Gobbledygeek

Listen to Gobbledygeek and live forever. This week, in a stealth continuation of this year's Gobbledyween , Paul and Arlo head on down to New Orleans for Neil Jordan's 1994 adaptation of Anne Rice's classic Interview with the Vampire . Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, and Antonio Banderas are the most beautiful men anyone could have cast as immortals in the mid-'90s, and they're joined by a prepubescent Kir...

We all get lost, every now and then. Most of us don't get quite as lost as the three film students at the center of The Blair Witch Project , a massive hit in 1999 whose reputation among the average moviegoer has also taken a massive hit. If you ask Arlo, though, it's one of the greatest horror films ever made–and he tells Paul exactly why, as they celebrate the second and final week of this year'...

Leaves are on the ground, blood is on the screen–it's time for a (very late) Gobbledyween! Gobbledygeek's annual horror-thon returns for an abbreviated run, kicking things off with Mike Flanagan's 2021 Netflix miniseries Midnight Mass . What at first seems like a riff on 'Salem's Lot –a vampire ingratiates himself into a tiny coastal community–becomes a soaring exploration of addiction, faith, and...

For his third film, Jordan Peele looks to the skies–and what he finds doesn't want to be seen. This week, Paul and Arlo say yup to Nope , Peele's celebration and evisceration of spectacle. The boys discuss the widening of Peele's horizons in the summer blockbuster mode; how the film reveres Spielberg while offering a pointed rebuttal to Jaws ; Daniel Kaluuya's quiet intensity; and why first-time v...

Sing, sing a song; sing of oblivion, it's 36 issues long! For this month's first (?) Four-Color Flashback , Paul and Arlo are harmonizing about Robert Kirkman and Lorenzo De Felici's 2018-22 Image series Oblivion Song . It's an alien invasion saga that questions the very concepts of "alien" and "invasion," regarding its human and Kuthaal characters with equal levels of empathy and complexity. The...

No, this isn't a dream (or even a nightmare): The Sandman , the iconic Vertigo comic book series created by Neil Gaiman, Sam Keith, and Mike Dringenberg, has finally been adapted for television. Paul, Arlo, and The Deli Counter of Justice co-creator Eric Sipple are all huge fans of the comics, and they use their familiarity with the Dreaming to dive deep into the first season of the Netflix TV sho...

From Tupelo to Memphis, from Hollywood to Vegas, Elvis Presley conquered America–and now, telling his story, an Australian filmmaker has conquered the biopic. The operatic, maximalist, subtlety-eschewing Baz Luhrmann returns to the screen with Elvis , delivering the glitzy, excessive tribute this mythical/kitsch-ical icon deserves. Paul and Arlo share their personal connections to Elvis, rave abou...

For another freestyle, Paul and Arlo are getting weird. As in "Weird Al" Yankovic, whom Arlo recently saw with their good buddy Kenn Edwards. Arlo recounts the concert moment he'd been waiting for all his life, then Paul discusses the joys and frustrations of the first-ever virtual Slayage conference. Plus, brief ruminations on Nope , Thor: Love and Thunder , and The Rehearsal ; and we remember ou...

Listener, we would have words with thee! As the Odinson and the Mighty Thor swing their hammers onto the big screen in Thor: Love and Thunder , Paul and Arlo revisit some of the film's influences for this month's Four-Color Flashback . The boys dig deep into the early part of Jason Aaron's run on the golden-haired Avenger, with Thor: God of Thunder #1-25 and Thor (2014) #1-8. Topics of discussion...

Paul and Arlo are going slightly mad. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is the MCU's latest trip through the titular multiverse, fracturing and reshaping reality to meet the franchise's corporate needs. If that sounds a little unenthused, well, what can we say? The boys didn't love this one. Paul, ever the optimist, discusses why the MCU's depiction of sorcery continues to be one of its...

For this month's Four-Color Flashback , Paul and Arlo roll the Die to discuss Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans' dark tale of a group of one-time RPG nerds getting sucked into the world of the game. Gillen has described the book as "goth Jumanji ," and there's some truth to that–these characters feel everything, hard. Luckily, so do we, and so does special guest Eric Sipple, author of Mimesis and c...

In a multiverse without limitations…you have chosen to listen to Gobbledygeek . Let that sink in. While you do, you'll also get to hear Paul and Arlo's latest Geek Challenge ! Arlo sort-of challenges Paul to The Daniels' Everything Everywhere All at Once , the year's big breakout movie, starring Michelle Yeoh as infinite versions of herself; and Paul in turn challenges Arlo to James Wong's 2001 ac...

Travelers of the night, welcome to Paul and Arlo's latest MCUTV discussion. They join hands once again with Hollywood wonder boy Michael Holland, and together they summon Moon Knight . Oscar Isaac joins the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Marc Spector, the human avatar of Egyptian god Khonshu, and…well, is he Marc Spector? Is he Steven Grant? Or is he someone else entirely? The gang discusses how the...

It's a freestyle episode, boys and girls! You know what that means: the Dragon's Milk is flowing, the tangents are plentiful, and Paul and Arlo just can't get enough Dick's. Now, now, get your mind out of the gutter–we're talking Dick's, the iconic Seattle burger chain. In addition to chowing down on their favorite regional burgers (Arlo shouts out Akron's very own Swenson's), the boys are very mu...

Sit back and say 'Aaaahhhh!' For this month's Four-Color Flashback , Paul and Arlo take a trip to the dentist with Raina Telgemeier's 2010 autobiographic novel Smile . Raina looks back on how her orthodontic woes served as a marker for her adolescence, from the loss of her two front teeth in 6th grade circa 1989 through finally ditching those braces in freshman year '92. This prompts Paul and Arlo...

Riddle me this, riddle me that…who's afraid of Matt Reeves' The Bat ( man )? Not Paul and Arlo, that's for sure, at least not with Project Batman vet Kenn Edwards at their side. There's a lot of ground to cover, beginning with: Did we need the 897th Batman movie? Of course not, but since we're here, the gang discusses Robert Pattinson's turn as the Caped Crusader, the film's emphasis on detective...

And you run, you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking…well, before it sets, Paul and Arlo have a few MCU movies they need to discuss. Due to that pesky pandemic, we've gotten behind on the Marvel Cinematic Universe here at Gobbledygeek , but fear not! In this special, super-sized episode, Paul and Arlo discuss three mighty Marvel movies: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings , which...

What happens when a child is born who will invent immortality? According to Ram V and Felipe Andrade's The Many Deaths of Laila Starr , Death is fired from her job, is cast into a mortal body, and attempts to find and murder this child. Oh, she also dies a lot. On this month's Four-Color Flashback , Paul & Arlo discuss the book's unique approach to Indian mythology, Andrade's beautifully distorted...

It's Ladies' Night on Gobbledygeek ! By which we mean we've got a Geek Challenge featuring Richard Donner's 1985 medieval fantasy epic Ladyhawke and Greta Gerwig's 2017 millennial coming-of-age tale Lady Bird . What do these two films have in common? They're both about transformation, of course! In Lady Bird , Saoirse Ronan transforms into a young woman ready to take on the big city; in Ladyhawke...

For Paul and Arlo, existential crises and comic books often go hand-in-hand. Such is the case for this week's freestyle, wherein Paul's rumination on the erosion of his teenage self-confidence leads into a discussion of superhero mags. Paul tells Goblin punks to fuck off as he rocks out to Cody Ziglar and Justin Mason's Spider-Punk , goes undercover with Kelly Thompson and Elena Casagrande's recen...

Weigh anchor and hoist the mizzen! Paul and Arlo set sail for a discussion of David Jenkins' pirate rom-com Our Flag Means Death . The new HBO Max series, a very loose telling of the history between Stede "The Gentleman Pirate" Bonnet and Edward "Blackbeard" Teach, begins as a silly romp very much in the vein of executive producer/star Taika Waititi's other work. And then…well, it becomes somethin...

Sometimes a gorilla is just a gorilla. Sometimes, though, that gorilla–righteously bearing arms though he may be–is a gateway to a story about the power and fluidity of narrative. For this month's Four-Color Flashback , Paul and Arlo go ape for Si Spurrier and Jeff Stokely's Six-Gun Gorilla , a sci-fi Western published by BOOM! Studios in 2013. The boys discuss Stokely's glorious, hyper-exaggerate...

Somethin's comin', somethin' good: this week, Paul and Arlo pirouette through a discussion of Steven Spielberg's new take on West Side Story , nominated for Best Picture at this year's Oscars. Is it a spoiler to say they love it? The boys discuss how Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner's changes enrich the text, why choreographer Justin Peck's bold choice to discard Jerome Robbins' iconic chor...

Why use old code to mirror something new? Writer/producer Tilly Bridges is back to continue last week's discussion of The Matrix series. This time, she joins Paul and Arlo to chat about 2003's anime anthology The Animatrix , which fits surprisingly well into the series' trans allegory; and, for the bulk of this episode, The Matrix Resurrections . Lana Wachowski's triumphant return to her signature...

Unfortunately, no one can be told what Gobbledygeek is. You have to listen to it for yourself. Writer-producer Tilly Bridges joins Paul and Arlo for the first of a two-part discussion of Lilly & Lana Wachowski's revolutionary Matrix franchise. This week, the gang discusses the original Matrix trilogy, which was released from 1999-2003 and shattered moviegoers' preconceived notions of the world aro...