Barbenheimer | Low Effort Game Ports | Birmingham Anime Film Festival

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the Geeky Brewing Podcast. Joining me today is Mr Keith Bloomfield. [00:00:03] Speaker B: Hello, everybody. [00:00:05] Speaker A: Miss Lee Price. [00:00:06] Speaker C: Hello. [00:00:06] Speaker A: And Mr Sam Edwards. Bit of deja vu going on. It's been a while since we've been in the studio, but feels like much recently since we're recording this piece. [00:00:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I feel like I've spoken to you about things very, very recently. [00:00:19] Speaker C: Very recently. [00:00:20] Speaker A: How are we all? All good. I think we've all been in the cinema quite a lot the last couple of months. So we'll be talking about the two biggest films of the 2023 season so far, which are Barbie, which is across a billion in the box office, I believe, by now, and Mr Nolan's latest opus, which is Oppenheimer. We'll also be talking about the world's worst or laziest effort ever from a game studio into a game port, I think that's fair to say. [00:00:49] Speaker C: Possibly. [00:00:50] Speaker A: And we'll talk about Birmingham Anime Film Festival, which Geeky Premiere is involved with. But now roll credits. So there's been two big films in the box office recently, barbie and Oppenheimer. Keith, which order did you watch them? [00:01:24] Speaker B: I saw Oppenheimer one weekend and then I saw Barbie the following weekend. [00:01:30] Speaker A: Lee, how about yourself? Have you been to watch the two? [00:01:33] Speaker C: I did not go and watch the Two. I've mostly been enjoying the whole Barbenheimer phenomenon in the same way that I enjoyed the Animal Crossing Doom phenomenon three years ago on Games Twitter. [00:01:45] Speaker A: Are you looking forward to Saw Patrol, which is the Paw Patrol movie, and. [00:01:51] Speaker C: Saw Ten coming out so desperate to make that a thing. But it's not a thing. [00:01:56] Speaker A: It works. I think the titles do just serendipitously line up and Sammy and you watched it together. So we both had the Barbenheimer double bill day, didn't we? [00:02:05] Speaker D: We did indeed. [00:02:06] Speaker B: Yep. [00:02:06] Speaker D: We saw Oppenheimer in the IMAX screen and then Barbie in the screen, next to Oppenheimer in the screen. [00:02:16] Speaker A: We heard a bit of Oppenheimer during the Barbie screening. We'll come back onto that in a little bit. But yeah, so we kind of thought a bit of it like the old Grave of the Fireflies territory. Doubleville miserable film first, happy film later on. So start with oppenheimer first. Keith, initial impressions. [00:02:37] Speaker B: It was a good film. It was a good film. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a masterpiece, as these kind of biopic type movies go. It was perfectly fine. I mean, I didn't see in IMAX iron. [00:02:54] Speaker C: Max. [00:02:54] Speaker B: Iron Max. So I don't know if I suffered any loss of spectacle from that, but I kind of was interested to see how it treated the story of quite a pivotal moment in human history. And I thought it was fine. It was nicely done. I didn't think it was the incredible film that everybody seems to be claiming it to be, but it did get a lot of kind of, like, geriatrics into the cinema, which is quite nice. I was quite pleased to not be the oldest person in the screening, which was good. But I don't know where I don't know how many of them stayed awake. [00:03:36] Speaker A: I imagine a few with that soundtrack. [00:03:38] Speaker B: They stayed awake. [00:03:40] Speaker A: Even if they were nodding off, they would have been yeah. [00:03:43] Speaker B: I thought it was a perfectly serviceable biopic. Nolan quite clearly going, I haven't done a biopic, so I'm not really a proper filmmaker. [00:03:55] Speaker A: We've had Tarantino do a kind of biopic with the whole Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. That was his kind of interpretation of a biopic to a certain stage. [00:04:06] Speaker B: Yeah. With certain kind of like my biggest come away from it was that I thought he'd obviously seen a few Oliver Stone movies, but wasn't quite as good a filmmaker as Oliver Stone was at his peak. So yeah, I didn't think it was it was fine. I scored it on my letterbox review. I scored it at three and a half, which I thought was generous for me, as you already know my well. [00:04:33] Speaker A: I was thinking when I was watching it, it's like what other directors would have done with this film. Because you just imagine if, like, Snyder done like a Snyder version of the off. And I think it would have been even more dark and gritty. Load on the dark gritty. [00:04:45] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:04:45] Speaker B: You know those 1940 suits? Can you make them spiky? [00:04:49] Speaker D: 2 hours of it would have just been a slow motion shot of the explosion and then about an hour of plotting. [00:04:59] Speaker A: A reasonable score for you than three and a half. We know Nolan isn't your favorite director. [00:05:05] Speaker B: No, I mean, I wouldn't go back. I probably wouldn't watch it again out of choice. If it was on somewhere when I'd got a couple of hours background there, I'd probably go, maybe I'll give it another go and see if the indoor firework explosion, that is the crux of the movie. Which although I did quite like the idea of science and that you didn't hear the explosion until after you see it. Which I was like, at least he's done the whole kind of like, this is what a black hole looks like element. He went, I've done science. [00:05:39] Speaker A: Well, I think I read an article somewhere, it's like, oh, there's no CGI used in this film. And went really really? No CGI just let a bomb off. [00:05:49] Speaker C: We literally just set off a nuclear bomb somewhere. We're not telling you where. [00:05:53] Speaker B: We're just going to do it. [00:05:54] Speaker A: We're doing it properly. [00:05:56] Speaker D: I think in our screening as well, that bit where it had that silent moment first, I think there was someone a bit along the road from us, just very loud, just loudly enough said, oh, it's not as loud as I thought it was. Something along those lines. [00:06:12] Speaker A: But yeah. So it's for the three people in the world who don't know what the Manhattan Project was. So this is the story of Robert Oppenheimer, his dalliance and his early career learning about theoretical physics, getting his university position started to teach theoretical physics, and how that impacts physical physics. Then we get the Second World War begin, and then Matt Damon recruits into the Manhattan Project to lead it. And it's pretty much every single person in Hollywood who's now probably on strike. It was all together in that film. [00:06:42] Speaker B: It was science avengers. [00:06:43] Speaker A: Yeah. It was pretty much every single name that you can think of from turn of the century physics. [00:06:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Not to spoil it if you haven't seen it, that scene where Samuel L. Jackson comes up and says, I want to talk to you about the Manhattan Initiative. That was spot on, Chris. That was great. [00:06:58] Speaker A: But we also do get a few scenes afterwards. Well, that's pretty much the final act of the movie, is all the kind of post war, his move towards Pacifism, his interactions with the government, the whole McCarthy astera that kicks off, and his early involvement, the Communist Party. So it's kind of not just purely focused on the Manhattan Project. [00:07:17] Speaker B: I did find that last third to be the bit I like the most. [00:07:21] Speaker A: Yeah, I was going to say that's my favorite entire film. Unfortunately, it feels like that's the buildup and that should have been the heart of the film. [00:07:29] Speaker D: It almost could have been two films. Yeah. There's very clear break between them, I think. [00:07:35] Speaker A: Yeah, but I mean what are your thoughts, Sam? Is it a repeat watch? [00:07:41] Speaker D: I really, really enjoyed it. I thought it was incredibly well made. I do kind of agree, though, that I probably won't be going back to watch it. It's a huge investment in time. And having seen it, I don't feel like I desperately need to see it again anytime soon. But, yeah, I had a great time watching. Very it felt weighty in the way that a film about Manhattan projects, it. [00:08:07] Speaker A: Felt cinema in the horrible definition of that word. But I'm really glad we watched it in IMAX. And I think it was definitely worth the extra few pounds worth of investment in IMAX. I think you said a little bit off air earlier, the explosion wasn't as impressive as no. [00:08:26] Speaker B: In the non IMAX screen, I didn't think it kind of just happened. It didn't seem as impactful. And perhaps that is not seen in an IMAX. [00:08:39] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:08:39] Speaker A: And I think part of the issue me and Sam had we talked about this before, is the loudness of the film in the IMAX was slightly over the top. There's quite a lot of repeated bits with stamping of feet and that just drowned out everything else in the film. It was so loud that sound mix uncomfortably loud. [00:08:58] Speaker D: It was actually quite painful to it. [00:09:02] Speaker A: Was actually loud enough that you could hear the dialogue. So they'd obviously done the sound because we know with nola movies, you're not supposed to hear anything they're talking about just explosions. But yeah, I mean the cast as well. So we'll go through some of the cast. So we've got Cylinder murphy playing J. Robert oppenheimer emily Blunt playing Kitty Oppenheimer robert Downey Jr. Playing admiral. Then Senator Strauss. Alden ivanrich pops up. Scott Grimes jason Clark kenneth Branner. Let's go through the list. Everybody's in this. [00:09:37] Speaker B: I like the way Kenneth Branner again, just has a thing of playing, like, non English characters in his Christopher Nolan appearances. Was he Russian or German in tenet. I can't remember now. [00:09:50] Speaker A: I think he was German. He usually plays German. [00:09:54] Speaker D: He plays British and Dunkirk. [00:09:58] Speaker B: Yeah. He's very British in Dunkirk. [00:10:00] Speaker A: But Tom Carr Conti playing Albert Einstein. Florence Pugh rory Key dane De Hahn. David Dalmastian pops up. Remy Malik pops up for 10 seconds quite early in the film and then you're like so they've just wasted the entirety of Remy Malik Oster winning Remy Malik 10 seconds. And he has kind of a bit later on, but you're like it. Is that star studded? It takes me out of the film quite a lot because I'm spending half the time recognizing who's the person in the 1940s suit, rather than who's actually what the characters that are playing, even Katie Affleck's in it. And I thought his career was over. [00:10:38] Speaker B: So really, you've got to mention the one josh Hart. No, the one cameo that you just go, you've not really thought this through. [00:10:48] Speaker A: Happy, Chris. [00:10:49] Speaker B: Go on. When the guy who turns up as the leader of America yes. And you go, that's the same man who's the leader of Britain at this point. [00:10:56] Speaker A: Yeah, but he is a bit of a comedian actor. He is uncredited, so it was kind of a surprise when he bops. [00:11:07] Speaker B: I just found that highly amusing. Truman and basically Churchill in The Darkest Hour are just the same actor. I just thought, that's just so funny. [00:11:15] Speaker A: But it was just complete I mean, Olivia Thelp was in it and I completely forgot she was in it. And like, the 5 seconds, she is as well. It is just every single person who turns up on the screen, you go. [00:11:30] Speaker B: This is our chance of being in an Oscar winning movie. [00:11:33] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's obviously going to be nominated for Best Picture. I think Phillia Murphy deserves a Best Actor Oscar for it. [00:11:41] Speaker D: It depends what else comes out, but. [00:11:45] Speaker A: Stray ain't going to get much. What are you looking forward to, Stray's? Keith, are you the one person in. [00:11:52] Speaker C: The UK that, having seen Grant Turismo can I sure. That's not going to win any acting awards. [00:12:00] Speaker B: David Harbour must be up for a Best Supporting in that. [00:12:04] Speaker C: He has to, because he's the only one who acts in it. [00:12:08] Speaker A: It's not Best Supporting actor. Best supporting the entire film. [00:12:12] Speaker C: Best effort of carrying the entire movie. Yeah. [00:12:15] Speaker B: He has to go through that movie. While Orlando Bloom consistently calls him by a different yeah. [00:12:24] Speaker C: Not to derail. But like I will say, with that, with David Harbour's character, had a more interesting character arc than the actual protagonist. I don't understand how they did that. [00:12:36] Speaker A: He looks like the dullest person ever to build a biopic around. [00:12:40] Speaker C: Oh, he is. He really is. Like, most of the movie, he's just sitting there and he just talks like this the whole time in the trailer. [00:12:47] Speaker A: His dad, played by Digimon Hutsu, is an amazing actor, is more interesting than the protagonist. It's like, Stop playing video games. [00:12:54] Speaker C: Get a proper job. [00:12:55] Speaker A: That's it. That's the entire scene he gets. And he's still better. [00:13:00] Speaker C: Anyway, carry on. [00:13:02] Speaker A: Who thought a video game movie based on a popular gaming franchise from Sony wouldn't work? But, yes, moving on. So oppenheimer, I think yes, I'm glad I watched it. I enjoyed watching it. I didn't get World War II history at school, so I got British social and economic History at school. [00:13:23] Speaker C: This is why I didn't go see it, because my entire high school years was learning about World War II. So any movie about World War II, I avoid because I'm so sick of the subject. I'm sure it's very good, but it's just like, I can't do it. I can never do it. [00:13:45] Speaker A: I enjoyed it, and it was something different to have. So I really enjoyed the way that they did it. Would I rush back to watch it again? I think I'm the same as Keith and Sam. No. It's a massive investment in time. And Nolan stuff, especially since the Batman films, has been not really accessible for home theater watching or for just watching on a TV. Everything's about scale and it's about size. It's a lot about the mean. Look at tenet in distella. It was all about the scale of the thing. So it just doesn't really work that well. [00:14:15] Speaker C: Are you really getting the full experience of Oppenheimer if you can't see every paw in. [00:14:22] Speaker A: I mean, I think people went to the cinema to see the paws of somebody else. But, yeah, that was a kind of bit of a superfluous storyline to have in there, I think, to a certain extent. I know, Keith, you said from the real world, real story of that there is something in I mean, I think. [00:14:40] Speaker B: The other thing we haven't really touched on is that there's much more going on because Nolan's not very good with female characters. And Florence Pugh's in there as Jean Whitlock. There's a very interesting story about her and what happened and kind of like there's a lot of kind of conspiracy theories about what was going on there. And I think that would have added a lot to the whole dichotomy that you get from him. Oppenheimer at the end about the kind of bad choices that he made and like, oh, I created a bomber, and a woman I was in love with died. And that kind of like that whole, like, what have I done? The destroyer of World Destroyers, whatever it is, there's that illusion between the kind of like the very personal and the very kind of global things. [00:15:29] Speaker A: I thought that was a very cack handed way to insert that line into a film. To be mean won't spoil it, but it was kind of like, did you really have to do that? You could have written that a lot better and smoother the way that you put that line in there. But yeah, again, I think Emery Blunt's wasted. Yeah, it's basically her job is given have children, become an alcoholic and just cry. That's her entire job until the very last couple of scenes. [00:15:55] Speaker D: I think Henry Blunt and Florence Pugh are both wasted in it. They're both incredibly good actresses. And yeah, to be the only really two major female characters in the film and each barely have ten minutes of screen time in total. [00:16:11] Speaker C: Well, considering that most of what I've heard about Florence Pugh's performance is how. [00:16:14] Speaker D: Naked she was, that's literally a very small portion of it. [00:16:23] Speaker A: Very large. [00:16:26] Speaker D: The fact that that's what people are taking away exactly. [00:16:30] Speaker B: Shows how little she actually does have in there. And the fact that she's playing quite. [00:16:35] Speaker A: A and the moment she does get to act, it's really powerful and it's really strong, and it's really strong acts. And same with Emily Blunt. When they do get some dog to actually chew on and demonstrate, they're fantastic. That whole scene with Emily Blunt for the first time in Montana when they go horse riding together with Oppenheimer is a great scene. And then it's kind of nourish as a wife will just box her off to one side. [00:16:57] Speaker B: Yeah. Now, you mentioned that scene. I did think in a lot of ways it was very disjointed. A thing happened. So for me, it didn't flow as a story as well as I would have liked. It was lots of kind of, like almost vignette episodes to lead us through, I think, was going on. [00:17:17] Speaker A: It probably would have worked better, as you said, as two separate films and just expanding it a little bit more if you wanted to get that much story in, because I can imagine he's cut a lot of stuff out. [00:17:26] Speaker C: Oppenheimer, oppenheimer. Oppenheimer. The return oppen. [00:17:31] Speaker A: And then heimer write that down. [00:17:37] Speaker B: Are you listening, Universal? [00:17:38] Speaker C: Are you listening? [00:17:39] Speaker B: I do think, though, if you were interested in the history of the whole Manhattan Project, there's a Paul Newman film called Fat Man and Little Boy, which is much more condensed about what was happening around the Trinity Test and the Mad Murdoch as Robert. [00:17:56] Speaker C: I love the name of that film because if you don't know anything about World War II, that just makes no sense. I know that it's the name of the bombs that they dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but it's still like it's. [00:18:09] Speaker A: Interesting you say that. I think that was the best part of the movie when they did the sciency bits. That's the stuff I really enjoyed when they talk about it and all the kind of dialogues and how they were iterating and the scene with the marble and the goldfish bowl that was kind of like, this is a really interesting bit. Do more of this. And then it was more and more melodrama squeezed in. [00:18:28] Speaker B: I know I've already said I wasn't that impressed with the explosion in IMAX. Not in IMAX, but as well. Although it was sciency. The reason why they did it. Did you not think it was like a really bad ASMR video when the explosion goes and everybody's like. [00:18:58] Speaker A: And then you've got the other guy who's like suntan lotion duffer sat next to him. [00:19:01] Speaker B: In a dirt chair. Yeah. I am not being burnt by radiation. Yeah, cool. [00:19:08] Speaker A: So recommended, but worth a single watch. And whilst it's in the cinema, I think probably the best way to describe think unless you've got a giant screen at home, basically. [00:19:21] Speaker B: Yeah, it's definitely worth a watch. I think it's got a historical merit. [00:19:28] Speaker A: Right, so we'll flip to the other side of the double bill now, which is Barbie, which is first ever solo female director getting over a billion in the box office, which is fantastic to hear. And it's the reverse tron movie. It's reverse tron. It's Barbie. The character who lives in this plastic, perfect world, has an existential crisis about being Barbie and then questions her own world and existence and comes to the real world. [00:19:57] Speaker B: I didn't quite read it that way because I just felt that Barbie land was in the real world and it was just a drive, a tandem, a. [00:20:04] Speaker A: Rocket ship all made out of cardboard. [00:20:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I've much felt it was more like elf in that sense of like, you have to go through the curly whirly what's it and the rest of it. I like that. [00:20:16] Speaker A: So it's directed by Greta Gerwig. Written by Greta Gerwig and Baumbach. Starring Margot Robbie ryan gosling issa Ray kate McKinnon simu Liu It's great to see him. Innit dura Lipa and a few other cameos. America Kingsley Benadier, which was really weird because I was watching Secret Invasion at the same time. And he's the bad guy in that doctor who's also a Barbie. And you're like Doctor Who's in it, too, which 115. [00:20:45] Speaker B: Yes. [00:20:46] Speaker A: And what's his face stafflett's flats. Jamie Dimitri pops up in it randomly. But I have a weird brain theory as well, before Will Ferrell's in it, playing the CEO. So is Will Ferrell the same CEO that he is in The Lego Movie? [00:21:04] Speaker D: I think that works quite well. [00:21:06] Speaker A: He's got exactly the same outfit. [00:21:08] Speaker C: I mean, we're in a position where every company is just consolidating into one. So Lego becoming part of Mattel. It's inevitable at this point, I think. [00:21:18] Speaker A: I mean, it's quite weird because they've already confirmed the Mattel cinematic universe is coming after this. I believe they're making films on the other MCU. I think ThunderCats is coming back as well. Sorry, 2 seconds while I Google this talking. [00:21:35] Speaker C: Isn't there like, one really stupid thing that they've already announced that I'm just like, really? You're adapting this? [00:21:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Basically, it's made over a billion at the box office. And Mattelo like, oh, we have money. For the first time in decades, people actually buying things that we like. So they've announced 17 other films already. [00:21:52] Speaker B: 17? [00:21:52] Speaker D: Wow. [00:21:53] Speaker A: 17 other I know. [00:21:54] Speaker C: Rockham Sock and Robots is in there. [00:21:56] Speaker A: Rockham Sock and Robots. [00:21:57] Speaker B: Wasn't that just steel? Probably real steel. We've had that already. [00:22:01] Speaker A: So Polly Pocket is already in production. Star King emily Lily Collins. [00:22:06] Speaker C: Isn't that just Barbie, but small teeny Barbie, yes. [00:22:10] Speaker A: Uno. [00:22:10] Speaker D: Please tell me they're doing Mighty Max, the bullies equivalent of as far as. [00:22:15] Speaker C: I've seen, they aren't. [00:22:16] Speaker A: Uno is going to be an actor. [00:22:18] Speaker C: It is the male equivalent. He'd already had a cartoon, I think. Yeah. [00:22:25] Speaker A: Uno is coming. [00:22:26] Speaker C: That's the one. [00:22:27] Speaker A: Yes, that's the one movie Barney and Daniel Kaluya is probably being rumored to take the lead role in that one. Major Matt Mason, who I've never heard of, is a 60s character, apparently. [00:22:40] Speaker B: That's quite cool. I'd probably see that one. [00:22:42] Speaker A: Magic eight ball. The movie. [00:22:44] Speaker C: That's the other one. [00:22:45] Speaker B: I mean, I'd watch a magic eight Ball movie that's got legs. [00:22:49] Speaker A: Masters of the universe. [00:22:51] Speaker B: Yeah. Do it right. [00:22:54] Speaker C: Don't get back. Dolph Lundren, please. [00:22:56] Speaker B: I don't mind that movie. It's not Masters of the Universe, but it's a decent amount. [00:23:00] Speaker A: Hot Wheels, the movie, which is probably going to be better than that, probably. Christmas Balloon. [00:23:12] Speaker D: It's even a toy, let alone it's. [00:23:14] Speaker A: Not based on any toy, apparently. But they're going to produce it's a new property. [00:23:18] Speaker B: And they went, of all the things. [00:23:19] Speaker A: We'Ve got, christmas Balloon. Thomas the Tank Engine, because they own the US rights to it. Nope. Rockham sockham. Apparently. Vin Diesel is rumoured to be. [00:23:31] Speaker B: If they don't end up with it being Vin Diesel and the Rock. [00:23:34] Speaker A: Yeah. American Girl. Big Jim. Of course. That very famous franchise. [00:23:41] Speaker C: Big Jim, popular character. [00:23:42] Speaker B: I mean, that's going back a while because that was a 70s, late sixty s. Seventy s toy. [00:23:47] Speaker C: I like that. You're the only one that knows what it is. [00:23:49] Speaker B: I know what Big Jim is. [00:23:50] Speaker A: Chatty Cathy and Betsy Witsy. [00:23:54] Speaker B: That sounds like a film that probably is already produced and is available on. [00:23:58] Speaker A: A certain YouTube, apparently. Possibly Jason Bateman's production company is involved in that one. So it might be like Horrible Bosses. [00:24:04] Speaker C: Three, we never know. [00:24:05] Speaker A: Matchbox. So they're not just doing one car based film, they're doing two. [00:24:09] Speaker C: Do Hot Wheels or do Matchbox? Don't do both. [00:24:12] Speaker A: You master. [00:24:15] Speaker B: It'S like jumanji. You click it and you get taken into the world that you're watching. [00:24:20] Speaker A: Wishbone, if you remember Wishbone, it was the Russell Terry with the eye who looked like the dog from Rudd Dog. [00:24:26] Speaker C: And the Dweebs that one's fine. [00:24:28] Speaker A: And Boglins. [00:24:30] Speaker C: That one's fine, too. Boglins. [00:24:32] Speaker A: I can see working. [00:24:32] Speaker B: I would go for Boglins if it was like a horror movie, like Goolies or Critters or something. That'd be good. [00:24:38] Speaker A: Same could be Gremlins ish with the twist. [00:24:41] Speaker B: Yeah, that sounds funny. [00:24:42] Speaker C: That would work. [00:24:43] Speaker B: Let's get back to Barbie. [00:24:45] Speaker A: So we've done the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is starting to die. A bit of a death, unfortunately. So we'd all swap over to the Mattel cinematic Universe. [00:24:53] Speaker B: I don't think we will. [00:24:53] Speaker C: I mean, to be fair, like, hearing all that, I probably would see the Hot Wheels movie. I probably would. Against my bed. No, come on. [00:25:02] Speaker B: We all know Christmas Balloon is going. [00:25:04] Speaker C: To be, let's be honest, like Hot Wheels or Matchbox, which is the cooler one. Exactly. [00:25:11] Speaker A: But Boglins, I could be up for a Boglins movie. Master of the Universe never gets enough love. [00:25:17] Speaker C: If Boglin is like Smith from that franchise. [00:25:22] Speaker B: I like revelations. [00:25:24] Speaker A: I like revelations. But a live action, live action master of the Universe film starring Kevin Smith means Jason Lee is going to be in it, which means Jay and Silent Bob will probably be in the background somewhere, which means Ryan Reynolds is probably going to be playing He Man or Prince Adam. [00:25:41] Speaker B: I quite like the idea of two characters standing. [00:25:46] Speaker C: Just standing outside. [00:25:50] Speaker B: Doing some dancing or whatever it is. [00:25:51] Speaker A: It'd be great. His live action work hasn't been great for a while. I think we can all agree that he's very much better doing comic books and animated stuff. [00:26:01] Speaker B: Well, yeah, I think Masters of the Universe needs a lot of work yes. [00:26:06] Speaker A: Really, to do. [00:26:07] Speaker B: I think the problem with that is it's going to be so massively budgeted for it to work that I imagine. [00:26:14] Speaker A: They'Ve announced a billion dollars to sell. [00:26:16] Speaker B: They've announced 17 films. [00:26:17] Speaker A: That's probably just about cleared their marketing budget for this film. [00:26:21] Speaker B: They've announced 17. And we'll get Christmas Balloon and Chatty Cafe and that'll probably be it. [00:26:26] Speaker A: Major gym. [00:26:28] Speaker B: Big gym. [00:26:29] Speaker A: Anyway, to return to Barbie. So it's tron in reverse, is all I'm saying. It's kind of the plot works. It's tron in reverse. But yes. So Barbie comes to the real world and it's stereotypical Barbie about how she deals with becoming something beyond just the Barbie doll that she was created to be. [00:26:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:26:49] Speaker A: Sam, you can go first. What do you think? [00:26:51] Speaker D: I thought it was a lot of fun. I think it had some very strong feminist messages in there as well, which I think it did really well. I think it had to do that as well, because it would have been very easy if you hadn't done that for a Barbie film to just be dismissed. Well, for all the same reasons that the Barbie franchise has always been dismissed. But, yeah, I thought it was a lot of fun. Performances were great. Everyone was clearly enjoying what they were doing. Yeah, thoroughly enjoyed. [00:27:30] Speaker B: Lee just saw. [00:27:34] Speaker A: Mean was Gran Turismo, narrated by Helen Mirren, which again, is quite weird. No crossover. I don't think there's any real crossover between the two. [00:27:43] Speaker C: The only film I've seen based on a property owned by a toy company I've seen this year is Dungeons and Dragons. Good film, which is good and sadly didn't do as well as they'd hoped from what I've heard, despite it being really good. [00:28:03] Speaker A: America Ferreira, we didn't mention she's in it as well. Ariana Greenblatt, who is at the age of think, she's like twelve now. She's in $2 billion franchises because she played young Gamora and now she's in the Barbie movie. So it's kind of like kind of weird if you think about the other person who played Gamora has also been in $2 billion franchises, which is Zoe sold on her because she's been in MCU and she's been in Avatars, kind of. That character has really developed well for some people, if you think about it. But yeah. And then Rhea Pellman playing the creator of Barbie as well, towards the Mean. I really, really enjoyed it. And I think we've discussed about this before, keith, your not liking of a certain other Ryan. Mr. Gosling? [00:28:47] Speaker B: I'm not a fan of his style of acting, but I've got a through line now that his best two roles are as a robot and a plastic man. He's found his lane, let's all say. Ryan, you found your lane. [00:29:05] Speaker A: Does that mean he's going to be the next Terminator? [00:29:07] Speaker B: Yeah, it's like if I play a character that's not remotely human or needs to be quite clearly not human, I. [00:29:15] Speaker C: Mean, he's found his groove as someone who's sort of always found him a bit bland. Obviously, I haven't seen the full movie, but I've seen clips of it and stuff. He's really leaning into it and I. [00:29:25] Speaker A: Think completely I think I've never seen anybody lean into as much since Alan Rickman as the sheriff. He is just completely every scene he. [00:29:37] Speaker B: Is in, he just completely now, you've mentioned that comparison. It's a very apt comparison in how much Ryan leans into the ridiculousness of a think. I'd like him to win Best Supporting Actor. [00:29:58] Speaker A: I think Alan might win Best Supporting Actor. [00:30:01] Speaker B: Well, he won't because he's Alan. [00:30:04] Speaker A: So, Alan? Yes. Lee is looking at his computer. [00:30:10] Speaker C: Is this michael sarah? [00:30:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:30:12] Speaker C: Michael sarah's character. [00:30:13] Speaker A: Alan. So basically Alan was a friend of Ken that they made in the 80s or ninety s, I think, who could wear all of Ken's clothes. [00:30:20] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:30:20] Speaker A: So it's basically just another friend of. [00:30:23] Speaker C: Ken's who wears all his clothes. [00:30:27] Speaker A: They refer to some of the older versions of Ken. And you're like, that's quite spicy for a rob Briden. Yeah, there are some KENS and you're like, how do they get away with this? How do they get away with this? [00:30:44] Speaker B: But I loved it. I thought it was great. The whole premise, the whole way it was styled. I thought it was in terms of people thinking Oppenheimer's, the intellectual movie. I thought Barbie was a much smarter film in terms of how it was addressing things in a way that was like, I don't feel was kind of bashing people over the head. [00:31:09] Speaker A: No, there's been a lot of controversy, again, in the states of it mainly due to the usual right wing crowd, like, oh, it promotes men not being men, and it promotes women being able to believe whatever they want. [00:31:23] Speaker D: It doesn't promote men not being men. It promotes men not being toxic males, which is absolutely like ken goes through as much of an arc as Barbie does. In that sense, it's very much a feminist film, but there are messages for men on how to treat women, which. [00:31:45] Speaker B: Is why I think it's a smart movie. [00:31:46] Speaker C: But that's exactly why the right wings in America hate it, because that's what they want. [00:31:53] Speaker B: Because one of my favourite scenes was when the KENS are trying to separate Barbie land, or Ken land as it becomes and they're building a wall and the line where they drop the line where they go, yeah, we're really in trouble if they figure out how to go sideways. I thought that was just so that was hilarious. [00:32:11] Speaker A: I loved that bit. [00:32:11] Speaker B: That was great. There were lots of moments like that that were just little throwaway bits that you just go, oh, that is just so mean. [00:32:18] Speaker A: Because there's quite a lot of stuff about Greta Gerwig selling out to make a bargain because she's been an indie darling for quite a while now. And it's kind of I think it was the perfect franchise for her to come in and do something with. [00:32:30] Speaker C: But from what I've heard, she's kind of just done what she always does, but just happens to be attached to. [00:32:36] Speaker A: A big a lot of pink slapped over the top of it is probably. [00:32:39] Speaker B: The I mean, I think if you don't know anything about Barbie, you don't lose anything in seeing it. There's no necessity to kind of understand the brand because it doesn't really need to understand. It's a doll. It's a range of dolls. And I kind of like the idea that that's the people who and they kind of touch on that about that we project ourselves onto these dolls. And I liked the little switch, which I kind of spotted early on, I think, where who owns the doll that causes the reason for the Barbie to become whatever it is. And then they introduced this mother daughter combination and I was like, yeah, I. [00:33:23] Speaker A: See where this is going. [00:33:24] Speaker B: I know where this is going. And I thought that was kind of cute. Our projection into and as an adult who still kind of has toys and a close connection, I do understand that idea of projecting things onto these inanimate objects. [00:33:44] Speaker C: The thing I kept seeing on social media was so many women who played with Barbies as young girls were talking about the stories that they would make up while playing with them. And I sort of got the impression that there's a lot of that kind of coming into the movie, and it's. [00:34:03] Speaker B: Something that all kids do, whether they play with Lego, whether they play Cindy. [00:34:07] Speaker A: Or there's astronaut Barbie, there's Dr Barbie, there's all these different variations of Barbie. [00:34:13] Speaker D: My favourite is Weird Barbie, played by McKinnon. Oh, yes. [00:34:15] Speaker A: Who's now an actor doll, because they're releasing Weird Barbie. [00:34:19] Speaker D: That's the perfect manifestation of what you're talking about. Because the whole concept is she's been. [00:34:23] Speaker B: Played with too, bashed about, played with. [00:34:25] Speaker D: Too much, had the haircut and weird makeup done and just come out a bit weird. [00:34:30] Speaker A: She reminded me of Angela from Rugrats, if anybody remembers. But it just came to me, as was discussing that there is a film which links both these films, Oppenheimer and Barbie, quite nicely together, which is Don't Worry, Darling, which kind of fits in between. It's about a project in the middle of the desert masculinity and how women are treated as objects. And it's got the Sci-Fi elements mixed in the middle. [00:35:00] Speaker C: It kind of works Florence Pugh so. [00:35:03] Speaker A: You can watch Oppenheimer, then don't worry, Darling and then Barbie and Florence Pugh in it as well. [00:35:08] Speaker C: So it's great crossover. [00:35:10] Speaker A: It's kind of weird how that works out. [00:35:12] Speaker B: But, you know, you were talking about how the cameos in Oppenheimer took you out of it. Yes, I thought the cameos the cameos. [00:35:20] Speaker A: Barbie were enhancing the movie rather than taking you out of it. I mean, the mermaid, John Cedar. So John Cedar turns up as a mermaid Ken, and he's amazing in it, but simulu great as a foil to Brian Gosling as Ken, john Cena and. [00:35:39] Speaker D: Ariana Grande as the mermaid Barbie as well, isn't. [00:35:45] Speaker C: It? [00:35:46] Speaker A: But, yeah, it was quite nice to see a variety of Barbies as well. It was kind of then they're all just like stick thin white females. They go into the diversity of Barbie as a character, which is nice to see, apart from was it Midge or Maj the Pregnant? Like, there's a really good scene where Will Ferrell gets into Barbie land and he goes, Mitch Earth, he forgot that was created. But they do really read into the. [00:36:15] Speaker B: History of the even the dubious history. [00:36:19] Speaker A: Yeah, it's not just surface, it's like you can tell that Greta Rowwig has intensely researched Barbie from its creation all the way through and found some of the best bits, some of the worst bits, some of the kind of freaky bits about Barbie's history, and some of the missteps they've taken with the character. But that's part of the fun with it. I mean, especially with Alan and Michael Sarah. He just, again, completely leads into that role of I'm Alan, I'm just the friend. I don't do anything. [00:36:48] Speaker B: It's ally Alan, which is quite good. And also, I thought the last line of the film was phenomenal. [00:36:54] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:36:57] Speaker B: It'S not really a kids movie. [00:36:59] Speaker A: But it was a brilliant line. [00:37:01] Speaker B: The final line is just you just go, oh, because I wasn't expecting it to go in. And they hit you with this line and you go, I have heard what. [00:37:10] Speaker C: The final line is. Yeah, nice. This is good. [00:37:14] Speaker A: But it is a film that I can probably go back to multiple times. [00:37:17] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [00:37:18] Speaker A: And there's going to be little bits of stuff in it which I'm not going to have noticed the first time around, which I'm now going to pick up the second time around. The whole scene of him throwing the clothes at the house and then them becoming like the accessories. It's like all the little things like that. You can imagine if you actually are into Barbie quite a lot, there's a lot of history for it. And it was nice to see the diversity in the audience as well because it was pretty much from three year olds to retirees in the audience that we went to watch it in. And it was packed as well. It's the busiest I've seen the cinema since Pre Pandemic. [00:37:51] Speaker B: I mean, of the two, I would say that was more Barbie was more my cinema. Something that could reach a lot of people entertained, would make you laugh, make you think, whatever it is. And that's what I want from my cinematic experiences, to be bludgeoned over the head and come out and go, I want that kind of sense of like the whole crowd is buzzing a little bit because Oppenheimer, a couple of people attempted to applaud at the end, and a lot of other people were just like, no, it went that good. [00:38:25] Speaker A: I felt exhausted by the end of Boffenheimer and considering the runtime of Barbie isn't that short as well, I came out of that feeling energized and happy about it. It's just weird how much the variety of cinema can do that for mean, it's nearly 2 hours, Bobby, so it's still not a short film. [00:38:43] Speaker B: It zips by. It zips by. [00:38:45] Speaker A: I don't think there's any wasted moments in it either. [00:38:49] Speaker B: No, not really. [00:38:50] Speaker A: I suppose I could have probably done more character development with the mother door relationship and that was probably my only downside. [00:38:56] Speaker B: Yeah, but I mean, it's a film, there's only so much time that you can do. And I think it's a bit harsh to criticize films sometimes when they don't, people go, oh, I don't want a movie that's 3 hours long. And you go, well, then you criticize it for not having this. [00:39:11] Speaker A: Something's got to give, obviously split into two because there's no way you can squeeze out to film, which is what David Lynch proved when he tried to do it in one film. [00:39:21] Speaker B: I'd struggle to figure how they could do a Barbie sequel that would work as well. They'd have to really come up with something interesting for that I'd quite like it to just be that's it I think the sequel is obviously going to be Alan. [00:39:34] Speaker A: Just Alan's adventures. [00:39:36] Speaker B: I think we should have the kind of old school the old school spin offs. And we have a really badly animated Alan the Cartoon Series. [00:39:46] Speaker A: Just like the Lion King or the. [00:39:48] Speaker B: Beetlejuice or whatever it is. [00:39:50] Speaker C: It won't be Michael Thera playing him. [00:39:52] Speaker B: No, it'll be a sound alike. [00:39:54] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:39:56] Speaker B: He might do kind of like the title sequence and speak. [00:40:00] Speaker A: Talking of massive segue, the whole Garfield journey always amazed me because the Garfield cartoon, they got somebody to come in perfectly to sound like Bill Murray, and that's why they hired him. And he didn't want to do the film. So they brought Bill Murray in to play himself, pretending to be the Garfield. [00:40:18] Speaker C: From the other it's it's more kind of like so this kind of brings Ghostbusters into it. So you've got obviously got Bill Murray in Ghostbusters, and in the real Ghostbusters, it was Lorenzo Music who played Peter Venkman, who was also the voice of Garfield. And then when Garfield got made into a film, they got Bill Murray to voice Garfield. So you end up with Garfield and Peter Venkman being played by the same people. [00:40:44] Speaker A: Yeah, it's kind of so, but yes. [00:40:49] Speaker C: Recommended. [00:40:50] Speaker B: Yeah, highly recommended. I scored it higher than Oppenheimer, and. [00:40:54] Speaker C: I would say, was it a four four? [00:40:57] Speaker B: And said in the Barbieheimer equation, Oppenheimer was most definitely the Ken, is what I kind of said. And I think if you're on a limited budget and you can only really go to one movie, go to Barbie. [00:41:12] Speaker C: So now I'm just picturing the oppenheimer. [00:41:14] Speaker B: Ken yeah, there'd be an oppenheimer. [00:41:16] Speaker C: Ken doll. [00:41:17] Speaker A: Now, swap the entire cast and location, say, for the cast of Oppenheimer and Barbie land. And you put the cast of Barbie into the man. [00:41:26] Speaker B: Yeah, the world would be a much better place. [00:41:29] Speaker D: I'm just Oppenheimer, and that's okay. [00:41:34] Speaker A: I am Oppenheimer. Enough. It doesn't work, does it? [00:41:38] Speaker D: And now I am Ken, destroyer of world. [00:41:45] Speaker B: You were talking about that scene with Oppenheimer, and it's like, Oppenheimer horses. He's got horses. There's that whole thing. Paramount plus put a thing out about, like, great men on horses on the Paramount Plus channel. It was all these weird blokes with horses. And I went, you've seen Barbie, right? And they were like, what? Which was quite funny. I quite like, that was a good line. Yeah, I was kind of like horses and patriarchy. And then I realized that patriarchy wasn't that much about horses. It's full of such great lines. It's like, got stuff that you just go, oh, man. [00:42:20] Speaker A: I think it's a film for everyone. It doesn't matter who you are or where you're from. It's worth a watch. [00:42:27] Speaker B: Yeah, it's good fun. [00:42:31] Speaker A: After 13 years and a sequel, there's a game being released by Rockstar for the switch and weirdly, the PlayStation Four, which is red dead Redemption plus Undead Nightmare as a port at full price with no remastering on it. Is this acceptable in the current day and age? We're getting remasters remakes of everything at the moment, but this seems to be the most low effort thing ever to rerelease for consoles. [00:43:09] Speaker C: I mean, there have been plenty of times where games have been rereleased for consoles that are just straight ports and no one's freaked out about it. It's only because of the size of Red Dead redemption. I think, that well, I think there's. [00:43:22] Speaker A: Been rumors about an untitled Red Dead project for ages now, and everybody was expecting it to be Red Dead Redemption Three. Or a spin off, or a new DLC for the second game, or a remaster of both collections together. And then Rockstar went, yeah, we haven't even bothered to make it ourselves. Here's a lazy port. We slapped a DLC package on it and that's it. But you got to still pay full price. [00:43:45] Speaker C: But this is the thing. I think we're in a position where we have too many remasters and remakes. And what's happening is that the games industry has learned, because we've taught them that it works, that if they just slightly pretty up a game from a few years ago and sell it again at full price, we'll buy it. [00:44:09] Speaker A: The Tod Howard method of exactly skyrim. [00:44:12] Speaker C: Is a perfect example of this. How many times has Skyrim been released? [00:44:15] Speaker A: Skyrim. Skyrim the game of the Year edition. Skyrim ultimate edition. Skyrim Remastered. Skyrim VR skyrim re remastered. [00:44:25] Speaker C: And then if you think Rockstar themselves have done this because there's the joke about how there was once upon a time one PlayStation had three GTAs, whereas now we've got one GTA on three PlayStations. [00:44:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's now reaching the point where every other single GTA game has been made in the gap between GTA five coming out and when GTA six is going to be released. So you could get one to four, plus all the side stories, plus Vice City, plus San Andreas, plus all the stories, chinatown walls. Every other GTA game has been made in the same period of length. [00:45:03] Speaker C: And I think this is the problem. I think the reason why I kind of don't really care that there's been a port of Red Dead Redemption is so I obviously made a video recently which was about how companies should be making their games available on modern systems. And I think too often we've got this situation now where they remaster an old game and then make it like their big new release. And it happens all the time. I think just all that Rockstar have done in this case is they're just like, we've made it available on Mon systems and that's it. But admittedly, not all of them. [00:45:45] Speaker A: There is a counterpoint to that one, and it is a franchise very close to my heart. But the mass fetch Legendary Edition, I think is the example of how you should do a remaster in a remake because it brought everybody into a brand new audience, it added a few bits, it polished quite a lot, and it had pretty much every single bit of content ever released. And it was a really good way to get people back into the game or people who never experienced mass fit. So I think if it's done with care and attention yes, but I think. [00:46:12] Speaker C: My problem is that we're seeing it too often where companies just fall back on the remaster model. If we just remaster our back catalog, we don't have to make new games. [00:46:24] Speaker A: But this isn't a remaster, it's just a port. [00:46:26] Speaker C: I know, but that's why I think this is why I'm like, I would rather see companies just port stuff and just casually do it like Rockstar have done with this. Because at full price, though not necessarily at full price, but then again, it's not technically at full price considering that prices have gone up. It's 40 quid. And full price now is 70. [00:46:49] Speaker A: I mean, 40 quid for a 13 year old game, which is a poor. [00:46:53] Speaker C: Probably the business practice. Yeah, that's the one thing I disagree with, is the actual price of it. [00:46:58] Speaker A: If it was 20 quid 20 quid? [00:46:59] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:47:00] Speaker B: Happy? Is it full price and digital only? There's no physical I struggle with the. [00:47:07] Speaker C: Idea of if it was cheaper. I do think the sort of outrage over it is a bit overblown just because I fully agree that we should make stuff available. And I would rather that companies just did it and didn't make a big song and dance out of a remaster and try and basically sell us the same game a million times as the big new releases. Again. We've talked about skyrim. We're talking about GTA five. [00:47:37] Speaker A: Last of US is probably a good example. Last of US is really good. Now they're remastering it again, aren't they? [00:47:42] Speaker C: They remade it. [00:47:43] Speaker A: Yes, remake. [00:47:45] Speaker C: But it's like a one to one remake. So they basically just built the entire game from the ground up, but just while just recreating the original game. So they just had the original game open. We're like, okay, we're going to make this meticulously exactly like it was originally. [00:47:58] Speaker A: And I'm like, so it's not really a remake, it's a remaster. [00:48:01] Speaker C: Just no, but they new engine. They remade it, though. That's the point. A remaster takes the original assets and prettys them up, whereas this, they built it from the ground up. And I'm like, how much development time did you waste on this when you could have just well, you can already play The Last of US on the PS Five because the remastered version is a PS Four game, so therefore it'll play on PS Five. [00:48:26] Speaker A: Yeah, and I appreciate your points about video game preservation. And it makes sense to make as many games as accessible as possible. If I was a PS Five owner, I'd be very angry about this because it's 40 quid and it's not even a PS Five version. It's a PS Four version. It's a so it's not even in four K sixty. It's just purely you're getting the PS Four. [00:48:48] Speaker C: Well, it also goes beyond that because I do think it's weird that I picked those two systems and nothing else, because at first I was like, oh. [00:48:57] Speaker A: Is Xbox it's backwards compatible anyway? Is it not backwards compatible? [00:49:01] Speaker C: I looked it up before coming here today, just to double check. I was under that same impression. It is not available on the Xbox store, as far as I can see. Red Dead Redemption Two is, obviously, but I could not find the only thing that came up was the Xbox marketplace, which is like the second hand thing, which I think they're closing down at some point anyway, which means that it isn't actually on the Xbox store, as far as I can tell. [00:49:26] Speaker A: Physical disc editions backwards, possibly. [00:49:29] Speaker C: There are definitely games, and I think. [00:49:31] Speaker B: Lee's touched on this. In the past, you've talked about the game preservation and the difference between the digital and the physical side of things, because I can imagine what a lot of this controversy is. The fact that development time between games now is so huge that people are going, or why are we getting this and not Red Dead Redemption Three? Because it's been however many years since two. So I think the whole thing is people are waiting so long for AA titles. [00:49:58] Speaker A: Yeah, or how long it been since Skyrim to six. [00:50:02] Speaker B: And I think Lee's right in the fact that it basically should be like games. Companies should be just their focus should be on their major titles, which are new and next Generation, but also be going, here's our back, catalog all the games. Because if I can go to AliExpress and buy a bit of hardware for 50 quid, that can play me literally every video game ever made up till the PlayStation One, and we're talking something the size of a Game Boy. [00:50:36] Speaker C: How can is it that thing that's on the desk in front of you? [00:50:39] Speaker B: Just so happens, but the idea that something Xbox have come across recently, but that they've been trying to stop people who have been putting retro arc up so that you can play for the Xbox series X where you could turn. [00:50:56] Speaker A: It into development mode and then yeah. [00:50:58] Speaker B: If somebody who can sit in a bedroom can do it, why can't the big companies go? Surely people would go, oh, I'll pay a fiver for that game to play it. I think their pricing is all over the place. [00:51:15] Speaker A: This isn't the first time that Rockstar's done this because they released GTA Definitive Edition, which was completely broken on release. And I don't think it's much better now to the state of they actually changed some of the in game assets because they just didn't work as a joke anymore. So it was like the doughnut, which they turned it into like a nut, wasn't it? Or something like that? [00:51:34] Speaker C: No, I think it was the other way around. I think it was like a nut. [00:51:39] Speaker A: And it turned it into a doughnut. [00:51:41] Speaker C: But because they smoothed it, because they thought, oh, well, it's jagged, PS, two textures, we'll smooth it and it's like no, but the joke was that the jaggedness of it was part of the. [00:51:50] Speaker A: Joke of it, but it smacks off absolute laziness. And yeah, it's been outsourced, which I have no issue with getting other games studio to do it, but the whole thing, you would think they would have learnt after the whole GTA definitive edition, how badly that was received. [00:52:09] Speaker C: It's one of those things I think a big part of maybe where the outrage comes from is the fact that Rockstar are just dragging their feet with things. [00:52:22] Speaker A: They get so much money from GTA online, they don't have to bother doing. [00:52:25] Speaker C: If you think about it this way, Red Dead Redemption and GTA are not made by the same studio. Like rockstar. [00:52:33] Speaker A: North is GTA. [00:52:34] Speaker C: Yeah. Rockstar north is GTA and then rockstar. San Diego, I believe. Is Red dead? And it's the fact that there's two Red Dead Redemption games and they released eight years apart. [00:52:45] Speaker A: Well, strictly speaking, there's three because there was Red Dead revolver, which was before. [00:52:48] Speaker C: It became well, we're not going to get into Red Dead revolver, but even then I think that's like a little bit I think obviously the gap between those is due to rights changing hands and what have you. I think Capcom with the original rights holders on that one, but with GTA, it's been ten years since the last GTA and GTA six is still very much in development. [00:53:13] Speaker A: Oh, it's going to be at least. [00:53:14] Speaker C: Three or four years before they drop anything on that. I think that even that's being optimistic. And I just think, what are you actually doing behind the scenes, you know what I mean? [00:53:27] Speaker A: Yeah, like Valve with half low three never going to get made. [00:53:31] Speaker C: Because at least with Valve I can understand it's like you've kind of made a pivot more towards being a storefront and your developers are working on maintaining the storefront, I guess. But like with Rockstar it's like, what are you actually doing apart from GTA online? [00:53:45] Speaker B: I always think that with the next GTA, it's going to have the spinal tapness about it and it'll be like, it's GTA six. And it's like, well, what's different? It's one higher. And that's the thing with a lot of games now, you just go, well. [00:54:01] Speaker A: Hasn'T their narrative director left as well? Because that's always been the good thing about GTA, is their stories and how they do it. And he's walked out. [00:54:09] Speaker C: Yeah, I know. One of the sort of main creative people, one of the Howzer brothers has gone. I know that. [00:54:13] Speaker A: So that's probably why GTA Six is because somebody's actually got to write the story for it. [00:54:18] Speaker B: But then why not just drop it and create a new item? [00:54:22] Speaker C: GTA Online brings in too much money. [00:54:25] Speaker B: Surely it should be about the game. [00:54:27] Speaker A: Surely site franchises do they have I mean, they can't bring back table tennis as a new just invent a new game. [00:54:35] Speaker B: Surely as gamers, we all want something new and exciting rather than the same thing, repackaged with like, ray tracing and longer draw. [00:54:44] Speaker C: This is what I was getting at, though. [00:54:45] Speaker A: Back to remakes and remasters. Are we all creatively bankrupt because there's nothing else left to come out? I mean, Starfield is the big hope for Xbox Studios, especially Bethesda, are going to release something that's not wonky from day one. But it's kind of like that's their new franchise, which is basically just Elder Scrolls in Space. That's all it is. I don't think anybody's going to deny that that's not the case. It's just an RPG in space. What recently new game wise, have we had, which has been fantastic out of Wilds, was well, out of Worlds was just again, Oblivion. But it was Obsidian Studios, wasn't it? Basically them doing fallout in space. [00:55:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I feel bad now that I'm saying create new games and then I'm going, yeah, I quite liked Jedi Fallen Order or whatever it was called. And then I'm looking forward to Outlaws or whatever it's called, when they showed me a clip of you flying a ship from the spaceport into space. And I'm like, I kind of want to do that. [00:55:52] Speaker C: It's kind of interesting because we are in actually a pretty good year for games because there are just so many really good I think what we're in is the tail end of all the delays from COVID are all kind of landing at once. But even then, I think what's pivoting to be like the biggest games of the year, arguably, I'd say like every system's got something coming or something already out that is arguably in a position to be Game of the Year. And I count PC in this because of Boulders Gate Three, but in all four cases, they're all sequels. They're all sequels except Starfield. But even then, Starfield's kind of it's just Elder Scroll slash Fallout in Space, because you've got here's the Kingdom, so that's a Zelda game. You've got Baltisgate Three, which is based on DND, and you've got Spiderman coming up for PlayStation, which I think is probably going to sequel to well, it's. [00:56:51] Speaker A: A sequel because you've got Miles Morales, which is kind of a sequel. [00:56:53] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a sequel. But it's a marvel property, isn't it? It's a big existing property that's Sony. [00:57:01] Speaker B: Surprise us with an incredible grand tourismo release before the end of the year, based on the movie Grand Turismo, the game. [00:57:09] Speaker C: Now, see, what they've done is they actually put the car from the movie in Grand Tourismo seven. So that's the level of effort they're willing to go to for that one. [00:57:18] Speaker B: And it's one pound 99 if you. [00:57:21] Speaker C: Want to download it. [00:57:21] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll still be sat here three months later trying to get our International Beat license before we allow to play the game. Do all the driving tests first. But yeah, I think there's two tiers of games now. We have the AA studios and as you've said, the amount of time, the amount of investment has now got to the stage of it's got to be successful from day one. So it's either pivoted on a franchise or it's a sequel or it's a recognized property. And then you have this world of indie games where all the creativity is going to and all the amazing games that are written, but they don't get enough creative polish to make them. [00:57:59] Speaker C: And I think we've also lost the significant the mid tier stuff because it's either got to make so much money to cover the cost of the or you can either make something on a shoestring budget or make it on a massive budget, but you can't really do it on a mid tier budget. [00:58:16] Speaker A: Like, I look at the big games last year, like Vampire Survivors, that's made by a single developer and that was a fantastic hit. [00:58:22] Speaker C: Yeah, I think it won the BAFTA. [00:58:24] Speaker A: The best game, but you could tell if that had been a team and it had had a lot more polish, it would probably have been an even better game. [00:58:32] Speaker C: I really struggle to think of mid tier games that are sort of doing really well. I mean, the most recent sort of mid tier game is probably Atlas Fallen, which I basically hear no one talking about. And it's got like a 50 on Metacritic, so it's not I mean, the. [00:58:47] Speaker A: One I was going to say is Hi Fi Rush, which was great and it felt like one of those mid tier games of it. It didn't have a massive budget and it was just dropped quietly. [00:58:56] Speaker C: But I think you've got to remember with that is that it's Bethesda behind it, who are then getting their money from Microsoft. But I think, yeah, Hi Fi Rush is a really good example of something that sort of broke through and did it's something new. Yeah. And he's like, oh, it's something new. [00:59:14] Speaker A: And creative and I want to play it. [00:59:15] Speaker C: And it is harkening back to the GameCube era where there were a lot of games of that sort of style, but I think that's why people latched onto it, because there's so few games of that style now, because we've pivoted so much towards like big open worlds. [00:59:32] Speaker A: You don't get beautiful. Joe obviously an inspiration this week because. [00:59:37] Speaker B: It'S come to Xbox. I'd preordered Stray because I just really wanted to play that. But it was like a PlayStation exclusive for a certain amount of time. But that's a. Game that's like, I just look at it and I'm thinking, that's a game I want to play. There's something about that. And I kind of like the robots thing and the cats and all the rest of it, and making it meow and all the rest of that, thinking that's a game I'm going to enjoy playing and I'm going to be able to play it. I've not got to invest like 100 hours and whatever. [01:00:05] Speaker C: It is quite a short game, something. [01:00:07] Speaker B: I'm going to be able to just pick up, play through once, enjoy it, and possibly will play through again, just to play through. [01:00:15] Speaker C: It's definitely sort of in that indie tier because it's made by a very small team and it's quite a short game and all that sort of stuff. [01:00:23] Speaker B: That's where my game plan is. [01:00:25] Speaker A: Nomen sky when that came out, which was basically it was definitely an indie game and it was definitely not great at release, but it was sony just decided to market the hell out of it. [01:00:35] Speaker C: And then we went, oh, God. [01:00:36] Speaker A: How are we going to cope with all this attention on our franchise, which is really a b or a single a tier game? The best, which Stray was, but at least it was polished and fixed. [01:00:46] Speaker C: And with Stray, though, at least it was always kind of presented as this sort of small project. It was never sort of present. [01:00:52] Speaker A: It was never like, this is going to be a 600 hours opus game. [01:00:55] Speaker B: Yeah, but that's where my game playing time is now. I can't justify dropping 70 quid on a game that's going to take me hundreds of hours to play, that I know it's going to take me three or four years to complete because I just won't get around to it. [01:01:12] Speaker A: Well, this is where you have the difference in the tiers of gamers, because I lump the Call of Duty and the FIFA people together, which is they'll buy a console, they'll buy one game, and that is the game they will play until death. [01:01:25] Speaker C: And this has even been proven by the recent Microsoft case, the whole Activision trial, to determine whether or not they should be allowed to buy it. I still think the outcome was wrong, but anyway but yeah, it's proven that people will just buy a PS Five because they want to play Call of Duty or FIFA, and that's it. [01:01:48] Speaker A: It's a bit like destiny. Two players. You'll get people who are just purely playing Destiny Two. [01:01:55] Speaker B: Yeah, that is a thing. But then again, the promise that Destiny Two had when they launched it, it was like there was a ten year plan, there was going to be all of this thing. And I think what happens is that the development doesn't happen. And I know lots of people have been very unhappy about things that been happening in the Destiny world. [01:02:14] Speaker A: I was going to say, hasn't there just been some new news about the dropping gambit as a mode and everybody's upset about it. [01:02:18] Speaker B: Yeah, so they're struggling to figure out ways of keeping these franchises going, keeping the player base up. [01:02:25] Speaker C: This is also why anytime a developer says a ten year plan there, everyone just kind of groans and just says, oh yeah, sure, but the problem is. [01:02:33] Speaker A: It takes them ten years to make the sequel. That's why they're saying they've got a ten year plan. But look at the mess of Halo Infinite, which should have been one of the biggest selling games of all time. It should have been this whole live series, persistent environment. You've got Microsoft money, you've got three, four, three studios, they've got all the money in the world and it just died on its ass already. [01:02:52] Speaker C: Although, to be fair, Microsoft are like tripping over their own feet constantly at the moment. [01:02:57] Speaker B: Because the Halo thing is weird because I downloaded because it's on game Pass. [01:03:02] Speaker A: Halo Infinite and the campaign is great. [01:03:04] Speaker B: And I played a bit and then I found that when I played Halo again, I was playing Master Chief Collection and I was playing the earlier Halo games again because they were just halo. [01:03:14] Speaker A: Three is still one of the pinnacle games that's always in my top five. [01:03:17] Speaker B: And I'm like, you've just released a brand new game that's on Game pass, it's free, I haven't got to pay for it. But even still I want to play an older game, which is weird kind of way of doing it. I think games as a thing at the moment are in trouble. [01:03:35] Speaker A: They could come across spoiled because it's got too big. That's the problem. [01:03:39] Speaker C: But I think we're potentially heading towards like a correction point because one of the biggest games last year was Elden Ring. The biggest games of the year so far are Tears of the Kingdom and Baldigate Three. And the thing that unites all of them is that they're a bit more, well, Baldigate Three. [01:03:55] Speaker A: Everybody's been talking about it because there's no Microtransactions, there's no Day One DLC, it's been polished to hell and everybody. [01:04:05] Speaker C: Is favorably and I am playing this, I'll talk about it later. But it is good. It deserves all the attention it's getting. [01:04:13] Speaker B: The other interesting thing about Balder's Gate is the platform it's available on because it's not on consoles, which just goes to show everybody talks about gaming as being a console thing. And I think a lot of people forget that there is such a massive core of people who play games on PC stuff. [01:04:31] Speaker A: What always makes me laugh when it says exclusive. It's like, oh, it's an exclusive game and it's like, oh, it's not available on PC. I'll go and play the other 100,000 games that I can possibly download and play everyone. [01:04:43] Speaker C: But no, I think we are heading towards that correction point because the thing that connects those games is that they're primarily single player experiences. They offer the player a lot more freedom than a lot of games have recently been doing. They don't have microtransactions. And I think the fact that they're so successful and so many live services are just dying on arrival is potentially showing. [01:05:08] Speaker A: We're going to see a three live services. [01:05:12] Speaker C: Hey, does everyone remember Hyperscape? Yes. [01:05:15] Speaker A: There was the Ghost Recon one, which had the NFTs built in, which everybody hated from day one. [01:05:21] Speaker C: And I'm sure I think I read that the NFTs made about $50. [01:05:28] Speaker A: They sold 15. Yeah. [01:05:30] Speaker C: I think it collectively made Global Launch massive live services. [01:05:34] Speaker A: And they sold 15 NFDS. [01:05:35] Speaker C: Yeah. Which collectively, I think made about $58 or something like that. And I'm just like, wow. [01:05:42] Speaker A: That'S just ubisoft. And their terrible practices of business. [01:05:45] Speaker C: But it's like the whole thing with live service stuff. And this is why I'm just baffled that Sony are just leaning heavily into it because they're not going to well. [01:05:53] Speaker A: Anthem died on Launch. [01:05:54] Speaker C: We've got anthem. You've got even the stuff that people forget about. Crucible was like the big one that I always like to point out, which is the Amazon. It was Amazon's first attempt at going into the games market. And they released it, put it in beta a month later, and then just canceled the beta. And that was the end of that. And no one remembers that game except for me because of the story. But then you can already see where Sony's attempts at live services are going when you see the response game, which the Avengers game. But Sony earlier this year did a big showcase and they showed off about five different live service games and no one was talking about any of them except for one of them, which was Foam Stars. And the only reason the Splatoon rip off yeah. And the only reason people were talking about is because everyone's going, my God, they really ripped off Splatoon. That was all the discourse about it. [01:06:51] Speaker A: Yeah. The egregious thing, I suppose, going back to our original subject about this Red Debris import to me is it's a fantastic game. It's an absolutely amazing game and played it when it came out on 360. Undead Nightmare is probably one of the best DLCs ever done. And it feels they've insulted the game by not bothering to put any effort into this. [01:07:19] Speaker C: Probably. I kind of see the sort of annoyance around it just for the simple fact that Rockstar do release so few things. If they just put it out alongside a bunch of other stuff, I don't think anyone would really have minded all that much. But I think it being Secret red Dead product. Yeah. And I think the only reason those rumors even existed is because Rockstar isn't putting anything out. So everyone's like, what is Rockstar up to? And then it's like, oh, well, someone's working on a Red Dead thing. And of course, as always happens in these situations, everyone overhypes it. Everyone gets all these ideas in their heads, like, oh, it's going to be the exact fantasy thing that I want is going to be achieved. And then it's a port of Red Dead. And that was all it was ever going to be. And I think if they'd released it alongside an announcement for Red Dead Redemption Three or something, I think no one would have cared that it was just a port or something because everyone would. [01:08:17] Speaker A: Be or even if they'd just released it on whatever PlayStation Plus is now, or Switch Online. [01:08:22] Speaker C: It wouldn't be on Switch Online just because of the way that works. [01:08:25] Speaker A: But it would have been like, here's a nice free because we were announcing the release of Three. That would have been fantastic. And I don't think anybody would have cared that it was a port, it would just been a go and learn about the Marston's history. Here's the second game, which is kind of sequel to the Red Dead Redemption, too. [01:08:43] Speaker C: But it's one of those things where I just think it's another example of people kind of overhyping stuff a bit too much and possibly kind of turning it into more of an issue than it really is. I think it's more the context and the price that's the problem, I suppose. [01:09:05] Speaker A: Submit if it's come up with some original stuff, please people. You like original stuff? Yes. Coming up on Friday the 29 September is an anime film festival in Birmingham in partnership with the Mockingbird Cinema, all the anime and the Mac and us. So we've been involved to a certain extent, but there's some fantastic films coming up for all ages. Probably going to be too late for this one. But on Friday the friday, yes, Friday the 18 August, we are showing End of Evangelion at the outdoor screen at the Mac, which is going to be fantastic because it's a film that doesn't really get on the big screen that often. If you ever heard of Evangelion, it's one of the big old franchises from the mid to late 90s. It was kind of one of the seminal animes over here in the UK, I think. Was it toonami used to show it, I think back in the day. [01:10:04] Speaker C: I know I saw it on the Sci-fi Channel. [01:10:06] Speaker A: Sci-fi Channel. Anyway, big giant robots, existential crisis, teenagers. It's a great film if you've not watched it. [01:10:15] Speaker B: So effed up going on at the same time. [01:10:17] Speaker A: Yes, the lovely high vis festival co founded by frequent visitors to Tai Brummy. Mr. Ollie Mcnamy, you may have seen him in the past. They'll be doing some live art alongside that. That should be pretty cool. And following that one quite closely. On Sunday the 27 August is my neighbor totoro at Birmingham Botanical Gardens. So bring a picnic, bring me a blanket, bring a couple of chairs, go and enjoy Totoro in a nice cool outdoor environment. [01:10:47] Speaker D: It's going to be beautiful there. Perfect place to show a film next story. [01:10:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I think there is prizes for the best Ghibli cosplay as well. [01:10:58] Speaker C: Someone doesn't show up in a full totoro. [01:11:06] Speaker A: The cat bus is one costume, but full of totoro. That would be amazing. [01:11:11] Speaker C: That would be like an ideal thing for a parent with multiple children. All the Totoro's being their kids and they're the cat bus. Like wheeling them back on like a wagon or something behind them cosplay up. [01:11:23] Speaker D: Your car to bring them in. [01:11:26] Speaker A: But talking about the main festival itself, so we tried to cater for a wide variety of different styles of anime. So to kick us off at the Mac on the 29 September, there is a screening of Satoshi Khan's seminal piece of work, Perfect Blue. So I think we were discussing this off air earlier, weren't we? It's one of the highest regarded animes of all time. Everybody steals bits from it. Some people have bought rights just so they can steal. [01:11:53] Speaker C: Darren Aronovsky. [01:11:54] Speaker B: Yes. [01:11:54] Speaker A: Just so he can steals a bit of it's. Just one of Satoshi Khan's amazing works. There is something on the Mockingbird which we're not allowed to talk about yet, but it's very exciting. So something on that one. And on screen two there as well. There's the first Lamb Dunk, which is quite a recent anime. Quite a lot of hype and buz around that one. But the main events for many people would probably be the Saturday and Sunday double, where we're having a Makoto Shinkai versus HaYomi Yazaki Face Off. So the Saturday will all shinkai all the time. So some of his greatest films, garden of Words, 5 cm/second, Your Name, Suzumi Weathering with you. So really check that one out. And on the Sunday, it's going to be some of Ghibli's greatest hits, including, if I can ever read this, kiki's Delivery Service, howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away and Princess Mononoki. So don't think there's any other four Ghibli films I'd probably pick to be sharing that day. [01:13:00] Speaker D: You've got some big ones in there. [01:13:03] Speaker A: They're the big ones. [01:13:04] Speaker C: I'd throw in Castle in the sky personally, but, you know and if Ghibli's. [01:13:08] Speaker A: Not your thing on the Sunday, we'll also be screening another one of Satoshi Khan's awesome works, which was Millennium Academy, which is kind of slightly more accessible movie, put it that way. On the Monday, we're showing The Deer King, which is a very well regarded anime. The Mac is showing Belladonna of sadness. Lots and lots of stuff that we're coming up with. WorldsPart are partnering with us. They're doing a pop up shop at the Mockingbird for the week that it's running. And they've got some secret screenings on the Thursday, which be very interesting. [01:13:39] Speaker B: Yeah. Join their discord, their manga discord. [01:13:42] Speaker A: Yes. That will be in the description, if. [01:13:45] Speaker B: You want that skinny on that. [01:13:47] Speaker A: Yes, but it's really exciting. It's the first time we've ever been involved in a kind of film festival. So really looking forward to it. [01:13:56] Speaker B: It's an excellent selection of movies. If you've never experienced anime before, seeing these on the big screen is probably going to be a great way of doing it. [01:14:04] Speaker D: Yeah, there are some great kind of gateway films into it, especially the ghibli ones. I would. [01:14:12] Speaker A: And if you've not seen Shinkai's films before, they are absolutely stunning. [01:14:18] Speaker C: I've only seen Your Name and Soothe's Mate, but both of them are just brilliant, just perfect films. Yeah. [01:14:24] Speaker A: And some of the stuff at the Mac is stuff that you will never see probably again on release for a while. Bella donner of sadness, for example. Its 50th anniversary this year, based around the story of Joan of Arc beautiful watercolor style. It is an 18, so it's restricted audience, but yeah, it's not a film that you'll ever really get on theaters that often. So if you want to check more information, you can find BAFF underscore UK on Twitter and Instagram and Threads and Birmingham annual Film Festival on Facebook. And there will be a website coming very soon, which is BAF UK. And again the links will be in. [01:15:02] Speaker B: The description and I imagine you'll be able to book the films directly with. [01:15:05] Speaker A: The yeah, so there'll be links directly to all the booking from there, so you can see if there's anything that takes you fancy. [01:15:11] Speaker B: Just see them all. Got to catch them all, unfortunately. [01:15:15] Speaker C: Pokemon. I was about to say we don't have any Pokemon films in there, but. [01:15:19] Speaker A: There is plenty of other alternatives and it is. [01:15:24] Speaker C: That would be a hell of a marathon though. Every Pokemon movie on one day and. [01:15:29] Speaker B: Then you have all the digital. [01:15:30] Speaker C: I don't know if you'd be able to do them all in one day. I think in terms of the existence of time, I think it's impossible to fit all of them in one day. [01:15:41] Speaker A: Imagine how long it would take to watch all the anime films in concurrency with the series, flop them in when they were released. [01:15:51] Speaker B: A long time. Yeah. [01:15:53] Speaker A: But unfortunately no Pokemon. But there's plenty of other stuff. And keep your eye out on the website and more information coming soon. Alright, it's time for one geek thing. Our roundup of what we've been up to since we've been away and our one geek thing, which was highlight that. So it starts off lee. Lee, what was your one geek thing? [01:16:14] Speaker C: Highlight? Well, I've already hinted at this earlier in the show, but Balders Gate Three. [01:16:18] Speaker A: Oh, I thought it was going to be grand trismo the movie. [01:16:20] Speaker C: Well, if you want me to talk about both, but yeah, Balders Gate Three. Because obviously I saw people like raving about it. [01:16:30] Speaker A: Can you explain Baldsgate as a franchise? Because is it licensed DND? Because they have their own games, so it's licensed? It is licensed. [01:16:39] Speaker C: It is licensed all of the Baldersgate games because Baldersgate is an actual setting in the D, D, forgotten Realms, Universe and so obviously in order to use that, you need to have the permission of Wizards of the coast and all the rest of it. And in fact, Balders Gate Three is built. It's DND fifth edition, the video game. All the mechanics are taken straight from the tabletop game. As someone who has played them, I recognized all the mechanics instantly as soon as I saw them. Obviously they've tweaked them here and there so that it fits a video game, but otherwise it's fundamentally the same game. [01:17:16] Speaker A: So my other big question was, I know it's PC only it's PC exclusive is the control scheme that as such that you must use a keyboard mouse. [01:17:26] Speaker C: I haven't attempted to use a controller, I'm only using a keyboard and mouse because it just feels like the sort of game that makes sense with a keyboard and mouse because it's sort of like not fully top down, but you're kind of looking down. It's almost like you've got figurines on a map and you're moving them around. So it just sort of made sense to me to be able to sort of click around and do in terms of the control scheme, the only criticism I have is that I feel like the camera rotates the wrong way just because it's Q and E for rotating the camera, but it feels like it does. It the opposite to how I want it to do it. [01:18:01] Speaker A: Flick that in the configuration, probably can. [01:18:03] Speaker C: But there are so many options. It's in there somewhere and I can't be bothered to find. [01:18:09] Speaker A: So tell us about the story of Bold Skate Three. [01:18:11] Speaker C: So Bold Skate Three is basically. [01:18:15] Speaker A: As. [01:18:16] Speaker C: You'D expect from a DND thing. It's a team of adventurers going on a quest, but it starts off with basically a bunch of people who've been taken on board a mind flayer ship. So mind flares being like these kind of weird tentacle things that infect your brain. Every party member has basically been infected with a mind flare parasite that it will supposedly turn them into a mind flare, but mysteriously it isn't doing that. So all of them are sort of questing together to try and find a way to get the parasites out of their heads. And you've basically just like a collection of different characters. You can either choose to play as one of the pre made characters who you will encounter throughout the game anyway, or you can make your own character, which I did. I made a tiefling sorcerer that I got to play exactly once for one session in A-D-D game. And I'm like, I really like these character concepts. So I'd like to actually so I was like, I'm going to revisit it here. But yeah, like, you've got different characters, like you've got Lazell, who's a Githyanki fighter. So the Githyanki are kind of like this kind of warlike, almost alien race where they're sort of very big on being warriors and that sort of thing. You've got Gale, who is a wizard, who is just like charming man, the wizard. You've got a guy called Asterion, who is he's a vampire rogue and he's just the creepiest guy in the world and I refuse to have him in my party. There was a scene where he was sort of approaching my character really closely and I was just like, you can back off, mate. [01:20:00] Speaker A: Personal space. [01:20:01] Speaker C: Yeah, but it is basically a big chunky classic style RPG that you normally get on the PC back in the day. So it's like a lot of mechanics. But the great thing about all that is that it gives you so many options of how to approach different situations. The amount of times where I've failed a sort of big combat encounter or really struggled through it and sort of reloaded it and then just been like, all right if I put, like, a load of grease over this? Bit and then I can set fire to that at some point and just take out a whole bunch of enemies or you can sort of reposition people before you enter a fight and so give yourself advantageous things or you can find sort of really interesting ways of navigating things without combat and all that sort of stuff. So this is kind of the big appeal for a lot of people is the fact that it's so open and you can do so many different approach things in so many different ways. And it's one of those sort of experiences that people feel like they haven't really had from games for a while. And it is fantastic in how it approaches all that. [01:21:14] Speaker A: It's got a massive voice cast thing as well. [01:21:16] Speaker C: Things like 270 actors, I mean, pretty everything. Every character in the game is voiced, fully voiced. And obviously this is a big fantasy world with full of just random people that you're going to meet maybe once or twice and even they're fully voiced. And it's great because Larry and Studios, the company who made it, they're based in Belgium so naturally they stayed on the continent and every voice actor is British. [01:21:48] Speaker B: Fun fact david Montes, who is one half of Geek syndicate. [01:21:54] Speaker D: Yes. [01:21:54] Speaker B: Hello, Barry. The other half, apparently he did all the voice work and motion capture for it ages and ages ago and I think he's discovered that he plays eight characters in the game. So you'll have to listen out for David's voice and see if he's in, know we know somebody and gently who's in. [01:22:16] Speaker C: And it's a really good voice cast. I don't necessarily know many of the actors. I think they're sort of smaller actors and stuff, but they were all really great performances. And I've also heard the narrator, she put out a selection of outtake reels that she collects together of her just kind of like losing her mind in the booth and like trying to read out all these complex fantasy names and just, like, losing her. At one point she's lost like, this name has four apostrophes in it. What are you doing? How do you say this? And at one point, just, like, turns the romance options into, like, a phone line where it's like, to romance Shadow Heart, press one, to romance will press two. [01:23:03] Speaker A: Because suppose some people are their only ever experience of DND is possibly going to be the Honor Amongst Thieves movie or Stranger Things. Which two most popular thing to get people into. Do you think this is accessible enough that you can get away with jumping in? [01:23:21] Speaker C: Probably not. It's not really good at explaining the DND mechanics all that well. It just kind of throws them at you and just kind of goes, Figure it out. [01:23:32] Speaker A: I've seen one viral video where somebody's walking down the street and a squirrel come and bites them on the foot and they roll 20 works and what that means is they kick the squirrel into a tree and kill it. [01:23:41] Speaker C: Well, there was, like, one quest where I was sort of like saves coming here because I was writing something for work off the back of it and just kind of trying everything to see what it was. It's basically like there's a quest where you find a gnome tied to a windmill. Basically, a bunch of goblins have just tied him up there and turned the windmill on because they find it funny and you can free him. And it's very easy to get rid of the goblins because they're basically just very skittish and just one attack on the leader and they're like, oh, no, I'm sorry, we'll all go. But then when it comes to turning the windmill off, there are two levers. One of them is the brake lever, which obviously stops the windmill. The other one is the release the brake lever, which does the opposite. And that scene is one of the funniest things because it just speeds up rapidly and it just shows him just flying through the air and landing in the middle of a village somewhere across the valley. And then it cuts to one of the goblins who's, like, run off. But he's just like, oh, man. He's really taken flight and everything. Even he's amazed that you did that. [01:24:51] Speaker A: So you can be a bit of a bastard. [01:24:53] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, it absolutely kind of lets you play again because it's come from DND, it kind of lets you play it how you want. And most of the DND sessions I've played have been absolutely chaotic anyway and there's a lot of that chaotic energy here and I'm very glad that it's here. So, yeah, I'm enjoying it. I'm not super far into it, but I think I might be approaching act two. But I'm really enjoying it so far. [01:25:22] Speaker A: So if you've got any interest at all in D, D definitely awesome. Thank you. Sam, how about yourself? What's your one geek thing? [01:25:31] Speaker D: Possibly stretching the geek thing a little bit, but it's what I've got, so I'm going to say it. About a month ago, I saw the Groundhog Day, the musical in London, which. [01:25:43] Speaker A: Obviously did you only see it once. [01:25:45] Speaker D: Or I did only see it once. I would very happily see it again. It was absolutely incredible. I think it's only on for about another week at time of recording. But if you are able to see it, or if it comes out again or goes on tour, I heartily recommend it. [01:26:03] Speaker A: So when you explained it to me that it was a Groundhog Day musical, I was like, how is this going to it's? [01:26:12] Speaker D: The way it's sort of presented is it works very similarly to the film, really. It's written by the same the script is by the same person who's wrote the film. All the songs are by Tim Minchin. So really witty, funny songs. It's very cleverly staged. So you sort of have him waking up in his bed every morning. There'll be certain kind of beats of what goes on in the day that are enough to make you recognize that it's repeating the same day. But it doesn't ever feel repetitive to the extent that it becomes boring. There's certain moments where, for example, he sort of through just good stage trickery, you'll sort of see him go off and go off one side of the stage and then a second later wake up in his bed in the middle of the stage, that sort of thing. There's one song in particular where there's basically a big kind of car chase. It's a brilliant son. The concept of the son is he goes to a bar, laments to a couple of barflies in there. You can't possibly understand what I'm going through, guys. Every day it's exactly the same. There's nothing I can do to change anything. And these barflies launch into this brilliant song about basically being alcoholic and every. [01:27:47] Speaker A: Day is the same. [01:27:48] Speaker D: Yeah, exactly. But it kind of goes into they all decide there's no consequences to what they're doing, so they might as well get really drunk and go on this like, go on this big bender in their car. And they have this car chase that's projected. Not projected. It's portrayed on the stage. And it's a car going through with buildings zipping past. But it's all done by just kind of puppetry and people moving things around. I can't describe it in a way that does it justice without spoiling things, but it's well worth a watch. [01:28:25] Speaker A: Sounds better than the other musical that you saw recently, which was Tarantino the Musical. [01:28:29] Speaker D: It's definitely better than the Tarantino Musical or Experience or whatever that was called. Yeah, it's had a bit of a difficult history as well. I think Grand Holiday, because it had its first West End run about seven years ago. Really successful, won loads of awards. Then a bit later on, they went to. Broadway, and then that got cut short, I think, because of COVID So it hasn't had as big an audience. It still feels like a relatively unknown thing, despite the fact it's had a huge amount of critical acclaim. [01:29:07] Speaker A: There's quite a few of these nostalgia musicals, which kind of deserve that one. There's back to the future one. There's been a few others, I think, recently, where they're lifting an old kind of franchise and bringing it back together. [01:29:21] Speaker D: Yeah, this feels special. As an example of how good it is. My parents see a lot of musicals. My mum's absolutely obsessed with them. She's seen Hamilton, I would guess, about 20 times now. Very often takes my dad along as well. He's less into it, but still does generally enjoy them. Dad will say now Groundhog Day is his favorite musical ever. It's up there for Mum as well. It's just incredibly good. So, yeah, I would hope at some point it's going to get another either a permanent fixture or semi permanent in the West End, or it will go on tour. Either way, if you get a chance, absolutely. Go and watch it. It's brilliant. [01:30:10] Speaker A: Awesome. Keith, how about yourself? [01:30:16] Speaker B: I'm going to surprise you because you'll think it's one thing, but it's completely something else. So those fine folks at 2000 Ad are doing a good job at the moment of putting out things that I wish they'd put out when I was 910. Eleven, whatever it is, in the 1970s. So they've announced a thing very recently that I'm thinking, why has it taken you so long to do this? So they've actually launched a range of patches. So these are iron on patches. So if you're not particularly good at sewing, you can just iron them onto your various bits and pieces. I'm going to sew these on because I don't trust the iron on thing, but they've released a kind of initial range which features patch designs from Rogue Trooper Judge Dredd. [01:31:02] Speaker A: I thought you was going to give it to guests. [01:31:04] Speaker B: Can you guess that one? [01:31:05] Speaker A: Well, that's Rogue trooper, of course. That's the GI. [01:31:07] Speaker B: So this one will get you. This one is the increased leisure, citizen. [01:31:15] Speaker A: So that feels like it should be a Megacity Badge. [01:31:23] Speaker B: No. [01:31:25] Speaker A: Dante? [01:31:25] Speaker B: No, it's a very old Alan Moore series. That's from Halo Jones. I think that's the only Halo Jones one. And then obviously, of course, there's a Megacity one. Like that's. The GI one. So that's the Road Trooper one, but they have a naught one as well. If you're one of these crazy people who like to be the baddies, but the Strontium Dog one is really nice. I think there's one from Nemesis, but again, that's a termite one, so it's kind of like it's the baddies and I'm not so happy. I like having the good guys. Although some people might say that the good guys in Megacity One, the Justice Department aren't quite the good guys. [01:32:09] Speaker C: But. [01:32:10] Speaker B: I think there's about ten designs in the range as well. And they've got some sniper elite ones on there. They've got into this thing. But yeah, it's like the idea of being able to adorn your jacket or bags with patches from 2080, I'm, like. [01:32:25] Speaker A: Done that a long, long time ago. [01:32:27] Speaker B: I don't know why. I mean, they're starting to increase their range of T shirts. So I've got the I think I bought this about a year ago. So this is the 2080 logo from when I first started buying it. This is the original. And they've got the various iterations in T shirts. And they got doing a load of T shirts and things now. So it's one of those things. I still kind of like the visual aesthetics of 2008 and the design work that's gone into that over the years. [01:32:55] Speaker A: Some of Britain's most famous comic book artists. [01:32:57] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:32:58] Speaker B: So I'm still picking up the Apex editions. So I'd recently had the Kevin O'Neill one, which had come. I'd ordered that. That's a work of art. And it's a great shame we've lost Kevin in recent times. And there's a second Mike McMahon edition coming out, which will focus on his slain artwork, which is really good. But I'm like thinking, you've got to stop putting these out because I've only got so much money. And when Marvel is putting out Rom and micronauts omnibuses and stuff, it's like, oh, my God. Nostalgia and comics just keep going. Do you want this one now? [01:33:31] Speaker A: It's like, yes, I do. [01:33:33] Speaker B: But I don't know. But the patches are brilliant. And I just know it's one of those things. I just think everybody's got room in their lives for a patch. [01:33:42] Speaker A: So it's going to go on the jacket. [01:33:44] Speaker B: Stick it on your these be these will be these are going on my bag. Just because I don't wear my jackets often enough. And my bag is kind of round all the time. So because it's going on my bag, I'll be sewing these on just a little bit more. What's it but if you're not very good at sewing, just iron them on. Iron on patches, man. Like, every kid wants these. So if you're thinking there's a certain holiday coming up soon that everybody celebrates at the end of the most, people celebrate perfect stocking filler. They're under a tenor. So you could get Halloween. [01:34:14] Speaker C: Keith no. [01:34:15] Speaker B: Well, you could do Halloween. [01:34:17] Speaker A: Is this going to return for our Christmas special? [01:34:21] Speaker B: You could patch yourself up for Halloween as well. I do quite like it. It does give you sewing instructions as well. Or you could use safety pins. I hadn't noticed that before. You could attach this by using safety pins. I don't know if that's probably a good idea. [01:34:38] Speaker A: It's nice to see Road Trooper getting some looks. It's one of those franchises that I think 2000 Echoes do forget they have. [01:34:43] Speaker B: Well, I mean, it's still quite annoying that Duncan Jones has been attached to a Rogue Trooper movie for a while now and he kind of has alluded to that project is now moving forwards. [01:34:56] Speaker A: A little bit more because we're waiting for the Mega City One TV series. [01:35:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm not quite sure what's happening with that. I think it's problematic. A lot of things of this nature COVID happened, and television's kind of right stroke going through a weird thing and stuff as well, so it's a bit tricky to move these projects forward. But 2080 is such an intrinsic part of the madness that took my life in a particular direction in terms of the crazy things that are going on. So it's quite nice the idea that I can get out of things I wish I'd had when I was ten. [01:35:34] Speaker A: Well, now you got the money to buy them. [01:35:35] Speaker B: Now I've got patches instead, which is quite good, and they're reasonably well priced, so it's quite good and the quality is pretty solid. So if you like patches, get them. [01:35:43] Speaker A: So just 2000 Ad. [01:35:45] Speaker B: It'll be the 2080 webshop. Yeah, so just pop on there. Like I said, they've got some Sniper Elite designs as well, so if you're the kind of person that likes to pop a Nazi in the nuts, you can get a patch to celebrate the. [01:35:57] Speaker C: Fact a Nazi played by Charlie Brooker, because that was a thing once. [01:36:05] Speaker B: But I need to get the strontium dog one because the strontium dog one's really good and I might put that one on a jacket because I can pretend that I'm a strontium dog then, as you do when you're in your fifty s and you pretend to be a mutant with crazy powers. But then that's me. So. How about you, Brian? What's your one geek thing? [01:36:23] Speaker A: So recently I went to the continent, it's been a while since I've been overseas. [01:36:27] Speaker B: The continent? [01:36:28] Speaker A: Yes. So I went to the Netherlands in particular. But whilst we're there, there's two really big standout things. One is Micropia, which is a museum all about microbes bacteria. Sounds terribly dull. It was one of the best museums I've ever been to. It's really interactive, really good fun. The other museum we went to, which is probably my one geek thing pick, because it's an artist that really inspired me when I was back at school in the day, which was Escher MC. Escher. So you don't know he's a Dutch artist? [01:36:55] Speaker B: I thought you said he was going to be a DJ. No. [01:37:02] Speaker C: Keith, just so we're aware, DJs and MCs are not the same thing. [01:37:08] Speaker B: I kind of realized that when I let that miss this opportunity. [01:37:13] Speaker A: DJ Dali supported that would have so what they've done is this in The Hague or Denhag if you're actually Dutch, there's the former Winter Palace, which was Queen Mother Emma, I think it was basically gave it up in the 90s, retired out somewhere else and then said, here's my Winter Palace. But it's got to be dedicated to the arts. And at the time MC, Eschew wasn't that well regarded in the Netherlands. He's one of those artists who is famous, come much longer after he's passed away. But his stuff has always inspired me. I always like the tessellation and his artwork and it's the development of that. But it's a permanent exhibition on there. So it is called esher in Het palace. If you ever go to The Hague, quite cheap. I think it's like 13 €14 to go in there's. Three floors, all experiencing Esher's artwork. And at the moment, for I think it's till August 27, they're talking about Samuel JESSER and De Mesquita, who is the person who basically got Escher to move in from architecture into artistry. So it's all about how he inspired him. Lithographs Woodcuts and that's how Escher's art progressed into the way it did and moving into desolation. It's really, really good stuff. So it goes about the whole history. It talks about during the Second World War and talks about mosquito being sent to a concentration camp and how effect that on Escher and his artwork. And it goes on to like the where he found his biggest success. And how about artwork and isolation? And there's loads and loads of artworks there. I mean, I picked one of probably one of the favorite ones out, which is, if you can see that, which is one of his kind of the start artwork, that style that you've ever seen. And there's kind of really fun things to do. So me and Viv had a there is a little photo booth in there and it's kind of one of those distorting ones that you've ever seen. I'll put it bigger on the screen, but it's kind of so you can get into rooms and one of you looks giant, one of you looks small. So it's all about distortion. It's the way that he looks at it. [01:39:19] Speaker C: Picture is even better knowing the height. [01:39:20] Speaker A: Difference between you and like it's all about metaphor. Tessellation. It's one of the things that really inspired me when I was doing art at GCSE. And it was the way of patterns and the way of that kind of there's a mathematical element to art, which is what Escher really brings through into his work. And it's something that's really beautiful and you don't often get to see. So these were original prints and etc. They pulled stuff out of private collections. They pulled stuff out. The Reichs Museum. The Reichs Museum. And there's lots of different interpretations of Escher and all of his most famous prints. Like the one of him, old Mcglass Glow with the reflection of himself, the one of the two hands drawing each other. They're all there. So it's worth, definitely just worth if you are that way in the world, going and seeing this Escheric exhibition, it's like 50 minutes to get to Amsterdam on the plane from Birmingham. So not too far away at all, actually. [01:40:15] Speaker C: And I'm very aware of how easy it is to get to Amsterdam from Birmingham Airport because it's basically the only flight that goes from Birmingham Airport. Yeah, pretty much direct when trying to find flights for later this year, like Amsterdam just keeps coming up. I'm like, no, I don't want to go in that direction, thank you very much. [01:40:33] Speaker D: Actually, I'm going to New York next month. Then? Yeah. Amsterdam? [01:40:38] Speaker C: Yeah. Shocked. [01:40:44] Speaker B: He didn't know that was possible. [01:40:46] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:40:47] Speaker A: But really recommend it. If you are over in The Hague. [01:40:49] Speaker C: For any reason, go and look at it. [01:40:56] Speaker A: Thanks for joining us on the Geeky Brummy show this week. Lee, where can we find you online? [01:41:00] Speaker C: You can find me on YouTube at Bob the Pet Ferret, where by the time this episode goes out, I will have a Smash Brothers retrospective along with all the other videos that I've put up previously. You can find me find updates on that on Twitter at Bob the Pet Ferret. It is still Twitter. I refuse to call it anything else. You can find my personal Twitter at the Cheap Ferret as well. [01:41:26] Speaker A: Awesome. [01:41:26] Speaker C: And where can we find your writing? Oh, and yes. And you can also my job, my day job is writing for Silicon Era where I do news review, writing, guide writing, that sort of thing. [01:41:40] Speaker A: Thank you. Sam, how about yourself? [01:41:42] Speaker D: You can find me on Twitter and Instagram at Dragon Sam 89, I think, and or possibly at SD Edwards 89. [01:41:51] Speaker A: So dragon sam's a twitter. SD Edwards is the instagram. [01:41:54] Speaker D: Thank you. [01:41:56] Speaker A: Awesome. Thank you. Keith, how about yourself? [01:41:59] Speaker B: Still on Twitter with the underscore for Hardlock Hotel. I might try and change that now. I don't know if I can. But hardlock hotel without on threads. [01:42:11] Speaker A: He'll steal it for himself at some. [01:42:13] Speaker C: Point in the future. [01:42:13] Speaker B: And then just more generally, Wednesdays on the Geeky Premiere website and taking over the Geeky Premiere socials with the picks of the comic picks of the week, which you should all go and read. Or just go to Comic Shop and read something else. [01:42:27] Speaker A: And you find me at Ryan Parrish on Twitter and parrish Ryan on Instagram. But don't forget to go and follow birmingham Anime Film Festival That's at BAFF underscore UK on Twitter's and the Instagrams and Threads and Birmingham Anime Film Festival on Facebook for more updates and website will be coming soon. And don't forget geeky [email protected], geeky. Brummy on Twitter. Instagram, Facebook Threads, Mastom Hive that we haven't really posted on there since we set it up, but they're there anyway, just go and follow us. And Keith's gaming roundup every comic roundup every Wednesday and Lee's game releases every Friday. [01:43:10] Speaker B: Which I'm in this week, if you've not recently what's it? I'm on the star of a game. I did the motion capture for you a long time ago. [01:43:18] Speaker A: So you retired from doing the comics because you was in what was that comic series. [01:43:23] Speaker B: It was once and future. [01:43:24] Speaker A: Once and Future You was in that every week. [01:43:26] Speaker C: Quite big. I love that the game has also got Future in the name of it because it's called I Am Future. Yeah. [01:43:32] Speaker B: I'm a bit of a one trick pony in terms of when it comes to these things. [01:43:36] Speaker C: Really? [01:43:36] Speaker A: Sorry. [01:43:37] Speaker C: Cool. [01:43:37] Speaker A: But yeah, so don't get YouTube. I think we've thrown up the Dial of Destiny review that we did recently. I faffed around with something involving American Psycho and all three. [01:43:49] Speaker B: Well, I'm also considering doing shorts for the Comic of the Week soon as well, so you'll have to let me know what you think of those. [01:43:55] Speaker A: I'll do a quick short for the. [01:43:56] Speaker B: Comic of the Week. [01:43:57] Speaker A: Yeah, but don't forget to do the, like, subscribe review. [01:44:01] Speaker B: Yeah, like subscribe. Join a cult about us somewhere. I don't know what else you want to do. [01:44:10] Speaker A: Go and watch us in IMAX with very loud noises. [01:44:13] Speaker B: Yeah. Let off a small indoor firework in your house if you need to. Kind of, like, emulate that. [01:44:18] Speaker C: Please do not let off indoor fireworks for legal reasons. We do not advise letting off fireworks in your home. [01:44:27] Speaker A: But you can wear pink. We are all Kenneth, but I definitely. [01:44:37] Speaker B: Prefer to be Alan. Bye.