theworstbuddhist

God, poor Jet Li. I'm not sure what is worse, John Woo's Hollywood years or Jet Li's. What a waste of some good physical ability years for him.

It's so great, all that Dave Filoni stuff has been great. As a person who is old enough to be one of those obnoxious fans who has loved Star Wars all his life and only loves the original trilogy etc., it annoys me no end how much some "fans" sneer at the animated series or anything that Lucas didn't teabag himself. Honestly I think it's the best thing to come out of the prequels. I'd rather watch that concluding movie again before at least half of the canonical big screen ones.

Listening to the end now, good stuff. Nice reminder that everyone should both read and watch the film of The Kid Stays in the Picture, the Robert Evans autobio. I also really need to catch on Rebels now that I watched the end of the Clone Wars series, which is every bit as good as Paul and Jason were saying. And Leisure Suit Larry memories, good times. So next week is Ninja 3: The Domination, continuing the general low budget 80s action trend. Should be fun.

Sorry to be that guy, but the novella is under King's name - it is one of the four in Different Seasons, which also includes The Body (Stand By Me) and The Shawshank Redemption. Not a bad collection! And yeah, the film is relatively limp compared to the source, though the cast was fine. I have mixed feelings about Tarantino as a person from what little I know about him, but I do like most of his films. I still haven't seen The Hateful 8. I quite enjoyed Once Upon a Time. Maybe his last will be a musical!

Yeah, not the kind of drug I've ever been interested in. I had oxy once after an operation and it certainly relieved my pain, but the side effects were unpleasant.

You can probably thank the Twilight Zone movie for the decline in big crazy practical stunts and effects. Apart from Jackie Chan's team of course. But he has also broken every bone in his body and is uninsurable. As for cocaine, all I know about it is it's apparently a hell of a drug. I am more of a weed and mushrooms guy. God I wish I had some mushrooms, is what I'm saying

Tall John, Jason and June try to make sense of the 1982 Hal Needham action classic starring Barry Bostwick, Henry Silva, Persis Khambatta and Michael Beck. This episode was HDTGM's first recorded outside of the US, at the Just For Laughs festival in Montreal in 2019. Megaforce is available to rent on Amazon and as recommended in the podcast, if you haven't seen it yet, they recommend listening to the first few minutes of the podcast first to get a taste for it, then watch the movie, then go back to the podcast. Don't forget that there are some new shirts and other merch at the HDTGM store, including a charity shirt for Feeding America. Let's get that shirt funded, people.

If people are still looking for recommendations, I've been enjoying the new podcast by Joel McHale and Ken Jeong, The Darkest Timeline. As you might expect there is a lot of Community related content, but even if you're not into that show there's a lot of funny stuff. For example, the following stretch of the latest episode where Pedro Pascal talks about his dad taking him to some HDTGM fodder in the late 70s.

I'm guessing it's just a military motto as described in sites like this. Not unusual for a small military force to have its own slogan a la semper fidelis. Amused to see that the latin version of Deeds Not Words ("facta non verba") is used by Canada's own JTF2 elite strike force. Though "Balls of the Corps" (see #4 on the list) is pretty impressive too. I think it actually makes sense for the movie thematically too, especially at the end, where I guess we are supposed to take away that Strong Men of Action like Ace and Duke are more honest and honourable than weaselly generals putting them in harm's way and then leaving them hanging.

Indeed. I feel like this could drive June over a precipice, because she hates robots. At least let them do Bumblebee!

How I wish I had posters for Megaforce and Outland like this guy!

I feel like there are a lot of movies in this vein that could be done on the podcast - buddy cop, 48 hours wannabe films like so many that got made with an asian martial arts star and an african-american comedian or rapper. And Steven Seagal films, how have we not done EVERY STEVEN SEAGAL film? Also, Heartbeeps.

Yeah, that is a weird moment that gets kind of buried in the Very Impressive Victory the MFers have just pulled off. When I watched it last night I thought "man, I hope no one was doing maintenance on that helicopter." Hopefully Egg has some really good sensor tech on those rocket bikes.

You're just trolling me now. I don't care. I'll play. I think this new movie would be well served by keeping a fabulous Indian (or at least Indian American) actress front and center, so.. maybe Naomi Scott? She did well with the action work and comedy in the recent Charlie's Angels film. Ryan Reynolds is as good a choice as any for Ace Hunter but in my mind-movie, which is 1000% more gay than the original, Duke is played by Gina Carano, who cuckolds Ace by stealing not only his lighter, but Naomi Scott as well. Throw in some cyber thumb kisses and you're done. Other cast? Egg is played by a robot voiced by Norm MacDonald. Daniel Levy is Dallas. Patton Oswalt is Duke's second in command. The other members of Megaforce are an ever shifting sea of guest stars without dialogue, including Jake Gyllenhaal, Nick Kroll, and everyone who was ever in Wet Hot American Summer.

If you have access to them on BBC America or some similar network, I highly recommend everything to do with Inspector Morse, which at this point encompasses three TV series (Inspector Morse, Inspector Lewis, and Endeavour) and hours of excellent acting. Also enjoy the Miss Fisher mysteries from Australia (two TV series and a film, so far) and a series called Fortitude starring Stanley Tucci, Michael Gambon and a bunch of other ppl. Hot Ones on Youtube is weirdly fun. Masterchef Australia, again if you have access to it, is surprisingly compelling and structured quite differently from the American version.

Someone on the episode joked about there being a Megaforce Cinematic Universe but if you think about it, a Needham/Stuntman Cinematic Universe could be pretty rad. It could encompass Megaforce, Jackie Chan's stunt team, The Fall Guy, Brad Pitt from Once Upon a Time AND Kurt Russell from 2 Tarantino films. And maybe the F/X films..?

Needham and Reynolds are also referenced extensively in Archer, so they probably have a Megaforce joke in there somewhere. But they do mostly concentrate on the movies that Reynolds is actually in.

This would be a pretty controversial pick, maybe not as much as Drop Dead Fred, but it's one of those movies that some people recall fondly and many do not.

One of my favourite bands of the time, Fishbone, do the song "Jamaica Ska" with Annette Funicello. The soundtrack is more fun than the film itself. As for how this movie got made, I think it's pretty much the same as with a lot of crap in the 80s: baby boomer nostalgia for dumb shit they grew up with, like Frankie Avalon beach movies. Bear in mind, Back to the Beach was made only a few years after Grease.

Insert your own "this is the America that Democrats want" joke here (except for Dallas, fuck him)

Link?

Once again thanks to my fellow forum-mates who have indulged my passion, I guess is the word? for this movie. I just listened to the episode - well done, guys - and I wanted to raise the following points in the hopes of clarifying a few things: 1) as someone points out, no one gets killed (or even seriously hurt) in this movie about two battling bands of mercenaries - with the very notable exception of a mortar crew who intend to blow up the command centre van thing. The Robert Forster looking guy in the van notices them and FUCKING VAPORIZES them with some weapon that is never mentioned again. So Jason, not only do they have lasers, they have some kind of Dr. Manhattan particle beam at their disposal. 2) Star Trek: The Motion Picture came out in 1980 I think, two years before Megaforce, starring Persis Khambatta (Major Zara) in the role of Ilia, who is the original version of Counsellor Troi from Star Trek: The Next Generation. She is also in an awful movie called Warrior of the Lost World starring Robert Ginty and Donald Pleasance, which takes place in a postapocalyptic 80s setting where the hero rides a super-powered motorcycle. 3) Ace's headband. My theory is that however period appropriate it looked at the time, I think it actually had a practical purpose - to show which person was Ace when he was driving around with a helmet on during the action scenes. 4) Probably the single most useful piece of advice I have ever seen about watching Megaforce is this: think of Burt Reynolds in the lead roles, because it was almost certainly written for him. Especially Duke, the way he talks and jokes around, the cigar work, the silly giggling laugh- Henry Silva does a wonderful Burt Reynolds impression here. Now, why didn't Burt do his pal's movie? Did he get a look at the script and somehow know it would bomb? 5) there was a passing mention of Fast & Furious films but I just remembered making this point way back when we did Hobbs and Shaw: what if the shadowy organization that creates super Idris Elba in H&S is just whatever Megaforce has turned into since 1982, and the mysterious voice in H&S is Barry Bostwick? Just saying. Thanks as always for a fun episode, I hope that my fellow forum posters enjoyed it too. [Edited to add point 5 ]

Hey, I did warn you that I would have a lot to say about Megaforce, which was done at the Just For Laughs festival last summer in Montreal and is just this week finally being run on the podcast. "Why on earth should I care about this Barry Bostwick movie?" you may ask yourself. It's not up to me to convince you that you should or should not watch Megaforce, any more than I should try to convince you to eat a really good cheeseburger. It's not good for you, but you might really enjoy it, and you have to admit you're probably going to have that cheeseburger again sometime. I've enjoyed the sloppy mess that is Megaforce at least a dozen times over the years. I watched it in the theatre for the first time when I was a kid. Every comic book had an ad for the movie for what seemed like forever up until it was finally released in 1982. And yet, I don't think there was a comic adaptation of the film, nor am I aware of a novelization, or any of the usual marketing tie-ins that we had come to expect for all of these would-be super-action franchises: Flash Gordon, Buckaroo Banzai, Remo Williams and so many lesser efforts. There were apparently Hot Wheels-type toys of some of the film vehicles, but other than that a surprising dearth of toys. But, there is this stuff which I have held on to over the years: a VHS (formerly rental store) copy that I picked up used in the late lamented Honest Ed's emporium in Toronto; my DVD copy, which is probably still the edition available for sale; and an optimistic article about the film from a 1982 issue of Starlog. Enjoy.

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