Verbal Diorama

Featuring five-time award winning podcaster Nicholas Haskins..... and Tits McGee. Actually, it's me, Em, Tits McGee is on vacation. Joining me is the Ron Burgundy of podcasting. A man who has many leather bound books and whose apartment smells of rich mahogany, a man who can play jazz flute like no other - Nicholas Haskins of the podcast Nikoli's Kitchen. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy , if...

I can't believe how cute this episode is! On the surface, Romy and Michele's High School Reunion is a very simple premise. Two friends, happy with their lot in life, suddenly realise that maybe their post-high school existence isn't as brilliant as they first thought. Car dealership cashier Romy White and unemployed fashionista Michele Weinberger decide to go to their ten-year high school reunion...

You know the name. You know the number. He has a licence to kill, he likes his vodka martinis shaken, not stirred. He's a sexist misogynist dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War.... And then, along came GoldenEye . Propelling James Bond into the post-Cold War, post-fall of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall, and a technologically advanced 1995. It had been six years since the previous Timothy Dalton...

SURPRISE!! In the grand tradition of surprise Halloween episodes, and following last year's Halloween episode Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight , I wanted to cover another underappreciated cult classic that probably not many other podcasts will this spooky season - Buffy the Vampire Slayer . Not the excellent TV series, (although I have done an episode on Hush ), but the 1992 movie that introduce...

You could say Jennifer's Body was wildly misunderstood on its release in 2009. Just seen as yet another titillating teen horror capitalising on the sexuality of its lead actor Megan Fox, and heralded as neither funny nor scary; the Diablo Cody-penned, Karyn Kusama-directed, horror-comedy seemed to be destined for the DVD bargain bin.... And then, in recent years, the tide has turned because now pe...

Welcome to the second Nanorama episode - episodes slightly shorter, but focusing on interesting titbits of information. For this episode, I'm continuing with the Alien franchise by talking a little about the saga's attempts at prequels: Prometheus brought back Alien director Ridley Scott, to distance itself from the franchise and delve into the origins of humanity, and the story around Alien's spa...

They're creepy and they're kooky, mysterious and spooky, they're altogether ooky, and they're finally on Verbal Diorama. **click click** The Addams Family , based on Charles Addams' comic strips and the TV show that preceded it, might be a fun family Halloween movie, but the behind-the-scenes troubles for this production are so plentiful that it's a miracle that The Addams Family not only exists,...

Are we ready to talk about Keanu's best role in cinema? Ok, so it might not be exactly that, but I have a LOT of love for Francis Ford Coppola's lavish, sublime and gorgeous adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula . So much so that I don't even mind Keanu's stilted performance - it's no way as bad as many say it is, although that might be my bias shining through. It's a visual treat for the eyes, with...

James Gunn is mostly known nowadays for his work with Marvel Studios for the Guardians of the Galaxy duology (and his famous firing and re-hiring from said company), and his most recent DC release The Suicide Squad which he made during his Marvel hiatus (similarities between this movie and the character of Starro not withstanding!) Before Marvel took a chance on him, he was a reasonably well known...

The final episode of Sequeltember, Gremlins 2: The New Batch is, in many ways a total anomaly. It's likely many a millennial's first foray into the Gremlins universe (Gremlinverse?) due to it's focus on the cartoonish humour, rather than the horror aspects of the 1984 original. Plus it’s not often a director gets to make a sequel that the studio is so desperate for that they will relinquish creati...

Welcome to the first Nanorama episode - episodes slightly shorter, but focusing on interesting titbits of information. For this inaugural Nanorama, I'm continuing with the Alien franchise by talking a little about the multiple screenplay attempts for Alien 3 and the differences between David Fincher's experiences working with 20th Century Fox to Jean-Pierre Jeunet's on Alien Resurrection . Alien 3...

In the pantheon of great sequels, nothing comes close to James Cameron's Aliens . It takes everything great about Ridley Scott's Alien and builds on it. It gives us more backstory for Ripley, more human characters for Ripley (and the audience) to form relationships with, and more importantly (especially as it's in the name), more aliens! The Alien Queen is both antithetic and comparable to Ripley....

100 episodes ago, I covered The Mummy (1999). It's still the greatest movie ever made. The Mummy Returns , the 2001 sequel to The Mummy, was always going to struggle to live up to the fun, charismatic original (especially in my eyes) Nowadays, The Mummy is revered as a modern classic that reinvigorated pulp action adventure movies, but The Mummy Returns languishes in the sand dunes of Hamunaptra f...

Sweet mother of Abraham Lincoln! Toy Story 2 has a story to tell! Yes, it's the first Pixar sequel, momentous in its own right, but it started off as a Disney direct-to-video sequel, with a character called Senorita Cactus and a talking Bullseye, voiced by Martin Short.... Then it became a theatrical release! Then it got deleted accidentally! Then it got deleted on purpose! Then it got remade in n...

Mutants. Since the discovery of their existence, they have been regarded with fear, suspicion, often hatred. Across the planet debate rages. Are mutants the next link in the evolutionary chain? Or simply a new species of humanity, fighting for their share of the world? Either way, it is an historical fact that sharing the world has never been humanity's defining attribute. X-Men 2 took the mould m...

Through dangers untold, and hardships unnumbered , It's my birthday and because I ask for so little. Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave , I've brought you a gift ! Here's the third annual birthday episode - a special episode based on one of the defining movies of my life. You've had The Iron Giant and Jurassic Park , and now.... I have reordered time, I have turned the wor...

Most of us grew up on adaptations of fairy tales; on stories of princesses, animal companions, and ultimately a happily ever after ending. Guillermo del Toro successfully interprets and deconstructs the fairy tale in his 2006 masterpiece Pan's Labyrinth, by blending a nightmarish fantasy world of fauns, fairies and quests, with a similarly nightmarish real world of war, fascist regimes and evil st...

In space, no one can hear you scream. Thankfully though, they can hear a podcast. I think. Comparisons to Jaws aside, Alien remains one of the seminal science fiction horror movies of all time, generating fear through its H.R. Giger designed sets and creature work, and the copious amounts of sexual and phallic imagery denoting the ultimate in terror - the fear of sexual violence, specifically male...

Last Action Hero had everything going for it. An in-demand script which enticed the biggest action star in Hollywood in Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Shane Black re-write, a credible action director in John McTiernan, a huge production budget (for the time) and a huge marketing budget. This was going to be the cinematic event of 1993. Except, it wasn't. A certain dinosaur movie went ahead and became th...

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water this summer season, the cultural and societal behemoth that is Jaws finally makes an appearance in the waters around Verbal Diorama. But, don't worry, it's probably just a boat propeller killing all these random victims. Certainly not a huge 25ft long shark. Nope. No sharks in these parts. Jaws has a rather famously tumultuous production,...

Mad Max: Fury Road is not the movie you'd expect after the three very masculine Mad Max movies that came before it, but it's the Mad Max movie we needed. While arguably Tom Hardy's titular Max is side-lined by Charlize Theron's Imperator Furiosa, it's done for a good reason - to give Max something pure to fight for and alongside. Women are not treated kindly in this post-apocalyptic wasteland, and...

From the same studio who brought you Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse , and the producers of literally everything great that came out in the last 10+ years comes the best movie of 2021. Yep, I said it. The Mitchells vs. The Machines is the best movie of 2021. No hyperbole, either. This is also the studio that brought us The Emoji Movie , proving that things can only get better if you have a passi...

The Frighteners is more important than you realise. Not only was it a landmark of visual effects in 1996, it also starred one of the biggest Hollywood stars of the 80s/90s in his last live-action leading role: Michael J. Fox. Directed by Peter Jackson, The Frighteners languishes nowadays in some sort of film-based purgatory. Not cult classic enough to be deemed one, not good enough to be seen as a...

Wade Wilson: mercenary, talker, fourth-wall breaker and extremely self-aware comic book super-anti-hero. In a cinematic world where superheroes are commonplace, it makes sense for Deadpool to be the perfect tonic. A hero who isn't a hero, but is super. Deadpool, as a character, is pretty different to anyone else. Deadpool, as a movie, is certainly unlike anything Sony, Fox, Universal or Marvel Stu...

To celebrate the 100 episodes preceding it, here's a special episode about Tommy Wiseau's cult classic disasterpiece The Room , and the movie all about the making of The Room , The Disaster Artist . The Room holds a special place in many peoples' hearts, despite often being labelled as one of the worst movies ever made. The Disaster Artist is based on Greg Sestero's book of the same name, which is...