The Toronto Raptors made history last night, dethroning the Golden State Warriors and winning the franchise’s first-ever NBA championship. To say their 2019 playoff journey was unique and/or special, would be an understatement – never have we seen a team in any of the major sports have an entire nation rooting for them. The NBA Finals have changed in many ways over the years, but for NBA fans across Canada, everything changed on June 13, 2019.

This week Ricky D, Randy Dankievitch and Sean Colletti (three of Goomba Stomp’s biggest basketball fans) discuss the evolution of the NBA Playoffs and how it has changed and not changed over the years. Ricky shares his playoff experience in Toronto and what it was like to attend the Finals as well as participate in the Jurassic Park festivities while Randy and Sean share their frustration with the so-called “player empowerment” era. Other topics discussed include the Toronto Raptors organization; the rabid fanbase spreading across all of Canada; the US media; annoying sportscasters and how the internet and social media has impacted the game. All this and more!

When novelist-turned-screenwriter George R.R. Martin published A Song of Ice and Fire way back in 1996, I don’t think anyone could have imagined his epic fantasy series adapted to the big screen, never mind television. Things changed, however, and at the turn of the century networks like AMC and HBO took huge risks on enormous budgets and pushed boundaries with shows like Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, Rome, Deadwood and The Sopranos. Television was giving Hollywood a run for its money and in the eyes of many pop-culture enthusiasts, television was doing just about everything better – and in some cases – bigger. When Game of Thrones premiered on April 17, 2001, the season premiere received largely positive reviews and was seen initially by 2.2 million viewers. Fast forward to 2018, the series finale, drew in over 42 million viewers to HBO, with millions (and millions) more watching online. It’s impossible to say just how many viewers Game of Thrones has but ever since Ned Stark lost his head, we lost our minds theorizing on what would happen next; who would soon die; and how it would all end. That beheading was a monumental moment in what is now referred to as Peak TV and with Lord Stark’s death, Game of Thrones became a cultural phenomenon.

Ever since we’ve witnessed some truly jaw-dropping moments. From the Red Wedding to Hodor’s gut-wrenching death and everything in between, Game of Thrones has always found ways to surprise its viewers. Above all, Game of Thrones is both –the closest thing television has ever had to a blockbuster – and an old-fashioned ‘monoculture’ show consumed week-by-week, with its millions of devoted fans debating and theorizing what would happen next. And given how the television landscape is changing, it may be the last of its kind.

On this episode of the Before the Internet Podcast, we sit down and discuss the legacy of Game of Thrones and whether or not we will ever see another television show match both its popularity and greatness.

Jordan Peele’s Get Out was a smashing hit back in 2017 – a biting satire on racial tension in America that won Peele an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Get Out was one of the most talked-about and commonly dissected horror films of the decade and it catapulted the first-time director Jordan Peele firmly into the spotlight. Now, two years later, Peel has returned with his sophomore effort, the physiological thriller US that pits an endearing American family against a terrifying and uncanny opponent: doppelgängers of themselves.

Where Get Out took a simple premise and turned it into a brilliant allegory for what it's like to be black in America, Us structures itself as a home invasion thriller that touches on issues of class, capitalism, on gender, and on the lasting effects of trauma and/or mental illness. There's a lot to unpack when watching Us but did Jordan Peele strike gold once again or is this what the movie industry refers to as the Sophomore Slump?

On this episode of Before the Internet, Sordid Cinema’s Film Editor Patrick Murphy and film critic Brian Marks join Ricky D and David Harris to discuss Jordan Peele’s psychological thriller and the hundreds of ridiculous crackpot theories floating around. All this and more.

 

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Imagine not needing expensive gaming hardware to play the next big video game release. That’s the hook of Google’s new cloud gaming service, Stadia. At launch, Google promises Stadia (which was prototyped under the Project Stream moniker) will support desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones - without the need for a console. Google claims they will take care of all the heavy lifting on its own servers, which can process the latest version of a video game at high resolutions – up to 4K, 60fps game, in five seconds. To put that in perspective, Google Stadia's cloud computing power is the equivalent of a console running at 10.7 GPU teraflops, that's twice the power of the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X combined. Google is making big promises and if it delivers on these promises, it will change the video game industry forever.

This week on the Before the Internet Podcast, Mike Worby and John Cal McCormick join Ricky D to discuss Google’s new technology and how it will bring players, developers, streamers, and viewers closer together. How will Stadia effect Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, and other competitors? When is Stadia launching and how much will it cost? Will Stadia come with a subscription service similar to Netflix? What games will be released on launch and will Stadia have any exclusive games worth investing in? We have a lot of questions this week and one of the biggest questions on everyone’s mind is how Stadia will affect sales of physical hardware and software moving forward.

Google’s presentation was fixed inside an hour and in that hour they made plenty of progress but also left us with plenty of questions. Regardless of the outcome, 2019 will be remembered as the year Google invaded the gaming industry. Whether or not the launch of Stadia will be as smooth as Google will like you to believe, remains to be seen.

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On Leaving Neverland, Wesley Morris wrote, “If the average cultural experience demands the suspension of disbelief, if we oughtn’t think too much about this movie we’re watching, this novel we’re reading, this magic trick being performed right before our eyes, if being entertained means setting aside skepticism, logic and possibly a sense of morality, then what a magic trick we had in Michael Jackson.”

On this episode of the Before the Internet Podcast, Mike Worby and Aisha Newton join Ricky D to discuss Leaving Neverland, the recent documentary directed and produced by the British filmmaker Dan Reed which focuses on two men, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, who allege they were sexually abused as children by the singer Michael Jackson.

The devastating two-part, four-hour documentary has spurred intense reactions from those who continue to support the late singer and others who have rallied behind his alleged victims. The question is, does Wesley Morris make a point? Did Michael Jackson trick his millions and millions of fans worldwide or is this just another example of both the media and some greedy men looking to get rich?

Released in 1998, only two years after the groundbreaking Resident Evil, Resident Evil 2 helped further establish the survival horror genre by placing a heavy focus on story, exploration, atmosphere, sound design, and nail-biting tension. 

It’s rare to see a direct sequel live up to or surpass the original, but Hideki Kamiya’s Resident Evil 2 (1998) not only matched the quality of its predecessor but arguably surpassed it to become one of the greatest of its genre. It isn’t, however, so rare to see a game remastered or remade outshine the original, especially given how far technology has advanced over the years.

On this episode, Patrick Murphy, Ricky D, and Mike Worby sit down to discuss Resident Evil 2, both the original and the remake.

On Friday, December 28th, Netflix not only released a new episode of Charlie Brooker’s anthology series Black Mirror – they also released what is arguably television’s biggest moment of the year. Neither a Christmas special nor a traditional episode of the celebrated British series, Bandersnatch introduces itself as a Netflix Interactive Film in which viewers choose their own adventure. The arrival of Bandersnatch wasn’t exactly a secret as it was announced way back in October — but Netflix kept tightlipped about anything to do with the storyline, leaving millions of people across the globe tuning in the second it dropped and ever since, they haven’t stopped talking about it. On this episode, Simon Howell and Mike Worby join host Ricky D to discuss Charlie Brooker's movie/game, a show that could not exist prior to the internet and how it might inspire more interactive storytelling movies in the near future.