Big Daddy Dispatch: September 2022 (Patreon)

Dispatch Sixty Eight, September 2nd, 2022





Greetings WHM Family!

Season 13 is happening this coming TUESDAY! You are going to love this season. In just a few days you're going to get a disgusting episode on one of the most grueling films we've ever subjected ourselves to, that's right gang, it's Nothing But Trouble! You'll also find out who Chris Cabin (that rotten son of a bitch) chose as his second Cameo, and trust me, you don't want to miss that. 

You know what else you're not going to want to miss? We Hate Movies ON TOUR! That's right, we're doing an amazing Fall Tour, featuring four NEW CITIES we've never played in before. We are so excited about this we needed to tell you right up top!

Thursday October 27th we'll be doing our FIRST INTERNATIONAL SHOW OF ALL TIME, in Toronto, ON on Saw IV!

Then, just a few weeks later we have three stops in the western United States, in cities people have been asking us for YEARS to visit. We're so thrilled to play

Denver, CO on November 14th to talk about Matthew Broderick, the first hacker, in War Games! 

Then, the very next night on November 15th, we'll be in Salt Lake City, UT, to do a live episode on Michael Douglas' fuckterpiece, Fatal Attraction!

And finally we'll be wrapping it up in Phoenix, AZ with the beefcake epic Universal Solder! Expect dueling bad impressions of Dolph Lundgren and Jean Claude Van Damme in that one, folks! 

All of these tickets are moving fast and AVAILABLE NOW at Whmpodcast.com/Tour! 

This is going to be an incredible tour and an incredible season, we can't wait to enjoy it all with you! 


Banner Credit: We Hate Movies The Big Daddy Dispatch by Felipe Sobreiro

Image Credit: We Hate Movies Fall 2022 Tour by Felipe Sobreiro

LAST MONTH ON WHM

Episode 624 – Escape Plan: Live in Boston



It’s vacation time for the boys, so here come the live eps! Straight from the bog that birthed Mark Wahlberg, the fellas discuss Sly and Arnie’s 2013 prison-break movie, where they do battle against sadistic warden Jim Caviezel and his blunt instrument, Vinnie Jones. Is Stallone excited about being able to see his fellow prisoners go to the bathroom through a plate of glass? Did Arnold have a clause in his contract maximizing his on-screen sitting time? What on earth is Sam “I was in Possession” Neill doing here? Wait, Amy Ryan too?!? 50 Cent being here makes much more sense.

Episode 625 – RoboCop 3: Live in Detroit

The gang heads to Motor City to take apart the third and somehow not last attempt to follow-up the miracle that is RoboCop, this time with Robert John Burke in the suit for Peter Weller. Is this just a total cynical ploy to cash in one last time on the franchise name? Who thought RoboCop the Resistance Fighter was a good idea? OCP would have to be out of business, right? Maybe that’s being a bit optimistic, but they have had more outright scandals than Tesla at this point.

Episode 626 – RoboCop (1987) (PATRONS ONLY)



The party doesn’t stop on the Patreon, as we dedicate our monthly We Love Movies episode to talk about Paul Verhoeven’s original masterpiece RoboCop, starring Peter Weller as the cybernetic Omni Consumer Products weapon of the future that gets self-aware and successfully excises the middle and low class criminal elements of its parent company to make life easier for the high class criminal contingent. Can you tell Chris wrote this one? How is Verhoeven able to have his cake and eat it too? How many god-tier deaths and one-liners is he able to pack into one movie? I’d buy this for several dollars, hundreds of them even.

Episode 627 – Under Siege: Live in Charlotte

From their recent stop in North Carolina, Andrew, Chris, Eric, and Steve take on arguably the best Seagal film ever made, wherein he plays a tier-one-operator-turned-military-cook who outwits Gary Busey, Tommy Lee Jones, and a battalion of homegrown terrorists on a Navy Destroyer. How many times is Chris going to do the voice? How much of modern hipster style did Tommy Lee Jones’ fit create? Does Gary Busey remember doing it or was this one those fugue state situations we hear about? Go talk to the Captain!

Episode 628 – Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot: Live in D.C.



Coming in live from the cesspool, the boys return to the D.C. Improv to talk the rarest of all gems, a Sylvester Stallone comedy. Specifically, the one where he becomes overwhelmingly infantilized by his overbearing mother, Estelle Getty. What’s with the pineapple juice? Did Schwarzenegger really trick Sly into doing this? Would the FBI have to get involved with what he’s putting this girlfriend through? Let’s take a very long break before we discuss Stallone’s sense of cinematic humor again maybe?

Episode 629 – Footloose: Live in Nashville



Full of Hot Chicken and the good kind of country music, Andrew, Steve, Eric, and Chris head to the Town of No Dance, where the ruler Lithgow’s super-weird obsession with teenagers is challenged by heroic Kevin Bacon who spreads dance fever. Is Chris Penn the first person you thought of when you thought of making a dance movie? Why is everything aside from the dancing so fucking bleak? Who would nominate a man like Lithgow to such high office? He never wants to hear it for the boy, whereas We Hate Movies LLC. Is, of course, very pro-hearing it for the boy.

WHAT ARE WE WATCHING?

This is a space for us to talk about some NON-We Hate Movies related content that we've shoved into our eyeballs in the last month: TV, Movies, Cartoons, and Sports (maybe?). Just about anything that isn't pornography.

Andrew: I used our month-long vacation to really make a dent in Movie Mountain—the large pile of disc media that sits in my home studio—and while I really need to put out a new, fuller write-up of stuff I’ve been catching, here’s just a taste: 

Alex Garland’s Annihilation — I finally revisited this one for the first time since theaters and wow, it really hit me this time. The first time I checked it out, I was completely greened out at the Brooklyn Drafthouse and didn’t remember a ton, but at the start of this month, I popped on the Paramount 4K disc and yeah, I definitely think this is Garland’s best film. The whole cast is really great, and the atmosphere that Garland & Co. creates made me so unsettled the whole time. Solid, solid movie. 

Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive — The same day I checked out Annihilation, I also threw on the Second Sight 4K for one of my faves. I know this one is a divisive title, but hot damn does it still slap for this guy. I remember the first time I caught this one downtown at the 23rd street theater in Chelsea. It’s a Cinépolis theater now, and pretty nice, but back then it was still a gross-ass Bow Tie theater and at the precise moment that Christina Hendricks’ character—SPOILER ALERT—is super-murdered, the DCP server crashed and it turned into a whole thing. Chaos in the theater. Anyway, fantastic movie, fantastic L.A. movie, and Second Sight did a fabulous job with the 4K disc. 

Wayne Wang’s Chan Is Missing — This was a film I’d always read about and seen people talking about in various corners of Film Twitter and elsewhere, but only this month did I finally fill in this huge blindspot. I really loved this. Watched it on the Criterion blu-ray, a total blind buy, and had a ball. I really wish we could get back to a place where lo-fi films like this had a larger footprint on the exhibition scene. Wood Moy and Marc Hayashi are so great together, each guy’s on-screen persona gels so well with the other's. Everyone should see this. 

William Brent Bell’s Orphan: First Kill — Okay, I will admit that the first time I heard they were doing this, I was incredulous to the very notion of Orphan getting a second installment, let alone a prequel. I thought the first one was fine enough (it made for a great episode), but I just couldn’t see what they could do with this story. Well, friends, I’m proud to say that I was wrong. I appreciate just how totally unhinged this film is, how warmly it embraces its batshit nature, and how game absolutely everyone in the cast is. Just a reminder that Julia Stiles is, and has always been, totally great. Plus, props to Isabelle Fuhrman for cementing her place in the horror pantheon with her portrayal of Esther here. She’s wildly convincing and totally eerie. Great job all around. 

Věra Chytilová’s Daisies — I went and caught this at the IFC Center the other weekend when they opened Janus’s new 4K restoration and holy hell, this is still so chaotic, cacophonous and hilarious. Watching the Maries take society to task in one hysterical situation after another, it’s exhilarating. Destroy the world, one rich, high society asshole at a time. See this if you haven’t yet. It’s 75 minutes you absolutely will not regret. 


Chris: My wife is the main TV watcher in the house and I like to be around her so I watched most of Abbott Elementary and the first two seasons of What We Do in the Shadows recently. The former is very cute; the latter is very funny, and maybe the only Waititi project I’m currently interested in handing any good will over to in the wake of Love and Thunder. I’m hoping to pack in a re-watch of Von Trier’s The Kingdom before his follow-up hits later this year. I will report back, but I remember it being one of my favorite works by that miserable pain in the ass and kinda-genius.

Anyway, having some off time means I get to watch a bunch of new (to me) stuff. Here are some high and low lights:

Eega: For those who have rightly become obsessed with Indian powerhouse S.S. Rajamouli’s rebellious action epic RRR, I have good news: it wasn’t a fluke. This unclassifiable lovers-divided epic essentially takes the Bart-Becomes-Fly segment from the Treehouse of Horror to its maximalist conclusion, pitting a recently murdered flower arranger, reincarnated as a clever fly, against the criminal kingpin who murdered him and is trying to take his beloved Bindhu. It should not work on any planet or alternate dimension, and yet Rajamouli makes it as rousing and flamboyantly romantic as RRR is in its own way. Really should be seen with as little preparation as possible, so I will stop here.

Green Snake: Tsui Hark’s deranged and delightful fantasy about a pair of snake sisters, a repressed poet, and a powerful monk easily ranks among his best work (Once Upon a Time in China, Time and Tide, Peking Opera Blues) and is the only film of his I’ve seen that feels as lush as the first Once Upon a Time film. The snakes are big, dumb, and practical, the way they should be, but Hark doesn’t use that as an excuse to dumb-down his romantic and dramatic intentions. In fact, he uses this swirling epic-in-miniature of pastels and aquas to defy the inherent misogyny that often guides a great deal of Chinese folklore and fantasy. A stunner.

The French Lieutenant’s Woman: Maybe this is going to take a few more watches but I am really struggling with Karel Reisz. I love the original The Gambler, with James Caan as the destructive boy wonder, but since then, everything I’ve seen of his has made me want to nap. This now includes this Criterion-endorsed mediocrity with Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons giving about par for the course to this unwieldy movie-movie. Not as unwatchable as Sweet Dreams, but just so plodding and unremarkable as a visual experience.

Happy Feet/Three Thousand Years of Longing: I am a completist, and this is the burden of being that particular type of annoying person. You find yourself sitting down and attempting, in some small way, to take the tap-dancing-penguin movie seriously because it bears the name of the man who made fucking Mad Max: Fury Road and Lorenzo’s Oil, one of the greatest medical dramas ever made. It is my sad duty to report that Happy Feet sucks, and includes at least one deeply troubling moment when the teen-ish penguins almost fuck accidentally a few times in like a 15-second sequence. They can’t all be bangers but as Miller’s latest film attests, most of them might be though. There’s a lot going on in Miller’s genie romance – several time shifts, stories within stories within declarations, gorgeous bejeweled vessels of all sorts and sizes – but what he’s considering underneath it all has to do with why we do what we do on this planet and what we do when we decide to change it or blow it up for a dream or a promise. That it also gives Idris Elba a long-overdue great role that he knocks out of the park is all bonus points.

Eric: I did not watch a ton this month, as I've been trying to give my brain time to heal from the torment this podcast puts it through, that and I've been binge watching Seinfeld again and finally got to Peterman living in the Burmese jungle. I cannot believe how often that show still to this day makes me laugh.

But what I did check out includes The Devil's Rain from 1975 the Satanic cult movie starring Ernest Borgnine, William Shatner, and Tom Skerritt. I know it's very lowly rated online and people practically tell you to steer clear altogether but I gotta say.... I had a blast with it. I don't think it was as slow as people say! And at 86 minutes, it's a great in and out. It's also a serious stay tuned.

Speaking of eventual episodes, Chris Cabin and I watched Barb Wire from 1996 the Pamela Anderson vehicle for the podcast Soundtracker we guested it on. Temuera “Boba Friend” Morrison is also in it! Along with a slew of other notables like Udo Kier and Xander Berkeley. The movie is actually somewhat better than I remembered but still a bad half-baked Casablanca remake. Yes, really! That said it predicted a lot about the future accurately down to American Nazis controlling Washington DC in 2017.

I am sorry to say that the Kung Fu corner this month is going to have to be the White Guy Karate corner. I watched American Ninja 1-4, and yes, I know I need to check out 5. That said the franchise is, as you know, dog shit. However, I was actually impressed with American Ninja 2. It is the top of the franchise without a doubt. I watched these movies a lot growing up and always praised 4 but now as a mostly clear headed adult I now see and recognize 2 as the tops. I guess my rankings would be: 2, 1, 4, 3, and 5 will probably not move above 4, but who knows. Stranger things have happened.

I also spent part of this August catching up on things I missed and these three are in my top of the year: Crimes of the Future (2022), Elvis (2022), Prey (2022). If you haven't seen 'em, check 'em out!

Steve: Holy shit, August is finally over! Is that allowed? I thought it was supposed to go on for at least six more weeks. I did a lot of watching and even still I feel behind! I haven't got to Prey yet, and I feel like there's just so much more that I should be watching, but I've gotta LIVE dammit!  Anyways, I'll only talk about the one thing that's been occupying my brain these last four weeks.

The Sandman (2022): If you know me, or have seen me wear numerous t-shirts of this character and concept, you know that Neil Gaiman's Sandman is absolutely one of my favorite things on this planet. So to say that I was guarded about this long festering, long awaited adaptation (remember when this was supposed to be a movie series with Joesph Gordon Levitt? Yikes), would be an understatement. And you know, when I saw the promotional stills, I was incredibly wary. The show is in no way as striking to look at as Sam Keith or Mike Dringenberg's art, and you know why? Because it's a TV Show, and it can't do that. And once I watched the first episode the breadth of the care that the creative team behind this adaptation put into every single decision to make this comic book into a TV Show—I completely fell in love. I am more satisfied by this adaption than I can recall being by any comic adaptation. Full stop. They get so much right in the casting. and the tone and the direction of the series, and honestly it's the changes that keep me excited. I love what they did with the Corinthian, taking him out of the Doll's House storyline and making him a "season villain" it's just smart. And Boyd Hollbrook is having a blast in the role, too. Tom Sturridge is pitch perfect as Morpheus—a moody, sullen, imperious, likeably unlikable protagonist—a difficult feat to pull off. I can go up and down this very deep and very excellent cast but as I just finished "The Sound of Her Wings" episode and Kirby Howell-Baptiste is amazing as Death. She plays off Sturridge perfectly, is light, airy, intelligent, and strong willed. Anybody who is looking at skin color to find the accuracy in the casting is an incredibly sad and dull person.

PATREON MAILBAG LIGHTNING ROUND

Here's a fun space where folks on Patreon get to ask us Questions directly. This month's entry comes from 

Luca from Switzerland who asks: 


"In what fictional band (from any movie) would you like to be a member? "

Andrew: There are a lot of great fictional bands I would’ve loved to have played in—I think playing guitar in Citizen Dick, Matt Dillon’s grunge band in Singles, would’ve been a good time. Hanging around Seattle in the early 90s, drinking beers with your band buds (including Eddie Vedder), playing shows, yeah I could see that happening. I could also see being a part of Sonic Death Monkey/Kathleen Turner Overdrive/Barry Jive and the Uptown Five, Jack Black’s band in High Fidelity. I mean, come on, closing every show with that “Let’s Get It On” cover? Hell yeah. Oh, and maybe playing bass in Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, it would be incredible to be in the rhythm section playing alongside Animal, dude is a total legend.  

Chris: My off-the-bat answer would be Stillwater from Almost Famous as that, to me, is a pretty sober(ing) view of what its like to be famous for a little bit and how it works when that goes away. I also remember thinking Fever Dog was an absolute banger when I heard it originally. If we want to be a bit more realistic about my skills as a musician, Sex Bob-omb from Scott Pilgrim is probably a bit more representative of what I can do, minus unleashing that neon super-ape creature.

Eric: I'm not picky, I'll take either the Blues Brothers or the Good Ol' Boys. It's either that or maybe the band Black Roses from Black Roses (1988) so I can do some Satan shit. 

Steve: If I could choose, I'd love to be in the titular band from The Commitments,  that whole crew was having a blast the entire time they were doing it, fucking, fighting, and getting black out drunk in working class Ireland. Sounds like it's right up my alley. Plus since I have no musical talent whatsoever, I could easily pass as a back-up singer. Win/Win.

SEPTEMBER SCHEDULE

Say what? The Schedule in advance?! It's the least we could do! By subscribing to this newsletter you get a sneak peak at what we're putting out for this month! 

Episode 631— Nothing But Trouble

Episode 632 —  Stone Cold (1991): with special guest Josh Lewis!

Episode 633 —  Shrek Ever After

Episode 634 —  Disturbing Behavior: with special guest Angelica Jade Bastién

Patreon Episodes:

Patreon Exclusive We Love Movies — The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Animation Damnation — Tale Spin: "Last Horizons" (s1,e32)

The Nexus: TOS: "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" (s3 e8) TNG: "The Offspring" (s3, e16)

Gleep Glossary: Weequay

Melr0210: 90210: "Fire and Ice" (s2, e19) Melrose Place: "Hot and Bothered"  (s2, e6)

Find all this crap and enjoy it legally, just like we do! Now!

PATREON RSS BUG

If you’re having trouble with the RSS feed updating or episodes not appearing in your app, Patreon has acknowledged this bug and they have a fix: "Try un-subscribing and re-subscribing via your app by re-entering the unique RSS feed you were given and is on our Overview section of the Creator page. Or try using a different podcast app or RSS feed reader." 

Please consult this page and contact Patreon Support if the problem persists. We apologize for any inconvenience you’ve experienced on Patreon and truly appreciate your continued support!

UPCOMING NEWS AND PROMOTION



Our Youtube Channel continues to kick-ass folks! Just this last month we did an impromptu LIVE MAILBAG, which are always so much fun. We also have all officially sanctioned VHS Trailer Game episodes up to this point. Eric has also put out great clip packages like Toby Jones in Bee Movie, Sausage Claus, David! Muppet Hitchcock Presents, Egg Lawyer, Lak Sivrak, the Wolfman of Star Wars, Michael Biehn at Comic Con, Loose Loomis, and many more! You can also watch the entirety of our Witchboard episode! Complete with visual gags (most of which are almost funny.). You'll find all sorts of cool shit like Mailbags, VHS Trailer Games, Full Episodes like The Last Boy Scout, Event Horizon,  Eternals, Saw III, and Resident Evil (2002). Like we said above these are great for sharing and introducing folks to the show. There's so much content there we can't list it all here. Just go and subscribe already! 



We just want to let you folks know that the Scanner Cop 1 & 2 collection is back in stock on the Vinegar Syndrome website! Why should you care? Well, A.) Those movies are awesome and B.) Scanner Cop features a synchable, hilarious commentary by your friends at We Hate Movies! Get your copy now before it's off the market! 

OH Snap! Eric and Ben are pushing the boundaries of podcasting! The latest episode of Hooked on TJ Hooker was recorded in a field! You read that right!  Listen here!  

If you're a fan of the show and a fan of looking sharp, you should check out our merch on our TeePublic store! We've got awesome new designs including a  MINGO (copyright forthcoming) shirt from MelR0210 by (you guessed it) Felipe Sobreiro! We also have a ton of great designs like The VHS Trailer Game Logo, Egg Lawyer, The Order of the Boop, The Kornkast design and many more, with more to come! 

That's going to do it for this month's Dispatch! See you next month for the Spooktacular! 

Take it easy,
Andrew, Chris, Eric, and Steve
We Hate Movies