Podcast Reaction: Avatar Edition

This week on the podcast, the topic of Avatar came out, and not the one that brought us the Last Airbender.

Wait, why am I doing these again?  I don’t know.  I have enough problems when I’m part of the show.  I can use my desktop for better audio but no video, or my Kindle Fire for video but sometimes spotty audio.  Back to reactions…

Ryan, it seems, was quite enthusiastic to defend James Cameron and the movie Avatar. But really, do we need four sequels to this movie?  Furthermore, how do we measure success for a film like this?

Defending The Grade: Batsoup

70%? That’s a passing grade, right?

Yesterday, the last of the Gabbing Geek crew, Ryan, finally saw Batman Vs. Superman Vs. All Common Sense.  He didn’t like it and left a long, often amusing, ever-expanding when he remembers something else list of the film’s flaws.  For my part, I thought it would be fun to write a tongue-in-cheek reply listing everything that was “right” about the movie.  That was rough because I wanted the same number of points as Ryan’s original post, and he has since added a few more.  There may be more by the time I finish typing this and more still when it goes live.  Check in often and make sure.

However, Ryan made note of the fact that the others ’round these parts, either on post or podcast, rated the movie above a five out of ten.  My own grade was a seven out of ten.  I stand by that.  So, in the interest of filling up space, allow me to explain my reasoning a bit.

SPOILERS for the movie after the cut.

The Complete List Of Everything Right With Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice

At last, Ryan has seen and reviewed the eponymous Batman Vs Kramer:  Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes.  He didn’t like it.

Well, it wasn’t good, but to be very fair, I will now list all that was right about it.  SPOILERS and such.

Tom Recommends: Danger Mouse

There’s a lot of pop and geek culture stuff out there I’d really like to recommend, but sometimes the hardest part of trying to make a weekly recommendation is just picking one thing.  This week, I really had a hard time narrowing things down.

But, even though I did sort of recommend it once before, I’ve been rewatching Danger Mouse on Netflix recently, and it has held up very well, so the World’s Greatest Secret Agent gets the nod again.

Geek Lit: Ernest Cline’s Armada (With SPOILERS)

Last week, Ryan posted a spoiler-free review of Ernest Cline’s second novel, Armada.  Now, Ryan is on-record of being a big fan of Cline’s first novel, Ready Player One.  Seriously, you don’t have to go beyond the first paragraph of that linked review to see it’s either his favorite or second favorite book depending on his mood.  Now me, I enjoyed Ready Player One for the most part, but not being as enamored with the 80s as the author appeared to be, it didn’t do as much for me as it did for Ryan and the other podcaster types.  Besides, I hate nostalgia.

I have since finished Armada myself and we here at Gabbing Geek are not above having multiple reviews of the same thing by different writers.

So, here’s my review for Armada.  SPOILERS after the cut.

Podcast Reaction: The Ryan Edition

Ryan likes this movie.

I’ve been doing podcast reactions for a while now, even before I got tapped to write for this site.  In that time, I have picked on Jenny and Watson quite a bit.  Why not?  Jenny is three ducks in a woman suit who doesn’t know who Max von Sydow is despite his memorable roles in both The Exorcist and Flash Gordon–leading to my theory that someone is finally continuing Flash Gordon‘s “To be continued” tag when Ming the Merciless is revealed to be the bad guy in Star Wars Episode VII.  Watson just has that one picture that makes it rather easy.  Heck, it doesn’t matter what other pictures I use, that picture will be the one that appears on Facebook for any article I write and use it for.

But aside from pointing out just how much Ryan likes the awful, awful Krull, I don’t pick on him that much.

I’m not going to pick on him now, because this post is an intervention.

Going Through The DCAU Part Four

Continuing Jimmy and Tom’s rewatch of the DCAU.

Podcast Reaction: I (Don’t Really) Love The 80s Edition

Let’s try not to read too much into Ronald Reagan sharing a drink with Cobra Commander in this image.

This week on the podcast, the guys and Jenny discussed the 80s.

Now, if I have a reputation around here, and I might, it may include how I am not much into nostalgia.  That was, like, my biggest barrier to really enjoying Ready Player One.  The big problem with nostalgia, I feel, is that it elevates stuff that maybe doesn’t deserve it.  I have no problem loving things from my childhood that hold up, but these things should be good in their own right, not good because I thought they were awesome when I was 8.

Another (Spoiler Free) Review Of Mad Max: Fury Road

I think anyone who reads this site and pays attention to bylines knows my thoughts on nostalgia.  Heck, I wrote a whole piece last week saying horrible things about Krull more or less for that very reason.  I wasn’t planning on seeing the new Mad Max at all for a number of reasons, ranging from not being a Mad Max fan to being generally against remakes.    But the reviews started coming in very positive, and Ryan and Watson were both raving about it, and hey, Ryan may like Krull, but Watson sure didn’t (he likes Clue), so that means there’s a variety of opinion out there.

So, I went.  And I loved it.  Further SPOILER-FREE comments after the cut.

Original Geek Art: KRULL

I don’t know why anyone would spend time on making a Krull drawing, but apparently there are lots of people who do – including Krollo (John Gonzalez) over at DeviantArt. Nothing against Krollo, he’s actually quite talented. You should go check out his other stuff. But I do have to question what motivated him to draw any tribute the obviously the worst movie ever made? The world may never know.