Never Play Off Godzilla at an Awards Show

Our favorite kaiju received an Academy Award nomination, while our favorite Barbie didn't. Plus we talk about how the Razzies are mean-spirited, how the Steamboat Willie version of Mickey Mouse is now in the public domain, and we take a look at a half dozen movie trailers. And more!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Large Ner Drunk 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 Castin and with me as always
after our holiday extended break is Jonathan Strickland.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
I am not dead yet. Yay, Yeah, I mean it
was close call, y'all. Yeah, are our extended hiatus wasn't
just because the holidays. I don't mind saying this because
I've said it on some other podcasts. I had a
significant medical scare. December thirtieth was the first one, but

(00:49):
another one happened the following week, and it resulted in
having to get surgery, and then I had the recovery
from surgery, and it's just been kind of a nightmare situation.
Ariel has been very patient and supportive through the entire process,
and I am thankfully through the worst of it as

(01:10):
far as I can tell. Your fingers crossed and back
to talk about things what are geeky?

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Yeah, there was a whole bunch of that happened in
the past few weeks, but we're going to ignore a
lot of that and talk about what's new. And as
far as patient goes, I mean like I've had auditions
and I've had other stuff to do, so like.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
She was busy, she wasn't spending the whole time giving
me puppy dog eyes and saying I sure hope you're
feeling better, just you know, but she did check in,
so yeah, I don't want to give the wrong impression.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Also, like I want to say, one of our listeners,
one of our listeners on discord was like, I can't
wait for Ariel to admonish you or to get back
to aerial admonishment again. I'm going to try not to
admonish you too much because I don't want you to
have to recover from any sick burns along.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
With yeah, yeah, considering that my illness was related to
high blood pressure, like I can just hold that over people.
I'm like, please don't upset me. You'll kill me.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
But any time that I gave you puppy dog guys
and asked if you were I sure hope to you're
feeling better, it was genuine. There was no ulterior motive
because your health, my friend, is the most important thing
to me.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Thank you, thank you so much. And so we have
a pretty ginormous episode lineup. We'll see if we can
cover everything, but we've got a ton of stuff to
talk about. Like Ariel said, obviously a bunch of news
has come out since we had to take our break,
and we're really just focusing on the things that happened

(02:43):
over the last week because to do everything would I mean,
we'd have to have like a three hour long episode.
And I think a lot of that is because obviously,
during the course of the strikes, there really couldn't be
any progress on any any meat stuff, at least any
media stuff that was in the world of TV or film.

(03:05):
And now that those have been reconciled and resolved, the
floodgates are open.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Floodgates are open, and lots of productions are starting back up,
and that's awesome for actors as well as for viewers.
So yeah, do I don't remember, Jonathan, remind me, do
we start with what we've watched or do we start
with thirty seconds or less?

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Wow? I don't remember either. I think actually we usually
start with what we've watched and then we go into
thirty seconds or less, And if not, that's how we're
doing it today.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
Rockin'. So I've watched a bunch of geeky media over
the holidays and the new year. I finished Barry, I've
started Squid Games. I watched that Batman Ugly Christmas cartoon
special that I was like, oh, it's so ugly. It
was really cute. It was very ugly, but it was
very very cute. I finished Echo, I started Fargo, I've

(03:59):
restarted Skyrim, and my husband has started playing Dave the Diver,
which is a game that Jonathan also enjoys playing. And
then I watched an episode of Has Been Hotel. But
I wanted to like it because it's kind of a
more adult cartoon and it's got a b it's a

(04:19):
musical and it's got a bunch of Broadway star actors
in it. But they really lean into like the depravity
of the story, and it's not funny. So that's the
thing is, you can have cussing, an adult humor and
sexy jokes and all that stuff and it can be hilarious.
And everything just fell flat to me. It felt like
they were trying to push it into be edgy.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
And gotcha, yeah, where they're leaning so hard on that
that they're doing it at the expense of actual clever writing.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yeah, yeah, and then like the storyline is also one
of those ones that's like a little bit of a
stretch for me based on my upbringing, But yeah, I
give it a fair shot. And yeah, the joke, it
just wasn't as funny as I had hoped it would be.
But the music is banging, Like the music might be
the best TV music I've heard. It might be tied
for schmcago after Gallivant, not counting the first episode.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
Yeah. Uh for me, really the geeky thing. So I
watched a lot of old stuff, like I finally watched.
I went through and watched all the movies that have
been made so far in the hell House series. Okay,
and I had seen the first one before. If you're
not familiar, hell House is a found footage horror franchise,

(05:36):
with the first one taking place in the Abadon Hotel,
this fictional hotel that's supposed to be in New York.
They actually use a real abandoned hotel that's used for
things like like Halloween haunts in Pennsylvania. Anyway, it's about
this crew that's trying to turn the Abadon Hotel into
a haunted house, and it turns out it really is haunted,

(06:00):
and then hilarious Halloween hyjinks ensue. And by hilarious I
mean horrifying and grotesque to ask, Yeah, Well, there are
four movies in the series so far. Three of them
take place in the Abadon Hotel. The fourth one, which
in some ways is a prequel, like it takes place

(06:21):
in modern day, but they're they're investigating something that happened
in a time before the other movies that occur in
the franchise. I actually think the fourth one is probably
the strongest of the series so far, which is unusual, right,
Usually with horror franchises, you start off super strong and

(06:42):
then maybe you can get a little close to the
brilliance later on. But this is one of those cases
where I actually think the fourth movie might be the
best one of the bunch. I don't know that I
can recommend it. Like, if you want to see some
sort of semi schlocky found footage horror, it falls into

(07:02):
the same traps as other found footage. Mainly you'll be
left asking why would anyone be filming this? Right? That's
the big problem with found footage, unless you're doing something
like security cameras that are supposed to be on all
the time. You're left with the question of why would
anyone bother to this is so mundane, there'd be no

(07:24):
reason to waste time filming it until something scary happens.
But you wouldn't have known something scary was gonna happen
before it happened. So it does fall into those same traps,
but it's it's fairly entertaining. The third one is perhaps
the schluckiest of the bunch, which in some ways is fun.
So that was one thing I did. The other thing

(07:45):
before it came out, before the first episode of season
four of True Detective came out, I decided I wanted
to read Robert Chambers The King in Yellow because that
that's a co election of short stories that Robert Chambers
published before Lovecraft really got his start that kind of

(08:09):
fall into the weird fiction category, at least some of
them do, and it involves things like creating fictional works
of literature that end up having like supernatural powers, the
main one being a play named The King in Yellow
and if you read it, you go bonkers. And that
was a big influence for the first season of True Detective. Well,

(08:31):
I knew that the fourth season was coming out, and
that it appeared to go back and reference stuff from
The King in Yellow. So I thought, I'm going to
read this, and while I was sick, I read the
book stories. Probably not the best state of mind to
do it, but I thought they were pretty pretty good.
Like not I wouldn't say they were brilliant, but I

(08:54):
thought they were well written and interesting. And then I
watched the first episode of season four of True Detective.
I think it's very well made. I lament the fact
that there are no really likable characters, that all the
protagonists are deeply damaged and not very likable, which I
get is a film noir trope, but it makes it

(09:16):
hard for me to connect with the show. But it
is very well made and it's interesting. It does jump
around a bit, to the point where I feel like
it's doing it in an effort to make it seem
very spooky, supernatural, mysterious, But when the filmmaking itself is

(09:38):
creating that kind of disorienting effect and it's not just
the story, it feels a little bit gimmicky to me.
I still think it's well done. I need to watch
the second episode. I just haven't gotten around to it yet.
But those are what I've really been focused on. Nice.

Speaker 1 (09:56):
I was going to ask, I'm glad you like the stories.
I was going to ask if you had read right
before you got sick, because then that might have been
the cause.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
But right, yeah, I shouldn't have read the book because
that's what caused my blood pressure to skyrocket. I read.
I think I started it. I might have started it
before I got It's hard because, like the last few
weeks are all jumbled up in my head. That blood
pressure thing. It was so bad that I couldn't think coherently,

(10:29):
and it was so bad that when I went to
the emergency room the second time, I don't remember it.
I don't remember the emergency room at all. I remember
the ICU, but that was hours after I had arrived
at the hospital. I was in the emergency room for
hours and I have not They gave me a lumbar
puncture and I don't remember it.

Speaker 1 (10:50):
Well, that's good. That's a good thing.

Speaker 2 (10:51):
Yeah, that's what I hear.

Speaker 1 (10:54):
I mean, I've not had one, but I'm just going
to assume that's a really good thing. YEA great. Well,
that's the stuff that we have done. I'm sure there's
a lot more but that's just like the top of
mind stuff. So now let's jump into our thirty seconds
or less. Some of these might be like fifteen seconds
for me, Jonathan, I'll try to pad them out.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
No, don't, don't pad them out if they're fifteen seconds there,
some of mine are probably going a little long. So
let's just let's just do what comes naturally.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
Awesome, all right, Well, I get to start today, and
I'm starting with the fact that if it has been
announced that Jillian Anderson is joining the cast of Tron three,
she'll be there with Jared Leto, Jody Turner Smith, and
Greta Lee. Tron is known as Tron three, is being
called tront Aries, and they have started filming, and that's

(11:46):
that's about it. I love the first Tron movie. The
second Tron movie was okay. I I have no expectations
for the third.

Speaker 2 (11:55):
I feel I feel the same like I think. The
first Tron movie is fun, slow, second Tron movie is beautiful,
and the soundtrack is banging, but is kind of a mess.
So here's hoping the third one can really nail it. Okay.
One lesser known conference that happens each year is called

(12:16):
Cinema con that's when studios meet with theater owners and operators.
Sony is sitting this year's event out, but it's business,
not personal, as the company is trying to make up
for lost time due to the recent strikes in Hollywood.
So it's not that Sony doesn't love you theater owners.
They just need to wash their hair that weekend.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
I mean, I wonder how many people are going to
have be affected by that when it comes to cinema
con All right, I have my stories wrong in my lineup,
but the next one is that Invincible season two. Heart
two has a release date and it is March fourteenth.
So Jonathan and I have both watched the first half

(13:00):
of season two. It's rough, it's real rough at times,
and got kind of left with Invincibles on an alien
planet after battling some filter miites. So you won't have
to wait too long to see what happens next if
you're following that storyline.

Speaker 2 (13:19):
Yeah, yeah, all right, Hey you got Magic the Gathering
cards on my board game clue? Hey you got a
board game clue on my Magic the Gathering cards? Say, yep,
that's right, there's a Magic the Gathering and clue or
a clue dough if you have to be a brit
collaboration coming out, it's called Ravnica Clue. Addition, up to

(13:40):
four people can play at a time and it comes
with booster packs and stuff. It's available for pre order now.
It comes out later, I think in February, and it
retails for a wop in seventy dollars.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
Golly, I do feel like it doesn't play like traditional clue.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
No, I think it. It does apparently play like some
sort of combination between Magic the Gathering and Clue. I
read the review of it. I cannot say that. I
actually I feel like it's something you have to experience
to really understand, because I couldn't quite grasp what the
playthrough is like. But it's at least interesting.

Speaker 1 (14:17):
All right. Yeah, I might have to tried it at
some point next in our thirty seconds or less. Apparently,
my viral push to become the Thing in the New
Fantastic Four movie may not be as successful as I
was hoping it was. There is a rumor that Moss,
that Evan Moss Backrack, is being considered for the role

(14:41):
of the Thing. I love him. He places cousin in
the Bear, and he was also micro in the Punisher.
He's a really phenomenal actor. I like him a lot.
I wouldn't be like too mad if he was a thing.
But also I still want to be Ben Grimms. So
you know, we'll have to see whether that rumor's true.
When it things like Marvel and DC and big major

(15:03):
studio stuff, you can't you often can't talk about it
yes or no. Like you can't say no it's not me.
Yes it is me. Sometimes you can say no, it's
not me. But also wishful thinking, So we'll have to
wait and see.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
Also, sometimes when they say no it's not me, it's
totally them. They they just changing. Yeah, they're just trying
not to get in trouble all right. Through Dangers untold
and strikes unnumbered. The latest Deadpool sequel has wrapped filming.
The film, which at one time drew eyre as it
seemed it would continue production through the writers strike with
actors you know, just making stuff up on camera, is

(15:38):
now finished with principal photography. The movie is slated to
release on July twenty sixth of this year. Get Your
Chimichanga's Ready, Okay?

Speaker 1 (15:52):
Next, Kit Harrington, who is John Snow in Game of
Thrones is producing a TV thriller, very British Western. It
takes place in the Lake District of the United Kingdom,
and it's called, uh something like the City of Dust.

(16:12):
I'm trying to Empire of Dirt. I was close. City
of Dust, Empire of Dirt. They're close. It's a working title.
It's about a big city boy who returns to his
family farm in the Lake District for a cousin's wedding
and discovers that his family has been doing major, major
drug deals. One, I can't wrap my head around what

(16:33):
a very h what a very British Western would be,
if that equates to American westerns at all or is
a completely different thing. And two the description sounds like
breaking bad, and I don't I don't know if I
would have called breaking that a Western.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
Southwestern is what I would call it. Because you know
that Albuquerque has that very unique kind of sensibility. I
will say they've If you need to see a British Western,
just watched John Cleese and Silverado. It's just one English
actor in an otherwise American movie. But he is a
lot of fun as an English sheriff.

Speaker 1 (17:10):
Okay, John Cleese is a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (17:12):
So yeah, what's all this? Then? All right, Mortal Kombat two,
the film sequel, not the video game sequel, has wrapped.
It's a sequel to the twenty twenty one movie, which
was okay. I mean that movie started off great. I
think the Scorpion sub Zero fight at the beginning is amazing.
But the new movie is going to feature Carl Urban

(17:34):
as Johnny Cage, and other faces that you can expect
to see include Shao Khan played by Martin Ford, Princess
Katana played by Adeline Rudolph, and Kwan Chi played by
Damon Harriman, as well as more. I got high hopes
for this one. We'll see.

Speaker 1 (17:50):
I'm glad you've got high hopes. Yeah. The last one
was Fair to Midland.

Speaker 2 (17:56):
I agree, Fair to Midland is like, my favorite Mortal
Combat movie is still the nineteen nineties one, the original
nineteen nineties live actual one. It's schlocky as heck, but
I still like it more than the twenty twenty one film.

Speaker 1 (18:11):
Yeah, yeah, same. All right, I'm digging deep into the
rumor pool today, you guys, because the next thing is
that apparently some people found the producer of Zelda in
a Universal Parks video with them building kind of universal
langismatic something like that. Yeah, and then after someone posted

(18:34):
that video it got like almost immediately taken down. But
now folks are wondering if we're going to get a
Zeldas section to our Mario world. It would be cool,
it would be smart.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yeah, it'd bean neat, It would definitely Uh, it would
definitely pose a huge competition to Disney, which honestly I
think is necessary. I think Disney needs to have that
kind of crazy competition up against it to kick them
into gear because, yeah, the Parks, I feel have been

(19:10):
a little neglected. All right. AMC has released a trailer
for The Ones Who Live, which is yet another spin
off of The Walking Dead. This is the one that's
going to bring back Rick Grimes and Nichean, because if
there's another penny to be wrung from this franchise, they
are going to find a way to do it. The
trailer looks grim and hopeless. It reinforces the message that

(19:32):
humans are just the worst, and isn't that what you
need in an election year. It comes out February twenty fifth.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
Oh my goodness, Well that's it for our thirty seconds
or less.

Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yeah, I obviously have feelings about how nihilistic and grim
the Walking Dead series is.

Speaker 1 (19:55):
Well something it tells you something when I've watch WALKI
Dead and I watched Last of Us, and Last of
Us seemed hopeful, comparatively.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
Agreed, I mean, and that, yeah, we won't get into like,
even though the end of Last of Us has a
definitively dark message to it, we don't need to get
into spoilers or anything in case people haven't watched it yet.
That series is brilliant, But I would agree with you
that even with the ending of the Last of Us,

(20:28):
it still feels more hopeful than the Walking Dead does.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
All right, Now, let's see how much of our other
news we can get through.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
Yeah, Like, as per usually, we decided to dwell a
little on thirty seconds or less. But I mean we're
both rusty.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
Yeah, yeah, and he's not just talking about my hair color.
All right, So we have a bunch of stuff that
we're looking forward to. I'm going to just go over
that real quick. Things that I'm looking forward to, The
silly Argyle movie that looks like a mix between the
Lost City of d and Kingsman and Bullet Train and

(21:09):
Stranger than fiction. Look's dumb fun. We're getting a second
season of Life for Beth, which, even if you're not
an Amy Schumer fan, this is a fantastic semi autobiographical
story of her life and deals with like meeting her
husband who then got an adult diagnosis of autism, even
though he's a mischel like and he's a Michelin star chef,

(21:30):
so it deals with that and it's just really good.
It's really good. I'm looking forward to Avatar the Last Airbender,
which we'll talk about in a little bit. And then oddly,
normally I hate scary movies, but I'm vaguely intrigued by Abigail,
which is a story about a little ballerina girl who
gets kidnapped and then turns out to be a vampire

(21:51):
and turns all of her kidnappers into vampires.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
Yeah, it's given me a little bit of a Let
the Right One In energy, which if you have not
seen Ariel, I think you would really dig it, like
it's more of a drama than a horror movie. Either
Let the Right One In or Let Me In, which
is the English version of it, but I which I
haven't seen, so I can't say I prefer Let the

(22:15):
Right One in because I've only seen Let the Right
One in, but Let the Right One In was just
brilliant and kind of dark. So for me, I would
say things I'm looking forward to include Furiosa. I really
am looking forward to Furiosa. A lot that comes out
this summer. Borderlands I'm looking forward to just to see

(22:35):
what the heck it like. I cautiously look forward to
it because I haven't seen enough of it to know
whether it's going to look relatively good. Beetlejuice two, it's
another one that's coming out this fall that I'm kind
of curious about. Those are like the big ones. I mean,

(22:57):
I probably will see the sequel to Joker because I
saw the first one, but I have the more distance
I get from seeing the Joker the first time, the
less I like it. So I'm not sure if I'm
going to be, you know, fully on board with that
by the time it comes out. But those are the

(23:17):
ones that are really Oh in Nospharatu, I want to
see Nosaratu four December twenty fifth. It's Christmas Day, that's.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
Right, That's right. Yeah, I'm looking forward to many of
those things too. I do, I do have interest in
Let the Right One In. I like, I don't mind
monster movies. I just don't like gory horror.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
That there's a little bit of gore and let the
Right One In, but that's not really what the movie's about.
Like it's it's got moments of that which do shock
you out of the moment, but it's it's not like
unrelentingly gory, which is why I think it's it's actually
kind of a sweet and some what sad friendship story,

(24:02):
which is why I think it. Like I saw it
in the movie theater and I was blown away. I
thought it was great.

Speaker 1 (24:09):
Yeah, And I think that's part of it for me
with scary movies is it's got to have like a
good intriguing story and maybe some like uplifting bits or
some sort of hope in there somewhere. If it's just
scary for scary sake, it's.

Speaker 2 (24:23):
Not for me. Yeah. Yeah. Now, I think it's something
you could give a try. I mean, I would never
tell you that you have to see it. I just
think it's something that you potentially could find value in.
So something that unfortunately hasn't found a whole lot of
value in the month of January is live theater. The

(24:46):
month of January is always tough for Broadway specifically, and
that's partly because you know, it follows December, which is
a big travel month. Lots of people go to New
York for the holiday season, and there they will often
seek out theater. But January tends to be a much
less travel month, so you don't have as many tourists.

(25:10):
And it also is like, if you're in the you
know you're after the Tony season. Uh So, a lot
of shows, if they haven't received huge accolades, may find
that their audiences have dwindled down to like half full
or something. Uh And it's expensive to produce a show
on Broadway. It's expensive to keep a show running on Broadway.

(25:33):
So it's not unusual, as Tom Jones would say, for
shows to close in January. It's just this January we
got quite a few closings that have either happened or
have been announced. So like Gutenberg the Musical, which you know,
I knew was going to be a short run anyway,
it's a two person show. It's hard to make something

(25:55):
like that run for real.

Speaker 1 (25:58):
Names.

Speaker 2 (25:59):
Yeah, yeah, you wouldn't expect it to run forever, but
it's closing. Mind Mangler, which is a spin off of
Magic Goes Wrong, is closing. How to Dance in Ohio,
which I understand is a really uplifting show. It involves
people who are on the autism spectrum who are actually

(26:20):
playing the characters who are on the autism spectrum. It's
supposed to be phenomenal, but it just hasn't been getting
the crowds. That one's closing soon, Sleep No More, which
is the incredibly immersive show. It's the retelling of the
Scottish play that one's been running in New York for

(26:40):
quite some time and it's fairly well known, but it's
closing this year in March. And Kimberly Akimbo, which won
the Tony for Best Musical as it's announced that's going
to close in April. So yeah, lots of closings coming
up in the near future.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
I mean that we always get new musicals, so like
Boop the musical, I expect that to come to Broadway soon.
Dead Outlaw is opening. I know this because my friend
who is in Shucked, which also either just closed or
is closing this month, is now cast in Dead to Outlaw,
which is a comedy that's opening and sounds pretty funny. Yeah.
But good thing is some of these shows that when

(27:19):
they close on Broadway, they go on tour. So like
Beatle Juice is currently on to tour, Shucked is going
to be on tour. Clue there's a clue that's coming
to the twenty twenty four twenty twenty five Broadway touring
season that there there hasn't Is it just straight to touring?
Did it?

Speaker 2 (27:37):
Yeah? I hadn't heard of a clue on Broadway, So
my guess is that, uh, it did not have I mean,
if it had a Broadway run, I didn't hear about it.

Speaker 1 (27:47):
Okay, Yeah, So I mean it is sad. I hate
I hate to see shows close before there before they
want to. Thankfully there are new shows up and coming
as well.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
Yeah, all right, let's get into some news. One bit
of news that has obviously been a big part of
the entertainment world is that we got the announcements for
Oscar nominations.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
Yeah, and a bunch of people were kind of upset that,
Like I'm just going to get to the controversy, right,
A bunch of people were upset that Margaret Robbie and
Greta Gerwig did not get nominated for like Best Director
and Best Actor, although Barbie has a lot of nominations.

(28:34):
I don't know. I don't like when Oscars are like, well,
nominate this person, or this person wins because it's their time.
So for them to get nominated just because they were
women who made a woman empowered movie, I don't know,
it feels it feels a little false to me. I
loved Barbie, but there are lots of women directors and

(28:55):
amazing actresses of color who are who are not dominated
this year in place of that, So it's still this
Oscars might break a lot of new records.

Speaker 2 (29:12):
Yeah. I think part of the reason why people got
upset is that Ryan Goslin got a nomination for Best
Supporting Actor as Ken, but Margot Robbie did not get
a nomination for Best Actress for Barbie. I did see
that Woopy Goldberg had a response to this and said

(29:33):
that there's no such thing as a snub because it's
not like it's not like collectively the Academy decided not
to nominate these women. It's that when you tally up
all the nominations, they did not receive the number necessary
to be listed among the nominees, and it's that each

(29:55):
individual person responded like who they thought deserved it and
collec colectively. That's just how it shook out. And I
thought that's actually a pretty reasonable way of looking at it.
It still stinks like it still doesn't look good when
the two women who were most responsible for making that

(30:15):
movie happen didn't get nominated, but the guy who played
the himbo did that?

Speaker 1 (30:21):
Does America Ferrara did?

Speaker 2 (30:24):
Yes, she did Supporting Actress Best Supporting Actress. So it
wasn't like it was totally overlooked. But yeah, I think
that that that perspective, that it's not like it's, you know,
a group of eight white men in a conference room
somewhere smoking cigars and just deciding who gets the nod
and who doesn't. It's not like that, and I think

(30:46):
remembering that is important. I do think. I mean, I'm
not big on awards. I've said this so many times.
I don't like awards like I don't like I don't
like trying to assign, you know, rankings to art. I
don't like saying this art is better than that art
like that just bothers me, especially when you're talking about
things that are in wildly different genres with different perspectives

(31:11):
and different messages, Like it just doesn't make sense to me.
And I really don't like the how it creates a
political discussion within Hollywood where you have these four year
consideration campaigns that are so shallow and so like obvious

(31:33):
and callous and gross. I think it just reduces art
to something that I think is so shallow that it's
just disturbing to me. So I'm not big on oscars anyway.
I do think that the people who were nominated, all
of them put in incredible work and that, you know,

(31:55):
I'm glad to see them get recognition. I just wish
it weren't in the form of a competition me too.

Speaker 1 (32:02):
I'm kind of surprised May December didn't get more gnoms
because they did across other awards award series like the Academy,
But they are nominated for Best Original Screenplay, which I'm
just gonna say is cool because I have a very

(32:23):
good friend who was a small role in that movie.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
Me.

Speaker 1 (32:28):
Yeah, yeah, So it's it's kind of a very black
Swan esque movie. It's based on it's based on a
true story. It's not like exactly following the true story
and it's a disturbing story, but it's told very well.

Speaker 2 (32:47):
So out of curiosity, how many of the nominated films
have you seen? If you happen to know?

Speaker 1 (32:56):
Hold on, I've seen Barbie. I wanted to see Poor Things,
but I haven't gotten there yet.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
Poor Things is on my list to see. I really
want to see it. I've heard great things about it.

Speaker 1 (33:08):
Yeah, I want to see American fiction. They are actually
a bunch that I haven't seen that I want to
see this year. I just haven't got it to it.
So I've seen Barbie and then I've seen Pneumona. Okay,
I haven't seen Boy and the Heron or Spider Man
Across the Spider Verse yet. I know I could watch
Better Man Across the Spider Verse, but it I think

(33:29):
it came back to theaters, and if I haven't missed it,
I want to go see it there instead. So that's two.
Hold on, I'm killing him continuing to go. I saw
May December, so that's three. I saw that one, not
on Netflix where it's currently streaming. I saw that in
the movie theater. I saw Guardians the Galaxy Volume three.

Speaker 2 (33:54):
Mm. Hmmm.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
That's four of them. Oh, Flame and Hot has a
song nominated. That's awesome. Uh. And then we get to
the shorts, which I haven't watched. So I've seen four.

Speaker 2 (34:09):
I've seen two. Okay, I've seen Barbie, and I've seen
Indiana Jones and The Dumb of Destiny.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
Oh, I haven't watched that one yet. It wasn't good.

Speaker 2 (34:21):
I am not going to say it was not good.
I am going to say I did not like it
at all, and I wish it hadn't been made.

Speaker 1 (34:31):
I I was it better or worse than Crystal Skull,
I mean better than Crystal Skull, But then the fact
that I had high blood pressure and had to go
to the emergency room was better than Crystal Skull. Oh
my goodness. Uh wow, that's that puts Crystal Skull on

(34:52):
part with Sucker Punch.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
Yeah. Yeah, I have never subjected myself to Sucker Punch
because I know that would be that would be truly terrible.

Speaker 1 (35:01):
No.

Speaker 2 (35:01):
I didn't like Dial of Destiny. They made some choices
that I did not care for. I felt the story
was kind of stupid. I don't know, I just feel
like it. Also, it's so far disconnected from the pulpy

(35:22):
action feel of the first two films, in particular, the
third one I enjoy a lot, but I don't think
it's nearly as pulpy as the first two movies are.
And then after that everything just gets further and further away,
and I don't like it. They also make a choice

(35:43):
in dial of Destiny that regard regarding a character who
appeared in a previous film that I thought was really upsetting.
A Okay, so there you go.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
That's unfortunate among the many. So usually when the Oscar
noms come out, there's like a couple movies that I
want to see. There's a bunch this year that I
didn't see that I want to see. Yeah, and I
just I haven't had the bandwidth to go to the
movie theater as much, unless it's like I took my
niece to see I went to go see The Marvels

(36:22):
with my niece, right, But one of the ones that
I really wanted to see that everybody I know who's
seen it has loved is Godzilla Minus one, which is nominated,
and it's the first Oscar nomination for Godzilla in the
seventy years of Godzilla.

Speaker 2 (36:42):
Yeah. Now, my question is if Godzilla wins the Academy Award.
Are they going to have the guts to plague that
monster off stage? If Godzilla takes longer than thirty seconds
to thank everybody, I.

Speaker 1 (36:54):
Mean probably, I bet he's I bet he she. I don't.
I don't know in Godzilla minus one whether Godzilla is
a he or she, But I bet Godzilla. I bet
Godzilla is more like actually temperamented like Godzuki.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
Yeah, and we should say that this nomination is in
the field of visual effects, and it's also it's also
good to note that Godzilla minus one had a budget
of around ten to fifteen million dollars, which I would
argue should send a message to all those Hollywood big
budget films that spending two hundred million dollars to make

(37:32):
your movie look like it was a PlayStation three game
is not necessarily the best use of money.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
Yeah. We we already knew that it was possible to
make a really great visually effective movie special effects and
VFX on a short budget because we had just strict
nine right that. Yeah, what's phenomenally done.

Speaker 2 (37:50):
Yeah, if you, if you, if you, if you use
great cinematography, amazing lighting, and great practical effects, you can
make a really really great movie, and then like you know,
you can still use visual effects when you need it,
but like that combination, like if you just get the
right people together and you're paying them properly, you can

(38:11):
make a really effective film, great visual storytelling, and it
doesn't look like garbage, like like someone playing a video game.
And I really wish more movies would take that into consideration,
because I'm so tired of going in and when it
comes to a big action scene, I just check out
because it doesn't look real at all anymore.

Speaker 1 (38:34):
Yeah, I agree. We will link to an article about
this on our website. I will get it up this weekend.
The article we're linking to is on Vulture, and I
love how they ended their article, which is When reached
for comment about this, honor Godzilla said scree on.

Speaker 2 (38:53):
Yes, I thought that was great too. That actually did
make me laugh when I got to that point, because
I didn't expect it.

Speaker 1 (38:59):
Yeah, so you don't like you don't like awards, Jonathan,
No idea, you like not even the Razzies.

Speaker 2 (39:07):
Especially not the Razzies. Actually same yeah, same, same, because
like no one sets out all right, I won't let
me not use the absolutes.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
Shark Nado.

Speaker 2 (39:20):
That's different. That was a film made by committee. It
was a total like cynical approach to filmmaking. But like
when you're actually trying to make a movie, ninety nine
percent of the time, you're not setting out to make
a bad movie. You're not setting out to make something
that is poorly made or poorly executed. That's not your goal.
You want to make something that is going to entertain people.

(39:42):
And I think holding stuff up for ridicule when it
doesn't deserve it really is just really crass and tacky.
So I don't I don't love the Razzies. Now, occasionally
the Razzies are there to hold up those instances where
maybe it's because of like studio interference, where this is

(40:05):
to say, hey, studios, stop messing with people when they're
making their movie because you're just making it worse and
you're hurting yourself down the line, or it's to call
out really bad behavior, right like if a director or
an actor or somebody is truly a bad person, Like
I don't, I think those need to be called out.

(40:26):
And if it's in the form of a razzie where
you're like still getting the message home, but you're doing
it in a way that's kind of entertaining. I guess
it's okay, but just to make fun of films, even
if they are quote unquote bad ones, I just don't
find that particularly cool or entertaining. I will say. In

(40:48):
the list of Razzies, just like with the Oscars, I
have seen precisely two of the movies that are among
all the different nominations.

Speaker 1 (40:57):
Which two have you seen? Well?

Speaker 2 (40:59):
Well, first of all, I mean list off what the
Worst Picture nominations are, just so folks know what movies
were warranted as the worst according to the Razzies. And
there was like almost twelve hundred people who voted on this.
So the Exorcist Believer expend Deforables, also expendables, four Meg

(41:20):
to the Trench, Shazam, Fury of the Gods, and Winnie
the Pooh, Blood and Honey. I haven't seen any of those,
so none of the ones that were nominated for Worst
Picture are among the ones I've seen.

Speaker 1 (41:34):
I feel like, in the spirit in which it seems
like Winnie the Pooh, Blood and Honey was created, that
one deserves a spot.

Speaker 2 (41:42):
Yeah, that feels like that's almost like a Sharknado thing, right,
Like it was clearly made because there was the opportunity
to take advantage of this ip. There was never an
intent to actually create anything of value beyond exploiting an IP.
So I agree with you that deserves its place. So
the two that I have seen is ant Man in

(42:03):
the Wasp, Quantum Mania. That one I saw I think
on a plane like, I didn't see it at the theater,
and the other one is Indiana Jones and The Dumb
of Destiny.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
I've seen one one of these movies, and it was
it was. It was Quantum Mania, which I it wasn't like.
I wouldn't say it was a great movie. It certainly
wasn't at the top of I've talked about on the show.
It wasn't at the top of the marvels by any means.
But it was enjoyable popcorn movie. They did a couple
of things that I enjoyed.

Speaker 2 (42:38):
I didn't. I did not find that much entertainment in it.
I would put it above The Eternals, which is the
worst one I've seen. I have not seen all the
MCU movies. There are a couple that I still haven't seen,
but The Eternals is probably the bottom of the barrel.

Speaker 1 (42:56):
For me. And then I feel like things like make Too,
like that is a comedy, it's supposed it's not supposed
to be great cinema. It's supposed to be fun. I
feel like that one's not made by committee like Shark Nato,
but it is supposed to be tongue in cheek, So
I feel like, And my friends who enjoyed Meg one
really enjoyed the Meg two. So I feel like sometimes

(43:18):
it's it's it's weird to put a movie in that's
supposed to be funny and a little bit cheesy and
does it well?

Speaker 2 (43:26):
Yeah, I mean, it does it well is the important part, right,
Because like the Sharknado movies argue that that's what they are,
but I've seen Sharknado. That is not what Sharknado is
because Sharknado is not effectively funny. It's just bad.

Speaker 1 (43:43):
Yeah. And then and then some like you said, like
nominating actors and actresses as like the worst. These are
good actors and actresses. It's oftentimes not their fault if
their character falls flat.

Speaker 2 (43:57):
Yeah, could be the director, could be the editor. I mean,
there's lots of things that go into shaping a performance. Actually,
same thing you could argue for a great performance, right
like sometimes yeah, sometimes saying like best Actor and Actress.
This is another reason why I don't like awards. It's
it's it's not really fully honest, because an actor's performance

(44:20):
is a collaborative effort. Obviously, the actor needs to put
forth a very strong foundation, but directing and editing goes
so far into shaping that performance that it really is
a collaboration.

Speaker 1 (44:36):
Yeah, yeah, which is why I understand why a lot
of times, like in things like Oscars, I would assume,
you know, we get a lot more of the less
sparkly movies as nomination because there's less to hide flaws behind, right, Yeah,
it's a more straightforward production. My husband actually shared something

(45:00):
about this, like about editing, so he saw a clip
on social media about the Usual Suspects. I don't know
if you've seen this clip, but in the Usual Suspect
there's a lineup scene where everybody's supposed to say, hey,
give me your keys, and then they use a derogatory term,
which is not like impossible to say on our show,

(45:21):
but we try to keep it a little bit cleaner
than that, and in this lineup, when you watch it,
when you watch it in the movie, it's like a
game of make a different choice, right. Everybody says the
line a different way, and it's hilarious. Apparently, when they
were filming, they were all supposed to be nonplussed with
the police and deadpan, and they couldn't get their stuff together.

(45:44):
They kept cracking up and laughing, and at the end
of the day, the director's like, you guys aren't giving
me anything to work with, and that that made them
crack up even harder. So at the end of the
day they hadn't hit what the director wanted and he's like, fine,
we're done. We will figure it out, and it's a
brilliant scene.

Speaker 2 (45:59):
Yeah, that's all editing. The other part of that story
is that supposedly Benicio del Toro was breaking whend the
entire time. Yeah, that's and that's what was starting to
crack people up. Yeah, because I've seen I've seen various
actors talk about that scene and what was going on,
and about how the director was like beside himself. He

(46:21):
was so frustrated that they had spent all day trying
to just get this one scene and they he felt
like they didn't have it, and it turned out to
be one of the most memorable sequences, and like, when
you're talking about a sequence that creates an ensemble, that
was the one.

Speaker 1 (46:40):
Yeah, and I like the performances were great, but it
was also a lot of editing. You wouldn't have known
that it wasn't on purpose.

Speaker 2 (46:47):
Yeah, yeah, you would have thought that that was exactly
how it was supposed to be. So that was, again,
again a show about how all of these different components
come together. Well, moving on, let's talk about some of
the stuff we have this This lineup's not quite as
organized as we usually do, but we've got some fun
stuff in the first up is the full trailer for

(47:09):
the Netflix series the live action remake of Avatar the
Last Airbender.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
Yeah, it looks pretty accurate to Avatar the Last Airbender.

Speaker 2 (47:20):
The effects look a billion times better than the M
Night Shyamalan version.

Speaker 1 (47:27):
My friends when the trailer dropped her like, oh man,
this fixes all the ills of the M Night Shyamalan one.
And I was like, I know, I watched it, and
I know I didn't like it, But could I tell
you anything I didn't like about the movie?

Speaker 2 (47:39):
Now? Yeah, I know that, I know, so I didn't
see that one. My wife did because she is a
huge fan of the of the animated series. I think
if I were to show her this trailer, she would
be far more enthusiastic about this adaptation because it does
look like it is much more true to the original series.

(48:02):
And like I said, like it just looks like it's
better made, not necessarily more expensive, although maybe it was.
Like it's a series, none of film, so obviously you
can't break it down. It's not apples to apples, but
it just looks like it it was made with more
reverence for the source material, and I'm glad that it

(48:26):
doesn't feel like they've tried to make it grittier or edgier. Right,
this feels like this is something like if I were
if I were ten years old, I would be so
on board. I would be excited about when this show launches.

Speaker 1 (48:43):
Yeah, yeah, same, I will say. I had a friend say,
don't get too excited because they're going to cancel it
after one season because a bunch of stuff that that
friend enjoys watching has been canceled off with Netflix, and
part of it is you know, cost versus intake, So

(49:04):
you know, if you like it, make sure you watch
it and make sure you finish it. I know I'm
notorious for watching a series and then getting distracted in
the last couple of episodes, but that really does play
into whether they keep a show for multiple seasons, is
whether people finish the season and whether they finish it
in a reasonably timely manner, probably like within the month
of it coming out. I don't know for sure, but

(49:26):
I think I think we've talked about that. I think
that was reported recently.

Speaker 2 (49:31):
So, And there's also like, obviously if it if it
turns out that you don't like it because of whatever reason,
then that's legit. Like there's no shame for not liking something.
Like I know a lot of people who really really
wanted to love the Cowboy Bebop live action remake and
then just felt that it wasn't what they were hoping for,

(49:52):
and as much as they loved the visuals and the
music and everything, they did not connect with the series.
So when that was not not, you know, renewed for
another season, they were like, it's a shame, but it
wasn't what I wanted, So I'm not broken up about it.

Speaker 1 (50:10):
Yeah, yeah, I'm not saying to watch it if you
don't enjoy it, but if you do enjoy it and
you want a second season, make sure you finish the
first season. Yes, it's gonna hurt the metrics and and
like some of that is like how much it costs
to make the show. But like One Piece got a
second season and that has a lot of special effects too.
So yeah, so Stranger Things has a lot of special

(50:31):
effects too. So it's not just because it's an expensive
show to make.

Speaker 2 (50:34):
Wait what I could have sworn the demo? Gorgon lived
right down the street from me.

Speaker 1 (50:38):
I mean they did film it in Georgia, but yeah,
it's true. Maybe do you hate one of your neighbors
that much?

Speaker 2 (50:45):
Do I hate one about one?

Speaker 1 (50:48):
Oh no, hey, let's move on.

Speaker 2 (50:50):
Erry, I live near a hippie commune. Okay, so.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
Don't. I don't want to get you all stressed.

Speaker 2 (50:58):
There's a drum circle that meets regularly in my neighborhood.

Speaker 1 (51:03):
Oh goodness, sorry.

Speaker 2 (51:05):
No, no, those actually the hippies are all They're all fine.
It's the it's all the townies over at the Pullman
train yard that drive me nuts anyway, because the man
I still don't know what pickleball is, but I refuse
to learn anyway.

Speaker 1 (51:21):
It's like Badminton.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
Something I don't think I'm ever gonna bother learning. The
day I learn, I'm gonna be sad because it probably
means I'm gonna play it. But next up, So it's
twenty twenty four in case you didn't know, some days
I don't. And part of what happened in twenty twenty
four is Steamboat Willie. The original Mickey Mouse cartoon finally

(51:49):
went into the public domain because it's copyright finally expired. Now,
to be clear, Mickey Mouse is not in the public
domain Steamboat Willie, So the Steamboat Willie version of Mickey
Mouse is in public domain, but any other version of
Mickey Mouse is still under copyright. So it's kind of

(52:09):
like a rolling copyright for Mickey Mouse as different eras
come up than hill in her public domain. But obviously,
just like with Winnie the Pooh, the fact that there
was the opportunity to take advantage of this ip that
is now in the public domain meant that it was
only a matter of time and not a long one
before someone did it. And thus we have a teaser

(52:33):
for the return of Steamboat Willie, which is a movie, right, yeah,
and it's made in the unreal engine, so it's a
computer generated film, and the trailer gives you no information
whatsoever other than the fact that this is a horror
take on Steamboat Willie and that's it. Like there's literally

(52:56):
no other info about what the story could be, or
if there even is one.

Speaker 1 (53:03):
Yeah, the beginning of the trailer is very nice and pretty,
and I was like, oh, this is nice, and it
doesn't stay that way. I will say, the beginning of
the trailer looks almost realistic, and then the end of
the trailer looks very much like I've stepped into a
video game.

Speaker 2 (53:18):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (53:19):
Yeah, but there also have been a couple of video games,
and I can't remember offhand because it's not in our
show notes because it's older news that like as soon
as Steamboat Wally went into the public domain, they dropped
that character into their video game like they were just.

Speaker 2 (53:33):
Yeah, yeah, because I mean, well, I mean when you
think about iconic characters who have incredible value from an
IP perspective, and also the fact that a lot of
people look at the Walt Disney Company as a company
that has a chip on its shoulder, because that company,
more than any other, has been responsible for extending copyright

(53:55):
protection in the United States, Like they have lobbied so
hard to get copyright launch changed over and over again
that I think a lot of people are One, they're like,
I want to be able to tap into this incredibly
valuable character and exploit it so that I can make money.
And two, man, I really want to stick it to
Disney because they have worked so hard to make it

(54:17):
impossible to take advantage of created characters by making copyright
last so freaking long. So yeah, I get it, But
it doesn't mean that the stuff they make is good.
It doesn't mean that it's bad necessarily, but it's way
easier to make bad stuff than it is to make
good stuff.

Speaker 1 (54:38):
Yeah. Hey, speaking of bad we got a trailer for
the final season of The Bad Batch by Disney.

Speaker 2 (54:45):
Yeah, yep. I watched the trailer and I can't tell
you what the heck is. I haven't watched Bad Batch,
Like I haven't watched any of the Star Wars animated stuff,
so I haven't watched Clone Wars or any of that.
So I watched it and I was like, don't know
what's going on, don't know who these characters are, don't
know what the steaks are None of this matters to me.

Speaker 1 (55:05):
It sounds like Wanda Sykes was a voice in it. Yes,
that's what I can tell you.

Speaker 2 (55:11):
Apparently Wanda Sykes was piloting a ship at one point.

Speaker 1 (55:16):
Yeah. I haven't watched Bad Thatch. I've heard good things
about it. Yeah, I think what is it? Four seasons
now is a fine run. Yeah, three or four seasons
is a fine run for a cartoon. Not everything needs
to be forever years long. So yeah, if you like it.
That trailers out if you haven't seen it already. Next

(55:38):
trailer is for something I hadn't heard about it at all.
It's called Constellation. It's gonna be a series on Apple TV,
and it's like a space thriller mind Vendor, and it
looks really fun. Yeah fun is that the right word?

Speaker 2 (55:53):
It looks it looks like it would be gripping and entertaining,
but in like that thrilling way. Yeah. I think of
it as like gravity mixed with Jordan peels Us right likes.
It starts with a woman who is aboard the space station.
There's a a catastrophic accident. She uses an ejection pod

(56:21):
escape pod essentially to get back to Earth. When she
gets back to Earth. She returns to her family, but
things are not the way she left them, and there's
a question of like, is there some sort of parallel
universe thing going on? Is this a multiverse kind of film?
We don't have any answers to any of this, but

(56:43):
obviously things are not the way she expects them to be,
and that's where the tension comes from.

Speaker 1 (56:51):
Yeah, because other characters notice it too. I'm interested in that.
I will probably watch it. Yeah, it doesn't look like gory,
so I'll probably watch its.

Speaker 2 (57:02):
Sense and Mike from Breaking Bad isn't any plays of
a scientist And I am excited to see that.

Speaker 1 (57:09):
Yes, me too, Me too. You know I love that actor.
I loved him in bucker U Bonsai. I loved him
in Breaking Bad and better call Saul.

Speaker 2 (57:17):
The fact that you called him out from Buckerup bonds
I impresses the heck out of me because he had
hair back then.

Speaker 1 (57:23):
Look, I watched Buckero Bonsi for some reason. Maybe it
was that like a bad movie night after I watched
Breaking Bad, so it was easier to recognize in that way.
And I watch every movie. I watch every movie in
that way of like where do I know them? From
and it's just it's a hard thing to turn off, sure,

(57:48):
because I like comparing performances, just like I like comparing
Anthony Ramos's performance in Transformers to his new performance in
Bob the Builder.

Speaker 2 (58:01):
The fact that you put this into our lineup, I
was like, I'm just gonna let Ariel talk about Bob
the Builder because I literally have no connection to this
material whatsoever. The fact that you used to work with
kids tells me that maybe you do, but I don't.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
Bob the Builder, Yeah, Bob the Builder is a show
for little kids. It's like a Nick Junior show, and
it's all about, you know, kids like construction. A lot
of kids like construction, so that's kind of what it's about.
And it teaches good values. And they're making a movie
about it. Jennifer Lopez's company is producing it, and Anthony
Ramos is like the main voice. And it's a story

(58:39):
about Bob the Builder goes to Puerto Rico. It starts building,
but then it has like some bad effects and so
he learns a lot more about the country he's in
and how to how to build and make things better.
So I think it'll it sounds like it'll be a
really good story in being like ecologically and locationally aware.

(59:00):
This is not the right terms, but that's what came.

Speaker 2 (59:02):
To my brain. Yeah, regionally sensitive.

Speaker 1 (59:05):
Maybe that's correct. That's that's it, Jonathan. You are as
always much smarter than I.

Speaker 2 (59:12):
It's because I didn't waste my time watching Bob the Builder.

Speaker 1 (59:16):
Look, the amount of things that I have watched passively
while making coloring pages for my students is a lot.

Speaker 2 (59:30):
Yeah, I mean, listen, No, I don't actually have any
gripe against Bob the Builder. I don't think that Bob
the Builder is bad or anything like that. And I
like things that have messages and can help teach values
and concepts to kids. I like all of that. So
as much as I'm joking about Bob the Builder, it's
literally only because I'm too old for it to be

(59:53):
relevant to me in any way. And so that's kind
of why I just stayed out of it, because it's
like I don't have so I never watch it. It
was not a thing when I was a kid because
television had only just been invented. So you know, you're
not that old, Jonathan.

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
Television was invented way before you were born. It's true,
way before you were born.

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
Well, here's the thing though, here's the thing about Bob
the Builder is that I would love I would love
to see the connective tissue between Bob the Builder and
our next story, which is the remake, the remake of
the classic action movie Roadhouse. And if Bob the Builder

(01:00:43):
showed up in Roadhouse, I would watch all of Bob
the Builder.

Speaker 1 (01:00:47):
Maybe Bob, Maybe Bob the Builder built the Roadhouse.

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
That's possible. Yeah. So so for those who somehow are cultural,
culturally ignorant of the masterpiece that is Roadhouse. It was
a Patrick Swayze vehicle rough the nineties where we learned
that pain don't hurt. That was the valuable lesson of Roadhouse. Yeah,

(01:01:14):
where Patrick swayzey plays a stoic man's man of a
bouncer for a really rough and reality bar and then
gets embroiled in local politics slash business dealings with that
involve a corrupt business owner and hilarity ensues and it's y'all,

(01:01:37):
it's terrible. Roadhouse is a bad movie. It is schlocky.
It's entertaining, especially if you like action movies and people
slug in each other, but it's not good.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
No, However, the new trailer. The trailer for the new
Roadhouse looks kind of good.

Speaker 2 (01:01:54):
Yeah, no, I agree. I watched this trailer and I
was like, this is the way remakes should happen, right, Like,
if you're going to remake a movie, remake it where
it's different enough, where you have an opportunity to tell
the story in a really good way, potentially in a
way that's even more effective than the original. And I
haven't seen the film, but based upon the trailer, it

(01:02:17):
feels like that's the direction they win in, and I
sure hope they achieved it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:22):
Yeah. Jake Jillenhall is a UFC fighter who gets into
some fights and then gets like conscripted to help at
a roadhouse that's been having some like bad clientele in Miami.

Speaker 2 (01:02:40):
So actually I think it's the Keys. I think it's
in the Keys, not in.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
Miamis, Okay, yes, in the Florida Keys. So you know,
a slight a similar story. Who knows if it's like
I can't tell if it's similar enough to be called Roadhouse.

Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
I think it is. I mean, like it's the same
basic plot because again there's like a local businessman who's
it's like, you're what's crazy is that this is a
plot from the nineteen eighties, y'all. The plot from the
nineteen eighties is business big wig wants to have some
property owned by a scrappy small business owner. That's the

(01:03:21):
business big wig who's the main bad guy. That's their goal,
and they will stop at nothing to get hold of
that property. This is the basis of like endless nineteen
eighties action in comedy films, Like there's like Ski Lodge movies.
There are one Crazy Summer has this plot, Like there's

(01:03:43):
endless plots that fall where evil developer wants land.

Speaker 1 (01:03:50):
I'm pretty sure the plot goes even further back than that.
I just can't name any movies, but.

Speaker 2 (01:03:54):
It's just it's funny to me to see a movie
in the year of our Barbie four where it's that
plot brought back, and I'm like, is this because Generation
X is now reaching into their elderly years? Like, maybe
that's why this is happening. Not that I'm complaining, I'm

(01:04:17):
just asking questions.

Speaker 1 (01:04:19):
Because retro things are popular again. So no, it's the
gen Z who discovered roadhouse, but only through tiktoks and memes.

Speaker 2 (01:04:28):
Yeah, well, I'm surprised that they're able to watch anything
longer than a minute and a half. That's an old
man apparently Dutch alfa. But yeah, I watched this trailer
and I was determined to think like, oh, this is
gonna be terrible or whatever, But y'all, it kind of
looks like a fun like not a not again, not

(01:04:49):
a heavy one, not a not a thoughtful movie, but
like a fun action film, like when you have one
of the guys get his butt kicked by the good
guy to the point where his arm is broken. But
then he's like the rest of the trailer, he's like,
he seems like a pretty good guy, Like he's guys
arm in a cast and he's talking about the bouncer.

(01:05:11):
He's like, yeah, he seems like he's really got it together. Like, Okay,
I kind of need to see this.

Speaker 1 (01:05:17):
Yeah, it looks like there's a good amount of like
humor and lightheartedness in it. Yeah, which is my favorite, Like,
that's my sweet spot for Jake Gillenhall movies is anything
where he gets to be funny, even a little funny,
to a lot of funny, like the Lunch Bunch Gang,
Lunch Set whatever. He's hilarious in that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:37):
Well, he's great in in his behind the scenes interviews
and stuff too, like when he was doing press for
a Spider Man like his interviews along with Tom Holland
were some of the some of the most entertaining that
were out that year.

Speaker 1 (01:05:53):
Yeah, yeah, I agree, I really enjoyed his I didn't
watch a whole lot of his interviews, but I did
see the Hot Ones one and that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:59):
Was something less delightful. Yes, involves layoffs. So Microsoft finally
was able to secure its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which
was something that took more than a year to complete.
But in the wake of that, it's not like it's

(01:06:22):
necessarily a surprise, because usually when you have big acquisitions,
you get a round of layoffs that follow as the
two organizations start to determine where there might be overlap.
But that's what we're starting to see, both on Microsoft
side and on Blizzard side. Now we specifically have a
story about Blizzard, but Microsoft likewise is doing layoffs in

(01:06:43):
their Xbox division in order to consolidate these two groups.
But yeah, we have a story here about Blizzard not
just laying off some folks, but also canceling games.

Speaker 1 (01:06:57):
Yeah, there was an untitled survival game. It was code
named Odyssey that they had been working on for quite
a while. Apparently like it had development issues. They had
changed to an internal engine that made it more difficult
to develop, and like there's even rumors that it was
really just a vehicle to get new developers in, like
it was a recruitment tool. But it had positive reviews

(01:07:21):
from everybody who was able to kind of like poke
around in it. So it's it's sad that it's not happening,
and probably sadder for the people who came on board
to work on the project and then either had that
project canceled or got fired.

Speaker 2 (01:07:34):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, obviously getting fired would be the
saddest of the various outcomes, because you know, hopefully if
they were not let go, then they can be pourted
over to another project, maybe one that they can have
some ownership of or at least feel like they've contributed
to and create something really great. We have been in

(01:07:57):
a kind of a beauty full time for games in general,
and that a lot of really really good games have
come out over the last year or so. There have
been a few clunkers too. Not everything has been perfect,
But my hope is that we see that continue on

(01:08:18):
throughout twenty twenty four and beyond, and that I hope
this acquisition, this merger will lead to some really great
creativity as the teams merge together. You always want, you
always want for the best, and you want any negative
impact to be as small as possible.

Speaker 1 (01:08:39):
Yeah, yeah, I will. I will fully admit that I
haven't been following video games this past year, but apparently
I should.

Speaker 2 (01:08:46):
Balder's Gate three areel You Gotta, You Gotta. I.

Speaker 1 (01:08:51):
I ask for that for Christmas, and my loving husband
was going to get it for me, but we have
to figure out which game console we want to upgrade
for me to play it, because I'll probably want to
play it my lat my gaming lot. My gaming computer
is also not it's old. Yeah, so I have to
upgrade one of my devices that I can play Boulder

(01:09:12):
Skate three you on because it doesn't play on the
one and it doesn't play on the PS four.

Speaker 2 (01:09:15):
Yeah. I don't know if I would want to play
it on console, because I mean, but I haven't used
the user interface for console. I'm very used to the
computer one and that to me works really well. But
the the character creation, the story, I haven't even like
I've been playing that game so slowly because it's so

(01:09:35):
good that I don't want it to be over.

Speaker 1 (01:09:39):
I'm like, I'm sure, and we are. We are going
to upgrade our systems. It's just like there haven't we
haven't had a lot of time to game in my
house in the past couple of years. And there also
haven't been a huge amount of games that like have
super appealed to us. My husband's getting back into it
now because we're remembering, hey, this is a good way

(01:09:59):
to like be active in your downtime, like mentally active. Yeah,
as opposed to just sitting watching the television.

Speaker 2 (01:10:07):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:10:07):
I've started playing Skyrim again on the Xbox three sixty
that we have upstairs. That's no longer supported, but it's upstairs,
so and that's fun because I got Skyrim at a
time where I hadn't played a lot of console games,
and so an open sandbox world was really difficult for me.
I'll say the interface is still a little difficult because
there's not like a good way to find all of

(01:10:30):
your quests once you're given them, other than just explore
this giant city. But it's fun. But yeah, I do
want to play Boulder Skate three that is on my list.
There are a couple other ones too. Tony just finished
up Data of War two and that was a lot
of fun.

Speaker 2 (01:10:48):
So yeah, I want to say the gosh, what was
it called. It's not it's it's the I'm like, I'm looking.
I'm looking it up now to see if I can
find it, but like it's whatever. The Kuza series has
changed it's name too, Like the latest one just came
out that everything I hear about that sounds like it's

(01:11:08):
an absolute blast to play, and that's the one that
I want to tackle next. Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth,
that's the name of the game. I want to play
that when it's apparently you play a real dufis who
goes from Japan to Hawaii and it has all sorts

(01:11:31):
of really silly mini games and stuff, and everything I've
seen about it just makes it look really appealing. So
that's like, after Balder's Gate, that's probably the next one
I want to tackle. Anyway. All that aside, our hearts
go out to all the people who have been affected
by the layoffs over at Microsoft and Blizzard, and I
hope that they are able to find gainful employment at

(01:11:54):
o their studios really soon.

Speaker 1 (01:11:56):
All right, the next thing, this is going to be
really quick, but I just wanted to because we talked
about Priorly, there were talks about how to Train Your
Dragon Live action movie being in development and the struggles
about making those dragons look real between you know, digital

(01:12:17):
effects and practical effects and creature technology. On TikTok released
some videos of them making like these animatronic versions of
the dragons from How to Train Your Dragon, And now
I'm completely on board with How to Train Your Dragon
Live action movie, Like, does the story need to be
retold in live action? No, but I think visually it
can be done.

Speaker 2 (01:12:37):
Yeah. The TikTok's very impressive, especially when you realize that
that footage is like a decade old. They made those
for a stage show, a traveling stage show, for like
a decade ago, and the animatronics are enormous. Many of
them are capable of moving across vast distances of stages,

(01:13:02):
like they're not just stationary. I'm used to seeing animatronics
that are rooted in place, right like, they don't they
don't move, so you have to work around that. Well,
these a lot of them have the capability of moving
like across an entire stage and they're huge and beautifully designed.
Yeah that TikTok it's real short, but it's incredibly impressive

(01:13:24):
and it'll be in our show notes.

Speaker 1 (01:13:27):
Yeah, they do a lot of stuff that's incredibly impressive. Okay,
we get a few more stories. We got to kind
of rush through them at this point because I am
running out of time. The next is that Disney has
introduced their new hollow tile floor, which everybody's like it's
the closest thing to the Hollow deck and I was like, oh, great,
like images projected, but no, it's a really cool floor

(01:13:48):
that we'll do everything it can to bring you back
to a certain spot on the floor no matter where
you move.

Speaker 2 (01:13:56):
Yeah. The idea being that the floor is made up
of these hexagonal tiles. Each one is essentially an omnidirectional treadmill.
And imagine that you're standing in the center of a
room and you take a step forward, and take another
step forward, and take another step forward, but you're not
actually moving forward with regard to the rest of the room.
You could use this in something like virtual reality settings

(01:14:18):
where you've got a headset on and so you can
feel like you're actually moving through a virtual space. But
you can also use it to move objects around on
the floor, Like you could put a solid object on
one part of the floor and have it through these tiles,
zoom across, or change directions. Like they said, you could
use it in like a Star Wars type of feature

(01:14:41):
where you're using the force and you're moving your hand around,
and by moving your hand around, you're guiding an object
to move around the physical space, which does sound really cool.
So they've got a lot of ideas of uses beyond
virtual reality to things like stagecraft and stuff. It's really neat.
I would love to learn more about how it works,

(01:15:01):
but really they just showed it off while they were
inducting a Disney imagineer into the Inventor Hall of Fame,
which was pretty awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:15:11):
Yeah. Also, I feel like watching that person walk on
it and then like you can have multiple people on
the floor at the same time. The way that I walk,
I would get to the end of the room before
it could bring me back to the center.

Speaker 2 (01:15:23):
Yeah. It's clearly still in a prototype phase right, Like,
it's not designed. It's not designed yet to be able
to handle person walking at a real stride at a
real pace, so it's like everyone's doing like you can
either think of it as toddler steps or old person
steps where you're going pretty slow and making pretty short
steps in order for it to compensate. But that makes

(01:15:46):
sense because it's new technology, and plus it's I'm sure
it's going to be super challenging to make it so
that you could walk at a regular pace or even
maybe run without potentially catapulting the person across the room
and slamming them into a wall.

Speaker 1 (01:16:03):
Yeah, yeah, it's very cool. We'll also have a link
to that article and video in our show notes at
largener john collider dot com. We have two more quick trailers,
and the first one is a Dev Patel and Jordan
Peel collaboration called monkey Man. At first I was confused.

(01:16:28):
I thought it was another season of Hit Monkey. It
is not at all.

Speaker 2 (01:16:32):
Yeah. Yeah, this is like a revenge action film where
you've got like the beaten down, downtrodden character who's trying
his best to right wrongs. And it's an action film,
a fighting film, And y'all, the trailer looks real good
if you like action movies, Like, if you like fighting films,

(01:16:53):
I think this looks like pretty pretty spectacular.

Speaker 1 (01:16:59):
It's like if they cast Dev Batel as John Wick
but then put him into like a UFC movie.

Speaker 2 (01:17:06):
Yeah, yeah, I think this one looks really entertaining. I
definitely want to check it out. And then our final one,
of course, I couldn't let it go. I couldn't. I
could not do this. No, I couldn't.

Speaker 1 (01:17:19):
I said, I wasn't going to demonish you. But you
could have let it go. You could have put this
anywhere else in the lineup and ended on a happy
monkey Man.

Speaker 2 (01:17:26):
Listen, listen, skeptic monkey Man will make you believe. If
you know what that reference is, make sure you shout
out to us, because if you know what monkey Man
will Make You Believe comes from, I'm really impressed. But
our last trailer is for of course, as his tradition
on large NERD drunk Collider, a horror movie tradition I established,

(01:17:49):
and it's called stop I Love You.

Speaker 1 (01:17:53):
I hate this. Yes, it's The opening scene is a
woman laying in bed and it looks like she can't move,
so it looks like it's sleep paralysis, which I get.
And it's really disturbing because then a little creature comes
in to mess with her and I hate it. I
hate it so much.

Speaker 2 (01:18:09):
Yeah. So the trailer shows that the main one of
the at least one of the main characters, is a
woman who makes stop motion animated features and the figure
she makes are pretty grotesque, and she's working on a project.
And then this little girl comes in and decides that
she thinks the story that the woman's trying to tell

(01:18:31):
is boring and tells her a terrible, horrifying, scary horror story.
And then the puppets seem to be having a mind
of their own. But is it in her mind? Is
it really happening? Is it supernatural? Who knows? But it's creepy.

Speaker 1 (01:18:48):
It's creepy. Why is her daughter so creepy?

Speaker 2 (01:18:51):
Is that her daughter? I just thought it was a
little girl.

Speaker 1 (01:18:54):
I assumed it was her daughter. But it could be
just a little girl. It could be the little girl
in the story that she tells, although they don't look alike. Yeah,
this passes my threshold of horror that I'm comfortable with.
But if you like it, enjoy the movie.

Speaker 2 (01:19:11):
No, this, this looks this looks really interesting to me,
Like it intrigues me. My worry is that it's going
to be one of those things where the trailer makes
it seem like it's one kind of movie, and then
when you see the film, it's a different kind. Not
that the different kind is necessarily worse or anything, but
sometimes that feels like, Oh, you didn't know how to
market this movie, so you ended up creating a trailer

(01:19:34):
that's misleading. Hopefully that's not the case here, because I
think the story they seem to be hinting at in
the trailer is one I want to hear.

Speaker 1 (01:19:45):
Cool. You'll have to You'll have to let us know
what you think when you watch it.

Speaker 2 (01:19:50):
Will I'm not, I'm not.

Speaker 1 (01:19:54):
I know better that one? That one I know better.
There are certain things that I'm told Ariel do not.
That's one of them. That night swim. Well, that brings
us to the end of our very long show. We
will try to make our shows a little bit more
personal sized pizzas in the future, but we just had

(01:20:16):
so much to catch up on. Thank you for all
of your patients in our hiatus and for listening. And Jonathan,
if they want to talk to us about any of
the myriad of things that we've discussed today, how can
they reach out.

Speaker 2 (01:20:31):
Well, you're going to make your way down to the
local hospital, and when you get there, you're going to
go into the actual gift shop of the hospital. And
when you walk into there, you're going to see lots
of just weird stuff that you just wouldn't associate as
a gift shop. I mean, they're going to have things
like flowers and stuff like that, but you're gonna see

(01:20:53):
like aprons. Who needs an apron when you're in the hospital,
But you're going to walk up to those aprons, and
when you look behind the third apron hanging from there,
you're going to see a weird little Christmas ornament and
it's going to be the figure of a badly burned doll.
And this badly burned doll is going to slowly turn

(01:21:13):
its head and look at you. And when you look
into its eyes, you're going to feel yourself as if
you're falling forward, toppling head over heels, falling into a
deep void that exists behind this doll's lifeless eyes, and
you'll hear the sound around you kind of become muffled
and dull, like something heavy is sitting on either of

(01:21:37):
your ears, and you'll start to feel like it's hard
to breathe, like the air has grown really thick and humid,
And just as you're starting to panic, as you can
feel your heart beating so fast it's going to burst
out of your chest, You're going to fall through a
sheet of ice, and on the other side of it,

(01:21:58):
you will be in a featureless world standing there, and
in front of you will be me, and I'll be
trying to take these frickin' EKG stickers off my chest
and I'll be screaming a lot because it's pulling all
the hair off my body. And I'll say, yeah, what
do you want? And you can ask me your question.

Speaker 1 (01:22:18):
Just use baby oil. That's what they use on television
to get tape off of hairy bodies. Yeah. If if
you need a different way to reach us, I don't
even I don't even know. If you just need a
different way to reach us, you can reach out to
us on social media. Let's see if I can remember these.
On Twitter, we are llenc underscore podcast, yes I know

(01:22:40):
it's called x now. And on threads and Instagram and
Facebook we are a large neur drunk collider. Uh, And
then also on Discord we're a large neur drunk collider.
The invitations on our website www. Dot Larger drunk Collider
dot com should still be active if you want to
join the discord and talk about the things that you

(01:23:01):
watch and enjoy and get conversations going. We've had a
couple about like Doctor Who and some other stuff and
if you want to email us, we are a large
nerdron pod at gmail dot com. And I think that's it.
We do have a blue sky, but I'm really not
on there, so until next time. Yes, that's what goes next.

(01:23:26):
I have been Aerial, Rusty Dusty.

Speaker 2 (01:23:29):
Cast In, and I have been Jonathan. I gotta go
oil a baby. Strickland. The Large Nerdron Collider was created
by Aeriel Caston and produced, edited, published, deleted, undeleted, published again.

(01:23:54):
Curse That by Jonathan Strickland. Music by Kevin McLeod of
encomp teck dot com. Thanks, thanks,