The Latecomers

Show Notes This week we’re watching the romantic classic Lady and the Tramp. Keep an eye out for a problematic ethnic portrayal - or seven. At least the ladies are represented - one as a whore and the other as a madonna. Whoo, it’s a melange of WTF this week on the show. Recommendations: Shrinking (Apple+)   Next up: Sleeping Beauty (1959)    Email us at latecomers@gmail.com Find Amity @ www.amity...

Show Notes**** This week we watch a film that lives deep in the cultural consciousness that we seem to have conveniently added a fun song and a heartwrenching screen near-death to while forgetting just how much blatant racism is actually in it. Peter Pan and his sidekick (girlfriend?) Tinkerbell kidnap a few kids and then get mad at Hook for kidnapping one kid. Discussions include malicious intent...

Show Notes We’re back with Alice as she dreams up Wonderland - and then would very much like to get out of it. Up is down, red is white, and everywhere you look something is telling you to eat it. Characters that live large in culture everywhere you look, and holding it all together is an impetuous and nosy child. Hit the hookah, grab a little cake, and join us in Wonderland. Oh - and we have a ne...

Show Notes First - I am sorry about the short bursts of crackling, my editing skills were no match. They are few and brief. It’s the beginning of the 1950s and Disney enters strong with Cinderella. This is the first film of the series that legitimately feels like it was made for children. We’ve got animals with various levels of personality and anthropomorphism, helpfully delineated by the additio...

Show Notes It’s time to close out the 40s with an adventure and a terror. Mr. Toad goes on a wild ride in spite of his friends’ best efforts and then Ichabod goes on a wild ride at the behest of his rival. Two more stories from the library and the last of the piecemeal films, not only do the characters go on wild rides, we do too!  Recommendations: The Wind in the Willows (80s Stop Motion availabl...

Show Notes Seven songs, seven cartoons - from near death by waterfall to Pecos Bill, with Johnny Appleseed and a tugboat in between. This one is chock-full of stunning animation and fun music in short vignettes so you can’t even get bored. Fun songs, sweet poems and silly gags - it’s a fun one! Recommendations: Quesadillas - yes, those quesadillas Next up: The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr Toad (19...

Show Notes We’ve got a duology as well as a debate - is this movie fun, and is it fancy free? We start with a staid tale of the power of love which is expressed through violence as Bongo the bear tries to make his way among nature’s savage beasts after living amongst the civilized circus animals. After nothing happens for a while, he does get there in the end - all he has to do is murder his rival...

Show Notes Back into the world of propaganda and lack of narrative throughline, we learn about birds, burritos and piñatas this week as we discuss The Three Caballeros (no, not Los Tres but The Three…). Donald Duck once again wants to learn all about places and kin from south of the equator. From heat seeking penguins to sex-starved ducks (that’s Donald doing an excellent Pepe Le Pew impersonation...

Show Notes Travel with us - and the Disney animators - to the wild world of South America - from Lake Titicaca to the Argentine Pampas to Rio, we get a cartoon’s eye view of the our neighbors to the south. Disney was trying to lure these South American countries away from the Nazis and Donald Duck was the tool.    Recommendations: Gilda (Tubi), The Traitors (Peacock), The Anniversary Party (Rentab...

Show Notes We were introduced to a wobbly legged pre-cursor Simba this week as we watched 1942’s Bambi. With the story arc of simply growing up, we get to see baby Bambi and his woodland friends frolic freely until Man comes and does what he does best - destroy everything. But everything comes out twitterpated in the end.     Recommendations: Go outside and/or make something with your hands   Next...

Show Notes This week we follow the adventures of a silent baby as he is tormented by all but the one creature who he is supposed to fear - Jumbo Jr. stars as Dumbo! The physically largest circus in all of creation, built on the backs of faceless slaves, and populated by bullies, welcomes a new baby and has nothing nice to say. We remind you and ourselves that our protagonist is a BABY. But at leas...

The combination of music and animation goes back to the beginning of animation and Disney dives all the way into the motif in 1940’s Fantasia. We get dinosaurs, dancing mushrooms and hippos, the first color Mickey Mouse and a full Bacchanal - all while listening to some of the most popular classical music of all time - would you dare ask for anything more? A plot? Nah, not this time. Just kick bac...

Show Notes We’re going deep on one of the most unsettling movies of all time - Pinocchio. A movie full of horny animals, butts, and human trafficking, we never would have thought we would want to screen a Disney animated film from the 40s before showing it to a kid, but this thing is bonkers and more than a little frightening. From gross Italian stereotypes to the theme song for all of Disney, it’...

Show Notes We enter the vault and go all the way back to the beginning to the Disnification of their first Grimm’s fairy tale with Snow White. Being the fairest in the land is a tough and dangerous gig, as this pale princess finds out when the evil queen and her narc of a mirror come after her. So loveable that she woos 7 grown men in less than 12 hours, she has a heart of gold to go along with th...

Show Notes Welcome back! We are embarking on a new and hopefully more lighthearted and escapist journey with Disney Animation - and Pixar, of course! Here's a little of our Disney history and a sneak peek into what you can expect.

Show Notes In our final episode of the season, we’re talking Train to Busan from 2016. In a film that mashes 28 weeks later and Snow piercer had a baby we follow the adventures of Bad Dad, Bad Ass, and Baseball Boy, along with their respective women, trying simply to survive both zombies and capitalists while hurtling through space on a train. We find out what makes a good person and if your job s...

Show Notes Ready, set, drive! This week we watched Mad Max – Fury Road, a diesel soaked naked prey in an the apocalyptic future vision out of the mind of George Miller. Rictus Erectus, Vuvalini, Immortan Joe, Furiosa, the Doof warrior, Splendid, Capable, Nux, The Dag and … Max, the gang’s all here. Stunts galore – explosions and crashes and motorcycles and sand storms – it’s got everything you cou...

Show Notes This week we’re talking STDs with 2014’s It Follows. It’s not a slasher movie, but it sure looks up to John Carpenter. Girls just want to have fun, and this supernatural buzzkill comes out to keep that from happening unless you want to be ****ed to death by something that looks like your parent’s corpse. It’s slow, but it’s not stupid, and it’s scary!   Recommendations: Companion (In Th...

Show Notes It’s the best modern day action franchise – maybe the best American action franchise – John Wick. Never have so many people died because a dipshit made a dumb decision and killed a dog. We talk all things Keanu, the hubris of waiting for an assassin while nude, the assassin’s code and how cool the underground world they build really is. Join us for the watch – and keep on – make it a wh...

Show Notes This week we go back in time to when AI was a remarkable step forward instead of a feature on all of our devices, whether we like it or not, with Alex Garland’s Ex Machina. Oscar Isaac plays a billionaire that falls into all of the billionaire stereotypes that have proven true with the rise of Elon Musk: a self-proclaimed demi-god. Domhnall Gleeson plays a patsy for every other speaking...

Show Notes It’s a love story this week as we watch Gone Girl directed by fave David Fincher. We extoll the virtues of Ben Affleck and Carrie Coon and spend a lot of time asking about love and romance. What is love? Is this it? Why? What? How? Come to your own conclusions but not until you hear ours.   Recommendations: Wolf Man (in theaters); Self-care   Next up: Ex Machina (2014) (Rentable)     Em...

Show Notes This week we watch Bong Joon-Ho’s dystopian masterpiece – no not that one, the other one – Snowpiercer. Chris Evans doesn’t want to be a hero, and can he truly be if he know what people taste like? We argue yes, when the villain is capitalism, any man can be a hero. Tilda Swinton puts in a grounded and naturalistic performance (her words) and Allison Pill is just a delight while Kang-ho...

Show Notes Lily Taylor is trying very hard to not kill her kids in the first film of the Conjuring Universe – aptly named the Conjuring. Ed and Lorraine Warren – characters we are not going to conflate with their real-world counterparts – are enlisted to help a family of seven with a demon problem. Think Poltergeist but replace a haunted closet with a haunted mom and Zelda Rubenstein with Vera Far...

Show Notes This week, we are on a hunt for the most wanted man in the minds and hearts of Americans lead by the inimitable Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty. Kathryn Bigelow is a master of packing lot of tension in scenes set anywhere from black sites to offices. The fundamental reality of war makes even the most benign seeming activities a possible powder keg leaving us off kilter and at a los...

Show Notes First days on the job don’t get much worse than this one – Iko Uwais stars in the pure action film The Raid: Redemption. Cops go into a tenement building and have to fight their way out facing off against an army of desperate people and unhinged gangsters. Once we get in, the only way out is through. Martial arts you probably have never seen alongside bonkers gunfights leaves us exhaust...