Frame Work

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Frame Work branches out into gaming, with a look at the most sneakily influential piece of culture of the last half century, the OG table-top role playing game, Dungeons & Dragons.  The original idea was to examine its role in shaping  the video game industry, but before that the party finds a great deal to unpack about the creation of the game, its strange method of encouraging unfettered imagination while shackling it to complex math-based mechanics, the Satanic Panic of the 1980s,  the D20 system as a tool for teaching about both statistics and privilege, the relation between plagiarism and innovation, and the challenges of allowing an audience to dictate the direction of an ongoing story.

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The guys begin a look at the filmography of David Fincher by welcoming Bill Heidrich to discuss and defend his divisive debut, a franchise sequel/ender that somehow manages to be completely compromised  and utterly uncompromising at the same time.

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Before kicking off their next David Fincher series with the deeply imperfect ALIEN3,  John and Al geek out over Ridley Scott's perfect creature feature ALIEN and James Cameron's perfect sequel ALIENS.   They gush over the incredible creature design, intricate world-building, forgotten plot twists, and Cameron's facility at making R-rated movies for kids.  

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John embarks on a semantic quest to define the genre of Adventure films, leading Al through a series of puzzles and pursuits that hits all the notes one would expect:.  The correct pronunciation of "Cary Elwes".  Historical revisionism.  The quality of Charlie Hunnam's agent.  The relationships between The Goonies and Da Vinci Code.  And more talk of the 1990s, Armand Assante-led NBC miniseries adaptation of Homer's The Odyssey than you can find anywhere else.

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"Donnie, got us an internet that loves ranking movies!  OBLIGE him."

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The guys discuss the generally amiable mess that is WW84, the definition of nitpicking, and the whole misbegotten affair that is the DC Cinematic Universe.

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The guys welcome their Kiwi Kompadre Ben Hansen, aka Bucho, to explain the finer points of CLONE WARS and defend the light, crowd-pleasing delights of THE MANDALORIAN from the Dark Side of Al's incessant negativity.   Subtopics include video gamification of TV, justic for Pedro Pascal's skull, a thirst for villains,  and the truly daunting mass of Star Wars series that have just been announced by Disney+, awaiting like so many dark troopers massed in a hangar bay to hammer us all into submission.

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John and Al talk up the latest, messiest season of FX's shockingly great "adaptation" of the Coen Brothers' crime classic, before doing a quicker, Boba Fett-centric check up on The Mandalorian  (70:45).

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John and Al attempt to chart the history of rowbuts on film, and how a genre long defined by allegorical significance is beginning to clash with a modern reality where computer intelligence manifests as less Kunta Kinte from ROOTS and more Jerry Lundegaard from FARGO. 

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John and Al wrap up the QT catalogue with the surprisingly respectful, oddly wistful but still jarringly and gratuitously violent ONCE UPON A TIME...IN HOLLYWOOD.  We talk about what it means to respect or disrespect the memories of Sharon Tate and Bruce Lee in 2020, the eroding differences between film and TV, the oddball structural choices, and whether its possible for the ending to be both shocking and rote at the same time.