Today I bring you the greatest podcast in the history of podcasts of the greatest television show in the history of television. Yes dear podcast listeners, I bring you season one of…
HERCULES THE LEGENDARY JOURNEYS.
Hercules the Legendary Journeys was a nineties syndicated telvision series starring Kevin Sorbo. It’s about a time of myth and legend in ancient Greece when the ancient gods were petty and cruel and they plagued mankind with suffering. Only one man dared to challenge their power. His name was the half god Hercules. Since he was half god, Hercules possessed a strength the world had never seen that was surpassed only by the power of his heart. During the series he travels the earth battleling bad guys. Often times these were the minions of his step mother Hera, the all powerful Queen of the Gods. Basically, whenever there was evil or an innocent was suffering Hercules was there to save them.
You’re welcome internets. You may procede to weep with joy.
Watch the trailer to Hercules the Legendary Journeys
Yeah, Doctor Who isn’t fantasy it’s sci-fi. So we’re bringing you a Fantasy Movie Podcast SPECIAL about Doctor Who! This way we can talk about Doctor Who and still feel like we’re not deluding the podcast’s theme. It’s a win/win right?
In this episode, we dicuss the new Doctor Who series’ (or seasons for us yanks) 1-6. There are no series seven spoilers in this podcast. We also don’t discuss much of the classic Who series. If you haven’t seen any Doctor Who this isn’t a very good introduction too it. We spoil major plot points even more than we usually do. This is for people who are already fans of the series. If you haven’t seen it, check out the trailer below and see if it piques your interest. This Doctor Who episode was requested by several listeners. I hope we don’t disapoint!
It’s a special episode this time around because we have our first guest host here on the podcast, long time listener Charlie! Our amazing threesome of epicness reviews the 2010 film Scott Pilgrim vs the World. Scott pilgrim is based on the comic book series by Bryan Lee O’Malley directed by Edgar Wright and starring Michael Cera. The story follows twenty something hipster Scott and his quest to get with the girl of his dreams named Ramona. Along the way, he will have to defeat her seven evil exes, win a battle of the bands, and grow up. The film is a weird mish-mash of reality and video games. Bad guys turn to coins after they die, amazon.com uses the inter dimensional highway located within people’s dreams to deliver packages, and Macaulay Culkin’s brother Kieran Kyle Culkin is the best actor in the film. Yeah, the film is THAT weird.
Thanks again Charlie for recording this episode with us!
Snow White and the Huntsman is a 2012 fantasy film directed by newcomer Rupert Sanders. The film stars Kristen Stewart, Cherlize Theron, and Chris Hemsworth. There is defintily more style to the film then substance. However, the film isn’t as shallow as it would first appear. It does some very interesting things with the evil queen’s back story. Charlize Theron steals every scene she is in. Kristen Stewart and Chris Hemsworth do the best with what they’re given, but they’re largely archetypal compared to Kristen’s Stewart’s fascinatingly broken queen.
The film is worth watching alone for its imaginative portrayal of magic. There’s a scene for instance, where the evil queen slowly drags herself from a pile of raven ichor until she slowly solidifies into a woman once again. She doesn’t rise magically or form from a mist… She has to painfully drag her broken body from a pile of corpses. Her magic is dirty, bloody, primal and comes at a drastic cost.
Overall, the film isn’t a study on the human condition, but it isn’t a shallow special effects fest either. Want to hear more? Listen to the podcast below!
Eragon is a 2006 film based on the book series The Inheritance Trilogy by Christopher Paolini. The movie was touted as the beginning of this epic trilogy, but there was never a trilogy because the first movie kind of sucked. The movie is about a young guy who finds a dragon and then rides it into battle against the forces of evil. This should have made a pretty decent movie, but the plot is a mess. When it’s not being generic it’s confusing the hell out of the viewer. Kasey watched the movie three times and was still unsure who the bad guys actually are. Still, the movie is worth watching once for the sheer awesomeness of the dragon visuals. The cgi holds up well, and the visual design of the evil dragon is badass. Riding dragons is portrayed in a real jaw dropping way. It’s fun to watch the movie and simply insert yourself into Eragon’s place riding a totally awesome dragon who is your BFF FOR EVAH while you kill some evil dudes.
Because come on, you know you’ve day dreamed that before.
Links to Stuff we mentioned: Nostalgia Chick - reviews of retro tv shows, movies, and toys. She’s kind of our hero. An American Tail - there are no cats in America. Inheritance Cycle - The books Eragon was very loosely based on.
Kasey has just made a guest host appearance on Lee and Dan’s Midnight Movie Club! There she discusses the 1983 fantasy movie Krull which was disapointingly not about barbarians. It sounds like it should be a movie involving dudes in loinclothes right? But alas, there are no dudes in loin clothes. There is a cyclops, magical horses, marriage rites involving fire, kids choosing puppies over dead relatives, and a horny evil lizard man.
The Addams Family Values is a 1993 sequel to the 1991 Addams Family film. All of the actors from the previous film reprise their roles plus there’s a brand new Addams baby. The Addams new baby is a dark haired chubby cheeked baby boy that is somehow born with a mustache. In addition, a buxom blond serial killer, played by Joan Cusak, is after Uncle Fester’s life and money. The Addams also make the mistake of sending Wednesday and Pugsley to summer camp. Stuff gets set on fire.
This is a shorter episode than normal. We recorded an hour of podcast, but I guess twenty minutes of that was just us going ‘uhhhhh, ummmm’. This is a great movie that surpasses the first movie. This is one of the rare instances that a sequel is better than the original. The extremely sturdy baby is a hilarious edition and all of the actors bring their A game. The casting is so perfect. Christini Ricci definitely steals the show though as Wednesday Addams. The camp play her and Pugsley are in is the thing of legends. There’s some great satire hidden in here too along with all of the morbidly hilarious jokes. If you liked the last Addams Family movie you”ll love this one.
Merlin, aka. The Adventures of Merlin, is a British television show that started in 2008. It stars Colin Morgan as a young Merlin who must hide his magical powers because Camelot has outlawed all magic on threat of death. He spends his time secretly protecting Arthur and Camelot in hopes that Arthur will someday grow into a great King.
This review is for season (or series) 3 and 4 of Merlin. If you have not seen season 1 and 2 I encouraged you to check out our season 1-2 review or simply go watch the show. This episode does not even attempt to describe the premise of Merlin and completely spoils all of season three and four. So beware! This is no holds barred magical Arthurian spoiler time!
This television series just keeps getting better! The show makes a steady incline in quality throughout season three until its a really great show in season four. Does that make up for some of the lack luster episodes in season one? Yes, actually. I think it does. Many aspects of Arthur’s character development are finally barring fruit in season four that had seeds planted way back in season one. Merlin himself still has lots of room to grow, but he’s shown some welcome steps into becoming more pro-active instead of reactive (and ignoring Gaius’s terrible advice). Hopefully, in season five we’ll finally see him become the warlock of legend.
The series does have some problems, mostly involving Morganna’s strange character development. In season three, they take some dramatic shortcuts in her development. While its certainly plausible, the show doesn’t bother explaining or even showing the path it took her to reach her new persona. Furthermore, she doesn’t appear to have any remnants of her old persona at all. There’s some weird slippery slope fallacies going on there and odd inconsistencies. I wonder if this was because the writers were so determined to follow the path of the actual Arthurian legends? Who knows, but she’s definitely the weakest link in season three and four.
We highly recommend you check out this series. Make sure to start from the beginning though! If you watched season one and two and are on the fence about watching more, we think you should reconsider. The series gets continually better and really rewards long time listeners.
Tinman is a 2007 Syfy Miniseries directed by Nick Willing. It is loosley based on L. Frank Baum’s Oz book series. Very loosely.
The miniseries has great production values, intriguing writing, and most of the cast are talented. Zooey Deschanel gives an odd almost autistic portrayal of the main character D.J. I’m not sure if she was directed that way or if it’s just Zooey Deschanel being Zooey Deschanel. The rest of the cast is fantastic, particularly Neal McDonough and Kathleen Robertson.
The world building rivals a Hollywood film. Everything in the world, from the steampunk technology to the rare glimpse of magic fits well into the world. The technology, politics, history, etc of the O.Z. is well thought out and has its own internal logic. The world feels like it could really work.
The miniseries updates the world of the O.Z (pronounced ‘Oh Zee’) without disrespecting the original. There are a lot of homages to the original books and films some obvious, some not. You can tell there’s a real reverence to the source material.
The miniseries is easy to obtain. It’s often on Netflix Instant Watch in the U.S. and readily available on blu ray and DVD in most countries. Check it out, you won’t be disappointed.
So here’s a podcast about Tim Burton’s 1999 version of Sleepy Hollow starring Johnny Depp and Christinia Ricci… only a month after Halloween is over! That’s nearly on time! Right? Right? Well, it was recorded on Oct 30th at least.
Tim Burton’s version of Sleepy Hollow is vastly different from the original short story but for the better. It has a great cast, special effects that hold up pretty well, and some top notch spooky atmosphere. Is it great? Not really, there are several plot holes, shortcuts taken with characterization, and Johnny Depp and Christinia Ricci don’t have fantastic chemistry together. It’s still a solid film though, that’s enjoyable to watch every few years on Halloween.
This fills a request from Monica G. I hope you enjoyed the episode.
