Tag Archives: tobiah panshin

Fun Size Episode 63 – I Want Willem Dafoe in Every Movie

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Has the world gone mad? Well, yes. But we’re also looking back on 2021 as a remarkably great year at the movies! We’re still talking to Tobiah Panshin for an uncharacteristically positive and optimistic discussion about the current state of cinema. For real!

We briefly touch on: The Last Duel, Titane, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Licorice Pizza, The French Dispatch, Dune, C’mon C’mon, Spencer, Malignant, The Suicide Squad, The Twentieth Century, and The Matrix Resurrections.

Plus, would it be so bad if the world we lived in was just a computer program?

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Episode 50 – The Green Knight

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“Honor. That is why a knight does what he does.”

With the New Year, we’re on a knightly quest to the Green Chapel to trade blows with returning guest Tobiah Panshin of the View from the Gutters podcast, to dive into David Lowery’s visually stunning and unorthodox adaptation of a 14th century Arthurian legend, The Green Knight.

When the supernatural Green Knight issues a yuletide challenge for any of Camelot’s bravest knights to try to land a blow on him — and receive an equal strike in return one Christmas later — King Arthur’s flawed and reckless nephew Gawain accepts without thinking. Easily decapitating his compliant foe, Gawain sees the Green Knight immediately rise again and remind him of his obligation one year hence. Embarking on a quest to the mysterious Green Chapel, Gawain contends with ghosts, giants and his own selfish nature, to see if he can live up to his promise — even if it might mean his certain death.

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Fun Size Episode 57 – The SJW/C.H.U.D. Alliance

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We’re joined again by Tobiah Panshin to dig into some movie talk. Is there really a hard divide between popcorn blockbusters and what Martin Scorsese calls “cinema”? Will the shadow of the pandemic change anything about movies going forward?

And we talk about the oddity of Zack Snyder’s 4-hour cut of the Justice League film, and how it inexplicably exists beyond all probability — both through the world-changing crises, scandals and events that even made its creation possible, and probably made critics and audiences kinder to it.

CORRECTION: Ava Duvernay turned down directing Black Panther, not The Eternals.

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Fun Size Episode 56 – “The Customer is Always Right”

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We continue to work the registers with Tobiah Panshin, going to places both weirdly metaphysical and painfully mundane.

First, Mike thinks it might actually be preferable to live in a hypothetical computer simulation than a “real” universe. What is real, anyways? Does that make our programmers gods?  Is the act of creation inherently selfish — and if it is, does that even matter?

Then, we look at a recently unearthed-on-YouTube reality show, Airline, about ticket agents and flight attendants weathering often-drunken customer abuse and demands. It triggers all sorts of all-too-familiar customer service flashbacks. Plus, Mike remembers that one time he almost got into a fight at the airport.

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Episode 45 – Willow

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Adventure doesn’t come any bigger than this.

We’re back in the studio and ready to cross swords with Tobiah Panshin, the author of The Game Master: A Guide to the Art and Theory of Roleplaying, and dive into George Lucas and Ron Howard’s high fantasy tale of magic and child endangerment: Willow!

When a diminutive farmer, Willow Ufgood, finds a baby princess prophesied to destroy the evil Queen Bavmorda, he is recruited by magical forces to be the child’s guardian. Now, aided by a roguish swordsman, a wise sorceress, and an annoying pair of impish brownies, Willow must overcome his fears and save the entire realm from evil.

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Fun Size Episode 42 – Hey, I Know That!

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We chat a bit with Tobiah Panshin about that great intangible that gets people’s ire up: Fan Service!

What is it? Why is it used as a pejorative? Is it ever a welcome thing? Why does it both delight and frustrate? Amuse and Annoy? We delve into the wherefores and whyfores and try to figure it all out.

Note: This episode was recorded before our last Fun Size episode in October, and we hadn’t seen Joker yet.

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Fun Size Episode 40 – The Fucking C-Word

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We sit down again with Tobiah Panshin to open up a bit about medical scares and Mike’s recent testicular cancer diagnosis and treatment. We dig into the heavy emotional weight that comes with getting scary news from a doctor. We also look at how the fictional depiction of cancer in popular media really doesn’t prepare you for the reality of even a highly treatable cancer.

Plus, we chat a little about the recent, strange anxiety about vaping, and how it compares to past moral panics like video games, rap music, Satanism, and Dungeons & Dragons.

Oh, and don’t vote for Joe Biden. He’s just awful.

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Podcasta la Vista, Baby! Episode 20 – Red Sonja

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A woman and a warrior that became a legend.

This month, we’re back in the Hyborean Age to battle wizards and monsters with Tobiah Panshin of the House of Jack and Stan to test our mettle against the third and most poorly-received of Arnold’s fantasy epics: Red Sonja!

When her family is murdered and her body defiled by soldiers of the mad Queen Gedren, a vengeful Red Sonja is gifted with great power to take her revenge. Sonja’s help is sought by a dying priestess when Gedren steals an ancient Talisman with the power to make or destroy worlds. Now with the aid of the mighty Lord Kalidor of Hyrkania, Red Sonja must battle to the center of a kingdom of perpetual night to destroy the Talisman, and save the world!

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Mike Appears Again on the View from the Gutters podcast!

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Avengers Assemble!

In honor of the release of Avengers: Endgame, Mike is back on the temporarily-out-of-retirement View from the Gutters podcast, to participate in their first ever, Avengers Fantasy Draft!

Mike joins Tobiah Panshin, Joe Preti, and Brant Gillihan-Eddy to draft our own five-member Avengers line-ups.

Check it out and let them know which drafted Avengers team you think is the best (hint: it’s Mike’s!)

Fun Size Episode 36 – Peak Clown

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In our latest fun-sized chat with Tobiah Panshin, we dig into the topics that really matter to working people, like the media depiction of Clowns, and how it’s affected their public perception. Is the happy clown character now a totally dead concept?

We briefly dive into the phenomenon of the Simpsons, and how what was once a controversial program has survived long enough to see an entire culture change around them. We pick at how the experiences of comic book stores and video arcades have fundamentally changed since we were children.

And finally, in a reaction to a recent Rob Kelly podcast, we ask: how can we make obnoxious people shut up in a movie theater?

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Episode 39 – Spider-Man

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“Spins a web, any size. Catches thieves, just like flies.”

This month, we’re web-slinging through New York with the Fire and Water Network‘s Ryan Daly and Tobiah Panshin of the House of Jack and Stan podcast. We’re climbing the wall over Marvel’s revolutionary and relatable comic book hero: the Amazing Spider-Man!

From his beginnings in a cancelled anthology comic by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in 1962, Spidey has exploded into multimedia superstardom, and changed the superhero genre forever. He’s headlined literally thousands of comic book issues, seven feature films, and countless animated shows. He’s been a company mascot, a parade balloon, a breakfast cereal, a cartoon pig, and even the star of his own failed Broadway musical.

We dig into all things pertaining to the web-head, try to figure out if the Daily Bugle is a reputable news source, and try to answer that question: is Spider-Man hero, or menace?

Music: 
“Main Titles/Costume Montage” from Spider-Man (2002) by Danny Elfman

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Fun Size Episode 26 – A Continuity Gumbo of Nonsense

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While Casey has to run upstairs and be a dad, Mike continues his talk with Joe Preti and Tobiah Panshin for a full-throated bitch-sesh about the state of the comic book industry. From Marvel and DC’s refusal to change its accessibility, sales methods and whether its time to give up the ghost of the monthly issue, we wonder if the current superhero output from those two great companies just isn’t for us anymore.

And is DC Comics secretly a doomsday cult trying to provoke Alan Moore into ending the world?

Plus, we talk about cartoon voice actors and try to make heads or tails out of the design of K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider.

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Episode 33 – Akira

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“KANEDAAAAAA!!!” “TESTUOOOO!!!”

We’ve returned with a long-awaited panel episode! This time, we’re popping some capsules and tearing our motorcycles through the ruins of Neo-Tokyo with Tobiah Panshin and Joe Preti of the View from the Gutters comic book podcast. We’re digging into Katsuhiro Otomo’s groundbreaking 1980s apocalyptic manga epic about psychokinetic powers and mass destruction, Akira.

From its serialized origins in the Japanese Young Magazine to the pioneering animated film, this is a seminal masterpiece of explosions, body horror, secret military programs, and disaffected youth, and it’s cast a long shadow over all of modern popular culture.

Music: 
“Kaneda” from Akira (1988) by Geinoh Yamashirogumi

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Black Ops Episode 7 – The Twilight of the Pamphlet

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In this extra-sized episode, we talk more with View from the Gutters‘ Tobiah Panshin about the past, present and possible future of comic books as a medium and an industry.

We talk about how old Marvel letter columns reveal both angry letters from Tobiah’s mom, and how Wolverine was initially the least popular X-Men character. We react to the puzzling tirades about “SJWs” taking over superhero comics, and reflect on how we can balance the toxic attitudes of creators like Frank Miller and Dave Sim against their groundbreaking work and where he puts them in comics history.

And finally, we wonder if it’s time for American comic books to abandon the floppy monthly issue format and fundamentally change if Marvel and DC are going to survive for future generations.

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Fun Size Episode 24 – By the Way, I Have a Plan to Kill You

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We’re joined again by Tobiah Panshin for a stream-of-consciousness style talk about swearing on cable television, the portrayal of violence and smoking in Marvel Comics, and how the hell we’re supposed to pronounce Ra’s Al Ghul’s name.

We also try to square Batman’s paradoxical career as a street level urban vigilante with his sci-fi adventures with the Justice League; and his role as the loving patriarch of a Bat-family who also had a predilection for dreaming up hypothetical schemes for killing his super-powered friends.

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