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Welcome to Movie Podcast Weekly. Thank you for listening! During Episode 084, you’ll hear your usual hosts and special guest Willis Wheeler review “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” “Big Bad Wolves” and “Favor.” We also give you a quick rundown of the Summer Blockbusters slated for the next few months of 2014. Enjoy!
Movie Podcast Weekly typically features four hosts (and frequent guests), who give you their verdict on at least one new movie release that’s currently in theaters, mini reviews of what they’ve been watching lately and specialty recommendation segments. New episodes release every single Monday.
SHOW NOTES:
I. Intro
— Welcome special guest Willis Wheeler
II. Mini Reviews:
Andy = We’re the Millers, The Way Way Back
Willis Wheeler = Son of Batman, Insidious: Chapter 2, WWE Extreme Rules Pay-Per-View event
Karl = Draft Day, Transcendence, (Electric Dreams), Seems Like Old Times, Das Boot, (Down Periscope)
Josh = (Blood Glacier), Survivor: Brains vs. Beauty vs. Brawn, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Jason = The Amazing Spider-Man
III. Feature Review: THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 (2014)
Jason = 7.5 ( Theater / Buy it! )
Andy = Abstaining from judgment
Karl = 7.5 ( Theater / Buy it! )
Willis Wheeler = 9 ( Theater in 3D / Buy it! )
IV. Feature Review: BIG BAD WOLVES (2014)
Jason = 7.5 ( Strong Rental )
Josh = 7 ( Rental )
V. Feature Review: FAVOR (2014)
Jason = 6 ( Rental )
VI. SUMMER 2014 BLOCKBUSTER PREVIEW
VII. Wrap-Up
NEXT WEEK:
We will be reviewing NEIGHBORS or CHEF or GOD’S POCKET with a top secret, very special, special guest
Links for this episode:
Willis’s plugs:
Willis Wheeler on TV’s Toy Hunter
Terror Troop horror movie podcast
Cinema Beef Podcast
On Twitter: @NastyWillDC
Willis On Facebook
Willis on the NFW Movie Commentary Podcast (mostly horror-related)
NEW! Remember to add Movie Podcast Weekly to your Stitcher playlist here: Stitcher.com
Follow Movie Podcast Weekly on Twitter: @MovieCastWeekly
Check out Book Review Podcast
Horror Movie Podcast Ep. 014: Oculus (2014) and Afflicted (2014) and BillChete’s Big News and Jan-Gel
Josh covers streaming movies: Movie Stream Cast
We’d also like to thank The Dave Eaton Element and Dave Eaton himself for the use of his music for our theme song.
Special thanks goes out to singer-songwriter Frederick Ingram and the Blue Claw Philharmonic for the use of their music and the voice talents of Midnight Corey Graham from The Electric Chair Podcast, Willis Wheeler from the Terror Troop Podcast and Spike Real for their help with our recommendation segment intros.
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You can always contact us by e-mailing MoviePodcastWeekly@gmail.com. Or you can call and leave us a voice mail at: (801) 382-8789. And you can leave us a comment in the show notes for this episode.
Thank you for listening, and join us again next Monday for Movie Podcast Weekly.
I am coming out in favor of reviewing The Sacrament on Horror Movie Podcast. The movie is based on what is certainly one of the most horrific occurrences in human history. While the film may not be typical horror fare, I believe it does fit with the theme of the show.
Thanks, One Sick Puppy. Josh kindly humored me, and we recorded an epic, 45-minute Feature Review of “The Sacrament” for Horror Movie Podcast, Episode 016 — which will release (ON TIME!) this Friday, May 9, 2014!
I obviously agree 100 percent with your comment, and I think our review on HMP proves our sentiments further. Josh will still disagree with us, I’m sure. ha ha
But I want to publicly thank Wolfman Josh, again, for humoring me and reviewing “The Sacrament” EXCLUSIVELY on HMP. I hope our friends who listen to MPW will check out our review at http://horrormoviepodcast.com/ this Friday!
Thanks for commenting.
Jason (aka JAY OF THE DEAD)
You guys are stoned.
A lot of horror fans might be under the impression that The Sacrament is a horror film because it’s directed by Ti West and features actors from You’re Next, besides the fact it’s based on a Jonestown-like event. If you guys review it and then tell me ‘this isn’t a horror film’, that’s a service I appreciate.
Doesn’t mean Jay and Puppy aren’t stoned, though.
I just think we should have reviewed it here and told the HMP peeps it wasn’t horror, but head to MPW for the review if they were still interested. That’s podcast house-keeping and a little too “inside baseball” for the listeners, but Jay and I take this all very (maybe way too) seriously, because we care.
Regarding my not having read a comic book in a while, I’d like to point out that the mechanized Rhino (who first appeared in our universe in 2010) was NOT Aleksei Sytsevich, he was another person altogether, whose name was never revealed, and he died in about 2 months (at the hands of Aleksei Sytsevich). Aleksei did not die until mid-2012.
So for the Sytesevich character that Paul Giamatti played, there are 46 years of history which Marc Webb threw out the window.
Alexander O’Hirn was an alternate universe version of Rhino (from Ultimate Spider-Man), which did appear in 2002, but I don’t consider him relevant to this discussion, because The Amazing Spider-Man takes place in our universe, not Earth-1610.
As for my “out of the loop news,” here’s the link to the article I mentioned, dated 3 days ago (as of this posting):
http://sciencefiction.com/2014/05/02/marc-webb-reveals-mary-janes-deleted-amazing-spider-man-2-scenes/
I stand by my review, and I feel that it is based on an educated perspective.
Solid points, all. Mostly, I’m glad there is apparently a new rivalry heating-up between OSP and TWMWW to replace the one between Jason and myself. You two need to start a podcast together!
To be clear, the planet we actually live on is Earth-1218, not Earth-616 (the Earth of the mainstream Marvel Universe,) but after 35 years of reading comics, I think of Earth-616 as “ours”.
Nerd alert!
Juuuust kidding.
I do have one MAJOR bone to pick with Willis myself, actually. It is partially my own fault because I was totally zoned-out during the Spiderman review. BUT …
I hate this myth that a financially successful film equates to a good film. Willis said that they must have been doing something right in Spiderman 3 because it made the most of the 3 films. In my opinion, that obviously has to do with how good Spiderman 2 was. It left people wanting more.
The same could be said of Die Hard 4, which made the most of any film in the franchise. Is it because it was the best? Probably not. I think it is because the 1st film is a classic and the 2nd and 3rd films were strong enough to keep stringing the audience along (maybe didn’t hurt that it was PG-13 as well). But, I doubt there is anybody out there that would claim Die Hard 4 was doing something right because it was the most successful. And what happened after Die Hard 4? Ticket sales went down again for Die Hard 5. Because it sucked? Maybe. But I don’t think the audience was very interested after the suckiness of the 4th film. Which is why they are returning to the Die Hard 3 formula for the 6th film.
Meet the Fockers, same thing. Most successful in the franchise. So much so that they built an attraction around it at Universal Studios Florida. Most financially successful film in the franchise. But was it any good? The first film was great, ticket sales go up for the 2nd film. 2nd film sucks, ticket sales go down for the 3rd film. I could go on and on with examples.
Now, this isn’t primarily directed at Willis, just something that I hear people say a lot that drives me batty. They use it to justify their prejudice against indie films. If they were good, they’d make more money, right? No. Wrong. Great artists at every level know this. So many of the all-time-great authors and painters were never successful in their lifetimes. Love the way George Clooney outlook on the art vs finance aspects of the film industry:
I actually watched AS2 the weekend before, about whole week ahead of your MPW crew, such a rare happening. Then only reason I didn’t write something to email it over is I was not feeling as charged up as I walked out of the cinema.
I think that movie was a mess. Sure the action scenes were fantastic, the SpikerMoment (if that is a thing) was quite intriguing, but the story telling of the movie was simply a M.E.S.S. the inconsistancy of the personality for Peter with or without mask on, the swivel relationship between the pair, it felt like the director couldn’t make up his mind what story he wanted to tell, so the movie constantly jumping tones through-out the running time. at the end it is full pack of eye candy but nothing to walk home with.
I give it 6/10 – it is slightly better than fantastic 4, but comes no where near Batman or recent Superman. Well we know people will rent it so we will just leave it at that.
If u can watch the director’s cut of the first fan 4 movie it has like 15 mins added to it made the movie much better
To explain regarding The Notebook: if the storytelling had been restrained to the point that she remembers him, they have their moment and then she fades back to not recognizing her husband and he sat with her in silence, that would have been devastating for me. Heartrending!
Instead, in a seeming attempt to force me to FEEL(!), the decision was made to go gangbusters and have her go into a full-blown episode. It was too much, too manic, and over the top. No subtlety at all.
I’m a man, and I am able to express my emotions, even in tears. For instance, Somewhere in Time has me breaking down at the end of every watch.
Anyways.
Just a heads-up for our Utah listeners, Blue Ruin and Joe, both of which I saw on VOD, are now screening theatrically in Salt Lake City at the Tower Theater. If you like dark indie dramas, both are excellent, though I slightly prefer Blue Ruin, which is also the more assessable of the two. Under the Skin is also still playing at the Broadway. Only Lovers Left Alive and Fadinf Gigali coming this week to the Broadway.
I just really think this movie is getting a lot of hate for no reason at all, it’s a very solid comic book movie , it was fun , and a lot of people I know or talked to enjoyed the movie . I know it will never be as perfect as the avengers . I know it better job then the dark knight rises , they made batman look like a dummy in that movie .
Willis, I whole-heartedly agree. Rises didn’t even feel like a Batman film. However… I feel like Raimi’s Spider-Man felt like an actual movie, more sincere, than the world that Marc Webb has created. I also believe Tobey is the real Peter Parker. I know Raimi got a few key elements and facts wrong from the comics… but I really feel those films (1 and 2 in particular) have so much more weight and fun. Maybe I am biased because I spent my teens watching those movies and reading the comics. I do love Emma Stone though.
We’re the Millers – 6/10 I feel like there is a special movie waiting on Sudeikis. And the boy who plays his ‘son’ is hilarious.
The Way Way Back – 7/10 Carell is great, but this is Rockwell’s show. A decent coming-of-age.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade – 10/10 I believe (if I remember correctly) I am in line with Jason when I say this is the best of the Indiana Jones films.
The Amazing Spider-Man – 5.5/10 I FAR prefer the Raimi films over this new franchise…. Sad to say.
Top 5 Most Anticipated of the Summer (blockbusters):
1. Godzilla
2. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
3. Guardians of the Galaxy
4. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
5. How to Train Your Dragon 2
Also… just Netflix-streamed a little indie called The Dirties. I can’t remember if you guys covered this but wow, this flick blew me away. Any thoughts if you’ve seen it? The two main characters are so similar to myself and my best friend, but there is an angle to this film – that I don’t want to spoil if you know nothing about the film – that resonates. I grew to care about the characters and found them funny and likable… I even laughed out loud multiple times… and then I saw where the film was headed, which made it even more heavy. Anyway if you haven’t seen it check it out.
I don’t have much to say about the movies discussed on this episode but I’ve just got to note that the more I hear of Willis Wheeler the more I totally love the guy. If it comes down to it I probably disagree with him a whole bunch but he’s such a unique, genuine and insightful chap that I just can’t help but smile whenever he’s about.
Is this where I rate a movie you guys haven’t talked about? I saw “The Other Woman”. 6.5/10. There were only four of us ladies in the theatre, but we were all laughing. This is just what you’d expect out of a funny chick-flick. But let me say this; there were plenty of boobs to keep any guy entertained for the duration. Cameron Diaz is such a likable, charismatic person, it doesn’t even matter that she seems to be playing herself most of the time. Leslie Mann gives it all comedically here, to the point of embarrassment sometimes, and bikini model Kate Upton, even though she was playing stupid, seemed to actually be acting! The storyline was “9 to 5” redux, but with the modern measurement of gross potty humor. So, If you like that kind of thing…..
Really, Willis, have you ever met a comic book movie you didn’t give a 9 or a 10? 😉
And Jay, I liked Insidious 1 and 2 (I’m not sure I’d give it a 9, maybe a 7), so don’t listen to Willis, and there are plenty of horror movie podcasters that liked those movies.
I still cannot believe that you neglect the Tits & midgets AKA GoT. This is the best TV show ever period. Better than Breakingbad or Walking Dead or Dexter or whatever you don’t neglect. An the performance of Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) on the end of the last episode was kind of “edge of the seat”.
The strangest part I find that since I’ve asked for this show to be reviewed few weeks ago you haven’t mentioned it once for even a second during the show. A simple GFY would be better than totally ignore.