Podcast Reaction: Wait, More Villains?! Edition

“I’m going to go menace a St. Bernard, Scully.”

This week on the podcast, there was no Jenny.  That means a lot of boring stuff about box office numbers that haven’t happened yet.

I mean, yeah, there was some Mars talk that proves Watson is as bad at counting as Jenny, but at least they didn’t get into some really complicated numbers over how many rocks from the Sun Mars happens to be when Mars has two moons of its own to screw with his totals even more.

Then there was a List O’Truth for movie bad guys…

Non-Geek TV From The Geek Perspective: A Young Doctor’s Notebook

There’s a lot of TV out there, and some of it is British.

This week’s show is A Young Doctor’s Notebook.

Punching Up Instead Of Down: The Art Of Finding The Proper Victim In Comedy

At some point in this movie, Seth Rogen maybe wishes he didn’t anger the American Sniper crowd.

My wife and I watched The Interview off Netflix recently.  It was funny in some places, not so much in others, but it got me to thinking about why it is considered acceptable to mock some figures in comedy and not others.  The basic idea is, it is OK to “punch up” and not to “punch down”.

To be clear, this has nothing to do with free speech rights or anything along those lines.  It simply has to do with what is and is not funny.  That’s highly subjective at the best of times for any number of people.  So, to make things as clear as possible, these are my thoughts on what is and isn’t funny, and that is not to stop anyone from making jokes at the expense of anyone anywhere.

Also, there’s going to be some MASSIVE SPOILERS below the cut for The Interview, so you’ve been warned.

Stars Who Only Play Themselves

My name does NOT appear in this article…

Some actors have great range.  They disappear into their roles like chameleons with such success, you forget they are acting.  Then there are the people who don’t know how to play anyone other than themselves.  These folks can be charming, even occasionally win awards, but they eventually get called out in a Gabbing Geek filler article!

Ryan’s Ten Best Movies of 2014

Now that I’ve blasted the ten worst films of 2014 it’s time to be a bit more optimistic.  Here were my favorite ten movies from last year.  Disagree?  Let me know in the comments.

Gabbing Geek 21: Golden Son & Prophecies

This. Read this. Now. Unless you haven’t read the first book. In which case, read that. Then read this.

 

Gabbing Geek’s first podcast of 2015 is now live and we FINALLY get to talk about Golden Son, the second book in the Red Rising trilogy.  If you’ve read the first book, Red Rising, or don’t care about spoilers for the first book, then you’ll absolutely want to listen to this episode–we don’t spoil anything for book 2.  But if you want to participate in our Gabbing Geek Book Club in 4 weeks, be sure to read both Red Rising and Golden Son (they’re page turners, you won’t have any problems, Jenny guarantees it!).