The Futile Podcast

Deconstructing 80's & 90's action movies. Relating them to comics, TV, and cartoons from then and now.

Just because you’re a nerd, doesn’t mean you have to be a pussy.

Fall TV review (right click, save as)
I do a Fall TV preview while Zack dozes off. Sadly this one is not about Black Lagoon, as soon as I finish the season I’m on it. Instead, I talk about House (A-), Chuck (C (for Chuck HA!)), Heroes (B-), Journeyman (B), My Name is Earl (B), The Office (B+), The Unit (A-), Madmen (B), Bionic Woman (C (for “Chickish”)), Life (B).

music: Journey – Anyway you Want it

Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises review

Eastern Promises review (right click, save as)
We talk about David Cronenberg’s films and how they have changed from Spider and History of Violence to his newest one Eastern Promises. Zack compares Cronenberg’s more visceral quick and “realistic” violence to Peckinpah’s stylized “glorified” sloMo take on violence. And he also compares the dramatic style of Eastern Promises to Paul Verhoeven’s newest movie Zwartboek (g. Black Book).

"He’s drinking a milkshake from a hummingbird feeder."

Podcast 10 (right click, save as)

We talk about some Justice League movie which sounds like a real piece of shit. I talk about JLU and the Timmverse for a bit. I bring up my favorite character The Flash and one of my favorite fight scenes: Captain Marvel v. Superman. We are still watching Double Trouble. Which leads us to talk about Wrestlers in movies. Which leads me to talk about Suburban Commando for about 5 seconds (which is about 4 seconds too long). Which leads us to speculate about the new Halloween. Somehow from there we talk about Nabokov’s Lolita (it’s Carrol Quilty not Quimby my bad). Then in anticipation for the new season we talk about Metalocalypse primarily Dr. Rockzo who is the rock’n roll clown “Gigggity yeaaaahhhh!”

Zack enters into record the rule that: “you can only get winged in a cornfield.” And I talk about the brutality of Short Circuit 2. But really aren’t we Beyond Thunderdome?

Bump Musics: Al-pha-X – The Oddity Interval
nine inch nails – We’re in this Together

"A Meatloaf Aday keeps the doctor away."

Podcast 9

In this one I talk about going 90 mph while listening to MMMMMM by The Crash Test Dummies. Then we discuss Blood Rayne for a bit though to be honest I’m speechless, though I do my best as a person with a degree in biology to discuss physiological realism in terms of blood. The average human body contains about 5.6 Liters of blood which is approximately 12 pints (I confuse my pints and my quarts in the podcast). We next try to do a top 7 list of racist portrayals of antagonists in film. I spend most of the time talking about the Jamaican drug lord stereotype and Zack brings up Live and Let Die (the Bond movie among other Bond movies). We do all this while really focusing on the movie in the background which is called Double Trouble staring Peter Paul and David Paul. We close by discussing the new A v. P movie.

Bump Musics: Samurai Champloo OST (Fat Jon) – Ole
Djengo Reinhardt – I’ve Found a New Baby (F)
– In a Sentimental Mood (E)

The Monkey’s guy comes in … he’s a rape enthusiast

podcast 8c

We talk about Sam Peckinpah, violence (esspecially the use of practical special effects to convery visera more viserally) and his film Straw Dogs. This is where we discuss consequences of violence as they relate to masculine interactions and male/female interactions and the inevitable misogyny that results. We talk about the bad guy in Tron (David Warner not Moses from South Park) as a mentally retarded character who in a Of Mice and Menesquescenario kills a girl. It’s kind of hard to explain but it gets pretty dark and heavy. Zack is a Peckinpah expert so it’s a good conversation … even though it sounds like it was recorded in Cheyenne Mountain.

"Come on Jack you anti-hero." – Kuato

podcast 8b

Blue Velvet inspires a Dean Stockwell v. Dan Hedeya (OR Al v. Carla’s ex-husband) aside; then
we discuss the seminal revisionist Western Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven. I talk about my first impressions of the film and what I think about the political subtext and the nature of small now fascism v. sociopath reformed killer of men. My Dialectic process of starting with one opinion and then “caving” into another is tested as I try my best to defend Gene Hackman’s character. Hell I’m a bit of a”contrarian” and playing Devil Advocate is why I’m in this podcast game . . . even though I hate pinball (Oh, will the contradictions never cease).

The NORAD sessions pt. 1

Podcast 8a

In these next few podcasts, which I lovingly refer to as the NORAD sessions (due mainly to the fact that for some reason I have yet to discern the audio sounds like we were recording it in some bunker full of computers in a cave), we discuss revisionist Westerns and the concept of the anti-hero. In this first part I give my review of The Proposition and compare it to Jim Jarmusch’s Deadman. Then I briefly talk about Cannibal: The Musical which had Stan Brakhage in it … it’s all very strange.

AFI 100 and Ian’s movie illiteracy.

podcast 7

In this one we talk about TV nostalgia and if Cheers is a good show or not? A: yes. Then Zack reads off the AFI top 100 and I realize how few I’ve seen (something which I’ve remedied a bit since recording). There’s not much more to it than this but we do discuss a few of what are considered to be the best American movies around; good times. illiteracy

bump music: Transformers: The Motion Picture-Their Darkest
Art of Noise – Crusoe

It’s kind of like the Dr. Phil House

SAW [s] review

Or so I’ve been told by our guest Seth (he’s my brother and he the one that does the theme music for the show). In this one Seth and I review SAW I and II and then III. We discuss how SAW II is like The Godfdather II or Return of the Jedi and we talk about the evolution of the SAW films as they relate to industrialization, the information age, and the post-modern depression of the soul. I think the hobo was named Obi but I’m not sure.