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Episode 003 - We Read Stuff Too
55 Plays9 months ago
On this episode, we talk about some movies, TV, books, comics, and other stuff. Well, I guess we talk about a little of everything.
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Chapters
00:00:00 Nonsense
00:02:00 Intro
00:04:00 News
00:19:07 What We're Watching
00:49:32 Books & Comics
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Where Eagles Dare' and its iconic line
00:00:00
Speaker
broadsword calling Danny boy, broadsword calling Danny boy over. Can you hear me? Is that like one of the, is that one of those things that you say to like loosen up your speech before you go on air? It's a little bit like that. It's, it's an old, it's an old Richard Burton film. Uh, it was, um, where eagles dare.
00:00:26
Speaker
I think it was where it was today. What year did that come out and were you alive when it came out? No, I wasn't alive when it came out. I don't think so anyway. It was where Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood had to scale, had to disguise themselves as German
00:00:48
Speaker
troopers during the Second World War and had to get up to a particular High place in the German Alps to do something and I can't remember what the story is or anything But the whole the whole point is that as Brits we used to admire as a generation Of my father's generation. Sorry these two admire Richard Burton who was very very serious actor at the time and his his
00:01:15
Speaker
His radio speak at the time was Broadsword, which was his code, his codename to Danny Boy. Danny Boy was communicating back to the UK. Broadsword, Danny Boy, over, over, and it was all very frightfully lovely. Anyway, sorry, let's start.
00:01:39
Speaker
I love every minute of it. I don't know if you caught that there was a subtle age joke in there, but then I immediately regretted it because I don't want to turn this into a, and Andy's old, Sean's too young, that weird dynamic. I don't want to start all that. It's before my time, dude. Give me some bloody respect, please. Anyway, all right.
Podcast introduction and hosts
00:02:03
Speaker
Welcome everybody to just showing episode
00:02:07
Speaker
three, I believe, three or four, depending on how you start it. My name is Sean Hoffman. I'm one of your hosts and across the pond for me is my good friend, Andy Bell. How are you doing today, buddy? It's been a while. Yeah, it's been another week. Yeah, I'm good. I'm good. Thank you, Sean. It's been another life and it's been another weekend in the dreary months of early months of the year, but
00:02:37
Speaker
Yeah, I'm good. Thank you. How are you? No complaints, except for I can't believe it's already February. One month down from this year is kind of just like I know I say I say this every year, but I'm just shocked at how fast it's going, which is kind of cool because that just means we're one day closer to celebration or and or season two. You never know. But it's been good. It's been good. I've been I've been staying busy and just
00:03:07
Speaker
bearing through the winter and all that, all that comes with it. Excellent. Yeah. I'm sure it's the same with you guys, but essentially the first three months of the year, you can write off and just get your head down and get on with it. And then all of a sudden the flowers start blooming and we can start enjoying
00:03:33
Speaker
um, warmer climbs and, uh, and enjoying the new stuff that's, uh, uh, coming our way, including time off. Always looking forward to time off. Love time off. Okay. It's a gift. It is. So
00:03:57
Speaker
Are we going into the normal format of what's top of mind this week and what news have you heard and what's switching your ears this week? Sean.
Impact of Carl Weathers' passing
00:04:14
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we can go with that. I mean, just looking at some of the things that have been newsworthy this week, I know that we've had the unfortunate passing of Carl Weathers, which is
00:04:25
Speaker
very sad, not just for his family and the fans and everybody involved.
00:04:32
Speaker
But it's a rough take for the Mandalorian and things like that. Not that that's the most important. I mean, I think it goes without saying, but it's very unfortunate. I know that we messaged offline and we're like, it's really difficult to have all of these losses within a franchise that I personally love. We lost Carrie, we lost...
00:04:56
Speaker
uh, bail at school. I'm drawing, drawing a blank on his name right now and Carl Weathers and stuff. But I mean, I don't have, I don't have a lot to say. It's just, it's, it's very sad to, to kind of have these kind of crop up and, and, and, and catch you off guard. But that's, that's probably the biggest one for me this week.
00:05:15
Speaker
Yeah, Carl's a kidney punch. It's a bit of pill to swallow. The guy was an all-rounder, an amazing all-rounder.
00:05:31
Speaker
I mean, Carl Weathers is Carl Weathers, played the most iconic roles in some many, many different franchises across Rocky, Arrested Development, and of course, Mandalorian, which is close to your and my heart. But it's sad when someone like that who is iconically Carl Weathers, I mean,
00:05:54
Speaker
Carl Weathers is Carl Weathers, passes like that because the guy is an icon and he is himself a meme. And it's very, very sad. And I'm sure he'll be sorely missed, not only with us fans, but also within the community over at Lucasfilm because from the sounds of it. I don't know if you saw the tribute that
00:06:21
Speaker
Mr. Filoni gave to him, but I mean, the guy was pretty iconic in the behind the scenes in the directorial role that he played as well. So yeah, it's gutting, but let's celebrate what he did give us in terms of his performance and his creativity and look at that as a positive for the future of the franchise.
00:06:47
Speaker
Absolutely. Any other news on your side of things that you can think of?
Excitement for 'Alien Romulus' and expanded franchises
00:06:52
Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot of noise about alien Romulus, this new prequel, or sorry, this new alien
00:07:07
Speaker
audition to the Alien franchise that's coming out and I believe it's set between the original Alien and Aliens obviously the former being the Ridley Scott production and the latter being the James Cameron production but there's something going on between there no idea what it's about I believe it's not it's related to but not associated with either productions but I'm really excited about that because
00:07:35
Speaker
One thing I didn't tell you about because it's been a long, long time since I've done it is I went through the Alien franchise recently and I went from top to bottom all the way through from the original Alien
00:07:47
Speaker
or if to the prequels or the recent prequels that Ridley produced recently and also the somewhat controversial should we say alien versus predator spin-offs that came from that which
00:08:06
Speaker
personally love and we'll go into that a little bit later on. I personally love because of the whole idea of mashing these two universes together as a concept I think is gloriously chaotic in all the right ways. Did it land particularly well? We'll talk about that later on but the point being is that I love that idea and I've watched the whole thing all the way through recently in the in the advent of this in the
00:08:38
Speaker
on the understanding that this alien Romulus series was coming out. And so I'm looking forward to it. I have no idea what the premise is. I've got no idea, but I do understand, like I said, that it is separate to the actual individual films, but we'll use connective tissue to be able to kind of add to the whole alien
00:09:03
Speaker
franchise pace which I really really love that kind of stuff because yes there are an awful lot of really good stuff obviously the originals but there's also a lot of good stuff that that are in the in the sequels and indeed the prequels that add to that kind of lore which actually like it may not be executed particularly well in certain circumstances but the whole premise around the idea of this biological um
00:09:34
Speaker
infestation as opposed to something that's relatively natural being the biggest threat to humankind going forward, which, of course, humans being humans are trying to pervert it to weaponize it, I think is really, really interesting. So I'm looking forward to that in particular. So I haven't heard anything about it yet, and I've always been lightly
00:10:03
Speaker
I've watched the movies, but I've never been in it. But similar to what we've talked about the last couple of weeks with Monarch and the Ghostbusters stuff, just even hearing about this, it's exciting because I'm all for fleshing out any of these universes, any of these franchises, even if they're not,
00:10:23
Speaker
You know, 10 out of 10, you know, critically like critics rave kind of content. Even if it's campy like that's that's awesome. I more content in these in these franchises in these in these universes to flush it out and like, especially when they don't take themselves too, too seriously.
00:10:44
Speaker
Like I'm not looking for hardcore canon, but just more content, building it up, flushing it out, pre-equals, sequels, stuff like that. That's really cool. And I'll definitely be watching it.
Streaming's impact on film accessibility
00:10:55
Speaker
Maybe not day one. I don't know where it's coming out, but it's exciting nonetheless. So it is a standalone film. Sorry, I should have done this again, the research before, but I think it's going to be set to land.
00:11:12
Speaker
on Disney Plus, the same way that Pray did. So again, so Predator is also, I mean, you know, they're kind of associated by the aforementioned mash that I was talking about.
00:11:28
Speaker
you know, Prey was this, the latest iteration of the Predator series, albeit it was kind of like a, I would say spin off, but a redefinement of the franchise for TV or as a TV film. And I thought it was absolutely fantastic. And I think it introduced a,
00:11:54
Speaker
a new breath of life into that into that franchise which was which was so so needed because it became it became this whole thing around big blockbuster after big blockbuster after big blockbuster and unfortunately the quality in my mind deteriorated over time because of lack of ideas and what they or lack of lack of purpose and what they did
00:12:22
Speaker
with prey was they took the concept of the predator back to the origins in that it's essentially a species that hunts challenging other species or challenging races that are a good fight to have with and
00:12:47
Speaker
The insinuation from Predator 2 with Danny Glover, I don't know if you remember it, was that they've been here for quite some time and they've been hunting humans as their prey or their trophies for quite a few years. Hence the reason why there was a pistol, an old flintlock pistol that was passed to Danny Glover at the end by the Predator King.
00:13:11
Speaker
And what I loved about prey was that it used the idea of history and introduced a really interesting, or sorry, a really, for me, compelling idea that, well, let's have a look back in time and look at when the predators were originally hunting their prey or looking at challenges.
00:13:39
Speaker
on earth, hence the hence the the setting in the 1800s whereby they were they were they were they were looking at the they were hunting indigenous indigenous Americans on
00:13:54
Speaker
as being the kind of fundamental crux or pivot of the whole story. And I hope that the same kind of thinking has gone into this idea of this kind of
00:14:09
Speaker
bridging film that looks to be bridging the two original films that will provide a little bit more context around it and I hope they approach it with the same kind of attitude as the same studio did with Prey because I thought what they did for the TV was brilliant and actually I would argue probably should have been released at the cinema but I'm so glad it wasn't released at the cinema because it meant that it was
00:14:39
Speaker
a lot more accessible to everyone and ended up being quite a delight to watch.
Prioritizing storytelling over special effects
00:14:45
Speaker
Well, especially with, like, I hate, I mean, I don't want to, it's kind of weird to phrase it this way, but when you say accessible on TV, it's like, yeah, I mean, I probably wouldn't have gone to see it if it was in movie theaters. Like, there was enough of a poll for me to go in and watch it in the theaters. But when I heard everybody talking about it and pulled it up at home on streaming,
00:15:07
Speaker
It's like, oh, this is awesome. Like, talk about Prey specifically. It's like, oh, that was actually really good that I can watch it on my own time. I'm not committed to taking the time to go to the movie theater, which I love. I'm a big movie theater person. But for the franchises that I know or the movies that I'm...
00:15:22
Speaker
More interested in seeing and I think that's one of those ones that it wouldn't have had it would have never had the the the acclaim or the The the viral fan base to kind of drive me to be interested to go see it but I'm glad so I'm glad it came out as streaming and I'm hoping that more More content is I don't want to say self-aware enough to make those kind of decisions, but
00:15:47
Speaker
you know smaller budget it could still be big budget but it doesn't have to be a big movie budget and then lose money and have all the critics pan it at the movie theaters like it's come out on streaming when you know and then now i'm more interested in a in the in the predator kind of prey franchise or even alien and stuff like that like they can it doesn't have to be this this thing that's looked down upon from movies like oh it went straight to right went to a series on streaming like no they can be symbiotic
00:16:13
Speaker
and help each other. Now I'm more invested in that and maybe would go see a movie in that franchise. Well, we talked about the power of good storytelling at least for the last two or three weeks. It's good storytelling without the flashbang wallop that you expect from an Avengers moment.
00:16:38
Speaker
in a Me Too kind of film, it's really, really important. And, you know, think about our reaction to Monarch, for example, which was, you know, we went in with low expectations. We were expecting some big monster movie, sorry, some monster battle moments. We didn't get it, but what we did get instead was a very, very low key, but really, really compelling character-driven story.
00:17:06
Speaker
And I hope that, and that's kind of what they did with Prey, despite the fact that the predator was very much there. But it was a really, really good, good story. And the fact that there, you know, there are these little cherries that they can take from that production. And I mean, I love the background of an awful lot of
00:17:29
Speaker
The fact that they used, you know, genuine Indigenous people to act as to take on the roles that they did and that it felt genuine and it felt, you know, really, really realistic and it was at the right time. They were, sorry, it felt like it was being filmed actually at the time that it was meant to be set. All that kind of stuff is for me, in my current mindset,
00:17:54
Speaker
around what I like and what I don't like is probably more important than the VFX or the SFX. It doesn't have to be so big blockbuster stuff as long as the story is fantastical because that's what I'm into. But most importantly, it's a really, really good story with really good characters. And for Prey in particular, I really, really enjoyed.
00:18:22
Speaker
Well, good story is what lasts and is what you remember, like what you take away. Like, yeah, cool special effects and stuff are neat in the moment or...
00:18:32
Speaker
a couple of days after watching it and you're like, oh, I mean, that part stood out, whatever. But the takeaway in the end is, is there a good story? Is it compelling? Is it, does it make you feel something? Um, so yeah, I like, I like the, the push and focus on character driven stories and, and, and, and deeper, deeper concepts even, um, that we're seeing in a lot of, a lot of these franchises.
Oscar-nominated film tradition and cultural enrichment
00:18:58
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, don't, you know, agree totally, totally. So my friend, what have you been doing for the last week? What have you been watching or what have you watched? What are you in the middle of? Let me know because I've got a bit of an update for you. It's quite a change from last week, but I'll let you go first.
00:19:20
Speaker
to my update is a lot more extensive than past weeks. And that's for a specific reason, if you'll indulge me a quick background story really quick. A couple of years ago, probably more than a couple, Madison and I discovered that AMC movie theaters here in the US
00:19:45
Speaker
when it comes to Oscar time, they will do a two weekend or a one weekend showcase where they will do back to back showings of all of the movies that are nominated for best picture. And so at that time, we thought it was a silly idea. So we went in and did a we did it over the course of two weekends, where they will play like four or five movies back to back.
00:20:10
Speaker
in a movie theater, you pay for one ticket and you get to go one Saturday, you set a movie theater for like four movies back to back and they give you like a lunch break in the middle so you can leave and come back and they give you a lanyard and all this other stupid stuff. But I mean, it was exhausting. It literally killed us and we kept doing it every year after that until we moved away from an AMC movie theater. But we tried to carry on that tradition, not the back to back part necessarily, but really kind of when the Oscar noms come out,
00:20:40
Speaker
trying to make sure we watch all of the the best picture nominees like right like kind of around the same time this this time period between when the nominations come out and before the Oscars just
00:20:52
Speaker
and just to, I don't know, culture and the sake of culture and the name of culture or whatever. And so we won't usually rewatch the ones that we've already seen. So like this year we've already seen Barbie together. But over the course of the last week, we've been knocking out a bunch of them. Last week you talked about Killers of the Flower Moon. We did watch that. I rewatched Oppenheimer. She watched it for the first time. I feel like we've,
00:21:18
Speaker
those have been discussed to hear and back on every on every podcast so I'm not going to dive too deep into those but some of the other ones that we watched were um the holdovers which is
00:21:31
Speaker
I don't need a deep dive. It was good. I enjoyed it. It was kind of that retro flick kind of budding relationships of like a grumpy old person and a kid and trying to like that kind of trope and how they get through it. It was okay. I enjoyed it. I don't think it's going to win. Don't want it to win. The other one we watched last night was Maestro with Carey Mulligan and
00:21:58
Speaker
Rocket from Guardians of the Galaxy Bradley Cooper areas. It felt like one of those like this, this is the uncultured person in me speaking. It felt very much like that. There's always seems to be one that's like a Hollywood nod, where it's like, oh, this was for the people in Hollywood and media. And it's like, this is honoring
00:22:19
Speaker
Uh, Bernstein and, uh, and things like that. Yeah, it's art. It's artsy. It's like, there's, it was, it was good, but there's elements or like, you just kind of sit back and go, I don't think I'm smart enough for this. Like, I don't, I don't know if this is hitting for me. It was good. The, the, the makeup and the prosthetics and just the, the Bradley Cooper acting in it were, were.
00:22:41
Speaker
phenomenal, but it didn't make me feel anything. And like, I, there's a common thread here, I don't know if you've picked up on it, it's like, I want movies that like make me feel something or make me think something. And it didn't really do it was an interesting biopic, I guess, in a ways, but the other the other one that I watched that was a total sleeper for me that I hadn't
00:23:02
Speaker
Hadn't heard anything about until I watched it. We just kind of went in blind because we don't we don't like Look them up on IMDB or anything ahead of time or like read the descriptions Like Madison doesn't do that for any movies ever which is insane to me But this one we just kind of press play and it's called past lives I'm we watched it probably three or four days ago and I'm still I'm still just kind of like in a state of like I cannot believe
00:23:29
Speaker
So the way that it made me feel and kind of like the sense memories that it brings back for me, there's not really spoiler. It's just, it is what it is. It's kind of like a childhood love story kind of thing of like friends and like an introspection into love and friendship and like distance and like meeting people and things like that. But it does it in a way that is real
00:24:00
Speaker
honest, brutal in some ways, and just the story, the acting, and just the real power in it is what it doesn't say and what it doesn't explain. You just see it and it gives you the space
00:24:20
Speaker
to kind of like remember how you were maybe when you were younger or maybe in your current state or wherever you are in your life and like what love and friendship and things like that mean to you. Like it gives you the time to kind of like feel it yourself without missing parts of the story. Like it's not fast paced and it is
00:24:39
Speaker
It's unlike anything I've probably ever watched that's like that. Like I'm not a big, like a rom-com kind of person, but it's not a comedy. It's just, here's a window into the lives of these people. I highly recommend it for everybody. Do I think it'll win? Probably not. Like it's up against some pretty heavy hitters, but I do think it's probably the one that's made me,
00:25:01
Speaker
feel the most and keep thinking of like, man, I've been there. I felt that way. I know, or like I could put myself in those shoes and like,
00:25:11
Speaker
It's not, it doesn't follow the, like you think it's gonna be trophy. Yeah, that's a word. But you get to certain things and you're like, oh, this is gonna happen. Or you want certain things that follow the typical story beats, but it's like, it just does its own thing. And it's like, and it feels this really real. So yeah, past lives, it was really, really good. But outside of that,
00:25:41
Speaker
Oh, go ahead. That sounds really cool, but most impressive is the fact that you do this in advance of the awards, whereas Lucy and I typically will watch what we like. I'd like to think that we've got a relatively good judgment in that pretty much, let's say,
00:26:08
Speaker
two out of five well certainly this year anyway two out of five last year sorry two out of five or two out of six films we or three out of six films we'd we'd pretty much cover the end up in the nominations and then we'll cover the the the rest retrospectively because we won't know it wouldn't have been on our radar the fact that you're actively doing it before the nominate sorry before the award ceremony i think is actually quite that's quite nice it's actually there's something quite
00:26:38
Speaker
There's something quite nice about that that I never even thought about before. And I bet you, I put money on it. I think Lucy would love that. Would absolutely love the idea of, do you realize that these films are out there? They're nominations. Should we have a look at them before they actually get done? Sorry, get the awards go out so that we can actually think to ourselves, who is more worthy? I love that. I really love that.
00:27:08
Speaker
It definitely makes you know, I mean, because just to be clear, like this isn't the type of like.
00:27:14
Speaker
people that I think that we are, like we're not like award show chasers. Like it just happened to be, like it really was about that AMC double weekend thing. And then from there, it just became like, it became interesting. Cause we don't even watch the Oscars. We just look it up on our phones later, like, oh, who won? That's like, ah, that makes sense. Oh yeah. And so it really kind of opened our eyes to the types of movies that get nominated and just, it's all those like sleeper movies that are the ones that are
00:27:43
Speaker
you don't normally yeah, yeah, we've all heard of Oppenheimer and Barbie and, and American fiction and things like that. But it's some other ones that are just wild. Yeah, but that but that in itself is really, really is nice. It's not it's not about it's not about the thing. If you know what I mean? It's it's more about your relationship with with with with Madison. I mean, I wouldn't have known anything about
00:28:11
Speaker
anything everywhere all at once? Is that the right? Is that the right? Yeah, it's something I don't know. I wouldn't have known anything about that film unless I'd heard it until I saw the impact it made at last year's Oscars. And I saw it again retrospectively. And I loved it. It's like, how the hell did I miss this? How the hell did I miss this? So I guess what I'm trying to say is I understand where you're going from.
00:28:39
Speaker
You're not some sort of wannabe media hack that's got a review of everything. You're doing it for your own self-gratification, which I think is brilliant. I think it's great, and I never even thought about
00:28:56
Speaker
doing it in advance of the awards, which is cool. So that, you know, you have your own, you're going in with your own shortlist before it actually happens. I think that's kind of fun as well. I think that's really fun. It definitely eats up a chunk of time. Like it's, which is funny because I feel like we never have time, which is very, really interesting if I think about it. It's like, we never have time until one of us, I won't say who is like, you know, I think the Oscar nominations are out and then we suddenly have,
00:29:25
Speaker
a ton of time to watch like six movies in a week, which crazy. I might need to sit on that one for a little bit and figure out.
00:29:33
Speaker
why that is, but outside of that, I did watch, I keep this one short, cause there's not a lot there. I did watch Masters of the Air, episode three, still good. I think it's that episode three typical part where I'm like, when I'm watching it and when it's over, I'm like, yeah, I feel like it's missing something, but it's that feeling you get when you're in the middle of a weekly episode episodic, where it's like episode three out of nine or whatever it is. It's like, I feel like it's missing something. We're not really getting going.
00:30:03
Speaker
But then you see the preview for the next episode. It's like, OK, no. OK, we're it's episode three, episode four and beyond is like is when it really picks up. So I'm not going to try. I'm trying not to be too hard on it because I know I've only seen a handful, but it's it's getting there. It's definitely not the production quality of the Pacific and Band of Brothers, but it's also because I'm what we're watching it on four KTVs and we have a different expectation now and things like that. But it's.
00:30:32
Speaker
It's getting there. I'm enjoying it. We watch it when it comes out. That's all I can really ask for. And so I get it. Yeah.
00:30:40
Speaker
What about you, buddy? I know you've said you've been watching some different stuff this week. And so what's been on your television?
Discussion on 'Haunted Mansion' and other media
00:30:48
Speaker
So last week, I mean, I think I spoke about having the TV to myself for 24 hours where I binged the great and the not so great and I had a good time regardless. This week, we had the girls back
00:31:08
Speaker
sorry we have my daughters back for the weekend which was lovely to see them and we spent some quality time together as you do but they very much dictate what's going on what the TV schedule is so out of the normal
00:31:24
Speaker
should we say, the normal weekly stuff we're carrying on. And by the way, I didn't add this. We're carrying on with For All Mankind. We're approaching season three now out of four. So we're making some really good progress there. Still loving it. And I forgot to add, Lucy's joining me in this little adventure as well and really, really enjoying it. Again, in most cases, she doesn't,
00:31:53
Speaker
dig the same stuff I do. But she's liking it, mainly because of the historical aspects to it, but also the kind of perverse skew on, on history, as we talked about last week, you know, the butterfly effect of what could have been had had circumstances been different. And she's really liking it. And the acting is so good that quite frankly, it's a it's a it's a proper drama, let alone a sorry, aside from being a
00:32:20
Speaker
pseudo-sci-fi kind of flick as well, series as well. So there's that. The other thing that... So the girls came back at the weekend and we watched a lot of
00:32:37
Speaker
stuff that I can't remember if I'm perfectly honest with you because it was very much white noise to me but that's not me dismissing what they're watching but it wasn't my my gig so I kind of
00:32:52
Speaker
did stuff in the background and it was my cue to cook for the evening and that kind of stuff. But two things really, really came out for me this week, or really underlined this week, weekend with the girls was I watched Haunted Mansion, the new take on Haunted Mansion on Disney Plus, which none of us had seen before and was kind of somewhat under marketed by Disney Plus when it did come out. And I have to say, it's a really good film.
00:33:21
Speaker
It's a really, really good film. It's really, really well done. It's not a cheesy Disney flick on a, oh, sorry, Disney film interpretation of Disney ride. There's actually a story there, a genuine story. And I do implore anyone that's not just into the ride itself, because I've never done the ride,
00:33:49
Speaker
I've only done Euro Disney, so my experience with Disney Parks is relatively limited. But the take on the story and the actors involved are, it's a really, really good story. And I'm trying for the life of me while we talk to remember the name of the lead
00:34:15
Speaker
who I love already because I follow or I love Atlanta, the TV series. And it's, I'm trying to make sure I present his name properly. It's Lakeith Stanfield, is that right? And he's already
00:34:40
Speaker
a king in Atlanta. But in this film, he really, for me, you know, he's his own guy now rather than being part of the crew with Donald Glover and the rest of the guys there. And I thought his take on the role was superb. And I really hope he gets an awful lot of
00:35:08
Speaker
primary roles in films going forward because I think he's pretty awesome and very very diverse which you might not get from his from his take in Atlanta but he's a really good really really good actor and everyone around him in that film is really really good so I really enjoyed that and that was again
00:35:31
Speaker
the girl's idea and I'm grateful because I would probably have skipped it again on Disney Plus. And the next, funny enough, we were talking about Atlanta, nice segway actually. We started the first episode of Mr and Mrs Smith. Really good. Really good. Very different. Really good. Really, really good. I mean, anything from Donald Glover in itself is going to be pretty talented. I mean, the guys are multimedia.
00:36:02
Speaker
guru and an extremely talented actor, but Mr. and Mrs. Smith is good. And I'm not going to give anything away because I've actually only watched the first episode with the girls. But it's a very, very different take. I never watched the original TV series, but I did watch the film obviously with Brad and Angelina Jolie.
00:36:30
Speaker
And it's a very, very different take on the Mr. and Mrs. Smith dynamic. In the film, you have Mr. and Mrs. Smith that are a married couple, and they just don't know that each other is actually a secret service agent or an assassin. And that's the take on the plot of the entire story until they both realize that they're both kind of
00:36:58
Speaker
part of the same professional profession and end up having to or being forced to fight against each other until their love conquers all, all that kind of stuff. Whereas in the TV series, Mr and Mrs Smith is a label for a Secret Service agent in that there are many, many different types of Mr and Mrs Smith.
00:37:21
Speaker
It's more like, like I said, it's a label or a pseudonym for a person's role within the secret service. Again, a married couple, albeit they're not.
00:37:41
Speaker
in reality, Mr and Mrs Smith, that's their, that's their, that's their AKA. And I really enjoyed it. And it's a very, very different take. It's a really, really compelling story at the moment. And I'm really looking forward to episode two.
00:38:00
Speaker
And that's kind of what I've watched on Telly, nowhere near as extensive as last weekend, but we were busy because the girls were back, so life gets in the way.
Appreciation for YouTube creators
00:38:13
Speaker
The only other thing that I want to
00:38:16
Speaker
I wanted to bring up for your attention was between you and Chris Hall, you guys have got me into watching an awful lot of creators on YouTube. We talked a little bit about last week and I've really late at night when, you know, we're in bed and it's that last read of the night or whatever it is.
00:38:38
Speaker
I'm on YouTube all the time at the moment looking at different creators. And there's one creator in particular that I follow, which is Boiler Hobby Time that I know you follow as well. Really, really clever guy that builds dioramas, builds worlds, all this kind of stuff. And a spin-off or a partner of his or a friend of his has this channel called Gamey Builds on YouTube. And he's a very similar,
00:39:07
Speaker
creator as Boilohobby, but he creates a story behind what he's building. And he's got many, many videos on YouTube where he's building these
00:39:23
Speaker
kind of steampunk kind of environments and technology as dioramas and models and robots and everything you can think and transportation and ships and walkers and the rest of it but he's creating this story behind it as well and he's kind of building in it as a side project he's building this this narrative called Beyond the Blight
00:39:53
Speaker
and it's the most compelling youtube i'm watching this moment in time for two reasons one is his amazing amazing talent in building these
00:40:04
Speaker
things that he or this world that he's building in a miniature format, but also the story or the narrative that he's giving to these things that he's building, which eventually will come out as a book. His plan is that he's planning to release this world that he's building in physical format as a novel as well, which whether it
00:40:28
Speaker
whether it flies or whether it sinks is kind of neither here nor there at the moment because the guy is just a genius and the amount of commitment that he's putting into his work. And I know you in particular would appreciate his creative talent is just beyond me. And I just find it strangely fascinating. I could watch the guy for hours. So that's Gamey Builds, G-A-M-E-Y.
00:40:54
Speaker
builds on on YouTube and I would implore anyone just to watch one episode because it's or one one of his Of his uploads because it's it's it's fascinating stuff. It really is Yeah, we'll put a we'll put a link to that in the description and to add to that like I I tend to watch those a lot for multiple reasons those kind of those kind of channels one it's
00:41:23
Speaker
It's not just looking at what they're creating, but I think I get a lot of techniques from it. Just seeing how people, cause like, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not a painter and things like that, but you learn how to take
00:41:40
Speaker
this like cheap products or just everyday items especially when it comes to dioramas like yeah you can go to the the model shop and buy spend your whole paycheck on products that are very specifically tailored for the the thing that you're doing whether it's like oh it's sand or rocks or little trees it's like but you can watch these youtube videos and you just watch
00:42:03
Speaker
people take a stick from outdoors and it's like, yeah, here's how I would convert this into a tree to make it look not just the right scale, but the right colors, the weathering, and like, oh, put it in the mud and yada yada. And it's just like, they have that creativity and that vision of,
00:42:19
Speaker
understanding how to take everyday objects one to one scale, per se, and translate them down. And here's how you do with basic tools. And that's the stuff that I really take away from it, of putting them in the old noggin in case I ever start going down the diorama path again, because
00:42:42
Speaker
I've built one, I have my ATST back here with my guys on it. And that alone was just like brain melting.
00:42:51
Speaker
to try to figure out like, okay, how do I do like mud and things like that without spending a fortune on products? And it's just amazing the creativity and plus it also fuels the addiction of like, I imagine it's similar to like with people who watch Twitch and like for playing video games. It's like, yeah, I watch Twitch when I don't have the time to play video games, but I can watch other people play it. I kind of get same thing, similar to this. Like I don't have time to invest into dioramas or hardcore model making and things like that. So I'm gonna watch other people do it with
00:43:21
Speaker
amazing results because they're really good at it. And it's a more effective use of my time maybe in the moment. Yeah, it's awesome. I have to jump have to check them out. I think you sent me a link to and I opened it and I subscribed. I haven't deep dived any other videos yet. So that's cool. Yeah, it starts off his series starts off, but relatively basic as most of them do, which is, you know, I'm I'm I like building stuff. I like I like creating stuff.
00:43:50
Speaker
And then he just had this, I don't know, epiphany, I guess, to just create some content or some narrative behind what he was building. And I just think the guy is extremely talented and I will be buying his stuff when it is finally published. Nice. I did just have a random thought about your Haunted Mansion stuff. You mentioned,
00:44:20
Speaker
that you hadn't been there. And so I only watched about 50% of the movie because I watched it on a flight home and I forgot to pick it back up, but it did seem really good the first half that I saw. It's one thing I can take, I'm inspired to watch it now, finish it. What my major takeaway from it was as somebody who did work in the parks pretty close to Haunted Mansion, it did a good job at balancing the
00:44:48
Speaker
The kind of like Easter eggs of like oh, that's from the that's from the ride with the actual an actual story wasn't just all cheese and But the thing that I remembered was I'm always gonna find a way to try to get like Disney Parks content into the podcast discuss But they if you ever do go to Disney World Specifically, I don't know about the other ones
00:45:14
Speaker
They will sometimes offer a backstage tour. They have a lot of backstage tours that you can take on. But one of them specifically, I got to do part of it when I was a cast member because I won a random lottery and got to go. But they have backstage tours where you can go tour behind the scenes the Haunted Mansion and other rides. They'll turn the lights on and you walk along the track and you can go out on the dance floor and stuff. It's really cool.
00:45:42
Speaker
So if you ever get the chance and go to Disney World, look into that. It's pretty neat. I will be going. I will be going. I mean, my children are adults now, but they keep saying one day we're going to go, right? Aren't we, Dad? I'm like, yeah, we are. We are going one day. And so we are coming one day, I promise you. I'm ever so sorry. There's one thing that I've been watching that I watched, sorry.
00:46:09
Speaker
And I watched it about three or four weeks ago, but I keep forgetting to mention it. And that is, anyone that knows me from being a guest on other pods will know that I'm in love with the creator, particularly I'm in love with Gareth Edwards and the way that he's his guerrilla style of film watching.
00:46:34
Speaker
On Disney Plus at this moment in time, there is a making of the creator extra to the film itself. And I implore everyone to watch that. If they've heard me ever prattle on in my own world about how impressed I am with the way that the guy made it, because for me that is as compelling as the film itself. The guy basically made
00:47:04
Speaker
a what should have been a $200 to $300 million film. He made it for only $80 million. And the way that he did it, which I very, very badly typically talk about with both you, Sean, and others in our community,
00:47:27
Speaker
it's perfectly explained on this particular extra on Disney Plus. It's only an hour or 15 minutes even. I do implore you to watch it because this is the fresh kind of filmmaking that really excites me and in particular I love Gareth. And while Rogue One is still my favorite
00:47:53
Speaker
of the new Star Wars productions that have been produced since the acquisition by Disney of Lucasfilm. I still would love, love, love to have seen what Garrett's own vision prior to the
00:48:14
Speaker
Uh, uh, the changes that were made and the involvement, the great involvement by the way, but the involvement of, of, of, um, Oh God, God's name. Come on, help me out here. Tony Gilroy. Tony Gilroy. Tony Gilroy. Good God.
00:48:32
Speaker
I will say, I will jump in and say that I disagree with the fact that you speak about it badly. I personally enjoy your 20 minute monologues on other podcasts, but that's just my opinion.
00:48:49
Speaker
Thanks. Thanks, mate. But anyway, anyway, point being, get back to, I can't believe, I can't believe I forgot Tony Gill was there. I've got to stop recording it late at night, mate. I'm not good at this. Anyway, point being is, yeah, the creator, Making Of, it's an extra on the film itself, Disney+, watch it, it'll make you love Gareth even more. I promise you. Nice. It's on my, it's in my list or up next or whatever it is.
00:49:20
Speaker
But unfortunately, it's taken the backseat to the multitude of movies I've got to smash through. But it's definitely on the shortlist to watch, though. Cool. The one else is there. I think we've covered everything that we've we've been watching. Should we should we dive into books and comics?
Exploration of books, comics, and Star Wars literature
00:49:39
Speaker
Yeah, let's do that. So
00:49:44
Speaker
Let me explain how this category or this discussion point came about. Last week we talked about, a little bit about our collecting habits. And one thing that I, when we, when we stopped recording, was I forgot to talk about
00:49:59
Speaker
the number of books that I have both out on the shelves and also in storage that are noteworthy because I read a lot or I read a lot.
00:50:17
Speaker
it's very much part of my collection. So we decided this week, if it's okay with everyone, we decided we'd talk about, you know, what really fires us about the written word. And so we're looking at this week, we want to discuss a little bit about books, comics, and anything in print, basically. So with that in mind, I'm going to
00:50:41
Speaker
hand it over to you first, Sean, about your experience in the written word in terms of where you started, where you are at the moment, and where you're going with it, what your preferred medium is. Really just give us your take on
00:51:10
Speaker
What excites you in anything wordy? I can jump in there. Yeah, so I think like most people, I read a lot as a kid. Then life got in the way.
00:51:30
Speaker
But then I will say maybe 10 or so years ago, I really got into it pretty heavy. Again, some of that had to do with where I lived. I had a lot of train commutes and things like that. It also had to do with the
00:51:47
Speaker
of the obvious like new canon Disney clean slate and that that kind of I think along with collecting I think that sparked a lot of like okay I can I can start clean again it's like cleaning your house it's like okay it's clean and now I'm starting fresh like I can I can stay on top of it this time that was kind of
00:52:09
Speaker
reinvigorating in a lot of ways and I think that that white that clean slate was one of the big things that got me back into reading more regularly. Specifically books, the comics, the comics came in a little bit later.
00:52:24
Speaker
at that same time, like I always had books and stuff as a kid, but I didn't really have the space for it. And that too has translated into adulthood. So I don't have a lot of, I never got the bug for like collecting physical books, except for like when I travel, every time we go to like a national park or something, I will get like an images of America or some kind of book from the national park about the history, because I'm always
00:52:51
Speaker
digging in deep for that stuff. And there's never a lot of resources, so you always find a very specific book from there. But for terms of like fiction, Star Wars and stuff like that, I'm a big digital collector in those regards. It's gotten excessive over the years with my obsession with getting
00:53:11
Speaker
everything like legends all of it short stories out from magazines the magazines all that stuff so my digital collection is extensive the reading the to read list is is infinite um but i've tried to stay on top of i've fallen i've fallen
00:53:30
Speaker
by the wayside and a lot of the newer canon. I've tried to keep up with High Republic, which is really enjoyable, by the way, anybody who's not read it. And if you don't have time, go check out Rick over at Jam Transmissions. He covers a lot of that pretty well. Saves you a lot of time. But it's been a constant struggle, like with the books. It's like, I want to read more. But I'm sure, like most people, it's
00:53:57
Speaker
Oh, I have a billion other things to do. But then I'll get I'll get into like waves like the the the hyper fixation will kick in. And I'll just start smashing through books. I would love to hear what your favorite, like your top two or three lists are like, what are books that are really meaningful to you? I'd love to hear that. But those are that's kind of like my story. And in terms of comics, it's a similar thing. I but I was never into them as a kid. I always found them a struggle.
00:54:25
Speaker
to kind of follow like there was, I appreciated the art but I was never able to like get into the stories because there wasn't enough meat on that bone. I've had a lot more luck in later years. Like recently I've been trying to smash through the Dr. Afra series now that it's just wrapped up and I'm really enjoying it. But I would say not, I want more. I always want more from comics because it's, there's too much detail left out.
00:54:52
Speaker
Dr. Afra is something unique though, isn't it? I mean, that is something, that is a gift that came out of new Star Wars or new, or new, that wasn't a, that wasn't plugging, you know, creating adventures for the sake of creating adventures between the timelines that we knew, you know, between the timelines that we knew and Dr. Afra in my mind, and I've read them and
00:55:22
Speaker
I would say that, for me, she's the most exciting thing that's come from new, well, since Marvel re-inherited the Star Wars franchise in comic format. I mean, the rest of it is kind of cool.
00:55:45
Speaker
But in most cases, with the exception of the higher public, which I'm ashamed to say I have, I haven't read yet. The rest of it is kind of plugging in the gaps from our, you know, from our, from our heroes. You know, you know, what have they done between this point in this point or this point in this point? Let's keep that continuity going. And it's kind of
00:56:09
Speaker
It's been good, but nothing quite as exciting in my mind as Dr. Afra in that she is the, you know, she is the
00:56:18
Speaker
the modern anti-hero that I just fricking adore. And the fact that she's- There's not all the weird, there's not all the weird like tendrils, like with the mainline- Yeah, yeah. Pan and Star Wars stuff, it's like they start introducing them into these weird scenarios and it's like, yeah, that's, now it's just weird. Like, but with Dr. Afra, there's no, there's no connections. No, no, no. There's no like baggage with it.
00:56:43
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, there's no consequence to what it should be, you know, the, you know, the, the, the, the sacred, the sacred content should be what's on, on celluloid, it's what's on film and the some of the some of the, the
00:57:02
Speaker
You know, I mean, it's not it's not just the latter day Marvel stuff, but even the Dark Horse stuff was back in the day when they had the franchise was skirting on the edge of impossibility or it kind of somewhat stretched the the connective tissue between
00:57:21
Speaker
um people meeting for the first time supposedly on celluloid um or on film sorry and and and there being an association with them uh off camera at some point it kind of it gets a little bit long in the tooth in that respect but now the doctor actual stuff i thought was kind of groovy and not only that you know they made her extremely inclusive as a as an individual which
00:57:52
Speaker
with my sixth sense of humor, wound up an awful lot of people, which I find hysterical as well. And I love that. I love the fact that, you know, she's very, very different to what typical, I say typical, God, that in itself is a judgment, but should we say some fanboys would like or not like, and I think she's absolutely adorable. I really do hope that they,
00:58:19
Speaker
They have the opportunity to make more out of her, either still within the comic pages or on screen as well, which will leave for another day.
00:58:34
Speaker
because we want to talk at some point about the successful translation between games, media, sorry, comics, cartoons and novels to real action, which I think in itself is a discussion point. But yeah, no, I love, I love Aphra to bits. I think she's awesome. And she's got these two killer robots as well, which also makes me laugh.
00:59:03
Speaker
It's the ridiculousness of it. It's self-aware. It's ridiculous and kind of tropey at times, but it's self-aware and kind of fun. To the Dr. Afrasuff, it's like, I know there's a big push for her to be on the screen. I think it'd be interesting to see her on animation first, because she's not gonna get a full-length live-action film. So it's like,
00:59:27
Speaker
Then there's a niche of people who are familiar with the comics, like bring your animation somehow in like somewhere like Hondo Inaka. Like there's a there's a love for that character and their personality, like bring them in as a side character, give them more time and let people really build up their familiarity and their love for them even more. That's that's what I would do if I were.
00:59:49
Speaker
I 100 if not 1000% agree with you. The only thing I would say is that I hope that by translating her into animation, then doesn't set a precedence on
01:00:06
Speaker
expectations as to how she should be portrayed in real life. I mean, some of the stuff that I saw in particular on the way that Ahsoka was presented was basically around fanboy expectations that wanted the same as what was on as an animated series. It's like, well, you can't apply some logic here, guys. You can't
01:00:34
Speaker
do exactly the same, both in terms of the actor. And we saw the same, for example, and not only that, we saw the same with Book of Boba when we saw Cad Bane in the flesh, as it were. I thought it looked great.
01:00:51
Speaker
And is he going to be the caricature that he is in animation? Of course he's not going to be. And there's an awful lot of backlash from that. And I just hope that people, you know, to your point, I'd love, I would love for Afra to be translated to animation and then translated to real life, because I do think that if you're looking at something new,
01:01:16
Speaker
And if you're looking at something that is low risk, so there's no expectations around it, Afro is the perfect segue for that, or your perfect platform, sorry, take that forward, without any kind of preconceptions as to how it should be, and because there is no precedence there. But I just hope that, you know, I just hope that
01:01:39
Speaker
the business gets the opportunity to do that because they have every right to take that to screen because I think she's ace. I don't really do. Yeah, I mean, to your point of like there will there will always be laser eyed YouTube thumbnails that are complaining about the translation of animation into live action. I just like you just hope it doesn't get a foothold and and bring everybody down with it. It's that grass isn't going to touch itself, but
01:02:10
Speaker
like I'm hopeful, like I'm hopeful that like they stick with the character and like stick with like her.
01:02:17
Speaker
her look and dynamic and her origins and things like that. I think it'd be really interesting. It's like, it doesn't have to be as over the top as what the comics are all the time. Cause I think that's, I think that's where I would fear the translation happening where like the comic only has so many dialogue boxes. There's only so much nuance. So every, everything always seems like it's, it's a, it's a boiled down version of people's motives, character and dialogue and the things where they act. So on paper, Afra is just this,
01:02:48
Speaker
insane like Han Solo 2.0 if you want to be like follow a trope but like they can have nuance and I think that's what I would fear of people being like this isn't dr. average she's just her she is a sarcasm a hundred and four hundred four thousand percent of the time it's like no they can have depth you're just taking it from a comic yeah
01:03:13
Speaker
Yeah. Do you see how skinny her arms are? She can't do that in a fantasy universe. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, anyways. It's so boring, isn't it? It's so dull. But I do enjoy the comics. Yeah. What about you? What's your backstory? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think I talked a little bit about it last week, which is the reason why I was gutted. We didn't discuss it any further. So as a kid,
01:03:43
Speaker
Up to, sorry, approaching the launch of A New Hope in the UK, I started describing as a kid to the original Marvel comic run of Star Wars, which eventually got weird and beautiful in all the right areas over time for the first, you know, at least four or five years
01:04:13
Speaker
So the original Marvel Comet run, which was amazingly bizarre. I originally subscribed to. And then as I got a little bit older, while I was keeping on with the original Marvel Comet run, I subscribed to the 2000 a day. We talked a little bit about it last week in that it was a bit of a more mature comic.
01:04:42
Speaker
that gave birth, as we said, to the characters like Road Trooper and Judge Dredd. A whole bunch of other characters as well, spin-off stories like ABC Warriors, in particular Strontium Dog. There was an amazing interstellar galactic bounty hunter called Johnny Alpha.
01:05:03
Speaker
in that he's essentially a mutant. It's a bit like an outerworldly version of the X-Men, in that there's a bunch of mutants out there with amazing abilities, one of which is, sorry, of which an awful lot of them can be used to, for nefarious means, or they can be used for good. And the majority of those,
01:05:31
Speaker
mutants that are used for good end up being part of this bounty hunter crew that go through space and time and they travel through time as well to put things right. And they use their abilities to be able to take down the bad guys. That was, that was a good one as well. And it was, like I said, there was a more of a mature take on that. And I, and I kind of loved that there was like, there was blood, there was real blood.
01:05:58
Speaker
in these comics and I really enjoyed it, despite the fact that it was still in black and white in those days. Then got into novels in a big way. I would say I'm approaching like 10 or 11, got into novels quite in a big way. Started obviously from a Star Wars perspective, had all the novels and the spin-off novels, which was relatively limited at the time. There was the Adventures of Han Solo, so there was
01:06:26
Speaker
Star's End, Lost Legacy, and another one, which I can't remember at this moment in time. And at the same time, there were three Lando Corisian spin-off
01:06:45
Speaker
spin-off stories. I'm trying to remember them, which is the reason why I'm procrastinating. And I can't remember them. But they became what were the, the Chronicles of Lando Carusi and all the Calvary's in Chronicles, which made me laugh. And I know that there's an awful lot of hate towards solo, but I loved solo because it was so on the nose. It was so obviously on the nose. It was brilliant.
01:07:08
Speaker
for all the, for me, for all the right reasons. So when Lando's, you know, when, well, Lando's on the falcon waiting for the heist to go on in the spice mines of all the, yeah, the spice mines of Kessel. He's talking into the hologram about, you know, the Calrissian Chronicles and recapping the
01:07:31
Speaker
Was it the storm cave of Thrombo? Anyway, the point being is that there's all these stories that I got to know as a kid, which seemed completely out of context of the main story and the amazing space opera, which is very grounded in my mind between, you know, between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back and which other Jedi and these ridiculous stories, which at the time were like, this doesn't feel
01:07:56
Speaker
in any way like Star Wars. It feels more like science fiction than Star Wars, but I love it because it's Star Wars. There was that. Then as I grew up, I started just investing in other books as well.
01:08:12
Speaker
Um, so for example, you know, things like, as, as my palette got a little bit more mature, I'd start reading, reading Asimov or, um, Huxley. Um, um, there were, uh, the original, uh, take on 2001, Space Odyssey, 2010, and it's SQL, which I can't remember what the date is. The point being, I started reading that as well.
01:08:41
Speaker
read the Tolkien, the original Lord of the Rings after obviously really the easy one first being the Hobbit and just got into more and more fantastical and more heavy going
01:08:55
Speaker
more heavy going books, although a lot of them I've gone back and read again, although I have to say I've only read Lord of the Rings, the three of them once, because they're heavy going, they're really heavy going.
01:09:12
Speaker
One thing that I'd say about Tolkien is that on screen it looks amazing but it's quite a heavy read as a kid and I'm talking about in my teens still but I'm still a kid in my mind. It's quite hard in that there's a lot of reference
01:09:30
Speaker
Tolkien was really into his study, really into his reference material. And he goes, it's an amazing amount of detail, which typically I would love, but it goes so deep, you can get really lost in that and then lose the way of the story. And he jumps around an awful lot as well. So I found that quite difficult. I'm glad I achieved reading it, but it was in my mind, in my simple brain, I found it really, really quite hard.
01:09:54
Speaker
And as time went on, I moved off a little bit of the comics a little bit and got into, it's when the graphic novels came out. So things like Watchmen, and as we were saying earlier on, the mashups between we're taking Alien and we're taking Predator and we're going to stick them together. Dark Horse had the license at that moment in time.
01:10:21
Speaker
We're sticking them together. So I'm talking about late teens now, early twenties. And I started reading A, the anti-hero type comic like Watchmen. And then B, the kind of mash up popcorn stuff like Aliens versus Predator or Terminator versus
01:10:43
Speaker
predator as well, I think it was. It was also Batman, Batman versus aliens. There was this whole kind of idea of let's take these two or three universes and mix them all together. I really, really enjoyed that. And in fact, I got an awful lot of them here. And then
01:11:03
Speaker
life kicks in. You know, I got married, we got married very, very young. And you have children and then things like, you know, personal time kind of goes out the window. So I found myself not reading as much as I'd like. But I kept on buying the
01:11:21
Speaker
the original legacy, Star Wars legacy books, which of course originated with Heir to the Empire. So if you think about the original, if you like, bunch of books around the time of the original film launches, that was that. And then there's this resurgence in the 90s, when Heir to the Empire, and everything successive of that came out from Lucasfilm. And I bought all of them. And I say I would
01:11:51
Speaker
At the moment, I've got pretty much all of the original Legends books in hardcover because at the time I thought these are going to be collector's pieces at some point. Little did I realize the actual value of printed fiction is pretty much worthless these days. But the point being is I pretty much all have all of that and I got to reading pretty much all of it until
01:12:15
Speaker
the New Jedi Order. If you remember the New Jedi Order where it started getting a little bit funky, they ran out of ideas, the Yu Zhong Vong started coming in and it just got to a point where it was not only I felt I was dropping out as well as I felt
01:12:35
Speaker
that the creators of the content were kind of losing interest as well. And I've still got 10 to 20 books I haven't read yet and I probably never will because I lost my appetite after Chewie got hit by a moon in those books.
01:12:57
Speaker
And then subsequently, you know, life goes on. We've got, there's a whole bunch of digital content I've got typically with the new content. So everything from Aftermath onwards, I've got digitally. I haven't read all of it at all. I've got some of it both digitally and also as an audio book because until recently I did a lot of driving in my role. And so I'd find that, you know, I found,
01:13:25
Speaker
as an old man, I found audiobooks quite useful going forward and spent an awful lot of time listening to audio. But it's not quite the same. But I do, there are certain publications where the production is so bloody good, that it's actually better than the written word. And then lastly, but again, I've kind of, life gets in the way and I've fallen by the wayside when it comes down to
01:13:50
Speaker
an awful lot of the new content, despite actually having it myself. And then I would say that lastly, it's a bit of a renaissance for me in that last year I went away on a couple of holidays and
01:14:07
Speaker
I didn't want to read a book via my Kindle. I didn't want to listen to something. So I put a bunch of graphic novels, old school graphic novels, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. And then I went away later on in the year as well and I bought another couple of graphic novels. So there I am on the beach or at the pool or wherever I am. And I've got this old school kind of
01:14:34
Speaker
book that I'm bringing out that's got the printed stuff. And I've loved it. I've absolutely loved it. And I think I'll do it again, because I love the idea of not only having this renaissance of getting back a comic book or a graphic novel back into my house, but the enjoyment of having it
01:15:04
Speaker
in a printed form wherever I am in the world and digesting it that way, I'd forgotten how much I missed it and I absolutely loved it. In this case, the last time we took out, I actually bought the Firefly series on graphic novels. So, yeah.
01:15:31
Speaker
I love Firefly as a TV series. It's unfortunate that the guy that created it is perhaps not as...
01:15:41
Speaker
not the type of guy that I thought he was, if what is said about him is true. But I think his content is great and the spin-off graphic novels of that TV series is great. So I bought all of the
01:16:01
Speaker
the spin-offs of the original series that were printed in as a comic in graphic novel format. And I spent two weeks on the beach basically sifting through the whole thing, having a thoroughly good time. And it wasn't just the content itself, it was the format that it was in as well. So yeah, I'm old and I'm going back to graphic novels, but I don't care. I will say, you keep telling, you're talking a lot about like physical copies of stuff. I will say I do have a
01:16:32
Speaker
there is something about the tactile nature of like a physical book, especially for me when it comes to like coffee table books.
01:16:40
Speaker
Like I have the, like the, what's it called? The, the Tashin Star Wars archives books. I, I absolutely love those things. They're like a billion pages and it's got every piece of concept art, like scripts, storyboards, photography from the sets and stuff. Those are, I love those things. I love the, like any kind of like art of or
01:17:05
Speaker
like not the visual dictionaries per se but just anything where it's somebody's taken the time and like collected a bunch of behind the scenes photos, any of those kind of books. Oh, I love I love those. Then I have to have those physical like those are those are those are like sentimental in that way. Like I have a was it like a behind behind the galaxy book or something I can't remember what it is but it's all
01:17:28
Speaker
It's a whole coffee table book dedicated to high resolution photography of the models they used in Star Wars. I used it a lot for reference, but it's just incredible. Because you've all seen the videos of ILM blowing stuff up and things like that. But it's like, yeah, where's the photograph of it? The high res. I want to see what it really looked like, not just see it zipping across on a line and those kind of things. Those are passion of mine that I don't think I can ever get rid of.
01:17:59
Speaker
Yeah. And they were few and far between back in the, you know, back when they, if we're going back to Star Wars, there was a making of pretty much all three films. And then on top of that, they had from Star Wars to Jedi, which was a kind of a wrap up making of that happened at the same time. And it was all very good and very
01:18:28
Speaker
curated for you to consume on the screen. But at the time, the making of books were very few and far between. They didn't exist. They pretty much didn't exist. And I would say that the first ones that came out were, were, goodness me, trying to think of the first ones that came out. It was the likes of,
01:18:57
Speaker
sound suite and those guys that came out with just the original kind of thrown together. I mean, way before he did his, oh, there's a book that he did, which literally is a scrapbook of everything that he'd collected in terms of the fan journey. But there was stuff that he used to do for Virgin Media, not for those people that
01:19:27
Speaker
no Virgin Media today but for Virgin Publishing at the time and he came out with some really really good compelling stuff. I've also got a paperback from the late 80s which was basically a dictionary from A to Z on everything Star Wars with an explanation and a very rudimentary drawing of
01:19:48
Speaker
of what was being discussed. But there was very little of that until I'd say the resurgence of Star Wars content from which started, I guess, with Air to the Empire. Then all of these companies, including Tashland, came out with all these really, really good things. Kind of cataloging and resurrecting what was going on in the background. A lot of the stuff that we hadn't seen before.
01:20:17
Speaker
heck of a lot that we haven't seen before. So yeah, I mean, I've got a lot of them as well. I had to temper my collecting in that area because I'd buy everything. There were things like, I don't know if you remember, there was not only the art of books, there was also the incredible cross sections where you get a cross... Oh, I love those. Yeah, so do I, dude.
01:20:40
Speaker
on top of that there be from concept to screen on top of that, pretty much for every single, so you could pretty much get three or four books for every single new media that was coming out. And then they go back and obviously cover the original trilogy as well. And then they kind of
01:21:03
Speaker
messed around with the format a little bit when it got to solo. I don't know if you noticed this, but they got to solo and then they messed around with it. And that gave me the opportunity to jump off. And I jumped off at that point because literally my shelves could not carry any more weight. And so I've been a lot more selective in that kind of stuff ever since then. But I have to say the quality of some of the books
01:21:28
Speaker
to this day are phenomenal and amazingly good value for what you get. So yeah, those kinds of reference stuff I've still got, oh dude, sorry, I know we're going on a little bit and I will shut up, I promise you. I've got the, one of the things that got me into these kinds of reference books was there was a tabletop game. I'm trying to remember the, the maker of this, but it was the Star Wars, the role-playing game.
01:21:57
Speaker
And I'm talking about the tabletop, you know, the dice game. Like the Imperial assault kind of game? Imperial assault or one of the others? No, no, no, no, no. These aren't with miniatures. These aren't with miniatures. These are literally a way before. These are the RPGs. So it was the it was the Imperial. It was the Star Wars sourcebook.
01:22:21
Speaker
And all for these, for these old West End games that were way before, way, way before the miniature games came out, which are a lot more comprehensive and quite frankly more fun. But the reference books that came with them are phenomenal. And that was all we had way before, you know, in the drought that was the gap between the end of Return of the Jedi and the beginning of
01:22:46
Speaker
of the Phantom Menace, all we have with these reference books for this RPG.
01:22:56
Speaker
I don't know enough about the RPG because I never played it. I was more interested in the content of these books, which would go into the backstory of Wedge Antilles, go back into the backstory of Lobacher, go into the backstory of all of these bizarre secondary and tertiary characters that we didn't know about that would be, if you like,
01:23:18
Speaker
part of this game, but I wasn't bothered about the game. It was all about the content. And it was brilliant, absolutely brilliant. One day, we should spend an episode on it because it's really good stuff. Anyway, sorry, I went off at tangent again. You don't have to apologize. Like I said, I love hearing it. The tangents are why I do this. I do have to ask, I mean, since you have,
01:23:47
Speaker
quite inexpensive. It doesn't even have to be from your collection. But what do you what would you say? Or I don't know if it's recommendations. Like what are your what are your books that like your top books, they don't have to be like the best of all time. But like, what are the books that like live in your head rent free, or like a recommendations or your favorites to go back to or just like what are what are some of those the highlight books from your? I don't know in your memory. Don't even have to be Star Wars doesn't have to be sci fi could be anything.
01:24:19
Speaker
Um, on the spot. No, no, it's fine. Um, my favourite book of all time that I read after the film, you know, um, is, is, is Louis, uh, Paul Theroux, the Mosquito coast. Um,
01:24:42
Speaker
Being an impressionable young man that loves Star Wars, I watched the Mosquito Coast with Harrison Ford, which is a great film. It's a really, really great film. Harrison Ford's Harrison Ford, and he's a character actor in that he plays Harrison Ford. You know what you're getting when Harrison Ford's in the film. And that's the one film that, and I was going to say regarding Henry, but even then I think this is better.
01:25:13
Speaker
That is the film that really made me think, oh, he's actually a pretty good actor as well as a great action hero, a movie star, a movie star. It impelled me to read the book as well, and I'd say that
01:25:33
Speaker
one of the, I'm not saying it's the best book I've ever read, but the one I've gone back to more than often, more often than not, is The Mosquito Coast by Paul Thoreau. It's a really good story. And it's actually
01:25:48
Speaker
despite how I feel about the film and how I feel about Harrison Ford's performance, it's significantly better than the film and goes into a lot more about the guy's mind and where he was coming from. In terms of fantasy book or science fiction book, Clive Barker, and I think it's
01:26:14
Speaker
What's the word I'm thinking of? Is it Clive Barker in Magica? Oh, sorry. Let me do something else, because I can't remember the book I'm talking about. But no, sorry. In terms of other books, sorry, in terms of fantasy, I've always been a fan of Frank Herbert in Dune, or Dune, sorry.
01:26:43
Speaker
Frank Herbert's Dune is, for me, was big boy sci-fi. So when I came away from Star Wars and reading Star Wars and I read Dune, it kind of like, it changed everything for me a little bit. And I still haven't finished the whole art, believe it or not, because of course his son carried on after Frank Herbert died.
01:27:11
Speaker
He's carried on with his own stories and anthologies from that. And I still haven't finished any of those, but I will do one day, I promise. And then when it comes down to comic book series, Watchmen for me landed at the right time, at the right place. I know that a lot of folk don't necessarily think the movie is that great. And I'm okay if they don't think it's that great because it doesn't have the same
01:27:42
Speaker
vibe or immediacy as when Watchmen for me at my age at the time landed. And I would say there were two publications in Comic Book World that landed for me at the right time at the age I was at and the way I felt about myself, the way I felt about my partner at the time, the way I felt about life in general. There are two comic books that landed for me exactly at the right time that made me
01:28:09
Speaker
really, really represented who I was at the time and the way I was thinking. The first is Watchman and the second is Akira. And Akira landed with me in a way that it blew my frigging head off. And if you asked me to this day, what would be the most amazing
01:28:39
Speaker
book to or comic book to film translation that you would love to see. It would be Akira. But my God, the risk of getting it wrong is so large. I almost don't want it to happen. Does that make sense? No, it makes perfect sense. That makes sense. It's like you don't want the you don't want the source material to be like you don't want to bring everybody else into and have it potentially be ruined and take something away. Like that. But that let that time capsule be
01:29:08
Speaker
be what it is yeah cool so let me ask the same question what about yourself what what's you know what is i've spoken a lot and i i promise i wouldn't do this this week what about yourself what about yourself what's influenced you so there's a handful there's a hint so i'll start with the easy low hanging fruit the uh
01:29:31
Speaker
But my favorite Star Wars book is Lost Stars. It's Young Adult. It's an easy read by Claudia Gray. I love it. I've read a billion Star Wars books, but none of them I felt had the depth and the character that Lost Stars had. And I'm not even a person who loves that.
01:29:54
Speaker
Star-crossed lovers kind of vibe, but it was just, it was so, I mean, it was a moment in time kind of thing. It was the lead up to Force Awakens, getting excited again, a different quality of writing. Like, I mean, I grew up on like the glove of Darth Vader and stuff like that. So having stuff, like I know there's a lot of criticisms of aftermath, but I'm a young adult reading level anyway. So like, I loved the aftermath books. I loved Lost Stars. Those were, those hit pretty hard for me.
01:30:25
Speaker
If I had to pick a recent, a recent book that, like a recent release-ish within the last whatever years, that's non-Star Wars, I would say, Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe. That book is fantastic. It's about kind of like the
01:30:47
Speaker
the Irish, the troubles and the things in Ireland and it's based off those stories. Fantastic book, loved it. If I had to pick a book that was another right time but older, I would say Cannery Row by John Steinbeck.
01:31:05
Speaker
I don't dive deep into the older literature. My attention span doesn't hang with it, but man, that book hit hard. It was perfect. It was like right when I was moving out to California to like the San Francisco area. So Cannery Row, Monterey, all this stuff isn't too far from that. And it was just like the right time and it was perfect. I love that book. I have a physical copy of that book that like I've written notes in of like
01:31:35
Speaker
how I felt, like how different parts of it made me feel. And that's not something that I do, but it just, it hit that hard. And I would probably say the most, the book that probably, it's not like it was, it doesn't affect my day to day, but it was a book that I read and wasn't able to put down and had more effect on me than I think any book ever has.
01:32:03
Speaker
I'm surprised I finished it because of how big it was. As a book called, and the band played on, it came out in the mid to late 80s, I believe. It's a documentation or a retelling of how the global AIDS epidemic took over and where it started and where it went.
01:32:27
Speaker
It just that peak in it, because as being somebody who didn't live through a lot of it, and I was born later, you kind of have windows into what it was like. And then reading this book that kind of covered a lot of it really in depth was eye-opening and kind of shocking to kind of the world that we live in at times. And I've always said, I'm interested to see, you read that book that comes out through the pandemic, that covers the pandemic,
01:32:54
Speaker
COVID pandemic and stuff like that, because it was so, it grabbed me and held me for so long, and I've recommended it to others, and it kind of sucked them into. So it's one of those books that's captivating in that way. Not necessarily a cheery story, by any means, but it's
01:33:15
Speaker
You need that reality every once in a while. But those are probably my four big ones that I can think of at the top of my head, that I kind of carry my back pocket all the time. What about the comic world? I mean, you have
01:33:36
Speaker
a library of content, digital content in the drawn narrative. What's really rocked your world in the comic world, if anything?
Importance of impactful books and graphic novels
01:33:54
Speaker
I think similar to some of your answers, I think some of the graphic novels, some of the bigger classic graphic novels, because I feel like, are the ones that I would gravitate towards, because I feel like they have more of that meat, that depth that I'm looking for in a story where I want the details really kind of drug out. Like I've read the Watchmen graphic novels,
01:34:23
Speaker
And those are incredible. I can only imagine what it was like reading them when like at that time, like when they came out and which they are, not only say they're of a time, but I can imagine they were more impactful when they were released. In terms of the comics that I've read in recent years,
01:34:45
Speaker
I've always really liked some of the shorter stories. Like I'm not a big fan of the longer running comics. I feel like that's where things just get squirrely and get weird.
01:34:56
Speaker
It's like, oh, we gotta fill a content, we gotta fill an issue. Like, let's introduce an octopus person and just have it just be completely ridiculous. Like, it's not, it just feels like it's content for the sake of content. So like the short stories are the ones that I've always, or what the one shots, I've always thought were really interesting. Like, I don't like C3PO, but I like the one where he, you learn how he gets his red arm.
01:35:22
Speaker
I like the short Lando series and things like that. I think that's Chris Hall's favorite as well. I believe so. I'm pretty sure he likes receiving gifts.
01:35:35
Speaker
that are representative of C-3PO with the red arm specifically. I'll keep my eye out for it. There's actually a reason why I was asking because I know that you quite rightly talked about Aftermar from Lost Stars as being some of your favorites because
01:35:58
Speaker
For me, I agree. I mean, Aftermath in itself was the first, this is the first new cannon we have from really, really branching out. And the way that Chuck dealt with the content and the diversity within new Star Wars, I thought was phenomenal. It annoyed a lot of people, of course, which actually made it even more compelling for me to love it.
01:36:25
Speaker
but also Lost Stars I think is actually one of the best stories that's ever been written in All Star Wars on the screen, on the page and in animation. I think it's fantastic. If you ever got the opportunity, and I don't know if you already have,
01:36:40
Speaker
There is a three-part manga version of Lost Stars and it is phenomenal. You've got it. You're talking about these? Okay. These right here? Yeah. They might be the same. Are these them? It's such a nice, it's such a really, really tidy representation in that they
01:37:00
Speaker
a bridge the whole story, but they keep the whole content of it together. And then of course you've got this amazing art on top of it. And it just, honestly, for me, that is, we talked to, we talked, you know, when it was last week or the week before, we talked to the idea about a multimedia experience. And for me, Lost Stars is that for me in the new
01:37:20
Speaker
in the new Star Wars realm.
Value of side stories in Star Wars
01:37:23
Speaker
And I still think to this day, it's one of the best ships in Star Wars across the entire 40, 45 years that we've had. I think it's a wonderful story.
01:37:36
Speaker
And I love the whole kind of back to the futurist kind of what went on in the background. Well, this stuff was going on kind of kind of rationale behind it. I love I love that story. But it's the stories. Oh, yeah.
01:37:52
Speaker
It's a side story stuff that we always talk about with the content that we want. Not everything has to be, I enjoy the Skywalker stories, but not everything has to be them. It's okay to be a side story that's like tangential, but it doesn't have a direct tie in, but it's close.
Role of background characters in storytelling
01:38:11
Speaker
It's the people in the shirts over there. And I thought it played that card really well of like, hey, they were there, but they didn't pick up the lightsaber and hand it to Luke Skywalker kind of thing.
01:38:22
Speaker
And it was subtle as well. It wasn't a case of, hey, we're in the background waving. It was a case of they're fighting the same, or they're in the wrong place at the right time fighting the same battles and kind of the hero's story in the background is almost inconsequential as to what these people are going through. Their story is the main focus of the story and it's an aside to the
01:38:52
Speaker
to the main Star Wars story that we know today. No, I loved it. I thought it was really, really well done. Really, really well done. And like I said, because I love manga anyway, or bit of manga anyway, the artwork in conveying that story is
01:39:08
Speaker
brilliant, especially if you're not into reading. If you're not into reading and you don't mind looking at a bunch of really, really great art, I really implore everyone to buy the three-part manga series. Good stuff. Is that about Kyra for us this week, buddy? We think we should cut it there. I think we're well over what we promised ourselves, but it's been a good conversation. It's been a really good conversation. It has.
01:39:39
Speaker
It's been good stuff. And on that note, I'm Sean, this is Andy.
Engagement with the audience through their website
01:39:44
Speaker
You can find us. If you're interested in finding us anywhere, just go to our website at justshillin.com. Leave a voicemail, send us an email or a voicemail. There's links to it on the website. We'd love to answer your questions. Leave us a review if you want.
Closing thoughts on happiness and caring for loved ones
01:40:01
Speaker
That'd be cool too. That's all I got. Do you have anything else you wanna add?
01:40:06
Speaker
Just stay happy guys and look after your loved ones. Take care. Till next time. Bye.