Ep 029 Solo=Meh Deadpool=Yay

Millennium Falcon from Star Wars Solo Movie

Bill and Chad can’t conceal that they have a bad feeling about Solo following the first trailers for the next Star Wars story, then Chad hooks us up with a breakdown of the much-anticipated character Cable, soon to light up screens in the upcoming Deadpool 2. Tune in, turn on and drop everything and listen!

Show Notes:
00:08 – Premiering the new Nerdstalking theme!
02:06 – The start of our Solo talk.
19:38 – We talk about the hilarious Deadpool 2 trailers.
22:25 – The start of our discussion of Cable. Who is this Cable guy?
32:30 – The powers of Cable.
37:12 – How will Cable fit into Deadpool 2?
40:11 – Demollition Man: A Retrospective.

Thanks for listening!

Solo: A Star Wars Story Trailer – https://youtu.be/K9PkToULL1c
Deadpool 2 Teaser Trailer – https://youtu.be/I4tFNfROlqk
Moss buys some women’s slacks on The IT Crowd: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujGCGZqwaSc
Deadpool 2 “Wet on Wet” Trailer – https://youtu.be/8-Cjsnq8kVU
Demolition Man Trailer – https://youtu.be/0B5v6QZ5R3g

Connect With Your Nerdstalkers:

Bill Hunter – writer, and creator of video game history website The Dot Eaters

Chadwick Gendron – writer, musician and creator of the Canadian Culture Thing

Our Website: http://nerdstalking.com/

Social Media Links:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NerdstalkingPod

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nerdstalking/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nerdstalking/

Ep 028 We Declaw Black Panther

We declaw the Black Panther movie.

At the expense of causing fur to fly, Bill and Chad smell something pretty bad in the kitty litter as they do an extensive break-down of the 2018 Black Panther movie from Marvel. Try not to get scratched as you listen! As usual, we examine lots of details of the movie to cover all the bases with our assessment of it, so THERE BE SPOILERS!

Show Notes:
3:00 – We confront the white colonizer elephant in the room.
6:25 – Shortchanging Wakanda
10:55 – Missing impressive set-pieces
16:53 – No buttons at the end of any scene.
22:40 – Talk of not-so-special effects.
26:52 – Female empowerment.
30:45 – The Boko Haram scene.
33:21 – White boys.
38:35 – Weak motivations.
42:23 – Summing up.

Thanks for listening!

Your Nerdstalkers:

Bill Hunter – writer, and creator of video game history website The Dot Eaters

Chadwick Gendron – writer, musician and creator of the Canadian Culture Thing

Ep 027 Wakanda is Wack in the Black Panther trailer

Chad and Bill examine the trailer for Marvel’s Black Panther, and find it wanting. Bill also ponders the Amazonian (or not) nature of Wonder Woman Gal Gadot, we dwell on next year’s Captain Marvel, and other pressing topics.

Show Notes:

00:00 – Intro, and we go right into our breakdown of the Black Panther trailer.

15:25 – The beginning of our thoughts on leaked set pictures of Brie Larson as Captain Marvel, as well as Chad sets up some comic book context for the character.

16:02 – Is Gal Gadot tall enough to be Wonder Woman?

23:40 – Chad gives a run-down on Fox’s post-apocolyptic sit-com The Last Man on Earth.

26:10 – More Captain Marvel talk.

30:30 – We ponder what terrible thing Mark Hamill must have done to Rian Johnson to make the director force him to milk a sea cow in Star Wars: The Last Jedi

33:46 – What in the Hell is cryptocurrency?

36:55 – After what Donald Trump would no doubt describe as a “fake sign-off”, we really do sign off.

Thanks for listening!

Footage of Elon Musk’s Sportscar Being Released in Space!

So cool.

Funny Dubbed Milking Scene in The Last Jedi

Say what you might about Star Wars: The Last Jedi, (and Nerdstalking does say, a lot, in our review of it here: http://bit.ly/2BefOJK), but at least it has the singularly strangest scene of any big-budget movie of at least the last ten years, if not further back. Heroine Rey has tracked down reclusive Jedi Luke Skywalker, who summarily refuses to train her in her Force powers. After following Skywalker around his desolate island to determine what is keeping him so busy that he can’t help her out, she make a harrowing discovery of just what a fallen Jedi does to get some protein in his diet.

Solo: A Star Wars Story Teaser Trailer, Now With More Millennium Falcon

Alden Ehrenreich doesn’t really seem much like Han Solo, but at least Disney plays to their strengths in this trailer: lots and lots of the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy.

Ep. 026 No need to get petty about Last Jedi

Bill and Chad serve up roasted Porgs and fresh lounging sea creature milk with their in-depth breakdown of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Does Episode VIII add momentum to the sequel trilogy and tee fans up for Ep. IX? Listen and find out!

We start out, though, giving our thoughts on the Netflix original TV series The Punisher. Frank Castle in the hizz-ouse!

Avengers: Infinity War Trailer Drops

I guess they’ve been making these little independent films about a group of friends that always gather together when a crisis affects them. There’s a rich guy, this old-timer who’s from the 50’s or something, one guy who keeps losing his temper, a woman with a dark background she never talks about, the pretty boy, and a guy who’s a straight-arrow. You know, an ensemble piece. So the trailer for their latest movie was just released, so I’ll post it here for anyone who wants to take their date to a romcom or something.

Nerdlog, Supplemental: George Pal Animation

In episode 25 of our podcast, Chad described his discovery of the amazing works of George Pal, who made such SF masterworks as When Worlds Collide and War of the Worlds, to name just a couple. Beyond film epics, Chad also mentioned that he started out as an accomplished animator, although we couldn’t remember at the time what his stop-motion animation technique was named. Well, they were called Puppetoons, and here is a great example of his work. It’s a 1948 theatrical ad for Mounds chocolate bars:

Click to watch video

Ep. 025 Dissing the DC Bleakaverse!

Sure, DC movies have had some hard knocks over recent years, but at least they warned us that Kevin Spacey is, in fact, a real diabolical menace! The two Nerdstalking evil geniuseses Bill and Chad take a journey into Zack Snyder/Joss Whedon’s darkened treatise on super friendship, Justice League, and lo and behold they find that there’s light at the end of the DC tunnel after all! Plus some talk on the first series of TV’s Star Trek: Discovery, and Chad relates his wondrous discovery of the films of SF movie extravaganza pioneer George Pal.

Ep. 024 For Those about to Thor: Ragnarok

Poster for Marvel superhero movie Thor: Ragnarok

What rhymes with 24? Sore, gore, humidor… but also Thor, the God of Thunder! Gaze in breathless wonder, as minor deities Bill and Chad give their takes on the Marvel superhero extravaganza Thor: Ragnarok. What is Jeff Goldblum smoking? What’s the deal with Thor’s hair? Exactly how “big” is Hulk? Your noble quest for answers lies within Episode 24 of Nerdstalking, along with some talk of Stranger Things 2, The Punisher, and American Horror Stories.

Scary Effin Halloween Moments: Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Rosemary’s Baby was a blockbuster when it was released in the late 60’s, and its brilliant conceit of putting gothic horror themes of Satan and his followers in the environment of the bright NYC apartment of a young couple was groundbreaking for the time. It paved the way for other urban horror hits like The Exorcist and The Omen, and was a profound influence on writers like Stephen King. The movie culminates in this scene when Rosemary, played by fragile waif Mia Farrow, discovers the true nature of her newborn child. Her plaintive question at the end reveals the horror of her progeny more than any make-up job could.

Scary Effin Halloween Moments: Carrie (1976)

Any kid coming of age in the 70’s was permanently scarred by the ending of this flick, based on the first published novel by Stephen King. Director Brian DePalma lulls you into a sense of calm with a tinkling soundtrack and a diffuse lens… and then gives you one hell of a jolt.

Speaking of Stephen King, I complained in Nerdstalking Podcast IT Review that that movie had too many jump scares. You can probably trace the lineage of the cheapest of all film frights to this moment in Carrie. Still, it’s fun to look back on a time when it wasn’t the overused trope it is today.

Creepy Effin Halloween Moments – Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)

John Lithgow is one of those actors where, no matter how mediocre the film, he’s always interesting to watch. His segment in the film version of The Twilight Zone, based on the original series entry Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, was anything but medicore. It takes a real actor to out-hysteric William Shatner, but Lithgow somehow manages it as a harried aviophobic who keeps seeing a gremlin on the wing of the airplane he is flying in.

While the scene featured here occurs before the fireworks really get started, its weirdness serves to put both Lithgow’s character, and the audience, ill at ease.

Great Effin Moments in Film: Aliens (1986)

When it comes to great film moments, this one has an edge. As a fan of the original Alien (1979), I was wondering a couple of things when I was in the theatre watching this scene from the 1986 sequel. First, since the crew has woken up from cryogenic sleep and they’re gathered in mess eating a meal, is someone gonna start convulsing and you-know-what pop out? You have to wait for a full chest-bursting scene later (and they already kind of pulled the trigger on that earlier in the film, as well).

The other question they answer here is, as with Ash in the first film, is there a shady android among them? The answer comes in this great scene, where Bishop (Lance Henriksen) exhibits an otherworldly skill with a knife, at the expense of eternal whipping-boy Hudson (Bill Paxton).

Author archives: William Hunter