jac

Guess this isn't a huge problem for me as I've been on howl premium for a while, but I just want to point out all the archiving work and server space necessary for the increasingly vast amount of earwolf material now. The manpower and server costs for keeping all of these shows up has to be getting impressive. Regardless I would personally love it if the people who have given me tons of free content, and continue to put free content out weekly, could monetize their hard work and talent. Also will second that The Teacher's Lounge was incredible and well worth the price of a month of howl. As a subscriber the all-time most important issue forever is that the Hollywood Handbook ads are never taken off the episodes.

It's gotta be Escape from NY, The Thing and Big Trouble in Little China at the top. Honestly, though The Thing was my solid number one Carpenter of all time for a while, I don't know that I can choose between the three now. I'll say Big Trouble in Little China, then The Thing, then Escape from NY, it's a real tough call though. Next would be Escape from LA and They Live tied for fourth. That's how much love I've got for Escape from LA! Haven't seen Elvis yet unfortunately.

Can't believe how many people are outraged about the paywall thing. Not because they don't have valid points, just that their outrage should be directed at how NO ONE ON THIS EPISODE WOULD ADMIT THAT ESCAPE FROM LA IS THE BEST! First of all, it is obvious that the movie was supposed to be an absurdly formulaic remake of the first movie. This is why literally every single plot point is paralleled, and then upped in ridiculousness - the fight to the death becomes basketball to the death, Cabbie becomes the absurd Buscemi character, destroying the tape because Snake hates being told what to do becomes destroying all of technology because Snake hates being told what to do, etc. I found it very upsetting that no one got that this was a choice and was meant as meta-parody. Admittedly the movie fails to make the parody as winkingly obvious as modern films like 22 Jump Street have learned to, but it's a fun choice, that I think should be applauded. When Jason guessed that Snake Plissken was meant to be Russell's attempt at Clint Eastwood's man with no name, I was galled. The character was borderline campy in its larger-than-life, iconic original form, but by this time Russell is really leaning in hard. After him and Carpenter made possibly the most campy-fun movie of all time with Big Trouble In Little China, I have to give them some benefit of the doubt in terms of their intentions here. I mean the guy is un-killable, is the first man to survive HORSE-sport, and can surf on a fucking tidal wave, he is clearly not meant to be taken all that seriously as a character. This is also the only of their movies where Russell shares a writing credit, and I truly feel that this was his and Carpenter's chance to just have some extremely self-indulgent fun. Then there are the effects. To me, much like in Lawnmower Man, the terrible 90s effects are the icing on the delicious cake of this movie. Sure, the terrible CGI takes away some gravity from some of the scenes in comparison to Escape From New York, particularly in the helicopter scene, but it is because they went all in on the special effects that they were able to push the plot to the absolute limit in terms of set pieces, explosions, helicopter crashes, sharks, and oh yeah that one time where SNAKE CAUGHT UP TO A CAR SURFING ON A FUCKING TSUNAMI! I'm obviously a big fan of this movie, and was very much expecting HDTGM to give it much more love. But I guess in the end this is really a movie most enjoyable for the Carpenter-Russell superfan. After all the classic films they made together, and their varying levels of fun, suspense, and campy-ness, it is just great to see a film where they are just going all out and truly enjoying themselves. Escape from New York and The Thing are two of my favorite films of all time. But I will always have a weird inexplicable love for Escape From LA, which drove that weird-looking N64-style 3D submarine straight into my heart.

tour de force of gelman. i would definitely listen to a full episode of just his lecture

Dope as always. What about cLOUDDEAD tho?