The Crate and Crowbar

By The Crate and Crowbar

A group of friends who work in the games industry meet up once a week to talk about PC games over a drink. “Off-the-cuff” is a polite way to say “unprofessional”, right?... more

4.8

106106 ratings

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FAQs about The Crate and Crowbar:

How many episodes does The Crate and Crowbar have?

The podcast currently has 496 episodes available.

The Crate and Crowbar episodes:

April 01, 2022Licorice Pizza: A Lock-in at the Crate and Crowbar
Jamie and Marsh enthuse about Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film, Licorice Pizza – an energetic and uplifting tale of an eccentric romance set against the backdrop of 70s LA. Watch it, it’s fab.
The 94th Academy Awards! Licorice Pizza woz robbed! Maybe?
Billy Crystal getting covered in gob
Who’s in this film then, eh?
Alana Haim as Alana
Cooper Hoffman as Gary
Alana Haim’s entire actual family as Alana’s family
John Michael Higgins as Jerry
Skyler Gisondo as Lance (also seen in the excellent Righteous Gemstones)
John C Reilly as Fred Gwynne, playing Herman Munster
Harriet Sansen Harris as the talent scout
Sean Penn as Jack Holden, based on William Holden
Tom Waits as Rex Blau, based on Mark Robson
Bradley Cooper as Jon Peters, a real-life hairdresser, hollywood mogul and, apparently, maniac who wanted Superman to fight a giant spider
George Dicaprio
Benny Safdie as Joel Wachs, and one part of the Safdie Brothers – who are not, as per Adam Sandler’s tremendous acceptance speech, homeless rabbis.
Maya Rudolph has a cameo during one of the casting calls. She’s a tremendous actor who should be in more things, not necessarily shitting herself each time – but she is very good at that, as Bridesmaids attests.
Andy Jurgensen is the editor and long-time collaborator of PTA. Here’s an interview with the fella.
Licorice Pizza draws from some of the life experience of Gary Goetzman, former child actor, waterbed salesman and co-founder of Tom Hanks’ production company.
Other films and filmmakers we mention:
PTA’s previous films: Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, Inherent Vice, The Master, Phantom Thread
Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
The Safdie brothers’ Good Time and Uncut Gems are panic attacks masquerading as films. They’re excellent. They should have both been in our Top 50 probably. Apols!
Mank is a film saturated in nostalgia and reverence for an era that is inaccessible without a lot of shared knowledge.
Wes Anderson and Edgar Wright also get name-checked for their playful cutting and framing which I find increasingly insufferable.
PTA interviewing Robert Downey Senior about getting sexy with a monkey.
You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. If you have a question for a future episode, send it to us at [email protected] or tweet us @crateandcrowbar. You can also listen to it on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like.
The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.
Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.
...more
1h 17min
March 25, 2022Episode 395: Palace of the Cars
Tom S, Alex and Marsh graft themselves into a singular mass of thrashing limbs and return to Elden Ring’s shattered land, get lost in the knot of Tunic’s shortcuts and enjoy the drizzle of Gran Turismo 7.
Be wary of lore, in short, hole ahead: Elden Ring.
Homage to Zelda games of yore, Tunic.
The wonderfully, wilfully unglamorous, and yet somehow pompous, car game, Gran Turismo 7.
You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. If you have a question for a future episode, send it to us at [email protected] or tweet us @crateandcrowbar. You can also listen to it on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like.
The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.
Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.
...more
1h 17min
March 18, 2022The 50 Best Films Since the Millennium: A Lock-in at the Crate and Crowbar
Jamie and Marsh compile a list of 50 movies, released across the last 22 years, which are dead good. Are they the deadest good? Decide for yourself! They certainly contain all manner of blood-drinking, cow-kissing, custard-selling, marmalade-making, bestiality, incest and murder.
Phantom Thread
There Will Be Blood
The Piano Teacher
The White Ribbon
Cache
The spoof Michael Haneke twitter account.
Under the Skin
A Separation
The Great Beauty
Holy Motors
Captain Philips
Memories of Murder
Once Upon A Time In Anatolia
Toni Erdmann
Amelie
The Triplets of Belleville
The Last Jedi
Thirst
Old Boy
The Tale
Hunger
Shame
The Arbor
Volver
Talk to Her
Gozu
Call Me by Your Name
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Amores Perros
Fish Tank
Saint Maud
Nightwatching
A Serious Man
The Social Network
Zodiac
Whiplash
Paddington
Darwin’s Nightmare
Bitter Lake
Silence
Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World
Spider
Possessor
Zoo
Grizzly Man
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Your Name
Mean Girls
Tabloid
Best In Show
Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse
You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. If you have a question for a future episode, send it to us at [email protected] or tweet us @crateandcrowbar. You can also listen to it on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like.
The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.
Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.
...more
2h 17min
March 11, 2022Episode 394: A Strong Track Record of Freaky Dogs
Chris, Tom S and Marsh deliver the world’s very first takes that anyone has ever had about Elden Ring. Salute the skill of Bumbo, fear the knife-eagle’s fire-bollock, regret the crafting system and wonder, “Why is it always behind?”
Are show notes even necessary for this episode? Elden Ring is the new game from From Software, at least partially attributable to Hidetaka Miyazaki and George R. R. Martin. From Software also made Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls II, Dark Souls III, Bloodborne and Sekiro – games which share many hallmarks with Elden Ring. But Elden Ring’s got a horsey.
That’s the show note. Farewell!
You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. If you have a question for a future episode, send it to us at [email protected] or tweet us @crateandcrowbar. You can also listen to it on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like.
The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.
Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.
...more
1h 35min
March 04, 2022Rebecca and Brighton Rock: A Lock-in at the Crate and Crowbar
Jamie offers Marsh a cinematic serving suggestion: a pairing of Hitchcock’s classic 1940 adaptation of Rebecca with the 1948 version of Brighton Rock starring Richard Attenborough. Discussed: hauntings, Hell and the occult origins of beef tea.
You can watch both of these films for free on The Inter-Net! Rebecca is on Youtube and Brighton Rock is on archive.org.
Rebecca (1940)
Joan Fontaine as the second Mrs. de Winter
Laurence Olivier as George Fortescue Maximilian “Maxim” de Winter, owner of Manderley
Judith Anderson as Mrs. Danvers, housekeeper of Manderley
George Sanders as Jack Favell, Rebecca’s first cousin and lover
Florence Bates as Mrs. Edythe Van Hopper, employer of the second Mrs. de Winter
Du Maurier’s novel is available for free in this typo-ridden pdf and elsewhere as scans.
The battle between producer David O. Selznick and director Alfred Hitchcock for control over the picture is described in this half-hour documentary on Youtube.
Intertexts for Rebecca include the legend of Bluebeard and Jane Eyre. The recent movie adaptation of Jane Eyre, starring Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender is worth seeing too.
Rebecca has recently been re-adapted by Ben Wheatley, starring Lily James, Armie Hammer and Kristin Scott Thomas. It’s on Netflix. It has its moments and star turns, but the epilogue deserves to be scuttled off the Cornish coast.
Anne of Green Gables is a novel which offers a redemptive arc to an austere matronly figure.
The twist in Arrival has something to do with this hypothesis.
Lisa needs braces! Dental plan!
Brighton Rock (1948) – released in the US as Young Scarface
Richard Attenborough as Pinkie Brown
Hermione Baddeley as Ida Arnold
Carol Marsh as Rose Brown
William Hartnell as Dallow
Harcourt Williams as Prewitt
Wylie Watson as Spicer
Alan Wheatley as Fred Hale
“Just a little Bovril adds the concentrated goodness of beef.” No.
You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. If you have a question for a future episode, send it to us at [email protected] or tweet us @crateandcrowbar. You can also listen to it on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like.
The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.
Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.
...more
1h 58min
February 25, 2022Episode 393: The Horse Bows to No Master
Chris and Marsh define irrelevance by recording a podcast hours before the release of the biggest game of the year so far, and instead discuss Destiny 2’s Witch Queen expansion, brutalist physics puzzler ABRISS, Total War: Warhammer 3, how much whomp you can put in a bog, and more.
Destiny 2‘s shaggy dog story about a ball and the horse that loved him (or does he?) finds its apogee in the latest expansion: The Witch Queen.
ABRISS, a physics-based puzzler about disassembling buildings entirely made out of greebles.
Total War: Warhammer 3‘s battles aren’t the most articulate, but give us a wibble-snoot and all is forgiven.
You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. If you have a question for a future episode, send it to us at [email protected] or tweet us @crateandcrowbar. You can also listen to it on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like.
The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.
Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.
...more
1h 27min
February 18, 2022Castlevania: A Lock-in at the Crate and Crowbar
Jamie and Alex take a trip up the castellated spires and lethal staircases of the Castlevania series. We cover both the bonkers camp of the Symphony Of The Night-likes, and also the lethal twitching of the 8 & 16 bit games on Old Nintendos. Yes in that order, as this is a very personal and deeply non-definitive take on the series as experienced by British lads who came very, very late to the party. Learn the difference between house music and techno. Find out where Jamie had his GBA stolen and what it had to do with his parents divorce, and then take a long ride to Epping with Alex, perhaps never to return.
Games Discussed:
Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin
Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia
Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night
Castlevania
Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest
Castlevania 3
Super Castlevania 4
Castlevania: Rondo Of Blood
Exit Music: I Am The Wind from The Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night, feat Kenny Gee (not really).
You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. If you have a question for a future episode, send it to us at [email protected] or tweet us @crateandcrowbar. You can also listen to it on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like.
The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.
Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.
...more
1h 51min
February 11, 2022Episode 392: Floating Knife Guy, I Like Him!
Tom S and Marsh discuss the underwhelming goon-kicking reward loop of Dying Light 2, the high-calibre clobbering but confusing structure of Sifu, and the many ways of being stuck in Expeditions: Rome.
Dying Light 2: Staaaaaay Human is an expansive parkour game with comically wonko interpersonal drama and surprisingly crap combat.
Hybrid tactics/strategy RPG Expeditions: Rome is many games in one, and some are good!
Not actually going to link the studio’s new endeavour, because blockchain is for chumps.
Kung-fu roguelike Sifu brilliantly captures the choreographed man-punching of martial arts movies. More will be said upon this matter in due course!
If you want to be reminded why the past is bad and should be left alone: Bloodborne PSX is a supremely impressive attempt to recreate Bloodborne within the limitations of old hardware that also make it extraordinarily annoying to experience.
You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. If you have a question for a future episode, send it to us at [email protected] or tweet us @crateandcrowbar. You can also listen to it on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like.
The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.
Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.
...more
1h 5min
February 04, 2022The Matrix and its Sequels: A Lock-In at the Crate and Crowbar
Jamie, Graham and Chris get lost in the desert of the real for three and half hours. Join them as they discuss the several Matrices, velcro, dads, bad squids, comedy French Dracula bastards, whether Geoff Keighley is real, whether films themselves exist, the “vocabulary of power”, the emotional logistics of sofas, 5D aeroplanes – and more! For three and half hours! I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it.
Spoiler warning: the gang talk about the plot points of the first three films pretty liberally from the outset, but somehow don’t get into Matrix Resurrections until 1 hour, 8 minutes and 40 seconds in. The show-notes below also contain spoilers.
Content warning: discussion of the films’ imagery relating to suicide
The Matrices are, in order:
The Matrix
The Matrix Reloaded
The Matrix Revolutions
The Matrix Resurrections
Side projects of note:
The videogames, Enter the Matrix, Path of Neo, The Matrix Online
The animation, The Animatrix
The Matrix films were conceived and directed by Lana and Lilly Wachowskis, with the exception of the fourth film, for which Lilly did not return, and was co-written by David Mitchell and Aleksander Hemon. Screenwriter Zak Penn (mentioned on the podcast for producing the screenplay for Warner Bros that would eventually lead Lana Wachowski to grudgingly return to the franchise) is not credited as a writer on the final script.
Important casting for the first three films:
Keanu Reeves as Neo / Thomas Anderson
Carrie-Ann Moss as Trinity
Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus
Jada Pinkett Smith as Niobe
Joe Pantoliano as Cypher
Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith
Lambert Wilson as The Merovingian, aka “comedy French Dracula bastard”
Monica Bellucci as Persephone
Harry Lennix as Commander Lock, aka “Captain Grumpy”
Important casting in The Matrix Resurrections that might count as SPOILERS:
Jonathan Groff as Agent Smith
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Morpheus and sorta also Agent Smith
Jessica Henwick as Bugs
Neil Patrick Harris as The Analyst
Priyanka Chopra Jonas as Sati
Some other things that get namechecked:
Skins – Jamie wrote it! It was very good
Kiss Me First
Last of the Summer Wine
Definitely real human man Geoff Keighley
Carrie-Ann Moss is great as a ruthless lawyer in Jessica Jones
Keanu returns to another iconic Keanu role in Bill and Ted Face the Music
Keanu is also good in Cyberpunk 2077
The Last Jedi trod a similarly controversial line regarding fan expectation. It’s one of those Star Wars films, if you’ve heard of them
Bound: what the Wachowski’s did first. It’s a horny-as-hell crime film!
Spider-Man: Far From Home is an interesting parallel for the introspection and nostalgia of Resurrections
Leap of faiths are a significant motif lifted from Open Your Eyes, later remade as Vanilla Sky
Sense8, the Wachowski’s Netflix sci-fi series about pansexual kung-fu psychics
You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. If you have a question for a future episode, send it to us at [email protected] or tweet us @crateandcrowbar. You can also listen to it on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like.
The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.
Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.
...more
3h 22min
January 28, 2022Episode 391: You Can’t Jostle the Ghost Clump
Graham, Alex and Marsh revel in the dopamine hit of spook-’em-shmup, Vampire Survivors, grumble about Halo Infinite, cultivate occult vegetables in Strange Horticulture and use children as ammunition in Fuga: Melodies of Steel.
Starting out strong, it’s Robotron with Ghosts and Upgrades, aka, Vampire Survivors. And why not? Also playable in your browser.
There may actually too much Halo: Infinite. If only they could have warned us somehow – say, in the title.
Confoundingly unmysterious plant puzzler Strange Horticulture
Namechecked: recent mystery games with young buff versions of famous detectives: Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One and the badly titled Agatha Christie – Hercule Poirot: The First Cases which, according to this dev diary has invented a new moustache.
Tank tactics trapped in an insipid anime about dog nazis: it’s the also-terribly-titled Fuga: Melodies of Steel, which is part of the “Little Tail Bronx” series, of which there are four, including Solatorobo: Red The Hunter on Nintendo DS. Thanks, Wikipedia.
That’s it! No more mediocrity for you until you finish your plate!
You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. If you have a question for a future episode, send it to us at [email protected] or tweet us @crateandcrowbar. You can also listen to it on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like.
The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.
Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.
...more
59min

FAQs about The Crate and Crowbar:

How many episodes does The Crate and Crowbar have?

The podcast currently has 496 episodes available.

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