Episode 126:A Popcorn Bucket Full of One-Star Reviews

It's 1-Star Reviews all around this week as we look at the top ten movies of 2011 and it's not the world's most inspiring list, filled with franchise bloat and soaked through with sequel sogginess. There are a couple of gems and some fun times, but, for the most bankable movies of any year, the general picture is pretty sad.

Smurfs, Transformers, Muscle Cars, more sodding sparkly vampires, it's enough to make you want to drink, drink, drink until oblivion takes you, only to wake up the next day in some unknown location with no hair and a leopard in the bedroom. And yet, we didn't, and neither did anyone we know. All in all 2011 appeared, upon the surface of it, to be a pretty enjoyable year for movies, certainly the upcoming summer of 2013, infamous as the "Summer of Various Disappointments" had more to be glum about, so what gives?

It would appear that the masses were swayed towards big, solid, bankable, critic-proof franchise fare, which is fine and fair enough when you're talking martial arts pandas, talking cars or super spies who may, or may not, be getting on a bit now. But the wonderful thing about 2011 is that it allowed us to have our own dreams, there were many smaller, non-top ten movies that filled in the aching void of hunger for something a bit more substantial.

Great, Leo managed to get through that whole set up blurb without mentioning Captain America or Thor. Now to move on to next week, where he won't be mentioning them either.

This episode uses Excerpts of John Bartmann's My Time Done Come, available on Bandcamp and used under a Creative Commons License

EDITOR'S NOTE: At one point in this episode Leo boldly proclaims that Captain America: The First Avenger and Thor made x "thousand" dollars at the box office, he, of course, meant x "million" dollars but failed to catch his own mistake. I have covered it up as seamlessly as I can, hope no one notices...

Direct Link: https://archive.org/download/3032011Part1/3-03-2011-Part-1.mp3

Episode 120: We Are The 80s Kids... - Summer Predictions 2018

As we may, possibly, have remarked, we are the 80s Kids, and as we further may have mentioned, we predict the future. We only mention the former because no one knows who we are. We only mention the latter because, like latter-day Cassandras, no-one listens to our prophecies, so the only ones wigged out when they come to pass is us.

It should be pointed out, to be fair, that we're a bit like those Cylons wired up in bathtubs from new BSG, parsing out our spooky visions of the future is rendered impossible because of the surrounding word salad, most of the time. This is our annual attempt to actually focus on the predictions at hand, a breakdown of what we consider to be the likely winners and losers in Summer 2018.

It's no surprise that Superheroes are back at the cinema this summer, enough of them to get their own category, but what's the point of speculating on those, really? SF and Fantasy, on the other hand, asks us to nominate Solo or more Jurassic World, among a smorgasbord of other delights. In the world of action, it looks like it's all about Skyscraper and MI: Fallout. Then it gets tricky, can one really pick apart a slate of comedies including Game Night, Life of the Party and Super Troopers 2? Family movies wave the big shinies of Incredibles 2 and Hotel Transylvania 3 in our direction, but all of this may lead one to wonder WTF happened to a variety of entertainment, sure Avengers, Solo, Rampage and the Stath punching a Megalodon are all amusing, but where are the zingers and shouldn't there be a minion in here somewhere?

Summer predictions, either they seem easy or they quite blatantly tell you they're impossible to pick. Let's see how the 80s Kids get on with this mess, shall we?

Direct Link: https://archive.org/download/203WeAreThe80sKids2018SummerPredictions/2-03-We-Are-The-80s-Kids-2018-Summer-Predictions.mp3