This week, we take an aritcle originally posted over at Ain’t It Cool News and talk about what improvements we’d like to see what what we’d be willing to pay for them.  Joining Dave this week are film student Nate and writer of the Trailer Park column over at Quick Stop Entertainment, Chris Stipp.  Oh, and be careful to step around the visual vomit.  You’ll get it after you listen, I promise.

Dave would also like to take this opportunity to apologize to the good listeners from GeekLabel and Geek Radio Daily for his old-goat-boy version of “MATLOCK!”

 

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Since we’re not doing an episode this week, I figured that I should get SOMETHING up for those who need some kind of fix.  Yesterday, the Dentmobile stopped in our humble hometown, so I headed down with my new video camera to see what this was all about.  If you think you notice a familiar face, you do indeed see Alex Billington from FirstShowing.net in a few of the shots.  He also did a write-up about it that you can read here.  Our good friend Chris Stipp from Quick Stop Entertainment also did a great write-up about his experience in this week’s Trailer Park column.

I will freely admit to throwing a Harvey Dent bumper sticker on my car as soon as humanly possible.  Below is the video that I also submitted to IBelieveInHarveyDent.com.  I’ll post if/when that goes up on their site as well.  I do apologize for the few times you can hear me breathing.  I didn’t realize just how good the mic was on my camera and well…IT WAS SNOWING!

Dave’s Score:  8.5 out of 10 

Going into any movie, one can’t help but have pre-conceived ideas.  I had two strong ones going in:  1.)  As has been well documented, I’m a huge Simon Pegg fan.  If he’s in it, I WILL watch it and 2.)  I am really not a Thandie Newton fan.  I’m putting that as diplomatically as I can.  I have yet to see anything of hers that I’ve actually liked.  Add in that this is David Schwimmer’s first feature directorial venture, and this one could have gone either way.  Fortunately, Run Fat Boy Run takes all the clichés of a feel good comedy and makes it feel like it isn’t a retread of forty other movies you’ve seen before.

Dennis (Simon Pegg) isn’t just a loser.  He’s the worst kind of loser.  The guy left his pregnant girlfriend Libby (Thandie Newton) at the altar.  From there, things go downhill for Dennis.  He’s stuck in a dead-end job as a security guard for a high-end lingerie store and he gets no respect.  To be fair, he really hasn’t done anything worthy of respect.  He hasn’t finished a single thing in his life.  The only thing he does right is love his son and try to be a father to him.  Five years after leaving her at the altar, Libby has a new man in her life named Whit (Hank Azaria).  Whit is an American living in London who really seems to be the perfect man.  He’s a nice guy.  He runs marathons for charity and he really has a good relationship with Dennis’ son Jake (Matthew Fenton).  When it becomes apparent where their relationship is headed, Dennis has to make a last ditch effort to win Libby back and decides that running a marathon will do the trick.  Will Dennis win Libby back?  Will he finally finish something for once in his life?  Do you really have to wonder the answers to these questions?

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Just as a heads up to everyone, we’ll be taking this weekend off, so there won’t be a new show being recorded for next week.  I’m working on lining up a couple of guests for the next week, so that should definitely be a fun show.  I’m also working on finishing up my review of Run Fat Boy Run and will hopefully have that up this afternoon.

I can’t promise a timeline as to when it’ll be done, but I’ll also be going out to see the Dentmobile tomorrow and will be taking my video camera with me.  I’ll be talking to people about why Mr. Dent should make a run for Gotham DA and will be posting that at some point soon as well.

So while we are taking the weekend off from the show, it’s not like we’ll be slacking!

I do apologize for all these Starfest releated stories to those who won’t be able to attend.  We’re just really excited about it and we’re at t minus 28 days. 

Here’s where it appeals to everyone.  Right now, Starland is running a contest to see who can drive the most hits to their site leading up to Starfest.  The winner will win two autograph tickets of their choice.  Obviously, we’re doing all this pimping for Starfest just to get people excited.  In that same vein, should we win, I will take one of those autograph tickets, buy something extremely cool related to the guest involved, get it signed and give it away on this site.  One example would be getting a Jayne figure from the Serenity toys and get it signed by Adam Baldwin.

If everyone were to click the banner at the top of our page at least once a week, I’m pretty sure that we could win.  Besides, if you haven’t checked out what’s going on, you really should so you can get an idea of what we’ll be covering.  Josh, Barry and I will all be up there covering this glorious geekfest for all three days and we’ll have some extra help as well.  This should let us not only interview the main guests, but also cover Horrorfest (more on that in a near-future post) as well panels and the other goings on at the con.  This should be a REALLY good time.

The guest list for Starfest is finally shaping up.  An interesting thing that has come up is the announcement that there may be some studio presentations coming to the show, and a bit of speculation has begun as to what movies will be there.  Past presentations have ranged from an exclusive clip of the first five minutes of A Scanner Darkly to full studio presentations with people coming out like Karl Urban for Pathfinder, Oded Fehr for Resident Evil:  Extinction, Christian Bale for Reign of Fire, Tobey Maguire for Spider-Man, the entire cast of Eight Legged Freaks and Tom Cruise for Mission Impossible.

So what’s coming this year?  I have absolutely no idea, but here are nine picks for movies that could concievably be showing up to make presentations.  Props go out to brutus at the Starland.com forums for the inspiration on this article.  There won’t be more than one or two there, but let the speculation continue!  I will insert posters or publicity stills where available.  These are listed in order of release through the end of the year (for better or worse):

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The triumphant return of the Film Snob!  Yes, a lot of people have seen Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly’s masterpiece, but we decided to take the opportunity to talk about our favorite musical of all time.

 

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I mistakenly say episode 27 at the beginning.  My bad.  Anyway, this week we tackle Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales, which comes out on DVD this Tuesday.

 

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Big is a film that surprised audiences when it premiered 20 years ago and, even today, the movie takes you off guard in unexpected ways.
 
In 1988, Big was opening at the tail end of a movie year that saw three other films with “body-swapping” gimmicks: Like Father, Like Son (a dreadful farce with Kirk Cameron and Dudley Moore hamming it up), 18 Again! (with George Burns and Charlie Schlatter of tv’s Ferris Bueller), and Vice Versa (a not-bad comedy with Fred Savage and Judge Reinhold giving good performances). Only Like Father, Like Son was a hit (a year later, Dream a Little Dream, with Jason Robards swapping souls with Corey Feldman, saw a mercifully brief run in theaters). The problem with these witless concoctions is they gave older actors an excuse to broadly impersonate a clueless child and young actors an opportunity to broadly mimic adult authority figures. The original Freaky Friday did this better 10 years earlier and all of the four previously mentioned films didn’t look beyond the surface of its gimmick.
 

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We FINALLY have a logo!  Thanks to the greatly talented Mark Rantal, we now have a logo and I have to say that I’m really pleased with it.  We should have the hi’rez version up soon as our banner at the top of the page and a little different color scheme to work with the logo colors.  Let us know what you think!