[School of Everything Else 2022] The initial trailers for this one had me groaning. We were still pre-Birds of Prey movie so it was easy to assume the touchstone for this one was the first Suicide Squad movie, plus extreme cartoon violence and crudity. Well I was right about the second two! Turns out this is one of the smartest, most psychologically explorative of DC's vast back catalogue of superhero TV. Primarily because it is framed first as a relationship drama, second as a comedy and third as a DC world. But even with that lowered priority and an emphasis on wild chaos there is still the ..read more

[School of Everything Else 2022] This is our second show on Kamala Khan. The first was all the way back in 2017 when we talked about her first comic miniseries. I've re-released that show on the podcast feed so these two can be companion pieces.  The Disney+ miniseries delivered almost exactly what we had been hoping for all these years. A bright, funny, courageous Pakistani-American girl hero. Instantly iconic and clearly in love with all things Marvel.  We did not expect the drama to be quite so naturalistic and poignant, the family to be so much more interesting than the interdime ..read more

[School of Everything Else 2017] This is a reupload of our 2017 show discussing the first series of Ms. Marvel comics. It works as a great companion piece to our show on the 2022 MCU TV series.  In 2013 a brand new Marvel character was introduced to the world, one who is very reminiscent of classic Peter Parker, a goofy, hapless, sweet-natured teenager who just wants to help people. She's also the world's premier, headlining Muslim superhero, and very much due a movie or TV series to bring her to mass popularity like those who came before her. In tonight's episode we are joined by Alasdai ..read more

[School of Everything Else 2022] There are two things about Star Wars that seem endemic, inextricable from the process of engaging with the multitude of stories that have emerged over the many years since 1977. One is that we always seem to return to Tatooine. It ties in with the fact that Star Wars plays on nostalgia. Even as early as 1983's Return of the Jedi they were bringing us back to that sand planet only actually named out loud at the tail end of The Empire Strikes Back. That movie also continued the long procession of Death Stars. But if we accept that these touchstones will mean that ..read more

[School of Movies 2022] This is an exploration on the more personal, less studio-based films of Thor Ragnaraok and Love & Thunder director Taika Waititi. Most of you won't have seen all of them, and that is okay, you should listen to this episode in its entirety anyway. The show will give you more details to look for when you get to watching them. 03m: Eagle vs. Shark (2007) 25m: Boy (2010) 41m: Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016) 59m: Jojo Rabbit (2019) All of them have many factors in common, but the unifying factors are parents not being around, and lonely boys going through a transformati ..read more

[School of Movies 2022] This one hit us mere hours after the finale of Moon Knight. It has been six years since the first Doctor Strange hit in late 2016. To the point where the dangling threads of that film are ignored, because Stephen has made four more appearances since then, and been instrumental in deliberately instigating The Snap. But even that is mostly pushed to the side as this film becomes the follow-up to the first Disney+ Marvel TV show, WandaVision. And the handling of that factor by dream director for many; Evil Dead and Spider-Man-helmer Sam Raimi has caused this to become one ..read more

[School of Movies 2022] Two films about dinosaurs as a metaphor for our own existential fear of extinction. We've held back on talking about the second film, released in 2018 because I was waiting on the onscreen consequences of the big decision at the end. While some folks considered Fallen Kingdom to be the worst in the franchise (I even saw a video declaring it the worst movie ever made - clearly somebody who has never seen Swamp Shark) we actually quite like it. Don't get us wrong, it's dumb as a sack of hammers, but there are qualities that win it points with us that the other sequels don ..read more

The window for negotiating commissioned shows is now open and we have four slots available. These tend to fill up in the first day or so. If you've been wanting us to cover something specific you might want to jump in on this. If you miss out, don't worry, the next window will be available near the end of the year for early 2023 releases.   And we start this announcement with a line-up of the shows we're releasing over the next few months. You'll find the Marvel and Star Wars that everybody flocks to, but also some we've been promising we'll do for years, and a bunch of unusual choices th ..read more

[School of Movies 2022] The third in the Rage Cage trinity, released less than a month after Con Air, this movie saw our boy Nick set against John Travolta, who was at the time flying high on the success of Pulp Fiction a few years previously.  The premise of "Good guy wears bad guy's face" is completely nuts for a start, but what it allows us to see onscreen is two extremely intense actors performing as both a wackadoo international terrorist-for-hire and the broken, obsessed FBI agent hellbent on revenge. Science and physics are utterly abandoned in favour of comic book logic, but the p ..read more

[School of Movies 2022] The Rage Cage Season continues, as Nicholas transforms himself into a statuesque Army Ranger from Alabama with a mullet (as We Hate Movies would say) to beat the band! It's had to imagine from every movie he was in before and since but here he's a combination of the peace-making soft  tones of Jesus and the spin-kicks of Chuck Norris.  Handed a severe sentence after defending himself and his pregnant wife from literally the worst man in the world, Cameron Poe is sent home after eight years in jail. Unfortunately he is put on a plane with superstar celebrity co ..read more