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DigiGods Episode 255: Across the Digi-Verse
48 Plays1 year ago
Horror classics for Halloween, The Exorcist on 4k, anime old and new, Hong Kong classics from the UK and does anyone really need a Walker: Texas Ranger origin story?
DigiGods Podcast, 10/10/23 (M4a) — 61.4 MB
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In this episode, the Gods discuss:
- 1923: Season 1 (Blu-ray)
- Aber Bergen: Complete Series (DVD)
- Ancient Aliens: Season 17 (DVD)
- Batman Mask of the Phantasm (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Beach of The War Gods (Blu-ray)
- Best Seller (Blu-ray)
- The Big Knife (Blu-ray)
- The Black Phone (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- The Blackening (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Blue Bloods: The 13th Season (DVD)
- Blue Thermal (Blu-ray)
- Bride of Chucky (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Burning Paradise (Blu-ray)
- Busou Shinki (Blu-ray)
- Call of the Night (Blu-ray)
- City of Ghosts (Blu-ray)
- City of the Living Dead (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Cobra Kai Season 5 (DVD)
- Cocaine Bear 4k UHD (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Couples Therapy Season 3 (DVD)
- Crime + Punishment (Blu-ray)
- Crime + Punishment In Suburbia (Blu-ray)
- Crooked Hearts (Blu-ray)
- Cult of Chucky (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Curse of Chucky (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Darrow & Darrow: The Complete Collection (DVD)
- DEEMO Memorial Keys (Blu-ray/DVD)
- The Demon Girl Next Door S2 (Blu-ray)
- Diary of a Hitman (Blu-ray)
- Elizabeth (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- The Equalizer: Season Three (DVD)
- The Executioner and Her Way of Life (Blu-ray)
- The Exorcist 4k UHD (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Fall (Best Buy Steelbook Exclusive) (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Fantasista Doll (Blu-ray)
- Fire Country Season One (DVD)
- The Flash (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- The Flash: The Ninth and Final Season (Blu-ray)
- From Beijing With Love (Blu-ray)
- The Girl from Rio (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Girlish Number (Blu-ray)
- Girls Und Panzer - TV + OVAs (Blu-ray)
- Go Tell the Spartans (Blu-ray)
- Golden Gate (DVD)
- Golgo 13 (Blu-ray)
- HALLOWEEN H20: 20 YEARS LATER - 4k Steelbook (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- High School of the Dead (Blu-ray)
- History’s Greatest of All Time with Peyton Manning (DVD)
- Immoral Guild (Blu-ray)
- In the Line of Duty III (Blu-ray)
- In the Line of Duty IV (Blu-ray)
- Inu-Oh (Blu-ray)
- Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! (Blu-ray)
- Kiss the Girls (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Lady Reporter (aka Blonde Fury) (Blu-ray)
- The Legend of Zorro (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Leprechaun: The Complete Movie Collection (Blu-ray)
- Leprechaun: The Complete Movie Collection (DVD)
- The Life of Budori Gusuko (Blu-ray)
- The Lincoln Lawyer” Season 1 (Blu-ray)
- Lonely Castle in the Mirror (Blu-ray)
- Lupin Zero (Blu-ray)
- Made in Abyss: S2 (Blu-ray)
- Magnificent Warriors (Blu-ray)
- Majestic Prince (Blu-ray)
- Medaka Box Complete Season 1 and 2 (Blu-ray)
- My Isekai Life (Blu-ray)
- Mystery Date (Blu-ray)
- Natural Born Killers [Collector's Edition] (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- NCIS: Hawai'i Season Two (DVD)
- NCIS: Los Angeles - The Final Season (DVD)
- The Neighborhood - Season 5 (DVD)
- New Gods: Yang Jian (Blu-ray)
Recommended
Transcript
Hosts return with updates
00:00:25
Speaker
Welcome back, everybody. It's been a few weeks. We have been just crazy busy, Tim and I. We try to schedule a day. And you know, it used to be easy when we did these things every week. We got so many other things going on and it's just nuts. Yeah. Let's talk. I mean, we're not going to talk about war in the Middle East because nobody tunes in to us for that. You can not share. You got your 24 hour cable news for that. You're coming here. We're going to. We thought about recommending some films, but it was too complicated.
00:00:52
Speaker
It's too complicated. It's too complicated. They even recommend good films to get you up to speed on what the hell is going on. And there are interesting films out there. It would have to be like a 12 film set and it still wouldn't complete the movie. No.
00:01:08
Speaker
Yeah, no.
Scarecrow Video's new rental website
00:01:10
Speaker
But there is some news, which if you go to scarecrowvideo.org, scarecrowvideo.org, Scarecrow Video has launched a new rental website for all of you who are mourning the loss of the Netflix disc rental service.
00:01:25
Speaker
scarecrow video there they're stepping in and they're filling that space granted they do not have as many titles. And if you were accustomed to finding pretty much anything in the under the sun over at netflix you will not find anything under the sun but you'll find a lot if you want to do this rentals and.
00:01:40
Speaker
Not actually buy them and not have to deal with digital and digital rental and all that stuff and a lot of stuff that you can't find elsewhere except on disc video dot org it looks never had this deep a library as they claimed anyway there's plenty of crap that you could not get a physical rental just for whatever Netflix on that was so that was always the thing that was in our head rather than something that was actually true.
00:02:06
Speaker
But still, you know, scarecrowvideo.org. It's a good, it's a good new rental website, scarecrowvideo.org. So go check that out.
David McCallum tribute
00:02:14
Speaker
And then on the, on the open run. We can put links into a link someplace, I guess. I guess I'll just go check it out. I'll include it on the on the show rundown. But David McCallum, we lost David McCallum a couple weeks ago. The man's an uncle.
00:02:27
Speaker
Yeah i mean we remember from man from uncle mainly so much yeah he was recently on some other what was the other show he was recently on for you he's a he's a one of the one of those cop procedural story played that that scientists and he was on fringes and yeah i love david mccallum but elia he was elia yeah and from uncle yeah.
00:02:48
Speaker
And it finally dawned on me that, man from uncle, what was it about that show that I just found so captivating versus the Avengers and Mission Impossible and all the other spy shows that were taking advantage of the Bond moment there in the 1960s?
00:03:04
Speaker
And i think it was whenever i saw david mccallum's head which is much too wide it's much too wide like the crown of his head is at least three inches just this much larger than a normal human being almost looks like an alien.
00:03:19
Speaker
And then you put him next to Robert Vaughn, who has a jaw, like Jay Leno could live in his jaw, or his Vaughn jaw. And it was just, it was the fact that the two of those heads next to each other looked like some kind of a cartoon. They looked like a cartoonist had drawn the caricature of real people with exaggerated features, except those were the real people. That's what it was. You just see the heads and you're like, I got to see this show. I can't believe these people live in the real world.
00:03:49
Speaker
It's one of the NCIS's, I think is the answer to that question that you asked in one of those NCIS's. And so much stuff, a lot of great
Eureka's martial arts film collection
00:03:57
Speaker
voices. And David, I think what I liked about him is that intellectual thing that he brought to him. You know whether it's demand from Uncle's stuff or the other stuff.
00:04:05
Speaker
He was always there doing a lot of thinking. And, you know, I sort of appreciate it. Sapphire and steel. It was something like the Avengers. It was him. And who was it? Oh, my gosh. I can't remember who the heck it was. But that was another great one from anyway. It was kind of cool, like an early 80s kind of thing. I love that stuff.
00:04:29
Speaker
Joanna Lumley, Joanna Lumley, that's who it is. Joanna Lumley. We are now able to review some stuff from Eureka, which is a UK company, but they are sending us some of their wonderful, wonderful titles. They, of course, do the Masters of Cinema series. I'm going to blow here through some of the really, really terrific Eureka stuff, most of which is Hong Kong and Hong Kong martial arts and Japanese genre stuff.
00:04:57
Speaker
But there's a lot of really really great stuff in here junya satos film with kentaka kura gogo 13 is quite a fun discovery i had not seen this and i find it really quite enjoyable it is it made in nineteen seventy three.
00:05:13
Speaker
It's a very particular period in Japanese cinema. It's post-Japanese New Wave. It's not really so-called Japsploitation, but it's a really, really cool film and limited edition. There's only 2,000 copies being run, comes with the collector's booklet and the whole deal. But Ken Takakura, who actually was the part was written for him,
00:05:35
Speaker
It's pretty great, based on a manga series, but a really, really great kind of one of those assassin action stories. It's pretty terrific.
4K restorations of action classics
00:05:43
Speaker
Golgo 13, really, really fun stuff. And then there is also Samurai Reincarnation by Kinji Fukusaku. Kinji Fukusaku is most famous for his gangster movies. Like Battle Royale is kind of in the gangster genre. It's more of a Hunger Games thing in Battle Royale, but it's from the present day genre stuff that he does.
00:06:04
Speaker
Samurai Reincarnation is one of his samurai things. Pretty great. It's got, you know, ninjas and magic and all kinds of fun stuff. It's much more genre-fuel than something like, you know, a Kurosawa film. But Samurai Reincarnation, lots of fun, all of the same just relentlessly bloody Kinji Fukusaku stuff. You'll absolutely love it.
00:06:27
Speaker
We've also got rich and famous and tragic hero this is a great double feature from the hong kong new wave and it's a you know it's a gangster thing it's it's got you know andy lounge i am fatter in it.
00:06:44
Speaker
and there's all kinds of the usual Hong Kong stuff, gambling and racketeering and all that kind of stuff. Don't worry about any of this stuff. This is just a couple of years before the killer and it really kind of sets the stage for a lot of that John Woo stuff that's gonna come later. So it's really, really, really great. Good, solid action, bloody as can be, but also if you love chai and fat, if you love Andy Lau, you're gonna love it.
00:07:14
Speaker
The Jackie Chan police story films are out now, 4K Restorations, really, really outstanding stuff. Police Story 3 is the one that is most famous, but they're all on Ultra HD, 4K.
00:07:32
Speaker
Terrific. The original police story is the one where he slides down the banister in the mall and scrapes all his, you see in the outtakes at the end, right? He tears his hands up and where he fully, the two, I think it was three stuntmen who the bus stops.
00:07:49
Speaker
right as he's holding the gun on the bus in the road and it was supposed to be where they go falling out the top window and they like hit the car. But the bus stopped in the wrong place so they fell out and they hit the pavement and they were, they broke bones. Every stunt in this film somebody got actually hurt. Super, you know, Police Story 2 has one of my all-time favorite scenes which is the kids playground scene where he's fighting off guys around, you know, jungle gyms and the whole thing. It's amazing. Phenomenal. But, of course,
00:08:17
Speaker
you know, Police Story 3, Supercop. That's where Michelle Yeoh got her great big giant break. And she had done films previously. We're going to talk about some. But that was the one that really, you know, she was with Jackie. She held her own. She does the splits in the midair going over somebody. She rides a motorcycle up onto a moving train. It's unbelievable.
Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock classics
00:08:36
Speaker
So all of that on you. If you survived the Jackie Chan School of Filmmaking, you got the right to be a movie star. Just if she survived it.
00:08:47
Speaker
Sam O, the whole shebang. So true. Burning Paradise is a Ringo Lamb film. Ringo Lamb, of course, kind of came over to Hollywood for a moment and did like Joy Hawk and...
00:08:59
Speaker
Um, John Woo ahead of him and he made a Van Damme film. And then of course he's gone back. And this is a, uh, you know, he used to make gangster films kind of in the John Wooish mode, a little bit different. Anyway, um, this is really interesting. If this is kind of a little bit martial arts, a little bit Hong Kong horror, but what's interesting is that the lead character is, uh, folks I hook.
00:09:24
Speaker
Which is kind of you know basically the same characters from the movies and it's completely fictitious but there you know anytime you have a name it's it triggers something for audiences so that's what it is but he made a movie.
00:09:43
Speaker
Would you claw maximum risk? You remember that one late 90s? It's a fight scene in that movie that takes place inside an elevator, right? Yeah, I remember that fight scene in the elevator. Dude, that is why sometimes I teach that fight scene for beautifully staged fight scene in a close quarter. So it's just just brutal, brutal fight scene inside. It's just out freaking standing to this day. It's one of my favorite fight scenes in that Ringo Lambo.
00:10:13
Speaker
Man, Ringo knows how to stage some amazing stuff. He really does. He does. We got a bunch of Michelle Yeoh films now that she is an Academy Award winner. We're releasing a lot of her great stuff, like Yes, Madam, in which she stars with Cynthia Rothrock, Magnificent Warriors, which is kind of a mainland Chinese themed World War II Japanese fighting thing.
00:10:37
Speaker
I'm not really related to the royal warriors which was what preceded it and but i gotta say you know magnificent warriors was recently on the on the criteria channel beautiful transfer this looks even better yes madam was also on criteria after you know she won the oscar. Terrible transfer this blu-ray is phenomenal yes madam has the big finale in the in kind of these these.
00:11:04
Speaker
it's again shopping mall thing where she and this sent the rock rocker just going out against bad guys unbelievable unbelievable stuff.
00:11:12
Speaker
Awesome. And then we also have, as long as we're speaking about Cynthia Rothrock, we've got Lady Reporter, which is also known here as the Blonde Fury. Lady Reporter was, I think, the original Hong Kong title, and Blonde Fury is how it was released outside of Hong Kong. In any case, it's absolutely great. If you were Caucasian and you made it into a Hong Kong martial arts film,
00:11:34
Speaker
That meant you were legit because you had to be up to their level. And Cynthia Rothrock was. She's not a contact martial artist. She's a forms martial artist, which means it's, you know, she learned to do forms. It's all kind of, it's not fighting martial arts. It's kind of.
00:11:50
Speaker
Presentation acrobatic marshmallows and all that stuff but she's great at it and this is a really really fun film. Lots of lots of really great stuff in here directed by cori young you know jackie chancell pal who did so many of these other great films it's really really good.
00:12:08
Speaker
Let me go through just some of these real fast so that I don't spend too much time on the rest of them. We've got Beach of the War Gods. This is Jimmy Wang Yu title, which is like, gosh, 19, gotta be late 1970s. Jimmy Wang Yu, of course, Tim and I have done a commentary for one of his movies and he made a lot of great films in the 60s and 70s. This is one of them. So this is worth checking out. Nice kind of,
00:12:36
Speaker
period Chinese thing. Beijing with love with Stephen Chow is hysterical. This is a James Bond spoof with Stephen Chow is the dorkiest, weirdest, most psychotic spy imaginable. I remember that early 90s, right?
00:12:53
Speaker
Yeah he can he's a butcher until he gets called up to be a spy he sits around any brings the big butcher clock like a cleaver with him that's his that's his secret weapon and it's it's really a little bit scary and there is a scene here i cannot even describe on the show is not appropriate.
00:13:12
Speaker
Because it's so crude, and it's so hilarious. So from Beijing with Love, one of the funniest spy spoofs, maybe the funniest spy spoof ever to come out of Hong Kong for sure. And then we've also got The Prodigal Son, which is one of the all-time, this is from Arrow, by the way, not Eureka, but I'm including it here. The Prodigal Son, one of the all-time great classic Hong Kong films from the Hong Kong New Wave era.
00:13:37
Speaker
She shoots straight.
The Flash movie vs TV series
00:13:38
Speaker
This is back to Eureka now. She shoots straight with Karina Lau and in special appearance by Sam O'Hong. Also, absolutely one of the great kind of feminist actioners that they, you know, Karina Lau is, you know, not up to Michelle Yeoh standards, but, or Cynthia Rothrock, but awful lot of fun anyway. And then, no, Jackie Chan and Jet Li are not the only actors to portray Wong Fei.
00:14:02
Speaker
Wong Fei Hong was portrayed by Quan Tak-Hing in 1974 in the movie The Skyhawk, which also starred Carter Wong and Samuel Hong. And I had never seen this. And do I prefer Quan Tak-Hing to Jackie or Jet? No, not by a mile. But you know what? It's a really fun film. It's pretty great. Another 1970s era classic.
00:14:28
Speaker
And then just two more in the line of duty four is along with the in the line of duty three i don't know why one and two weren't released but this is another great long standing series with donnie yen and cynthia con. This is one reason why michelle yo who was momentarily known as michelle con change your name so as to not be confused with the equally excellent cynthia con senator but cynthia con also very very good yeah the two in the line of duty films.
00:14:56
Speaker
And then yes we do finally have royal warriors, the well the other warriors film from what i just mentioned anyway magnificent warriors and royal warriors so those are the two michelle yo warriors movies they have nothing to do with each other but they're both absolutely terrific.
00:15:15
Speaker
And then lastly, Eureka is also releasing a lot of Buster Keaton films, all of which are available here in multiple versions. So you can take your pick. There's the Kino stuff, which looks really, really good. There's the Cohen stuff, which also looks really, really good. And that all comes from a separate library. And then there's another library that is being used to release all of this wonderful Blu-ray stuff from Eureka in the UK. And the one I'm mentioning here is the Three Ages, which is
00:15:42
Speaker
The very that was buster keaton's first feature length film and it's really really good anyway really goes great with the jackie chan stuff it does and that's why i'm including it here because this is the hundredth anniversary of buster keaton's directing debut so it's it's worth checking out the three ages a whole lot of fun.
00:16:02
Speaker
So where this is probably gonna be our Halloween show as well. I don't know if we'll get to another show before Halloween. So we've got a ton of 4Ks. A lot of them are Halloween themed. Should we dive into those Tim? Let's do those. We're gonna get to those criterions, because there are a lot of few criterions I definitely wanna talk about. So we're gonna bump into the 4Ks? Yeah, let's bump into the 4Ks. And you know what I wanna do, I'm gonna deviate a little bit here, because I want to
00:16:32
Speaker
I want to talk about, because I'm going to pull something out of the TV stacks. So we've got The Flash, the movie that kind of tanked this last summer on 4K. And then we also have the ninth and final season of The Flash on television, which Tim and I, of course, have been fond of since it began nearly a decade ago. So let's compare and contrast these two, because here's my big problem with The Flash, the movie, if I could point this out. And I have mentioned this to people.
00:16:59
Speaker
Is that if you saw season three of the flash on television, it's basically the same story as the movie.
00:17:09
Speaker
Oh, well, yes, because of the going back with the with the with the because I mean, I guess we're not doing spoilers. We can't really do spoilers, can you? Yeah, look, the big twist as to, oh, who is that guy in the who's attacking him in the Speed Force? Who is that? Well, if you watch season three of the TV show, you know exactly who that is. And yeah, not a surprise when it happens.
00:17:31
Speaker
And that sort of surprised me that warner brothers would not have seen that problem coming it's like the two worlds did not even connect and this flash movie is so obsessed with tying in all these other universes.
00:17:49
Speaker
Tying in like, I mean, there's all this, all this DC stuff that gets surprised by all the way the multiverse is connect. Like everybody knows, yeah, he teams up with Michael Keaton's Batman because it's a different universe. And, you know, there's another universe where there's no Superman, but there's a super girl and she steals this movie. I thought great. Yeah. Yeah. But they, they taught, they would wrap in all this other Superman and Batman lore. I mean, you know, when you see Adam West and Bert Ward kind of show up in the background, you roll your eyes a little bit, but the one universe that they don't actually tie in correctly.
00:18:19
Speaker
is the TV flash. It's weird because on season, was it seven or something, where the movie flash showed up for a moment on the TV flash. Yeah, but they don't repay the loop. They don't answer. They don't move back around. Look, all of that is so true, but here's my problem with this flash, the flash. Yeah, the movie. It's the movie. It's ugly.
Multiverse in superhero movies
00:18:47
Speaker
It is, isn't it? It's visually displeasing. Almost always. Almost always. Particularly when that whole melange of things are coming at you. You know what I'm talking about. But really, just in any given moment in that film, it's literally visually displeasing. It hurts my eyes. It's an ugly movie to look at. And it gets uglier the more kinetic it gets. And I don't know.
00:19:15
Speaker
I literally just did, so narrative, all the narrative stuff you said, absolutely, but I just didn't like looking at this movie. I just, you know, and that really disappointed me. Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. And, um,
00:19:27
Speaker
You know, I mean, it's interesting because they were always very concerned about how he would play, how Ezra Miller's indiscretions in regular life would impact what happens in the movie. And, you know, I can put that stuff aside. Like, he can be the biggest jerk in life. I'll still, I'll be willing to suspend it and, you know, give him a solid shot in the movie because sometimes actors need to just be who they are on screen and that way they can cope with who they are in real life.
00:19:56
Speaker
But I don't, I didn't find it great casting, to be honest. I know, you know, we saw him in, you know, Justice League and he had done, you know, the previous stuff, and that was fine. And I really like Zack Snyder's Justice League director's cut. I like that four-hour film, and I think he's very good in it.
00:20:16
Speaker
But here, that whole like, you know, playing off your goofy old self, which was which seemed to me like a kind of like a cheat of what Michael Keaton did in multiplicity, I thought was great. I love multiplicity. No, I love it. Didn't work for me. It just didn't work. Like, oh, there's my goofy pre pre flash self. I just could never wrap myself around it. And again,
00:20:38
Speaker
I think they could have done better with the plot. They really could have done better with the plot. And it wound up not making much money at all. Well, no, no, it did very, very, very poorly and for a whole lot of different reasons, some of which had to do with Ezra and his shenanigans, most of which had to do with just people not particularly caring for the movie, the narrative, the story, the stories the film was communicating and agree.
00:21:21
Speaker
years. If he had played every Batman and every Batman movie made, no matter who the director was, Michael Keaton could have held on both physically, presentation. He could have played the arc of the character, obviously, because he's aged, you know, 25, 30 years old. So he could have played the whole arc. I believed him every bit as much as old ass Batman in this movie as I'm like, all these Batmans we've had, and I only ever needed the one.
00:21:21
Speaker
best thing in
New 4K film releases review
00:22:04
Speaker
I just used to be fun, but now, you know. Well, let's talk now. Now that the grand romance of Barry and Iris has come to a close in the next season, and I thought this show, I loved the first few seasons of this show. I thought around season, late season six, it was starting to run on some fumes, and seven, eight, and nine have just been kind of treading water.
00:22:11
Speaker
It is an interesting thing because I was never a fan of him originally, but I love him in this. Isn't that interesting?
00:22:30
Speaker
And God bless it, I mean, bringing Chester on to replace Cisco. I'm okay with it because I like the actor that they brought in for Chester. I think he didn't try to be Cisco, right? He did his own thing, but he's still being that part of the team.
00:22:47
Speaker
But just too many characters in this show became meta at a certain point. Yeah, it was just everybody was meta. Everybody had powers and it just got a little crowded in the room. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, look, and then they were around for a while. Look, we had the whole thing with, you know, with Zora, you know, heard the daughter and the son and from the future and there are all kinds of shows.
00:23:11
Speaker
And I was never particularly crazy about that little bending of time and space. And it makes things like very complicated, to say the least. But I was never crazy about that. But OK, dealt with all that. By the time we get to I think everybody but Joe, you know, dad, I think everyone with Joe got powers and Joe toward the end of this place, Joe and Chester.
00:23:34
Speaker
Just a super smart, but no problem. Joe is just a cop, regular cop. I went to a state college. I got no powers. I'm good. I've been solving crimes here. By the time we get to the end of this, Joe's like, you know what, guys? I'm going to take the kid. We're moving out to the farm. You guys go ahead and hold this down. I'm like that. Now, that guy is talking since.
00:24:05
Speaker
Joe is like this this shit is crazy. I'm getting out of here So a couple other 4ks here as long as I'm the superhero kick. Ah, yes when I went to we're into some animated stuff So Batman mask of the Phantasm. Mm-hmm. Okay. It's another you know DC original looks great You know
00:24:23
Speaker
respectively written. It's from the Batman animated series universe. Joker comes back, which is always nice. There's something really classic about Joker. I just don't know that this is given as much that's new. On the other hand, Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse, the second of the Spider-Verse films in the trilogy, the first one, of course, won an Academy Award for Best Animation, and it deserved to.
00:24:51
Speaker
How do we feel about this now that they are going into this kind of multiverse craziness i mean the first one opened up the multiverse but now. You got this character here who becomes kind of a multiverse villain and it just goes bonkers.
00:25:09
Speaker
Tim? Well, the notion of the multiverse is problematic at this point, period. Now, I'm being ridiculously unfair as a child of the original Star Trek series where, you know, every now and again, we go to New York, and the ones with mustaches and goatees were the bad guys.
00:25:30
Speaker
There'll be all this kind of stuff like that. So maybe I'm being a crank about this, but I think that the notion of the multiverse has become a crutch. One of the many crutches that live inside of all of these, whether it's the Marvel over here or the DC over there, whatever it is, when they start the multiverse in you,
00:25:52
Speaker
That's when you know they're running out of ideas. To me, the multiverse is an indicator of ideas are getting sent. Yeah, I agree. I agree. The weird thing, though, is what occurred to me because I saw these, like, on Successive Nights, Spider-Man Across the Multiverse is basically the same movie as The Flash. Again? Except it does the whole the way that the way they tell that multiverse story.
00:26:21
Speaker
Is is better, but yeah the movie flash. It's the again. It's the third season of the tv show, but the general story structure Is basically spider-man across the spider-verse except it does it better now. I still think this movie has problems I think it's way too busy gave me a headache. It's just there. I felt the same way. I thought about flash. Yeah Too busy too busy just because it's trying to capture that comic book page look where everything is a frame on the page
00:26:47
Speaker
Right like you know you get some some pages in the comic book and they're like seven or eight or nine ten frames and there's something outrageous happening in all of minutes it's kind of visual overload and it takes you a moment to kind of work your way through it. If you're a comic reader but but when you animate each of those frames and then you put them all on the screen at the same time.
00:27:08
Speaker
You're gonna give me a migraine. Exactly. It's all moving too fast and things get missed. And like you said, that multiverse dynamic does put you into this narrative flow that's gonna loop you through the same things happening over and over and over again. Things that have to do with meeting yourself, things that have to do with meeting other versions of the things that have to do with changing the timeline, things that have to do with blah, blah, blah, you know, all of that. And I don't know, if you see it coming, you see it coming. Yeah. Yeah, I agree.
00:27:39
Speaker
So we got three little pieces of 4K here before we get into the Halloween stuff, but I want to also mention a Best Buy exclusive from Lionsgate for the movie Fall. Unrated version of Fall in a steelbook packaging only at Best Buy. This is from Lionsgate.
00:27:56
Speaker
And i'm a little bit surprised that they went for a big 4k steelbook for this because almost nobody had heard of this thing but it is you know this is the rock climber movie right it's it's kind of a young adult oriented story but,
00:28:13
Speaker
And it's really very well shot, like the 4K is well served by the whole idea of climbing to 2,000 feet up to the top of this radio tower, and then having to figure out how you're going to make your way back down. And there's a whole thing here.
00:28:33
Speaker
I don't know is this really like a I mean people who buy four K's are they gonna go for this deal book I don't know. I don't know I'm not I'm not a rock climbing guy you know yeah that's a thing but I mean it's or whatever this doesn't really do it for me. Unless there's a market for you know young adult.
00:28:55
Speaker
book readers and movie viewers that really craves 4K adaptations like this. I mean, maybe I'm not into it anyway. Three movies that are, you know, semi-recent, recent dish within the last couple of decades, that are now out on 4K, Legend of Zorro, which was the second of the Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones Zorro movies.
00:29:18
Speaker
Promising Young Woman, which is absolutely superb, and then the original Elizabeth by Shaker Kapoor starring Cate Blanchett as Queen Elizabeth I, which is one of my favorite films of the past 20-some years.
00:29:34
Speaker
It has been notable before that, but that film made her kind of put her in that upper Meryl Streepish level of range. Really did. I mean, it's a great film and Shaker Kapoor had been a favorite director of mine for a while. He had done Bandit Queen.
00:29:50
Speaker
I saw it can in 93, I want to say. That put him over the top in the Indian film industry. It got released here. It was my number one film of the year when it got released here. Hollywood took notice and his career is a little bit stagnated now because he did The Four Feathers and it didn't do well. But well, I'll tell you, he just nailed it and knocked it out of the park with Elizabeth. I still think this is one of the best period films of the last 30, 40 years. It's a gorgeous movie too.
00:30:19
Speaker
She is so phenomenal in it. And Promising Young Woman, by the way, both of them, and Legend of Zora, they all have movies anywhere, digital codes. So you can add them. Promising Young Woman, boy, let's just talk for a second.
00:30:36
Speaker
Because, you know, last year I loved the, I loved She Says, which is the expose on the Harvey Weinstein thing. And Promising Young Woman kind of, you know, it got a good little awards attention, but not a ton of money at the box office, because it's kind of going in that same direction, right? She's a woman who's trying to, you know, seek revenge for a rape that had occurred. And, you know, I think everybody knows the story.
00:31:04
Speaker
Yeah, Emerald Fennel wrote and directed, you know, terrific writer, excellent screenplay, really just brutal film on the whole Me Too moment.
00:31:13
Speaker
But we have breaking news as well on the Harvey Weinstein thing, by the way, the Julia Ormond lawsuit this week, which I should have mentioned at the top of the show. For those who don't know, Julia Ormond has now come out years after everybody else came out and is now suing Harvey Weinstein for sexual assault. And I think calling it assault as opposed to rape is pretty charitable. But she's suing him. And here's the twist. He's also suing CAA and Disney and Miramax.
00:31:42
Speaker
for enabling it. That'll be a game changer. I mean, she prevails on that, that changes everything.
00:32:02
Speaker
particularly that Asian suit. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, in your Salma, who was probably sexual arrest by Harvey Weinstein as well. So, so anyway, yeah, like very, very interesting set of events. Uh, legend of Zorro. How does this compare to the original?
00:32:20
Speaker
Oh, well, it's not, it's not the original, but I appreciate it. Look, I appreciated both Antonio and, oh, what's his name? I haven't seen him in a while. Anthony and Anthony. And that original, for one thing, I bought Anthony Hopkins, that's that original Zora. Yeah, it goes to those, Anthony, Anthony was probably my age at the time, 16, some odd years old, you know?
00:32:45
Speaker
But he sold it, that he was still that thumbs capable. By the time you get to this, even Antonio's a little long in the tooth. To be running around in that black outfit. But it's okay, what do you think?
00:32:58
Speaker
You know what, I remember liking it okay. I didn't love it, but it didn't sort of destroy the memory of the previous one. I didn't think it was nearly as good as the first one, but it was fine, it was adequate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Revisiting those characters. Yeah, yeah. So three more here, which are a little bit more in the exploitation-y vein. Kiss the Girls, not really an exploitation film, but it is not, you know, as Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd, not up to other serial killer stories.
00:33:23
Speaker
I'm certainly not the same legal signs the lambs are seven but it's not bad you know gary gary flater did a decent job with it and i'm working for you it always makes you believe that you're watching a better movie than you are now that's what that's what it is in the name it is that's what it is it's just he brings that gravitas and you just you buy into it like you look at that face you go alright you buy it i'll buy it.
00:33:45
Speaker
Yeah, there it is. Look, Ashley Judd was something that Vannage knew at the time. And those James Pattinson novels, this is another one of the James Pattisons. I guess Morgan played this character twice for James. I think Tyler Perry played one. This is a detective character that's in a whole bunch of James Pattisons. That's right. Yes, yes, yes. And this may have been one of the first ones. What's funny is you can't really make this kind of film,
00:34:08
Speaker
Even with the weight of a Morgan Freeman in the lead, let alone an Ashley Judd as a feature film anymore. These are not feature films anymore. These are streaming films now. But back in 97, that was a big movie. Sure was. Sure was. And then we also have Cocaine Bear on 4K. I ripped the daylights out of this thing on radio. I mean, what an unfortunate movie to be one of Ray Liotta's last films.
00:34:37
Speaker
You know, some people have told me now because I was I was on with Kristi and and Kristi loved it. She's like, I love me some cocaine there. And and Kristi is much more forgiving of this stuff than I am a much more populous sensibility. But everybody's told me you're too tough on it. It's just it's just it's just messing around. I'm like, yeah, but but it's the problem. It's too gory. And it's not funny.
00:34:59
Speaker
I mean, am I wrong? It was definitely too gory for me. My problem with it was that it was too gory. Had it been way less gory. I mean, you know, O'Shea Jackson with the hand and all kinds of stuff. And it just, it had been more funny than I would have liked. It's kind of like, what was that one about the tire, the killer tire rubber?
00:35:20
Speaker
Rubber, yeah. Yeah, you know, Steve made you giggle right there. Yeah, already. And but with the bear, the effects, all of that kind of stuff, but it's just too gory. It just, I would like this movie if the bear never never killed anybody. I agree. Did I like it?
00:35:36
Speaker
And the thing is, you know, Elizabeth Banks directed this and really needs to kind of get the tone right in her movies because they claim like this is based on real events. Well, I know you, you are always ripping on the real events thing. Here's the real event. Here's the real event. Uh, somebody dropped some cocaine out of, out of a plane and a bear found it. And I guess the bear like died or did something, whatever a bear found it.
00:35:57
Speaker
Bear didn't go on a rampage and start killing people. Basically, the portion of this movie that bears any relationship to real life, I might as well say that The Godfather is about my life. It's about people. It's about people who have dinner. There you go.
00:36:20
Speaker
I'm trying to think of something that I would compare it to that got it right in terms of tone by me. Like I said, rubber or something like that. But that's about, you know, rubber is a good one.
00:36:31
Speaker
And then we've also got a blue underground UHD 4K of an old Jess Franco, the kind of spy, Barbarella thing called The Girl from Rio. I had forgotten this movie even existed. This is such a weird movie, but it may be one of the most accomplished and professional and good films that Jess Franco ever made, because usually Jess Franco would make movies where people are just kind of partially naked and acting very badly.
00:36:59
Speaker
And this really does try to be much more in that barbarella vein that that danger diabolique all the bond spoofs of that era and it's you know what i mean it's it's.
00:37:15
Speaker
It's a little bit over the top but really i kinda had a lot of fun with it it's a you know it's stylish and it's well shot and franco suddenly knows where to put the camera and get you some really good visuals and uh george sanders is pretty great in it.
00:37:31
Speaker
He just nails it. A city full of nothing but fine ass women, Italian chicks mostly. I mean, right there, I'm like, go ahead, string it up. Let's film a movie. Whatever. But that's a lot of fun. I dig that movie.
00:37:50
Speaker
You know, we've got also, there is a part of the Warner Brothers releasing all of their classics on 4K now and the 100th anniversary run. And the original William Friedkin, our dear late friend William Friedkin, the original The Exorcist is now on 4K UHD the very same week that the latest Exorcist or the attempt at a kind of semi long distance sequel
00:38:16
Speaker
With the sequel is a is the reconception of the originals that way david gordon green that way. Ellen bursen shows up in the movie is she the same okay i don't i don't really understand why this new like.
00:38:33
Speaker
Gosh, he made George Washington. Why? How? Go back to making those movies. Oh, he also made How High. And I was wondering if he was doing here what he did with the Halloween movies, you know, where he just sort of like, you know, yeah, more or less, you know, started over and I don't know. Well, this has the extended director's cut and the original theatrical cut, both of them on it. So you can make your mind up to which one you prefer. But this movie still works. It still totally works. The music works.
00:39:02
Speaker
The effects work. Max von Seidau is tremendous in it. Everything works. I remember this as a kid. It was a total sensation. People were lines around the block. It was one of those first kind of movies in the 70s that really just lit people up and it was a whole new movie-going experience.
00:39:23
Speaker
It still works, man. Yeah, yeah. Bill never cared for calling it a horror movie, though. When one included it in the ranks of, you know, what we classically call horror movies, he really never cares. You know, Frankenstein, you know, Dracula, or all that kind of stuff. You know, drama, to him. It's a drama.
00:39:41
Speaker
Now, we also have a 4K release, collector's edition, from Shout Select, volume 147, gosh, we got there quickly, of natural born killers. Oliver Stone's adaptation of the Quentin Tarantino screenplay, which Quentin never, they went splitsville on this. Quentin didn't like the movie, he didn't like what Oliver Stone did with it. They hated what he did with it, in fact. So, you know, is it more a Quentin film? Is it more an Oliver Stone film? That's the debate.
00:40:08
Speaker
This held the top spot of my worst film ever made list for a long time. It displaced Ken Russell's gothic and it was eventually displaced by Postman, by Postle. Which is just... Uwe Boll. Uwe Boll's unwatchable piece of garbage. But I really dislike this movie.
00:40:32
Speaker
However, I recognize what Stone was going for, that he was going for something completely unhinged and psychedelic and otherworldly. And so over time, I've cut it a little bit of slack. I'd forgotten Robert Downey Jr. was in it entirely. Didn't remember that at all. But I still think it's too much. I still think it's too much.
00:40:52
Speaker
Well, you know, it was a cultural commentary 1994. And it's all about cultural commentary about about the media creating the sensation and the media becoming the story and the story, you know, all that kind of stuff, you know, so
00:41:07
Speaker
I don't know that it captured the reality of the culture of that moment. Everything sort of being, particularly given what things have become today. But the intention of the movie, I always appreciated. It struck me as a movie about, from a filmmaker looking at the culture and saying, the culture is sort of shaped in a certain way. I'm gonna take all of that, turn it up to 11.
00:41:36
Speaker
and see what happens. Robert Downey played that reporter, you know? So it becomes a part of this. It's an interesting sort of thing. Kind of like Man Biked Dog a little bit, I guess. For my money, The Better Movie was the one that came out not too many months earlier. That was California with Brad Pitt. Oh, with Brad and... Kate. California with a K. With a K, yeah. With Brad and... Who? Juliette Lewis? No, Juliette Lewis is in this one. This is in this one. Who's in that one with Brad? Oh, gosh. Who was it? I can only remember Brad Kitt.
00:42:08
Speaker
Oh David, it was David. It is Juliette Lewis. No, no, it was Juliette Lewis. In both of them. Isn't that weird? Why did I forget that? Yeah, it's stuck in my head. I forgot David the company was in it. Foxy anyway. Yeah, interesting.
00:42:23
Speaker
All right. Well, anyway, and then we also have, before we get into the Halloween stuff, we've got Orson Welles' Touch of Evil from Eureka. An amazing UHD volume of Touch of Evil. Which one? Is the one that they put back together from his notes? So this includes three versions.
00:42:46
Speaker
And they all have Dolby Vision HDR, which is just spectacular. It has the theatrical version, the preview version, and the 1998 reconstruction. All three of them. And it's really amazing. And there are four audio commentaries.
00:43:02
Speaker
Um, it, you know, interviews extras. I mean, this is like a criterion level stuff. So three versions of this film and you can make your own mind up. Uh, but it, it really is a legendary film. Orson Welles had already let himself go by this time. You know, the film gets mocked a little bit because, um, Charlton Heston as a Mexican is.
00:43:26
Speaker
Let's just leave it there. Charlton Heston plays a Mexican. That's a problem. But the film itself has that amazing opening shot and it has this limited edition 100 page book that is just tremendous. It's got essays in it by everybody imaginable, Truffaut and Bazan. It really just goes to the mat and tells you why this is a great film. And then you can watch the three versions to figure out which one you prefer.
00:43:50
Speaker
Again, Orson is doing cultural commentary. Everything that's going on in that movie is cultural commentary. I don't mind Charlton playing Mexico in that movie. It's 1958, so this is a very ordinary sort of thing. I do mind Orson Welles' fake ass nose. That's no excuse for that. Dude, come on, dude. So anyway, yeah. I love that movie.
00:44:15
Speaker
So let's get into some halloweeny stuff. We have a whole bunch of interesting kind of...
00:44:24
Speaker
Steelbook sets, Steelbook horror collections from Lionsgate, and they all have the digital copy thing. And one of them is Halloween 1 and 2, the Rob Zombie versions. Oh, the Rob Zombie stuff, okay. The Rob Zombie ones, right? The Rob Zombie Halloween 1 and 2, which are, you know, they kind of have, they're the most recent and they,
00:44:48
Speaker
You know, Zombie, if put aside his horrible monsters movie, he really does kind of capture something here in the way that he redoes these. And then as it happens, we also have out on 4K from Paramount via Miramax, Halloween H2O 20 years later, which is supposed to kind of bring the whole thing to a close. So the original series with Jamie Lee Curtis,
00:45:12
Speaker
now an Oscar winner, uh, 20 years later, uh, you know, this is the, the 25th anniversary of Halloween. I was going to say Halloween, Halloween 20 years ago, 20 years later, it was 25 years ago, right? Yeah.
00:45:30
Speaker
So so you know the run anyway the i'm rambling here i'm trying to sort of make sense of this so you have the robs on the reboot of the two and then the twenty years later film. From twenty five years ago which is supposed to bring the original series kind of to a close but of course it didn't really know.
00:45:50
Speaker
I don't know how to what did the whole Halloween universe and that's putting aside the original Halloween Was it three that was the Year of the Witch that had nothing to do with anything Halloween? Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah one and two Yeah, you know John Carpenters wanted to the film really made them back-to-back That's those are the only two of the Halloween films You need to pay any attention to but in my opinions the rest of you knock yourself out with closes out the chapter and
00:46:15
Speaker
We also have Rob Zombie's Firefly trilogy, which I don't know that I had paid much attention to as a trilogy, but it's comprised of House of a Thousand Corpses, The Devil's Rejects, and Three from Hell. Were you aware of the fact that this was a trilogy? I did not know that he conceived them as a trilogy and executed them as a trilogy, and I never did. House of a Thousand Corpses, I was just an outstanding film, but I always thought of it as a standalone film.
00:46:43
Speaker
So here's the weird thing. Like, apparently, the characters in these films, this tells you how poor the filmmaking is. The characters here, Baby Firefly, Otis Driftwood, Captain Spalding, Sheriff Wydell, and other characters are common across these films. I don't know that I even realized. I don't know that I knew that either. I knew the
00:47:02
Speaker
And the actors, his wife, she's in all those movies. Until Sid died, he was in all those movies. Sid, hey, it was all those movies. I don't know that I knew that they were playing the same people in all those movies.
00:47:17
Speaker
We have the Blair Witch Project and the Blair Witch. Now, the Blair Witch is a very, very poor follow-up. There's really no point to that whatsoever. But the original Blair Witch Project, anyway, these are also together in a steel book from Lionsgate. My question for you, Tim Cogshell, is does the original Blair Witch with its fantastic gimmick, and it was a great gimmick, but does it still hold up?
00:47:40
Speaker
Well, if you see it for the first time, and you haven't seen every sort of movie that grew out of it in the last 25 years, I guess it is, then all by itself found footage.
00:47:57
Speaker
the notion is really, really still interesting. Now, we've had a lot of these since then or something like them. So does it hit that way now? Not so much. Not so much. But what are you going to do? That's the thing about these things. They really do only really, really, really work the first time. Now, you and I are both old enough to remember that when the marketing for this was brilliant,
00:48:22
Speaker
because it really led you to believe before deep internet, there was internet, but not deep internet the way we have it now. The marketing really led even film professionals like us to believe that this was a found footage film. It really leaned into it hard and you had to put on your super deep skeptical cap in order to realize what was going on here and it was just so effective that people just all leaned into it.
00:48:51
Speaker
Tim, there is a boxed set, another steel book from Lionsgate, which contains the following films. Now you tell me if you feel like this is something people should run out and see. Let's see if this is something people should run out and see. Leprechaun. Leprechaun 2. Leprechaun 3.
00:49:12
Speaker
Leprechaun 4 in space, Leprechaun in the hood, Leprechaun back to the hood, T-H-A, Leprechaun origins, and Leprechaun returns. Well, look. First of all, first of all, Leprechaun, first one.
00:49:36
Speaker
Jennifer Aniston's in that movie. Young Jennifer Aniston fine as hell in that movie. I could have told her, I could have told her, baby, you're going to be a star. It was just Mark Jones, Mark. I know Mark Jones from way back there. But Jennifer Aniston's in the movie. But once you get past Jennifer there and you know, Warwick gave us places that I was like, Warwick is like, but you look, look, one leprechaun movie is all you really need.
00:50:02
Speaker
I feel like being a quarter Irish, I should be offended on some level, but I can't. I can't. Hey, dude, Leprechaun in the hood. I should be offended. But that's OK.
00:50:16
Speaker
And then we have the last of the steel books here from this Lionsgate series include Saw, Saw 3, Saw 4, Saw 5, and Saw 6. Saw 6 and Saw the final chapter, which as anyone who's been paying attention knows, it was not the final chapter.
00:50:40
Speaker
Because it's all ten that just came out so never listen to that because i think by the thirteenth chapter four was supposed to be the final chapter and i was twenty five years ago i never liked any of these movies that's not my thing you know james james wad and lee and and and and every day it's not my kind of movie no.
00:51:00
Speaker
just genre-wise. So that's the only thing I'm really saying when I say I don't like them. I don't care for the genre. I didn't care for it back in the days of Dario. Dario was making the same thing, relatively speaking. Torture of one sort or another for a reason. Torture porn is just not my thing. But apparently 10 movies later, it's somebody's thing.
00:51:23
Speaker
Well, as long as we're talking about Dario, Synapse has given us the 4K Ultra HD version of Tenebre that we've always wanted not. I have said many times in this show, I'm sorry, I apologize to Dario Argento fans, not a fan of, you know, Giallo or
00:51:42
Speaker
y'all or how you pronounce it i'm really not a fan of argento at all not at all but in nineteen eighty two he made a film that made that set people on fire and i know people who swear by this and they think i'm a heretic and does it look good i guess i you know it's four k it's splashy it's you know blood splashy but
00:52:03
Speaker
You know, I mean, it's still, it's frickin' Tanabre. You know, Anthony Franciosa is just not, he's not good in it. He's just not. I mean, look, for those who don't know, he's about a novelist, and he goes to Rome, and there's some lunatic in Rome who's on the loose, and the question is, why does this movie take place? Oh, well, of course, because, you know, Dario's Italian, and he didn't want to shoot the movie anywhere else, so he's like,
00:52:29
Speaker
I'm gonna shoot in rome just because so let's get an american to come to rome and will make an excuse for why this movie is in rome okay. Fair enough anyway so you know the it's like it's like murder she wrote except it's a guy and it's not really interesting john sachs is never ever called john sachs.
00:52:50
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's just really deeply unpleasant, but it's loaded with extras. And if you want to watch the movie and then endure like five or six hours worth of extras, go knock yourself out. Dario, Dario, whatever, in razors. He has a thing with razors and eyeballs and razors and whatever. Okay.
00:53:16
Speaker
We also have 4Ks of all the relevant Chucky films, and that would be, yes, I mean, it's not the original Child's Play, but these are kind of the, these are the ones that get campy. Let's put it that way. These are the ones where it gets really fun and much more campy, which includes Cult of Chucky, Curse of Chucky, Bride of Chucky, and Seed of Chucky. Seed of Chucky. This is all from Shout Factory.
00:53:42
Speaker
all on 4K, and I have to say my true favorite, maybe the only one of these that I like, is Bride of Chucky, because it was directed by Ronnie Yu, another one of the great Hong Kong New Wave directors, directed the Bride with White Hair in Hong Kong, tremendous director. And he came to the whole Chucky thing and just said, so I don't know what this Chucky thing is, it's some American deal, but I'm just gonna do what I do. And he basically made a Ronnie Yu movie.
00:54:10
Speaker
And Jennifer Tilly is terrific in it. And yeah, it's got some Chucky stuff in it. It's kind of spoofing, you know, Bride of Frankenstein a little bit, and Katherine Heigl's in it, and John Ritter even shows up. And it's a really, really, really fun film. It's just fun. The rest of them, not so much. Well, like, whenever Jennifer Tilly is in, she's in two or three of them. I think she's in C to Chucky. Whatever, I'm glad, because I'm not so much about Jennifer Tilly, but other than that, yeah, Chucky.
00:54:38
Speaker
Yeah, and see, the others are all directed by Don Mancini, who kind of does his same thing over and over. And they're fine. And there's a lot of... Wasn't it just a recent Chucky? Yeah, they reinvented him. But the latest Chucky, it's so stupid. He's not possessed by the spirit of a murdered killer. Of a murdered killer, yeah. It's like a whole AI thing. Like when he spilled coke on the chip at the Chinese factory, and it now made Chucky a murderer. It's the dumbest thing ever. It's whatever.
00:55:10
Speaker
So I want to get to, let's cover Night of the Demons. Let's just kick that out and then we'll get to the fun stuff. So we have Night of the Demons, Night of the Demons 2. Night of the Demons is 4K, Night of the Demons 2 is not. Not that that shouldn't matter. These are both from Shot Factory, Scream Factory. No real point to these movies, honestly. The only thing that is kind of relevant is that Night of the Demons 2 was directed by Brian Trenchard Smith, who is a very, very good kind of mid-level B director.
00:55:38
Speaker
made a lot of great classics. And he kind of brings a little bit more of a campy sensibility to the sequel than was in there in the original director, Kevin Tenney. So this is a film that I think gets better in the sequel because it's a lot more fun. It's like Gremlins. I love Gremlins too. I hate Gremlins 1. Because it's funny. So that's all I want in here. But also loads of special features. I wish the sequel was also 4K. Not that it super needs it or anything, but it's got its moments.
00:56:09
Speaker
I see the blackening. I see the blackening. Yeah, let's do it. Let's hit the blackening. Even that one for near the last, because this, I remember when you saw this and I texted you and I said, how was it? And you said hilarious. Absolutely hilarious. And you're right, it is unbelievably funny. This thing is so stinking funny. I just want to cry. Well, it's just that it's just a ridiculously self-aware sort of thing.
00:56:32
Speaker
And look, I imagine that most of these jokes, you don't necessarily have to be black to find funny, but if you happen to be black, they're really freaking funny. But the fact that it's all set on a Juneteenth weekend celebration makes it so hysterical. And a cabin in the woods, first joke in the movie, who the hell booked this?
00:57:01
Speaker
Black people don't go to cabins in the woods. Who booked this? His first joke in the movie. And we do that all the way through the movie. It's hysterical. Oh, it's so good. It's so good. What's amazing is that they
00:57:18
Speaker
There's not a single joke that they shy away from. No. The obvious ones, the not so obvious ones. They just sat down and they just said, what are the jokes? Like, let's make a list of every joke we can come up with. And they put them all in there. And you know what? It winds up being, and Tim's story, let's give props. Yes, Tim, yeah.
00:57:38
Speaker
This Tim story is a hell of a director he really is and and you know whenever he's given us a film that was not so hot like the like the fantastic for film is they handed him a bad script. But Tim is a good solid director specially when he's got a good cast and he can just he can work the cast they can work it like clay and he does that here and timing is perfect.
00:57:59
Speaker
Everything is just so spot on. Yeah, your barber shops, you think like a man. That's all Tim. And yeah, and this. So this, you're back in his bailiwick. It's what it kind of is. I dig it.
00:58:11
Speaker
It is a lot of fun, and it's a great cast. No, for sure. And also kind of along the same lines, I am very, very happy that Trauma has released the Toxic Avenger Collection in 4K. Now, I know you're thinking, but wait a minute, weren't the Toxic Avenger movies all like shot on, you know, super and then like, why would you want any of that on 4K? Because.
00:58:35
Speaker
Give me a ring, it's a toxic avenger. So you get a toxic avenger part one, part two, part three, and then a citizen taxi in the toxic avenger four. And that kind of wraps it all up. It's in a box set. It's ridiculous. These movies are just beyond stupid. It's outrageous that this whole trauma thing became their trademark.
00:58:59
Speaker
franchise, but Lloyd, Lloyd Cawthon, and built a whole little empire there, and, frankly, launched a lot of careers, not terribly unlike, unlike, uh, not unlike, uh, Yboria Corman. Roger Corman did, you know, a generation or two before. A lot of people who've worked on Lloyd Cawthman films and loved every second of it.
00:59:22
Speaker
I mean, the difference is that, you know, Corman was a real filmmaker. Kaufman always understood, this is kind of what I do. Yeah, and then we got to figure out a way to make money, yeah. And then the last two here, the Blumhouse film, The Black Phone with Ethan Hawke on 4K. And then also on 4K, City of the Living Dead by Lucio Fulci. Lucio, this is not a proper Living Dead movie. This is Lucio Fulci just kind of stealing the title because it, I guess, wasn't sufficiently copyrighted or something.
00:59:50
Speaker
Again, not a jello fan. I don't like Argento, so I'm naturally not going to like Fulchi, but look, if you like people getting their heads drilled literally, then if you like zombies and if you like all that kind of horrible gore, I guess you'll probably get a kick out of this.
01:00:09
Speaker
I think it's just a terrible film, but what do I know? It's not my genre. Christopher George was this actor who was married to Linda Day George. Gosh, I don't think I ever knew that. Oh, yeah. Linda Day George, a beautiful blonde actress from the 60s and 70s. It was in everything. Christopher George, her husband. Christopher was in a rap troll, that TV series. Yeah, he would pop up and all this kind of stuff. It was a certain actress.
01:00:38
Speaker
just call back memories in a certain way. And they pop up in the weirdest places. It's very strange that Christopher George was the star of a Lucille Filchy film. That just doesn't make any sense at all, but I suppose it kind of does. Well, in The Black Phone, which is really a much better shot than it has any business being, Ethan Hawke plays a killer who abducts a teenage boy. And there's a whole
01:01:08
Speaker
There's a thing with this phone where you can hear his previous victims on the phone and it takes some interesting turns. I'm not sure it kind of earns them. I'm not sure it earns the
01:01:28
Speaker
It's too clever by half for what it actually is, but it is interesting. And I give it credit for taking risks, even if they don't pan out. Scott Derrickson directed this, who, of course, took a, I mean, did, you know, Doctor Strange, and this is kind of a big step down. I guess he did Sinister as well. So I guess this is more his genre. It is kind of in the same vein as Sinister, but I still feel like, you know, I want to give it props for taking a risk, but it doesn't really work.
01:01:56
Speaker
Well, you know, the thing that it does to bug me, because I dug this film, watching this film, I'm digging this film as a film, relatively speaking, but it
01:02:07
Speaker
it has to sort of, well, I don't want to give anything away, a certain sort of supernatural twist to it. And yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Yeah, you know, and I'm like, okay, you know, I'm like, yeah, we weren't in that movie. You know, I mean, but now we're in that movie. And I've been enjoying the movie. So I can't say, but now we're in this other movie. And I'm like, Oh, okay. Now, if that's what we're doing, but you didn't say that's what we were doing.
01:02:31
Speaker
So i am at the end of the show i'm gonna let him go and i'm gonna get to a little one of our intermittent updates on some recent anime releases there can be a lot of great anime so i will roll through that the end of the show but until then let's do i want to make mention of a just a few m g m titles because m g m is releasing stuff again.
01:02:56
Speaker
because MGM now belongs to Amazon. Everybody may not have necessarily realized that. I literally just got an email as we're speaking from Scott Fondis over at Amazon. Oh, really? Yeah, I wrote a piece for the burial. Jamie Foxx from the interviews in Amazon. Scott's a buddy of ours. Yeah, he's now an executive over at Amazon.
01:03:21
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And I just, you know, that's, I wrote a great piece for the miracle. I happen to love the movie and Scott hit me up about that. So that's really just popped into my thing. And you mentioned that.
01:03:31
Speaker
Well, good deal. So anyway, MGM now, so they have MGM plus, right? It's streaming and they, I don't know how they're gonna reconcile that. But anyway, there's a whole, now they're releasing a lot of MGM stuff on Blu-ray again. And they were releasing kind of intermittently through Fox and Fox was then purchased by Disney. And then that distribution deal fell apart. So now we're getting a lot of MGM stuff coming out on Blu-ray again. And a lot of these are classics that haven't been out ever or in a long time. So I'm gonna just give you the names because they're all pretty,
01:04:01
Speaker
Just threadbare, very simple, just Blu-ray discs with the movie. But they're worth mentioning. Michael Caine in Play Dirty, which was directed by Andre Dutov, the great Andre Dutov, good, solid kind of action genre guy. Great war film, Play Dirty. Bestseller with James Woods and Brian Dennehy.
01:04:23
Speaker
Was a one of those cool films from the nineties that we that we went to junkets for and you know there were a lot of these kind of thrillers this was written believe it or not by larry cohen. I'm one of those legit films that larry cohen wrote that did not become a exploitation film.
01:04:40
Speaker
Matt Dillon and Joan Chen starred in Golden Gate, which was another early 90s film, really a pretty solid romance and a little bit of a crime angle to it.
01:04:57
Speaker
written by David Henry Huang, of all people who wrote M. Butterfly. And this was, you know, not his finest moment, but, you know, also directed by John Madden, the great British director who did wonderful work, including Her Majesty, Mrs.
01:05:14
Speaker
Judi Dench, thank Her Majesty, Mrs. Brown, thank you. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Another Matt Dillon film with James Cahn, City of Ghosts, which has a wonderful performance by Stellan Skarsgard in it. This was Matt Dillon directed, written by Matt Dillon and Barry Gifford, Barry Gifford, who at the time, and I have some connection to this, because Barry Gifford also wrote Lost Highway with David Lynch.
01:05:37
Speaker
And my wife was working for lunch at that time so this was a lot of the same people were involved in both of these and you know deepak naira my wife was working for also where at the time was one of the producers on this so we were very carefully tracking this thing shot in cambodia it's a whole kind of.
01:05:57
Speaker
Got a whole kind of leftover Vietnam War thing, but quite well done. I don't know why Matt Dillon hasn't directed more movies, but he did a good job in that. Stormy Monday, the Mike Figgis film. What happened to Mike Figgis? Where did he go? Good question, bro. So, I mean, after being so heavy, all for the 90s. I know. Yeah. And, you know, he did the score for this thing, too.
01:06:23
Speaker
Yeah, look, I don't want to put it out there, so I'm not going to say it. I was going to ask if he had one of those moments, but maybe I'm thinking of somebody else. Never mind. Well, anyway, Roger Deakins shot this thing. It's beautifully shot. It's a good, solid drama. Melanie Griffith is terrific in it. Sting is terrific in it. Mike Vegas wrote and directed and did the music. And Deakins shot it. I mean, Stormy Monday, it's kind of disappeared. Well, Mike, leaving Las Vegas, of course,
01:06:51
Speaker
but also internal affairs. And one of my favorite movies, Wesley Wesley stops movies, One Night Stand. It's Mike figures. So just this really, really, really great moves. Yeah, I just happened to be looking Mike up. I've already looked Mike up on purpose here. Mike 75.
01:07:06
Speaker
You should be making movies. Yeah. Ridley Scott's 86. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Back in the game. Yeah, man. Right there, yeah. Get back in the game. Ethan Hawke and Terry Polo in the absolutely terrible mystery date. But if you like Terry Polo, and if you like Ethan Hawke, I guess you'll have fun, but I thought this was an awful movie. This is a stupid movie. But there it is. The Wild Party with James Coco and Raquel Welch.
01:07:34
Speaker
Here's the weird thing about the wild party. So this is from 1975. It's okay. It takes place in Hollywood just right on the cusp of the silent films becoming talkies. And James Coco plays a movie star who just can't kind of... He thinks he still has it in gear and he doesn't really. Anyway, this is sort of like Babylon before Babylon.
01:08:01
Speaker
But the weirdest thing about this is James Ivory directed this. And this is an early Merchant Ivory film, and it's not at all what they should be doing. It's a little bit too unrestrained, but it is interesting as a weird entry in the Merchant Ivory canon. It doesn't fit very well. You can sort of see that they are learning what they can do and what they can't do.
01:08:28
Speaker
So there, there, it's kind of interesting diary of a hit man with Forest Whitaker. Yeah, James Belushi, Cheryl and fan Sharon stone. You know, another early 90s thriller, I guess, you know, Forest Whitaker kind of took this as a paycheck trying to build his career. I don't think he or Sharon stone are particularly great in this thing. But you know, they're, they're not terrible. I don't know.
01:08:54
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you ever see it? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not that impressive. Yeah. Yeah, not great. Rosanna Arquette and Eric Roberts in Nobody's Fool. Also not a huge fan of this. But again, another one of those 90s era star vehicles. And it kind of floats by. Crime and punishment in suburbia from 2000 still feels like a 90s movie.
01:09:21
Speaker
Also, not great, but it's still, it's kind of in that 90s indie vein. So, you know, teen angst and lovers on the run kind of genre, it's okay. You know, it's not really crime and punishment. It means it'll be a little bit of a literary adaptation, not really. Along the same lines is the 2002 film, Crime and Punishment.
01:09:46
Speaker
which legitimately is an adaptation of Dostoyevsky's novel starring Crispin Glover and directed by Menachem Golan. And that is just very strange. Dostoyevsky directed by Menachem Golan with Crispin Glover in the lead. It is weird. This movie is weird. John Hurt and Vanessa Redgrave don't- I can see the casting of Crispin Glover, though. That's the one thing you said that, you know, I'm like, oh. Yeah.
01:10:15
Speaker
Yeah, because he's a freak, but then again, yeah, that's interesting. It's just, but it's just, it's just strange going like, I don't know, he doesn't seem to understand the material. Red Grave doesn't seem to know what movie she's in. John Hurt, like, it looks like he just showed up for work the day before. It's very odd. What is it? What are we doing? What are we doing? Yeah, it's very odd. A movie that I had totally forgotten even existed, another early 90s film, Crooked Hearts.
01:10:42
Speaker
with a very, very good Vincent D'Onofrio alongside a bunch of other people who just seem to be kind of phoning it in. Peter Berg's so young before he became a director. Jennifer Jason Lane, Noah Wiley, Peter Coyote, Juliette Lewis, again. You know, one of those youth movies that, you know, it's not St. Elmo's Fire, it's not The Outsiders, it didn't launch everybody's careers, but actually it has them all in it, so. Yeah, they all have, yeah, exactly.
01:11:11
Speaker
And your guy, Tak Fujimoto, shot it and did a great job. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:11:16
Speaker
And then the last two here, The Big Knife, a great Robert Aldrich movie, a great Robert Aldrich movie from 1955, a really good solid noir with Jack Palance just being tough as nails and Rod Steiger being even more tough. And it's got a whole Hollywood angle to it, right? It's Hollywood as racketeering, and it's great. And then it even gets even better when Shelley Winters shows up. It's fantastic.
01:11:43
Speaker
I love everything about this movie. It's based on a play by Odets, and I just think everything just perfectly works here. Shelley Winters, great. Steiger is great. Jack Palance is great. Ida Lupino even shows up in the movie. So, the big knife, good solid genre piece from its day. And then, even better, go tell the Spartans with Burt Lancaster.
01:12:07
Speaker
which directed by a guy named Ted Post, who didn't do a whole lot of other stuff, but this was one of the first great movies about the Vietnam War, 1977. It's pre-Apocalypse Now and pre-Deer Hunter, post John Wayne's absolutely horrible Green Berets. So this is kind of the first one that really goes there, and it paves the way for the others, and I think it's an absolutely terrific film. Burt Lancaster, Go Tell the Spartans.
01:12:34
Speaker
Really, really good. Really good movie. All of that stuff from MGM now out of the MGM library. Shall we hit some TV? Yeah, dude. Let's go to the TV stuff. Let's see. What do we want to start at? What do you got down there? We can do the NCIS thing because we've got two of these. The complete Los Angeles set, I think, is there. Yeah, they finally brought this thing to a close.
01:13:04
Speaker
And it's funny these people whose careers just take a sideways turn. Like, you know, Christopher- If you had told me LL Cool J in 19 when he was doing it and doing it and doing it. If you had told me that at the end of the day, LL's bones would be made from X number of years, I think 2009 is when the series started, on NCIS. 14 years, 14 seasons. Yeah, so there you go, man.
01:13:32
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, and the franchise keeps going, because we're also going to talk about here is NCIS Hawaii season two. So even though they brought L.A. to a close after 14 years, we're two seasons into NCIS Hawaii. So they're not letting this go anytime soon. But yeah, it's weird. If you had said to me at a certain point, like back in the 80s, you had pointed to, you know, LL with his hat and with his cop killer song and crystal Donald running around with with with with with with Pacino.
01:14:02
Speaker
I know. If you had said to me, okay, those two hip-hop artists, they're going to spend most of their careers playing cops. Wait a minute. No, no, no. But I see. And cop killer is like, no, no, no, no. Trust me. Both of them are going to play their entire careers playing cops. And that that wussy guy in Send of a Woman. Yeah. What about him? He's going to be one of the one of their partners. No, get away from me. Oh, it's crazy. After he bombs as Robin. What do you mean, Robin? Robin in like Batman Robin? That guy? No.
01:14:32
Speaker
up. Really? Who knows? You can never predict these things. You can't. No, no. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And look, Sherman did an NCIS, now that I think about it, just popped into my head. A buddy of ours. These shows, and not just this one, the NCIS's, the law and orders, the, you know, there's a whole,
01:14:57
Speaker
And they just sort of like came out of nowhere. That didn't happen when you and I came up watching television and watching television. That didn't happen. A show happened. It had its run and then it was done. And if the creators of that show had another show, it would be, you know, Stephen Bosco, you know, he did Hill Street Blues and then he did, you know, Cop Rock.
01:15:16
Speaker
And that was Joe. And then he did whatever the other one was.
TV shows and musical productions discussion
01:15:20
Speaker
You remind me. Why did you remind me? I was like one of the few people who thought that that was a well executed, if poorly conceived show. Did it ever come out? I don't think that ever came out. Peanut on a variety and a few other people. I wonder. Because the musical productions were excellent on that show. I don't care what anybody said.
01:15:39
Speaker
But then this started to happen, and now they turn them over, they turn them over, they turn them over, and yeah, but that's a new thing that started to happen with that series of shows, the Law and Orders and these and so on.
NCIS Los Angeles praise
01:15:56
Speaker
Well, anyway, I mean, look, it's a giant box set on NCIS Los Angeles, 14 years, that came and went so quickly. Chris O'Donnell in LL,
01:16:08
Speaker
It has a lot of good episodes. It does, I'll be honest. Linda Hunt is great on this show. She kills it. Who knew that she'd wind up on a cop show? But she does. And it's got 17 hours of special features, 14 seasons, 81 discs, 320 episodes.
01:16:30
Speaker
Just if you're a fan, get it, sit it on the shelf, watch an episode a day, it'll last you the rest of your life. When they're on those game shows and they go, a lifetime supply of shampoo. This is a lifetime supply of NCIS Los Angeles.
Authenticity of NCIS Hawaii
01:16:46
Speaker
Then we have the second season of NCIS Hawaii.
01:16:49
Speaker
which they put the apostrophe in there correctly before the last I, which nobody else does. They want to be legit, so it's Hawaii. Yeah, authentic, yeah. Authentic more so than Hawaii Five-O, which won't do that. That's what I think they're doing. I think it's thumbing your nose at Hawaii Five-O. Hawaii Five-O, well, we're NCIS Hawaii. We got it right. We got it right.
01:17:13
Speaker
Anyway, you know what, here's the thing about this, and I've only seen a few episodes, I've only just sampled it a little bit, but I do like the fact that it feels more legit to the whole idea of the NCIS. It feels like that operation belongs more in Hawaii than here. You know what I mean?
01:17:35
Speaker
Right, because it's like, you know, navel and it just, it just feels like that. Like it feels like it's home. It feels like it belongs there. And, um, you know, the, the whole idea here is there's like, it deals with rim pack, which is the rim of Pacific exercises, which is kind of a,
01:17:53
Speaker
It's a military exercise thing that goes on. It all feels very much connected to the military in ways that I think other NCIS have not necessarily. This is 22 episodes, six discs, second season. It's not running on fumes. It's not like Law and Order or CSI where they just kept inventing it over and over. It really does feel like it's come home somewhere.
Blue Bloods and Tom Selleck
01:18:17
Speaker
Let's talk about some of these other cop shows as long as we're off on that particular thing. Blue Bloods is now in its 13th season. It's been in more episodes of this than he was on Magnum PI.
01:18:32
Speaker
Wow. Wow. 13 years of Blue Bloods? That is just it. And Tom, I got to tell you, Tom will always be my one and only Magnum PI. I know the other kid, you know, he plays Magnum over. But Tom, I still, when I think about Tom Salk, I still think about him in terms of Magnum PI. And then after that, that little movie career that he had there in the middle, you know, quickly down under Mr. Bass, or whatever it was.
01:18:59
Speaker
Stuff like that. There are a few of those that I really, really like, too. I've really only seen maybe two, three episodes of Blue Bloods, 13 years of episodes notwithstanding. Well, Larry Manetti shows up as a guest star in this. Tom Green! Yeah! A little bit of a Magnum reunion, but yeah, you know, it's a solid series, and Selik just, he holds it down.
The Equalizer TV adaptation
01:19:23
Speaker
We've also got season three of The Equalizer. I still...
01:19:28
Speaker
can't quite figure out how they, you know, like, I mean, we're doing the movies and we're also doing the TV show. And then Zell doing the movies and we've got Latifah doing the TV show. Robin, her name is... Her name is Robin McCall. Yes. As opposed to, you know, Robert McCall. Robert McCall. Yeah. So I guess it's the same problem I had with The Flash, which is how do you explain that you're doing like the movies and like how I don't...
01:19:58
Speaker
Maybe I expect too much. Anyway, how do we feel about this TV show? Again, I've only seen maybe three or four episodes of the show. What season are we in about that? This is the third season. On the DVD, not Blu-ray, DVD. You know, I know it has an audience that really, really likes it. But when I think, again, when I think about these things, I'm sorry, they have a context so far as I'm concerned now.
01:20:23
Speaker
Certainly, it is fair to note that we moved from the equalizer of 1985 and you ever ordered, you know, the older English gentleman, the white English gentleman to Denzel, you know, a brother. So it's not like it's not like these things can't do that. They can do it. Oh, yeah. The concept is
01:20:43
Speaker
It's I mean, what's great about the equalizer is you can you can twist it any number of different ways. It doesn't, it doesn't belong to any particular nationality to men to women. It's a psychology. It's the psychology of the person who is the equalizer. And you can really adapt that to a lot of different ways. So I like the malleability of it. It's just it's
01:21:05
Speaker
I'm in a way, and I hate to say this, I almost don't feel like the show is like the movies pushed it into a really graphic place, like a really intense place. I don't, I don't know that the TV series can go there. And so it almost feels like the movies raised the bar and the TV show
Bryan Cranston in Your Honor
01:21:21
Speaker
can't live up to it.
01:21:21
Speaker
Well, they can't. The television show is static. She's got a kid, she's got a home, she's in a place. The movies, the last one, where were they? Italy, Sicily, I believe, or something like that? Yeah, it was Sicily, yeah. So that's some of a different dynamic in the movies. Sometimes for me, it's just a matter of the title. Just call it something else. I think it would make me happier.
01:21:49
Speaker
We've also got Your Honor, season two with Bryan Cranston, who I guess has taken a break again. Is he taking a break again from acting? I think I heard something about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're out. Yeah, I think he's taking a break. So I don't know that we're going to get any further seasons, but this is from Showtime. And he's worked a lot, you know, but over the last, gosh, 20 years or whatever, he's worked a lot. So I think he's taken a break.
01:22:14
Speaker
And you know he's a guy he's an old judge who's been disbarred and you know he that's what price does he place people who are either dying and disgraced or both dying and disgraced.
Darrow and Darrow mystery series
01:22:27
Speaker
Yeah that's kind of what he does he plays dark people.
01:22:30
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, it's an interesting psychological study. But I'm not sure it's, you know, I mean, I'm kind of tired of judges and lawyer shows a little bit.
01:22:45
Speaker
And then we also have the series of darrow and darrow the complete collection this is for darrow and darrow murder mysteries from the hallmark movies and mysteries line. And the only thing that i find enjoyable about this i like i like british mysteries a lot more because i just more serious you know. But something there something about.
01:23:12
Speaker
Oh,
01:23:18
Speaker
Hallmark and mystery don't really go together, do they? No, not in my mind. You know, I mean, you know. Yeah, and one of the- Maybe a little Agatha Christie or something, but not Death's Avenue. Yeah, no, it's just, it is what it is.
The Lincoln Lawyer TV series adaptation
01:23:32
Speaker
But anyway, I know there's four of these on here, Darrow and Darrow, In the Key of Murder, Body of Evidence, Witness to Murder, and you know, it's a little bit, gosh, kind of heart to heart-ish.
01:23:38
Speaker
I don't know. How do I, how do I, how do I put this?
01:23:43
Speaker
I guess it's a little bit in that vein, a lot of guest stars, a lot of fun, but not necessarily my speed. It's like it's want to be British stuff. And then the Lincoln Lawyer season one, which is taking the Matthew McConaughey movie, which is also based on the book,
01:24:04
Speaker
and detouring it into a series and i kinda think uh...
Pennyworth series review
01:24:10
Speaker
you know this is only ten episodes like a streaming streaming ark i kinda think this works better and i like the movie i like the mcconaughey movie but i only think this works a little bit better in uh... on tv
01:24:21
Speaker
Well, do more, more, more narratives, more stories, the length of the main, the main one in the movie, the Matthew McConaughey movie from 2011. You know, you have yourself a single storyline going there. Here, you've got the, you know, you have several different little storylines that pop up, plus the whole relationship, you know, with the ex-wife and all this stuff played by the extraordinary Nev Campbell. So, so, you know, can't go wrong with that. And I also feel like, um,
01:24:46
Speaker
It's not so i mean my problem with the shows usually to courtroom bound and this is not so courtroom bound that it makes me feel claustrophobic and i hate the wood paneling and some of them are. You know the complete series of penny worth i thought this would actually do better this is seven discs i thought okay you know let's take alfred make him a.
01:25:06
Speaker
Make him a hero under himself give him a backstory make me a british sas guy and sixties in london and do a bit of a james bond thing and you know that will expand the whole gotham universe and it never really caught on.
Succession's impact and success
01:25:19
Speaker
For some reason well it didn't really make any sense and most of that had to do when they brought in all the things to connect alfred to the to the wane family.
01:25:30
Speaker
So when they bring in Thomas Wayne and his wife, and they try to make them all kinds of different people. And when it's living in the world of just Alfred Pennyworth and just the English people doing what they were doing and sort of East Ender sort of dynamic or whatever, that was all kind of interesting. But when they had to sort of Batman it up, they had to connect it back to the Batman dynamic now, now we're just making stuff up.
01:25:59
Speaker
Succession after the fourth season it now you can get as the final the fourth and final season or you can the whole bloody thing and this show just kind of came out of Nowhere and it put Brian Cox over the top like nobody's business I mean they you know some Jeremy strong and and Brian Cox were always good actors that we all followed but I
01:26:21
Speaker
Like this show just just suddenly they were stars it's just it's guys who've been really workaday actors for a long time and it just made him overnight stars. It's dallas isn't it isn't this just dallas. Yeah well you know that with dallas it's interesting dallas is funny now when you watch it when i watch it if you watch the episodes of dallas from the late seventies what not they're kind of funny.
01:26:47
Speaker
at the time, they didn't know they were funny. And I don't know that I thought of them as particularly funny. But watching if you watch now, this show knows that it's funny. And, and, and while it is working really hard to be extremely brutal and serious and all of that, behind it all, it knows that it's funny. And I think that that's the thing. I didn't watch this show all that much, to be honest with you. I think I think that the
01:27:12
Speaker
real world that this show is mirroring the world with Rupert Murdoch and Fox News and all of the other things that spin around that is far and away funnier and more dramatic too than this show
Norwegian legal drama Albert Bergen
01:27:29
Speaker
could be. So I would find myself watching this and then I would go and read the news and I'd be like, no, the real world won. So I'm just going to stick over there.
01:27:40
Speaker
A really good series from, this is a Norwegian series called Abert Bergen. And it's a legal drama. It's really worth checking out. And like most of these foreign language shows, this is from MHZ Choice. And you can see it, you know, you can watch their streaming platform or you can get it on DVD.
Critique of Walker independence series
01:28:02
Speaker
And this is the complete series of our bargain which is i think an incredibly well written show and really read i mean it's paste like a scandinavian show like you would expect. But you know what there's something really wonderful and exotic about the look inside a legal system that is totally alien to ours and these are a couple of your defense lawyers and you know if there's a little bit of a. A real life.
01:28:32
Speaker
Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn thing. Oh, Mike and Mike and Mike and what was it with you? Yeah, it's Adam's rib was Adam's rib. Yeah. There's a little bit of that going on here. But it is, it's, it's, it's quite good. You know, it doesn't, it's not comedy, it's straight up drama. So it's like if it's, you know, Norwegian Adam's rib series, if it were played straight.
01:28:57
Speaker
There you go. But anyway, it's really good. It's not just about the legal stuff. It's about the relationship, and it's very, very well
TV shows and current seasons overview
01:29:06
Speaker
written. So, Albert Bergen, the complete series. We're checking out. And then we've also got the new Walker, season three. I'm sorry, without Chuck Norris. No, yeah. The whole point of Walker is Chuck Norris. But here's what's dumb.
01:29:20
Speaker
I don't know. Did I say dumb? I mean, he was awesome. Awesome. So so we've got Walker independence, the complete series. And I and we get this and this is on DVD. Oh, yeah. And I thought Walker independent. What is this? And it's the origin story. Walker Walker clan. So what are clans about Abby Walker, the matriarch and her husband is murdered and
01:29:45
Speaker
You know, now we know where Walker comes from. And I was thinking to myself, you know, I never saw a single episode of the original Chuck Norris Walker where I thought to myself, I wonder what this guy...
01:29:58
Speaker
Like, never. At no point did I ever. So, and then I realized, oh, they're just doing the, they're, they're doing the Yellowstone thing. Sure. Yeah. And of course, you know, Yellowstone is obsessed, well, Paramount is obsessed with, with, with having the Yellowstone universe keep expanding and expanding.
01:30:17
Speaker
And you know it's because Taylor Sheridan is signed to like what a hundred and fifty million dollar deal whatever ten billion dollar deal i don't know where he's making a lot of money to keep making shows and writing them all so they keep expanding Yellowstone he had eighteen eighty nine or five or whatever it was and now there's nineteen twenty three with Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren a Yellowstone origin story because there are now multiple origin stories anyway i keep hearing how great these origin stories now i don't know i don't know not really.
01:30:47
Speaker
Yeah, well, it's a thing that is done now. It's relatively speaking new. I've never been much for origin stories in the first place.
01:30:56
Speaker
just broadly speaking, no matter what is applied to. And the origin story is almost always a little bit anticlimactic, because you know all the stuff that happens after, because there was the previous movie. So you know who's going to make it and who's not. But I don't know, people are into their origin stories. To me, the origin stories needs to happen in the original story. It's when you can tell me about the origin. Thank you. Yes, precisely.
01:31:27
Speaker
Uh, you know, let's, let's burn through some of the rest of these, uh, real quickly so we can, uh, we can give her by their TV bite and then I'll get into the, and then I'll get into the, uh, uh, uh, anime stuff. Tom Flans is Jack Ryan season three, um, wearing thin.
01:31:42
Speaker
Well, to be honest with you, I was not much of a fan of this particular incarnation of Jack Ryan. I'm like you. I go back to Jack Ryan. Tom Clancy's actual Jack Ryan on that boat. Hunt for Red October. And then Alex Baldwin did what he would do. It was Alex Baldwin and Ben Affleck.
01:32:05
Speaker
Yep. And then that's the movies, right? Two Alex Baldwin's and a Ben Affleck. Harrison Ford and Harrison Ford. Oh, Harrison Ford and Alex Baldwin and a Ben Affleck. That's what it is. That's what it is. Okay. And then, you know, now this whole TV and I'm like, you know what? I think I'm good.
01:32:24
Speaker
I think I'm good too. You know what else I'm good on? I see couples therapy season three on Showtime. So I watch a few of these episodes and I realize this is why I like the Bob Newhart show. Because I need to laugh at people who are in therapy. I know that sounds cruel, but I really need to laugh at these people. I can't deal with a dramatic show about people who are like in therapy. It's too intense. It's too tough. Like in therapy, I don't wanna do that. I need Bill Daley being neurotic.
01:32:54
Speaker
I've been watching a lot of I Dream of Genie lately, dude. I've been watching a lot of old I Dream of Genie episodes. Oh my goodness. It's just, they got several seasons on, they got three seasons on Tubi. And Barbara, Barbara's still kicking with us, right, Barbara? Oh my gosh. I think she's still here.
01:33:11
Speaker
she is she is ninety now fire country season one more fireman i don't know i don't know this. Really is needed i mean we've got you know so many fire shows.
01:33:27
Speaker
I don't know. Cops, doctors, lawyers, fancy firemen. I don't know. It's the same genre no matter where you set it. It's the same show. All the way back to emergency. I mean, as a survivor of multiple wildfires, I have a hard time watching this kind of stuff. I just do.
01:33:54
Speaker
So help me Todd season one you know this is a this is another CBS Paramount thing I I feel like Glenn Gordon Karen Should you know I mean right it needs his special touch on this it's about a about a guy who's you know the kind of an amateur who becomes a private eye and winds up working with his mom and It
01:34:24
Speaker
I don't know the whole the whole chemistry of it. It just needed that Remington steely moonlighting thing, right? It just Marshall Gay Harden and Skylar Ashton, most of whom I like up and you obviously love Marshall Gay, but mostly they're just sort of like doing a mother son. Yeah, irritating thing as opposed to, you know, so I don't know. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don't
01:34:50
Speaker
Yeah, I get it. And then, let's see, Smiling Friends season one, an adult swim show, which like most adult swim just feels to me like somebody took way too many hard drugs, came up with something and somebody guaranteed it, you know, some kind of a run. I don't know if this deserves to have a season two. I know these things, like people love the adult swim stuff. I don't know.
01:35:15
Speaker
Um, but these are eight episodes in this very, very strange, um, otherworldly, weird, uh, animated series. The, the, the, it's just, it's odd. It's just weird. It goes right up there with, um, uh, Aqua Teen Hunger Force. It's like the, they're trying to make it the new one of those. Um, the neighborhood is into its fifth season.
01:35:40
Speaker
Yeah, I'm thrilled for Cedric. It's still funny. I just don't know where this is gonna go. It feels like maybe they should, you know, just...
01:35:52
Speaker
I don't know. I'll move on to a different show at some point. I call it affable television. It's absolutely affable television. That's a great title. It's one of the few shows that's not one of the few, but it actually is one of the few that still shot on a classic TV set.
01:36:13
Speaker
where even the outside scenes are still on the TV set. You're right. When they're in the front yard, they're still on the set. They're just on that set. I got to tell you, that's old school filmmaking right there. That's Lucy and Desi type stuff. That's true. That's true. Lucy and Desi when they moved to Connecticut.
01:36:35
Speaker
everything outdoors in Connecticut was over on stage six. It was over on stage six, baby. Yeah, no, that's for sure. Or Green Acres, the whole frickin' Pixley is on a stage somewhere. Love it. And then six seasons of Rick and Morty, complete seasons of one through six with a free poster inside. You know, this, I guess, this is as weird as I'm willing to settle for a show. This has a lot of extras on it, commentaries, animatics, deleted scenes, sketches.
01:37:04
Speaker
I know feature and what not rick and morty has you know it's not it's not for everybody that's got a lot of memorable episodes so yeah yeah you know if you like individual episodes might be worth it. We also have season five of cobra kai i still can't believe the show has made it that far i got five
David Johansson documentary
01:37:21
Speaker
episodes out of this five series seasons out of this concept of bringing back the karate kid but there is cobra kai five seasons who thought i mean we did you ever think this thing would go along.
01:37:32
Speaker
Now, man, particularly the way it started, I mean, were they kind of bootlegged it up onto YouTube or whatever the hell they did for a buck 95? Yeah, you know what? Yeah. But then bit by bit by bit. And there you go. Now the kid and you know, one of the kids from the show is the blue is what is the he's a blue beetle or something like that. And one of the more he's one of the Marvel kids or something.
01:37:49
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, it's, you know, the whole thing here is, I mean, somehow the whole rivalry, they keep, you know, the Cobra Kai business complex, they keep pushing it. And somehow they're making this rivalry work, where I thought two movies done, you know, like two and done, right? That's what I always thought.
01:38:11
Speaker
There it is it keeps going and then last four here real quickly we got scooby-doo and crypto to an original movie where a scooby-doo makes friends with and teams up with crypto superman's dog. I there is a history and scooby-doo of doing weird stuff like this where they team up with the harlem globetrotters. So they already teamed up with bad man and robin. Why wouldn't they team up with crypto? I guess it's
01:38:40
Speaker
It's silly, but it's a new movie, and the kids will love it. Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi did their Showtime original personality crisis one night only, which is a fascinating- Oh, yeah, the Buster. Yeah, yeah. It's a David Johansson, AKA Buster Poindexter portrait. The guy has lived one hell of a life. He really has. And it is, you know, it's very impressive. Ellen Curris, who de-peed it,
01:39:10
Speaker
one of the best DP's working for independent film. She's won awards at Sundance numerous times. So you really are and produced by Brian Grazer and Ron Howard. So everybody's kind of on board here to kind of give this really amazing portrait of David Johansson, which is basically a portrait of the New York Dolls moment and everyone who came out of that glam rock period into the present. It's a much more expansive portrait than just the one guy, but he's kind of the linchpin that holds it all together.
Peyton Manning's History series
01:39:44
Speaker
What i love in that movie was all the great footage that martin found of the dolls in frankly david pre dolls
01:39:54
Speaker
And as you just said, because you're talking about these people at this time in New York, you by extension get Basquiat and Warhol and all of these other people that were just parcel of that. You know, what's interesting to me, you know, we look at David Johansson, you know, now or in the last 30, 40 years or whatever it is, David Johansson just bustered, you know, just all that kind of stuff. But we forget.
01:40:23
Speaker
that of the dolls, of the New York dolls, he was the prettiest. He was flat out gorgeous as a young, young, young, young, young, young. And maybe we all are, but man, he was a good looking fella. He was David Bowie, good looking.
01:40:44
Speaker
And then to wrap it up, we got a couple from History Channel. History's greatest of all time with Peyton Manning. Peyton Manning, not anybody's idea of a host, but why not? Sure. This is just a eight episode series looking at anybody who might be a greatest of all time in any particular discipline. And it's interesting. I don't necessarily agree with all the conclusions, but it is an engaging, it's one of those engaging kind of novelty shows, those documentary shows.
Enduring appeal of Ancient Aliens
01:41:13
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And speaking of Ancient Aliens season 17, I don't know, Jim, how many more aliens do we, can we, I mean, 17 seasons of Ancient Aliens? Oh, this is a forever situation. Every few years, we are given a reason to think about these things again, and that, sir, means that Ancient Aliens is a forever situation. Oh my gosh. Hey, look, I contributed to it as much as anybody else. I watch all those Stargate
01:41:41
Speaker
I'm serious. Well, you know, look, I grew up on all that Eric Von Dannigan stuff, right? Chariots of the Gods, you know, the outer space connection. I was a little kid. I made my mother take me to those things. I want to see those movies. They're all about aliens. And I know I saw Flying Saucer the other day. I know I saw one. I know I saw one.
01:41:58
Speaker
Anyway, sure, why not? 17 seasons of ancient aliens, but at some point they're going to run out of either aliens or ancient artifacts to try to pretend they have something to do with aliens. You've got to run out of something. You've got to call it quits.
Anime's sustained popularity
01:42:12
Speaker
Anyway, with that, I'll let Tim go, and I will tell him to animate.
01:42:16
Speaker
Check us out, cinegods.com, digigods.com, and we're starting to enter awards season here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll be back probably after Halloween or perhaps Halloween week. Halloween's early in the week, so it might be early November, but we will see everybody back in a few weeks. Bye-bye.
01:42:36
Speaker
All right, and we're just going to wrap the old show up with a few anime recommendations. There's been a lot of anime released recently, and it continues to be one of the most successful. And consistently in demand of the genres that continue to thrive on disc, much of everything else is moving to streaming. But anime on disc continues to be very, very popular.
01:43:04
Speaker
I'm going to just make mention of some stuff that is
01:43:09
Speaker
I've separated everything out here into several groups and I'm saving the highly recommended stuff for last. There's some stuff here that is, these are franchises, probably stuff that we've talked about in the past. So I'm just gonna roll through some of the franchise stuff first just to let you know that it's here. We have the second season of The Demon Girl Next Door, which is like almost all of this stuff is based on either
01:43:38
Speaker
Graphic novels or manga or video games or in many cases. They are these giant multimedia franchises where there are television and movies and video games and manga and books and it all it's they all kind of fuel each other So anyway demon girl next door
01:43:55
Speaker
is manga based and that recently last year had its second season so she and her cute little horns are out there once
Recent anime series releases
01:44:07
Speaker
again. We've also got the complete series of To Love Ru which is available now all 64 episodes in a boxed set Blu-ray with a new English dubbed edition.
01:44:18
Speaker
I would recommend you listen to it in the original Japanese. It just feels better. The voices match better, but that has a following as well. We also have the complete season one and season two of Medaka Box. That is something we have talked about as well in the past. That also is based on manga and that goes back about a decade.
01:44:45
Speaker
I think recently we mentioned Girls in Panzer. We now have the TV series and the six OVAs on three discs, Blu-ray. So if you like your girls in School Girls in Tanks, as some people in the anime audience do, there you go. And then Tokyo Mew Mew New.
01:45:07
Speaker
Not just Tokyo Miu Miu, but Tokyo Miu Miu New. It's 24 episodes that were aired just recently, ended up middle of the summer. This is the season one collection and it is on Blu-ray based on the manga of the same name. The manga was was made like
01:45:27
Speaker
at least 20 years ago. And it's some fun girl power and alien fighting. So that will eventually have a complete set as well. So if you just want to keep up, go ahead and get it. But otherwise, there will be future seasons and a boxed set somewhere down the line.
Anime on student experiences and adventures
01:45:52
Speaker
We've also got this very interesting expansion on the Utano Princess Sama series, which is, you know, video games and films and TV and the whole thing. This is Utano Princess Sama, Magi love starish tours.
01:46:11
Speaker
long titles. But, you know, it is again, in this boy band world and, and, you know, pop music, anime pop music and huge following for this, this entire franchise. And this is probably some of the better, the better stuff in the franchise. So that's, that's for fans only, but a nice entry in the, in the franchise.
01:46:39
Speaker
And then also kind of related to that is Watcha Primagi. Primagi is this competitive multi-entertainment thing. It's songs and dance and costumes and all the rest of this stuff. And it's originally a video game, a very popular video game in Japan, I am told.
01:47:03
Speaker
And you get 51 episodes on six discs in this Blu-ray set, which is just exploding with cute girl power and psychedelic animation and all kinds of crazy character design and costume design. Skews very young, but it's for young girls in particular, probably a great deal of fun.
Review of Lonely Castle in the Mirror
01:47:27
Speaker
Then the next batch of titles here,
01:47:31
Speaker
These all kind of live in a particular world that is the world of wish fulfillment for students. This is all about the world of students and student experiences in school and oftentimes supernatural adventures. A huge following in the anime world, a huge genre unto itself, skews very teenage.
01:47:52
Speaker
But I'm just going to go through some of the titles that are new here. These are all complete collections, most of them from Sente. Immoral Guild, which is a little, excuse me, a little bit older in the age range. Call of the Night is actually really well animated. This is vampire-themed stuff. Kind of some really very interesting artwork in that one.
01:48:17
Speaker
uh skewing much younger is keep your hands off eizouken eizouken exclamation point don't forget the exclamation point uh that's uh you know more of a more of a uh
01:48:32
Speaker
a kind of pre-teen thing. It was, this is, you know, aired a couple of years ago and around 2020, I think it was. But, you know, it has, it's kind of an internally self-reflexive story about kids and loving anime and, you know, it's, the comedy is not universal. Again, ski was very pre-teen. We've also got Verme in gold, V-E-R-M-E-I-L.
01:49:00
Speaker
High School of the Dead, which is actually pretty cool. Again, that's kind of older teen, young adult skewing. When Will Ayumu Make His Move? Really kind of standard teen stuff. My Isekai Life, I-S-E-K-I-A-I.
01:49:22
Speaker
Girlish Number, The Complete Collection. This is all on Blu-ray. Triage X, The Complete Collection. Busu Shinki, Armored War Goddess, which is absolutely a blast to watch. This is really one of the most enjoyable of all of these. It's kind of a dash of mecha in the teen wish fulfillment saga, and it's really, really great. It's kind of a...
01:49:49
Speaker
It's kind of crossover. Girls and boys would love it. It's good for even preteens all the way to young adults. Fantasista doll, more kind of tween oriented. The executioner and her way of life, great girl power, girl empowerment stuff.
01:50:12
Speaker
The movie collection for Recycle of the Penguin Drum, this is really kind of an interesting thing. I'm not familiar with the whole Penguin Drum saga, what precedes this, but it's excellent animation, it's very, very strong writing, and it's Recycle R-E colon cycle, but it kind of connects to, it has some,
01:50:41
Speaker
It has some narrative strains that sort of connect to some mecca stuff, but it's the mysterious, the fantasy of it orients about this hat, this almost magical hat, which is the key to all of the adventures in the mystery.
Diverse anime titles showcase
01:51:00
Speaker
The one I want to spend a moment talking about is Lonely Castle in the Mirror. Lonely Castle in the Mirror is absolutely beautiful.
01:51:07
Speaker
This is the only one of these that the others are all from the sent a library through section 23. This one is from G kids and shout studios. And it is, it's just a really, really top tier anime. This is from the director KAichi Hara, who previously did miss Hosokai. And it is, it is based on a, on a graphic novel that, uh,
01:51:31
Speaker
is apparently also quite, quite beloved of the same name, Lonely Castle in the Mirror. And it's about a young girl who finds this mysterious portal almost like Chronicles of Narnia-like,
01:51:47
Speaker
in the mirror in her bedroom. Six of her friends join her on her Narnia-like journey. Again, it borrows a lot from Chronicles of Narnia, but it also has a flavor all of its own. It has a style all of its own that is very, very uniquely anime. It's quite beautiful. It's a lonely castle in the mirror, really, really well worth checking out.
01:52:13
Speaker
As long as we're on the G Kids front, let's move to some of the more original and interesting stuff. A bunch of great, great other G Kids titles here, starting with Deemo Memorial Keys. This is from 2021, and it's based on a Taiwanese game.
01:52:36
Speaker
But it doesn't have a lot of the weaknesses that you often have with anime that is game-based. It doesn't feel as though somebody's just trying to stretch a story and adapt it. It's about this very, very unusual girl named Deemo who lives alone and plays her piano in this remote castle.
01:52:59
Speaker
And she makes friends one day with another mysterious girl who has amnesia and who just shows up from seemingly nowhere. And their adventure is what constitutes the story. And it is visually absolutely captivating and hypnotic. And the story is a little bit out there, but it's not so much so that you can't sort of suspend your disbelief and kind of go along with it. It's really quite lovely.
01:53:28
Speaker
We also have Blue Thermal, which is in the sports genre. You got a lot of these animes that are about basketball teams and other sports teams and baseball teams. And this kind of connects two of those things. It's about a girl who was very, very much into volleyball, and now she's segueing to
01:53:56
Speaker
gliders, small plain gliders. And it's wish fulfillment, it's kind of teen wish fulfillment, but it uses that as a metaphor for other things and other coming of age aspects of growing up. It's quite nice. The Fantastic Inu'o by Masaki Yuasa. This is fabulous. This was very highly regarded in our Laska voting.
01:54:26
Speaker
some years back and it's really, really totally off the wall, but it's absolutely excellent. It is like, it is a, if you can, if you, maybe this is the best way of putting it. This is as if someone made a feudal Japanese anime as a musical or as a rock opera.
01:54:47
Speaker
The music's great. The animation is terrific. The story is absolutely captivating. And somehow it doesn't feel weird or goofy. It just feels totally appropriate. And it's really worth checking out. It's beautifully done in all respects. Yuasa has done a number of great films before Walk On Girl, one of them. So this is also from G Kids. Excellent on Blu-ray. Well, well worth it.
01:55:16
Speaker
examining. A little bit more on the really out there stuff is the 3D animated New God's Yang Jian. This is 3D animation, this is CGI animation, so it's not traditional anime, and it's Chinese made, so it's anime influenced, but it's Chinese made.
01:55:42
Speaker
Directors are Zhao Ji and Mu Quan. It's based on a novel that was written during the Ming Dynasty.
01:55:57
Speaker
But it feels like anime that is feudal, but transported to a Chinese setting. So even though it is set in the Ming Dynasty and it has a wuxia feel to it, it also has a very anime feel to it. So it's really kind of fusing the influences of both.
01:56:17
Speaker
Pretty cool. It's pretty cool. Mystical and fantastical and all the best stuff from all these different genres. So give that one a look. New God's Yang John. Really worth checking out. And then the last one of the G-Kids front is Unicorn Wars, which is
01:56:39
Speaker
Again, not anime, but it's anime influence. This is a Spanish, this is kind of like a Spanish anime is the best way to put it, directed by Alberto Vasquez. And it takes place in a very strange universe where teddy bears and unicorns are at war.
01:57:03
Speaker
And you've got to roll with it because it really is enthralling and magical and funny all at the same time. And there's so much other weird stuff that goes on in this world. And it's a real trip. It's a real trip. It might be a little bit intense for younger children, but teens will absolutely have a blast with it. Families will have a blast with it. It's totally family friendly, nothing weird about it in the extreme.
Chinese anime and crossover titles
01:57:30
Speaker
Back to some of the Sente titles. We've got the life of, as long as we're in the weird anthropomorphized animal genre. Gonna talk here for a second about the life of Budori Gusuko, which was made about 10 years ago or so, also based on a graphic novel that was very, very popular in Japan. And previously, I think, I mean, I think the original novel goes all the way back pre-World War II.
01:58:01
Speaker
In any case, it is about kind of these rabbit-like creatures that live in the mountains, and the entire story is a bit of a metaphor for modernization and wrestling with the alienation of the modern world, but it feels also at the same time very Dickensian.
01:58:27
Speaker
It feels a little bit like, I guess, in some ways like the animation intersection of Peter Rabbit and Oliver Twist. How's that for an unusual fusion?
01:58:42
Speaker
We've also got Made in Abyss, the golden city of the scorching sun. This is kind of a semi-sequel to the first season of Made in Abyss. And this recently aired on television in Japan. It is now here on Blu-ray. And some people may have already seen it on television. I think it's had some streaming here. Anyway, it's 12 episodes.
01:59:09
Speaker
on two discs and it skews younger. It is a magical quest stuff for younger kids. You kind of need to have a little bit of background in Made in Abyss. You're not going to be able to pick up on their magical quest journey if you don't have a backdrop in what previously was told in the story.
01:59:33
Speaker
On the Lupin front, because a new season of Lupin is now on Netflix.
01:59:40
Speaker
starring Omar C, but the original Lupin, the great French thief that inspired that and also inspired the Lupin anime, is now the source of Lupin Zero. This is a complete collection, six episodes, all of it set in the 1960s, and it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's both anime and it pays tribute to the whole Lupin world.
02:00:08
Speaker
You know the everything that's fun about the theives and the and the caper stuff that it has it has a little bit of a james bond quality to it because it's set in the nineteen sixties.
02:00:20
Speaker
So if you're watching Lupin on Netflix, if you're watching Omar's Lupin, it's worth checking this out as well because it's all part of the overall Lupin universe. And it's fun how many different cultures and genres and media all wrap themselves around that lore. It's very, very engaging. And then lastly,
02:00:42
Speaker
We have the complete series of Majestic Prince, which is also one of these giant franchises that spans anime and manga and video games and everything else. And it's set about 100 years in the future. It is a wonderful, wonderful mecha entry. It is, I think, one of the best new mecha.
02:01:03
Speaker
And it borrows, obviously, liberally from a lot of the Mecca stuff that has preceded it. But it really has a great 21st century spin on at least its 22nd century, but, you know, obviously created in the 21st century. And there's a little bit of Arthur C. Clarke stuff in here, too. There's a lot from Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End, that's sort of been adapted for the Mecca environment here. And I think that's very smart and very cool.
02:01:33
Speaker
these what they call the evolved children so very very engaging majestic prince the complete series that is worth checking out as well all right thanks for tuning in we will see you guys probably sometime after after halloween early november and we'll have a lot of great great new material to talk for you at that time
02:02:24
Speaker
you