Two Nerds Sitting on a Couch

In which we discuss the SyFy channel's miniseries which encapsulates the second two of the Dune trilogy by Frank Herbert: Dune Messiah and Children of Dune . Though the production was written, produced, and largely acted by the same people, the clunkily titled Frank Herbert's Children of Dune was significantly better than it's predecessor, Frank Herbert's Dune. Though I think the miniseries i...

Continuing in our exploration of all things Dune, Two Nerds discuss David Lynch's 1984 film adaption of Dune, which was famously troubled production, critical failure, and pretty bonkers. It was also hugely formative for me. There are at least several cuts of the film out there, and we watched two of them: the 2 hour theatrical version, and the 3 hour version which was cut for television, disowned...

In which we discuss the documentary Jodorowsky's Dune , which details Alejandro Jodorowsky's efforts to make a movie version of Dune in the 70s. Some of the stories told by Jodorowsky are so bonkers as to strain credulity, but he's an incredibly entertaining raconteur. Jodorowsky's concept was way too out there for the money people in Hollywood at the time, so the film was never produced. How...

In the second installment in our series on all things Dune, Two Nerds discuss the 2000 SciFi (before it became SyFy) channel's miniseries entitled Frank Herbert's Dune. It's ... not great: seriously mis-cast, with weird pretentions of theatricality, but a totally gonzo lighting designer. The late 90's stylings of the production design were pretty fun, even if mostly this series misses the mark.&nb...

With the premiere of the Villeneuve Dune just around the corner, Two Nerds have decided to revisit all things Frank Herbert. This first outing is a discussion of the book Dune and Frank Herbert's work more generally. We touch on the Dune series, God Emperor more specifically, and The Dosadi Experiment. We also discuss Herbert's complicated legacy: One of the reasons we both love Dune is becau...

Two Nerds sat down to watched the recent film Voyagers with some excitement, because there are a vanishingly small number of actual generation ships in film. There are oodles of long haul ships, like the Nostromo , where its crew and passengers are put in hibernation of some kind. There are precious few fictional voyages where the ship's population will live out their entire lives on board, and wh...

Two Nerds finally watched Two Distant Strangers , an Oscar-winning short film which takes the Groundhog Day premise of a single, repeating day, and applies it to a situation where a white cop shoots a Black man over and over again. (So content warning for racist violence.) We watched a lot of Groundhog Day -like narratives a while back, and the way Two Distant Strangers centers Black America makes...

1993 was a good year for movies about the nascent Internet, apparently, because both The Net and Hackers were released that year. Two Nerds sat down and watched both. Both are very 90s time capsules, but Hackers is significantly more fun. Two Nerds talk about aol, 90s optimism, 20 lb laptops, our eternal love of Matthew Lillard, and so much cyberpunk. 

We've been on hiatus for a bit, but we're back with one of my favorite movies by one of my favorite writers: Pontypool. Tony Burgess adapted the screenplay from his novel, which is titled called Pontypool Changes Everything. Pontypool is kind of a zombie movie, though the mechanism of transmission and specific expression of the contagion is unusual: whatever is making people violently attack each...

Our other listener asked if we'd done a podcast about The Fifth Element , so we watched it again. You guys, that was totally off the hook. Apparently, in the intervening decade or so since the resident nerds last viewed The Fifth Element, we'd also seen a bunch of other stuff which has made us seriously rethink what was going on in that movie. Most specifically: the documentary Jodorowsky's Dune a...

Two Nerds decided to watch Cell , the movie adaption of the same-named Stephen King novel, which is about a pulse sent over cell phones which makes anyone who hears it homicidal. (King also co-wrote the screenplay.) This is our second foray into zombie narratives, which is pretty funny because the "phoners" of Cell are unusual zombies, more in the line of the hacked people in Neal Stephenson's Sno...

Two Nerds sat down and watched the newest Zach Snyder movie, Army of the Dead , which is really exciting me because zombies are 100% my wheelhouse, and this the first zombie movie we've discussed. Like a Zach Snyder film, this podcast got a little out of hand in terms of run-time. Listening to this again, I realize the zombie allusions come hot and heavy, so I'm going to try to keep a running tota...

Two Nerds recently learned of a new cut of 1993's super bonkers Super Mario Bros. movie , put together by the fine people at The Movie Archive . This new cut restores 20 minutes of excised footage, making the movie, if anything, more bonkers. The copy I watched was on the Internet Archive, but that appears to have been taken down. There's a mirror available here , but I don't know how long that wi...

Two Nerds watched the most recent movie in the Conjuring universe, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, which is the third to focus on Ed & Loraine Warren, and the eighth overall. We also recently watched The Exorcist and Poltergeist , as all deal with spiritual possessions of one kind or another. 

Two Nerds watched three movies that are about the justice system (or policing more generally) in futuristic dystopias: Demolition Man, Judge Dredd, and Robocop. The first two are very similar: both mid-1990s, with Sylvester Stallone as the lead. Both were (at least partially) reactions to Rodney King and the L.A. Riots. We included Robocop , which was made earlier in 1987, as a contrast with the o...

We went into the movie Bliss pretty cold. The really quite terrible blurb said something about how maybe reality is a computer simulation, and that sounded close enough to our theme of alternate realities that we gave it a go. Like Colossal , its TV Guide entry poorly describes what is actually going on in the movie. The movie features cameos by Bill Nye the Science Guy and continental philosopher...

Back in the day, you could tell if a Bruce Willis movie was going to be any good depending on whether he had hair or not. Given the movies Cosmic Sin and Breach , that rule of thumb no longer applies. Both movies involve space zombies of varying origins. 

The subject of this episode is the ways faith and/or religious doctrine is used differently in explicitly Christian films like The Remaining or Left Behind , and films that use religious lore more like mythology. In this instance our example is a movie called The Possession , but movies like The Exorcist or The Prophesy would fall into this category as well. 

Two Nerds discuss two movies that deal with parallel universes: the not very impressive Alpha Gateway , and the absolutely delightful Coherence .  We also talk a bit about Counterpart , a previous podcast subject, and China Miéville's The City & The City . While it seems like time travel narratives, especially those that go back in time, focus on regret, parallel universe stories focus mo...

Two Nerds watched both the 1995 and 2021 Mortal Kombat movies back to back, then sat down for a little chat. The 1995 Mortal Kombat was directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, who also wrote all and directed most of the Resident Evil movies to date. (Apparently there's a prequel coming out this year called Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, which he isn't involved in.) The 2021 Mortal Kombat is much...

As part of our exploration of parallel worlds, Two Nerds discuss the spy thriller series Counterpart . J.K. Simmons plays a double role as Howard Silk, each of whom are members of a shadowy U.N. agency in two different versions of reality. One is a stupendous badass, and the other a colorless drone. The two versions of reality are in something of a cold war with one another, and the two U.N....

Two Nerds sat down with our Gen-Z consultant (aka oldest son, Leo) to watch Monster Hunter , a Paul W.S. Anderson movie based on the eponymous video game series. We'd never played any of the games, so Leo was on hand to nitpick inconsistences. I think the resident Nerds were more inclined to be forgiving of Monster Hunter 's failings, because we're old in not invested in the source material, but L...

Two Nerds watch the first episode of HBO's The Nevers , a steampunk Buffy the Vampire Slayer slash X-Men hybrid. The Nevers was created by Joss Whedon, who then apparently "stepped away" some time after all the allegations about his behavior on the set of Justice League . Whatever his involvement, the series is undoubtedly Whedonesque, with familiar character types and relationship dynamics. As a...

Two Nerds have spent the last few episodes discussing time travel, repeating day, or otherwise timey-wimey narratives. Adjacent to that (and often overlapping) are stories that explore parallel worlds. In this outing, we discuss the movies Sliding Doors and Another Earth , and touch on a series called Counterpart. Sliding Doors is a rom-com from 1999, and Another Earth a melancholy indie movi...

Two Nerds were lovingly trolled by our listener, and ended up watching Knowing , a predestination wig-out starring Nicolas Cage, which was described by Richard as "Kirk Cameron's screenplay and directorial adaptation of L. Ron Hubbard writing Childhood's End ." It made us have some Serious Feelings.  This one's for you, Ian.