Wednesday, September 25, 2013

BONUS: Cthulhu Gloom - Ribbit, B*tch

http://www.warehouse23.com/img/full/AG1330.jpg

No spoiler warning! But I will say there are parts of this that are NSFW.

In this episode:
  • Back in July, Fio and I played a game of Cthulhu Gloom with our friends Vic and Louie. Since Fio just did an episode on Lovecraft, we felt this would work nicely as a companion episode.
  • Listen as we tell stories most eldritch, non-Euclidean, and squamous in nature. Who must inventory their limbs? Who gets rattled by rats? Who gets thwarted the most while trying to kill off their miserable characters to win the game?
  • The official Cthulhu Gloom website, with game rules
  • The characters from the starter set, and the Dreamland characters, if you wanted to see what they looked like on the cards. These pages also show the flavor text from the cards.
  • Here's some quick reference for who's playing which family:
    • Ian is playing characters from the Dreamlands: Barzai the Wise, King Kuranes, Richard Pickman, and Mo'mo'mo
    • Vic is playing characters from Arkham Sanitarium: Dr. Willet, Cassilda & Camilla, Henry Akeley, and Tigger-Man
    • Fio is playing characters from Innsmouth: Barnabas Marsh, Pth'thya-I'yi, Joe Sargent, and Zadok Allen
    • Louie is playing characters from the Whateley family: Old Whateley, Lavinia Whateley, Wilbur Whateley, and Junior
THERE'S ALWAYS AN ADDENDUM:
  • I recorded this on my voice recorder, so the audio quality is not the same as our regular episodes, but I did my best to tidy it up. Please let me know if it's completely unlistenable. The audio quality VASTLY improves when I move the recorder onto the table around the 16 minute mark.
  • To give a little context for some of the random comments we make, we had just seen Pacific Rim the day before, as well as the Avengers Rifftrax. As for all of the other comments we make without context...well, be glad you weren't sitting at our table at meal times back in college.
Music:
  • Intro: "Goin' Down to Dunwich" - The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets | YouTube | iTunes |
  • Break 1: "The Kraken" - Hans Zimmer, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (Original Soundtrack) | YouTube | iTunes |
  • Break 2: "Devouring the Dragon" - Danny Elfman, Red Dragon (Soundtrack from the Motion Picture) | iTunes |
  • Break 3: "Forward to Time Past" - John Williams, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Original Soundtrack) | iTunes |
  • Outro: "The Thing That Should Not Be" - Metallica | YouTube | iTunes |
(Cover art taken from the Cthulhu Gloom order page.)

http://archive.org/download/AMOTB01/AMOTB01.mp3

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

015: Stop! In the Name of Lovecraft




SPOILERS FOR... Well, nothing's really spoiled, but some stuff just kind of gets mentioned. Just to be safe? Oh gods... I don't even know... Lovecraft's Bibliography, Dr. McNinja, Evil Dead, IT, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Scrabble?, Ghostbusters, The Thing (1982, 2011, and the 2002 game), Hellboy 1&2, Pacific Rim, Shadow Hearts, and a lot of other stuff.

In this episode:
  • We're talkin' Lovecraft.
  • As we mentioned in the last episode, Ian decided to take a bit of a break to recharge his batteries, so it was up to Fio to recruit a guest host to help bear the neural load of completing this podcast. He chose an old friend, Turner, who's currently pursuing his doctorate in Neuroscience.
  • We breeze by about a million things to try and communicate the scope of wildly different pieces of media that Lovecraft has had an influence on. We probably fail.
  • If you're not familiar with how racist Lovecraft can be, it's honestly ridiculous. It reaches uncomfortable Poe's Law levels at times. I don't think we quite get into it enough on the podcast, but even if you brace yourself for the kind of racism and anti-antisemitism that you might find in early works, there are some bits of Lovecraft that will probably take you by surprise.
    • So this would be the time to let you know that here's a crapload of his work.
    • If you want to enjoy Lovecraft that isn't horribly racist, we recommend Cthulhu Gloom or Arkham Horror
  • This is the Call of Cthulhu film that we reference. It clocks in at 46 minutes and is currently available to stream on Netflix.
  • Pacific Rim is a character story. Somebody back me up on this.
  • "Wrecking your shit for no reason" is the only motivation any of the interesting characters in Lovecraft need.
  • Next episode we're going to talk about horror comics and I swear to you we'll manage to record for longer than an hour this time.
THERE'S ALWAYS AN ADDENDUM:
  • We mention Japanese games with possibly Lovecraftian influence and somehow I completely forget to mention that Nyarlathotep is the villain of Persona 2. And I really love the Persona series. Shame, shame.
  • Fio corrects Turner when he's talking about "The Rats in the Walls," saying that the mad idiot god at the center of the Universe is Azathoth, however, in "The Rats in the Walls," for whatever reason, Lovecraft refers to Nyarlathotep being the mad god in the center of the earth surrounded by pipers. Soooo... bad Fio.
  • Other titles I briefly considered for this episode: "Lovecraft in the Time of Cholera," "I'm not gonna' write you a Lovecraft song 'cause you asked for it," "What is Lovecraft? Baby don't hurt me," "Lovecraft Actually starring Alan Rickman," "Shot through the heart, and you're... screw it, you get it. 
Music:
  • Intro: "The Innsmouth Look" - Darkest of the Hillside Thickets | iTunes |
  • Outro: "Love will Tear us Apart" - Joy Division | YouTube | iTunes |
(Screencap from http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100202021247/lovecraft/images/1/1b/Kraken-cthulhu.jpg)

http://archive.org/download/AMOT015/AMOT015.mp3

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

014: Hannibal Rising (2007) - Hannibal Lecter, Nazi Killer

Click to view full size image

SPOILERS FOR "HANNIBAL RISING" (2007), SEASON 1 OF NBC'S HANNIBAL, AND HANNIBAL RISING AND HANNIBAL BY THOMAS HARRIS

In this episode:
  • Back to just Fio and me (thanks again, Cleo!). And we're trying out something new with the opening! Let us know if you like it or if change makes you go into the fetal position (hoo, boy; wait 'til the end of this episode).
  • Discussion of the 2007 adaptation of Thomas Harris' novel Hannibal Rising, including Gaspard Ulliel's performance as the young Hannibal Lecter, Rhys Ifans and his band of Nazis, Thomas Harris' screenplay, and what material they might use in NBC's Hannibal.
  • David Bowie is like cheese and bacon.
  • I want a comic/gifset of the movie's conversation with Fio. No, this is not a contest, it's just something I really, really want to see.
  • Here's the gorgeous forest shot Fio and I appreciated.
  • I make another comparison to The Phantom of the Opera.
  • We ask the hard-hitting questions: Did this movie need to be made? Does Hannibal's motivation make sense? How disappointed would we be if David Bowie wasn't in Season 2 of NBC's Hannibal?
  • Fuller's version will probably be ridiculously coherent.
  • The problem of origin stories, and the pacing of novels vs. the pacing of movies
  • Poor Abigail. Poor, poor Abigail.
  • This is the way our discussion of Hannibal in film ends. (You know the rest.)
  • We finish up with a few updates on the future of the podcast.
THERE'S ALWAYS AN ADDENDUM:
  • Part of me is still trying to figure out the whole cannibalism-begets-cannibalism thing. Is it like, "Well, if I was willing to eat my sister, then everyone else is fair game"?
  • I totally forgot to mention all of the ways you can contact us at the end of this episode. Whoops. Well, there's our sidebar up there; you can find links for email and everything there.
Music:
  • Intro: "Howl" - Beware of Darkness | YouTube | iTunes |
  • Outro: "Goldberg Variations BWV 988 - Aria" - Johann Sebastian Bach (performed by Kimiko Ishizaka) | Free Download |
(Screencap from http://ladymanson.com/galleries/movies/MoviesHK/thumbnails.php?album=2)

http://archive.org/download/AMOT014/AMOT014.mp3