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Fourcast! 58: Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Movie

August 16th, 2010 Posted by david brothers

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is out!
-It is, of course, based on Bryan Lee O’Malley’s fantastic comics series.
-Spoiler: both of us liked it.
-Spoiler: Esther hasn’t read the books.
-Spoiler: David is totally in like with Aubrey Plaza.
-Spoiler: After the movie, he may also be totally in like with Ellen Wong, aka Knives Chau.
-At the end of the movie, David really thought that Scott was going to choose Knives over Ramona. While he’s okay with the fact that it didn’t happen, it would have been a nice twist.
-Capitalism: You can buy volume one or volume six, or really any of the books, for like six bucks on Amazon.
-Capitalism: You can also buy this bundle, but I dunno. I’m no math major, in fact I can only count to four, but I think that the individual books are cheaper than the bundle. But hey, it’s your cash, homey.
-Capitalism: There’s a soundtrack, too.
-The movie’s good, y’all. Stop worrying about the box office. It doesn’t matter, it has no bearing on how good the movie is, and however much money it did or didn’t make should not affect your opinion of the film or reflect your taste in comics.
-Besides, if it only did okay, then you get to pretend like no one has ever heard of your favorite movie, so you can use phrases like “cult favorite” and “sleeper hit.”
-Seriously, shut up about the box office.
-6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental for the theme music.
-See you, space cowboy!

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Fourcast! 56: Under The Red Hood

August 2nd, 2010 Posted by david brothers

-Movie review!
-Guess what we’re talking about.
-You guessed it!
Batman: Under the Red Hood
-Esther gives it a thumbs down.
-David gives it a thumbs up.
-The thumbs up and thumbs down are pretty much for the exact same reasons.
-The Jonah Hex short was pretty good, though.
-Here’s a trailer:


-6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental for the theme music.
-See you, space cowboy!

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Fourcast! 53: Predators

July 12th, 2010 Posted by david brothers

-We saw Predators!
-Now it’s time to ruin it for you.
-It may sound like we’re damning it with faint praise, but it’s honestly a pretty good movie.
-Well cast, well acted.
-It’s pretty dumb, and very outlandish, but in a good way.
-That’s about it, really.
-There is a conversation about Superman and Batman vs Aliens and Predator that got left on the cutting room floor, though.
-Sorry.
-(Psyche.)
-6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental for the theme music.
-See you, space cowboy!

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Fourcast! 51: Spelunking

June 28th, 2010 Posted by david brothers

-You Made Me Read This! returns!
-A cave-centric comic book podcast! Yes!
-We have some very kind words for Jeff Parker and Steve Lieber’s Underground
Here is the Steve Lieber photo David incorrectly described.
-This is also a You Made Me Watch This!
-Esther made David watch a movie about women and caves. It was called The Descent.
The Descent was directed by Neil Marshall.
-6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental for the theme music.
-See you, space cowboy!

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The Top Ten Most Ridiculous Things to Come Out of Mortal Kombat

June 22nd, 2010 Posted by Gavok

Recently, Mortal Kombat has been making another push into the consciousness of gamers everywhere. Two weeks ago, a video was released based on the treatment for a movie revamp that would reimagine the series’ story as more urban and somewhat more down-to-Earth. Then a few days later, a new trailer was shown for the new game, simply entitled Mortal Kombat. Much like Street Fighter IV, it’s an attempt at a nostalgic return to glory by emphasizing the franchise’s best game.

While the footage has a definite Mortal Kombat II feel, it’s actually a skewed retelling of the first three games thanks to divine time travel. You see, sometime after Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, Shao Kahn curbstomps Raiden so hard that Raiden realizes how screwed the entire series has gotten. I mean, before the DC crossover, the game’s story was about an over-inflated cast having to climb the Aggro Crag. So he sends a message back to his younger self to cause a massive butterfly effect (butterfly effekt?) and redo history right this time. It’s like the last episode of Mighty Max but without Bull from Night Court being eaten by a giant spider. Or maybe it does have that. I don’t know. The game won’t be out for a year.

I’ve always been a fan of the series. It’s cheesy, violent fun and – as stupid as it sounds – I’ve always loved the mythology that comes with it all. From the beginning, it’s been Enter the Dragon mixed with Big Trouble in Little China mixed with Iron Fist with a dash of Godfrey Ho. I’ve been following the series far longer than I have comics and I’ve experienced many of the nuances of its excessive success. I remember when digitized actor Daniel Pesina rebelled against Midway by appearing in a magazine ad in support for the game Bloodstorm while wearing full Johnny Cage gear. I remember the Mortal Kombat GI Joe figures. I remember the awful knockoff videogames like Way of the Warrior, War Gods and the never-released Tattoo Assassins. I remember how the ARCADE version of Mortal Kombat 3 got its own nationally televised commercial. I remember the Mortal Kombat 3 Kombat Kodes that weren’t even worth the effort. I even read that mediocre prequel novel where Scorpion was revealed to be the ghost of a murdered ninja merged with his son’s body.

That said, I’ve seen the weird stuff come out of the trademark that still causes me to scratch my head. I figured a trip through the stranger and more unfortunate pieces of output from the Mortal Kombat series might be worth the time. Though first thing’s first, I’m not going to go the gameplay route with this list. I don’t care about how it lacks the refined tournament play of Virtua Fighter 5 or how the Run button is the Holocaust in videogame form or how Human Smoke has an infinite. I really just do not care.

Let’s start off the list by getting the most obvious one out of the way.

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Fourcast! 50: Anecdotal Evidence

June 21st, 2010 Posted by david brothers

-Hey, remember when I jokingly suggested that we’d one day do an entire podcast composed of nothing but anecdotes?
-Ha ha, joke’s on you!
-For our 50th show, we decided to do a big fat show where we talk about things we like.
-It’s so that you get to know us better, or something. I swear I had a reason when I thought of doing this.
-This is a fun one, though, so listen to it.
-David: The Book of Eli, Inglourious Basterds
-Esther: Creature features & comedies
-David: Crime shows–no wait, TV on DVD.
The Shield, Homicide: Life on the Street, Dragon Ball Z
Puss-n-Boots, Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves
-Yes, I only know three fairy tales apparently. But Esther doesn’t know Dragon Ball Z!
Journey to the West
-Esther: TV shows–comedies, getting suckered into watching Oz/good dramas, making up memories
-David: Libraries and Fred Saberhagen
-Esther: Libraries and orphans
-The series I couldn’t think of was Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern. Thanks to snackmar for pointing it out from my vague, one-word description!
-6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental for the theme music.
-See you, space cowboy!

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Smurfs Movie Teaser!

June 17th, 2010 Posted by david brothers

It’s looks smurfing smurfy! Too bad it’s due in August 2011. I’ll just have to make do with The Smurfs #1: The Purple Smurf this August. Thanks to Tim O’Neil for the heads-up.

(Like I wasn’t gonna be a Smurfs fan. I’m an ’80s baby, c’mon son.)

(if the video doesn’t show up, blame Yahoo. I’ll replace it when I can.)

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Mortal Kombat Rebirth?

June 8th, 2010 Posted by david brothers


This is already better than any Mortal Kombat game that exists.

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Akira: The Future is Neo-Tokyo

June 3rd, 2010 Posted by david brothers

I was sitting here thinking about what I wanted to go up on the site today and drawing a blank. I have several posts in progress, but none I really felt like finishing tonight. A couple need more research, another would require some scanning, and I’ve had a long day. I threw on the Akira blu-ray I picked up the other week and had been putting off watching.

I think it’s safe to say that Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira was the first anime I ever watched, barring translated stuff like Puss-n-Boots and a few other fairy tales. It had to have been ’90, or ’91. I know I was living at my grandparents’ house at the time, and my uncle picked it up from the local video store. It was Akira and Fist of the North Star, and then Ninja Scroll a few years later, that ran my anime world. (FotNS was important to a much lesser extent than the others–my grandmother walked in on a headbusting segment and I didn’t see the end of that movie for a couple years. By the time I got back to it, I’d discovered Ranma and probably Tenchi Muyo. The animation looked stupid by then.)

The opening sequence of Akira got me thinking. Frank Miller’s Sin City burned a love of crime stories into my brain. I think that Akira, a movie I definitely saw before I turned ten, ruined me for science fiction.

I’ve briefly mentioned my problems with a lot of sci-fi stories on here before. I’ve never been into the super sleek Star Trek stuff. It’s too clean, too boring. Star Wars came a little closer, but still tended toward the shiny. Too much sci-fi indulges in utopianism, or at least some kind of frontierism, and I think that’s where the break happens. I’m not enough of an optimist to believe in anything utopian, I guess. It all rings false. The future isn’t going to be shiny.

No, the future is Neo-Tokyo.

The city design in Akira, movie or manga, is fascinating. There are pipes that spiderweb around the city. Dirty alleys lurk around the corner. Glitzy neon signs litter slums. The city is confused, with a ton of brick and stonework next to jury-rigged pipes and metal. It hints at rapid, unchecked expansion. Otomo’s incredibly detailed artwork makes the buildings look real, or at least real enough. There is depth and weight to them, and when they begin falling, it’s like the end of the world. After the rise of the Great Tokyo Empire, you can look and see how the ruins came from a real city. The city makes sense, which is something that is vital in establishing a setting or mood.

The thing about Otomo’s future is that it isn’t the far-flung future. There is technology beyond our capabilities, and it is clearly not the present day. It’s tomorrow. And the thing about tomorrow is that it looks a lot like today. Today? It looks a lot like yesterday. We wear our clothes a little different, we talk a little funnier, but society doesn’t change that much. The visions of the future from the World’s Fair or science-fiction didn’t come true. Our cities don’t walk on wheels, our cars don’t fly, and we don’t eat pills for breakfast. Well, most of us don’t. Our buildings are taller. Our roads are the same. There’s just a different layer of dirt on everything.

That’s Akira. Neo-Tokyo isn’t ugly. It looks normal, but just a little different. There’s a certain beauty in its crowded, cluttered landscapes. There’s something to it that reminds me of Moebius’s work on Silver Surfer: Parable or Geof Darrow’s Hard Boiled. They all show history through a weathered building or clusters of trash in the street.

What I like about it is that there’s been a clear progression from now to then. It looks like what the future might actually look like one day. It looks like Tomorrow Plus. A little dirty, a little dingy, but clearly the future. No utopia, no grand sense of exploration, and no sleek, sex toy-esque cars. The lasers are bulky and unwieldy. The backgrounds are dirty and old.

I think I like the future, but only when it looks like an older version of tomorrow. Akira works for me. Star Trek doesn’t. Maybe that’s Otomo’s fault.

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Batgirl: Year One Animated Movie Petition

May 31st, 2010 Posted by Esther Inglis-Arkell

So, it appears that because of slow initial sales of the Wonder WomanDVD made Warner Brothers rethink their plans to make a Batgirl animated movie.  And what’s more, it caused them to rethink making a Batgirl: Year One animated movie.

This saddens me. 

In fact, it caused them to rethink making any movie with female leads.  This angers me, a little.

Let’s focus, for now, on the saddening part, and what we can do to fix it.  For starters, there is an internet petition already started to restart the Batgirl: Year Oneproject.  I know, I know, internet petitions suck.  However, I’m very much of a ‘throw everything at the wall and see what sticks’ mentality these days, and so I signed it and hope you will, too.  I also hope you will blog, will ask questions at conventions, and will, if you’re old fashioned, drop DC a letter talking about how much you’d like a Batgirl:Year One movie.  That is, if you do.  And if you don’t, well, you’re a fool.  Below I will list the reasons why I think that even if Wonder Woman had sold badly entirely, and not just initially, it would be a good idea to make a Batgirl: Year One movie.

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