Diminishing Returns

Back on Bond! Calvin is determined to get us through the Brosnan era ahead of No Time to Die's release in November. This is our second step towards that goal, looking at Pierce's second time playing James: Tomorrow Never Dies! Listen for discussion of a wealth of name-actors and even No Time to Die's potential for a Best Picture nomination at the coming Academy Awards.

A rare non-franchise turn for Diminishing Returns - and our first real Martin Scorsese episode: a look at Taxi Driver, complete with Robert De Niro's (madness in the) method and how we'd react if taken to a porno theatre on a date.

You know the drill with these outtakes episodes by now: we needed a week off so we're releasing a load of never-before-heard material (unless you're one of our Patreon subscribers, in which case, you've had access to this episode for almost a year, now).

This is all stuff cut from previous episodes for the sake of time or because it went too far off on a tangent. But it still makes for good listening, so hear we are.

Guests this week, include Calvin Dyson, Judey Bignell, Daryn Ashcroft, Scott Chambers, Chris Hammond and Karl Pilkington.

After last week's live antics, we're going back to basics with a conventional Diminishing Returns episode looking at Starship Troopers, Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation, Starship Troopers 3: Marauder, Starship Troopers: Invasion and Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars.

A special live episode of the podcast, originally broadcast exclusively to Patreon subscribers on the 28th of April, 2020! (Please forgive the shaky audio quality - we're normally much better than this, but we're also not normally live).

That's right, this whole corona virus lockdown pushed us to hold a special video stream event: a live episode of the podcast. Hopefully the first of many.

Listen to this - the edited audio version - or head over to our official YouTube page to watch the (mostly) unedited video version!

This episode features Sol, Allen and Calvin as well as Emily Slade from Why This Film? podcast, who was kind enough to compere the event for us. There's a James Bond quiz, Calvin is invited to add his own ratings to the films he missed in the currently in the Diminishing Returns top 10 list, the gang take various audience questions and more.

Our epic trilogy comes to its conclusion with this: The Returns of the Diminishings (our third episode covering The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and, this time, looking specifically at The Return of the King). Emily Slade is this week's Lord of the Ringer, ushered in to defend the franchise against haters, Allen and Sol.

The trilogy of episodes covering The Lord of the Rings enters the exciting middle part as we turn our heads to The Two Towers, with the help of Grace Miller.

Diminishing Returns will be broadcasting a special, live episode at patreon.com/dimreturns on Tuesday the 28th of April 2020 at 8pm BST. The episode will be broadcast as a video, so you'll get to see us as well as listening to us, for once. It will involve Sol, Allen, Calvin and a special guest or two, as well as a Q&A section for viewers to get involved.

Corona virus has demolished the slate of movie releases we had episodes planned to tie into, so we scrambled for something else to do and asked Patreon which trilogy they'd like us to cover out of the ones we haven't done yet. The Lord of the Rings was the overwhelming winner, so here we are: the first of three episodes covering the first of three movies (no one mention The Hobbit).

It's a very special week at Diminishing Returns as we welcome the hosts of Overrated Everything podcast for a crossover! Did we mention that the hosts of Overrated Everything are Thomas Turgoose and Andrew Ellis who played Shaun and Gadget in This Is England? We probably should have done, because that's the film we're covering this week... We're also looking at the three miniseries follow-ups This Is England '86, '88 and '90 and, as always, chatting about the possibility of another sequel...