Legends Podcast

We're continuing Legends of Halloween with… A real throwback to the inception of the paranoid thriller.  Creepy neighbors in a gothic NY apartment building and formulating distrust of everyone you should.  What's the worst that can happen?  Satan himself slips you a ruffie and doesn't pull out … Rosemary's Baby   For more geeky podcasts visit GonnaGeek.com   You can find us on iTunes under ''Legen...

We're kicking off Legends of Halloween with… well, Halloween! John Carpenter's 1978 film starring Jamie Lee Curtis ushered in the classic era of American slasher films. With the 12th movie in the franchise coming out later this month, once again starring Curtis, it's easy to forget that the original was an independent film, made on the cheap for just over a quarter million dollars. Co-written by D...

One year after their successful reboot of Mission: Impossible, Paramount Pictures went back to the well of classic '60s TV action series with The Saint starring Val Kilmer and Elizabeth Shue. Based on the best-selling book series by Leslie Charteris, international super-thief Simon Templar has been played by nearly a dozen actors, including Vincent Price and Roger Moore, with Regé-Jean Page set to...

In 1991, Walt Disney Pictures released a live-action comic book movie - decades before their Marvel films - based on the 1980s graphic novel The Rocketeer by Dave Stevens. Itself an homage to 1920s and '30s action serials, Disney hoped to jumpstart their own Indiana Jones-style franchise based on the high-flying adventurer. The film starred a relative unknown, Billy Campbell, in the lead role, and...

Forty years ago, two friends sat down for dinner. Starring Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn as fictional versions of themselves, Louis Malle's film has become a cult classic. Now we're sitting down to feast on My Dinner with Andre. The restaurant, as they say, is history!    For more geeky podcasts visit GonnaGeek.com   You can find us on iTunes under ''Legends Podcast''. Please subscribe and give...

The "Fast and Furious" franchise was firing on all cylinders in 2011 when it released its fifth installment. Far from the Point Break redux of ten years before, the films had evolved from their street race-centric origins through a series of side-quels, only really getting around to a proper follow-up to the first film by the fourth overall outing. In the hands of director Justin Lin, the series t...

This week, we're doubling down on Soderbergh with his "Ocean's 7-Eleven" movie from 2017. Starring Channing Tatum and Adam Driver as two possibly-cursed brothers who plan to rob a NASCAR race, this down-and-dirty heist flick rounds out its cast with a Southern-drawl sporting Daniel Craig, two years ahead of his turn as the detective in Knives Out. While the film didn't exactly make off with the bo...

This week, we're betting on the 2001 remake of the 1960 Rat Pack classic Ocean's 11 to deliver some solid Aug-Heist fun. Directed by Stephen Soderbergh and starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia, Julia Roberts and more, the film scored at the box office and won two sequels and a spin-off. Numerically speaking, the film was the fifth highest-grossing movie of the year, with a w...

This week, we're celebrating the 25th anniversary of the movie reboot of the classic television series Mission: Impossible. Starring Tom Cruise as secret agent Ethan Hunt of the Impossible Mission Force, this Brian De Palma-directed film scored the third-biggest box office haul of 1996. Cruise returned as Hunt for five more films, with two more on the way, making him the longest-running actor to p...

This week, we're going back to the early days of the Coronavirus lockdown, which posed an interesting problem to filmmakers. How do you make a movie during a deadly pandemic when everyone is supposed to stay at home? While many productions were put on hold, writer Steven Knight took a dare and wrote the script, and director Doug Liman shot it in 18 days with an all-star cast. The result was Locked...

Fifteen years ago, a would-be summer blockbuster became an early example of a viral internet hit after the film's title was announced. Starring the already meme-worthy actor Samuel L. Jackson as an FBI agent tasked with protecting a witness on a flight from Hawaii to LAX, only to find the flight besieged by venomous serpents, the film's online notoriety did not translate to box office success I.R....

The 2001 sequel to 1999's hit monster flick The Mummy saw director Stephen Sommers helm another Indiana Jones-inspired adventure through cursed tombs infested with creepy bugs. Joining Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, Arnold Vosloo, and the rest of the first film's cast was a professional wrestler and untested actor known only as "The Rock." The film was another box office hit, delivering the biggest...

Forty years ago, director John Carpenter followed his hit horror film Halloween with an action movie set in a year far off in the future: 1997! Starring Kurt Russell in his iconic role as the eye patch-wearing former soldier Snake Plissken tasked with a mission to save the President from the island prison of Manhattan in return for a federal pardon, the film was a hit and became a cult classic. Wh...

Fifty years ago, automotive journalist Brock Yates and Car and Driver editor Steve Smith conceived the Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash, a timed race from East Coast to West Coast of America. The first "Cannonball Run" from New York City to the Portofino Inn in Redondo Beach, California, was covered in a widely-read article, and the race was run four more times throughout t...

Twenty-five years ago, Speed director Jan du Bont's latest action movie blew into theaters. Starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton as a pair of estranged tornado chasers, the film was co-written by Jurassic Park author Michael Chricton and produced by Stephen Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy. While the screenplay went through several rewrites from script doctors like Joss Whedon, Steve Zallian, and Jef...

On June 4th, 2004, disgruntled Granby, Colorado, resident Marvin Heemeyer drove his secretly-built "Killdozer" through the wall of his garage and took it on a destructive rampage of vengeance against his fellow townspeople, who he believed had wronged him over the years. At the end of the day, Heemeyer had destroyed 13 buildings, including the town hall, the local newspaper's offices, several loca...

Forty years ago, Indiana Jones swung onto movie theater screens with his first epic adventure hot on the heels of some nasty Nazis in search of the Ark of the Covenant. Created by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman, and brought to life by screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan, producer Frank Marshall, and director Stephen Spielberg. The film also featured a score by John Williams, cinematography by Douglas Sl...

Forty years ago, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table got the blockbuster treatment with John Boorman's 1981 production retelling the classic tales. Starring Nigel Terry as Arthur and Nicol Williamson as Merlin, the film also features Gabriel Byrne, Helen Mirren, Patrick Stewart, Liam Neeson, and Ciarán Hinds in some of their earliest film roles. Shot entirely on location in Ireland, the...

Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who produced the Academy Award-winning (and Legends fan favorite) animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, teamed up with director Mike Rianda on a family road trip movie about the end of the world for Sony Pictures Animation. Originally called Connected, the movie was scheduled for a 2020 release that was cancelled due to the pandemic. Netflix picked up the mov...

Director Chloé Zhao became the first woman of color to win Best Director at the Academy Awards this year with her 2020 film starring Frances McDormand. Based on Jessica Bruder's non-fiction book exploring the lives of van-dwelling transient Americans in the wake of the Great Recession, the film features many of the real-life people from the book playing fictionalized versions of themselves. The fi...

Author Tom Clancy ruled the '80s and '90s with his military espionage thrillers, starting with 1984's The Hunt for Red October, producing seventeen bestsellers and selling over 100 million copies in his lifetime, and spawning multiple motion pictures. His most famous character, CIA analyst Jack Ryan, has been played by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, and Chris Pine. Most recently, John K...

Danish director Thomas Vinterberg, perhap best known for co-founding the Dogme 95 filmmaking movement with fellow director Lars von Trier, is also famous for his intensely intimate character studies within ensemble casts. His latest film follows that trend, with Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Magnus Millang, and Lars Ranthe starring as four high school teachers who decide to get perpetually buz...

This player-versus-player video game hit arcades almost thirty years ago, and it quickly became infamous for its graphic violence, including bloody signature kill moves called Fatalities. While it's gotten the big screen treatment before, most notably in Paul W.S. Anderson's 1995 film, it's never earned the R-rating that the franchise deserves. The new film, released last month in theaters and on...

Playwright Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band opened in 1968 as an Off-Broadway production with a limited engagement - just five curtain calls. However, the show's popularity led to a change in venue to a larger theater where it ran for 1,001 performances from April of '68 to 1970. In 1970, William Friedkin directed the original cast in a film version from a script by Crowley, which made waves as...

Director Jamie Babbit made her feature debut in 1999 after she found success at Sundance with her short film Sleeping Beauties. Starring Natasha Lyonne as a high school cheerleader sent to conversion therapy camp, the film also features Clea DuVall and Melanie Lynskey as her fellow lesbian campers, along with Cathy Moriarty and RuPaul as the staff in the pink and blue John Waters-esque dreamscape...