Count Magnus

I ran across this on SyFy this afternoon and was shocked not to find it listed here already. This is some sort of utterly bewildering Twilight knock-off set in the deep South. The cast includes people like Emma Thompson, Viola Davis, Margo Martindale, and Jeremy Irons (there I go, saying three serious things and then a joke). It is bizarre, overwrought garbage with a thick coat of fake southern accents. It would be perfect for HDTGM.

That would be an episode for the ages. If we can't have that, though, I would take a crossover linking Atherton and June with the Don DiMello/Golly 'verse from episodes 274 & 300 . It got really close in this one, and I can only imagine how incredible it would have been if Andy Daly had been in the studio.

I had heard that about Saving Christmas when it was released. I guess I was being a bit facile when I made the above comment, but I really do despise Kirk Cameron and I'd love to hear June demolish one of his garbage movies. Fireproof sounds like a good candidate.

I wasn't going to give that creep any of my money, so I haven't seen it yet. I might do it for the podcast, though. Might.

Oh my god, could it please be this? Please? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4009460/

Yeah, I binged on it back then, but I really want to mainline some SCTV.

That is one short-fingered vulgarian you got there.

I just tracked that down and listened. I might have a new favorite episode. Amazing.

Can I live in Montreal? I had the best sandwich I've ever eaten there in 1998, and I've been chasing that high ever since.

I'd move to Canada today if it meant the complete runs of SCTV and Kids in the Hall on demand.

I thought Paul F Tompkins was great on the Lake Placid/Deep Blue Sea episodes, and would like to hear him on an in-studio ep. Lauren Lapkus would be great. I'm surprised she hasn't been on already. I'd also like to hear Joe Lo Truglio sometime.

Or the perfect live show.

Upon relistening, I noticed that Jason and Paul made a glancing comparison of He-Man to Conan. They joked about the similarity between the two. That triggered a memory that the original He-Man action figures were prototypes for an abortive Conan toy line. In fact, I thought that origin story was common knowledge. I'm glad I checked before committing to that idea. What actually happened is that Mattel, reeling from the decision not to produce a line of toys for Star Wars (they balked at the then seemingly excessive licensing fee of $750K) created their own IP with the hopes of grabbing some of the market. The initial toys were designed in late 1980 and went into production in 1981 for delivery in 1982. At pretty much exactly the same time, Mattel entered into negotiations with the company that owned the rights to the Conan character, Conan Properties International (CPI). CPI shared production materials with Mattel in 1980, and in 1981, an agreement was signed allowing Mattel to create a toy line for the upcoming Conan film. In January 1982, Mattel requested the contract be terminated. In 1983, the He-Man toys hit the market. Obviously, CPI cried foul. They went to court contending that Mattel had stolen the ideas and visuals of the Conan project, developed the toys, then severed the licensing agreement in order to market the toys as their own IP. Incredibly, Mattel won the lawsuit, seemingly by claiming that the He-Man IP drew inspiration from multiple sources, had been developed independently if concurrently with the Conan line, and was distinct enough to be easily differentiated from Conan. And thus we have a team of very good lawyers in what I have to imagine were terrible Reagan's-first-term suits and haircuts to thank for this awesome episode of HDTGM.

I know how much of an entitled, out of touch jerk this is going to make me sound like, but here goes. When my wife and I moved back in 2007, we decided to skip getting cable or satellite TV and just switch to streaming services. This caused us to become active seekers of video entertainment, rather than passive consumers of it. The negative side of this is that we are always late to the party. We are a season behind the culture as a whole, since we're waiting for things to hit Netflix (obviously things are better with Amazon's streaming video). By the time we get to most things, any spoilers have already been spoiled, plotlines have been resolved, and everybody else has moved on. But this set up also insulates us from most of the real dreck that's out there. I had no idea that this terrible movie existed, because it came and went while I was under an effective media blackout. In fact, while I knew on an intellectual basis that there was a long train of Twilight knock-offs put there, I had no experience with just how bad this stuff really is. I still don't know if we made the right decision. I feel like there are huge blind spots in my engagement with the culture, but if stuff like Beautiful Creatures is what's behind that veil, maybe the trade off is worth it. I realize all this doesn't add to the conversation, but I'm on the road, out of my time zone and not at the top of my game. Thanks for indulging me.

It was Winter's Tale that got me hooked. My wife and I were about to leave on a vacation that involved a 10 hour flight. I can't sleep on planes, so I usually load up with podcasts and audio books and try not to fidget too much. We had both thought the movie looked terrible, based on the trailer, so when I noticed that this hitherto unknown podcast was going to discuss it, I grabbed it. When we got back two weeks later, I downloaded the entire run.

I think Auden should try again with safe search turned off.

Oh my god. It really couldn't be anything else. It just makes sense. Brilliant.

Thanks! There's nothing quite like listening to a ferocious space dogfight on a pop-top cassette player. Really captures the magic. The Muppet Show makes much more sense. Bravo.

I know this has nothing to do with the film itself, but wasn't there just a great vibe to this episode? June was killing it (by far this ep's MVP), Paul was totally present and, well, sort of honest and vulnerable, Jason sounded really happy and Tatiana was an awesome and fully engaged guest. There was an energy and focus that really put this one over the top for me. And I'm going to put my name on the list of people who made audio recordings of visual media. In my case, it was episodes of the original Battlestar Galactica. I was probably 8 years old (yes, I am ancient), and I lived off of anything with a spaceship or a monster in it. Home video was still a few years away, so rather than being able to indulge in my franchise of choice, Star Wars, I had to make due with whatever was broadcast over the air (we were one of those disgusting poor families which could afford neither cable nor an airplane). I'm pretty sure I also had a cassette dedicated to TV theme songs I liked (number one with a bullet: In Search Of...). Anyway, great ep. Thanks guys!

I think I might have worked out some of internal logic that caused so much consternation for the team vis-a-vis the UFO, the Soviet satellite, the role of the comet, which machines were animated and the nature of the control of those machines. Aliens are absolutely behind all this mayhem. They have either built a fake comet or built onto an existing comet an apparatus for animating and controling machines as a way of conquering planets. The UFO mentioned in the end title card has used the tail of the comet to hide itself from detection. These aliens are able to animate electrically powered machines and some electronics (the ATM, for example). However, they are not able to take over EMP-hardened electronic equipment, for some plot dictated reason. This is why we see a machine gun equipped jeep among the maximum overdrivers, but why we haven't seen a full-blown Skynet event. Missile contol systems, nuclear power plants, satellites, etc are immune to alien control. However, there are a couple of days of chaos and confusion among the militaries of the world in the immediate wake of the UFO takeover. Not every system is EMP hardened, a lot of personnel is caught out in the open when the machines come to life, etc. Thus, from the vantage point of one little truck stop in the middle of nowhere, it looks like the machines are taking over and no one is there to stop them. Eventually, the Soviet military, possibly in coordination with NATO for all we know (and the efforts of the world's superpowers to cut through the confusion in order to unite against the alien menace might also contribute to the lag between the start of the takeover and the destruction of the UFO), is able to find and, using an armed satellite, destroy the alien menace. Somehow, the goverments of the world realized that while the animation of these machines was being accomplished through the comet, the intelligent control of Earth's machines was done from the UFO. Destrying the UFO would endthe direction of the machines, and then it would just come down to holding on until the Earth passed out of the tail of, and thus the deletorious effects of, the comet's tail. Now, having been a teenager during the last phase of the Cold War, I think I remember that the Reagan adminstration had levelled accusations that the USSR had violated the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 by placing nuclear armed satellites, or had plans to do so, as a means of garnering justification and support for the Strategic Defense Initiative. It stands to reason that in such a climate, the idea that the Soviets had nukes in space would not have seemed too far-fetched to use in a movie about the brave last stand of the criminal, inbred and/or just backwoods crazy denizens of a North Carolina truck stop in the war against the Green-Goblin-faced-tractor-trailer uprising. Either that or I'm just not doing enough coke to see the real story going on here.