Sequelcast 2 and Friends

Hosts Mat Bradley-Tschirgi, Thrasher, and Alex Miller discuss Psycho 2. Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) is let out of an insane asylum for good behavior, but can he return to normalcy without wanting to kill Bates Motel tenants again? An intellectual kind of sequel, Psycho II leans heavily on psychology and character dynamics. By the time we get to the end, there are a few too many plot twists. Per...

Hosts Mat Bradley-Tschirgi and Thrasher discuss Sierra's Hi-Res Adventure #6, The Dark Crystal.  Based on the original feature film directed by Jim Henson and Frank Oz, game designer Roberta Williams designed a game that sticks closely to the movie. While it's easier to play than earlier Hi-Res Adventures, it's also missing a big scope and, well, a sense of adventure. A recent abridged remake of t...

Hosts Mat Bradley-Tschirgi, Thrasher, Alex Miller and special guest Mike Kunda (star of The Pretender , author of Cue The Rocky Music: A Memoir , and founder and guide for the Yo, Philly! Rocky Film Tour ) discuss the rare Rocky V Workprint Cut. They also dive into how his life led him to be a Rocky impersonator so great that a documentary (The Pretender) was made after him!  Although the Rocky V...

Hosts Mat Bradley-Tschirgi and Thrasher discuss National Lampoon's European Vacation. A family goes to Europe and causes mayhem.  A bit less dark than the first entry, National Lampoon's European Vacation has a bigger scope but fewer laughs. Despite her comic chops (Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Johnny Dangerously), director Amy Heckerling does a bit of whiff here. Not awful, but not great either....

Hosts Mat Bradley-Tschirgi and Thrasher discuss National Lampoon's Vacation. A family gets yelled at by their father in the car during a long car trip across the United States. Inspired by a John Hughes from National Lampoon magazine, National Lampoon's Vacation takes slapstick, a road trip film, and dysfunctional family dynamics into a solid comedy. Harold Ramis directs his funny comedy that drag...

Hosts Mat Bradley-Tschirgi, Thrasher, and Alex Miller discuss their favorite movie trailers. Sometimes better than the movies themselves, movie trailers are an art form all their own.  Sequelcast 2 and Friends is part of the Greenlit Podcast Network Follow the show on Twitter @Sequelcast2 Like our Sequelcast 2 Facebook Page Listen to Marc with a C's music podcast Discography. Buy Thrasher's tabelt...

Hosts Mat Bradley-Tschirgi and Thrasher discuss the Space Quest PC game series.  After the success of King's Quest, Sierra Online wanted a zillion games with Quest in the title. Mark Crowe and Scott Murphy launched a series of hilarious sci-fi sendups that put Spaceballs to shame. Its later titles are notable for having voice-acting, most notably Gary Owens as the pompous narrator.   Sequelcast 2...

Hosts Mat Bradley-Tschirgi, Thrasher, and Alex Miller discuss the original Psycho movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock. A woman embezzles $40,000 and is on the run.  Arguably Hitchcock's most well known film, Psycho adapts Robert Bloch's novel into a low budget black and white thriller that shocked audiences with its plot twists and violence. It's a bit of a slow burn at first, but establishing Mari...

Hosts Mat Bradley-Tschirgi and Thrasher discuss the first few Super Mario Bros. video games on the NES. While Mario made his start as Jumping Man in 1981's Donkey Kong, he eventually became Nitendo's mascot thanks to being the de facto pack-in cartridge for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985. Light on plot, Super Mario Bros. instead focuses on the fantasy letting players control Mario and h...

Hosts Mat Bradley-Tschirgi and Thrasher discuss Get Him to the Greek. A drugged up rock star is dragged by his talent scout to his big concert at the Greek Theatre.   Focusing solely on the Aldous Snow character from Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Get Him to the Greek is a raucous road movie with a rather dark father son story at its center. Its excellent soundtrack performed by star Russell Brand, wh...

Hosts Mat Bradley-Tschirgi and Thrasher discuss Forgetting Sarah Marshall. A man travels to Hawaii where he accidentally meets up with his ex-girlfriend.  A romantic comedy lightened up by its Hawaiian setting, Forgetting Sarah Marshall combines heartbreak, a Dracula muppet musical, and a kind of love triangle into a mix that works better than one might expect. Jason Segel is good as a schlubby le...

Hosts Mat Bradley-Tschirgi and Thrasher discuss Queen of the Damned. An undead musician rises from the dead to start a mediocre goth band.  Pulling in elements from The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned, this dopey sequel ignores large swaths of the book to make a generic early 2000s vampire movie. Aaliyah has some fun as the titular villain and Stuart Townsend looks the part of Lestat, but t...

Hosts Mat Bradley-Tschirgi, Thrasher, and Alex Miller discuss their favorite TV Christmas specials.  Apple TV+ had a recent controversy after acquiring exclusive rights to all Peanuts media, including the classic A Charlie Brown Christmas. After people complained this special was not going to air on broadcast TV as it has for decades, they worked out a deal to air it once on PBS ad free. Sequelcas...

Hosts Mat Bradley-Tschirgi and Thrasher discuss Interview With The Vampire. Based on Anne Rice's best-selling book that kicked off a slew of sequels and rip-offs, this heady movie combining of historical fiction, vampires, and queer romance nails the tone of the novel. It's gory, bloody, and campy, yet it works at balancing this tricky act. Brad Pitt is not great as Louis, but Tom Cruise really ge...

Hosts Mat Bradley-Tschirgi, Thrasher, and Alex Miller discuss A Chinese Ghost Story III. Set a century after the original, A Chinese Ghost Story III features new characters but some of the same actors. To make things a bit more confusing, it also revisits locations from the original film.  Ching Siu-tung goes for more of a comedic bent than the other flicks in the series. It's not the worst thing...

Hosts Mat Bradley-Tschirgi, Thrasher, and Alex Miller discuss A Chinese Ghost Story II. Picking up a few years after the original, Ning (Leslie Cheung) escapes from prison only to find a woman Windy (Joey Long) who looks remarkably like his love Siu Sin from the first movie.  While the original was a legitimate romance, this one feels more like Ghostbusters with its focus on the monsters. Its over...

Hosts Mat Bradley-Tschirgi, Thrasher, and Alex Miller discuss The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone.  Director Francis Ford Coppola returns to the maligned The Godfather Part III 30 years later to recut it to closer fit his original vision. Unlike a lot of director's cuts, this one runs shorter than the original. Aside from the different opening and ending to the film, several scenes a...

Hosts Mat Bradley-Tschirgi and Thrasher discuss Gremlins 2: The New Batch. A man's former pet follows him into his high-tech workplace in the big city to cause further havoc.  More zany than the original, Gremlins 2: The New Batch has more gags than an issue of MAD Magazine. Cameos abound and the variety of Gremlins will make your head spin. Some prefer this to the original.  Sequelcast 2 and Frie...

Hosts Mat Bradley-Tschirgi and Thrasher discuss Gremlins with fan of the show Chris Walsh. A father (Hoyt Axton) gets his son (Zach Galligan) a pet with deadly consequences.  Although originally conceived as an R-rated horror movie, Gremlins became more of a suburban fable. Although darker than its sequel, this has more of a family movie vibe. Jerry Goldsmith's score is very enjoyable.  Sequelcast...

After Mat interviews Al Jean (co-creator of The Critic and Executive Producer of The Simpsons) about the first season of The Critic, hosts Mat Bradley-Tschirgi and Thrasher discuss A Little Deb Will Do Ya, the fifth episode of The Critic. Jay Sherman helps his sister Margo prepare for the debutante ball.  There are some nice moments between Jay and Margo here. Much like The Simpsons, the sister te...

Hosts Mat Bradley-Tschirgi and Thrasher discuss Time Zone (Hi-Res Adventure #5). Save the world by traveling through time. A magnum opus of sorts for Roberta Williams, Time Zone originally shipped on six double sided floppies with a retail price of $99. Sales were poor and so was the gameplay. Sierra would later gain infamy in the 1990s for shipping a game on a lot of discs (CDs this time) with Ph...

Hosts Mat Bradley-Tschirgi, Thrasher, and Alex Miller discuss the original A Chinese Ghost Story movie.  Inspired by a short story from Pu Songling's Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, A Chinese Ghost Story weaves a fable mixing the comedy, action, horror, and musical genres into a charming motion picture.  Director Ching Siu-tung's first massive hit, A Chinese Ghost Story tells an intimate st...

Hosts Mat Bradley-Tschirgi, Thrasher, and Alex Miller discuss the current trend of home video and gaming going from HD (720P, 1080P) to UHD (4K, 8K).  According to analysis from Decision Data , Internet bandwidth in the United States is ranked 11th in the world. As the world economy shifts more to remote work, Internet speed is faster than ever, but is it enough to be able to stream huge amounts o...

Hosts Mat Bradley-Tschirgi, Thrasher, and Alex Miller discuss The Crow: Wicked Prayer. A crow revives a murdered man to get revenge on the Satanists that killed him.  Based on the tie-in novel by Norman Partridge, The Crow: Wicked Prayer to its credit tries to shake things up a bit. It takes about half its running time before killing off the main character and turning him into The Crow. A southwes...

Hosts Mat Bradley-Tschirgi and Thrasher discuss Clerks II. Desperate for work, Dante and Randall start to flip burgers for Mooby's and wonder what went wrong with their lives.   Kevin Smith returns to his roots with Clerks II. Featuring a mixture of crude humor and soap opera confessions, Clerks II has Smith on surer footing than the reviled Jersey Girl. Rosario Dawson brings a lot to the cast as...