Drat Pack

At long last, the prophecy has come true- we’re finally discussing that Christmas white whale, that rotten chestnut, that ho ho holy hell what a piece of crap movie we’ve been threatening to do for years. That’s right, for our annual Holiday Spectacular, listen in as Leigh, Brendan, and Chris discuss Robert Zemeckis’s 2004 motion-capture abomination The Polar Express with equal parts defeat and enthusiasm. Because everyone has already covered the nightmarish character aesthetics, we spend very little time on that in favor of instead discussing the perils of adapting a picture book to a feature film, what is “believe” and how does that even actually apply to this story, and why ill-written half-assed musicals are a particular thorn in the side of one person here. Naturally, we also drink hot chocolate as a cocktail. And of course we didn’t let it cool, lest we provoke the wrath of a weirdly-bald stickler Tom Hanks conductor.

‘Tis the Christmas season (because Thanksgiving is boring and who cares, let’s just skip over that whole bit) and what better way to celebrate it than by a third session of our patented Hallmark Christmas Movie Generator Game (patent not real)? Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they spin wheels of prompts to incorporate various holiday phrases into the titles of potential Hallmark movies and then try to create a plot to go along with them. Also, we now have a sixth wheel covering jobs women have in these movies, covering all the bases from “journalist” to “princess.” Naturally, we also talk briefly about our upcoming Holiday Spectacular episode, featuring a Christmas “classic” we have been threatening to cover and putting off doing for literal years. It’s… certainly a holiday movie that pops up a lot for some reason!

One must give credit to Michael Crichton, the man who created works of fiction that asked questions such as “what if Disneyland had dinosaurs” and “what if apes were jerks” and “what if Beowulf was boring and also laced with my historical fanfic.” Then of course, John McTiernan popped up to ask in turn “what if I did your book no favors by directing it without a sense of desperately-needed visual flair.” As you may have inferred, Leigh, Brendan, and Chris are tackling the 1999 would-be historical epic The 13th Warrior, a mostly-forgotten flop that was the financial equivalent of loading $160 million on a boat and setting it on fire so that it may ascend to Valhalla. Join us as we discuss the Beowulfness of it all, the lack of almost any compelling characters, and how almost every action sequence feels like it’s desperately trying to wrap itself up as soon as it starts. Naturally, we also made a hot Norwegian-inspired cocktail to accompany all this Nordic drollery, so at least we had that going for us.

A mini episode in which Leigh, Brendan, and Chris start out discussing original fantasy movies, then muse about why there are so few good original fantasy movies, then play an impromptu and unplanned game of Kevin Degrees of Seven Bacon (an invented game based on something Leigh has dealt with from her parents where you have to determine what movie someone is trying to remember based only on the vague information they can muster up). We really cover a lot of ground here! Naturally we also introduce our next movie and accompanying cocktail, and boy is it… esoteric!

October is back and so is our annual Halloween Spooktacular! We’ve previously dealt with a murder AND a death, so it only makes sense that a haunting should follow suit- and this haunting is in VENICE, baby! Kenneth Branagh returns as his version of Hercule Poirot as Leigh, Brendan, and Chris return with the third (and presumably final based on the box office) film in his Agatha Christie adaptations, 2023’s A Haunting in Venice. Lock yourself in your sinking palazzo and listen close as we discuss the truly bizarre source material, Kenny B’s bag of directorial gimmickry, and the advantages of adapting a Christie mystery (Christery?) that no one knows or cares about. Naturally there’s also a fittingly autumnal cocktail full of honey and apples because this movie is all about honey and apples (and vengeful Italian ghost babies).

As we slowly crawl to the end of another excruciating year, the Hallo-Thanks-Mas holiday corridor creeps up along with it. As is often the case with these periods, we sometimes fall back on tried-and-true movies to rewatch (or music to listen, or games to play, or whatever, do what works for you). Leigh, Brendan, and Chris have a short chat about these old standbys and what they get from returning to them and how the hell they ended up being seasonal media in the first place. No, the whole “Lord of the Rings are Christmas movies” really doesn’t make a lot of sense, but we try to address it anyway. One thing that DOES make sense is our impending annual Halloween Spooktacular episode, which we briefly introduce here along with a cocktail recipe that suitably makes use of honey and apples. There’s… a lot of honey and apples coming next episode.

Rita Mae Brown’s definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. On an unrelated note, in this episode Leigh, Brendan, and Chris return to the filmography of Kenneth Branagh just to see how we feel about perhaps his most unusual and unique movie, his 2000 Shakespeare adaptation Love’s Labour’s Lost. Yes, that’s right, that little-performed play that Branagh chopped down to about 80 minutes, reset in pre-World War II Europe, and then added musical numbers from the Great American Songbook. Can such a weirdly specific take work? Is this even a play that can justify having this much done to it in the first place? Does it matter if Kenneth Branagh doesn’t really get how to make a 1930s movie musical or indeed how to make song and dance look interesting? Listen in, won’t you, as we spend a lot of time trying to make sense of all this while enjoying a sparkling cocktail (but sadly no cocaine).

Remember a few weeks ago when the Borderlands movie came out and no one liked it and it flopped and we all agreed that there was no reason to talk about it ever again? Well, we’re talking about it briefly. Or to be more specific, we’re talking broadly about movies adapted from video games, a much-maligned niche that has only rarely ever resulted in a movie that can actually function on some level. Leigh, Brendan, and Chris muse about the innate difficulties of trying to adapt a video game in the first place, the problems that seem to affect most movie versions, and if there have ever been any successful ones in the first place (there’s a few!). Join us again in two weeks when we cover some wildly different territory with a setting-shifted jukebox musical adaptation of a lesser Shakespeare play directed by someone whom we’ve talked about, uh, quite a bit. Hey nonny nonny!

Our Summer of Failed Franchises (mercifully?) comes to an end with perhaps the most flagrant franchise bait yet, Stephen Sommer’s 2004 monster mash up Van Helsing. That’s right, at long last you can be chilled by terrifying imagery such as Dracula cosplaying as Gerard Way, Hugh Jackman with nightmarishly bad extensions, and a Frankenstein’s monster with a plasma globe jammed into his chest. Listen in as Leigh, Brendan, and Chris try to make sense of these choices, along with topics such as “what the hell is going on with this world building?” and “why do werewolves keeps regenerating tattered modesty pants upon transforming back into humans?” Fittingly, we also enjoy a light summer cocktail as red and bitter as Dracula’s heart. (AHHHHHH if only he had one!)

Obviously we’ve got some general movie spoilers to contend with in this episode, so be forewarned! Stemming from a brief digression in our last episode, Leigh, Brendan, and Chris kick around some thoughts on the state of modern movie trailers. How much information is too much information to reveal? What should a movie trailer ideally cover? How are modern tastes and viewing methods affecting how trailers are made? We’re casually dipping into all this and a whole lot of additional stream of consciousness chatter (plus a drink recipe for our final Summer of Failed Franchises episode coming up next)!