Spooky Outhouse Productions

Sam’s back from moving!  But he won’t be joining Jonathan at Gen Con this year.  Sad face.

Gaerma is the grand winner (and only entrant) of the Don’t Starve giveaway.

Sam gives us his take on the XBone, and it’s not terribly positive, although Alex has some new feelings about it.

Molyneux’s “social experiment,” Curiosity, has finished, there’s a winner, and the winner will be a god (for a while).

Sam may still be unpacking, but he’s got 5 of his 6 consoles unpacked and set up.

Alex makes inconsiderate comparisons when talking about Knytt Underground.

Jonathan makes similar, but more appropriate, comparisons for Stealth Bastard Deluxe.

Next week we’ll stop revisiting topics that one or another host missed out on!

Author: Haruki Murakami, translator: Philip Gabriel

Published: 1992

Vintage

Plot Summary - Growing up in the suburbs of post-war Japan, it seemed to Hajime that everyone but him had brothers and sisters. His sole companion was Shimamoto, also an only child. Together they spent long afternoons listening to her father’s record collection. But when his family moved away, the two lost touch. Now Hajime is in his thirties. After a decade of drifting he has found happiness with his loving wife and two daughters, and success running a jazz bar. Then Shimamoto reappears. She is beautiful, intense, enveloped in mystery. Hajime is catapulted into the past, putting at risk all he has in the present.

Quick Thoughts [forthcoming]

“Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I’m gazing at a distant star. 
It’s dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago.
Maybe the star doesn’t even exist any more. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything.”

Your Hosts:

• Lena
• Scott

Recorded 04/25/13

Next Time: American Gods by Neil Gaiman

A VERY SPECIAL CONGRATULATIONS TO MONTY!!  THE WINNER OF SEASON 4!! WOO HOO!

Congrats to Jeff and Lena for their perfect scores of 25!

Good luck, everyone… let Season 5 begin!

Picks:

Lena:

1. After Earth
2. Now You See Me
3. Fast and Furious 6
4. The Hangover Part III
5. Star Trek Into Darkness

Jeff

1. Fast and Furious 6
2. After Earth
3. Now You See Me
4. Star Trek Into Darkness
5. Epic

Art

1. Fast and Furious 6
2. After Earth
3. The Hangover Part III
4. Now You See Me
5. Star Trek Into Darkness

There are no other movies in wide release this weekend.

Back Seat Art House Picks

• Lena – The East
• Jeff, Art – The Kings of Summer

Rob and his co-worker Chris tell their story about the tornado that hit the St. Louis\St. Charles area on 5/31/2013.

Ha! Got you! You thought this was a new episode. It’s not.

But, while you’re here, go take the RPG Podcast Listener Survey.

Take the RPG Podcast Listener Survey 2013!

Two Top Ten Lists and More!

The post Slasher Flicks 101 with Cynthia Miller and Bret Gillan appeared first on Geeky & Genki.

Plenty of learning, lots of laughing

The post Old and New School Sims and Diffs with Raggi and Baker appeared first on Geeky & Genki.

Welcome to the next installment of Captain’s Journey. In case you have missed the previous parts, here they are in order. Bad Dreams Call the Question Dreams Remembered Desperate Measures Consequences Revelation Picking up the Pieces Identity Ship First Contact Pirates Danger Close Down Below Station Spider’s Web *** The person standing among the digital web that represents the heart of the Hierarchy looks exactly like the spider I knew. He stands at a regal two meters tall. His long black hair is tied in a ponytail and tossed over his left shoulder. His piercing blue eyes look down his aquiline nose as he inspects the new Jaxx standing before him. His rumpled gray onesuit has all the same tools crammed into the various pockets. There in case he has need of them while monitoring all the different endeavors that are happening across the station as well as the quadrant. This is the same Spider that was my friend when I was last on the station. He is also one of those aliens that I killed over a year ago. All of this is nothing but a cleverly crafted illusion. Beneath this facade hides a hideous monster. It reminds me of the creatures that I destroyed over a year ago but it has bits of other species tacked on. I can see a human hand at the end of one of its many appendages. There is still that feeling of nausea from looking at it but not as powerful if....

Insights about the Ransom Model and inside peeks into the writing life of writer Greg Stolze

The post Greg Stolze: Writing and the Ransom Model appeared first on Geeky & Genki.

Star Wars this week.  Mouchette next week.  As always, follow along on our iCheckMovies list, and be sure to let us know how you’d rank the movies in the comments below.

Star Wars – May 25, 1977

Director: George Lucas
Producer: Gary Kurtz
Writer: George Lucas
Actors: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing, Alec Guinness
Distributor: 20th Century Fox

The course of the conversation:

May the Fourth and Revenge of the Sixth.  Ouch.

Star Wars.  Not A New Hope.  Not Episode 4.

We’re going to limit our discussion to just this movie.  (No, we’re not.)

Three geeks like Star Wars.  Stop the presses!

Perhaps immaturity accounts for thinking A New Hope was a slow movie.

Darths & Droids: Where Jonathan read about the alternate take on Han’s Kessel run.

As geeks, do we do Star Wars a disservice by trying to make everything in the movie perfect?

The rest of the trilogy makes it easy to forget where Han Solo starts as a character.

Mark Hamill was the actor Luke Skywalker needed.

Leia is the strongest character, and Carrie Fisher plays it very well.

Vader’s the bad guy you remember.  Tarquin is the real villain of the film.

Despite saying that, the guys spend ten minutes talking about Vader.

Vader is the active use of the Force.

So much of the universe is implied in this first film, and it’s fascinating.  Later films get more explicit with the universe, and some of the wonder is lost.

One of the potential troubles with the Special Edition additions is that it loses the build up of suspense and context that make the later reveals so interesting.

Nathaniel disses George Lucas.

Did George Lucas become a slave of his own success?

Han Solo is the prime creator of satisfying character tension in the story.

Thank you, Ralph McQuarrie.

And credit to Lucas for letting Ralph McQuarrie do what he do.

An X-Wing would probably be pointless in space, but it looks perfect.

What’s your favorite Star Wars ship?

We apologize to Trekkers on behalf of Nathaniel.

Podcast compensation is discussed.

The Rule of Cool turned to 11.

It doesn’t make sense, but you don’t really care, do you?

Did Star Wars unite geek culture?  Or did it unite us all?

“I like Star War better!”  Dammit!

The hosts all try to convince themselves that they didn’t just fanboy out on this movie.

The hosts diverge into talking about Lord of the Rings out of order.

There’s after-credits bonus content if you want to hear Nathaniel agonize over his placement.

Justice League merchandise at Target Star Wars Rebels Green Lantern #20 Aquaman #20 Justice League #20 Superman #20 Journey Into Mystery #652 Superior Spider-Man #10 Scarlet Spider #17 Daredevil #26 Half Past Danger #1 Kinski #1 Give us a call at 972-763-5903 and leave us your thoughts. If we use your voicemail, you’ll win an Ideology of Madness SurPrize just like Dan in South Dakota! Knights of Reignsborough Season 2 is coming…!

Occasionally I get to do a show entitled Talking Shit with Dave and Earl. A friend of mine, Kristin, gathers together a group of people and we spend an hour or two talking about random topics that interest everyone that evening. It was on one of these appearances that I had the great fortune to meet two very cool authors. Karina Cooper, author of the Dark Mission series, and Delilah S Dawson, author of the Blud series. They were both kind, clever, and funny as shit. It ended up being a great time filled with fun conversation. The next day I set out to find books by both of them. I downloaded Wicked Lies which I will discuss at a later date and picked up Wicked As They Come by Mrs. Dawson. Wicked As They Come is a blend of steampunk, fantasy, and paranormal romance. These may not sounds like elements that would go together well but Mrs. Dawson combines them in an elegant fashion. The tale begins with one of my favorite fantasy tropes. The heroine is transported from her mundane life in our world to a magical land. In this case, Letitia purloins an antique locket from the estate sale of one of her deceased patients which whisks her away to the land of Sang. This is a world similar to our own but populated by vampires of every stripe with normal humans being the minority. I love this trope as it plays with the idea being a....

#1 Fast & Furious 6 from Universal opened at #1 with a gross of $97.4 million in 3,658 theaters.  Budget was $160 million.

#2 The Hangover Part III from Warner Bros. opened at #2 with a gross of $41.7 million in 3,555 theaters.  Total gross to date is $53.5 million.  Budget was $103 million.

#3 Star Trek Into Darkness from Paramount fell from #1 to #3 with a gross of $37.3 million (-46.9%) in 3,907 theaters (+39).  Total gross to date is $146.1 million.  Budget was $190 million.

#4 Epic from 20^th Century Fox opened at #4 with a gross of $33.5 million in 3,882 theaters.  Budget was $100 million.

#5 Iron Man 3 from Buena Vista fell from #2 to #5 with a gross of $19.3 million (-46%) in 3,424 theaters (-813).  Total gross to date is $367.4 million.  Budget was $200 million.

#6 The Great Gatsby from Warner Bros. fell from #3 to #6 with a gross of $13.5 million (-43.4%) in 3,090 theaters (-460).  Total gross to date is $114.3 million.  Budget was $105 million.

#7 Mud from Roadside Attractions rose from #8 to #7 with a gross of $1.9 million (-13.1%) in 712 theaters (-248).  Total gross to date is $14.5 million.  Budget was unknown.

#8 42 from Warner Bros. fell from #6 to #8 with a gross of $1.3 million (-55.2%) in 915 theaters (-1,465).  Total gross to date is $14.5 million.  Budget was $40 million.

#9 The Croods from 20^th Century Fox fell from #5 to #9 with a gross of $1.2 million (-59.7%) in 1,008 theaters (-1,365).  Total gross to date is $179.2 million.  Budget was $135 million.

#10 Oblivion from Universal fell from #7 to #10 with a gross of $870 thousand (-62.8%) in 572 theaters (-1,505).  Total gross to date is $87.3 million.  Budget was $120 million.

#11 Oz The Great and Powerful from Buena Vista held at #11 with a gross of $652 thousand (-25.2%) in 401 theaters (-134).  Total gross to date is $232.2 million.  Budget was $215 million.

#12 Pain and Gain from Paramount fell from #4 to #12 with a gross of $643 thousand (-80.1%) in 1,003 theaters (-1,426).  Total gross to date is $48.6 million.  Budget was $26 million.

The combined gross of the top 12 movies this weekend was $249.3 million.

Sources:
Box Office Mojo

Eddy Webb teaches us about live action roleplay in the World of Darkness.

The post Mind’s Eye Theater 101 with Eddy Webb appeared first on Geeky & Genki.

Players: Joe, Megan, Timo Todd, Tom Next installment of Black Diamond. FYI: There’s a pretty heavy scene at the end with some sort of torturey kind of stuff. It’s pretty rough. Listener beware that it gets kind of gruesome.

So, no… this is NOT an episode of Back Seat Producers.

Longtime listeners of BSP or BSBO might recognize Jonathan ‘The Stingray’ Holmberg as one of the hosts here.

We Just Watched a Movie is another movie review podcast who is less jackassy and more organized than BSP.  I make it a point to listen to very few movie review podcasts and this is one of them that I never miss.

Give these guys a listen and if you like what you hear, make sure you let them know that you enjoyed them in the Back Seat.  Seriously… make sure you say that exactly.  ”You guys were awesome when I found you in the Back Seat!”

We’ll be back (hopefully) next week with Django Unchained.

Hosts : Rob,Mike, and James Abendroth
BS! Memberships: Spooky Outhouse Productions
Music : Intro music “Hog Trail” used with permission of Ghoultown
Music : Outro music “Gunslinger” used with permission of Ghoultown

This time around, Wayne joins Aron and Paulie  in the Fortress of Solitude to talk about Superman: Paul smells like Superman Man of Steel Day Man of Steel Prequel Comic Superman Unbound, plus… DVD Commentary of Superman: The Animated Series episode “Toys and Games.” Give us a call at 972-763-5903 and leave us your thoughts. If we use your voicemail, you’ll win an Ideology of Madness SurPrize!  

We talk about Locke & Key, written by Joe Hill and illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez.

Sam Lesser is one creepy bastard, who reminds Thom of a childhood friend.

Writing people with an opposite sexual preference.

Kevin Pollak’s eye lasers!

Souls and ghosts.

Like beer, the universe is only borrowed.

What is the Keyhouse?

We always come back to poo.

The right art for the story.

Hosts:
(the) Brian
Ian
Thom

Read the full show notes here. The Sideways Tower And don’t forget to check us out and give us a Like on our new Facebook page The Sideways Tower Podcast

Our intro/outro music is by local band Suckerpunch. You can check them out of Facebook here: Suckerpunch

Owen Shaw is a ruthless criminal mastermind who has been running roughshod through Europe, committing his own brand of “vehicular warfare” in pursuit of a computer chip that can cause a communications blackout for entire countries. In pursuit of Shaw is Federal Agent Luke Hobbs and his newly-minted partner Riley Hicks. With his investigation, Hobbs has found similarities between Shaw’s methods and that of the team put together by Dominic Toretto and Brian O’Connor, who Hobbs previously encountered in Rio de Janeiro. But something else has been discovered as well; Toretto’s former lover, Letty, who was believed to be dead, has been seen as part of Shaw’s crew. Now, Hobbs has tracked down Dom Toretto and has made him the offer to both find Letty and gain full pardons for his crew in exchange for their help in taking down Shaw.

That’s the nutshell premise to Fast & Furious 6, the obvious sixth film in the Fast & Furious franchise, from director Justin Lin, marking his fourth time at the helm of this series. Now I’ve mentioned this before (and surely well again) that just talking about this series brings a standard set of eye-rolling with some moviegoers. And while I love this series, and really enjoyed this film, I still don’t expect that to change the minds of those that look upon it in a downward direction. With Fast Five this venerable series changed it’s direction from being solely about the underground street racing culture to taking on heist film elements. That direction change continues further with Fast & Furious 6, going from heist film to out-and-out over-the-top crime action, but still maintaining elements that it’s known for. As I said, I love the series, and thought Fast Five was about as good as it gets with this. Fast & Furious 6 is still quite a bit of fun for it’s fans, though I do think it drops down a bit from it’s prior iteration.

The constant though that keeps this entertaining comes down to two things; a very entertaining cast of anti-hero characters who it’s audience have grown quite comfortable with and high-speed action that just gets upped a notch with each film. Both are certainly very apparent here, though I think the characters get a little short-changed while the action gets upped dramatically, especially during the film’s back third. Now keep in mind, when I’m talking about the characters here, I certainly know that we’re not talking about Oscar-calibre depth, I’m well aware of that, it’s just that the stakes for this crew seemed a little more grounded in the prior film that it does here. Conversely, the climactic action gets upped so much more that it seems like it’s more at home in a Japanese anime film than a live-action film. It’s all still quite a bit of fun, but it didn’t quite hit me with the same balance that Fast Five did.

The film still looks fantastic and even though the action scenes stretch credibility in whole new manners, they’re still very entertaining to watch. I don’t think of these movies as being high art by any means, but they’re certainly high state-of-the-art in their technical aspects.

Returning from the previous movies, we have Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson, Jordana Brewster, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Sung Kang, Gal Godot, Elsa Pataky and Chris “Ludacris” Bridges. There’s an obvious chemistry at work here and it certainly goes a far way in projecting this franchise’s definition of family. As I said, those of us who are fans of the series are comfortable with these players and the characters they play. They don’t really rock the boat a whole lot here, though there are a couple of little surprises.

New players this time around include Gina Carano, Joe Taslim and Luke Evans. Carano plays Hobbs’ new partner, Riley Hicks. Prior to this film, Carano is best known for her MMA talents and her starring role in Stephen Soderbergh’s Haywire. I think the absolute world of Carano, she’s always fun to watch and she doesn’t disappoint here at all, though with such a large cast, she doesn’t get the chance to be as showy as what she was in Haywire but still, she’s a welcome addition. Joe Taslim plays Jah, a member of Shaw’s crew. Prior to this movie, Taslim was best known for being in the Indonesian action thriller, The Raid: Redemption and I certainly thought it was cool to see his addition here and he certainly gets a chance to show his action chops in a nice scene with Gibson and Kang. Luke Evans plays Owen Shaw, the main villain of the piece and before this movie, he’s been in such films as The Three Musketeers, Immortals and The Raven. Most recently, Evans was in the Anchor Bay/WWE co-production No One Lives in which he played quite the twisted character, so he’s no stranger to a villainous role. Evans is pretty darn good here and I get more impressed with him each time I see him. This won’t win him any awards, but still he commands the screen and can certainly hold his own with the leads.

I really did have a good time with Fast & Furious 6 though as I said above, I don’t think it quite hits the same balance that Fast Five had. I’d mentioned the short-changing of the characters and part of that short-changing includes just how large this cast is, and added to that was that Shaw’s crew was pretty much, as it’s termed by Tyrese Gibson’s Roman character, the “evil-twin” version of Toretto’s crew. On one side, that’s really cool to see but on the other side, that puts this film as having just as many characters as a Tolkien adaptation but with only 130 minutes to deal with them all. Now again, I’m not expecting award-winning stuff here, but still something that grounds this more. It’s still a lot of fun, there’s a lot of thrills, but it’s not quite as “on” as what the prior film was. By the film’s end though, we’re left in a place that can return the series to it’s roots, and that may not necessarily be a bad thing at this point in the series, especially after the little teaser of what’s to come right as the credits get ready to roll. Even with my own issues with the film, I’d still recommend Fast & Furious 6 pretty highly, especially if you’re already a fan of the series. As I understand it right now, the seventh film in the series is already on the books for coming out next year, but this time around in the hands of director James Wan, who’s best known for the first Saw movie. It will certainly be interesting to see what comes next.