RopeofSilicon Podcast

It's the Tuesday edition of the podcast and we have 42 good minutes to share with you as we discuss everything from this week's unveiling of the new trailer for The Hunger Games, the new Toy Story short that will play in front of The Muppets, Immortals winning the box-office and David Fincher's comments on the chances The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has at the Oscars. All of this plus a rundown of the week's new DVDs and Blu-rays.

It's Friday, November 11, 2011 and on this 11/11/11, Laremy and I recorded our 25th episode of the RopeofSilicon podcast and despite doing our best to not watch trailers we discuss three that we saw recently including trailers for Act of Valor, John Carter and Snow White and the Huntsman. We also, obviously, discussed the hiring of Brian Grazer and Billy Crystal as new Oscar show producer and host respectively, as well as commented on recent reactions to Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin out of the AFI Fest and Liam Neeson's appearance on Ricky Gervais' new television show "Life's Too Short". We closed out the podcast with a discussion about Adam Sandler since neither of us saw Jack and Jill, our review of Immortals and ended with a little more discussion regarding Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar, which we reviewed in full on Tuesday.

Welcome to our first Tuesday edition of the RopeofSilicon podcast as we are hoping to start doing this each week to not only bring you topics and reviews on Fridays for new and upcoming movies, but hopefully use Tuesday's DVD releases to talk about the new titles coming home as well as some older titles that don't usually make the list of topics. This week, however, also brings a review of Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar, which hits limited theaters tomorrow, Wednesday November 9, and expands this weekend. There is also news regarding Brett Ratner stepping down as Oscar show producer, we bring you a few Oscar predictions now that we've seen J. Edgar and then we switch over into the new DVD and Blu-ray releases.

We have packed this 65 minutes with so many topics it was hard to write up the timeline of topics as there are too many asides to count and so many stories they just can't be contained. Kim Kardashian, Brett Ratner, Olivia Munn and a crazy Star Wars fan occupy the first three or so minutes before we move into Andy Serkis signing for the Rise of the Planet of the Apes sequel, Universal's president tells us what he really thinks of his movies, James Bond 23 was confirmed to be titled Skyfall as production begins and Terrence Malick is making two new films back-to-back in 2012. After that, Amanda Seyfried occupies a few minutes as we move into conversation revolving around The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and our most anticipated films over the next couple of months. We wrap all of that up with reviews of Tower Heist and A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas before signing off and sending you on your way.

In this week's podcast Laremy and Brad talk about Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull comments, the Paranormal Activity 3 trailers showing footage not in the final film, the marketing of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1, Shame receiving an NC-17 rating and all of this week's new releases including Anonymous, Like Crazy, The Rum Diary, Puss in Boots and In Time.

This week may be our most random, wide-spread podcast yet as we discuss everything from whether or not the veracity of historical based dramas should play a role in our opinion of a film to the Republican debates. We discuss the weekend's new releases including Paranormal Activity 3, Margin Call, Martha Marcy May Marlene and The Three Musketeers. We talk about the films we consider the scariest of all-time, Joseph Gordon-Levitt negotiating for Django Unchained, David Fincher's three hour cut of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, our Halloween costumes, Occupy Wall Street and ask why are studios paying so much money to make today's movies?

It's a long one this week as we delve into no fewer than 13 topics and then discuss four of this week's new movies including comments on The Big Year, Trespass and, of course, The Thing and Footloose. However, before that we take a look at Empire's Top 100 British Films, the goofiness surrounding Drive, Star Wars in 3D, an art vs. entertainment conversation, comparing Tom Cruise with Taylor Lautner and a bunch of other stuff all at a rapid pace and wrapped up in 69 minutes.

Don't let my brain fart of an intro confuse you, even though I say this is the September 7 edition of the podcast it is in fact the October 7 edition as Laremy and I deliver 44 minutes of intense movie debate. This week we obviously review the new film Real Steel while also talking about the joy of seeing great films on the big screen as I saw Cleopatra in 70mm and Tower Heist will make its way to Video on Demand at the price of $60. We also continue our discussiong regarding Human Centipede and just how exactly we decide what kind of controversial material we're willing to watch as I just received the Criterion Blu-ray edition of Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom. We also venture into a Fast and the Furious rumor that has Jason Statham maybe joining the cast as well as news Tara Reid was paid somewhere around $250,000 to star in American Reunion. Ouch.

We begin talking about Fox's new TV show "Terra Nova", move into discussing those new photos of The Avengers cast, the Bond 23 rumors and the new Mortal Kombat movie that's in the works before discussing this this week's new releases, specifically What's Your Number?, 50/50 and a spoiler filled discussion on Take Shelter or which Laremy and I appear to be the only ones that don't consider this film a masterpiece. We then close things down with a few brief comments on Tucker and Dale vs. Evil and Courageous, some box-office chatter and comment on the chances The Artist and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close may have in the Best Picture race. We get sidetracked here and there, but for the most part that's the gist of it all.

Wow, take us away from the podcast for two weeks and we come back with a vengeance! This week we have for you a podcast that runs one hour and 58 minutes as we just couldn't stop talking. We went rapid fire on topics beginning with a Toronto Film Festival wrap-up of sorts talking about our favorite films including Anonymous, Butter, The Oranges and Shame as well as a couple we didn't like so much such as Coriolanus and Twixt. Next we moved to the new trailer for David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (watch here) and J. Edgar (watch here) that debuted this week and then questioned why anyone would want to watch The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence). Then we went to the Star Wars Blu-rays and somehow ended up talking about "The X-Factor" and Mimic before finally getting into this week's new releases, including Abduction and a brief aside on Taylor Lautner's "talent", Machine Gun Preacher, Killer Elite and Moneyball and ending with some chatter on our favorite baseball movies.

We're getting closer to that desired 30 minute mark as this week's episode goes just over 34 minutes as we briskly discuss several topics from this week beginning with a short tease from my interview with Martha Marcy May Marlene director Sean Durkin and move into discussion of the changes being made to the upcoming Star Wars Blu-rays, Disney's new "All Access" home entertainment option and the recently released trailer for The Hunger Games. From that trailer discussion we move into Drive, which Laremy finally saw earlier this week and I saw for a second time, and Laremy is finally able to join me in chastising the trailers for the film, which really do spoil several important plot elements. We also discuss the fact Apollo 18 and Shark Night 3D were not screened for critics and then quickly discuss A Good Old Fashioned Orgy, which we both enjoyed.

A little bit of a different podcast this week as we had to record it yesterday, before either of us saw Colombiana as I am currently taking a mini-vacation to Disneyland this weekend. So this week's podcast was recorded on Thursday for posting today, but that doesn't mean it isn't still one of the best podcasts ever! Okay, this one may be a little weak, but don't blame us we weren't given much to work with by way of new releases. As for this week's new movies we talk about Our Idiot Brother, which both Laremy and I saw, and Don't be Afraid of the Dark, which only I saw, but I have a lot more things to say than I discussed in my review as I delve into spoiler territory at the latter end of the podcast, but don't worry, I am sure to let you know when I do in case you want to skip over it. We also discuss the Chaos Cinema topic I discussed earlier this week as well as the five choices Christian Bale is looking at after he completes work on The Dark Knight Rises.

This week saw the release of Conan the Barbarian, Fright Night and One Day in theaters as well as continued news of The Lone Ranger debacle, Ridley Scott is going to direct a new installment in the Blade Runner franchise and a few other news items we have chosen to discuss on this� the August 19, 2011 edition of the 'Brad 'n' Laremy on Movies' Podcast.

If you were hoping for a shorter episode this week, I'm sorry, we started rambling as we talked about the controversies surrounding 30 Minutes or Less and The Help within our reviews as well as discussed upcoming sequels and remakes and even delved into Star Wars on Blu-ray for a bit. We also talked about the list of Top 50 Special Effects I posted earlier, whether or not spoilers actually hurt your enjoyment of movies based on a new scientific report from UC San Diego and then got into our reviews of 30 Minutes or Less, The Help and Final Destination 5 before shutting things down 56 minutes later.

Now that Rise of the Planet of the Apes has been released the question is no longer will Andy Serkis be considered for an Oscar nomination as an actor, but should he. While there are plenty of factions out there that believe he should RopeofSilicon contributor Laremy Legel isn't so sure and I have to admit, while I would have no problem with the idea of Serkis receiving a nomination, the question of "should he?" is a different beast.