Missing Real with Mike D'Arrigo

How can the guy who wrote The Empire Strikes Back go on to direct this unmitigated disaster of a cinematic abortion??  I'm still in denial.  Blame it on drugs, maybe?  The drugs that Stephen King was on while recovering from multiple surgeries after being hit by a distracted motorist while he was out for a walk.  The novel he eventually churned out, Dreamcatcher, should have credited Oxycontin as co-author.  It was sort of kooky, but in a King style.  The movie version, courtesy of Lawrence Kasdan, is a whole different kind of horrible.  Sitting through it is only marginally preferable to being eaten by a Wampa.  Dreamcatcher is such a nightmare even Freddy Krueger can't stand it.  But please....by all means, give it a look!  Listen to my podcast as I lavish everything but praise upon it.  It's almost too bad to resist.  

In-between The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, we Star Wars fans were given a cinematic "snack" in 2016 in the form of Rogue One, the first stand-alone/non-episode Roman numeral movie set in that galaxy far, far away.  You could call it a "solo" movie, but that's actually something else that came along a couple years later!  This one here deals with a bunch of characters you've never heard of before who managed to acquire and steal those plans for the Death Star, even though they never got any credit for it.  Until NOW!  There might not be too many familiar faces here, but the good news is there's no Jar Jar Binks and not a single Ewok anywhere to be found!  This actually turned out to be a pretty excellent film, praised by most of the fans and fairly immune to the typical haters out there.  It makes an excellent prelude to A New Hope, and features a brief but thrilling appearance by Darth Vader.  Almost as thrilling: my special guest on the podcast is none other than Ed Marcus, who can bullseye a womp rat with his T16 (I've seen him do it) so he's qualified to share the cockpit on this hyperspace debate!  Join the rebellion and listen now!  Don't make me Force ya.  

Another blockbuster action flick from Michael Bay, and probably his most excellent movie!  A disgruntled General and some Marines hold a bunch of tourists hostage on Alcatraz island (conveniently, the place is full of rusty but working jail cells!) and it's up to "chemical superfreak" Nicolas Cage and former "British Sheecret Shervish" agent Sean Connery to bust them loose and stop Ed Harris and his brigade from launching these deadly green balls of toxic chemical gas at the innocent citizens of San Francisco!  Those poor people have it bad enough having to go up and down 45-degree angle tilted streets every day, don't they?  We've got car chases, demolition, hand-to-hand combat, lots of things blowing up, and even some excellent performances (I was gonna say "acting", but you know...Cage is doing his over-the-top Cagey stuff...not sure if there's an Oscar category for Best Batshit Rant from a Lead Actor...).  Plain and simple, action and entertainment up the wazoo!  Welcome to The Rock!  You're in, mate!  

If I ever got to meet Christopher Walken, I'd certainly tell him how much I love his films and erratic speech patterns.  But, I'd be a little hesitant to shake his hand...'cause what if there was a sudden JOLT and he saw some terrifying future for me?  Or envisioned a total breakdown of civilization all because of my stupid Missing Real podcast?  I'm overreaching here, of course...we really just wanna focus on this fantastic David Cronenberg/Stephen King classic, The Dead Zone.  Walken plays the boringly named John Smith, who can see the future or past secrets of people just by taking their hand.  He's got a POW-wuh.  But will it be a curse?  Also in the movie is a live-wire Martin Sheen, as a political candidate you definitely do NOT want in the West Wing.  Also in this podcast is my good buddy Dave Chan.  And a couple of cats you won't hear much from.  Actual CATS, not jazz musicians.  But when you're talkin' like Walken, everything is improvised!    

Considering this movie came out in 2001 (and was originally going to be made by the director of 2001!), the concept of Artificial Intelligence is now about as common as coffee in our everyday lives.  Real intelligence, on the other hand, is still more of a science fiction fantasy than ever, and you won't find much of it in this podcast but don't let that stop you!  This is a somewhat disjointed film, kind of what you'd expect when you try to mix Kubrick and Spielberg, but it's a dazzling and emotional odyssey (not a space one!) which I've got a lot to say about.  A robot boy who wants to be "real" and be loved goes on a lonely adventure, with plenty of mushy drama courtesy of Spielberg.  Hey, if Kubrick made it the kid would probably just talk to his finger and write "Redrum" on the wall.  Join me for a podcastic voyage!  It's better than going to the Flesh Fair!  Trust me, that's not as thrilling as it sounds.

Pop quiz: a giant asteroid is hurtling towards Earth and will spell certain doom when it hits!  Ignoring the fact that asteroids can't spell, name that movie!  Um, is this multiple choice?  Kind of...ya see, there were two movies out in 1998 about this imminent threat from some distant space quarry, but I'm going with the bigger, badder, dumber one: Armageddon!  Directed (can you call it that?) by Michael Bay!  Action and adrenaline aplenty here, along with a hit soundtrack album that I dare say is even better than Dirty Dancing!  But, never mind the music...who's gonna save the Earth?!?  Destroying this asteroid will take a lot more than just dropping some quarters at the old video arcade!  It takes Bruce Willis!  Yippee-ki-yay, Meteor Fragment!  (sorry...I had to)  
Now, while there's still time...listen to this podcast!  It ROCKS!  

The third major theatrical Stephen King adaption by Frank Darabont (who did pretty well with Shawshank and Green Mile) doesn't take place in a prison, but it's still about a bunch of people who are trapped and any attempt to escape could be fatal!  A strange mist rolls into town, and lurking within it are all sorts of icky monsters!  Ordinary folks hiding in a supermarket can't deal with the horror (or each other) for very long and soon many of them are on their way to express check-out!  King's short story was really scary, despite its piss-poor ending.  Darabont fixes that here, and drops a whopper of a conclusion on us.  Any first-time viewers are in for a shock, so if you "mist" this movie, watch it now!  And by the way, it's not the same as The Fog.  That's harder to see through.  But awesome to watch!  

Contrary to legend, this movie is not about Metallica.  And the Metallica song is not about this movie, unless they stole the script, 'cuz the song came out first!  Now don't you believe all that horse pucky.  This here's a darn good western.  Take it from me, even if all I really know about westerns is they got Sam Elliott or Clint Eastwood in 'em.  Oh, and lotsa guns, horses and whores.  It must be a winning formula, as there are hundreds of movies in the genre.  I haven't got time for all that, so let's just pick a really famous one and talk about it with my sidekick Dave Chan.  It's one of his favorites, and quite appropriate because after all the junk I've dragged him into discussing on the podcast I'm the one who should be Unforgiven.  Saddle up, buckaroos!  Don't forget the moonshine.  You'll need it! 

James Cameron has spent so many years making movies underwater it's shocking that he hasn't grown gills by now.  This long-awaited sequel to his blockbuster Avatar (over a decade, so it better be good!) finally surfaced in 2022.  Can't really say it's better than the original, but it's definitely "wetter"!  We have those big blue digital cat people living in their psychedelic jungle for a while, and then they migrate to these nifty coastal villages and make friends with whales and stuff.  There's enough crazy creatures under the sea to give Jacques Cousteau a boner.  If he wasn't dead.  If you even know who the heck Jacques Cousteau was.  Doesn't matter.  But, you will definitely learn a whole lotta science stuff, marine biology and human evolution from my highly intelligent guest, David Franklin.  I'll make some jokes, he'll make some sense, and at some point we might even mention the Avatar movie.  Ready to take a deep dive?  

As a seasoned horror fan who grew up reading Stephen King books, I've always tried to watch every single film adaptation ever made from his stories.  Over the years the violence and gore quotient of the average horror movie increases relative to the tolerance of the viewer's stomach.  Before this turns into a math and biology lesson, I just mean to say it takes a lot to scare or shock us these days, right?  After all, once you run out of vampires, vengeful prom queens and rabid dogs, even the imagination of King gets stretched a little thin coming up with new frights to unleash upon us.  The terrors in the two stories I talk about here are a bit far-out, leaning more toward science fiction than horror, and it doesn't help that they were both made for television in the early  1990s, where visual effects were barely learning to crawl and the screen was still a square!  Now I'm getting into geometry, and that's not the topic here!  The Tommyknockers and the Langoliers, whatever the heck those are, were not Stephen King's finest hour.  They were, in fact,  8 hours of sitting in front of the idiot box (remember, television = commercial breaks every 15 minutes, get your calculators out...).  You'd have to be a fairly hardcore King fanatic to have sat through these two miniseries, so let me dilute them down for everyone else.  And, for those of you who don't like horror, don't worry.  The only reason you should be afraid to watch these movies is because they kinda suck.