Verbal Diorama

Enchanted started life as something very different to what it ended up becoming. Originally conceived as an R-rated comedy with no songs, it was purchased by Touchstone Pictures and eventually made its way to becoming a Disney property, which meant a serious tone down of the material. Going through several directors and writers, eventually it landed with Tarzan and 102 Dalmatians director Kevin Li...

Another Nanorama (episodes slightly shorter, but focusing on interesting titbits of information) on the history and legacy of 1984 smash-hit adventure romantic comedy Romancing the Stone and its rushed sequel The Jewel of the Nile ... Romancing the Stone was written by waitress Diane Thomas, and in a true rags-to-riches story was sold to producer Michael Douglas for $250,000. Filmed on location in...

GET OVER HERE! In a change to the scheduled episode, a smaller Nanorama (episodes slightly shorter, but focusing on interesting titbits of information) on the history and legacy of the original Mortal Kombat film adaptation from 1995, and its much maligned sequel... YOUR SOUL IS MINE! Mortal Kombat , as a video game, was a worldwide phenomenon. It made sense to make it into a movie. It really was...

Team America: World Police started out as an homage to Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds mixed with Jerry Bruckheimer all-action, post 9/11 US foreign policy and a hint of disaster movies. It's likely that South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone simply had no idea what they were in for when they agreed to make this movie and release it in October 2004. They had five months(!) Five months to mak...

Heroes Through the Decades comes to a close in the 2020s with The Suicide Squad , proving that even villains can become heroes when given a second chance. Literally. When David Ayer's Suicide Squad was released in 2016, it was not the original movie he envisioned. Affected by the critical hammering of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice , Warner Bros set about making Suicide Squad lighter and more...

After the financial success of X-Men: The Last Stand , X-Men spin-offs X-Men Origins: Wolverine and X-Men Origins: Magneto were both being developed at about the same time at 20th Century Fox. Due to the Writer's Guild of America strike in 2007-2008, production on Magneto was halted and put on the back burner, whereas Wolverine managed to scrape through the system. When Wolverine was released and...

Spider-Man gave us an origin story of great power and great responsibility, in more ways than one, but also a story that ordinary nerds could relate to. From humble origins as a throwaway character in a cancelled comic book title, to Marvel's flagship character, a movie version of Spider-Man has been in the works since the early '80s with differing results. Enjoy my new feature "Corman, Cannon, Ca...

Heroes Through the Decades ass kicks into the '90s, with Wesley Snipes' cool, charismatic badass vampire hunter - Blade! In 1971 the Comics Code Authority updated its code criteria, which had been in place since 1954, relaxing the rules on the depiction of horror in comics. For the first time, vampires were allowed in comic books. Marvel's first pseudo-vampire character, Morbius the Living Vampire...

Heroes Through the Decades kapows into the 1980s, and is there any superhero as ubiquitous as Batman? Found in comics, in movies and TV, on lunchboxes, as toys and as one of the best-known silhouettes in the world, Batman's omnipresence in pop culture might be commonplace today, but while Batman was a hugely popular comic book series (and '60s TV show!), the Caped Crusader as we know him shifted i...

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's Verbal Diorama's Heroes Through the Decades miniseries, continuing into the 1970s! Whether you know him as Clark Kent, Kal-El, the Man of Steel, the Man of Tomorrow, or just as Superman, that famous tights-and-cape combo emblazoned with the S on his chest is a symbol of a lot of things: Hope, courage, freedom, love... truth, justice and the American way, and a...

In the first episode of my Heroes Through the Decades miniseries, I'm starting in the sixties, and the crowing jewel of Ray Harryhausen's stellar career, with his trademark glorious stop-motion creature set pieces, in a movie I grew up watching - Jason and the Argonauts . Jason may be the hero on-screen, but Harryhausen is the hero behind it. From its basis in the Greek myth of Jason and the Golde...

What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does it see into me? Into us? Clearly or darkly? I hope it sees clearly because I can't any longer see into myself. I see only murk. I hope for everyone's sake the scanners do better, because if the scanner sees only darkly the way I do, then I'm cursed and cursed again. Welcome to the 150th episode of Verbal Diorama, and an episode on t...

Warning. This episode contains jokes about balls. Lots of balls. Sports movies are ten-a-penny in Hollywood, sports comedies even more so. There's nothing funnier than a ball being flung in the vicinity of a person's face or private parts, let's be honest. But DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story is more influential than you might think. Not only is it a sharp satire of the fitness and health industry...

The Crow is so bittersweet to talk about. It’s a dark, but stunning visual movie that looks unlike anything else. It’s hard to avoid the idea that perhaps Brandon Lee’s untimely death contributed to the popularity of the movie, and who knows if the movie would have been as big without the shadow of his death looming over it, but it’s hard to deny the screen presence of Brandon Lee, and that this c...

I'm doing my part! Young people all over the globe are joining up to save the future. We must meet this threat with our courage, our valour, indeed with our very lives to ensure that human civilization, not insect, dominates this galaxy now and always! All right, let's sum up. This year we explored the failure of democracy. How our social scientists brought our world to the brink of chaos. We talk...

For 145 episodes, Jess was an almost constant feature on Verbal Diorama, whether that was by making noises in the background, featuring on episodes as herself, or just by being in the next room during recording. Jess passed away after a brief period of illness on 15th March 2022, aged almost 18. She was a guiding light, my constant companion, and brought joy to literally everyone who knew her. She...

My Best Friend's Wedding - a romcom without the rom - was remarkably different in its original script. There were only two lines of dialogue for George (then named Digger), Kimmy just magically forgave all of Julianne's transgressions and not only that, but Julianne would be rewarded at the end of the movie by, not getting her man, but getting a man - a handsome stranger at the wedding played by J...

The official line from Disney and Pixar post the release of Toy Story 3 in 2010 was "we're not planning Toy Story 4" The honest truth was, they were, and they had been for several months too. Originally not planned as a continuation of the story, Toy Story 4 was intended to be a romantic comedy focused on Woody and Bo Peep, but all that soon changed..... Can I finish Animation Season with a bang?...

Animation Season 2022 finally reaches Pixar! After the huge success of Toy Story in 1995 and Toy Story 2 in 1999, a sequel seemed inevitable, but it'd take eleven years and a lot of behind the scenes issues. With the relationship between Disney and Pixar soured, Disney exercised its right to make sequels without Pixar's involvement. Disney decided to forge ahead with Toy Story 3 through their own...

To celebrate the third birthday of this podcast, I wanted to take a look into the history and legacy of The Lion King , a movie that, despite some plagiarism controversy, became the biggest commercial success of Disney's Renaissance, and the highest-grossing animated movie of all time (until the next episode of this podcast, at least!) Thank you for being here with me and supporting me and this po...

To celebrate the third birthday of this podcast, I wanted to take a look into the history and legacy of Beauty and the Beast , a movie that started out as a non-musical, but was scrapped, started again as a musical, and eventually became the first animated feature film to be nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. Thank you for being here with me and supporting me and this podcast over the las...

To celebrate the third birthday of this podcast, I wanted to take a look into the history and legacy of The Little Mermaid , a movie that not only changed Disney's fortunes, but also changed the face of animation forever. Thank you for being here with me and supporting me and this podcast over the last three years! This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podscribe - http...

Verbal Diorama. The podcast all about the history and legacy of movies you know, and movies you don't. Available wherever you get your podcasts! This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podscribe - https://podscribe.com/privacy OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is such an underrated gem. I know I say that a lot, but it is. Adults fall into the trap of seeing a bright, colourful, funny animated movie, and assuming it's "just for children" (as we know from the Verbal Diorama mantra, animation is not just for children!), but also because it is a bright, colourful, funny animated movie that just happens to masquerade as some...

Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov, the fourth child and fourth consecutive daughter for Russian Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Tsarina Alexandra, was a disappointment at the time of her birth. She wasn't the long-awaited son and heir for the couple. He would come along three years later. And, well, the rest of the tragic story of the Russian imperial family is fairly well-known. But Anastasia has led...