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 89: The Usual Bad Movies

What do Battlefield Earth, Ninja Terminator, Equilibrium, Highlander II, Catwoman and the Twilight Saga all have in common? Easy, they are unquestionably BAD movies. Not just the bottom pile 'Some had to come last' kind of Bad, I mean awful failures of culture kind of bad.

And yet even in the cesspool of cinema we find different hews and flavors of wretchedness. Sometimes it's just the singular creative vision of one man who's ability is in fact far below his own estimation; sometimes it's because a film is made so fast and for so little money that all choices made were in the lap of whatever they could think to do when the camera turned on; sometimes it's a frustrating mix of actual talent being smothered by fundamentally poor core ideas; sometimes it's because the script just kept changing depending on what day of the week it was; or maybe sometimes it was doomed from the outset because it's based on a book that is in any objective sense awful.

So please come join us as we look over some of the most infamously terrible movies and have nice chat about it all and watch us hope against hope that a bad film can gets so awful it loops right around and becomes hilariously good again. Incidental Music by Incompetech.com

Direct Link: https://archive.org/download/Rot80K089/089-Terrible.mp3

Episode 39: Bad Relationship Advice (The Hunger Games Discussion)

This week Leo and Ian sit down to have a pleasant chat about Child Murder as the official sport of the state and how grateful they are the rebellion is over. But first some unpleasant business needs sorting out as Ian issues forth a grovelling apology to George Lucas while Leo crows over Quentin Tarantino's latest woes.

With all that out the way our two heroes dive forth into an epic chin wag over Teenlit's latest sensation to strike a pose at the cinema, “The Hunger Games” series. Much musing is done as to why this grim dystopia where young adults die horribly is such a unique hit while so many other pretenders to “Twilight's” legacy have died off.

Much could be made of the series' love triangle but despite much prodding it doesn't seem to be the answer for our two bemused heroes, so the Wife is called into action in the hopes of finding a resolution and she promptly sets about bombing Teenlit's obsession with bad relationships into the ground, probably forever.

Direct Link: https://archive.org/download/039BadRelationshipAdviceTheHungerGamesDiscussion/039-Bad-relationship-advice-The-Hunger-Games-discussion.mp3