LAMBcast #255: Paul Thomas Anderson Retrospective

After a two week absence, I returned to my co-hosting duties on the LAMBcast for the latest director retrospective. I personally feel like I made up for my time away, as the director in question was Paul Thomas Anderson. That's right - we covered his complete body of work, which includes a lot of looooooong films.

WolfCadet

Jay and I were joined by Lindsay, Courtney, and LAMBcast newbie Brendan Cassidy from insessionfilm.com. So sit back and enjoy two hours of us talking about PTA.



Highlights:

• Here's a link to that piece on Punch Drunk Love over at And So It Begins we talked about. Great stuff by ASIB'S Alex. 
• I enjoyed our descent into "I drink your milkshake!" and "Bastard in a basket!" quote territory. Here's the milkshake scene in case you wanna watch.

• I'm glad someone made this a reality because it's all I could think about whenever we talked about the "window to the wall" scene from The Master. This works surprisingly well. THIS IS NSFW.

LAMBcast #252: Southland Tales

Much like last year, the LAMB Movie of the Month for January lucked out to be a sci-fi film, which is great since we're celebrating Escape-athon all month long. Said movie deals with time travel, vaguely defined perpetual motion technology, and badass futuristic zeppelins! Unfortunately, the movie is 2006's Southland Tales.

Punk Fiction

Elwood - the movie's champion - joined Jay and me for a discussion about Richard Kelly's follow up to Donnie Darko, one of my all time favorite sci-fi films. Dylan and Todd joined us for the ride. The episode's below, along with some notes.

"Let's dry our tears and face our fears."

1. We talked about the comics that Richard Kelly produced as prequels for this flick (as if the movie itself wasn't enough) - you can still buy them on Amazon.
2. Elwood talked about the theory that the flick's based on the Old Testament (or The Book of Revelation? I can't remember what we said on the podcast). If you're interested in that, it's apparently very true. Read this in-depth Salon article if you're up for it. It's pretty interesting (it actually kinda made me appreciate the film a little more...).
3. Here's that Back to the Future poll...vote! C'mon!
4. And you can head here to submit some LAMBcast topics. Thanks, guys!

LAMBcast 251: Best of 2014

Hey, everyone here in 2015! Here's the "Best of 2014" episode of the LAMBcast, where Jay, Lindsay, DJ, Eric, and I count down our top five films of 2014. Enjoy!

LAMBcast #250: Whatcha Been Watchin' Lately?

Our latest LAMBcast episode is another edition of Whatcha Been Watching' Lately! Jay and I were joined by Dylan, Lackey and Todd to discuss films like Enter the Dragon and The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Listen to the episode below and check out some notes as well.

• Here's some snaps from that John Alvin book...

The cover...

The Lost Boys poster...

Blade Runner art.

The Golden Child

From E.T. of course! One of my favorites in the whole book.

A plethora of unused Jurassic Park posters. Eat your heart out, Jay.

One final badass Jurassic Park poster.

• In case you missed that Flash episode that wormed its way back into this episode, here it is.
• Well, I guess that's it...

LAMBcast #246: Roll Your Own Top Five

The latest LAMBcast is a long one (close to two hours) so it took me a while to listen and compile my notes. This edition was a "Roll Your Own Top Five" so Jay and I did a Top 5 list of our choosing. We were joined by JD, Dave, and Will. My list was "Anticipated Foreign Horror Films". The episode's embedded below, followed by said notes. Enjoy, lickspittles!

• Here's the trailer for A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night:

• Highlight: When everyone turns on Will for not liking animated films. Seriously, what company did you think you were in?!
• Jay talks about the old lady in the bathtub in The Shining. Did you know people often used to mistake her for Mel Gibson’s mom? That sounds like a joke, but it's true.
• Highlight at 15:50: “When you’re 15 that’s the kind of scene with a naked girl in the bath that you kind of think, 'Oooh...hello...enjoying this.'”
• Here's the trailer for What We Do In The Shadows:

• And here's the article by Pete from I Love That Film that I mentioned. 
• Do you agree with Will that all space movies have terrible endings?
• Here's the trailer for Housebound:

• Here's the trailer for The Babadook:

• Here's that fabulous poster for Star Crystal, Dave's amazing Alien/E.T. mashup:

Wikipedia

• Highlight: When Jay said he hates the bit from Looper, I thought he said "Lupa", and proceeded to search for that film to see what the hell he was talking about. To no avail, of course. Damn British accents.
• Here's the Tech Crunch article about the Netflix API stuff, which mentions A Better Queue. *moment of silence for A Better Queue*
• Jay brought up the Adam Levine/Begin Again/Dave Grohl thing. I did some Googling and found this... 
• And here's the CeeLo Green thing I talked about. What a creepy asshole. He's defending Bill Cosby by the way...
• Highlight (of The LAMBcast in general): Will’s confusing Jeff Daniels with Jeff Bridges during Last Lamb Standing.
• Lickspittle.

LAMBcast #245: Interstellar

Interstellar spoilers follow!

Interstellar

You've seen the movie. Now listen to the podcast. Jay and I were joined by Stevee, past shepherd Joel, and newcomer Terrence from the Focused Filmographer. The episode's embedded below followed by some listening notes.

• "Something in both of your eyes," is a reference to Superbad.
• Joel mentioned he was interested in Dr. Mann's story pre-Interstellar. Wish granted (via the A.V. Club).
• Question - Are we to assume Chastain’s character married Topher Grace’s character?
• ♫Jay and Robert talk fem-in-is-m!♫
• It looks like Jay was right about The Yankees just playing an away game in Colorado (still assuming they're in Colorado...I suppose it's possible that they were in a neighboring state...they did drive for a while before they found NORAD/NASA, after all). Why I don't REALLY think about a question before I ask it is beyond me.
• Here's that JoBlo.com article about the Universal Monsters franchise that inspired my rant.
• The L.L.S. soundbytes have survived to become a regular thing. I think I mentioned on the last episode that this was my plan all along, and I wasn't kidding. Jay needs to do some, though! What other fun L.L.S things could our dear leader say?

LAMBcast #244: 2001: A Space Odyssey

It sure has been a while since I've done a write up on a LAMBcast episode. Not sure why I'm calling myself out, because I don't really have an excuse. Anyway, Jay and I were joined by Jess and Nick from French Toast Sunday for a conversation on our movie of the month, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Source

We had a really fun discussion on Kubrick's masterpiece and we definitely talked about that zero gravity toilet. Listen to the episode below!

LAMBcast #235: Flash Gordon!

"Tell me more about this man 'Houdini'..."

Coloured Movies

MOTM Champion DJ Valentine, JD Duran (I managed to not confuse their names), Will Slater, and Bubbawheat joined me for a ridiculous, raucous discussion about the 1980 sci-fi classic Flash Gordon (aaaaAAAH!). We had a blast. Listen to the episode and read some highlights below!



Main Topic

• I love DJ's line about Flash being the original fantasy football player.
• Will mentioned Brian Blessed does commercials and stuff in the UK. I think this is a commercial for Hellmann's mayonnaise. Blessed talks about making sandwiches and eating frozen mayonnaise.

"EAT MAYONNAISE, MY HAWKMEN!!!

Rants and Raves

• Here are the opening credits to Barb Wire, which stunned Will and bored Bubba (NSFW/#Nipples):

• Jay relegated my The Lost World rant to the end of the show but I haven't taken a rocket ship through the chest so he can't hate me completely. Here's that list of his I mentioned, where he points out some of the film's low points as well, including the T-Rex boat mystery/plothole.
• Watch closely eight seconds in. See??!!

• Finally, Jay obviously wasn't on the episode (except to pop in to banish my rant to the Phantom Zone) but kudos to him and his editing skills for making this fun episode even better with the Queen soundtrack inserts and the mega dose of outtakes at the end. Expect Jay and I to finally reunite on the next episode!

Mondo

LAMBcast 234: Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

Kristen, Elwood, and Bubbawheat joined me for a discussion on the Robert Rodriguez/Frank Miller sequel Sin City: A Dame to Kill for.

sincity-2.com

This was only the second non Movie of the Month episode I've hosted (as in, the bulk of the episode was up to me to host), so I hope I did okay. You can listen to the episode below and read some highlights as well. Beware spoilers!

• I mentioned wondering why they couldn't get Clive Owen to do his portion of the Dwight role somehow. I brought up a Cracked article that mentions how Andy Serkis has been Skyped for part of a role in one of his films (admittedly, that's obviously motion capture so it's not really the same thing). Here it is. 
• Question - was Marv's death in the first movie taking place after the second movie, specifically, the part where he teams up with Nancy? Or did this film totally rewrite his character so that he could participate in Nancy’s story? I think Kristen pointed that out so I'm just wondering what the deal is.
• I mentioned the fact that Chris Meloni is an awesome comedic actor, which apparently surprised Elwood, having known him primarily for his Law & Order work. I couldn't find the scene where he craps his pants in They Came Together but here's a great bit of his from Wet Hot American Summer. This is for you, Elwood.

• Calling out Bubbawheat and Kristen - what is Jessica Alba’s greatest acting role?
• We touched on The Spirit a bit, another of Frank Miller's directorial efforts (I didn't realize he co-directed the original Sin City as well). I haven't seen it and wanted a refresher on what it looked like. Here's the trailer:

LAMBcast #230: Movie of the Month: Ghost World

Jess, The Vern, Bubbawheat and newcomer Elwood from From The Depths of DVD Hell joined me for a discussion about Ghost World, the LAMB's Movie of the Month. Listen/read!

• I'm gonna call Bubbawhat "Bub" from now on. I think he'll appreciate the Wolverine reference and it's much easier for me to say.
• We touched on Thora Birch (no pun intended) a bit and I mentioned a Cracked article about her weirdo dad essentially destroying her career. You can check that out here.
• Behold, the trailer that made Elwood cry!

• Here's Jason Soto's account of the LAMB viewing of The Room from the official meetup a few weeks back.

LAMBcast #229: Anticipated Movies for the Rest of 2014

Shane Slater, JD Duran, and Pete Conway joined Jay and me to discuss what we're looking forward to for the rest of the year. The episode's below, followed by some highlights. Enjoy!

• Here's that cool Tusk poster that we talked about:

Wikipedia

• JD brought up Stephen Colbert’s cameo in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. Behold!

• Yes, I continue to confuse the words “rant” and “rave”. 
• I talked about Lucy and the fact that, while the movie is pretty good, its core concept that we only use 10% of our brains is false. You can read all about this over on Wikipedia.
• I'm still pretty stunned that Jay won that Scarlett Johansson round of LLS with his Spongebob guess. Here's a clip featuring the actress as "Mermaid Mindy".

LAMBcast #226: Taxi Driver

Jess, JD and Movie of the Month champion Will joined Jay and me for a discussion about Taxi Driver, Martin Scorsese's classic film about a mentally unstable taxi driver named Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) who sets out to clean up the streets of New York. He's just gotta eat some apple pie with cheese first.



Some notes/highlights!

• Do you think the ending (post shootout) was real or some sort of death/dream? 
• We talked quite a bit about Travis' diet. Apple pie with cheese and liquor poured over bread (was he trying to make bread pudding or something?) are just a few of Travis' favorite snacks.
• Here's that "Rorschach Meets Travis Bickle" thing Will talks about. It's from "Before Watchmen", a series of prequel comics that came out a few years back. As far as I know, "Watchmen" writer Alan Moore wasn't involved with those comics at all. 

Bleeding Cool

• My Travis Bickle impression does kind of suck. But did Jess do one? No!!! Someday she will. Oh yes, someday.

LAMBCast #224: Whatcha Been Watchin' Lately?

On the latest LAMBcast, Jay and I talked about...movies we've seen recently! Yes, it's another round of Whatcha Been Watchin' Lately? Joel, Kristen, and Pete Conway joined us to talk about Irreversible, Red 2, A Million Ways to Die in the West, Tracks, and Nashville.

Here's a few notes and highlights from the episode.

• Jay mentioned that Ernest Borgnine was in the original Red. Here's a sad bit of trivia I read about the sequel:

"After the success of the earlier film in 2010, Ernest Borgnine always held out hope he'd be around to reprise his role as Henry the records keeper in the 2013 sequel. When interviewed in April 2012, he mentioned there was talk about it over the years and made one request to the producers - "I told them if they do it, I want to carry a gun this time" He kept in touch with screenwriters Jon Hoeber and Erich Hoeber and in the end would have had a major role in a sequence at the start of the movie. When Ernest passed away in July 2012, three months prior to the start of production, his scenes were reconfigured and would feature an uncredited Titus Welliver".

• While on the topic of Irreversible, Jay and I talked about the odd tone/frequency that plays in the movie. 

"The first 30 minutes of the film has a background noise with a frequency of 28Hz (low frequency, almost inaudible), similar to the noise produced by an earthquake. In humans, it causes nausea, sickness and vertigo. It was the main cause of people walking out of the theaters during the first part of the film in places like Cannes and San Sebastian. In fact, it was added with the purpose of getting this reaction."

• “It's very anti-capitalist, and...but it’s just kids eating shit.” - Jay on Salo
• For my rant/rave I yammered on about the Ghostbusters 3/Max Landis news. Head here if you'd like to read more about that. And yes, I’m aware that I confused the words rant and rave at one point.
• "She’s like the George Bush of people from Jurassic Park." - Me talking about Ariana Richards, who is now an artist. 
• Finally, stalling for time during Last Lamb Standing by pretending you've been cut off Skype shall from now on be known as "Joeling". 

Batch o' Hatch: April 2014

Doc: No, it can't be! I just sent you back to the future!
Marty McFly: Oh, I know you did send me back to the future. But I'm back! I'm back from the future.
Doc: Great Scott!

I'm back! At least, I want to be back. But blogging is hard these days! I don't seem to have as much time anymore, and when I do find the time to write, I'm never satisfied with what I produce. Anyone else feel me?

But I'm soldiering on! I'm taking on co-hosting duties for the LAMBcast! Check out the newest episode below!



My work over at French Toast Sunday continues will continue! We've always got some great content over there. I've got some other projects brewing with some familiar friends as well. And, most importantly, I'm going to double down here on the site, with Favorite Scene Fridays, Escape Artists, reviews and lists flowing freely.

Speaking of, I'm re-purposing Batch o' Hatch! Originally the series served as a sporadic list of links that I found interesting at the time. Now, it's going to chronicle everything we do here on a monthly basis, along with select articles and stories from the past month. Tweets too. So it's not all that different really. Let's begin!

Escape Hatch Recap

• Favourite (Animated) Scene Friday! Wall-E: The Space Dance (courtesy of  Jay from Life Vs. Film!)
• Escape Artists: March and April 2014
• Favorite (Animated) Scene Friday! The Land Before Time: Littlefoot's Mom
• Cheap Thrills Interview
• Favorite (Animated) Scene Friday! Sleeping Beauty: Birthday Prep (courtesy of Jess from French Toast Sunday!)
• Favorite (Animated) Scene Friday! The Incredibles: Brace Yourselves

Other Stories

I dropped in on the Nerd Lunch Podcast for their first ever "Nerd Lunch Theater". We came up with a really bizarro movie. It's basically an origin story of sorts for Princess Peach (or is it?). But it's so much more than that. Check it out!

Let that burn into your brains. Let it!

April was Darren Aprilofsky over at sister site French Toast Sunday and I managed to contribute one whole article! Check it out!

Tweets

If any character in the history of horror movies had it coming to them, it was Franklin from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
— Miskatonic Musings (@MiskatonicPod) April 8, 2014

German Gaming Company Announces Boozy 'Shaun of the Dead' Style Zombie Board Game http://t.co/FQwyXll2to pic.twitter.com/u9Fbbzd7Jk
— Zombie Research Soc. (@ZombieResearch) April 11, 2014

Check out my friend @zerbert as he's posed with the most intricate 4th chair question EVER in the latest @nerdlunch ep. (Good answer btw!)
— The Sexy Armpit (@sexyarmpit) April 30, 2014

@zerbert I really feel like the casting was "hey, April's a brunette. This other check is a brunette. Sold!"
— J. Chlebus (@J_Chlebus) May 6, 2014

Highlight of my flight: realizing there are actually four versions of Ride Along, each with their own color scheme. pic.twitter.com/0OWoYCxUce
— Alex Withrow (@shiftingPersona) May 16, 2014

Maybe it's actually a sequel to the Burton/Schumacher films—Batman V: Superman Dawn of Justice
— CT from Nerd Lunch (@nerdlunch) May 21, 2014

All I wanna do is zoom-a-zoom-zoom-zoom & poom-poom if zoom means sleep and poom-poom means wake up feeling refreshed.
— Lindsay Street (@lindsay_fts) May 22, 2014

Escape-athon! The LAMBcast TimeCop Episode!

I recently sat down with Jay Cluitt, Dan Heaton, Jess Manzo and Bubbawheat to talk about everyone’s favorite “Jean Claude Van Damme travels through time to kick people” movie, TimeCop!

Wikipedia

Yes, since TimeCop is the reigning LAMB Movie of the Month, we all came together to discuss the flick on the LAMBcast. And it’s perfect timing since we’re observing Escape-athon, our month-long celebration of all things fantasy and science-fiction! So come on! Shitty time travel rules, Sloane’s boobs, water coolers...we cover it all!

Click here to check it out!!!

P.S. See??? There was a TimeCop TV show!

Batch o' Hatch: Trek, LAMBCast, Thor 2, Halloween Withdrawals, All Cheerleaders Die

Attack the Trek

Did you see Attack the Block? According to JoBlo, Paramount is supposedly interested in getting that film’s director - Joe Cornish - to direct Star Trek 3. This could be an interesting choice. I honestly haven’t thought much about Attack the Block since I watched it but it was a decent film. Cornish clearly has an interest in sci-fi so Trek fans can probably breathe a small sigh of relief for now.

IMDb

Machete Kills on The LAMBCast

A little ways back I stopped by the LAMBCast again to participate in their Machete Kills episode. I talked helicopter kills and questionable sci-fi with Jay, Pat, Fredo, and Will. Give ‘er a listen.

Wikipedia

5 Great Bits of Thor on French Toast Sunday

I’ve got a new post over on French Toast Sunday and it’s all about Thor. Go check it out!

Halloween Withdrawals

I watched a few horror movies last month for the Halloween season but I - like always - wish I had watched more. Check out my list below.

The Amityville Horror - “Mother of God I’m coming apart!”
The Exorcism of Emily Rose - Only the second time I’ve seen this. Holds up pretty well.
Stir of Echoes - Classic. Never get tired of it.
Curse of Chucky - .....meh.
Night of the Living Dead (Rifftrax Live) - Pretty fun live show.
Halloween 3 - Listened to the How Did This Get Made? folks make fun of it and had to watch again.
Evil Dead 2 - Dressed as Ash this year for Halloween so I had to watch this again. Still amazing.
The Conjuring - Watched this the morning after my Halloween party. It was still scary as f*ck.
Hocus Pocus - I’ll be watching this for years to come. Probably the funnest flick about Halloween.
The Possession - This was surprisingly good and creepy. Guy who looked like Matisyahu turned out to be Matisyahu.
Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon - Showed this to a few friends who had never seen it before. Mixed results. I still love it. I want a sequel!!!
Jaws 3 - Pretty terrible movie.

All Cheerleaders Die

Here’s an interesting trailer (via Arrow in the Head) for All Cheerleaders Die, a horror flick I really haven’t heard much about. It looks pretty cool though! It was directed by Lucky McKee (anyone seen The Woman?).




Tweets

It's ok to discuss 12 Years a Slave without having to mention Django or any other movie. Let the movie stand on its own. It deserves that
— Candice Frederick (@ReelTalker) November 5, 2013

Couldn't agree more.

I am going to see The Royal Tenenbaums --my favorite movie -- on the big screen for the first time tonight. Pumped.
— Britt Hayes, Esq. (@MissBrittHayes) November 6, 2013

Ms. Hayes wrote an awesome piece about The Royal Tenenbaums a little while back. Check it out here.

*circles January 2nd on calendar* #Community
— Community (@nbccommunity) November 6, 2013

Apparently the fact that Community is coming back on January 2nd is old news! But I'm still stoked!

Well, guess I'm sticking with Netflix.
— CT (from Nerd Lunch) (@nerdlunch) November 7, 2013

CT from Nerd Lunch on (I think) the news that Netflix will be producing TV shows for Marvel.