Read it and Weep

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Except for summer. And Spring break. And my birthday. It’s one of the top five most wonderful times of year!

It’s not so wonderful for Santa in Santa Claus Conquers The Martians ,where he is kidnapped by people of Mars (who look like earth people but with green face paint and steam-punk helmets). But in the end, Christmas is saved by a goofy alien and some precocious kids!

It’s not so wonderful for Ebenezer Scrooge in A Muppet Christmas Carol, where he is a bit too grumpy and doesn’t celebrate this particular religious holiday so everybody makes his life terrible. But in the end, Christmas is saved by three ghosts, one who looks like a preemie baby in a bed sheet!

It’s not so wonderful for Tim Allen in The Santa Clause 3, where he has to fight Jack Frost the douchy broadway star / theme park magnate. But in the end, Christmas is saved by a little red head hugging an old man.

Merry Christmas if you celebrate. If not, sorry for adding more shitty Christmas media to the world.

Surely we must be running out of crappy young adult fantasy books trying to cash in on the success of Harry Potter. This time it’s a satanist vicar and a Jamaican kid. What’s next? Vampires and werewolves kissing?

Shadowmancer is the story of a couple kids who get roped into fighting against the devil when a beautiful boy from Africa (but his accent sounds Jamaican on the audiobook) shows up and asks for help getting his doll back. The doll has been stolen by the town vicar who secretly is really super evil.

Uh oh. What’s that? When you dance with the devil he doesn’t let you lead? Shocking! Well now everybody’s fighting for their lives against the beast. That’s fun.

G. P. Taylor really did write this as a response to Harry Potter. Except he didn’t notice that what made HP good wasn’t just that there were kids and magic. It was good writing, a sense of fun, characters that matter, etc. Without those, you’ve just got a convoluted mess that might be trying to convert kids to Christianity. I suspect it won’t work.

Many people have fond memories of Super Mario Bros. Nobody has fond memories of this early 90s campy movie.

It’s like the creators thought the only important part of the game was that the main characters were plumbers. Nothing else is the same. The names have changed, they’re not twins anymore, the dinosaurs are people. It’s like if somebody made a movie out of Sonic The Hedgehog starring a horse who collects candy.

Add to that multiple directors, constant rewrites, and a cast that was drinking through the whole experience and you’ve got the making of a RiaW classic film. New York film student Ben Kegan joins us to talk about the movie’s finer points and video game designer Jace Proctor joins us to say racist things about Italian people.

Once you decide to name your movie Death Bed: The Bed That Eats is that you never have to explain the premise to people. “It’s a bed, Larry. It eats. How hard is this?”

On the other hand, don’t ask anybody to explain why the bed eats people. “Because it’s evil, Larry! And hungry.”

Such is the plot of the 1977 no-budget horror film that we review in this episode. It’s as delightful and bizarre as it sounds. A series of women, many topless, lay on the bed and get sucked into the sheets and then digested by some bubbly yellow fluids. Apparently it had something to do with a demon who made the bed to be a sex bed but then accidentally killed somebody on it and his tears turn the bed evil.

There’s nobody better to talk to about a movie like this than Matt & Kseniya of the ‘zine I Love Bad Movies.

IT’S FINALLY OVER!!! I can’t tell you how excited I am that the Twilight Saga is over. Okay, I’ll tell you. Very. I’m very excited the Twilight Saga is over. So excited I made a cartoon and a rap summarizing Breaking Dawn.

And barring Steph Meyer writing more books or the movies being rebooted or any number of other things, we’re done forever. Now all we’ll have to do is read all the fan fiction that’s gotten turned into actual fiction. Sigh.

For the final installment, Summit Entertainment did a couple interesting things. First, they added a huge battle sequence that didn’t happen in the book. Sure, it’s just a dream battle sequence, but it’s still awesome. Jasper’s head gets ripped clean off. So great.

They also added a long, wedding-video-esque ending saying goodbye to all the actors. It’s stupid, but it made the people in the theater cry, so that’s fun.

Thanks for everybody who called to say goodbye to Twilight.

And with that, it’s over. Twilight is over. Unless Stephanie Meyer writes more books, which she’s threatened, but WE DO NOT NEGOTIATE WITH TERRORISTS!

Breaking Dawn doesn’t end with a climax, like a normal book would. Instead, some tense negotiations lead to everybody getting what they want. Yay! The Twilight series is like March. It comes in like a sad lion at the zoo and goes out like a sad lion at a zoo.

In other news, Bella has a baby and they’re both allowed to live (?) which means she’s super happy and nobody in the story has grown or changed except Charlie’s mustache which has grown a bit but was trimmed back to avoid it changing. GOD I HATE THIS SERIES.

Twilight, it is with that I say to you, goodbye, good riddance, R.I.P., and yuck.

The first half of Breaking Dawn is bananas. The third quarter is straight comedy.

Bella is a vampire, and this only makes her a more annoying version of herself. She can think about nothing much faster, bite her lip much harder, sigh and whine much more perfectly. Everybody sits around and watches the baby’s mind movies and talks about how happy and in love they are. And there’s some sex.

A note about the sex: did you know vampires do it non-stop because they don’t need to breathe or rest? I know! Gross! And when they first marry, they do it for a decade solid and destroy whole houses with their love making. I know! An adult wrote that! I feel like we got Monkey’s Pawed with the sex; we wished for it, but it was much worse than we could have ever imagined.

Stick around next week for the last episode about a Twilight book we’ll ever have to do. Unless…

If you’re ever running for president, do yourself a favor: don’t sleep with Rielle Hunter.

I don’t know if “What Really Happened” is true or not. But the sad thing is, if it is, Rielle Hunter and John Edwards are both stupider than what we ever knew. They’re petty, vindictive, whiny, defensive, and most of all, dumb as an empty can of Mountain Dew.

Hunter is a former coke head and current “life coach.” She thinks the rhythm method is a reliable form of birth control but doesn’t know which part of the rhythm is which. She doesn’t understand why people care about her affair with a man while he’s running for president and his wife is dying of cancer.

Edwards has never used an ATM before, thinks spending campaign money to bring his mistress with him as he campaigns is a good idea, and had an affair with a “life coach.”

Both of the them thought making a sex tape was a good idea. OH. MY. GOD. Why would you make a freaking sex tape? You are both the dumbest.

If you need to know what really happened, read the book. But if you’d prefer to not hear any more about these two insane people who don’t deserve any more attention, then listen to this podcast and then forget about Rielle Hunter and John Edwards forever.

If the first part of Daughter of the Blood was all about men getting castrated, this half is the author trying to justify it. The second half is almost entirely about pedophiles.

Even the hero, who is saving the future witch queen from pedophiles, is himself secretly in love with her despite the 700+ year age gap. They don’t hook up in this book, except in the spiritual realm, but he still fantasizes.

The only trouble with the summary I’ve written so far is it sounds clear. Daughter is not clear. It’s the most convoluted battle between pedophiles and castrators you’ll ever read.

Fortunately, with the help of the game One Change, we show that it could be salvaged. Just be standing by with a lot of kitten pictures.

If you have or like balls, do not read Daughter of the Blood. It’s a fantasy book where women rule the world and, emboldened by their 30% pay raise, start chopping off some nuts.

Jeanelle is the young witch that has been foretold will rise to power in the dark world (which is called Hell but might not be that hell). Her family thinks she’s crazy, but she makes powerfull friends like Saetan (who is the dark lord of Hell but isn’t that Satan) who teach her the craft.

She also makes some powerful enemies like a couple of queens who I couldn’t keep straight. The Jeanelle story sort of disappears for a while during which time a prostitute kills men who sleep with her (they’re men, they deserve it) and the queens cut off men’s balls for entertainment,

It’s sick, disgusting, filthy, offensive, and really confusing. Don’t read it.