TV Ate My Dinner

Were there ever any good movies made from video games?  Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Mario Brothers, Doom, Dungeon Siege, Double Dragon, Alone in the Dark, Bloodrayne, Silent Hill, Resident Evil... hmm, guess not.  Do Tron and the Last Starfighter count?

What are the great cartoons of your childhood?  Did you watch Dungeons & Dragons or Super Friends (or the Super Powers show)?  Remember Hanna Barbera classics like Thundarr the Barbarian and the Herculoids before Adult Swim caught hold of them?  Of were you a robot man?  Did you follow Voltron and the Mighty Orbots?  Were you a Transformers man or did you favor the Gobots instead?  Remember the Ba...

In a world where anyone with internet access could get their own show, three friends stood together to make their dream of talking about great movie trailers come true.  But they're about to find out that there's more to trailers than Star Wars:  The Phantom Menace and Don LaFontaine voice-overs... and Darkman, Necessary Roughness, The Strangers, Star Trek VI, Superman Returns, and Patriot Games.....

Time Travel!  The boys discuss time-bending classics like Quantum Leap and Back to the Future, the temporal antics of the many Star Trek incarnations, and the many faces of Doctor Who.  What are the real life applications of time travel and alternate realities?  Did Napolean Dynamite get it right when it comes to strapping yourself to a car battery and looking for a vortex?  And what does Predator...

Is Superbad super bad for our economy?  Brooks and Sean ask this and other equally pointless questions, probing into the conventions of teen movies like the Stoned Age, American Pie and Juno, but also wondering why grown men collect action figures, how the Beanie Babies phenomenon got started, and how all this affects our ever-expanding consumer economy.  Somewhere along the line we also touch on...

What is junxploitation?  Well, you know all these movies (Pulp Fiction, Planet Terror, Sin City, RoboCop, Black Sheep, Hostel 2, etc.) about guys getting attacked in their man-business?  Well, the boys begrudgingly decide to delve into this disturbing cinematic trend by analyzing the long strange history of wang in film.  But they also take the time to exalt the awesome career of Karate Kid baddie...

Want to survive the scenarios you'd face in movies like Cloverfield?  Would you have what it takes to sidestep Godzilla or lay low while King Kong is ravaging the city?  From hopping biting monster spawn to ray gun powered giant robots, the boys are there with the survival tips you need to make it through the night.

Who is the REAL Leroy Mercer?  Where can you get a good copy of Black Devil Doll from Hell?  When is The Dolemite Explosion coming to your town?  Just a few of the questions you can try to answer if you take up the TVAMD scavenger hunt!  If Battlestar Galactica 1980 can make it to DVD, why not Heat Vision & Jack?  And have you ever heard of Edmund Cooper's visionary scifi masterpiece, Slaves of He...

Of all the underground art forms being exalted in the popular culture, comic books are among the least respected despite their influence on every other commercial art forms embraced by the mainstream.  If Spider-man and X-men top box office records alongside Batman and Superman while Dark Knight director Frank Miller dazzles us with big screen adaptations like Sin City and 300, why can't people ac...

Knight Rider returns and the boys are ready!  In this tribute to the Hof and his awesome computer car, the guys talk about the original KR and its follow-up incarnations.  Remember Knight Rider 2000?  How about Knight Rider 2010?  Did anybody watch Team Knight Rider?  Will the new car measure up?  And what will the future hold?  Knight Rider 3050, maybe?

Who are the unsung talents languishing in relative obscurity while millionaire entertainers are going on strike?  The boys talk about web sensations like Odd Todd and Homestarrunner.com (featuring Strongbad, Trogdor and Teen Girl Squad).  Are there internet treasures waiting to be tapped by mainstream media?  And what will it take for Hollywood to see that?

WRITER'S STRIKE!  The boys talk about the repercussions of the ongoing writer's strike and the impact it could have on quality television when the only shows left on the air are American Idol and I Love New York.  Also a bit of talk on Die Hard and its brutal body count of slain security guards.  As always, a dead-on laser focus discussion of relevant entertainment issues.

What are the movies that define a generation?  What movies defined yours?  The boys discuss this and how John Wayne and Star Wars represent the time in which they were made.  How does the Atari generation compare to the Halo generation?  What's the Breakfast Club for the modern age?  Listen and find out!

TVAMD:  The Jump the Shark Edition!  The boys discuss shows like Happy Days and their famous Jump the Shark moments.  At what point does a TV show overshoot its premise, lose credibility with its audience or lose its mind altogether?

The boys jabber about movies gone wrong, the wisdom of the continued Terminator franchise, and some stuff they've seen that they actually liked.  Also, weird adventures in movie theaters... Bonus Feature:  Learn how you can play the Kicking & Screaming game with your friends!  Are you a Max or a Chet?

Brooks and Sean look at the interesting film career of visionary director George Lucas, excluding his 800 pound gorillas - Star Wars & Indiana Jones.  Where was his film career going before Star Wars came along, and where might it have gone if it never had?

In today's short attention span society, are thirty second commerical spots the new entertainment?  The boys discuss it, along with classics like Burger King ads, the Geico cavemen and their weird TV show spinoff, the many incarnations of Max Headroom and whether Sonic ads are funny or just annoying.

The boys discuss movies that suck (mostly, anyway).  They trek into the vast wasteland of vampire movies, deconstructing where exactly the original undead lost their teeth and what it will take to get them back.

As the undisputed unequivocal authorities on what is empirically funny, Brooks and Sean discuss oft overlooked comedies like Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket and Noah Baumbach's Kicking & Screaming.  They also discuss sleeper classics like Office Space and the Big Lebowski, what it takes to be funny and why so many movies aren't.

In this scaled-down TVAMD minisode, Brooks and Sean review the monster flick The Host and talk a little about where horror movies are going, and how movies like Evil Dead may have taken their cue from the 60's experimental movie The Equinox:  Journey Into the Supernatural.  We cover a lot of ground in 12 minutes, folks...

As promised, the boys return to the 80's with this tribute to the Power Anthems of classics like Karate Kid, Rocky & Footloose!  If it set the scene for losers doing pullups so they could stand up to town toughs, then we'll cover it here!  Just record this show and play it every time you work out.  Or if you don't work out, then just listen to this show once and develop a six-pack montage-style!

The guys tackle the very guy-like subject of movie beatdowns, tough one liners, and other macho moments.  They also share some personal tough guy stories (all from Greg...interesting...)

Now that remakes are the new sequels, the boys tackle what movies should be reimagined (ever heard of Vally of Gwangi or Champions of Justice?), the direction giant monkey movies should be headed in, and what went wrong with the Rob Zombie Halloween remake.  There's also a couple of movies that maybe never should be remade.  Or maybe sooner or later they'll all get remade.  Who knows?

The inevitable 80's retrospective is here!  The guys go over classic 80's movies like Blade Runner, Aliens, and Back to the Future.  1987 alone gave us Predator, Robocop and Evil Dead 2.  What a decade for cool flicks.

Safety & survival tips you can get from watching movies and playing games.  The adventuring skills you picked up playing Dungeons & Dragons and watching Indiana Jones may just come in handy in your real life.  We also discuss the awesome precision and durability of booby trap technology, as evidenced in movies like The Goonies.  You'd be amazed what you can accomplish with a couple of ropes and a...