the show?

Speaker 1 (09:52):
I also have my own black and gold dress, which
I also never wore as Catherine Farragon, and I did
not I don't fit in it right now, so but
it's pretty and I did the Jesus out of it.
I thought it was a really good show. It definitely
benefits from seeing it in person versus watching a slime
tutorial or you know, little clips on on social media

(10:14):
or whatnot, or seeing pictures. Like the costumes just they
they're made out largely made out of like vinyl in
sequence and studs and things like that, and so the
way that they play with the light, that first of
the technical design in that show is amazing, and you
don't you don't appreciate it unless you see it live.
But the lights also play off of each actress's costume,

(10:35):
as it's like their time to shine. So it was
just really cool and just beautiful. The singing was good.
I feel really bad for the actress who played Catherine Howard,
because she was incredibly talented, but her monitors went out
in the middle middle of her solo song, or maybe
at the beginning of her solo song, and so she
couldn't hear the music to get the right note. Oh,

(10:55):
that's awful and towards yeah. And so there were times
that like she was consummate professional, but as she's singing,
she's like playing with the air pods in her ears,
trying to get the monitors to work. And there are
times where she just had to stop because she couldn't
get the note. She would always stop at the same point,
so it made it feel like it was purposeful, even
though if you're really familiar with the song, you know
that it's missing a word or two.

Speaker 2 (11:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
And then sadly she was a little off key. But
once she got the note, she was brilliant. She sang beautifully,
and at the end of the song, once her monitors
were the show and the song. When her monitors were
working properly, it was great. And I will say the
audience that was there was so wonderful and encouraging and

(11:39):
screamed and cheered and clapped for her. Regardless, Catherine Howard's
song is not an easy song to emote to either,
so because it kind of goes through how being a
woman in the renaissance, you don't get a lot of
over a lot of say over how men treat you.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
Yeah, you don't have a lot of autonomy or ages.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
Yeah, and so some of her reputation might have been
out of her control.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
Well, I'm glad to hear that. I mean, so is
it is it done sort of in a concert style?
I've never seen six or any of the stuff in there.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
Yeah, so it's, uh, it is. At the start of
the show, they're like, we're the six wifes of Henry
the Eighth and you guys, we're gonna have a competition.
You guys are gonna vote on who's the best one,
And of course that kind of it's a story and
it's an arc how it goes, but it plays like
a concert. So yeah, there's there's songs and each there's

(12:35):
like a an ensemble song at the beginning and end,
and then each queen gets like their own solo song
with backup vocals. Each queen is kind of based on
a couple of different pop pop diva is the wrong word,
but kind of pop divas.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
Sure, it's like Christina Aguileras, your Britney Spears, your you know,
Ariana Beyonce, you can tell from. You can hell from
my references what era I come from? Yeah, because I'm
not talking about Ariana Grande or anything like that.

Speaker 1 (13:08):
Well, Catherine Harold is very obviously based on her because
she's got like the long ponytail. But it's really good.
It's a lot of fun. There's a lot of really
great banter because you know, it's very sad and dark
material if you think about it. Oh yeah, you know.
I don't want to spoil anything about the show, because
there was definitely more plot than I anticipated, because it

(13:28):
is basically done in everybody's on stage ninety percent of
the time, exception of a couple of times where they
go off to get props or whatever or to fix
like a costume thing. But because everybody's on stage, it's
really easy for one person to sneak off if they're
not featured at the moment. You know, my party noticed
that someone sneaked off at one point and I hadn't

(13:50):
so but yeah, it's very much like Spice Girls esque.
The music is bopping that everybody had great comedic timing,
the costumes amazing. I I enjoyed it more than I
thought I would, so that, you know, you can go
into a show being like, I'm gonna I'm gonna like this,
I'm excited to see this, I'm excited to see with

(14:11):
my friends, and then come out going Wow, that was
even better than I anticipated, right, So, yeah, it was.
It was very good. It was very fun. If you
are not at all familiar with Sick. It is also
running on Broadway, so there's a touring show and a
Broadway show and they're running concurrently. Check it out somewhere
if you can, if it comes to your town, or
you know, check it out on TikTok or insta whatever

(14:33):
social media so that you're on It's It's a lot
of fun. A lot of it is actually pretty accurate,
and it even focuses on some of the things about
the different wives that get glossed over because it's like, oh,
Amblin she got beheaded by King Henry, you know. So
it goes over some of the other facts about their life,
which is really cool. So schools have even used it

(14:55):
as an educational tool. But I will say, like Ambulan's song,
there there are some There are a couple of like
bad words in it, cuss words. Basically amblan song is
There was a warning in the program that said children
under five should leave during this song.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
Would children under five even understand what was happening?

Speaker 1 (15:18):
I don't know. There's one moment where they make a
play on her losing her head, got it, And there's
some suggestive suggestive movements with it.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
Got it well. One of the things I thought was
interesting when I heard about six was about how the
show's goal was to tell more of the story of
these women, because ninety nine times out of one hundred,
when you are reading up on these people, it's always
in context of them being married to Henry the eighth, right,

(15:53):
Like there's nothing about them unless it's in connection to him.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
Yeah, and that's a part of the show.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
Yeah. I think that's great to have this effort to
learn more about them as people and not just as
a sequence, right, but to the point where, like I mean,
they even play off the whole divorce beheaded dye, divorce
beheaded survived thing, which is the way that your little
mnemonic device remembering what happened to each wife in the

(16:22):
course of Henry The's life.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
Yeah, my shirt has each wive's name with how how
they ended their relationship with King Henry underneath it Ingray.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
I will say that when I first looked at you
wearing that shirt shirt when we first started this call Aerial,
I didn't think it said Aragon. I thought it said
araic Gorn, And I'm like, Wow, she's got a weird
that's a weird Lord of the Rings t shirt she's wearing.
Then I saw Bolin underneath I'm like, oh, I'm stupid.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
Yeah, it's Catherine of ara Gorn. Why didn't we do
that for a mashup this week.

Speaker 2 (16:54):
Well, because, as it turns out, we've got way too
much to talk about to also throwing a mash up.
Oh yeah, that reminds me we do not have a
mash up this week. But that doesn't mean they're gone.
They will be back. We just we just didn't have
real time to dedicate to it. We were debating for
a while about what two things we would mash up
because we didn't have anything that's currently coming out that

(17:15):
really sang to us. So that's that's really why. Beyond that,
I also understand you decided to watch a little Amazon
Prime series.

Speaker 1 (17:27):
Yeah. After I was like, how Jonathan, could you watch
all of Fallout in a day? I went and watched
Fallout in a weekend.

Speaker 2 (17:36):
I mean it. I will say it was like an
eight hour thing for me. I did watch it all
in a day, but it did last all of the
second half of day.

Speaker 1 (17:46):
Let me tell you. Because I was watching it, and
I'm like, my folks like video games, and they've they
they've played like Diablo and stuff like that, so they're
not unaccustomed to this genre of game. Right, there's probably
played Fallout at some point. I don't know, but there
are some really amazing animal talent in Fallout, like really

(18:06):
great animal talent, good good puppy actors. And I told
my mom, I'm like, I don't know if the show
would be for you, but the there are some really
great animal actors in it. She's like, oh, yeah, I
know the owner of or I've met the owner of
one of them.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
The owner of dog Meat.

Speaker 1 (18:22):
I don't know if it's the owner of dog Meat or
if it was the owner of the collie later on.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
Mmm. The the other was a I don't remember a collie.
I only remember the German shepherd dog meat. Who's in it?
Through the whole thing? Uh?

Speaker 1 (18:39):
There was so.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
The h.

Speaker 1 (18:46):
How do I do this without spoiling? Okay, cover your
ears for fifteen seconds if you haven't watched.

Speaker 2 (18:51):
Oh Coops, Coops Dog. Yes, yes, Coops Dog. Okay, yeah, no, no, no, yeah,
Now I know who you're talking about now, Joy Club.
It's people know that there are flashbacks in the series
because that's been shown in trailers and stuff, even if
you haven't seen it. So that's a dog that's in
a flashback, not something that's going on concurrently with the
actual events of the show. Why'd you think of Fallout?

Speaker 1 (19:14):
I liked it and the funny thing about that story. Sorry,
I never got to the punchline because I'm sorry. My
Mom's like, oh, yeah, we already watched all of it,
and I'm like.

Speaker 2 (19:23):
I've heard that a lot of folks who have never
even played the games or even had heard of the
games before, have started to watch it because it's just
one of those things that got a lot of buzz,
which is cool. I wonder like I got a lot
out of it as a big fan of the Games.
What was your experience?

Speaker 1 (19:39):
So I I really enjoyed it. I'm actually going to
end up watching it again as a part of my
group watch with my friends. It wasn't sure if we
were going to continue group watch because of the whole
Amazon party going away, but we're going to try to
just do like everybody start on three to two to one.
It worked pretty well last night. That's TMI, that's personal

(20:01):
information whatever. I really enjoyed it. I honestly felt like
it picked up after the first two episodes. By the end,
I was all in the first two episodes, I'm like,
this is cute, but it's a little bit like too disjointed,
because that's.

Speaker 2 (20:15):
How I felt. That's how I felt too. And I
also felt like the first two episodes, I mean, there
was humor in that first couple of episodes, but it
didn't like I said, it was so dark and twisted
that it didn't It didn't hit me the same way
humor in the Games typically does. And then as the
show goes on a little bit more of the humor

(20:36):
as I am familiar with it in the game series
starts to come out. That doesn't make it like overall
a comedy. It's I would still say a science fiction
action series with comedic undertones sometimes overtones, but I wouldn't
call it a comedy first and foremost.

Speaker 1 (20:55):
So I will say like after I was in the
middle of the first episode and I texted you, I'm like,
you weren't about the violence being quite a thing, and
You're like, oh, it gets even more extreme. I honestly
felt the first two episodes were the worst.

Speaker 2 (21:07):
Oh I don't maybe it's my thing with like extremities
like hands and feet, but there's some hand and foot
damage that really got to me later.

Speaker 1 (21:17):
Yeah, but at least one of those was in episode two.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
That's true, Yeah, because that was yes that I don't
want to spoil it either, but yes, that was very upsetting.
I was like, like, I'm walking gingerly around the house
for the rest of the evening after seeing Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:33):
Yeah, but you know, they did set it up for
a sequel, which is really nice.

Speaker 2 (21:37):
And they're already they're already greenlit. They're gonna be shooting.
They'll be shooting in Los Angeles because they shot the
first season, like all the desert stuff, they shot that
in Namibia. But they're shooting in La next for the
next season because they got a big tax break deal
with the state of California. So it's already been confirmed

(21:58):
that season two is gonna happen and it's going to
shoot in California.

Speaker 1 (22:02):
Nice. I was shaking my fist a little bit because
I'm like, no, our tax deals better. But yeah, you
have multiple locations for a reason, right.

Speaker 2 (22:11):
I thought, I thought I saw Parnell Ella Pernelle, the
actress who played Lucy. I thought I saw her in
person this week. You might have like it was wild.
This young woman who looks an awful lot like Parnell
was walking down I was walking timble and I was

(22:34):
walking him from a dog parks that I was the
first time we ever went there. I had never been
to this dog park and it's like a fifteen to
twenty minute walk from my house, so I take him there.
We're the only ones there, so it was kind of
the most pathetic dog park experience because timblet had no
other dogs to play with. But then we were walking back,
and as we're walking back, this young woman's passing me

(22:56):
and I'm like, that looks just like the actress from Fallout.
That's crazy.

Speaker 1 (23:02):
Yeah, she does have a very distinctive look. But I
mean it could be so like if you watch James
Gunn's social media, he's all the time like I'm here, now,
I'm here. Now, we're filming in Atlanta, but I'm I
was in Hawaii two hours ago. You know, obviously he
may not be posting all of those things as they
are exactly happening.

Speaker 2 (23:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:22):
You know, I know a lot of times when I
go on vacation, I'll post pictures that once I'm home.
But you know, she's at a caliber of acting that
she could have been in Atlanta this week.

Speaker 2 (23:34):
Yeah, it would have been weird. She was walking by
the Pullman train Yard, which has been used as a
shooting location for a lot of films, but these days
it's more like a events place, like they've got the
Balloon Museum there right now, which, let.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
Me tell you, I was really sad because I was like, ah,
great they're doing so you think you can dance at
the Pullman yards, I'll I'll go and watch when they're
doing their live audience voting stuff, right, so you can
usually either be like extra or get tickets to it.
But they've already done that. They did that earlier in
the year because it's not an audience vote system. This
year they're doing a much more like America's Next Top Model, Oh,

(24:10):
sort of a sort of a setup where each week
is like a different challenge. So one week they do
music videos, they dance in music videos. In one week
they do like Broadway stuff because they're looking for somebody.
When they were picking their top ten, they were looking
for people who they could put into jobs tomorrow. So
on the one hand, it's weird and it's interesting because
I'm not like, I don't watch it for the drama.
I just watch it for the dancing. But on the

(24:33):
other hand, like the caliber of dancers probably higher overall,
I would say, but it just means I won't get
to be in the audience. But that's fine future years.

Speaker 2 (24:44):
Well, so you did six in Fallout and then the.

Speaker 1 (24:49):
Only things they're equally good?

Speaker 2 (24:55):
No, Yeah, so I'm playing Starting Valley and like other
like that's what I'm mostly doing in my off time,
is because I find it very relaxing. But and my
wife is out of town. So I thought, well, I'll
just I'll watch something, and I pulled up MAX, not
knowing what was on there. I just pulled it up
to see, like, what films have recently been added to MAX.

(25:17):
Maybe i'll check something out. And I saw that Wonka
was added to MAX. And I had not seen Wanka,
and I was pretty sure I wasn't gonna like it already,
but I was like, I'm gonna give it a fair
shot because Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the early
nineteen seventies Gene Wilder film is one of my favorite
movies of all time, like Jaws is my favorite movie,

(25:39):
but Willy Wonka is probably number two. Like It's it's
way up there, so it has a soft spot in
my heart. I despised the Johnny Depp version, and then
I thought, well, I'll give this a shot, and I
watched it and Timiditay Chala May is no Gene Wilder.

(26:02):
He I guess he's fine. I think my biggest problem
with Wonka has nothing to do with the performances or
even the lackluster music or the script that I didn't
think was particularly good. None of that really is the
biggest problem I have with it. The biggest problem I

(26:23):
have with it is it is so not just unnecessary,
but antithetical to the original material. Because to me, one
of the big, big, big appeals of the original Willie
Wonka film is that you don't know very much about

(26:45):
Wonka at all. He's a mystery, so you don't know
what to expect, and that, to me, is a huge
part of what makes that movie work. It's kind of
like how Jaws. Because the shark prop wasn't working most days,
they had to find clever ways to shoot around it,
and it ended up making the movie way better than
it would have been if you could have seen the

(27:06):
shark the whole time. And the problem with doing a
prequel is that it means you have to strip away
those layers of mystery, otherwise you have no story to tell.
But then you've you've diffused the defining characteristic of this
enigmatic character, and it's like it's like you're committing character assassination.

(27:31):
I would argue it's very similar to what happened with
Anakin Skywalker slash Darth Vader in the prequels.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
I you know, I kind of agree, I agree with
you I haven't watched it. I've seen bits and pieces
of it, but I haven't watched it all the way
through yet, And I agree with you on the anestheticalness
of it. I also like the songs that I have seen.
It's Timothy Shallamy's a fine singer, but they were just
a little mellow. The songs are mellow, the performance is mellow.
His performance of Wonka, he seemed delightfully charming and oddball,

(28:00):
but he didn't have the right spice to his quirkiness
for me.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
Yeah, there's no edge to his character at all, like
he and part of that, I guess you're supposed to think, oh,
this is Wonk as a young man. It's before he's
become cynical. It's before the real world has kind of
ground down his soft edges into a sharp edge instead.
And so of course he's not the kind of sardonic

(28:27):
character he would turn out to be later on in life.
But at the same time, there was no hint of
it whatsoever, Like he's just sort of this wide eyed,
naive guy who consistently gets his butt handed to him
because he just assumes the best of everybody, and the
people he runs into are very much not good people.

(28:48):
It was fun to see tons of different actors who
have appeared in other stuff I've seen where I'm like,
oh that I've seen that guy in Hyperdrive, or I've
seen that actress in the completely made up Adventures of
Dick Turpin, or you know, I've seen there's Rowan Atkinson,

(29:09):
there's mister Bean or black Adder. He definitely sounded more
black ad Her, But anyway, that was fun seeing all
these actors that I'm familiar with from English shows and films.
I like that. But I tried going in as unbiased
as I could. I still really did not like the movie.

(29:31):
And it took me three sittings, I think to watch it.
I watched all a Fallout in a day. It took
I took breaks what because i would watch like twenty
minutes and I'd just be like, oh, this is a
slog I'm going to take a break and have a
snack or I'm going to take tippled out for a
walk or whatever, and like, it took me probably about

(29:51):
four or five hours to get through a two hour movie.

Speaker 1 (29:54):
Wow, that's that's about That's that's almost as long as
it took me to get through the Snyder cut which
was that long.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So I mean, like in no shade
on anyone out there who saw the movie and loved it.
I mean, if that's your thing, that's cool. I'm glad
you enjoyed it. And there's I'm not even saying it's
a bad movie. I'm just saying that I personally did
not enjoy it and really struggled to get through it.
But I was determined to see the whole thing. I

(30:24):
wanted to kind of give it a really fair shot.
And again, like I think, I think most of the
performances in the film are good, but the movie itself,
just its existence vexes me. But then on top of that,
I didn't really think the songs or script were that good.
Oh Olivia Coleman, She's great, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (30:41):
Yeah, I am a So the Ministry of Ungentleally Warfare
came out this week. Yeah, it's got good reviews so far.
I'm hoping to see that this weekend. We'll see if
it happens.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
That would be fun, Yeah, I would. I'm curious about
that one. Like it's I know, as long as you
go into it thinking this is based on a true
story in the loosest sense of the terms. You're okay.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
I also tried to watch Quantum Leap, but unfortunately I
don't have that streaming service right now.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
Yeah, that's always a struggle for me. Speaking of struggles,
we have gone half an hour into this podcast just
chatting about the stuff we've done this week, and we
haven't even touched on thirty seconds or less. And y'all,
we have more than a dozen stories in that segment
this week.

Speaker 1 (31:31):
Then we better stick to the thirty seconds as best
as humanly possible. And I'm going to start. So Mattel
and Hines have teamed up to make a barbecue sauce. Yeah,
this is like if you want pink sauce, but actually
approved by the FDA's I guess, like a Mayo barbecue

(31:54):
mashup that gets it's pink because of bet It is
like legitimately like Neon pink. And they've also released it
with Tomato kenchup. So it's only available in the UK
right now really, but if it gets popular they will
possibly release it elsewhere UK and Spain, but there is
a potential that we will get it in the US

(32:15):
as well. If you are not in the UK and Spain,
we know We have some listeners there, so if you've
tried it, let us know.

Speaker 2 (32:21):
Yeah, considering the way food is in the UK, sometimes
I'm thankful that they just keep it to their borders. Okay, hey,
do you remember Sherlock. That's the series that introduced a
ton of folks to Benedict Cumberbatch, then precipitating an endless
series of jokes about his very English name. Anyway, it
appears that the series is only mostly dead because Mark Gabis,

(32:43):
who co created the series, has expressed interest in creating
a film that continues it. But how to do that
with all those tricky schedules. Well that's a mystery even
Sherlock Holmes might not be able to solve.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
But maybe Turing well, I don't know, same actor. So
do you remember Reginald the Vampire. It's a show we
talked about in twenty twenty two, which is when it
came out. Apparently it is getting a season two. A
trailer just came out for it. It's coming back on
May eighth. It looks pretty cute. Honestly, It's kind of

(33:20):
if like Supernatural and Buffy met Hannah Montana. According to
the trailer. Yeah, so if you've liked the show. It
is on my list of things to watch if you
liked it. Excitement you are finally getting that season two cool?

Speaker 2 (33:34):
All right, well, get ready to hear Shadow the Hedgehog
say whoa. That's because Keanu Reeves, who thinks you're beautiful
by the way, will be voicing the dark counterpart to
the plucky Sonic the Hedgehog in Sonic three. Shadow is
frequently a rival to Sonic in the games, but sometimes
is also an ally. So if I had to guess,
I'd say Shadow will start off by being an antagonist,

(33:56):
but by the end of Sonic three, we'll be running
right alongside our blue hero taken bets.

Speaker 1 (34:02):
I would not take that bet with you, because I
think you're right if you're a fan of Dimension twenty
by the Dropout crew, and we're hoping to get tickets
to their Madison Square Garden show in January for Unsleeping City. Unfortunately,
they are currently sold out. However, not until after they

(34:22):
opted out of platinum pricing through ticket Master, which made
tickets go up to two thousand dollars a pop. However,
in the future, drop Out in Dimension twenty has said
that they're going to opt out of all future platinum
premium pricing with Ticketmaster, because apparently that is a thing
you could do that they didn't know. And as well,
they are doing a lottery for people to get tickets

(34:43):
for thirty five dollars a pop, which is much more
kinder to your pocketbook, so keep an eye out for that.

Speaker 2 (34:51):
Well. Rough news this week for the staff at Marvel
Entertainment and Marvel Studios because both departments had layoffs, affecting
around fifteen people in total, and this seems to be
in part due to the fact that Disney Slash Marvel
has shifted strategies after pushing out an absolute glut of
film and streaming content over the past few years, now

(35:11):
that they're scaling back, that is affecting the staff as well,
and we just want to wish all those who have
been affected by the layoffs the absolute best.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
True true. That's sad for me too, okay, but a
much more sad for them. Live action one punch Man
is coming out. That's an awkward way to say it,
but I was looking at the story and that's what
came out my mouth. But it is getting new writers.
So now the team that is rewriting the script for

(35:42):
live action. One punch man is Dan Harmon, who created Community,
and I guess also Rick and Morty and then SNL
writer heather An Campbell. They're giving it a rework, although
it sounds like the director of it all of a sudden,

(36:02):
Justin Lynn, will still be directing it. He's the one
who has done a lot of the Fast and Furious movies.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
Yeah, hey, Dan Harmon, get back to the Community film.
We've been waiting on that for so long. I want
that movie, Okay. The filmmakers known as Radio Silence are
prepping a sequel to their slasher comedy film Ready or
Not So if you haven't seen that movie, a character
named Grace is marrying into an eccentric, wealthy family, only

(36:29):
to find out they have this irritating habit of sacrificing
innocence to the devil. Womp wop. But the ending of
that film was such that a sequel actually doesn't sound
like it would be that logical. But according to the filmmakers,
quote it's getting figured out.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
End quote interesting. I think they should let it be
just like the long lost nineteen seventies documentary about the
Beatles that Peter Jackson used clips from for his own
documentary about the Beatles to Get Back. However, Peter Jackson
has also been working with the director of Let It
Be to restore it and now Disney Plus, which has

(37:06):
already released Get Back, we'll be releasing this original Beatles
documentary on May eighth.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
Nice Quit Tarantino planned to direct ten films total and
then retire. The Hateful Eight was the eighth film. Once
Upon a Time in Hollywood was number nine, and ten
was supposed to be a film called The Movie Critic
about a nineteen seventy cynical film critic. But now Tarantino
has back out of that project for unknown reasons. So

(37:34):
will he make something else or will he actually decide
Kill Bill really counts as two films and he's already
done time.

Speaker 1 (37:43):
I'll tell okay. Sweet Tooth is getting a season three.
It's it's final season. They've released a teaser for it.
It looks pretty apparently. Season three is going to be
a little bit darker than the previous two seasons. Don't
feel too sad. Jim Michel, the showrunner, is really happy
with how it's going and thinks we're going to get
a really good ending to the show. Netflix's article on

(38:06):
it There to Doom. Article says that it's kind of
what he intended from the start. I don't know if
that's Netflix just saying that because they canceled the show
after three seasons, or if that is in fact the
arc that they wanted to make. Either way, season three
looks good.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
If you watch the Fallout streaming series and you pay attention,
you will notice at one point a phone number pops
up on screen. That phone number is two one three
two five vault, and you might wonder if that's a
real phone number. It is, and you might wonder what
happens if you call it, Well, you'll you get a
recording of someone screaming into the phone a lot. It's disturbing.

(38:45):
Try it, if you like I did, maybe you'll get
a nice sweet message. I did not.

Speaker 1 (38:52):
Oh no, I'm going to pass.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
Uh So.

Speaker 1 (38:57):
Superman Day just recently happened, and along with it, James
Gunn posted a picture of his Superman actor and his
Superman actress. Sorry I guess is Lesley an actress in himself,
all reading comics on set like old, old classic Superman comics.
It's a delightful picture. I'm really enjoying the social media

(39:21):
Superman stuff that's coming out, we'll post it'll be in
our show notes.

Speaker 2 (39:26):
Speaking of Superman, once upon a time, Henry Cavill said
he was committed to seven seasons of the Witcher series,
but then after season three he pieced out, reportedly so
that he could go and not be in the next
Superman movie. Now we hear tell that the series itself
is preparing to piece out after the conclusion of season five.
So why did we go from seven to five? Is

(39:48):
that a sign that maybe Cavill's departure left a big
hole in the show. We honestly don't know the answer
to that yet.

Speaker 1 (39:56):
Speaking of I don't know how to segue this, Okay,
balder Skate three is releasing a patch that's going to
deal with some bugs and also give you seven new
possible endings, namely dealing with like evil endings if you
go that route. Also, sadly, they've said that they are
not going to release DLC and aren't planning on working

(40:16):
on a balder Skate for any like Big DLC or
working on a Baldergate four, But they are working on
two of their own IP two games based off their
own IP that they've learned a lot of lessons from
Balder'sgate to build.

Speaker 2 (40:31):
Yeah, and I'm a little bummed about no extensive DLC.
But then at the same time they're like saying, no,
we built the game we wanted to make, and we're
not here just to milk you for more money, and
I really respect that. So yeah. Finally for me, Madison,
the party girl character in She Hulk, whose name has
two ends and a lie but it's that way, I think,

(40:54):
has appeared in Marvel Comics for the very first time. Namely,
she pops up in What If Venom number three? Sort
of In that What If, the question is what if
the symbiote bonded with someone else, like doctor Strange. And
there's a sequence in which Wong is heading off through
a portal and you see a word bubble from Madison

(41:15):
clearly talking to Wong and party on is all I
can say.

Speaker 1 (41:22):
Cute, and that is the end of our thirty seconds
or less. Hey, we largely stuck to it.

Speaker 2 (41:26):
Yeah, it wasn't wasn't too bad. Yeah, did you watch
the she Hulk series, Ariel?

Speaker 1 (41:32):
I did. I thought it was cute, but I also
thought that every episode ended too soon. They felt to me.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
I loved. I loved the character of Madison, which is
funny because that's typically the kind of character that just
irritates the living heck out of me. But for some
reason it really worked and she hulped for me. And
so when I saw that she actually makes her canonical well,
I guess not canonical because it's what If. What If
is not a canonical series, but she makes her actual

(41:59):
official comic book debut. I thought about darn time.

Speaker 1 (42:03):
She and she and Wong had a really good chemistry.
I think if she were by herself the whole time,
it would get annoying. But I like she was funny
is a bit, but I think I think having having
him as a straight man is was a really good choice.

Speaker 2 (42:17):
Well, when I heard that she appeared in What If
Venom number three and that the whole plot was that
what if the Symbiote had bonded with someone other than
Eddie Brock, I was like, Oh my gosh, are they
gonna tell me that the symbiote bonded with madisone? Because
I can only imagine, Oh no, it's not no, She's
just she just has almost like an off screen cameo,

(42:37):
at least in What I saw, so that's that was
a little bit of a letdown. But still, if you
want to talk about letdowns, though, we could really go
right into our first actual discussion point.

Speaker 1 (42:49):
Let's do it.

Speaker 2 (42:51):
So, Hey, you remember that series that I hate watched
the animated one.

Speaker 1 (42:56):
Tried not to, but you keep bringing it up.

Speaker 2 (42:58):
I mean the pain that I went through voluntarily. I mean,
I'll admit it, I voluntarily watched the whole thing. We
got a trailer for season two, which we knew was
already going to be a thing and everything, but now
we've got the actual trailer, and the trailer is getting
a lot of divisive reactions, just as the series did. Honestly,

(43:24):
I don't think I ever saw any reviews that were
really that positive for the first season of Velma, Like,
I don't think I saw any, but I saw some
that were kind of ho hum like they weren't super negative,
but they weren't really positive either, And I saw a
ton of really negative ones. So I'm not surprised that

(43:46):
there's been a pretty like volatile reaction to season two
because so many people just were already determined to hate it.
I have to say, though, when I watched this trailer,
I thought it looked like it might be at least
a slight improvement over season one.

Speaker 1 (44:06):
I don't want to agree with you, but I agree
with you. Yeah, I'm honestly like. I also saw no
good reviews about it, and I was really surprised it
got a second season. I guess enough people hate watched it. Also,
just comedy goes through eras you know, for a while
it was kind of like like Brooklyn nine to nine

(44:28):
style zany but sometimes slightly mean comedy, and then it
was a situational comedy for the longest time. So maybe
this very like face value Shrek esque comedy is coming back,
which is not my favorite kind of comedy.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
Yeah, maybe it has a little bit of like meta
commentary to it, Like it's got a lot of meta
commentary to it, not just of the original Scooby Doo cartoon,
but just an entertainment industry in general, and like pop
culture and even things like gender norms and that kind

(45:07):
of stuff all gets thrown in there. So the issue
I had with the first season is that none of
that seemed to be handled with any artistry or subtlety
or even something like clever to say. It was all
very easy blunt jokes that appeared to be shocking just

(45:27):
for the purposes of shocking.

Speaker 1 (45:30):
That's the issue I had with it too.

Speaker 2 (45:31):
Yeah, yeah, but I understand exactly what you're saying about
eras of comedy. Like I'll never forget the fact that,
you know, we had the Fairly Brothers era where you
were getting things like dumb and Dumber and you know,
there's something about Mary and all that kind of stuff.
None of that appealed to me. So I there's like
a whole like era of comedy where I either saw

(45:53):
very little of it or I just didn't see it
at all because it just wasn't my kind of comedy.
Same with like the stoner comedy stuff, which I get
as a subgenre, know, but Pineapple Express and that kind
of stuff never got into any of those things either.
So you know, comedy is a very very personal thing,
and you know, for people who enjoy it, that's great. Again, Like,

(46:16):
I never want to judge anyone for the stuff that
they like, assuming that it's not causing anyone harm anyway.
If it's causing people harm, then I will judge you
and I will not hold back.

Speaker 1 (46:28):
But I also don't get into stoner comedy. There were
a couple of stoner comedies or stoner era comedies that
I did enjoy for the most part until they grossed
me out, but for the most part enjoyed. You know, honestly,
the kind of like meta commentary, easy low hanging fruit
humor is also why I don't like Hasban Hotel, which

(46:48):
is a show on paper I should love just solely
because of all of the Broadway stars that are in it,
but all the jokes there also felt very like easy,
low hanging trying to shock you by just stating a
thing like you said this, so that's funny.

Speaker 2 (47:07):
I watched the not the not the pilot episode, not
the YouTube episode, but I watched the first of the
the official episodes after that, which which threw me off anyway,
because I didn't realize there had been a pilot, and
you know, the first episode picks up after the events
of the pilot, and so it was treating these characters

(47:30):
as people that you have already met, and I hadn't
met any of them, so I was very confused. I
i too, was not terribly impressed with it. I felt
like you do that a lot of the jokes being
made were very lazy and shocking just for the purposes
of being shocking, and like there were characterizations that didn't

(47:52):
make any like I couldn't tell what was trying to
be said, right, Like I'm watching this, I'm like, well,
you're you're using extreme recognizable biblical characters, like fundamentally biblical characters,
and you are completely twisting around what these characters are
like based upon compared to their traditional portrayals. And and

(48:15):
there's nothing illegitimate about that if you have something to say.
But I couldn't find anything that wasn't that there didn't
seem to be any like perspective or point or philosophy
or anything behind it that I could really latch onto.
So and full disclosure, like this show is hosted one

(48:39):
person who grew up and embraced kind of a faith
culture and one who grew up and embraced atheism, and
we both have the same reaction to the show.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
Yeah yeah, And I will say like as as a
person as a person of faith, like I went into
it a little bit wary, but I also like some
dark humor at times, right, like if you you have
to be able to like laugh at yourself. So, but
that wasn't the part that bothered me. It was little legitimately,
like the the very lazy humor. And I'm glad that

(49:18):
people like I'm so glad people like it because I
love musical television. I love it. I'm like, I'm still
salty about Gallivant going away, you know, so if musical
television is popular, I'm I'm happy for it because that
means we'll get more musical television.

Speaker 2 (49:33):
It's just it's it's not that as Wellma, but kind
of like how I'm still sad about Schmigado not coming
back again, Yeah, because man, we could have really used
a big, spectacled musical season of Shmigadoon and it would
have been incredible. Lately schmig Yeah, yeah, yeah, things playing
off of Le Miz and Phantom of the Opera and
Miss Saigon and all those, all those like huge musicals

(49:56):
where it's so bombastic that as a teen I thought
it was the most brilliant stuff in the world. As
an adult, I find them exhausting.

Speaker 1 (50:05):
You know that you're not the only person so like Tony,
my husband when I first met him, loved Phantom of
the Opera and Le Miz And we've gone to see
le Mis together because I had never seen it outside
of like the movie and listening to the soundtrack. I'd
never seen it live and I've still never seen fanom alive.
But as he's gotten older, he's like, yeah, I liked
these as a kid, but looking back on them.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
Yeah, it's because it's you know, you know, the old
saying of in a musical, when you're feeling something too
strong to say it, you sing it, and if you
feel too strong to sing it, you dance. Uh Like
lay Miz takes that to such an extreme that you're
just like, this does feel like it was tailor made

(50:48):
for super hormonal teenagers who just all like they're like, like,
it's it's they feel the highest of highs and the
lowest of lows and that's it. There's nothing in between.
And meanwhile, as an adult, you're like, yeah, all my
edges have been sanded down and now I just kind
of I feel a lot of on Wii and this
music is just not doing it for me.

Speaker 1 (51:08):
You know, I'm sorry you're feeling on we I do too,
But I think it's more I've become more present about
the time that I spend and more picky about the
ways that I spend it.

Speaker 2 (51:28):
Sure, Yeah, I mean as we get older, we have
less time. I mean that's just the way it works.
Like we've got a limited amount of time and every
moment we have less and we've chosen to spend it
by talking about this.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
So let's go from uh, you know where we went
from Velma to musicals with Velma type humor. Let's just
go to musicals. There's a new movie coming out called
Thelma the Unicorn about a little poney that wants to sing,
but everybody thinks that a pony singing is too plain

(52:05):
to gain notoriety.

Speaker 2 (52:07):
Yeah. I love that we go from Velma to Thelma.
We're just staying in a rhyming scheme. Yeah, And so
of course the trailer shows this, so this isn't a spoiler,
but Thelma the Unicorn, the little pony ends up looking
like a unicorn and then adopts this sort of glam

(52:28):
unicorn persona in order to pursue their dream of being
a pop star. And it's clearly this is meant for
like families and young'in's and stuff. And I put that
in here because I don't normally talk about this and
I don't have kids so I don't tend to get
exposed to too much of this kind of material. But

(52:50):
I saw the trailer and I thought, well, this just
plane looks adorable.

Speaker 1 (52:55):
It does. It looks really cute. I don't remember the
team that's working by behind it.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
Yeah, I didn't recognize the animation style or anything. And
I'm sure there are recognizable voices in it too, but
I didn't notice that either. I just thought, what a
cute little premise, and I thought the trailer did a
good job of kind of conveying it. It also felt
like it has, you know, a very fun and quirky
sense of humor to it. It kind of reminds me

(53:23):
a little bit of early Pixar.

Speaker 1 (53:26):
Yeah yeah, Oh, it's the team that did Napoleon Dynamite.

Speaker 2 (53:31):
Interesting, Like, I never would have put this together with
that because Napoleon Dynamite. I just think of it as
being such a hipster kind of comedy movie where it's
so disaffected and detached that it doesn't have the same
kind of, you know, wide eyed sincerity of something like
Thelma the Unicorn.

Speaker 1 (53:52):
Yeah yeah, which has a bunch of comedians voicing the
characters who tend to be kind of attached characters in
their comedy like Zach Alphanexit, galfan Akis, Fred Armisen, Will Forte.

Speaker 2 (54:07):
Oh yeah, yeah. All these guys are like known for.

Speaker 1 (54:10):
That Jamane Clement, which is awesome. It looks really cute.
I will say the song that they showed in the
trailer didn't grab me, yeah right away, But that doesn't
mean there won't be other bangers. It comes to Netflix
on May seventeenth, so make sure to make a note

(54:30):
of it sounds interesting to.

Speaker 2 (54:31):
You, yeah, definitely. And then next up, we've got a
trailer from space, which, Man, when you talk about like
publicity stunts in order to promote your film, this is
an odd one. It is.

Speaker 1 (54:47):
It's so like I have a hard time wrapping my
brain around it.

Speaker 2 (54:51):
Like yeah, like in space, in space, no one can
hear you explode.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
Did it explode?

Speaker 2 (54:59):
No? But I mean it's Transformers. There's lots of explosions
in Transformers and movies.

Speaker 1 (55:03):
So but like, so they shot this into space and
it aired from space, but we watched it here on Earth,
So what was the point.

Speaker 2 (55:14):
I mean, it's just a publicity stunt. But yeah, so
it's like they used it. We're talking about Transformers. One
as the movie we haven't actually named it yet, but
Transformers One, which is an animated Transformers film. It's not
one of the live action Michael Bay films, and it's
kind of like Transformers Babies or Transformers The Young Years

(55:39):
or whatever. It's it's set when Optimus Prime and Megatron
aren't even who they are in later iterations, and they're
like It made me think of those comic books that
would set Superman and Lex Luthor as high school classmates.
And it's because Clark Kent accident only causes or sets

(56:03):
into motion events that lead to Lex being in like
a chemistry class accident, which is why he no longer
has hair, and that ends up being the root of
their of their animosity. That's what it was given. It
was giving those vibes pretty strong in this trailer.

Speaker 1 (56:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Chris Hemsworth and Brian Tyree
Henry are Optimus Prime and Megatron. I will say it
looked more entertaining and funnier, though I know people don't
necessarily watch Transformers for humor. To me than most of
the Transformers movies that have come out live quote unquote
live action.

Speaker 2 (56:40):
I'll say the humor definitely was I think better, far
better than the Michael Bay movies, which mostly are like
the Michael Bay humor in those movies, it's mostly like,
uh like essentially potty humor. Like it's really juvenile. If
you watch those Transformers movies, it's all it's the whole
film is juvenile. I mean not just the humor but

(57:03):
the fact, like with the ones with Megan Fox in it,
you just feel like the camera is glued to Megan
Fox's body in a way that's very male gaze ish,
and it frankly like when I saw the trailer for
one of those movies where it comes up behind her
while she's bent over working on a car, I felt

(57:23):
like uncomfortable because of how creepy that camera angle was.
But that's how the whole thing is, like, you know,
having little little Transformers that are leaking oil or whatever
and making potty jokes. It's just like that's like the
level of humor you get in most of those movies,
and I always hated that, whereas this one it felt

(57:43):
more akin to something like teenage mutant Ninja Turtles, like
that kind of vibe and energy and humor to it.

Speaker 1 (57:50):
Yeah, yeah, I for that alone, I hope it does well.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
Yeah, me too, I would love to see I mean,
it's weird to say I want to see more stuff
like that for Transformers, because that's not how I associate
Transformers either. I don't think of Transformers as a teenage
mutant Ninja Turtles esque action comedy. I think of it
as more sci fi action and occasionally you get some humor.
I mean, I will say that Transformers the movie, the

(58:18):
animated film from the nineteen eighties, was where I first
heard weird Al Yankovic's Dare to Be Stupid. Nice that
was featured in the film. But yeah, I thought the
trailer looked interesting. I don't know that i'll actually watch it,
simply because I'm kind of over Transformers, to be fair,
like that whole franchise started just as a way to

(58:42):
sell toys, Like it wasn't I know, I feel the
same way about he Now, Like don't I don't feel
a particular affinity for these franchises when ultimately I know
that the only reason they exist was so that they
could toys. Like That's why I don't feel precious about

(59:03):
any of it, right, Like, if you want to do
a version of He Man, that's dramatically different from all
the other ones. When Kevin Smith was doing his, I
was like, fine, that's that's cool, because ultimately, you've got
to remember that this is a series that started literally
as a way to sell toys to children, So this
isn't like sacred text or anything. Have fun with it.

Speaker 1 (59:26):
Yeah, oh well, he Man fans will disagree with you,
but I enjoyed the Kevin Smith's vision.

Speaker 2 (59:30):
It's very Trueman. Fans often do disagree with me, and
I just say hey, yay, yay.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
Y, which you weren't at the latest improvised D and D.
But that was my little insert into pirates who don't
do anything.

Speaker 2 (59:47):
You did a what's going on from four non blondes?

Speaker 1 (59:50):
Awesome, we did that and defying gravity and toss a
coin to your witcher.

Speaker 2 (59:56):
If you don't know why I'm referencing what's going on
by four non blods, search what's going on? He Man
on YouTube and you can thank me later.

Speaker 1 (01:00:06):
It's ridiculous, but we'll add not you know. I was
going to say something and then we went off topic.
It was a really good segue. I was like, we're
going to add not doing this to the list of
things Jonathan's not going to do like not playing Hades
too early. Access.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
Yeah. Yeah, we talked about this, you and I earlier
this week when you were chatting and you sent me
this this news item about how so Hades is a
great roguelike game that came out a few years back.
And you are playing the Sun of Hades and you're
trying to escape the underworld and you want to see

(01:00:49):
you want to find your mother, you know. And the
whole game is you playing through these levels over and
over and over again, dying over and over again, getting
better as you continue so that you can get further
and further until you finally are able to find your mom.
And it's a great game. If you haven't played it,

(01:01:10):
I highly recommend it. The art style is incredible, voice
acting is insane, the music phenomenal.

Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
Do you have to be good at Rogue Lights?

Speaker 2 (01:01:20):
It helps? I mean, like, so you unlock weapons and
stuff as you play, and you can, like you can
actually start to do things like find the weapons that
work best for you and kind of develop a strategy
based on those. It's a bit tricky, it's challenging. I
am not the best at those games, but I did

(01:01:42):
finish it. So while I'm not the best at those
kinds of games, it wasn't so hard that I couldn't
complete it. But anyway, Haities two now is in development
and they've opened it up for some technical testing. This
is like even before beta testing, so it's a very
limited player base that they've opened this up to. And

(01:02:02):
I was telling Ariel that there's a temptation to jump
on because I'm so eager to see what happens with
Hades two, but that temptation is counterbalanced with the desire
to play the game in its best possible form, And
I don't really want to jump in when they're still

(01:02:22):
working on technical glitches, which is the whole purpose of
the test, And I understand that it's important part, but
I don't want my first impression of the game to
be based upon an incomplete version.

Speaker 1 (01:02:34):
Yeah. However, if you want to if you enjoy QA
and you want to QA a game, it's a small
group of players that they're going to let do it,
but you should sign up to do it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:50):
Yeah, And like the first Hades was that way too.
Like by the time I played it, it was already
out in full release, but it had a beta program
that people were active in for quite some time before
the game went to full release, and somehow I had
never even heard of it until it was released. And
I think that's part of why I'm okay with waiting,

(01:03:12):
because that first experience with the game was so positive
that I would rather repeat that than to risk like
being frustrated with it because it's it's literally still being developed. Yeah,
and I recognize the necessity for that testing. There's no
shade shade on Haiti, so to speak, But I just

(01:03:33):
think that that for me to really have the best experience,
I'm just gonna be as patient as possible.

Speaker 1 (01:03:39):
Well, someone else who is moving from a beta test
to a full release is John M. Hue. He was
the director of Crazy, Crazy Rich Asians, as well as
the In the Heights movie and the Wicked movie. But
now he's bringing Crazy Rich Asians to as a play.

(01:04:01):
It'll be his first Broadway play.

Speaker 2 (01:04:03):
Yeah, I'm guessing that the experience on things like Wicked
kind of helped inspire that. But that's that's cool. Like one,
I think it's it's cool to see a musical that's
going to feature a cast and a subject matter that

(01:04:23):
doesn't often get covered on Broadway if you do see
shows like Broadway has a very unfortunate past with shows
that have to do with Asian culture. Like I mentioned earlier,
Miss Saigon. Well, Miss Saigon has a half Vietnamese half
French character called the Engineer, kind of an antagonist sort

(01:04:48):
of in the show, and originally in the production it
was Jonathan Price, an English actor. You might know him
as Kira Knightley's dad in the Pirates of the Caribbean movie.
He played the part of the Engineer, which is pretty
darn troubling, right to have an English Caucasian actor playing

(01:05:12):
the part of an Asian character. So to have this
and but now we're in a post Hamilton world. I
feel like Hamilton really shone a spotlight on issues in
Broadway and through its popularity, showed proved that the issues

(01:05:32):
that existed on Broadway were like just constructs that could
easily be knocked down. It makes me excited to see
how this turns out. I never saw the film, but
it does make me curious about the musical.

Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
That's a shame. The film is one of my maybe
my favorite modern day rom com. Oh cool, yeah, yeah,
I mean like it's never going to replace like the
court Chester, which is only vaguely.

Speaker 2 (01:06:01):
A rom com, only vaguely modern day.

Speaker 1 (01:06:06):
That's not at all modern day, but that's why I
said modern day. But it's a wonderful movie. I highly
recommend it highly. And the really nice thing about it is,
like the the main romantic couple, neither is it fault
for the issues that they encounter in the movie. Uh,

(01:06:28):
And it's it's just really well done. And I hope
it's got a great soundtrack too, and I hope that
the stage play version includes Catherine Include. Well, it probably
won't include Catherine Hoe unless she joins the cast, but
she is a wonderful singer who did a cover of
Coldplay's Yellow in Mandarin Chinese for the movie. As it's

(01:06:52):
kind of like a tongue in cheek commentary on you know, racism. Yes,
but it's brilliant. It's brilliant and I love it and
it was such a such a great addition to the movie,
and I hope they put that into the stage play.
But yes, I highly recommend the movie. You should watch it.
It's a lot of fun, it's just and it makes

(01:07:12):
you feel good at the end of it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:14):
So well, that's a great recommendation and goodness knows, like
I am eager to seek out entertainment that leaves me
feeling better than when I started watching it. Like, that's
a rarity these days because we have so many not
I mean brilliant pieces of entertainment, don't get me wrong,
but harrowing entertainment where at the end of it you

(01:07:37):
feel worse than you did when you started. Yeah. I
appreciate that. I think that it takes talent to tell
a story. Well, but I could my mental health could
really use some pick me ups.

Speaker 1 (01:07:49):
Yeah, yeah, for sure watch it. This is gonna be
one of the ones I remind you about. Okay, something
that probably won't make you feel nearly as good. It
is the new m Night Chamalayan movie.

Speaker 2 (01:08:03):
Yeah, we told you we'd get there. It's an hour
and seven minutes later and we're finally there.

Speaker 1 (01:08:08):
Look, we're not even going to get to our conversation
topic today. We're going to move that to another week.

Speaker 2 (01:08:14):
Yeah. We made the call mid episode too, because we
were going to talk about fake trailers. But we'll save
that discussion for later because we don't need an hour
and forty five minute episode.

Speaker 1 (01:08:28):
No, I actually have to get back to work at
some point. But so yeah, so m night, Shechmalian's am
I saying his name right, Shyamalan, Shyamalan. I keep like
just like speeding through it, hoping no one will notice.

Speaker 2 (01:08:40):
I understand. I understand because I used.

Speaker 1 (01:08:43):
To say Shamalan and that's not right either. M Night, Shyamalan.

Speaker 2 (01:08:47):
There you go. Haha.

Speaker 1 (01:08:49):
It's coming out with a new movie called Trap and
there's a trailer for it and I was like, Okay,
what's the what is the twist in this going to be?
And they show you in the trailer.

Speaker 2 (01:09:02):
Yeah. So the trailer starts off with like a father
and he's your typical dad who tells dad jokes, trying
to connect to his like teenage tween age daughter like
she's somewhere in that area as and surprises her with
tickets to go see a concert of this particular pop

(01:09:26):
star that his daughter is a big fan of. And
so it's a daddy daughter trip to this concert and
she's all jazzed about it and they go and in
the trailer there's a moment where he says he needs
to go to the restroom, so he's excusing himself. He's
checking on his daughter make sure she's going to be
okay while he goes off. She's like, sure, just go ahead,
go I'll be right here. And then as he's heading

(01:09:48):
out toward the lobby, he notices that there's an increased
police presence and the police are putting up cameras, and
so he flags down a guy who's working perch at
the event and asks him what's going on. And then
this is where the twist is already revealed in the trailer.

Speaker 1 (01:10:11):
Yeah, which I don't know makes me less interested in
seeing the movie.

Speaker 2 (01:10:16):
Yeah, so you want to explain what the twist is
or what's going on.

Speaker 1 (01:10:20):
Oh yeah, it's the dad goes into the bathroom and
looks at a dude in his basement who's tied up,
and you learn that the dad is the serial killer.

Speaker 2 (01:10:28):
Yeah. I didn't even say about what they were looking
for yet.

Speaker 1 (01:10:31):
Oh yeah, they're trying. So it's called trap because they're
trying to trap. My brain just automatically filled it in Johnson,
because they're trying to trap a serial killer who they
think will be at the concert and there's no way
out of the concert, so they're going to find that person.
And it turns out the dad is that person. So
my assumption is the rest of the movie is him
trying to avoid them and escape.

Speaker 2 (01:10:53):
Yeah, he seems like he's not like he seems concern maybe,
but not like he doesn't seem overly afraid of being caught.
So it's interesting because you know, finding out that the
dad is in fact a serial killer, I guess, is
what the whole twist would be. But that is the
whole focus of the film is about him apparently trying

(01:11:17):
to outsmart the authorities who are there to capture him.
And of course, like you get the juxtaposition of the
guy who on the outside seems like jovial dad, joke
kind of dad, like a little bit lame, a little behind,
but he genuinely appears to love his daughter, and then
you find out, oh, he's also a sicko psychopath who's

(01:11:41):
kidnapping and killing people. But that also made me think
of there was a film that was done not too
long ago. It was a much more low budget movie
where it was the story unfolds where it's a young
boy who suspects that his dad is potentially a serial killer.
And I wish I could tell you the name of
it because it was again one of those movies that

(01:12:02):
makes you feel worse when it's over. It was not
a happy story. But this film kind of reminded me
of like if you did the big blockbuster, Hollywood glossy
version of that kind of film, this is what you get.

Speaker 1 (01:12:17):
Was it the clove hitch Killer?

Speaker 2 (01:12:19):
Yes, it was the Cloth hitch Killer? Okay, yeah, not
that I just googled it did a great job though,
area good good googling skills. Yeah, Clove hitch by the
way Man. Yeah, No, that's a that's a compelling film
to watch. And there are some intense performances in that movie.

Speaker 1 (01:12:37):
Yeah, you know. I do like a good thriller and
a good suspense movie, and Trap might be one of those.
But like I mentioned earlier, I bet that if I
went to see it in the theater, I would one
hundred percent the entire time be going Okay, so what
is the real twist? There's gonna be a twist. What
is It?

Speaker 2 (01:12:56):
Turns out the pop singers actually the serial killer, and
the whole thing leading up to that was just a
red herring.

Speaker 1 (01:13:02):
Yeah, and he is an undercover cop.

Speaker 2 (01:13:04):
Yeah, with a difference. The difference, Yeah, I I thought
I thought the dad character in this trailer was like,
it really appealed to me because it felt like it
felt like that sort of lame dad who's trying a
little too hard but genuinely cares about his kid. So

(01:13:27):
that's why I was like, Wow, this is this could
be really interesting to try and do a juxtaposition between
someone who appears to be that sincere and caring while
simultaneously is also you know, like a cold blooded killer,
because you know, you don't have that many actors who
could pull that kind of thing off. So it made
me a little curious.

Speaker 1 (01:13:47):
But Josh Hartnett for anybody who's curious.

Speaker 2 (01:13:50):
Yeah, apart from that, it just didn't really grab me.
But maybe I'll feel different. I'll probably have to wait
till it comes straight. I don't think I'm going to
go to the theater to see this one.

Speaker 1 (01:14:02):
Yeah, probably probably mean neither. That's that's a good sentence.
It's a good sentence I constructed there. So next, about
four years ago, Borderlands had their players do like this
mini mini game, this like puzzle minigame for science.

Speaker 2 (01:14:24):
Yeah, which is true. Like I did not know about this.
It's weird because I've played the Borderlands games and I
had not heard about this at all.

Speaker 1 (01:14:32):
Yeah, yeah, but it's really cool. So they had these
players play these games where they were like I guess,
comparing mapping and comparing microbes, and they were basically like
little puzzles that even their supercomputers were having a hard
time figuring out. And like four point five million players
took part, and they solved a whole bunch of these problems.

(01:14:54):
And because of that, we have a really good understanding
of some stuff that we didn't before, like IBS.

Speaker 2 (01:15:01):
Yeah. So this is similar in many ways to grid computing,
things like SETI at Home or folding at Home, where
you have these different projects that would make use of
normal people's computers idle time. So you could sign up
for like SETI at Home or folding at Home or whatever,

(01:15:22):
and when you weren't using your computer, your computer's processing
power would be used to help solve various problems in science,
like how certain proteins fold and such, and that would
be really helpful in the long run for learning things
about chemistry and biology and that kind of stuff. In
this case, instead of using computers to actually run these processes,

(01:15:46):
is making use of players to do it like manually,
but gamified in such a way that there was a
reward system, like a fun experience for the players to
urge that to happen. It's so such a brilliant approach
to problem solving. Obviously, it's not something that you could

(01:16:06):
easily poort over to just anything, but the fact that
they came up with this concept is incredibly clever, and
it's it's cool to think that while you're sitting there
dreading the next tiny Tina voice line, you could be
helping science.

Speaker 1 (01:16:24):
Yeah. Yeah, and you know, hopefully it'll give us better
answers to people who are suffering from things like IBS
or Alzheimer's just stuff. But the really really cool part
is everybody who participated is now listed as an author
among like their new their new paper on the scientific findings.

Speaker 2 (01:16:43):
That is really cool, Like, what a great way to
become a published scientist.

Speaker 1 (01:16:50):
Yeah, look, I was. I was just thrilled to like
I on a small scale, we we did the Doctor
Horrible like try to be is among the Village League
of Evil, Yeah, the Evil League of Evil, and I
just I was thrilled for the tiny bit of like
participation we had in that. This is twenty thousand times.

Speaker 2 (01:17:12):
Cooler the fact that the fact that our characters are
listed in credits in one of the Doctor Horrible Things. Yeah,
just like my name showed up in the credits of
that one season of MST three K that was crowdfunded,
So my name is on that list. But that list
is like thousands of names long, where it's like four

(01:17:33):
columns of names in tiny texts where you're just like
waiting and waiting, like they're not at the s as yet.
I'm not gonna it's gonna be a while. So uh yeah,
now that was cool. And our last story today is
about a stage show called the Twenty Sided Tavern, which

(01:17:54):
is an officially licensed Wizard of the Coast stage show
relating to Dungeons and Dragons. And essentially it's like you're
going to see a group of players play through a scenario,
but the audience, like there's no fourth wall. The audience
is essentially an additional element in the game and can

(01:18:17):
affect the outcome of the game. They even have an
app that the audience can use to help influence what
happens as the game unfolds, and so no two performances
are the same.

Speaker 1 (01:18:28):
Yeah, it's kind of like a mix between Critical Role
and Shoot Face Shakespeare. It sounds like a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:18:34):
Yeah, so it's it is kind of like a real
play session in that, like they're not dressed up. The
actors on stage are not dressed up as fantasy characters.
They're playing a game of D and D. But they
have like this big video screen in the back that
is versatile and can include stuff like showing you the

(01:18:56):
results of the app, like when people are using the
app to to do things like essentially kind of voting
on things that happen. The screen can show you how
the outcome happens before the game master incorporates that into
the story. It's cool and like the little clips I've
seen look interesting and neat. Apparently they did a short

(01:19:20):
run of this in Chicago before they ported the show
over to New York, which is not unusual. Chicago is
often a theater spot where they'll run a show before
it makes a transition to say Broadway. But it opened
this week. Actually, the day we're recording this is when
they're having their first preview performance.

Speaker 1 (01:19:41):
I'm sad that it's not in Chicago anymore because I'll
be there soon.

Speaker 2 (01:19:46):
Are you going to see two E two?

Speaker 1 (01:19:49):
No? No, am I going to see T E two?

Speaker 2 (01:19:51):
Jonathan, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:19:53):
You probably know I don't have the right connections to go.
No go, I'm traveling for a family event.

Speaker 2 (01:20:00):
Okay. I was like, you might be going there to
hang out with the mcilroys for all I know.

Speaker 1 (01:20:05):
Look, if that's the dream.

Speaker 2 (01:20:09):
You know, I met them because they came through the
House Stuff Works office years and years ago, because they
became friends with Josh and Chuck of stuff. You should
know Josh and Chuck. They're the ones who have the
celebrity hookups. Like John Hodgman came through. The mcilroys came through.
Although my boss Connall, of course, he went to college

(01:20:31):
with Bradley Cooper. They were roommates, so Bradley Cooper came through.
But that was not because of Josh and Chuck. That
was because of Connall.

Speaker 1 (01:20:38):
So look, technically I've met John Hodgman.

Speaker 2 (01:20:42):
Well technically I have too. We talked about runs.

Speaker 1 (01:20:46):
Yeah, he was on the Joco Cruise. My story is
not nearly that cool. But no, they seem like nice.
They seem like cool.

Speaker 2 (01:20:54):
Folk, nice boys.

Speaker 1 (01:20:56):
Nice boys.

Speaker 2 (01:20:59):
Yeah that I mean, I think I can be forgiven
for guessing that you were going to like a cool
convention or something.

Speaker 1 (01:21:06):
Yeah, that would that would be really cool. Now I'm
not cool enough.

Speaker 2 (01:21:12):
For C two E too. Well, I'm I'm so out
of touch that I didn't even know that it was
a thing until the McIlroy's mentioned it in like no
upcoming shows that kind of thing, because I do still
listen to their show. But uh yeah, anyway, well, it's
now going to be open in New York. Uh it's

(01:21:35):
I think their official opening day is in early May.
So these are just sort of like preview performances for
them to work out any kinks or anything. But yeah,
if you're in if you're in New York, you can
go to the twenty Sided tavern dot com and look
at getting tickets to go see the show. I am
certainly curious about it. Like we, Ariel and I have

(01:21:56):
both seen Improvised Dungeons and Dragons, which is an unofficial show,
not officially licensed my Wizard of the Cause, and that
is a lot of fun. But in that one, the
actors actually do dress up as fantasy characters, and the
D and D connection is light like like there there's

(01:22:19):
they'll lean on D and D a little bit, but really,
it's just a comedy show with a fantasy theme. A
great one, but it's you know, if you're there to
see like a serious D and D session play out,
you are going to leave the disappointed.

Speaker 1 (01:22:34):
Yeah, yeah, I am interested in it. Hopefully it'll be
around for a while. Because that way then went over.
The next time I go to New York is to
watch it. That is it? Like we said, no mashup
this week and no conversation topic, but that's because we
had a whole bunch of conversation topics we didn't plan on. Jonathan,

(01:22:55):
With that being the case, do you want to tell
people how to contact us?

Speaker 2 (01:22:59):
Or should I just oh no, I can talk about that.
It's pretty simple. It's really straightforward. So you're going to
roll up a character and you're going to have to
determine things like race and class and background. You're going
to need to choose advantages and disadvantages. You're going to
spend probably at least fifty minutes working on this, and

(01:23:20):
that's before you even get to the part where you
decide what this character looks like. Or maybe you start
with what the character looks like and then you build
from there. Either way. After about three hours of some
serious work. You're going to have this character ready to go,
and you're going to roll for initiative because our story
is going to start immediately with combat. Unfortunately, your character

(01:23:41):
is going to get killed in that very first encounter,
and it's going to be really devastating, I mean frustrating
that you put three hours of work into someone and
you even develop somewhat of an emotional connection with this
fictional character, and then immediately they are dispatched. And as
you see your game master tear the character sheet in

(01:24:01):
half in front of your very eyes, you will turn
with tears in your eyes and you'll see me and
I will say, it's going to be okay. What's your question?

Speaker 1 (01:24:12):
And if that's just not how you roll, then you
can reach out to us on social media on Twitter,
slash x where llenc Underscore Podcast, on Instagram, Facebook, threads,
and discord. We're Large nerdron Collider. You can reach out
to us by email at large nerdron pod at gmail

(01:24:34):
dot com. All of our show notes will be up
on our website www dot Large nerdron Collider dot com,
as well as the invite to the discord if you
haven't joined yet we've had some great fun conversations about
Doctor Who and some fun memes going around recently. So
thanks to everybody who's being a part of our lovely
community there and until next time. I am Aeriel net One.

Speaker 2 (01:25:01):
Caston and I am Jonathan. I lost my saving throw
on being a dork Strickland.

Speaker 1 (01:25:09):
Now you wrote a natural twenty on that.

Speaker 2 (01:25:11):
Ah. The large Nerdron Collider was created by Aeriel Caston
and produced, edited, published, deleted, undeleted, published again. Curse That
by Jonathan Strickland. Music by Kevin McLeod of ingcomptech dot

(01:25:32):
com