After Lunch

Pax, Rob, and Michael finish this month's lounge talking about  Scream: The TV Series , Universal's Dracula and Frankenstein movies,  Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person ,  Friday the 13th with Gourley And Rust ,  The Witch  (2015),  Salem's Lot (2024), and more.

Pax, Rob, and Michael talk about haunted apartments,  Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark , layoffs, Holmes/Poirot, taking breaks from comics,  Lone Women  by Victor LaValle,  Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson, and cetera.

Michael and Rob welcome back Joanna from  Bloody Popcorn and Becky Tyler to talk about our favorite pop culture witches. And of course also to put them into brackets and vote on them until we decide on the ultimate witch of all time.

Michael and Jess continue watching Mike Mignola's 20 Horror Movies That He Can't Live Without. This time it's all ghost stories with  The Innocents  (1961),  The Haunting  (1963), and  The Others (2001).  If you especially like movies about ghosts, this makes a phantasmic follow up to Episode 286 where Michael, Jess, and their friend Darla discussed three other ghost movies: Poltergeist  (1982), ...

Michael, Rob, and Pax continue drifting the  Fast and the Furious  drift with the third drift:  Tokyo Drift . It's time to drift goodbye to Brian and drift hello with Sean, Han, and Twinkie. 

After a fun exercise in which they create their own one-off Bond films, Michael, Rob, and Karen discuss the tone, the villains, and the Christmas Jones of Pierce Brosnan's third Bond film (and Desmond Llewelyn's last), The World Is Not Enough . Also starring Sophie Marceau, Denise Richards, and Robert Carlyle, and directed by Michael Apted.

Michael, Rob, and Pax talk about the  Scream  movies,  Beetlejuice Beetlejuice ,  Agatha All Along , Sherlock Holmes live theater,  Alien: Romulus , relistening to yourself on podcasts,  Yellowjackets ,  Omen movies, and more.

Michael, Rob, and Pax talk about rescuing princesses, refrigerator delivery,  Magic for Liars  by Sarah Gailey, comfort media,  Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein  by Anne Eekhout, Pax's revisiting early  Nerd Lunch ,  Kill Creek by Scott Thomas, and so much more.

Michael and Rob welcome back Carlin Trammel from last week and also John Vanover to nominate and vote on TV themes from dramas or any other genres that didn't fall into one of the previous categories we've covered. It's an especially eclectic hodge podge of musical styles this episode (making it particularly difficult to vote) in our road to determine the greatest TV theme song of all time.

These TV themes Sweet 16s aren't getting any easier. This time, Michael and Rob are joined by Paxton Holley and Carlin Trammel to agonize over, nominate, and vote on our favorite opening themes from action and mystery shows. It may be an impossible mission, but we'll open a bottle of magnum and try to become the greatest American heroes as we reveal the unsolved mystery of the best action/mystery...

Michael and Rob travel back to the late 1930s for the first screen adaptations of the pulp hero The Shadow.  The Shadow Strikes  (1937) and  International Crime (1938) both star Rod La Rocque as the Shadow, or at least Lamont Cranston. Or Granston. We'll get into it.

After largely agreeing about  GoldenEye , Michael, Rob, and Karen are divided once again. We differ about the enjoyability of  Tomorrow Never Dies , Pierce Brosnan's second turn as James Bond with Jonathan Pryce as an over-the-top villain, Michelle Yeoh as a butt-kicking rival agent, Teri Hatcher as the never-before-revealed love of Bond's life, and a heart-breaking tale of two theme songs. 

Michael, Rob, and Pax stay up late talking about  The Alienist ,  Avenue 5,   Presumed Innocent ,  Sugar ,  The Six Million Dollar Man ,  Batman: Caped Crusader , Cleopatra movies,  The Cat from Outer Space ,  Zardoz ,  Murder on the Orient Express  movies, the  Time Bandits  TV series,  Mayor of Kingstown ,  Deadpool & Wolverine ,  Knox Goes Away ,  Under Paris , generation gaps,  The Man from At...

After a quick conversation with Evan about ancient history, Michael, Rob, and Pax discuss Jedi gloves,  Tomb Raider ,  Star Trek  video games, salsa,  Masterpiece  by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev, DC's  Dark Knights of Steel  event, a  Ghostbusters  oral history,  Starter Villain  by John Scalzi,  Charlesgate Confidential  by Scott Von Doviak,  Sisters of the Neversea  by Cynthia Leitich S...

Michael and Jess talk about a couple of Mike Mignola's favorite movies about witches:  Black Sunday  (1960) and  The Witch (2015). Plus Spirit Halloween, Maxine Minx, remakes, and strangely enough: Tarzan.

The Return of Jetpack Tiger! In response to our episode on the Cartoons and Kids TV Show Themes Sweet 16, Dashiell and Carlin Trammel critique the decision to include the medium of animation as a separate category that competes with live action genres like sitcoms and action shows. Should animated shows be included with live action shows of similar genres?

Michael and Rob welcome Ben Graham, Kay, and Pax to talk about the greatest cartoon and kids show theme songs of all time. Only sixteen tunes can go in the brackets, but there are honorable mentions galore. Even so, we've undoubtedly left out some great ones, so let us know  your  favorites!

Michael, Rob, and Pax ditch Dom and Mia for Roman, Tej, Monica, and Suki. And talk about whether or not that was a good move.

Michael, Rob, and Karen watch Pierce Brosnan's introduction as James Bond and talk about how well  GoldenEye  rebooted and reinvigorated the series after a few years' break post- Licence to Kill . Directed by Martin Campbell, the movie also features Sean Bean, Izabella Scorupco, Famke Janssen, Joe Don Baker, Robbie Coltrane, Alan Cumming, and introduces Judi Dench as the new M.

Michael, Rob, and Pax talk about Marvel's Indiana Jones comics, DC/Marvel crossovers, Marvel novels,  Deadpool and Wolverine  pre-work, movies about the Greek Empire and the rise of Rome, the  Despicable Me  movies,  Tár , the Ti West/Mia Goth Maxine movies,  Clone Wars ,  Kimba the White Lion , Marvel's  Blood Hunt  event and other comics, Ernest Hemingway, favorite movie props,  IF , the final s...

Michael, Rob, Pax, and Evan talk about snakes, TV shows and documentaries about politicians,  Lawmen: Bass Reeves , sequel novels to  Star Trek TOS  episodes, Classic  Nerd Lunch ,  Furiosa ,  Brats , the  Beverly Hills Cop  movies,  Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 ,  The Boys ,  Cobra Kai , X-Men cartoons,  Ripley , space cat novels,  Why Didn't They Ask Evans?  and other stuff by Agatha Ch...

Michael and Rob welcome Jeeg and Mike Westfall to help nominate 16 favorite TV sitcom theme songs, then vote on them until we determine the single greatest TV sitcom theme of all time. This was crazy hard with some impossible decisions, so let us know what we forgot and which themes should have advanced further in the tournament.

Michael and Jess discuss their love for Samara Morgan in Gore Verbinski's 2002 US remake of Ringu (1998). They also talk about whether the sequels are any good: the short film  Rings  (2005),  The Ring Two  (2005), and the feature-length  Rings (2017).

Michael, Rob, and Karen wrap up 1980s James Bond as well as Timothy Dalton's too short time on the series with  Licence to Kill . It's one of Rob's favorites, but not so much one of Michael's. And it's Karen's first time seeing it. So there's a lot to unpack as always.

Michael, Rob, and Pax are going to kill time between  Fast and Furious episodes by watching some old superhero stuff. We're starting with the wildly influential Superman cartoons released by Paramount in the early 1940s. The first nine were produced by Fleischer Studios and their fingerprints are also all over the eight that followed by a renamed studio under different leadership. Because of that,...