Podcast: The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)

Take a ride with Chris and Nick through the streets of Tokyo as 30 year old teenager Sean (Lucas Black) learns the ins and outs of balding his tires with ruthless efficiency in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Bow Wow appears as a normal teenager who deals not drugs and Sonny Chiba classes up this movie about ten fold. Also Brad from Home Improvement plays the most convincing teenager of the whole bunch.

Other notes:

• In case you wanted to know more about the Fast and Furious chronology, and have it explained to you entirely in exclamation pointed sentences.
• Sonny Chiba is great and here's a clip from The Streetfighter to prove it to you.
• Check out our Halloween III review to learn more about Muldoon's.

Podcast: Barbarian Queen (1985)

Get ready for some ancient Roman sword and sandal fun! Except for, of course, the 25 minute rape torture dungeon lull in the third act. It's Roger Cormon's Red Sonja ripoff Barbarian Queen! Starring Phil Spector's murder victim (Lana Clarkson) the Queen embarks on an ill-conceived mission to avenge her village's destruction and rescue her fiance Argan.

The trailer is NSFW.


On the way she encounters a bunch of guys who attempt/succeed in raping her. Luckily her kegel skills help her out of a few torture-chamber-related jams. She also meets the daughter of the resistance leader, and she bears a striking resemblance to the son from Mrs. Doubtfire.

Matthew Lawrence or girl from Barbarian Queen? You Decide.

Some other notes:

• Chris remembers the names of tertiary characters from Masters of the Universe.
• Tarantino, remember to call us so we can improve the script for this movie.
• Ways to make BQ better: 40% more consensual sex, add a love story, incorporate the rebels more, bawdy burlesque show.

Podcast: Gabriel Over the White House (1933)

Journey with us, gentle listener, as we go back to a simpler time. A more wholesome time. A time before Hollywood had put the Hays Code into force. A time when America looked for a hero to create jobs, put an end to gangsterism, and finally shut down Congress once and for all! In 1933 MGM gave us such a hero in Gabriel Over the White House, the stirring story of a man getting hit on the head and hearing angelic voices that tell him to heroically bully his way into becoming a benevolent dictator.

Join Nick and I as we go back to the halcyon days when the president literally goes mad and then gets a lot of power, and is seen as a beneficent hero by almost all non-gangsters.

The advantage of a movie so old is you can watch the whole damn thing on YouTube! The full version is here:


Notes:

• Nick apologizes for his slightly offensive 1930s style African American gentleman's voice, but the movie started it! It's a commentary on the limited movie roles for African American actors in the first half of the 20th century.
• While President Hammond does talk of annihilating death rays, there is no mention of giant mecha robots, a la Metal Wolf Chaos.
• Some information on Pre-Code Hollywood i.e. the FUN Hollywood before couples slept in separate beds and people could flush toilets in movies (I presume).

Grantland Article Covers Super Mario Bros. Film

Today on Grantland, Karina Longworth has written an amazing piece on what exactly went wrong on the infamous flop "Super Mario Bros.," a movie we've reviewed here during our video game month all the way back in January 2011 (feels like yesterday). For those who haven't seen the movie, it's a bizarrely uneven mash-up of Blade Runner dystopian sci-fi, references to several video-games, almost all of them completely re-envisioned, and jokes about tacky Italian women. Amazingly, the Italian jokes still feel pretty current. The article talks about what went wrong, how a character with huge brand recognition failed so spectacularly at the box office. I theorized about its failings a bit in my review, but I think what it comes down to is: people like Mario games because they are fun. People did not like the Mario Bros. movie because it is the direct opposite of fun. It falls into the trap of other prequels in that it spends way too much time explaining how the things you know came to be, and almost no time being a fun, compelling story. It even teases us with an ending that seems to promise a fun, action-heavy sequel.

Critics correctly identified the movie as "dumb," but thought it would still be a hit because kids must like dumb stuff, right? Except that the bleak set design, posters, and everything else seemed to be explicitly trying to distance the movie from the source material. In a hilarious disconnect between children who liked Mario and adults talking about Mario, NYT critic Michael Specter wrote:


"The city, a future-shock melding of Times Square and downtown, is called Dinohattan. And the despot, the evil King Koopa, has to find a way to merge the rest of New York -- which was sheared off from Dinohattan in a meteor blast 65 million years earlier -- with his desiccated, reptilian empire.

Does any of this sound familiar?

If so, you are probably a 12-year-old boy, or one of the many Super Mario maniacs who sometimes act like 12-year-olds boys."

For the record, no, that doesn't sound familiar. Except for "King Koopa," none of that sounded like anything anyone had ever associated with "Mario." Honestly I think I would have liked Mario Bros. the movie a lot more if it were just a dumb, silly little movie about heroic plumbers, instead of some sort of bleak sci-fi prequel.

Roger Ebert, Screenwriter of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Dies

Some sad news today as it's being reported that Roger Ebert, the Sun-Times film critic best known for his long-running show "At the Movies" died today. While we here at YSM were not always big fans of Ebert's, we are sorry for film criticism's loss. Ebert was by all accounts a very good person and had a passion for movies. We are sorry to see him go.

Ebert's reviews may not have always aligned with our young, hip demographics, but his avuncular presence has been a constant (mostly) positive influence in film criticism. While Ebert could often miss or make up plot points, and had tendencies to interject his reviews with pointless factoids or fixate creepily over a "pneumatic" starlet, what can't be ignored is Ebert's love for movies. He was a champion of children's movies, camp, and genre movies from the beginning, applying the same silly ratings system to them all. Ebert was always willing to review his experience at the movies as much as the movie itself, which helped him to avoid the "me too" mentality of critics that seem to exist purely to slightly bump up the fractions on tomato-meters everywhere. Is a podcast review of more Russ Meyer on the way? Who knows?!

Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert, circa 1970

Beyond quibbling over how many stars Ebert gave some movie or other in the literally thousands of reviews he wrote over decades of work,* Ebert has made a huge influence on our culture and is probably part of the reason blogs like YSM even exist. Ebert and Siskel's show was such a revelation not only because it was two white guys in sweaters talking for 30 minutes, but because it was two men with very different tastes offering their different opinions, connected by a shared love of film. Siskel & Ebert encouraged disagreements, even arguments, about the merits of the most trivial films. They also gave equal time to independent and low budget fare, often introducing new films to an entire generation of young people and "casual" movie-goers. They also showed that it was completely normal to care about movies in a deep and meaningful way, that normal, otherwise well-adjusted adults could easily get into arguments about the merits of late Orson Welles or Woody Allen, not to mention the Russ Meyer's of the world. They also helped showcase how entertaining it is to come up with creative ways to put down a bad movie, inspiring basically all bad movie podcasts ever.

I guess what I'm saying is: we'll miss you, Roger Ebert, and thanks for everything.

*I couldn't resist one more dig: Ebert trashed "Speed Racer" as soul-less and corporate and "too long," giving it 1.5 stars. Then he gave "Cars" 3 stars.

Podcast: Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel (2009)

A surprising number of good comedic actors star in this big budget squeakeuel. Alvin and the gang send Dave (Jason Lee) to the hospital with what I assume is an irreversible spinal injury, so they go off to high school to complete in some charity concert. Meanwhile their conniving former manager Ian (David Cross) uses his new act the Chipettes, a demographically equal female version of the Chipmunks, to sabotage the brothers. Also there's a football game and I think they pilot an RC helicopter.

Watch this trailer and try not to puke.

Notes:

• Watching a live concert of 4 inch tall rodents is somehow more infuriating than a regular large venue musical performance.
• Possible title for the fourth movie: Alvin and the Chipmunk: Munkford and Sons.
• David Cross on the horrible experience that was Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked.
• The romantic lead discusses Taco Cabana's Shrimp Tampico (and a bunch of other TC menu items).
• Just what you wanted to see: animals with children's voices sexualized for profit.
• You should see Wreck It Ralph instead.

Podcast: Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009)

Kristin Kreuk and Chris Klein star in this kind of sequel to 1994's Street Fighter. When Chun-Li is given a mysterious scroll, she engages in her own hero's journey to find out if her father is still alive. Or is it defeat Bison? Or clean up the slums of Bangkok? Meanwhile Chris Klein squints his way through his role as an Interpol agent hot on her heels. Or Bison's. Also everyone knows magic.



Also here is the Turtles in Time scroll we referenced.

Also to note:

• Fergie is in Planet Terror
• Moon Bloodgood is 5'10", not 5'8"
• Chris Klein's performance is crazy

Enjoy the podcast!