Talking Simpsons - Talk to the Audience?!? - March 2024

Episode Date: April 3, 2024

Spring began for the Talking Simpsons Network with a light dusting of Springfield news in addition to a whole lot of fun had by us and the listeners. For this installment of the community podcast, we chat about the most recent new Simpsons episode, then discuss our reactions to Dune, X-Men '97, and other March media. Then we react to some great Patreon comments about Bigfoot, charity programs, Michael Keaton, and more! Support this podcast and get over 150 bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talk to the Audience, where this is always death. I am one of your hosts, the correct speller of Onderdonk, Bob Mackie, who is here with me today, as always. Celebrating five years of being owned by Disney, Henry Gilbert. And they certainly are owning us every day. And yes, this is Talk to the Audience. It's our community podcast. It launches at the end of the month on Patreon. The beginning of the month on the free feed.

In this podcast, we talk about what's happening in the Simpsons world and in our world. And we use the rest of the time to respond to your questions and comments that are left on the patreon it is a slow news month as season 35 is crawling to a finish we have a few things to talk about in terms of simpsons news yeah i do wonder this drip fee it feels like the last few months have just been we talk about one new episode of simpsons it could this be the long tail of the strike affecting it and having it slowing down the production stuff i wonder yeah perhaps i mean i was expecting it the delays to happen a lot sooner but because of the animation pipeline obviously they're working six to nine months ahead so maybe we are experiencing the first strike related pauses in production with

the drip feed that's happening now like you said yeah we'll see if uh april ends up having more stuff but yeah there was one new episode that aired uh this we're recording this the day before you hear this on the patreon so uh this was last night's episode of the simpsons that was brand new and i watched it i did my job because i wasn't reading dune or and actually i got a ton of other prep out of the way. So I was able to sit down and watch this during lunch. And yeah, this episode, Clan of the Cave Mom, written by Brian Kelly, directed by Rob Oliver. It is a Marge versus Luanne Van Houten episode where there's a fierce battle going on between

their parenting styles. And a lot of it is illustrated via a parody of the gendy tartakovsky series primal so that is the visual metaphor they're working with i thought uh i i was mostly indifferent to it i didn't hate it and love it i mean the fun stuff in the episode is the the parody because they're drawing the simpsons a new style animating them in a new style i'm not sure if i like the story that much but i i like when they're experimental and this one was pretty experimental i like when the animators get to have fun with drawing it in a different way and and having a i mean selman definitely it for him it now would feel like

an experimental episode would be where nothing experimental happens and it's a normal simpsons because it's most of his episodes but i did like that Luann got to take a major role again in the show like they've been using Kirk so much like he's every bad parent and uh anti anti CRT teaching character they need that Luann uh being a more normal passive aggressive mom to Marge that that felt a different flavor yeah the entire story is about how bart wants to go to a concert i don't know what kind of band or music they're parodying it's it's like very very offensive spanish language rap i think that's what the the band he's going to the band the group whatever you want to call it i'm just disappointed that we never saw the actual group

or we saw a more thorough parody of whatever they were going for because after bart announced what he wanted to go see they don't really address that in any way throughout the episode no yeah well and also they're doing the thing of uh the simpsons spend money without thinking it because it's just characters they they have to do rich people things for rich writers to do stuff yes yeah there's some there's some semi-relatable normal people stuff in the episode though like there there's a little gag where marge prints out the concert tickets but she needs the app and she has to call homer to get the password for the app it's just the nightmare of using apps in our daily life i thought that was reflected

quite well and i liked homer's joke that he says he deletes apps all the time because he loves to see them shake and quiver as they realize he's about to delete them that's a good joke and uh but also it was very violent for a couple times there was what happens to the caveman homer i was like holy shit yes uh i mean he is impaled and then he's basically spread apart as he's impaled not to spoil anything. But it's a very almost treehouse of horror level of gore. But, you know, I'm going to shame myself. I've never actually seen Primal, although I've wanted to.

I know it's been very popular. In fact, it was renewed for a third season last year, so it is coming back. So maybe when it comes back, I'll catch up. I know it's a very acclaimed show, and I believe it won an Emmy. Yeah, maybe. I think it actually beat Simpsons for an Emmy, so maybe that's how they first became aware of Primal as well. Professional respect.

So, you know, always like seeing an experimental episode. Let's move on to our next new item. Sydney Sweeney reveals what? Oh, she reveals a Simpsons game that she loved growing up and who she played as. Well, that's no fun. But yes, we all know Sydney Sweeney. We all like her. We all project our weird sexuality on her, as has been going on for the past, I don't know,

a couple of months. Are you aware of this, Henry? Conservatives are weirdly obsessed, sexually obsessed with her. And you're either a total cuck homosexual if you love her, or you know she's secretly a white hat for the conservatives and that's why you love her yeah it's so weird i i want i i was including this to have some sydney sweeney discourse engagement in that but yeah the it's like ign did an interview with her of just uh for for madame webb the the movie even she clowns on um that poor woman and and sweeney is asked like do you play to get the thing you ask if you're an IGN interviewer, I don't blame them. I would have done the same thing. And she goes like, oh, you know, I play that one, like, Simpsons driving thing with my brother.

Like, and the video assumes she means road rage. I'm going to assume she meant road rage as well, based on. I think they did a follow up with her. And I think she did clarify it was road rage. So now we know Sidney Sweeney, Simpsons gaming fan. But it's turned very weird but of course with all you know conservative reactionary stuff it's always going to be weird with woman but she she sydney sweetie is a young blonde girl with large breasts so of course it's going to it affects people in many ways but to say that like the craziest ones

have been the dunks i've seen on people saying that she is like anti-woke just by existing like here she is in the glad awards with her like big boobs prominently displayed it's like oh man the woke people can't take this like she got invited to the glad award she's she's in the she's in the system she is not fighting against it and now now she's freaking people out because she's in that horror movie which honestly seems very pedestrian to me this movie but it's about uh the nuns it's about the order of nuns and nuns up to no good and we're seeing a lot of crazy religious people getting upset with her so i'm gonna say once again that poor woman no it's let's all leave her alone it happens to every hot new girl. I mean, like Taylor, until Taylor Swift became like the secret Biden bullshit thing that just happened with her.

I think it was like eight years ago. Everybody's saying she's the secret cute blonde girl who's actually a Republican. And my favorite Sweeney thing I did see in the last month was from her SNL, which mostly looked like it sucked. But I did watch the sketch she did uh with bo and yang who's the the gay asian guy on it they did a sketch where he pretends he actually only pretends to be gay to get ladies and he like starts making out with her and she says like oh do you have protection and he says like no i'm good i'm on prep which is a very funny line in the gay hookup

community that like that chief says protection to not get pregnant and he's like yeah prep yeah that is the hiv prevention style drug and now keep in mind that's not part of my world i'm just making a wild guess in the dark here yes no that's so it was an extra funny i i laughed at that it's also just that i think it's funny that the only person on that snl who gets to write a scene of i make out with Sidney Sweeney is the gay guy who isn't using it to get off. Hey, you know, it's only fair. So we have more news designed to irritate us and make us very upset. all made our fun jokes about it probably like a month or month and a half ago where in Glasgow, Scotland, there was that Willy Wonka's Chocolate Experience debacle, which was this horrible event that used mostly AI art, had unenthusiastic Oompa Loompas, one of which is on Cameo right now,

making the most of her 15 minutes of fame. And I say, good on you. But I think I made this joke independently with my wife in that it was like Homer land in Bart's inner child. The, the fantasy Homer has of, you know, making the forts out of soiled mattresses, millhouse crawls out of it, says it smells funny in there. And Homer goes, no, it doesn't. And yeah, the people are jumping to the conclusion. The Simpsons predicted that Homer's bad event would lead to a real bad event. I see the most tenuous ties between the written joke and the actual thing that happened. I'm sorry, folks.

You're going to need to try a little bit harder. If that place was built out of soiled mattresses or if it had a trampoline in it, maybe so. But it's like, no, it's a crappily done thing. You could point at like seven different episodes where Homer had to do something and he did a bad job of it and it would be like the the failed uh willie wonka experience and people are also saying in this article by people i mean there have been reports that people are making these comparisons that the unenthusiastic oompa loompa joke in sweets and sour marge also

predicted the unenthusiastic oompa Loompas that were actually at the event. The paid workers in orange makeup. And again, I say, guys, you gotta try a little harder. It's one of the most obvious jokes. Like, what if the merry dancing creature was morose and smoking a cigarette? That's not a prediction. Family Guy and Futurama

did it like three years before them, too. And most cartoons have done their Oompa Loompa parody as well yes they're basically slaves yes this also shows you how shocking it is as you pointed out on selma's choice this was a new round of a thing happened that goes viral and then people say did simpsons predicted it by finding a specific joke. And yet it did not happen when that guy got naked and ran around while seemingly on drugs like the episode of The Simpsons. Yeah, there were no stories reporting people making those comparisons, right? No, I didn't remember seeing any when it happened either. And I usually am on the lookout for that.

Maybe I missed them. But yeah, it's like when I do the Simpsons News Search to prep for these podcasts every time, every month without fail, this time it was New York Post, but also like Collider and Screen Rant. They're also very guilty. Basically that they must have an editor or two that say, we need a Simpsons Predicted Post every month. Gin one up, no matter how tenuous you know having written for websites we do have sympathy for the people forced to write these articles and make these tenuous connections because they're told write four or five of these a day for the tiniest wage you can imagine and so they have to so we can't get too furious but i do see the genuine appeal of the simpsons predicted it phenomenon really dying down and i want to think that we were part of that donald trump does one more thing that happened in an episode of the simpsons we're in trouble it'll it'll start it anew all over again i imagine we'll

see many more instances of simpsons predicted it during the 2024 campaign trail as it heats up god help us all so there are more simpsons toys to come in the super seven deal is dead but guess what folks jack's pacific is picking up where they left off with a new toy deal and uh i believe the website you sent me henry i've never heard of it before it's toy news i.com or toy news one.com yeah no i international sorry toy news international is the website it was it was the only one that i could find that had photos from the toy convention that was showing off the jack's Pacific booth because I could not find any other posts about it that were actual like news stories but yeah it was at some

new toy fair Jack's Pacific which is a long established toy company though I don't know know toys that well these days but back in the day they did a lot of pro wrestling toys. They had the WWF license in around 2000 or so. But now they're picking up Simpsons from where Super 7 left off. And it's a lot of the obvious ones of like, here's a Homer, here's a Marge, here's a Bartman. But they also do have a Moe's, basically a Flintstones phone, but for Moe's, or the talking evil Krusty. And to be honest, when you look at the pictures of these, a lot of the pictures are photographs of the dolls or action figures inside of packaging. So it's like a little cardboard cutout of what the Bart doll is going to look like. And I will say that Jax, they do make toys for Nintendo,

and I don't like their toys very much i will say i i never like the nintendo ones and i i'm not very optimistic about these simpsons toys they do you know i didn't know they were those those nintendo toys but i've noticed those mario ones have some weak sculpts i normally don't now of course i'll be accused of just being somebody who says they only make good toys in japan they don't only make good toys in japan but the toys are usually better in japan than that but i there's a lot of american companies make great toys like super 7 but i would bet that jack specific won't take two years to ship you uh a crappier toy let's wait and see uh like you said henry i don't think they're going to be

going for deep cuts but just the main characters and then the evil crusty doll the mo phone i'm wondering what the mo phone how it even functions i guess it's like a novelty toy or something i'm not sure but maybe we'll see some more inspired things by them i bet you won't we we won't see anything as cool as troy mcclure from his many instructional tapes uh with this little sidekick we're not going to be seeing something like that. Nope, nope. They flew too close to the sun. So in other news here, Jeopardy made a disastrous mistake, and I hope they get canceled. But no, seriously, folks.

There was a question on Jeopardy, or rather an answer on Jeopardy, that invoked the name of Robert Underdunk Terwilliger, except on Jeopardy, they spelled his middle name underdonk which bill oakley uh ran to the rescue to point out that is not the correct spelling it's actually underdonk it was really impressive normally this kind of pedantry is is only for us to do but but especially like for jeopardy jeopardy really prides itself on like being like the most correct and the most

well-researched and they want to be America's smartest game show. So them getting that wrong is very different and unexpected. Like normally they get that right. I think a lot of sources just never got the memo from Bill and Josh because I assume they never got the scripts. I bet it's underdunk in episode guides. It's also underdunk on the Frinkiak. Oh, and that usually takes it from the closed captions, I would bet. Yes, yeah. So, I mean, they're correct,

but I feel like the bad information has been passed down for so long that it has now become the default information on his middle name. And as we've seen many times, wikis will have the wrong information quite often in the Simpsons world and that we'll just have to ignore or call out on a podcast from time to time. But Bill Oakley in a follow-up tweet, which I don't think was included in that New York Post article, I don't think they included the follow-up, or sorry, the Uproxx article, in that this Underdonk middle name was named after Henry Underdonk

which was a name Bill and Josh saw on a hymnal in high school and they thought was funny so they held on to that for a very long time and jammed it in a script that's that was that's awesome extra news to learn on that that like I mean this is why Bill and Josh were the masters of weird names that are like unexpected, but not silly and aggressive. They're not Mr. Picklefeather or whatever. There's a specificity to how they would choose a good comedy name. Yeah. As a kid, I always thought, is this a reference or just a funny name? But now we know it's actually a reference to one one of the bishops of pennsylvania from i

believe the 19th century and hey i would have i would have probably written underdunk too i mean it also doesn't help that like the only way i think that name is said or when i hear the name in my head i hear joe quimby saying it in his boston accent on the dunk yeah so it's hard to understand understand what he's trying to say there uh and yes we're we're really scraping the barrel for simpsons news but henry uh has realized that this is actually the fifth year or it's been five years now since the simpsons was acquired by disney and i guess the question you're putting out there henry is how have our lives changed has it really changed what the simpsons is and how like what, you know, when it happened five years ago, I definitely wondered,

OK, what's it mean that Fox isn't Fox anymore and Disney owns it? And especially the company that they made fun of so aggressively in so many classic episodes. What's it mean that they are now owned by The Simpsons or now owned by Disney? I'll tell you what it means for us. And I'm making the finger motion means the money. Because I will say it's bad for everybody in general when a corporation acquires something. But the one silver lining is, and it affects us in a big way, is that it made the Simpsons more available. There was a concern that we had early on, like, oh, when we get to the later episodes,

will people have purchased those DVDs? We can count on people to have DVDs of the classic seasons. But what about, I don't know, season 14 when we get to it, which we're in now? Then in November of 2019, we realized it didn't matter because, bam, they're all there waiting for you. I know. Well, and it definitely has helped with, like, guests, too, who maybe we've had on who don't own the dvds that now they don't have to search for it in like seven parts on youtube or whatever and they just watch it on disney plus or go to like a disturbing pornography website with uh vicious pop-up ads just to get through i don't know mr

plow or something i have a story about having to go to one of those this weekend uh to see watch a non-simpsons thing but i'll tease that for later but yes i think i i did think i was slightly worried that the simpsons was losing some relevancy because it was on that simpsons world app that kind of sucked but being on disney plus and being one of the most popular things on disney plus i do think simpsons has gained back a lot of its ubiquity i would say i'm still waiting though and this day will never come when the simpsons is able to make a joke as vicious as they did in the past about the Walt Disney Corporation. There have been jokes about Disney, and I'm a broken record and I apologize, but the jokes are always, wow, you're so big and powerful and we're afraid of you. That's really the main joke they do about the corporation.

But as we go through the classic episodes of The Simpsons again, we're seeing all of these just vicious jabs at Fox that only get more pointed in the Merkin era oh yeah and then even in the season 14 we're doing now Gene was real mean to Disney then too like because he had just worked for them and felt like being meaner yeah I'm watching ahead in 14 a little bit and one of the upcoming episodes has a very mean Disney joke in it i was like oh yeah they were still doing them this late i mean in season 14 an entire like half of an episode is about how epcot is shit there's another there's a joke that you'd rather be in prison than go to disney california adventure and the simpsons their conquerors will let you still watch that content it doesn't matter if they make fun of disney they won in the end yeah and also it i i'd say another thing that's a downside to it though is that uh disney

does not seem very interested in physical media at all for anything and that includes the simpsons yeah yeah in fact uh some of the final dvd sets made it out just as the deal was happening uh season 19 the the real final extras complete uh edition of the simpsons on dvd just kind of snuck out towards the end there and we have not seen anything since and it's a damn shame because those dvds set the standard for what tv physical media should look like yeah i i was just reading an article today about how like it's the nerds at these small companies are the only ones who are able to keep physical media alive with all of these extras and everything. And it really is,

it really is too bad that like they, they are such great historical records that the commentaries don't even get to like live on Disney plus. And it's just, it's, it's really, it's really too bad. There's,

there's people have cataloged them. You're not going to lose them anytime soon. As we've said before about delisting even the Michael Jackson episode, it's printed on 8 million DVDs, so it's not going anywhere. Don't you worry about it. I will say, in Disney's credit, just like Fox before them, they have yet to sue us. Yeah. And we appreciate that. Thank you, Disney.

Every day we're not sued or forced to change the name of our show or just like driven into poverty by a huge corporation. We're grateful. Hey, you know what? Well, we'll if you keep doing that, staying away from us, we'll like the next plusiversary you do. I promise. I'll be there with my positive review as long as you stay away from my money. So, yes, it's been five years of Disney and Simpsons magic. Here's to five more.

When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? Moving on to our news, we've got a killer month next month in April. I dare say one of the best months we've had in years, let's say. Yeah. No, we've got some really cool stuff coming up.

And also, we've got three Simpsons episodes, all with great guests coming up in April as well. Yeah, it's great. What a cartoon stuff. It's great new guests on Talking Simpsons and amazing What a Cartoon movie subject material. So let's get out of the way. April, as normal on What a Cartoon, is our live action month. We switched to the live action format to cover things that we normally couldn't cover with our normal format, which is why we're kicking off April. Our standard episode of What a Cartoon will all be about the kids in the hall. We recorded it. It's a little over three

hours long. It's very self-indulgent on our part but coming off of the mr show episode last year we really wanted to handle sketch comedy again and we did a lot of work to tell you kids out there why kids in the hall are important yes we and and i think we bob picked out the episode and we it was a really great one that covers a lot of the bases of what makes the kids in the hall such a memorable series like it's it's it's got everything and it's also uh at least in in the north american territories a fairly available to watch for free a thing yes yes so i forgot to mention the episode it's season 3 episode 14 that's when we'll be watching for what a cartoon and as henry said just type in kids in the hall on youtube and see where

it brings you because somebody uploaded all the episodes two years ago and nobody cares but outside of that it's very very available there's a very nice complete dvd box set that's full of commentaries and extras and a whole other series that's usually under like 30 or 40 dollars but yeah uh very very happy with how that turned out and i can't wait for everyone to hear it i want to see the response to our kids in the hall episode at the beginning of april yeah bob bob's also finally got his great research finally got me to also listen to the audiobook of the amazing one dumb guy book which bob has talked it up many times on here i'll i can finally say bob is right it's awesome and everybody should read and or listen to it yes it's the uh biography of kids in the hall titled one dumb guy by paul

myers it's essential reading if you love kids in the hall titled one dumb guy by paul myers it's essential reading if you love kids in the hall so get ready for that that will kick off our live action month in the middle of the month we're going to do our normal mini series episodes for patrons of patreon.com talking simpsons uh talking futurama and talking of the hill talking futurama it's been a long time coming we're finally here folks we are covering the devil's hands or idol play things the finale of the fox run of futurama and now a lot of you people have already jumped out your window saying talking futurama has disbanded well i'm here to report it has not disbanded there it will continue into the future we're going to give away our plans on that on april's episode of talk to the audience at the end of april rather so it'll be may's episode of talk

to the audience i don't know how it works, but next time we talk and gather, we'll let you know what's going on. But Talking Futurama will continue because, get this, did you know there's more Futurama? There's a lot more. Really? And hey, we can still talk, so put those two together and you got a podcast. When we started

it as one of our, it was our first miniseries on the Patreon, I never thought we would get to this point. I could never imagine the far off time that whenever it would be that we'd reach here. And yet it has happened. We have finished the volume four. I've had to put back on the shelf my volume four DVDs. Me too.

Yes, the six year journey has ended, but a new one will begin in May of this year. So hold on to your seats, folks. And then talking to the hill, we'll be talking about the episode Love Hurts and So Does Art. It's the episode where Bobby gets gout. It's very funny. And it is the first real episode that is building the whole Connie Bobby relationship. There have been hints of it up until now, but now it's really taking off. And that storyline will continue into the next few seasons. Yeah. It's a, it's a fun episode about beef and Oregon meat and listeners. We'll, we'll learn some facts about how this episode is a touched me in personal ways too.

You'll learn what a knish is. So get ready for that. And because it's live action month are what a a Cartoon movie for the month of April. Again, that is for patrons at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. It will be the 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. A real crowd pleaser, I'll say. And a very popular movie from our childhood. Oh, yes.

It was one me and Bob each each probably watched uh countless times in our youth we've covered tmnt before the original series the uh the original first five-parter and the the original like super popularity of turtles we covered that uh last year and now we can finally cover the big live action movie which again it was for a time one of the most successful independent films of of all time i think i think it might be maybe this will come up in my research did passion of the christ is that the one that surpassed it we shall see rafael suffered more than christ i think damn splinter i always love that part of the movie. Anyways, get ready for that. It's going to be an amazing month.

Kids in the Hall, Talkie Futurama, Talking of the Hill, and then Ninja Turtles to close out the month. And yeah, that is the news that's happening for us. And again, Talkie Futurama

will continue. Never fear. We got a lot more stuff to cover. So now it's time to talk about what we've been playing and watching that's not related to podcast. And it's been a very busy month just devoted to podcasting. No trips, no real events, just putting out a lot of podcasts.

Not a whole lot of time for games, but I have played and finished a slightly obscure game, but still released by Nintendo. It is the collection called Another Code Recollection, which connects both of the Another Code games. The first one came out here as Trace Memory for the DS, but the second one for the Wii only came out in Japan and I believe Europe. So it remade the first game and it's remaking the second game that most of us in the US never played. And these games are made by the developer Sing. You might know them best for the game Hotel Dusk. And if you played Hotel Dusk, you will know what to expect from these. They're very talky.

The puzzles usually are very simple and not that great, but they've got a lot of vibes. And this was a January release and I think a lot of people missed it. So if you want to revisit Sing's games and if you want to encourage them to release Hotel Dusk and the sequel,

make those into another remake, I say check out Another Code Recollection. It might be on sale for like i don't know 40 at some point in the future but i had a lot of fun with it i'll add that to my to playlist because i really did love hotel dusk the original i never imported the the european release of the sequel but uh yeah i really enjoyed hotel dust i i i another code was one of those or trace memory was another of those early early DS games that I heard it was like a 7 out of 10 or whatever at the time. So I didn't give it enough mind back then.

Me too. It was a lot of reviewers complaining like, oh, this game's only five hours long. Again, now I want all the five-hour games. What if I could finish a game in a weekend? I love that so much. And I did finish the first game on the compilation in a weekend and it was great uh also played a scant amount of final fantasy 7 rebirth uh like about five hours and i really love it so far for more than just nostalgia reasons um i recently came off of final fantasy 16 was very disappointed by that game i put together an entire

retronauts about my feelings on it check that out but this does everything that ff16 does incorrectly i like everything that'sFXVI does incorrectly. I like everything that's going on here, all the things you can do in the game in terms of just a world map that's full of things and events and objectives, not this giant FFXVI world map where you just run across it and just kind of look at Twitter while that's happening. It's so good and I'm enjoying it so much. But I'll let Henry talk more about that because he's played a lot more than me. And for something that's coming up at the beginning of April, I jumped into Final Fantasy 6 Pixel Remaster. And I'm happy I waited because it's received a ton of updates over the past 18 months and a substantial one in January.

So now it's finally in the most finished and fixed state it could possibly exist in. And that is the game I'm currently super addicted to because I have not played Final Fantasy VI since the Game Boy Advance release. And it is so great to see this ideal version of it with touched-up graphics that still retain the original intent and a new soundtrack, a remastered soundtrack. And they even fixed bugs that were in the original game. Certain stats didn't work right in the original game certain stats didn't work right in the original game because it was just programmed by one iranian guy now they

work no that's wow that's well that's great to hear because yes i also last played it uh for the gba remake uh re-release which i really loved how crisp the uh the detail was in that game and then you know, when pixel remaster first came out, all I heard was just negativity about like, this should be fixed. That should be fixed. The text,

all that stuff to know that now that six remaster are, and perhaps the other pixel remasters too, are this level of, of, of replayability. Uh, it's, uh,

comforting to know. Yeah. They definitely listened to the fans and they improved these a lot. They came out in an okay state, I will say. Not as bad as previous remakes of these games ever were. But now they're in a great state, they're totally worth playing,

and I can't stop playing FFVI. I'm playing it and I'm abandoning FFVII Rebirth for now because it's been so long. It's like visiting an old friend again and just remembering every little detail about the game i thought i had forgotten is it's really fulfilling in terms of watching movies well my wife nina and i have been on a real movie kick lately and because of that we watched 23 movies since the last talk to the audience recording before uh we met i i don't even think i would watch 23 movies in a year. This is how much my tastes have changed. I went a very long time with a movie light diet.

So I don't want this podcast to be two and a half hours long. So I've selected five movies to talk about. Very, very briefly. Ones I would definitely recommend. One of those is a movie that took me a very long time to get around to watching, but I really enjoyed. And that's The Triplets of Belleville. I don't know why i never checked it out uh i don't know why i stayed away from it but i really really liked it and i can tell everyone out there it's not going to be a what a cartoon

movie because it's all visual there's there's a tiny tiny amount of dialogue in the movie and it's mostly unimportant so um i say don't wait for us to cover it if you have not seen it go out and see it it's beautiful and hideous and it is i believe pg-13 and i was hoping you know in the past having not seen it knowing it was good oh why aren't there more of these pg-13 animated movies there still really aren't but i like the the the lot the the line it draws between like a spicier r rating and a babyish g rating in terms of the content they show you yeah it i uh haven't watched that in such a long time i did uh i was lucky enough to be working at a movie theater when it came out and it was actually shown in my theater

uh though very uh only for two weeks and uh very under attended uh yeah i won't spoil the plot for folks who haven't seen it yet but i'll also say uh it's a very very good movie but the opening of the movie is sort of a parody of like fleischer brothers animation of the day and i remember going into that theater and seeing it with like uh there was a young family a young floridian family and when i believe it's a josephine baker parody comes out who is uh topless the uh the the family left to the theater at that point oh yes well i hope that child who's now like 30 eventually got to see it but yeah it was nominated for the oscar that year that was back when they only nominated like three animated movies obviously finding nemo one but yeah i was very

happy with what i saw and it's just uh twisted fun and then it made me think oh yeah professor layton games really ripped this style off and were held unaccountable yes and i know you saw this henry dune too even better than the first and having read the book uh i can appreciate even more i can talk more about the book later in this podcast, but very happy. I'm also proud of myself because during Dune, my wife and I split a pitcher of beer and we did not pee once during a two hour and 43 minute movie. That is it's a it's a big movie and it feels big and epic. Like I knew I was aware of the overarching plot that was going to have to be addressed in it. And I did still remember thinking like, man, how are we going to get from here to here but

uh yes again as somebody who only did not read the book like you I did feel like it covered a lot of the information like really well and everybody acted great like I loved every actor in it was so awesome to see every every famous person was doing some of the best work I've seen him do. And when we emerged after the credits without peeing, all the employees got on their knees and said, Because I was the real quitsats hatterack of not peeing.

But you were a white savior, Bob. I heard that's wrong. By the way, that's the point of the movie. I was reading some Letterboxd reviews, it's like, I've had it with these white savior movies. I thought it was pretty obvious, but maybe some people didn't think it was. Dune Part 2 bends this version of it,

I feel like bends over backwards to be like, to say it is not that. And also, it is not portrayed as, and then everything's awesome after this thing happens. Yes. I've heard people say it ends like Empire Strikes Back, the second Dune movie, where it's like something wrong is going on. There's a victory, but at what cost? And what's to come in the future?

Yeah, no, I really enjoyed it too. A big thumbs up for me as a non-Dune reader, but new converter to the Duniac ways. I guess I can talk about the book because I read the book. It took it about two weeks, I think just shy of two weeks to get through it. Get through. I did enjoy it, by the way. I don't know if I'll keep going on the Herbert train, but it was nice to see the things I watched in the movie, how they were first rendered on the page.

Once you get to the second half of the book, you realize like, oh my God, what a challenge anyone has in adapting this. And that's why the David Lynch Dune, which I know you'll talk about, Henry, was such a failure because Denis is the guy who figured it out. David Lynch did not figure it out because the second half of Dune just jumps around in time. Important events happen that are just like cast aside and regarded as unimportant. Like Paul's a son and Paul's son is killed. What? Okay. Just a lot of things happen.

There's a lot of time jumps and stuff. And it's just it's because Frank Herbert was shooting a shot and didn't think he'd be able to publish any more stories like this and just cramming in everything he thought of into the back half of Dune. And because of that, it's a very long book. But I'm happy with how this new version reinterprets that second half. And I think it's the superior work because of that. And I also saw Alita Battle Angel. Have you seen this film, Henry? No, I've heard it's one of those things where when it first came out, the reviews weren't

great. And I remember Battle Angel and read some of the comics back in the 90s. It was one of, you know, not everything everything was available back then but it was one of the comics that was available and I definitely remember reading it but yeah the first reviews weren't that great and then it felt like too late for its reclamation by a lot of especially like queer and trans people on Twitter I had seen really going to bat for Alita as a great film, but I just hadn't gotten around to it. I will say that there are things to like about it. I was weirdly against the giant eyes on the main character because I thought like,

oh, you took the most superficial knee-jerk thing you thought about anime and you just applied it to the character. It actually, it works fine and it makes sense within the context of the world. What I thought was an odd choice is they chose to adapt an arc of the manga that is a sports arc so alita battle angel is also like a futuristic roller derby movie

along with introducing you to this character it's also dropping this very long sports arc into the mix which i think like save that for another alita movie but uh other than that i thought it was great the effects are great james cameron co-wrote the screenplay if that means anything to you that is such an interesting thing because yeah i also knew about this movie for like 20 years of its production before it finally came out as just you'd always in wizard magazine i feel like i read in 1997 james cameron is gonna adapt battle angel into a movie and then eventually he just hands it to robert rodriguez and says you do it i'm an avatar i will not make

a movie that is an avatar if you need me i'll be underwater uh yeah i'm not gonna see the ghost in the shell film i i assume that's much worse than this but i had fun with it i gave it a 3.5 on letterbox and then via just asking my wife questions about the manga because she knows about it, I found out that Battle Angel Alita is a complete localization invention. The original name of the manga is Gunma or Gundream. Sorry, Ganmu or

Gundream. And the main character's name isn't Alita, it's Gally. Wow. Wow, man, I had no clue. So they made these big sweeping changes, but like, hey, Final Fantasy VI Pixel Remaster, they keep Terra as Terra. She's not Tina. Sabin is not M.A.S.H. They keep the names Americans know instead of going for a more authentic localization. And that's what they did with Alita.

Well, that's interesting. I actually didn't know that about... Clearly, I was a light reader of the Alita. Yeah, that's it. Well, that's interesting. I actually didn't know that about. Clearly, I was a light reader of the Alita comics back then. Yes. A movie called Ganmu wouldn't really fly off the shelves here. No. Or Gun Dream.

Gun Dream does sound cool, though. It might do a little better, but then people might think it's a political statement about guns or something and not go to see it. Yes, that's true. We're all living the gun dream

in America, aren't we, folks? A movie I saw a couple of days ago it was nominated for best international film a zone of interest beat it it's perfect days my baby's first vim vendors movie that's the first one i've seen i haven't seen paris texas i haven't seen wings of desire i did watch this and i really really liked it and not because it takes place in japan but that helped. It's about a guy in Japan and he is a toilet cleaner. And you basically follow the routines of his life and you get to see how this person who is largely disrespected on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale, how he is able to find meaning in his life. And it's very uplifting. It's very beautiful. And I really, really liked it.

And the name of the movie is perfect days that's it does sound cool i had not i remember seeing it on the nominees list and that was my first real encounter with it i uh though i also uh had missed that it was uh directed by wim wenders i thought it was a uh a fully i i thought a japanese director worked on it but uh yeah yeah i believe he wrote it with a Japanese person, and he had a lot of assistance from Japan because the entire movie is co-funded by a Japanese toilet project called the Tokyo Toilet, which is devoted to installing these amazing free toilets in Japan

that are designed by different architects. Another thing you'll notice when you watch this movie is just like, wow, what a different world in which you can just pee without any shame, without having to go into a store and buy a coffee. And having been to Japan so much, Henry, we know other countries are better at this than America and even Canada, letting you use the fucking bathroom. Yeah. No, i had to deprogram myself of what i think a public toilet is same same with uh that when i went to japan i had to tell myself like 7-eleven food is not american 7-eleven food and it's the same it is the same with public toilets i mean with public toilets in in the united states it certainly is well it has to be horrible for everybody because

what if it was comfortable for a homeless person? Like, that would be bad. So it's really sad. Yeah, I really enjoyed this. It's not like Lost in Translation. It's not taking, like, casting a judgmental or, oh, look how weird glance at Japanese culture. It's looking at it very matter-of-factly and kind of seeing how the country can be accommodating and hostile towards lonely uh poorish people and uh because i roasted barbie last month on the podcast and thank you for taking that well

everybody i know people like the movie i didn't i watched another greta gerwig movie although it was uh directed by noah bombach her future husband and that is francis and I thought it was delightful it's a very slice of lifey movie about a woman in her late 20s trying to plant roots and just being kicked around by the economic forces that are uncontrollable around her and I found it very

relatable in terms of how being a poor and desperate person makes you very alienating to everyone around you I thought it was super observational in that respect because when she is floundering, she's a mess that nobody wants to be around. I was like, oh my god,

I was not a woman or a dancer in the 2010s but this is kind of what my life was before I found the podcast industry. That and her other bird movie. I haven't seen it yet. I've got to watch that movie. before I found the podcast industry. And that and her other, what the Bird movie got. Now, I haven't seen it yet. I got to watch that movie,

her last, her big- Lady Bird. Lady Bird. Yeah. You felt really in touch with that one too, right? Yeah, yeah. She's so, I mean, she did co-write this movie with Noah Baumbach,

and I feel like they're both really good at just super observational human behavior stuff that I don't see in a lot of other movies. In this case, especially what it was like in the 2010s as someone in your 20s, just trying to find anything, trying to live, trying to not live in complete shame of how poor you are. And it's funny, too. So I definitely recommend it.

It's a movie from 2012, and I'm glad that I watched a good Greta Gerwig movie because now she's going to be making Battleship 2, The the search for the cruiser and everything else mattel is gonna throw at her oh sorry she's gonna waste her life making narnia movies never mind god what a what a waste we already we already had that we don't need it again no it's uh well yeah also uh had have you yet to see uh the little women she did i have seen that one. No, I want to read the book first because I've always wanted to, and that's going to be a good inspiration for me to sit down because Little Women's as long as Dune, and I had no idea about that. It's a book originally published in two volumes, and both of them together are 832 pages. So it's like, well, I imagine it'll flow a lot faster than me reading Dune and having Frank

Herbert throw a new word at me every three pages it was i i remember liking it also because it is kind of like a creative adaptation and not a straightforward uh linear one like the uh the one i grew up with which it almost feels like it's in conversation with the one the one that had uh winona rider and kirsten dunst and susan sar. That adaptation from our youths that I'm sure Greta Gerwig also watched a million times. Yeah, that'll be on a future talk to the audience. And I'll say, I'll point out how Moe's story is incorrect. He got a weird publishing of Little Women. Other things really quick.

I read Dune. You heard about it. I also read, and I want advice from all of you Terry Pratchett fans out there. Last year, I read the first Discworld book and I really liked it, The Color out there. Last year, I read the first Discworld book, and I really liked it, The Color of Magic. This year, I read the second one. And when I got done, I went online seeing, like, what do people say about this? And then I saw the writer himself, the late Terry Pratchett, say, don't read the first two books first. I didn't know what I was doing.

You can appreciate them later, but please don't start there. And I thought, like, oh, I made a huge mistake. But I like these enough to want to read more. i want to know folks out there should i continue reading them in order because i feel like that's what most people did uh you know as they were released and i you know it seems like a valid approach but i'm really curious about what all the pratchett head thinks it's a new world for me i i'm a minor pratchett head and i actually did read it in the backwards way i didn't read i think i read two books first and then went back and read the first two. So I've read those two as well.

My personal enjoyment of the Discworld books are going within the sub-series. Thud was one of my favorites, and that's in the Nightwatch cop series. It's basically like a police procedural comedy in the world of Discworld that I thought was a lot of fun. Yeah, I know the next book is the third book, Equal Rights, and that's about witches. So that starts another branch within Discworld. But the first two books are strange in that they're mostly parody. And the second book literally takes place moments after the first book ends. So it's really just one long story.

Yeah, you know equal rights i remember being good too though it also is him it it's a parody of like 70s and 80s feminism that will feel dated in a lot of ways he's not like he's he's a pro-feminist writer i'm not making it sound like like but it feels dated in in the politics of it in that regard. He did a, now I forget the name of the series, but he did a young adult within Discworld series about a female magic user as well that felt like his response to Harry Potter that I also really liked.

Now I can't think of it right now, but it was really good. Yeah, I know his daughter went on to write one of the books with those characters, but that's the only one she's done in that world. And I will say, a weird connection is that Rihanna Pratchett, who is and was a video game writer, is the first interview I did in the Games Press. Her and Al Lowe, the Leisure Suit Larry creator. Wow.

So, very different people, but I'll always remember her for being my first interview and a great one at that. Also, I only watched the first episode of the Amazon series of it, but because I was reading every single thing Neil Gaiman ever wrote, I really loved Good Omens, the book that he co-wrote with Pratchett. Though that is not a Discworld book, but it is a good book. Well, it's nice to start a series and know there are 41 books to keep me company until I die. So thank you terry pratchett hats off to you wizard hats off to you uh and final thing is that i will be at the midwest gaming classic convention in milwaukee representing retronauts with jeremy and uh diamond and nadia

will be there as well so uh that'll be april 5th to 7th in milwaukee uh please check that out if you're going to be in the area i don't have a date and time for my schedule as of this recording in terms of what panels I'll be on, but that will all be available online soon. But I love going there every year. I love Milwaukee. I love going back to my Midwestern roots. So I'm going to have a great time there. Hopefully I'll see you in the audience at one of the couple of panels I'll be at. It sounds like a lot of fun i'm yeah i i had a good time going to uh being able to be adjacent to the retronauts fund at the portland retro gaming expo so this uh this sounds like a good time too oh yeah by the way uh preview for like i don't know nine months from now the deadline for panels for portland retro gaming expo was like yesterday weirdly enough even though the convention's not happening until late september so i submitted a panel so i'll probably

be there too. And maybe Henry will be there. Maybe there'll be another Talking Substance thing. Who knows? It's only a three-hour train ride away. So pretty easy for me to visit too. And that is all that's going on in my life. Well, for me in March, I had a lot of gaming stuff because I completed Like a Dragon Infinite

Wealth. It was 90 hours. I did enjoy it. I didn't like it as much as the seventh game the one that introduced it you bond like a dragon uh but infinite wealth is really good it has too much game i did like i said 90 hours i didn't finish every sub story that i wanted to finish i barely touched the animal crossing i could have played it way more than i did you know i did purchase that game when it was new.

Have not played it yet. Then FF7 Rebirth came out and I started that. And now this new game called Dragon's Dogma 2 is out and I'm terrified like this could be the game I start and forsake everything else. And I've been very good about starting games and finishing them, but oh man, Dragon's Dogma 2 looks so good

and I have a beefy enough computer to make it look even better. That sadly has to be the one that I'm like oh everybody is talking about it but i have to even when i be to the game i am currently playing i feel like i'm gonna start up persona 3 reloaded instead of uh instead of dragon's dogma which everybody yes everybody's talking a big time but uh yeah infinite wealth i might go back to it for some achievement cleanup also because the achievements are frustrating in that they are all the number four that most are 14 they are not a round number of five or ten so i have uneven achievement points right now and you will go to hell if you die with

uneven achievement points it's true and right now i am 55 hours into ff7 rebirth i won't name the chapter name in case you know you don't want to even have spoiled how many chapters are in it but i i am being thorough in doing everything i can in areas before i leave and continue on in them but i love it because yes it's all the stuff that was good about remake but when you finish remake you maybe were left thinking like okay well that's what they could do in the midgar section but once it comes to the open world of seven can they really make this work in an open world and oh my god do they it's so good yeah i've only gotten a brief taste of the open world but i am very satisfied like i said earlier in this conversation the ff16 open world

is not it's garbage it's like you run to see a little twinkling treasure and it's literally two gil it feels like a joke. But in this open world, there are just these little environments where it's like find all the treasures here or do this. There's always these little objectives that keep you busy and it's great. And every time you get to a new area and you unlock chocobos there, the chocobos are different. They all play differently. There's so much variety. And also they take into account, they learned from the western style of open world games that give you a map and a tower that you climb up

and you light up the tower and then you got objectives everywhere they they they took that and made it work in the final fantasy context the combat is great all the new party members uh play so distinctly i can't believe how deep the combat feels too like it's just great all over and soundtrack too amazing soundtrack oh my god yeah yeah as a big fan of the original soundtrack uh i'm really happy with how they've been able to rework it especially the very long world map theme they've found so many different ways to remix it into battle themes really impressed by that and uh the only other little things i've done is i did play the unicorn overlord demo the new game from vanilla ware as i played it i was like i could totally see that in a

time of slower games this could eat me alive in its addictive quality i've had similar that's why i didn't download the demo also because i have 13 sentinels on my switch the last vanilla ware game and i know i gotta play it uh people have just been screaming at me to play it this one looks great though oh and i love 13 sentinels i really did and i also i love dragon's crown like that it was fun to see them get back into a fantasy world and also sort of do fire emblem but they they really have a special approach to it it's really good but i did start up uh that princess peach game you know i'm not really feeling it you know what i heard uh not great because the explanation i've heard about the game it's a series of mini games where you kind of just hit one button and it's it feels like it

is for literal children you know we all know mario games are for mature adults who are 40 and over but this does feel like it's made for little kids. It feels like, I've only played three hours of it, and I did, of course, buy it, but it feels like Princess Peach is starring in an average Kirby video game. Not a great Kirby game, an average one. Well, that makes sense because it's developed by Feel Plus, who made Kirby's Epic Yarn, Yoshi's Woolly World,

Yoshi's Crafted World, all B-minus platformer platformer games yeah you can see why they hid that this was not a real nintendo internal and it was not a first party studio but uh sorry i think it's good feel it's it's i said plus it's another developer entirely i apologize that's right is yeah but um okay so as for movies yes i saw a lot of movies and TV this month too. I already talked about Dune Part 2. I did see Dune 84, the theatrical cut. And yeah, it's like, look, I like Lynch. I don't love Lynch, but I do like David Lynch. And I had been warned of like, well, never watch 1984, the 1984 Dune.

It doesn't capture it. It's a disservice to the book. Once I finally saw these movies, I was like, okay, now I know the structure of the story. I should watch this. But it caused a new problem of like, well, I know the story they're interpreting. And this goes, this smashes together so much that all I see are the flaws. Yeah, I mean, when I read that book, I thought, well, the new Denis movie is going to be bad. Because how can you turn this into a movie?

He did. And you can see the this into a movie? He did. And you can see the choices he made that Lynch didn't. Lynch is like, no, we're going to have a little Stewie use magic to kill the Baron. In the newer Dune 2, it's like, no, no, the hyper-intelligent baby just won't be born because that's an embarrassing idea that is impossible to convey via live action

without it being laughable. There were other things I was like, oh yeah, this is cool and trippy. In 84, there's probably tons of stuff in it that did at least feel so new and special. And he's such an avant-garde filmmaker working at that level of budget. It's impressive.

But there's just so much like, man, this sucks. When they got on the worm and it looks like they're riding the bus, like it just seems so lame there's a lot of uh superior worm riding in the new film i will say although the way the way they ride the worms in teams makes no sense to me like are they parking worms and waiting for people to join them with their new worms right oh and then speaking of uh strange experiences in the movie theater i finally saw the end of evangelion uh for for no particular reason it was being screened

in theaters this last week or this month uh by g kids in america the first time ever released in north american theaters yeah i had about an 80 full big theater to watch it with on a wednesday night and yeah it it really was something like to see we talked about it for five hours and on a podcast uh you know we're really proud of but to experience it in a theater you really do see like how competitive it is with an audience in real time and you feel the uncomfortableness at some scenes uh all around you in the theater it's really interesting yeah i guess the closest experience i had and i believe we talked about this on the podcast. I went to Otakon 2001, the anime convention, and I believe that's the first time they screened the then new dub of that

film. So I have seen it with an audience and I completely forgot until you just mentioned it now. Obviously, way different experience seeing it with like an anime convention crowd and not like proper moviegoers. But yeah, it hits different with a crowd. I will say I respect my crowd. Early on, when the second scene of the movie is the Shinji jerking off, that was my test for the crowd around me. I'm like, okay, is it going to be a giggle fest? And there was only a little here and there,

but it was a mature audience there to enjoy this film maturely. But yes when to finally be in the theater when they're showing you the movie theater viewers on screen that are you and then when the scene when the movie ends and just it's like lights up and no music and nothing like to experience that with a crowd is really something also in weird viewing experiences so my husband there's a new kung fu panda out and he's like hey i've always wanted to watch these kung fu panda movies so we watched we watched kung fu panda

and we also watched kung fu panda 3 and i'd already seen two but then after watching four four is coming out correct we saw a trailer for four when we saw uh perfect days yeah four is just out in theaters now uh as as rumors are swirling the dreamworks is laying off a lot of their uh staff which really sucks to hear when this movie is successful kung fu panda 4 but the the kung fu fandom movies are totally good they're not amazing but they they cast a good cast jack black doing skid skidoo and all those things it's uh we all chuckle it's fun but after watching them i said okay we we need to watch a true kung fu movie to see the stuff this is ripping off and so i hadn't watched the drunken master in the longest time the 1978 jackie chan yun wu ping movie my husband had never seen it before it rules it rules

so hard it was so revolutionary for its time it still holds up great today. It's the first Jackie Chan action comedy. And Yun-Wu Ping, there's a reason he goes on to be the legendary director or action choreographer for every movie you liked in the 90s and aughts. It just rules so hard. Jackie is a superstar at every second. All the training montages are great. The downside was, if you want to watch it with a crappy old British dub, but in hd you can watch it on like freebie and 2b and all those things if you want to see it in hd uh with accurate subtitles you might have to go on to a uh illegal website that it wasn't a russian illegal website full of uh hentai heads it was i'm not naming the

place it was a conservative illegal website with ads that were like will you support trump buy your mega hat here bitcoin for trump like it was those ads everywhere wow you know i've noticed that uh we have criterion channel i think you do too henry and that when we watch hong kong movies a lot of them have bad subtitles and i feel like there's not a lot of uh money in making subtitles better so it feels like criterion might have just gotten the uh the pirate release themselves and just rip those subs because a lot of them are really bad i think too with a lot of uh those classic hong kong action films the distributor won't approve a new a new localization like they've uh you know that's why

drunken masters was so hard to see and so many others too of like we're not going to approve a new localization so you either have to use this crappy old uh subtitles or have nothing and i bad subtitles on hong kong action films do make me feel warm and fuzzy on a certain way because those were the bootleg tapes i've watched in the nine in the late 90s that had horrible translations on them that also had like, it was Mandarin and then bad English, all in white text that would often be obscured

by the color on the screen. Yeah, I have fond memories of my 2002 bootleg One Piece DVDs where all the characters had new names that were weird translations of their actual names. But Drunken Master, I gave it five stars on Letterboxd. I cannot talk it up enough. It's a true classic. If you think, oh, well, that's, you know, Police Story is when Jackie Chan started making great movies. It's like, no, The Drunken Master, there's a reason that made him a huge

star in Hong Kong before he tried to go international the first time and uh and just quick hits on tv shows too delicious and dungeon continues to be great i love that show it's it gets better every week and i finished chainsaw man that's also rules i'm so sad there's not like a second season yet already it's gonna be a movie it's gonna be like uh just like demon hunter where you're gonna see like six episodes as a movie and it's gonna make more than every miyazaki movie combined and and i also watched x-men 97 the first two episodes i think you watched it too right bob yes uh i really enjoyed it actually and uh i will say that the the actor for wolverine is a cal dodd is that his cal dodd yes yeah his irish side is coming out

more than ever as he ages. And he sounds so Irish as Wolverine. We actually went back and watched the first two after watching X-Men 97. And we were like, Oh yeah, you can detect a little bit of Irish. He's Irish Canadian, by the way,

you can detect a bit of his Irishness in the original, but then this one, he's like, where's me? Lucky charms. Where's Jubilee? Who made you boss? Yeah.

Yeah. It's a, no, it's fun, but I like, like as he it turns out the irish side of you takes over when you get older it's it's an interesting casting thing they did because they retained it feels like about half got retained and half got replaced and and not just replaced in like jubilee's case for you know more accurate casting but also like you know Jennifer Hale is now Jean Grey for example like which totally she's great at it I was listening to We Hate Movies has a great new miniseries called Too Old for This Shit and they're covering the new X-Men series and they covered a bit of the old one too and I just listened to it before this

recording actually it sounds like some of the actors who did not reprise their roles are now playing other characters like I believe the person who played Gamb reprise their roles are now playing other characters like i believe the person who played gambit in the original is not gambit now but he's another person no yeah you're right it's really i also can't believe the guts on it to really be like this is the successor to that show this continues the plot this picks right up it's 1997 it starts with the world trade center like it uh and i've seen some wags on the Internet complain about the animation or something. I don't know what the fuck they are talking about. That upsets me, Henry, because my response is, did you ever watch the original? Go back.

And thank your lucky stars this new show looks this good. I think X-Men 97 looks like how you remember X-Men 92 looking. Yes. That show, terrible budget, people working very hard under the constraints of Saban Entertainment. We covered it a couple times on What a Cartoon, but it does not look as good as you remember. Things like Batman holds up in certain episodes of Animaniacs

and other things from that era definitely hold up, but that show does not. Saban Entertainment never spent the money on good animation. What was great about x-men 92 was what could you know overcome the horribleness of saban entertainment as working environment 97 meanwhile has great animation flourishes is it animated in in that flashy style how everything is now yes and you gotta accept that that's how these things look now and if you haven't accepted that by now like what what do you do with yourself because that's just

what everything looks like now i have seen people also complain like oh but rogues butts flat now or whatever which is like people are taking like two frames of her having being thick that have been that became memes from the 92 show and be like oh oh, her butt's not as fat as in this one picture. They erased Rogue's butt and her vagina bones, and that's why I'm boycotting the show. Also, Magneto's new costume, in the comics, he has side boob visible in it, and they didn't put that in either. Oh, wow.

So they're censoring us. They're censoring the butts and the side panels. But I don't think it could be done better as what it is, as it exists. I am definitely going to watch more of it. I was very impressed with it. I've also been reading a lot of Dr. Slump because the untimely passing of Akira Toriyama definitely drove me to finally pull it out on the Shonen Jump app and really give it a read. It's also annoying the anime is basically unavailable in america right now yeah there's been some subs but no

one has gone through the effort of subbing at all so you can watch it like i don't know like 10 episodes in english and it's pretty faithful to the manga but uh but the comic is like i you don't need me to tell you this listener and bob you Bob, you've read, I think, all of it or most of it? About half of it. There's a surprising amount of it, too. It's one of the best comedy manga ever. And it's comedy transcends. Maybe it's also just got a great localization.

It is a transcendent comedy. Like, comedy plays through in so many different languages. It's so, so damn funny. So I've been really loving dr slump and in r.i.p akira toriyama and now we're moving on to questions and comments from the last round of episodes up next is ce dough and len schmidt says hey just wanted to point out that there is no disney plus in china it's all blocked you can only watch if you have a vpn just like google facebook twitter youtube news channels etc lately a lot of disney

movies just don't even screen in china even live action the mulan which seemed made just for china so it seems kind of confusing why disney is so insensitive about china i guess they are hoping to get back in there or maybe want to protect those theme parks i lived in china from 2016 to 2022 mostly good experiences there some challenges went to shanghai disney a lot in disney hong kong once so i guess that counts for something that's uh i i would bet it does come down to the theme parks like even if they can't screen marvel movies there lately like that shanghai disney alone is worth so much money that they will they all want to please china no matter what and yeah part of the the terror and xenophobia that certain Americans and Westerners have about China is they use their own apps. And what's going on on those apps?

And what is TikTok doing? So that's where a lot of that fear comes from because of what's happening in China and how the free market is not always going on over there in the same way it is here. And I don't know what the state of TikTok is as of now. No, me neither. I think that thing passed in the time we're recording this. I believe it passed in the House, but not the Senate yet. But though, again, it's like it is just so it does feel disingenuous to see people complain about it because it does. Even if China does all that stuff with TikTok that people say, and I also do not use TikTok like at all.

But if it does all those things people are accusing it of, that's just what every app does in front of that American company's own anyway. It is America saying, no, that's our private data to steal. It feels like in general just America doesn't like that we're in danger, if not already has happened, that we are second place to China. Like the U.S. does not like that. Oh, yeah, we are we are definitely it's happened uh ryan benelli also said about ceo in regards to the low quality of recording of harry nilsson's best friend the theme to the courtship of eddie's father for whatever reason the only available version of that song has incredibly bad audio that sounds like someone just recorded it directly off

their television there's no official explanation for, but it's been speculated by fans that the master tapes went missing or were destroyed. Harry also has a song called Girlfriend, which is essentially the exact same song as Best Friend, but with slightly different lyrics. The recording also sounds a million times better. Despite this, it isn't used nearly as much as the low-fidelity twin.

I realize that nobody could possibly find this comment to be interesting, but as a Nilsson head, i felt obligated to chime in we found it interesting that's why we were questioning why does this version of the sounds uh the song sounds so bad but that's the existing version you can license i guess yeah it's the only one that sounds like the tv show i mean uh some of the honestly it's sounding crappier or lo-fi is some of the charm for me of best friend you know i i it feels old it musty that's part of the fun to me so now we're moving on to brother from the same planet and vance jericho says here's a random jeff lynch fact he was originally going to direct drag me to hell but sam ramey couldn't get the budget they wanted with him at the helm

which is too bad he's such a phenomenal animation director i would have loved to see what he could do with a live action ramey-esque horror film and yeah i remember looking into jeff lynch when we covered like father like clown he was working with sam ramey as early as uh the gift or even one simple plan doing storyboards for ramey so their connection was back then before he just took over for the cartoony parts of the spider-man trilogy that was really interesting to hear that i had not heard that drag me to hell fact and uh that i i want i was like oh i never heard that before i looked up when drag me to hell was first announced as a project the first articles were saying and jeff lynch is going to direct and sam ramey produces but uh i i did not

see drag me to hell in theaters i only watched it two years ago when Blank Check covered it. That's when I finally watched it. And it is good. It's hardly like Evil Dead good, but it's good. It now makes me wish I'd have loved to see what Jeff Lynch could have done with that on his first go-round. Yeah, I mean, they covered this on Blank Check, but it made us all think this is going to be Sam Raimi's new era where he's going to do a lot of these little horror movies, these little low-budget movies that can easily be put on DVD and sell a lot and get rented a lot. But that was it.

And he disappeared for a very long time. Oh, wait, the Oz movie. And then he disappeared for a very long time. And that's why he did. Yes. I got to see that Oz movie at a critic screening. It was shocking. Oh, lucky you.

Oh, boy, was that sad it uh i perked up for the like two minutes bruce campbell was on screen and then was mostly just sad the rest of the time is that is that jared leto in that movie no no it's what it's uh james franco it's james franco sorry i confuse them a lot i don't know why but uh again back to blank check i didn't watch the movie but it sounds like he is doing his role under protest and you can tell he's just trying to ruin the movie he's he doesn't want to be there mila kunis doesn't seem that happy either it's also funny because sam ramey like at least at the time loved james franco like he wanted james franco to be his spider-man uh and when they picked toby over him then he's like then he's going to be my harry osborn and he'll have a prominent role in the entire trilogy i'm back in this franco kid yeah he's he just what could go wrong uh also on that episode uh cad hayberg says as a kid i always paid extra attention to this episode and the mary tyler

more episode where she had a little sister through the big sisters or sitcom equivalent i wonder after hearing the background behind it if james l brooks was a big supporter or something my dad had a little brother when i was little quote unquote little brother when i was little who he'd been mentoring i.e playing dungeon of dragons twice a week hey henry interdilute here that sounds like a good mentoring thing oh yeah absolutely since before i was born and i loved when he as a teen would come to our house because he'd always bring me one of his old disney books as a present my mom always asked my dad why he didn't just take him to a baseball game instead of playing dungeons dragons but i'm pretty sure

that's why they were paired up my parents still keep in touch with him he does some cool job with a wrestling promotion now i believe and it seems like it was a great experience for everyone even toddler me i know my dad always liked this episode too and i'm glad to hear that the big brothers big sisters of america is still going strong and is apparently scandal free that's great to hear yeah i mean i don't want to be cynical and think like oh what's what's going on with these bigger brothers and sisters eh but you know some parts of me thinks that, you know, there could be scandal, but apparently there's not, and maybe that's because it's not a Christian organization. Who knows? They kept religion out of it, and that kept away the sickos.

The kids are safe. It does. I mean, you know, there could be egg on our face on all this praise for it now. But, yeah, it does seem scandal-free. Also, yeah, I'm tempted to send a a private message over uh patreon just to ask cat do you know the name of this person who works for a wrestling promotion because i'm wondering if i've if they are like famous or not i'm curious maybe they're a listener who knows up next is excuse me

while i miss the sky and alex irish says two observations one this continues the running theme of least episodes being the best ones of season 14. And two, this has my favorite line in the history of the show. I wish God was alive to see this. Uh, this is Bob speaking, Alex,

you're right about number two, but I just rewatched dude. Where's my ranch. And that destroys the trend, not a great episode. And it is a lease episode. That's really too bad. I thought this,

I really did like Alex's observation. I think it had been true to this point. I have also now seen dude. Where's my car up dude. that's really too bad i thought this i i really did like alex's observation that i think yeah it had been true to this point i have also now seen dude where's my car uh dude where's my ranch and i've also seen dude where's my car i haven't seen that i can say that at least i feel like unfortunately we get back to a big take that lisa's beliefs episode unfortunately yes and we'll get we'll get to it fairly soon actually but when i i was like who is playing this kid in this episode this crush of lisa's it's it's jtt but in 2003 i just thought really this late in his career i it was it was confusing to me i could see jtt being on

the show in like i don't know 1996 yeah it doesn't i am very confused by it i i doubt the research will tell us anything on that or maybe he's and he also doesn't seem like he does a lot of interviews either. So I am curious how that came together at such a late date. And also on that episode, Ara the Demon says, Nintendo still has, I think, a 10% stake in the Mariners, so you can still call them the Nintendo team. I do. And there are often Nintendo ads at t-mobile park

so now i can root for the the seattle mariners harder than i had before knowing 10 10 harder that is yeah i i did confirm this too or at least if they divested themselves more since they sold 90 of the team i that i have not seen but yes when the news came out that Nintendo sold their stock in the company to the person who owns it now, it was 90% of the stock. So they still have a 10% ownership of the Mariners. Though there were other people in the comments who were also bemoaning like, yeah, the Mariners even had some great players, but they just never came together. Though maybe if they had Diddy Kong on their team, they would have done better.

They're not doing baseball in those nintendo at the olympics games but maybe they should do a baseball game with all of the uh the characters like like the nicktoons got away with that for a couple years yeah they a couple decades actually let me correct myself they had they just had a mario well they had a mario baseball games on the wii and i feel like they haven't done that since yeah oh yeah you're right i forgot about that that. They're like edgier sports games, right? Well, the Americans who developed the soccer games, those got a little rougher. I think the baseball ones were Japanese ones. I see. A little nicer. Moving on to our What a Cartoon movie for that month, Porco Rosso and ICS says, or perhaps ICS says, it's funny. I think Michael Keaton's performance as Porco Rosso and Isia says, or perhaps Isia says,

it's funny, I think Michael Keaton's performance as Porco Rosso sounds more like Batman than his actual turn as Batman. Also, it's kind of neat now that three Batman have been in Ghibli dubs. And yes, Isia is correct because we have Michael Keaton as Porco Rosso, we have Christian Bale as Howl, and Val Kilmer is in The Cat returns whoa well then bob here i thought

the third one you were going to mention was just in the boy in the heron because the heron is uh robert pattinson oh so there's been four okay now for batman actually batman yeah yeah apparently uh val kilmer was Prince Loon. Wow, I didn't know that. And I've watched that dub, though. The Cat Returns is low on my rankings of Ghibli films. It's totally fine. It's not bad. Isn't it a secret Whisper of the Heart sequel or something?

So basically, it's a version of the story that the girl is writing in Whisper of the Heart. Basically, it expands that to a 90-minute film that is more of a OVA-level budget than a regular Miyazaki-directed film budget. But again, it still looks really good. It's good and stuff. But it's no Tales of Earthsea if you're thinking, oh, that's the worst. Tales of Earthsea is the worst Ghibli film.

It's not as bad as that. Well, I will say I was incorrect. val kilmer is not in a uh a dub i just searched val kilmer ghibli and like imdb spat back a list and it made me think that he was in a ghibli movie but he's not okay and then so my apologies we've been thinking a lot about keaton's voice lately after seeing the the first teaser trailer for beetlelejuice Beetlejuice you know what uh to paraphrase or sorry to quote we hate movies still haven't still happy I did not watch the trailer uh please report back on this Henry I don't want to damage my psyche anymore than it already has been don't don't watch that trailer Bob even if the movie ends up being good it's a really bad trailer it is the every cliche of a legacy sequel trailer you will see you were

saying it's like the trailer is them dusting off a prop and saying oh my god it's this yes the uh jenna ortega who was born to play uh winona ryder's daughter she goes upstairs in the old house and sees the old city model and takes the plastic off of it and then beetlejuice comes to life i was like can't beetlejuice be in a new house why can't why does it have to be the old house and they use the uh dramatic re-singing of deo right a dramatic reinterpretation of it yeah everybody guessed that that was the joke everybody made and the trailer people said let's roll with it people like people seem to like the deo it's uh it didn't fill me with confidence but i i'll watch i want to see michael keaton again i like it i it can't be worse

than the flash it can't be here's the thing henry steal it or i'll steal it for you okay don't give it money please don't give it i'll watch it okay that's the agreement we're making on this public podcast to steal copyrighted material uh also on uhco, Nina Matsumoto chimed in. Grandma is absolutely being used as a general term for an old lady, not with any actual blood relation. Also, hips equal butt in Japanese. So the butt looks big line is an accurate translation. Very good. I appreciate that.

I had a few uh wild localization guesses in that for my small amount of japanese knowledge and so i was happy uh nina could help clarify some of those things it's funny because we had that conversation and then um this is not a spoiler by the way i saw perfect days and uh in the movie a character arrives and starts calling the main character oji-san. And the translation is uncle. And I thought, like, oh, are they being literal about this? Or is this really her uncle? And it turns out, seconds later, you find out, oh, it's really her uncle.

Okay. Because Oji-san can mean old man. But it could also mean, literally, you're my father's brother or my mother's brother. Yeah, context means a lot of languages I've learned from now 240 days into, and I feel like I need a new app from Duolingo. All I hear about Duolingo is awful things about it as a business, but I got to keep that streak going. They've got you by the balls. Yeah, they do. That owl. Those talons are sharp, too.

Oh, yeah. You know how dangerous owls are, Bob. You're a bird expert. Yes. Moving on to our What a Cartoon episode. It was about Invincible, the episode It's About Time. And KSO says, I first got into the show from those Think Mark memes. They were going viral a couple of years ago.

It did spoil the twist with Omni-Man. However, I may not have given the show a chance if it wasn't for those memes. I am sure plenty of people were in the same boat. And this is me speaking. I saw a ton of those memes, but I must have forgotten them because when we got to the twist in the show, it surprised me. So I just, I forgot about the meme format and, you know, didn't think of them when we were watching the episode. All the big memes from that first season have definitely been from the, have to do with Omni-man usually and revealing his true nature it's uh i also i've been watching the new the the new episodes of it

have been coming out and there have been a couple fun twists in it that more of uh kirkman and his team playing off the expectation of comic readers that i think has been really interesting cool cool yeah i'm looking for i didn't actually pursue watching any more of it, but I really, I'm still planning to. There's, I won't name the anime because I don't want to spoil it for other people, but there's a new anime currently out now and a spoiler from later in the series has made it go viral for me

and I've heard about it. And I was like, boy, I kind of, if I watched this, I would have liked to be surprised, but also I wouldn't have given it a chance if I didn't know the spoiler. So it's a double edged sword there. It's a land of contrast, but also unadvanceable. L McDonald says here to say that the addition of a Canadian showrunner isn't a government thing, but rather a union thing. I see it happen often when shows like titans or the boys come to shoot in toronto they need to hire canadian equivalents if they bring a stunt coordinator

from the states and the leaf added to mark's shirt in a flashback is simply a nod i would assume so there's some canadian it's canadian unions not the government apparently yeah when when you see canadian businesses here that are existing american businesses they'll often have a maple leaf in the logo i think i might have said that on the uh the podcast though that's it's it's really interesting to hear about the canadian work on and yes that it's you you you haven't stalked anybody yet at the vancouver studio have you bob no no but i will say i'm getting a little taste of Hollywood right in my own neighborhood because I've seen things being filmed a ton of times living here. But I saw a Yellow Jackets crew jacket in my neighborhood, and we're doing some research, and it turns out they are filming nearby some stuff.

Nice. They have filmed inside the bowling alley in my neighborhood. If you watch Yellow Jackets and you see the scenes in the bowling alley, that's in my neighborhood. I'm going to keep an eye out for when Peacemaker 2 starts filming. And if they film in Vancouver again, I'm going to tell you, be on John Cena watch, Bob. He'd be hard to miss. I'm going to try being a background artist one of these days. Moving on, Talking Futurama, we're covering Spanish Fry.

There were a lot of big spoon, little spoon comments because i made this mistake of saying wayne in the comments and everybody did thank you for following my rule my rules and my orders but a lot of the comments were just about people arguing friendly in a way about whether or not the big spoon is behind or in front and it turns out uh it's up to interpretation there is no correct answer nina shared that comic of like, oh, the spoon is the legs. And that's why the little spoon is the one goes inside. I saw somebody else had a point of just like, I don't know everybody's dishware. But also in my drawer, I do not put a little spoon inside of a big spoon.

All the big spoons are in one part of the tray and the little spoons are in another part of the tray. Same here. Yes, they're segregated. We have a segregated silverware drawer in my home. But I am in a big spoon, little spoon relationship, so I'm a hypocrite. But my wife said I am technically correct, which is the best kind of correct. So we can move on now. So outside of the spoon conversation, we have Matt Quintanilla, who says, or Quintanilla perhaps, who says, I remember in the early days of camera phones there was a news story about

a hiker who posted a photo of a strange lizard he found on a walk, only for experts on the internet to discover it was a species thought to be extinct. That was the day any tiny shred of believability that cryptids exist evaporated for me. We now had cameras in our pocket at all times capable of showing the world not only every

animal, but also some that we had proof didn't exist anymore. There is nowhere for Bigfoot to hide from us that doesn't stop the Discovery Channel from making enough shows about it to buy Warner Brothers. So, yes, proof never mattered. And, yes, we've had cameras in our pockets for close to 20 years now. I saw another post about Bigfoot on Twitter this last month, too, of people saying Bigfoot is just bears like

it's just like somebody saw a bear and didn't see it correctly and they thought it's a sasquatch like no it's just a grizzly specifically bears just coming out of hibernation who are really skinny and looking like shaggy humans bears after hibernation just do look uh they do look plenty weird and bears already look really weird they do also on a different type of bigfoot tyler m says regarding bigfoot pizza i currently have the knockoff frozen version in my freezer it's called the sasquatch and i picked it up at a pittsburgh area aldi it's pretty massive and given that it's just my wife my infant son and I, it might languish in there for a bit longer. It's listed as two and a half pounds of food on the box, which that's a lot. That's a lot.

Yeah. On the podcast, we said it's something you can't really put in a freezer, but I'm guessing Tyler has one of those big industrial freezers like in the garage. I would hope so. That's the only thing. I mean, yeah, Bigfoot pizzas were made for a sleepover of at least four 10-year-olds. It's not made for a small family. Or perhaps three 16-year-olds. Sure, sure. Three 16-year-olds. But yes, I want to hear a report back on how that Sasquatch is.

But so we didn't have the name for it in the episode. So if you're looking for the knockoff Bigfoot pizza to take you back to your youth, it's called the Sasquatch, apparently. So moving on to our final set of comments for Talking of the Hill episode, all about escape from Party Island. And Nikki AB says, I'm from Youngstown, Ohio, like Bob. Well, hello, Nikki. My 99-year-old grandmother has a Warther Museum wooden fridge magnet in the shape of a train. I've never gone, but maybe I ought to next time i'm back there yeah more than one person has told me that they have been to this museum and someone who wrote a feature about it like within the past decade tweeted at me because i think they were

just searching for warther museum seeing what's out there uh and yeah it's still going strong and still seems like a fun little roadside attraction that's very pleasant so i recommend the warther museum in dover, Ohio. I don't recommend going to Ohio in general, but if you're there and in Dover, well, you got to go. You got to go there. If you're there anyway, you may as well. That person must have Google alerts for the Dover Museum or the Warther Museum. Yeah. And lastly, Mark says about that King of the Hill episode. I watched this episode with my son a few weeks back and the sloppy Joe stuff perplexed him. I had to break out the old best of Chris Farley DVD.

It sadly only partially cleared up the matter. Oh, that's too bad. I thought the kids would love Chris Farley these days, but maybe the concept of a lunch lady as we knew it 30 years ago just isn't the case anymore. Yeah, maybe it's totally lost on them. But like, also, I figure Adam Sandler still seems as big now as he ever did to me. I don't know. Maybe not with the kids, perhaps.

But I would hope that kids today at least still listen to Eight Crazy Nights every holiday season if they're not listening to Lunch Lady Land. It should be a holiday classic by now, right? You got to think. And there's multiple versions of it. But, yeah, it's the i listen by the way you mean you mean the hanukkah song yes the hanukkah song okay i thought you meant the movie eight crazy nights yes when you said there are multiple versions of it i was like what

sorry yes i got the hanukkah song uh is the name of it eight crazy nights is the movie they based it on we'll cover that someday i'm sure oj simpson not a jew but guess who is hall of famer rod carew yes important facts now uh the song has different implications as to pointing out who and who isn't jewish we live in a different world these days no it's uh it's really too bad robert smigel did not intend that as well when he helped write that he was just it's just fun he he was tapping into as as i was reminded doing the tv funhouse research he was just trying to tap into the thing many jewish americans did of just pointing out well you know who else is jewish and just they it's a fun thing not not a list to be made inspirational now now these days i'm finding out who is canadian and it's alarming there's so many canadians out there i was like oh that guy that guy too wow yeah hey you can do it in both ways

for uh for people like william shatner just turned like 93 or something i think yeah he's he's hanging in there he and takay by the way this podcast is being recorded one day in advance nothing nothing may happen uh but yeah that's been another episode of Talk to the Audience. Thanks for joining us, folks. We have a great, great month coming up in April. I'm so excited to be talking about the kids in the hall and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies and a movie, rather, the first one.

And we have big, huge new guests coming up, new to our podcast. So we're really excited for those to launch and to see all you freak out about who we got on the show next. Yeah, we've recorded a bit in advance so we've got a lot in the bank that are cool that are coming this way like starting next week with a really really cool first time guest i think you i think folks are really going to enjoy it but that is it for this episode of talk to the audience we'll see you again next week for a brand new episode of talking

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