Unlisted Wall

This week we walk a path through "history" paved with stones from the very bosom of Greece herself, seeking to look upon ancient Sparta. We make our camp in the pass through the doors of the recording studio, where Xerxes's numbers count for nothing. Our farewell tour of Greece is guided by bold Leonidas and noble Themistocles, by both land and sea. It takes even longer than we expect, since they keep stopping to do crunches and pushups. Ben gives them nothing, but takes from them everything; Charles readies his breakfast and eats heartily, for tonight he dines in hell.

We've been away a while, what with season 3 ending with us in Hell courtesy of the Event Horizon. Now that we're back, we've decided to stay here on Earth and take a tour of the past with season 4's opening block of ahistorical epics. First up, a pair of turn of the century blockbusters in Ridley Scott's Gladiator and Wolfgang Petersen's Troy. Both films combined topped the six-hour mark via the extended versions, and as a result we've posted our longest runtime yet....will our speaking voices hold out? At night Ben sees their faces. All the men he's killed. They're standing there on the far bank of the river Styx. They're waiting for him; Five thousand of Charles's men are out there in the freezing mud. Three thousand of them are bloodied and cleaved, two thousand will never leave this place. He will not believe they fought and died for nothing.

Our troubles in space finally reach their end with the fiery duo of Danny Boyle's Sunshine and Paul Anderson's Event Horizon, a match made in Hell(literally, in part). A star-stacked ensemble led by Cillian Murphy flies too close to the Sun trying to save our species from solar winter, and we reunite with Dr. Alan Grant(who still isn't feeling better after his visit to a mental ward courtesy of Sutter Cane)in orbit around Neptune to explore the eponymous rediscovered deep space vessel. Where did it come from? Where did it go? Will it show us secrets or kill us slow.....Ben folds a piece of paper and pokes a hole through it to show Charles the concept of a wormhole; Charles has been listening to the distress signal, and he may have made a mistake in the translation...

It's time to leave our solar system with Chris Nolan's space survival epic, Interstellar. Featuring black holes, quirky robots, mountainous waves, surprise Matt Damons, tasty cornfields, and lots and lots of gravity, we refuse to go gentle into that good night as we watch McConaughey struggle to save the species and return to Earth before his kids die of old age. Ben has a cue light he can use to show you when he's joking, you can use it to find your way back to the ship after he blows you out the airlock; Charles has an honesty parameter of 90%, absolute honesty isn't always the most diplomatic nor the safest form of communication with emotional beings.

This week we're leaving Earth's near vicinity for a pair of films that have the red planet in the mix. One's a story of rescuing Matt Damon(good thing we've narrowed down which one of those it is in the title)and the other is a chilling little sendup of Alien that happens WAY closer to home. Ben doesn't want to come off as arrogant here, but he's the greatest botanist on this planet, Mars will come to fear his botany powers; Charles is definitely gonna die up here if he has to listen to any more of Commander Lewis's god-awful disco music.

After a long lunar layover we resume our trouble-in-space block with a pair of tension-filled nailbiters in the genre; one a visceral physical struggle, the other a moralistic conundrum. Although both of these have extraordinarily low character counts we manage to completely fail to bring it up due to Charles' frayed nerves upon watching both of these back-to-back. Ben goes for the all-time space walking record; Charles contemplates the epi-pen of doom.

We break orbit with our fictional odyssey for now and turn towards the non-fiction odyssey of the human race's quest for space(and its subsequent troubles)with a pair of star-studded films centering on Apollo Mission astronauts. The events depicted in these films are less than a year apart, though nearly a quarter-century passed in real time between movies, and make for engaging contrast in our discussion(also, Ben knows a lot about space). Ben doesn't care about what anything was designed to do, he cares about what it CAN do, if they can make a washing machine fly he can land it; if anyone from the IRS is listening, Charles forgot to file his 1040 return, he meant to do it today, but, uh...

We begin our tour of things going wrong in space with the landmark Kubrick classic and its follow up from over fifteen years later, written by sci-fi titan Arthur C. Clarke. Put your investigative crew into hibernation and make peace with Soviet cosmonauts as we throw ourselves into alien monoliths and down psychedelic space tunnels. Charles thought this mission would be easy as cake, what happened to Russian commo sense? Ben can see he's really upset about this, and honestly thinks he ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.

We wrap the 2nd annual Spooktacular with the third of John Carpenter's apocalypse trilogy, his ode to HP Lovecraft starring Dr. Alan--er, Sam Neill as a claims investigator who gets a tad more than he bargained for. Ben asks Charles if he ever told him his favorite color was blue; Charles says to never, never, never.....throw chips at a driver.

The second annual Spooktacular kicks off with the spine-tingling chiller centering on a young woman fleeing from a horrible supernatural force in the form of an STD(the D is for demon). Ben thinks some firearm training is a great idea, and asks Charles if he can see the lady in the yellow dress; Charles says it's been three days so everything should be fine, he may just go for a swim at the community pool.