The SomethingSomethingCast

James and I are, once again, honored and thrilled to be involved in this year’s Livestream For The Cure.  Mark your calendars and join us, it’s always an amazing time for a phenomenal cause!

And now…a message from Nicholas Haskins…

Hello one and all!

The page at the Cancer Research Institute site is now live. Early donations can be made up to and through the event on this page. Please share this with anyone you know who might be able to help spread the word. 

https://fundraise.cancerresearch.org/fundraiser/3744472

100% of proceeds go to the Cancer Research Institute and immunotherapy research, training the body’s immune system to fight against all forms of cancer. The donations are tax deductible. This year for the Livestream for the Cure we’re aiming for our biggest goal ever of $20,000, and we need your help to do it. Together, we can make a difference.

Together, we can ignite the spark of hope in a future immune to cancer. Please, help us fight for that future. The biggest question we always get about the event is, “How can I help?” Not everyone can donate,  but everyone can help to share the event on social media and spread the word so we can have a great shot of hitting our goal.

Please join us for the live event at https://twitch.tv/livestreamforthecure. We’ll be live May 19th – 21st from 9 AM to Midnight each day fighting for a future where cancer is a distant memory. I’ll be joined by creator partners from around the world, who are coming together to help put an end to cancer in our lifetime.Follow the event on Facebook @LivestreamForTheCure.

Follow us on Instagram @LivestreamForTheCure.

Follow the event on Twitter @Livestream4Cure

Thank you so much for fighting alongside me. Let’s work together for a better world. Let’s work for a future without cancer.

Nicholas Haskins
Livestream for the Cure

Right now – if, all of a sudden, this opening introduction was interrupted by — hey! Look! It’s THE SMOKE MONSTER!

Ok, he’s gone, but wasn’t that crazy and sort of ironic given we have a previous relationship with him so it makes sense, but ultimately is more of a meta commentary than an actual one about the contents of the show and the surprise of a guest who didn’t even get a word in.. or, in that instance, a chain rattling?

So, since that happened – why don’t you settle in with Hatton and Rob as we discuss our favorite cameos in film — ROBERT DeNERO!? What are YOU doing here?

Oh, Bob.. that scamp… Ok, here we OHHH IT’S PERD HAPLEY!

Full Episode

The announcements of WWE’s new video game are out, and I laugh and laugh every single time because at the end of the day: nothing changes. To be fair, if there is a WWE game that ever deserved an eyeball, it will be this year, but I don’t expect a lot. Why this year? Because the last WWE game was a trainwreck beyond trainwreck that damn near destroyed the studio that was building it.

It was not only a dramatically similar game to the year prior, it was a buggy mess.. and when it comes to games, like most sport-oriented games, where year to year they just slap a new coat of paint and update the year, it was shockingly funny – especially when they ask a top dollar price for these games and offer at least 6 months worth of DLC.

So, with that in mind, I thought I’d talk about a few features I would love in a wrestling game.

GM MODE
But Hatton, tons of wrestling games have had this – and they do, but never the way I want.. and I think that’s because wrestling sits in this strange ‘liminal’ sport. It isn’t a REAL sport, so it isn’t as simple as putting two teams against each other, but in a video game it isn’t entirely SCRIPTED. That means that you have this mix of an action game and The Sims, where your results are based on vague numbers like ‘Audience’ and ‘Rating’.

I want a much more story driven GM mode. Literally, the fictional GM in a fed where putting good wrestlers into nonstop bad matches gets them mad at me or creating shows of 5-star classics gets me a raise. Where I can slowly make bad wrestlers into main eventers, and I can make people thrilled with Hogan is defeated by Barry Horowitz.

HEEL / FACE MODE
There is one game that does this – and if you’ve talked to me about wrestling games, I’ve probably apologized for loving it.. and that’s Rumble Roses. Do heel stuff, you go bad guy. You save good guys, you become a good guy. Yes, in Rumble Roses, the good guy is a sexy librarian and the bad guy version is a dominatrix librarian… but the idea is still badass.

NO MERCY’S STORY – BUT A BETTER GAME
Bring on your hate. No Mercy for the N64 isn’t a good game… want proof? How did you beat the APA in a NO DQ Handicapped match? I’ll tell you how – you stood outside and threw stairs at them until one of them was knocked out because it was impossible to win by wrestling them.

No Mercy, though, has one of the greatest storylines in wrestling gamery.. the story has branches, and tells you where the branches are. If you win this match you’ll go discover THIS plot – if you lose, THIS plot. If you knock out the ref, DIFFERENT plot. It was so unique and such a great way to show the avenues wrestling can go in, I am shocked nobody has tried it since.

In the end, I just want a wrestling game that feels engaging to me, a guy who likes playing video games alone. I don’t care about online play, and I don’t want a stat-grinder.. I have Disgaea for that. I want what wrestling really is – and that’s interesting stories – albeit, interesting stories told by men in shiny underpants.

Send all your scathing disagreement about No Mercy to @RevVoice and @STSTCast, and we’ll see you next time!
– Hatton

♫ Three two one.. let’s jam..

Do those few words blow your mind out with a brass section? Do you immediately start thinking about bloodshot eyes, gunplay, and corgis?  Well, if not, then you are probably going to be very confused about this episode, as we are talking about the end of the Netflix live-action of Cowboy Bebop.

Bounty Hunters against the world – and we are only watching the last episode… does it hold up? Was the show worth another season? Is anime even possible to do right on the bigger screen?

Let’s talk about it here – on The End: Cowboy Bebop

Ok, here we go, space cowboy…

Full Episode

Yes, it’s a terrible joke….

…but not as terrible as seeing between the veil and dealing with The Old Ones and the Elder Gods and non-euclidian geometry….

I love me some Lovecraft.  Yes, Howard Philip was an amazingly troubled individual whose views on politics, class, and race were questionable, but this blog isn’t here to dissect the man.. more the medium of his works.

I recently watched “Color Out Of Space” and… two things struck me…

1) Nicholas Cage will say “yes” to anything.

2) Lovecraftian movies just… aren’t that great.

The closest thing I’ve seen to a TRUE “Lovecraftian Movie” was “In the Mouth of Madness”.  It conveyed not only the weird waking-dream-slash-blurring-the-line-of-perceived-reality-and-what-really-the-fuck-might-be-going-on but the slowly seeping in horror/madness of many of Lovecraft’s works.

Unfortunately, movies like “From Beyond”, “Dagon”, and “The Void” are the usual offerings which either feel like they’re dancing around the edges of the story, or diving in with such gusto that a 5 page short story is turned into a 2 hour movie adding so much more than the original story did, that it’s just as ‘different’ but from the other side of the coin.

I think the problem with many Lovecraft translations stems from the fact that, through writings and notes… Lovecraft himself stated he wasn’t very good at writing action sequences.. so he largely avoided them… which.. makes for slow-paced movies.  Also, his descriptions were either fringe and minimal to let your imagination fill in the blanks (which oft-times can be far more horrifying) , or such a psychedelic fever-dream of description that it’s not something that translates well to film.

I know Alan Moore often complained that he wished people would stop making movies out of his works as they were intended to best be told correctly on in the medium he presented them in (I think he’s wrong…), but from what we’ve seen in movie adaptations from the works of H.P. Lovecraft…  Moore might be right.  Just.. not about his own works.

– PCR

The Wheel has returned… and the narrative of the Wheel takes a new turn!  Get it? Nevermind…

Anyway, there are some new topics on the Wheel, and we have been hit with one of them.  You know how Rob and Hatton are always talking about their favorite things? Well, this week they are talking about the Bottom 5, the worst, the shameful, the hysterically bad, and the ‘wait what?’ in the realm of computer generated graphics and green screen in film.

So gather round and think back to all of those horrible aliens, blood splatters, and technological marvels that were clearly added in post, just like your hosts on BOTTOM 5: CGI

Ok, here we go!

Full Episode

Well dip me in chocolate and gift me on Valentine’s – one of the games that I love that nobody really mentions, Chrono Cross, is getting the Square Enix video game remake treatment. I’m elated, although that is tempered by the fact that Squeenix are notorious for giving “important” games a notable spit and polish, while only giving games like Chrono Cross – games that didn’t move the needle – a visual upgrade, but then never go back to fix the new bugs or UI issues they’ve created.

With that in mind, I thought I’d drop three more games here that I would be ecstatic over if they got an out of nowhere remake – games that I’ve sunk a dumb amount of time into that have been lost to shruggable sales figures so not as many people are willing to part with their nostalgi-bucks.

ADVENTURES OF LOLO
I’ve mentioned this game at least once before, it was a single screen puzzler where you were a little blue ball trying to collect hearts. It was 100% a game for puzzle nerds, but it was, at times, gruesomely hard. You could call it simply a revved up sokoban-style game, and it is, but there were so many wonderful additions, power-ups, monsters, and evil mechanics in that game, I’d be on line day one to get a copy of something new.

KLAX
If you know this game – you already are hearing the sound of small colorful bricks slapping against each other. Klax looks like you took Guitar Hero and made it makeout with Tetris. A match three game with colorful bricks clacking down a chute.. I don’t know why I played this every time I found it at an arcade.. I don’t know what weird itch it scratches in my brain – but Tetris Unleased shows you can take something simple and give it a fresh coat and have it be amazing. Klax deserves that very treatment.

TRON
I hear you, if you are a nerd of a certain vintage, ‘Do you mean Deadly Discs or Light Cycles’ and the answer is – yes, obviously. We live in an era of VR – of big arena games – of Battle Royale games – we live in an era where a series of Tron games, whether alone or in a Fall Guys style ‘the last 10 people don’t make the next round’ would be astounding. All I’ve asked for in this world since I was 8 was a good modern light cycles game. (There have been attempts, none have been given the Hatton seal of approval) — but why not Deadly Discs? Why not firing your disc against a spinning MCP? Why not flying a Recognizer over the Grid to escape? WHY – NOT!? ANSWER ME!?!??!

…sorry. What are some games that you think deserve some re-thinking? You know where to let us know!
– Hatton

It has been a long time since we have tackled the world of comic book swashbuckling, so we’re doing it with style by inviting one of our ol’ friends to talk funny books and martial arts – the maestro of Kung-Fu Drive-in Podcast, Geoff Vita!

We’re heading off to Ta Lo to discuss some of the bigger pictures of the new Marvel Phase, discussing representation in the new run of Marvel movies, and of course how much kickass is the new MCU butt-kicker kickin

So join us as we head to a mystical land, and remember, ‘kick, punch, it’s all in the mind‘

Ok, here we fu!

Full Episode

Hey guys, Rob here….

The title basically says it all.  These are movies that.. in some way… enticed us into watching them, either by clever trailers, word of mouth, or sheer morbid curiosity… only to leave us far stupider than when we went in.

This list is FAR from all inclusive, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on YOUR entries to this list…

Let’s get to it!

Sausage Party
I mean, they let us know who and what this movie was right in the trailer right?  Anthropomorphic food trying to find the meaning of their existence, all the while filling the screen with a level of perverseness that would make the cast of Porky’s blush.  And yet…  even knowing what we were getting ourselves into..  this movie left us feeling mentally regressed.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
Let’s take a beloved horror movie franchise, reboot it, and suck every last ounce of what made it great out of it!  A lot of people thought Jackie Earle Haley would make a great Freddy Krueger (myself included) but this horrible vision made me feel as if I lost 1/3 of my brain cells.

Any Adam Sandler Movie
Ok, I take that back.  Waterboy was fun as hell, and The Longest Yard, while a husk of the original, had enough cameos to make it fun to watch.  Happy Gilmore and The Wedding Singer can be exempt as well…but those were in “The Before Times”  Anything even REMOTELY recent?  Nah fam.  I mean.. good on him for being able to play exactly ONE type of character and building an entire career on it, but Ernest did it first.

Malignant
Ok, I came to this bandwagon late, and had ignored any and all hype about it.  That being said… JESUS this movie is not at all good.  From the forced attempt to make an ‘iconic’ weapon, to the hilariously horrible CGI of Maddy’s face in the fight in the police station, this entire movie is a spot-fest of “What the fuck am I watching… and why am I still watching it?”

What movies made YOU dumber?  Let us know!

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– PCR

It’s February, and you know what that means… it’s time for another episode. I actually am not entirely sure what else it could mean.  

To start off this month of love, we are bringing one of America’s sweethearts to the front of the line. He has been an action star, a romance star, a heist star, a car star, and a truffle farmer st– wait what? Anyway.. it’s Momma Coppola’s Baby Boy – Nicolas Cage. 

From a meme legacy to being a lot of people’s favorite dirty secret… Cage has been in a LOT of movies, and we’re here to just talk about a few of our favorites.  So settle in, swallow after every thing you say, and keep your mouth slightly agape – it’s time for our favorite Nic Cage movies. 

Full Episode