Verbal Diorama

Party on Wayne, and Party on Garth - it's only Aurora's finest basement-dwelling public access cable show. Wayne's World ! Wayne's World. Party time. Excellent! From its beginnings as a Saturday Night Live sketch, to its democratization of America's cable public access TV network, arguably Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar were the YouTubers of their day, and probably also invented podcasts... maybe....

Seven A.M., the usual morning line-up, start on the chores and sweep 'til the floor's all clean, polish and wax, do laundry, and mop and shine up, sweep again, and by then it's like 7:15 And so I read a book, or maybe two or three, I'll add a few new paintings to my gallery, I'll play guitar and knit, and cook and basically Just wonder when will my life begin? Tangled's life began like every other...

This podcast is now four year old, so to celebrate, here's the fifth of five very special episodes on Wallace and Gromit, on the final of their short films, A Matter of Loaf and Death Thank you for your support over the last four years! This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podscribe - https://podscribe.com/privacy OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

This podcast is now four year old, so to celebrate, here's the fourth of five very special episodes on Wallace and Gromit, on their only feature-length theatrical adventure Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit Thank you for your support over the last four years! This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podscribe - https://podscribe.com/privacy OP3 - https://op...

This podcast is now four year old, so to celebrate, here's the third of five very special episodes on Wallace and Gromit, on the third of their short films, A Close Shave . Thank you for your support over the last four years! This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podscribe - https://podscribe.com/privacy OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

This podcast is now four year old, so to celebrate, here's the second of five very special episodes on Wallace and Gromit, on the second of their short films, The Wrong Trousers . Thank you for your support over the last four years! This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podscribe - https://podscribe.com/privacy OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

This podcast is now four year old, so to celebrate, here's the first of five very special episodes on Wallace and Gromit, on the first of their short films, A Grand Day Out . Thank you for your support over the last four years! This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podscribe - https://podscribe.com/privacy OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

One doesn't know why. Perhaps it's his luxuriant beard, or his gleaming teeth, or the way he smells faintly of coconuts, but we have taken a shine to this pirate. With different names depending on where you are in the English-speaking world, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (or The Pirates! Band of Misfits ) already feels like an anomaly in Aardman's stellar back catalogue. Based on t...

Satoshi Kon's debut feature-length animated movie is often cited as not just as masterpiece of animation, but a masterpiece of cinema full stop. Darren Aronofsky, in particular, has not only credited Perfect Blue as inspiration for a scene in Requiem for a Dream , there are also striking similarities between Perfect Blue and his Oscar-winning psychological horror Black Swan . Mima and Nina, anyone...

The Emperor's New Groove , unfortunately lumbered as part of the blame for the beginning of the end of Disney's Renaissance period, is actually three movies in one: The original movie that was never made, Kingdom of the Sun The movie we got And the documentary that Disney does not want you to see, The Sweatbox In this episode, I'm going to be telling you about all three; plus the alleged DreamWork...

South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut is a movie with a Guinness World Record, an Oscar nomination and, miraculously, an R-rating. That R-rating contributed to it being the highest grossing R-rated animated film for seventeen years, too. If the Motion Picture Association of America had their way, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut would have been rated NC-17, but the irony doesn't stop there....

Who's your friend who likes to play? BING BONG BING BONG! Inside Out captures the science of emotions, memory and personality remarkably accurately for an animated feature. In fact, getting the science right was paramount to the team at Pixar. It’s as accurate as the science in a Pixar movie can be, because it still needs to be entertaining, but it’s more accurate than it needs to be. Director Pet...

Comparisons to Avatar aside, FernGully: The Last Rainforest is a film of a lot of firsts.   It wasn't just one of the first animated features to combine traditional and computer animation; it was also one of the first to be produced with remote artists, Robin Williams' first animated role (no, not the Genie!), and the first movie to be screened at the UN General Assembly. It's also got itself...

What's this?! What's this?! There's colour everywhere! It's officially the final episode of Verbal Diorama of 2022, and my dreams of producing an episode on The Nightmare Before Christmas become a reality, just before Christmas! While this may have been Tim Burton's idea, and Tim Burton's vision, the real maestros behind the scenes on The Nightmare Before Christmas were undoubtedly Henry Selick an...

There's (a little more than) One More Sleep 'Til Christmas , and with a Thankful Heart , it's time for Verbal Diorama to give some festive love to The Muppet Christmas Carol , so It Feels Like Christmas , finally! Starring Kermit, Miss Piggy, Statler and Waldorf, The Great Gonzo as Charles Dickens, Rizzo the Rat as himself, and the inimitable Michael Caine in his career-defining role as Ebenezer S...

After Tim Burton made his phenomenally successful Batman movie, he had his choice of personal projects, including a Batman sequel and a Beetlejuice sequel, but he chose this deeply personal story based on a sketch he had drawn as a withdrawn teenager; of a thin, solemn man with what looked like scissors for hands. Enlisting the help of screenwriter Caroline Thompson, together they would craft the...

Tim Burton didn't intend to return for Batman Returns after his smash hit Batman movie in 1989, but after Warner Bros gave him free rein on the project and allowed him to fully "Burtonize" the movie, he agreed. The result was, unsurprisingly a completely Tim Burton Batman movie. Full of the typical gothic, macabre, dark and sexualised version of Gotham you'd expect. Warner Bros, though, didn't exp...

Super Troopers is a remarkable achievement - a comedy with no established comedic stars, an unknown director, and a very low budget that seemingly came out of nowhere, to become a huge hit when it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2001. And while I hate talking about Harvey Weinstein on this podcast, for obvious reasons, he was pivotal to Super Troopers ' initial financial success, which...

Not your average vampire story, Let the Right One In is a haunting, beautiful and unique take on vampiric lore, as twelve-year-old Oskar meets Eli, a young girl who moves into his building with her guardian. But Eli is more than she seems, as her 'father' Håkan is seen butchering young men and trying to collect their blood. His constant failure leads her to take matters into her own hands, and peo...

Halloween 2022 was the 30th anniversary of the airing of Night of the Sentinels Part 1 , the pilot episode of X-Men: The Animated Series, with Night of the Sentinels Part 2 airing a week later. Her original plan to launch an X-Men animated series had failed in 1989, but a couple of years later Fox Kids CEO Margaret Loesch was adamant she would get the X-Men on the small screen. The series itself w...

The movie that Edgar Wright called the "Best zombie movie I've seen in forever." and "my favourite zombie film of the 21st Century", Train to Busan is nothing short of phenomenal. With perfect action set pieces, the claustrophobia of being trapped in a zombie-filled train, and interpersonal and class conflicts brewing throughout, what starts as the simple story of a workaholic father taking his da...

One Cut of the Dead was a movie that came together in only eight days, with a tiny budget, that its own actors paid to be in. Not only would it garner major financial success, earning over a thousand times its budget back, it would also be a huge critical success (100% on Rotten Tomatoes!). Most importantly, it encapsulates exactly why this podcast exists in the first place - to celebrate every fa...

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, a patron pick by Pete, is a visual and audible treat. A sweeping epic about love, loyalty, lust and oppression, and a genre-defining Hollywood game-changer when it came to bringing Chinese wuxia martial arts films over to Western audiences. From terrific performances by Chow Yun Fat, Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi, to stunning cinematography and outstanding fight chor...

To mirth, to merriment, to manslaughter! What defines a loving family? Is is the rosy-cheeked cheery-faced privileged bullies at Camp Chippewa, or is it The Addams Family? Pause for thought. The answer is, and always will be, The Addams Family's honest depiction of love and acceptance. This is not only on full display once again in Addams Family Values , but includes a clear message from writer Pa...

Come with me if you want to listen.... to one of the biggest episodes I've ever made on one of the most ground-breaking and important sequels ever made. From the original 1984 low budget slasher, to a big budget action sci-fi spectacular, Terminator 2: Judgment Day upped the stakes in every conceivable way. With James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton returning, and a new Terminato...