It’s a very special Halloween episode of The Weekly Stuff Podcast, as we’re here on this very spooky day for a deep-dive retrospective review of one of the greatest films ever made: HALLOWEEN, the original John Carpenter classic from 1978 that introduced the world to The Shape, to Jamie Lee Curtis, to one of the most iconic film music themes of all time, and to a hilariously unwieldy franchise that has only gotten stranger over time. But this original film stands very tall on its own as one of the greatest triumphs of American independent filmmaking, a note-perfect exercise in pacing, cinematography, editing, and every other fundamental that makes film great. It’s an absolute joy to talk about, but that’s not all we have on this episode! We also review the campaign for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II – Here We Go Again! in depth and talk a little about the multiplayer, before discussing some Doctor Who news and puzzling over what’s going on with Henry Cavill and The Witcher. 

Enjoy!

Time Chart:

Intro: 0:00:00 – 0:02:37

Modern Warfare II: 0:02:37 – 0:32:42

News: 0:32:42 – 1:03:43

Halloween: 1:03:43 – 3:09:39

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Original Music by Thomas Lack https://www.thomaslack.com/

©2012 - Present Jonathan R. Lack & Sean Chapman

After giving initial impressions of the campaign for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II – Here We Go Again! and Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope, we give a live reaction to the latest regeneration on Doctor Who and discuss the series’ exciting future now that Chris Chibnall has returned to the chasm from whence he came. Then it’s time to finish our series of Fullmetal Alchemist reviews by rounding up the remaining theatrical feature films. First, there’s 2011’s The Sacred Star of Milos, an animated spin-off of Brotherhood made by the same crew, but with entirely different creative leadership, leading to a radically different aesthetic and the best animation Fullmetal Alchemist has ever seen. The live-action Fullmetal Alchemist trilogy consists of three films – 2017’s Fullmetal Alchemist and this year’s The Revenge of Scar and The Final Alchemy, all streaming worldwide on Netflix – that are a surprisingly faithful recreation of the manga (maybe too much so at times). Bouncing between hilarious B-movie oddity, boring recitation of the original story, and a few genuinely affecting performances and scenes, these movies are uneven but extremely interesting, and more than worth taking the time to discuss here.

Enjoy!

Time Chart: 

Intro: 0:00:00 – 0:01:32

Modern Warfare II & Other Games: 0:01:32 – 0:24:18 

Doctor Who: 0:24:18 – 0:34:46 

Fullmetal Alchemist: 0:34:46 – 3:04:04

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Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.com

Subscribe to JAPANIMATION STATION, our podcast about the wide and wonderful world of anime: https://japanimationstation.com

Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vK

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Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation  

Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcast

Support the show at Ko-fi ☕️ https://ko-fi.com/weeklystuff

Original Music by Thomas Lack https://www.thomaslack.com/

©2012 - Present Jonathan R. Lack & Sean Chapman

It’s a Very Special Episode this week as Sean & Jonathan answer a series of questions all about our day job: Teaching! Sean is a high-school English teacher and Jonathan teaches at the college level as PhD student, and while we’ve touched upon all this before, we haven’t yet done a deep dive on the profession, our thoughts – positive and negative – about it, how our two teaching roles differ, and so on. It’s a fun, informative discussion fueled by some great listener questions, and while we’ve never done an episode like this before, we hope it will be useful for those interested!

Enjoy!

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Follow Jonathan Lack on Twitter!

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Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.com

Subscribe to JAPANIMATION STATION, our podcast about the wide and wonderful world of anime: https://japanimationstation.com

Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vK

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Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation  

Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcast

Support the show at Ko-fi ☕️ https://ko-fi.com/weeklystuff

Original Music by Thomas Lack https://www.thomaslack.com/

©2012 - Present Jonathan R. Lack & Sean Chapman

Our journey through Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood comes to an end with the second half of the second anime, now in fully uncharted territory as it adapts the final stretch of Hiromu Arakawa’s original manga. Diving deep into the Briggs and Promised Day story arcs that conclude the series, we discuss all the many ups and occasional downs of this last run. The manga is probably at its most uneven during this portion, but Brotherhood fully comes into its own as an anime, its pacing finally relaxed enough to fully tell the story, its ludicrously stacked voice cast fully in place, and its animation and aesthetics frequently on point as it approaches the end. As we go through the good, the bad, and everything in between, we find no shortage of topics worth discussing, and Brotherhood proves extremely rewarding to talk about all the way up to its all-time great ending. 

Enjoy!

TIME CHART:

Intro: 0:00:00 – 0:03:42

Fullmetal Alchemist: 0:03:42 – 3:38:27

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

Subscribe to Japanimation Station, our Anime Podcast!

Subscribe for free to 'The Weekly Stuff' in Apple Podcasts!

Follow Jonathan Lack on Twitter!

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Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.com

Subscribe to JAPANIMATION STATION, our podcast about the wide and wonderful world of anime: https://japanimationstation.com

Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vK

Subscribe to our YouTube channels! 

Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation  

Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcast

Support the show at Ko-fi ☕️ https://ko-fi.com/weeklystuff

Original Music by Thomas Lack https://www.thomaslack.com/

©2012 - Present Jonathan R. Lack & Sean Chapman

We were planning on a very elaborate podcast for Jonathan’s 30th birthday this week, but some unforeseen travel problems led to us breaking glass in case of emergency on a topic we’ve been keeping in our back pocket for over a decade now: ranking the Top 10 Video Game Controllers of all time! From the NES to the PS5, we go through several generations of gaming consoles to pick out the best controllers from over the years – and make fun of the worst – to determine which are the best, most influential, and all-around most enjoyable to use. And we even rank the Top 5 D-Pads of all time, just to cover all the bases. Hot takes abound and fierce debates are had as we try to reach consensus on the best controllers in the history of console gaming. 

Enjoy!

TIME CHART:

Intro: 0:00:00 – 0:08:40

The Inevitable Death of Google Stadia: 0:08:40 – 0:31:08

Stuff: 0:31:08 – 00:44:38

The Top 10 Video Game Controllers: 0:44:38 – 1:59:37

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Follow Jonathan Lack on Twitter!

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Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.com

Subscribe to JAPANIMATION STATION, our podcast about the wide and wonderful world of anime: https://japanimationstation.com

Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vK

Subscribe to our YouTube channels! 

Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation  

Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcast

Support the show at Ko-fi ☕️ https://ko-fi.com/weeklystuff

Original Music by Thomas Lack https://www.thomaslack.com/

©2012 - Present Jonathan R. Lack & Sean Chapman

After a trip to Sean’s Beta Corner to review the recent betas for Team Ninja’s Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty and Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II – Here We Go Again!, Sean and Jonathan hop over to Pandora (the planet, not the music app) for a deep dive on Avatar (the James Cameron movie, not the Nickelodeon show). It’s been 13 years since the film took the entire world by storm, becoming the highest-grossing film in history, and the film’s reputation hasn’t aged very gracefully. We haven’t seen it since its original theatrical run, so how do we think it holds up now? We get into the special effects, the world-building, the story, the terrible dialogue, the extremely uncomfortable racial overtones, and much more in this wide-ranging, rewarding conversation.  

Enjoy!

TIME CHART:

Intro & Stuff: 0:00:00 – 0:10:15

Sean’s Beta Corner – Wo Long Fallen Dynasty: 0:10:15 – 0:18:00

Sean’s Beta Corner – Call of Duty Modern Warfare II: 0:18:00 – 0:41:46

Avatar: 0:41:46 – 2:58:39 

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

Subscribe to Japanimation Station, our Anime Podcast!

Subscribe for free to 'The Weekly Stuff' in Apple Podcasts!

Follow Jonathan Lack on Twitter!

Follow Sean Chapman on Twitter!

Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.com

Subscribe to JAPANIMATION STATION, our podcast about the wide and wonderful world of anime: https://japanimationstation.com

Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vK

Subscribe to our YouTube channels! 

Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation  

Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcast

Support the show at Ko-fi ☕️ https://ko-fi.com/weeklystuff

Original Music by Thomas Lack https://www.thomaslack.com/

©2012 - Present Jonathan R. Lack & Sean Chapman

With the Tokyo Game Show going down this week in, well, Tokyo, there was an avalanche of gaming news and gaming events, with Nintendo, Sony, and many others showing off new games for 2023 and beyond, and we break it all down on today’s episode! Starting with Ubisoft’s event last week to show off the appropriately convoluted future of Assassin’s Creed, and continuing on to this week’s Nintendo Direct – where we saw a new Fire Emblem, Octopath Traveler II, and got the title reveal for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – and Sony’s State of Play, which showed off Team Ninja’s Rise of the Ronin and gave us a peek at the future of the Yakuza franchise, now returning to its original Japanese title, Like a Dragon. And if all that wasn’t enough, Hoyoverse also gave us some huge Genshin Impact reveals, including the jaw-dropping news that Ufotable, the renowned animation studio behind Kimetsu no Yaiba, will be creating the long-awaited Genshin anime. 

Enjoy, and come back next week for our retrospective review of James Cameron’s Avatar, as it heads back into theaters ahead of December’s sequel.

TIME CHART:

Intro & Stuff: 0:00:00 – 0:21:34

Splatoon News: 0:21:34 – 0:29:00

Assassin’s Creed News: 0:29:00 – 1:01:10

Nintendo Direct: 1:01:10 – 1:31:30

Sony State of Play: 1:31:30 – 1:56:21

Yakuza and Tokyo Game Show News: 1:56:21 – 2:11:16 

Genshin: 2:11:16 – 2:23:07 

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

Subscribe to Japanimation Station, our Anime Podcast!

Subscribe for free to 'The Weekly Stuff' in Apple Podcasts!

Follow Jonathan Lack on Twitter!

Follow Sean Chapman on Twitter!

Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.com

Subscribe to JAPANIMATION STATION, our podcast about the wide and wonderful world of anime: https://japanimationstation.com

Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vK

Subscribe to our YouTube channels! 

Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation  

Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcast

Support the show at Ko-fi ☕️ https://ko-fi.com/weeklystuff

Original Music by Thomas Lack https://www.thomaslack.com/

©2012 - Present Jonathan R. Lack & Sean Chapman

It’s another packed episode as Jonathan gives first impressions of Splatoon 3 on the Nintendo Switch, reviews the Star Trek: The Motion Picture – Director’s Edition on 4K UHD Blu-ray, and we commiserate over the ever-growing avalanche of Disney/Marvel news from the weekend, before jumping into the next phase of our Fullmetal Alchemist review series! This time, we’re talking Brotherhood, the 2009 anime that starts fresh to adapt Hiromu Arakawa’s original manga in full. With a new crew, a new animation style, many new cast members, and a largely new story, Brotherhood is extremely different than the 2003 anime – and in many ways, it’s also a different beast than the manga, especially in this first half. It’s a lot to talk about, and with a whole half of the series left to go, we’re only just scratching the surface. 

Enjoy!

TIME CHART:

Intro & Stuff: 0:00:00 – 0:37:41

Fullmetal Alchemist: 0:37:41 – 3:29:34

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

Subscribe to Japanimation Station, our Anime Podcast!

Subscribe for free to 'The Weekly Stuff' in Apple Podcasts!

Follow Jonathan Lack on Twitter!

Follow Sean Chapman on Twitter!

Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.com

Subscribe to JAPANIMATION STATION, our podcast about the wide and wonderful world of anime: https://japanimationstation.com

Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vK

Subscribe to our YouTube channels! 

Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation  

Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcast

Support the show at Ko-fi ☕️ https://ko-fi.com/weeklystuff

Original Music by Thomas Lack https://www.thomaslack.com/

©2012 - Present Jonathan R. Lack & Sean Chapman

It’s a ridiculously packed podcast today filled to the brim with great topics, starting with Jonathan’s thoughts on the year’s two biggest American TV premieres – HBO’s Game of Thrones spin-off House of the Dragon and Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series, The Rings of Power – before he and Sean devote a very silly segment to pitching several different Lord of the Rings spin-offs to Amazon. Then we break down the news surrounding Halo Infinite, which is maybe in the most dire shape we’ve ever seen for an ongoing video game, before shifting gears to a game that’s never been better with Genshin Impact! The 3.0 update is now out, adding the Sumeru region, a new element, tons of story, and all sorts of new exploration mechanics, and it’s some of the best material yet introduced in this always-excellent game. And finally, we bring you a short Weekly Suit Gundam topic to break down the special Prologue episode for the upcoming Gundam show The Witch From Mercury. Phew! That’s a LOT of podcast all in one place. 

Enjoy!

TIME CHART:

Intro & Stuff: 0:00:00 – 0:12:58

House of the Dragon: 0:12:58 – 0:28:24

The Rings of Power: 0:28:24 – 0:41:29

Lord of the Rings Spinoff Showcase: 0:41:29 – 0:48:19

Halo Infinite: 0:48:19 – 1:10:59

Genshin Impact 3.0: 1:10:59 – 2:47:23

Gundam Witch Prologue: 2:47:23 – 3:25:55

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

Subscribe to Japanimation Station, our Anime Podcast!

Subscribe for free to 'The Weekly Stuff' in Apple Podcasts!

Follow Jonathan Lack on Twitter!

Follow Sean Chapman on Twitter!

Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.com

Subscribe to JAPANIMATION STATION, our podcast about the wide and wonderful world of anime: https://japanimationstation.com

Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vK

Subscribe to our YouTube channels! 

Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation  

Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcast

Support the show at Ko-fi ☕️ https://ko-fi.com/weeklystuff

Original Music by Thomas Lack https://www.thomaslack.com/

©2012 - Present Jonathan R. Lack & Sean Chapman

Nearly 4 years after Broly, Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero – the 21st Dragon Ball film overall, and 4th of the modern era – opened this weekend in North American theaters, playing in both English and Japanese for the first time in franchise history, and with the widest opening for an anime film ever in the United States, playing on nearly 4,000 screens! It’s also the first Dragon Ball film to be produced completely in 3D CGI, with a new team led by director Tetsuro Kodama bringing Akira Toriyama’s script to life in a very different style than we’ve seen before. And the movie turned out to be well worth the wait and the hype, telling a compelling character-driven story centered on Piccolo, Gohan, and Pan, with several wonderful new characters, a lot of incredible action, plenty of big laughs, and even a few surprisingly touching pay-offs at the end! It’s a great Dragon Ball movie, and a big step forward for CGI anime, and it makes for an incredible fun discussion between Sean and Jonathan. 

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

Subscribe to the WEEKLY SUIT GUNDAM Podcast!

Subscribe for free to 'The Weekly Stuff' in Apple Podcasts!

Follow Jonathan Lack on Twitter!

Follow Sean Chapman on Twitter!

Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.com

Subscribe to JAPANIMATION STATION, our podcast about the wide and wonderful world of anime: https://japanimationstation.com

Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vK

Subscribe to our YouTube channels! 

Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation  

Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcast

Support the show at Ko-fi ☕️ https://ko-fi.com/weeklystuff

Original Music by Thomas Lack https://www.thomaslack.com/

©2012 - Present Jonathan R. Lack & Sean Chapman