[School of Movies 2024] The late 2010s. It is a period of civil war. The vast Empire of Disney has released four of its five first Star Wars movies, to mixed reception. Critically and financially, The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi have done very well, as has Rogue One. However, the two episodes have divided the smaller portion of the global audience that amounts to the vocal fanbase, between those who are thrilled and those who are disgusted. In a vain effort to smooth things over, it is decid...
Mar 01, 2024•2 hr 25 min•Ep. 470
[School of Everything Else 2024] This was originally going to be an After School Club episode, but a combination of the community discourse regarding the X-Men, and an extremely well-timed trailer drop for the '97 reboot, AND a horrendous cold that has ravaged Sharon and I, along with our timetable, we're making this a Main Event. If you're a little younger than us, you may well have been the exact right age and state of mind for this early-2000s animated series, which in many ways surpasses the...
Feb 23, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 469
[School of Everything Else 2024] The infamous animated series with a theme tune you can hear just by looking at stills of it, finally gets a well-deserved podcast. We actually recorded this several years back, to coincide with the launch of the new X-Men '97 animated show on D+, and we're finally seeing images from that now. Whether it's good or bad, THIS ONE is worth watching, at least some choice episodes of. While often held up with the likes of Batman TAS, this one's strengths lie less in th...
Feb 17, 2024•2 hr 7 min•Ep. 468
[School of Everything Else 2024] We initially started watching this 2017 Paramount TV series just for some back-story context on a pair of commissioned podcasts we have upcoming on the first two seasons of the sister show about the crew of the Enterprise; 'Strange New Worlds'. As it turns out, after a rocky start, Discovery is really excellent in its own right and we wolfed down the first four seasons. So, this is a largely spoiler-free round-table discussion on those seasons, to give you folks ...
Feb 09, 2024•2 hr 48 min•Ep. 467
[School of Movies 2024] It's always a risk, setting a sci-fi dystopian movie only a few years from filming. You're going to make predictions about how the world might look and operate, with new technology or sociological and political upheaval within a time period so immediate that it's the difference between the launch of the Sony PlayStation and the PlayStation 2 But we are currently living in a dystopia increasingly left to the devices of the dumbest of AI, and many of us are wondering "How t...
Feb 02, 2024•2 hr 49 min•Ep. 466
[School of Movies 2024] After decades of very patchy sequels and spinoffs to the 1987 sci-fi classic, Predator, we finally get one that is not only worthy of, but in many ways surpasses its stealthy action-beefcake-slasher source. So far we've had Predator 2 (1990), Alien vs. Predator (2004), Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007), Predators (2010) and The Predator (2018). But this one takes note of there frequently being a woman of colour on the cast of the previous movies and this time put her fr...
Jan 26, 2024•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 465
[School of Everything Else 2024] This is one we have been planning and looking forward to for a long, long, LONG time. One of the most significant indie video games of all time, and for our child, maybe their favourite forever (up against Minecraft and Stardew Valley). In a gaming marketplace overflowing with charming retro-styled games with a dark, absurd sense of humour veiling heart-breaking stories about coping through pain, loneliness and grief, this one shines out as an inspirational beaco...
Jan 19, 2024•2 hr 19 min•Ep. 464
[School of Everything Else 2024] Part 6 of 6 We come to it at last. The final episodes of one of the greatest animated shows ever gifted to TV. And we pulled out all the stops this time, because it's bittersweet to say goodbye again. Originally I planned to get this whole season discussed in one sit-down session, considering how much ground we had covered back in Season 1 with two sessions. But in the end a second was essential. What we have here is that unplanned final session with Kaoru & ...
Jan 12, 2024•2 hr 54 min•Ep. 463
[School of Everything Else 2024] Part 4 of 6 Back in early 2020 (pre-pandemic even) just as Disney+ had launched, making this show super-accessible to everyone at last, we recorded three podcasts on the first season. Now we are finally back to talk about the second and final season and one of the most satisfying, bittersweet endings of any television series, and I am not being hyperbolic with that statement. Dipper and Mabel Pines are a pair of tweens who have to spend the summer in the strange ...
Jan 05, 2024•2 hr 57 min•Ep. 462
[School of Movies 2023] This is one of the hardest episodes we have ever had to record. I'm not dealing in hyperbole when I describe the shockwave that rippled through our house when we found out that without the slightest warning Chadwick Boseman passed away in the night. He represented, for want of a better term a great responsibility. And much of these few hours is spent talking about that impact. On top of that, there were elements of the film that bothered both of us, and our guests, but th...
Dec 29, 2023•2 hr 27 min•Ep. 461
[School of Movies 2023] One of only FOUR movies directed by the all-too-soon-departed anime darling Satoshi Kon (along with Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress and Paprika), this is by far and away his most heartfelt, funny, camp and soulful tale, and it is most definitely Christmassy in nature, considering it concerns three impoverished homeless people and their desperate attempts to protect and ferry back to her parents a holy infant, so tender and mild. But as well as being a fair and compassion...
Dec 22, 2023•2 hr 1 min•Ep. 460
[School of Everything Else 2020] Part 3 of 6 The third of three shows on Season 1 of Gravity Falls. Season 2 will be covered in 2021. We round off the first batch of episodes with a showcase of villainy, as a crazed piglet who holds small-town America in his thrall seeks unlimited power for himself. And on the other side of the reality curtain, a chaotic yellow triangle man hatches his schemes. There's also a hilarious take on boy bands which was in fact creator Alex Hirsch apologising to his si...
Dec 21, 2023•2 hr 4 min•Ep. 262
[School of Everything Else 2020] Part 2 of 6 The second of three shows on Season 1 of Gravity Falls. Season 2 will be covered in 2021. We return to one of the best animated series' to grace the TV screen. A rich, hilarious, fast-paced puzzle-box of twisty mysteries and subversive, genre-savvy capers. Tween twins Dipper and Mabel Pines are staying with their Grunkle Stan for the summer, at his combination gift-shop and rube-trap. But strange things are both out there in the woods, and inside the ...
Dec 20, 2023•2 hr 41 min•Ep. 261
[School of Everything Else 2020] Part 1 of 6 Throughout the year we will be releasing episodes covering one of our very favourite animated shows, now available worldwide on Disney+ which is why we waited until now. Most people haven't seen this, so you can watch along with us. We won't spoil any later episodes and the podcasts won't release all at once. Next week the Spielberg Season continues with E.T. The Extra Terrestrial. The elevator pitch for this one is "The Simpsons meets Twin Peaks". A ...
Dec 19, 2023•2 hr 55 min•Ep. 221
[School of Movies 2023] If you love Love Actually this show is for you. If you hate Love Actually this show is for you. If you consider Love Actually to be kind of a mixed bag and there's actors and/or scenarios in there that you really like and yet some of the characters behave in awful ways that the film doesn't judge as awful, but overall it seems to have its heart in the right place, this show is for you. And if you've never seen Love Actually... then this show is for you. What we have done ...
Dec 15, 2023•3 hr 30 min•Ep. 459
[School of Everything Else 2023] The first global blockbuster hit in this long-running series from Squaresoft. As we noted before, the excellent Final Fantasies IV, V and VI were not released in Europe (neither were I, II or III) until long after this one, and it was utilising the power of the PlayStation, so this really was the introduction to what a modern-day cinematic RPG video game could be, for an entire generation in 1997. Playing it today, there are a number of drawbacks, some of which (...
Dec 08, 2023•2 hr 10 min•Ep. 458
[School of Movies 2023] Arguably director Hayao Miyazaki's finest hour, and by extension the peak of composer Joe Hisaishi and for Studio Ghibli in general. This one is almost too easy to either sing the praises of, or to dismiss because it was so popular. Disney distributed it in America, and it made $395 million, which might make it the most successful theatrical release for an anime movie. By contrast, My Neighbours the Yamadas two years prior in 1999 made $11 million on three quarters the bu...
Dec 01, 2023•2 hr 44 min•Ep. 457
[School of Everything Else 2023] This is the good stuff. Look no further than the 2012-2013 one-season 3D animated show for the absolute best Green Lantern experience. Co-Created Giancarlo Volpe of Avatar and Bruce Timm, one of the key figures in the beloved and critically acclaimed classics of Batman: The Animated Series, along with the connected Superman, Batman Beyond, Justice League Unlimited, all of which constitute a true encapsulation of the DC comic heroes. What we have here is the archi...
Nov 24, 2023•2 hr 59 min•Ep. 456
[Digital Gonzo 2013] This is a special, re-edited, re-release of a classic episode of Digital Gonzo. Back in 2013 we talked all about Green Lantern, under the impression that Warner Bros. & DC had big plans for superheroes over the next decade. And while they have genuinely given more heroes an airing, audiences seem to only be interested in The Bat and the Joker, (oh, and Aquaman, because he has laser-sharks). So, what this is is a pared-down and pacier version of the first part of that sho...
Nov 17, 2023•2 hr 49 min•Ep. 455
[School of Movies 2023] A strange period for Ghibli brings us to the end of our current run, still with the closing triumph of Spirited Away (2000) to cap this body of work off, as well as this year's The Boy and the Heron paving the way for a future tenth instalment. What we are looking at is the last film from Isao Takahata (who died only five years later) the visually resplendent as well as distinctive Princess Kaguya, which is my favourite of his works, but still has one glaring bad decision...
Nov 10, 2023•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 454
[School of Everything Else 2023] We all knew this would happen eventually. No Intellectual property that has been known to rake in a billion dollars for a single movie will ever be left alone to stand in glorious completion. Whomsoever holds the rights will use them. Some folks expected a (potentially very misguided) attempt at making the entire Silmarillion for television, or for Amazon to do what it seems likely Warner Bros. eventually will with Harry Potter and just re-tread the books we've a...
Nov 03, 2023•2 hr 18 min•Ep. 453
[School of Movies 2023] An absolute landmark in terms of stop-motion animation within cinema. Conceived in the early 80s by Disney animator Tim Burton and manifesting first in an 11-minute poem after the style of both A Visit from St. Nicholas by Clement Clarke Moore and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas from Doctor Seuss. That was developed into this oddball story of a pale loner of an outsider (who is also wildly popular because of course he is, this is Tim Burton). The skeleton king of Halloween...
Oct 27, 2023•2 hr 57 min•Ep. 452
[School of Movies 2023] For our Halloween Spooktacular episodes we begin with a compilation of three After School Club shows, covering the first three of the eight instalments in the Howling franchise. However, despite two of them being from the same director (Philippe Mora) and two of them involving the writer of the original book (Gary Brandner) I struggle to think of three films that feel less like each other in a series. The incoherence and absence of any connective tissue or even thematic c...
Oct 20, 2023•2 hr•Ep. 451
[School of Movies 2023] With the grandfather of the studio, Hayao Miyazaki retired and his son Goro not warmly welcomed by the fans, there was now an enormous question mark over the future of Ghibli that persists to this day. Luckily, there was still amazing talent to be found within their walls. Hiromasa Yonebayashi (better known as Maro) made his directorial debut with one of our faviourites, which positively cries out for watching in HD, The Secret World of Arrietty. It's the tale -adapted fr...
Oct 13, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 450
[School of Everything Else 2023] There are many reasons why this 1994 instalment in the long-running Square franchise winds up high on lists of the very best RPGs of all time. It is an ensemble piece with an immediately engrossing story and endearing, growing party of misfits, oddballs and freaks. The concept of an oppressive, evil empire messing with powerful magic to secure its dominance isn't new at all, but rarely does a single self-contained game tell such a world-spanning tale with no one ...
Oct 06, 2023•3 hr 33 min•Ep. 449
[School of Movies 2023] Having now won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature Ghibli was facing the retirement of one of their absolute linchpins. Hayao Miyazaki wanted to go out with a bang, so adapted another favourite book of his. Howl was popular, but readers had things to say about changes that were made. After that, his son Goro Miyazaki tried his hand at being a director in the elder's absence. adapting another treasured childhood fantasy, which was declared the worst Ghibli ever upon launch ...
Sep 29, 2023•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 448
[School of Movies 2023] This, folks, is arguably the greatest adaptation of one of Roald Dahl's books made to date. Taking everything that was great about the 1988 book (one of his last, only followed by Esio Trot, The Vicar of Nibbleswick and The Minpins) and one of the abiding favourites for many kids and previously-kids who aren't entirely sure if they have truly grown up yet. It's about a schoolgirl who develops telekinetic powers that she uses to banish a truly horrific headteacher. But tha...
Sep 22, 2023•2 hr 42 min•Ep. 447
[School of Movies 2023] Many would call this period the crowning glory of Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki in particular. The maturity and refusal to pull his punches that came with the rich, dark and complex Princess Mononoke illustrated that when it came to humankind's strained, abusive relationship with Nature itself, that bloodshed was an inevitability, He followed this up with a personal favourite of mine, Spirited Away in 2001, but we have a dedicated show on that coming at the very end of this s...
Sep 15, 2023•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 438
[School of Everything Else 2023] The greatest brawler series in the history of video games. If you haven't yet had the pleasure of playing one of the four Streets of Rage, even if beat-'em-ups aren't your thing you owe it to yourself to investigate the sheer *craft* of these classics. Beginning with the original in 1991 and refined to magnificence with the second in 1992. They need to be looked at in conjunction with their contemporaries like Double Dragon (1987) the excellent Final Fight (1989)...
Sep 08, 2023•2 hr 11 min•Ep. 437
[School of Movies 2023] This is one you almost certainly won't have heard of, but will be happy you found it through School of Movies. It's the tale of a young man named James who has grown up in a post-apocalyptic bunker, raised by his loving parents and wondering what's outside. One night a raid by the cops results in his "parents" being carted off to jail, as it turns out they kidnapped him as an infant and hid him here. Now he has to come to terms with the real world and the awkward fit of h...
Sep 01, 2023•2 hr 52 min•Ep. 436
