RopeofSilicon Podcast

A busy episode, but we were still able to keep it under an hour, though just barely. We talk about this week's two new wide releases The Change-Up and Rise of the Planet of the Apes as well as this week's limited release, Bellflower. Additionally, we talk about a batch of new stories over the course of the first 18 minutes including the In Time trailer, Brett Ratner co-producing the Oscars, superhero talk including The Dark Knight Rises, Thor 2, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Man of Steel plus news that Steven Soderbergh will direct second unit on The Hunger Games.

We got a lot to talk about this week with four new releases to discuss including reviews of Attack the Block, Crazy, Stupid, Love, The Smurfs and Cowboys and Aliens. But on top of that we give you some brief comments on the Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman comedy The Change-Up, which I believe may be the funniest film I've seen all year, we talk about controversial films, Star Trek 2, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance and the brand new Battleship trailer.

Just under 32 minutes this week as we open with our thoughts on Comic Con and why we've decided to skip the comic book convention the last two years in a row followed by our thoughts on Captain America: The First Avenger and Friends with Benefits.

When a ten-year-old franchise comes to an end you know it's going to be part of the conversation, so, yes, we talk about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 in this week's episode as well as look back at the franchise on a whole. We also discuss the idea of a film "taking us back to our childhood" as we head into our discussion of Winnie the Pooh.

This week we start off the discussion with a little talk about the recent casting for James Bond 23 as well as our expectations for Peter Jackson's The Hobbit. From there we give our thoughts on this week's newest releases, Horrible Bosses and Zookeeper, before moving into talk of the year it has been so far with our favorites from the first six months of 2011 and then continue on to our most anticipated films for the next six months.

As for this episode's topics of conversation, Laremy and I start with the news that Thor 2 has a screenwriter in place, which then somehow transitions into a conversation of how TV and movies should start working closer together such as the proposed TV series tie in with Ron Howard's potential adaptation of Stephen King's The Dark Tower. This is followed up with reviews and conversation for Tom Hanks' Larry Crowne and Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Finally we talk a little box-office pertaining to Transformers 3 as well as the fact Super 8 just crossed the $100 million mark and any potential it may have for an Oscar nomination, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is about to cross the $1 billion mark worldwide and Bridesmaids just became Judd Apatow's highest grossing film as a producer or director.

This week the conversation begins with Cars 2 as we discuss our thoughts on the film, the critical reception and its box-office prospects and we also talk Bad Teacher and where we disagree on the film. Additionally we discuss Martin Campbell's comments regarding Marc Forster's Quantum of Solace as well as Shia LaBeouf's comments regarding Transformers: Dark of the Moon. And finally, midway through this 35 minute episode we discuss the future of the comic book movie on the heels of a disappointing opening weekend for Green Lantern. With Man of Steel, The Dark Knight Rises, The Amazing Spider-Man and The Avengers on the way, just where do lesser known superheroes such as Green Lantern fit in? Do they fit in?

This time around Laremy and I offer up commentary on two of this week's new releases � Mr. Popper's Penguins and Green Lantern � and we also briefly discuss the news from earlier this week that the Academy had decided to change the Best Picture nomination format to where they will have anywhere from 5 to 10 nominees depending on the number of films that receive at least 5% of the first place votes.

As far as the first 23 minutes of the episode are concerned, we discuss Darren Aronofsky moving once again on his Noah's Ark project, Leonardo DiCaprio has joined the cast of Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, we have a brief discussion on David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Tron 3, Salt 2, G.I. Joe 2 and then we end with our discussion of this week's new release of Super 8.

This one dedicates some time talking about the news of Osama bin Laden's death and the subsequent film Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal are preparing, Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained and Fast Five's box-office supremacy and the RottenTomatoes rankings for the franchise. Finally, we dedicate the last segment to the upcoming batch of summer films, which I just started previewing earlier today with a look at the blockbuster titles.

This week our topics included The Hunger Games, the trailer for The Change-Up (included above), this summer's superhero movies (based on this article), Harry Potter vs. Transformers at the box-office, Jeremy Renner being cast in The Bourne Legacy, Terminator 5 talk and ranking the Fast and Furious films.