Author: RevVoice

Did you listen last Friday? Well if you didn’t – you may be wondering what’s up? For December, the Somethings are taking their holiday, but to keep your brain hijacked, we are giving you two retro episodes a week as selected by the Somethings!

So join us as we picked our ‘Zombie Kill Team’

Our original post:

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

The Somethings decided that since it is the scaaaarrriest of holidays, we would go and give you a treat and not a trick this year, by releasing tomorrow’s episode for you today.  That way you can enjoy our spooooooky conversation while you are out haunting around. So what is this episode about?  Well – take your top four fictional characters that you want by your side during the zombie apocalypse.  We take one from movies. One from television. One from book fiction. One wildcard.  And then we decide who would survive. Now, you have to figure that James and Podcast Rob are both going to think their team is the strongest, so they got themselves a judge to solve who’s team is the best of the best.  None other than friend of the show, horror afficienado, from the Supernatural Department at Head Over Feels, Dawn!

So we know you are going to disagree with us… which means you should start a discussion below! Ok, here we boo! (get it? ..because it’s… right.. you get it.. nevermind)

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Happy Holidays everyone!

To give the Somethings a breather, and to give you twice the listening pleasure, for the month of December you get to roll back the clock with us as we look back at some of our favorite episodes of yore.

This week, travel with us to 2015 as we talk – Bad Movie Movie Posters!

Here’s what we said back then….

There is a little bit of movies that we sometimes overlook. No, it isn’t that your date keeps trying the hole in the popcorn trick and that you are starting to get worried about her.  It’s the poster. The first thing you sometimes see about a movie. The thing that is supposed to emblazen upon your mind that this movie will be here eventually.

Some are amazing. Some are horrible. Some things are repeated ovvver and ovvver… so join in with the Somethings as we talk about movie poster tropes and themes that we have just seen too much.

Ok, here we go.

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Oh my… wait… didn’t we say last week was the last episode? I mean, it was The End — but, there are 5 Tuesdays in November this year!?  What do we do?

We do a Free-For-All, that’s what.  If you’ve never been here when this happens, it is where we don’t set up a list or a show or a guest… we just hang out and talk, which, as this is the last official Something of the year, feels like it’s precisely what it should be.

So please, settle in and hang out with the Somethings for an hour, as we talk about the world we’re living in, the things we’re digging into, and what the plans are for the future.

Ok, here we go!

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Happy Holidays friends – as this is our last week of new material.. with one secret exception you will only know about if you are subscribed, I thought I should go back and look at some of my favorite things of the year.  Living in a bubble, I absorb a lot of garbage. Television. Books. Games. Comics. Alcohol… it really is a cavalcade of ignoring the outside world in this brain of mine. So, why not take a few minutes and look at the last year and talk about some of the things I’ve really enjoyed.

Books – Sadly, this year was not a big reading year for me. I wish I’d gotten through more books and as I’m currently reading, albeit slowly, Grady Hendrix’s Final Girl Support Group (and if you’ve never read Hendrix, he’s a horror treat) I am at least doing my best to keep books in my life.  So what was my favorite this year? That was a title that felt like it was from ten or twenty years ago with kids going to a magical school where magical things happen.  It doesn’t hold a candle to my favorite of the genre (and top favorite books of all time) in Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, but Naomi Novik’s A Deadly Education, which the sequel just released recently, was so much fun.

The school is deadly and alive. Magic attracts all sorts of beasties. The politicks of the students is in every conversation.. it is all very interestingly political, and where the main character could easily turn into an ‘all too powerful Mary Sue’ type – she’s so enjoyably grumpy, I kinda don’t mind.

Shows – The family finished the many seasons of our dinner time Parks & Rec – which was my second time around, and that show… dammit, I miss it. Maybe even more than I miss The Good Place.. but my favorite show of the year comes from an entirely different side of things. I know we had some amazong Mando action and WandaVision was a real front runner to be my favorite, just because of its amazing meta-ness — my favorite is going to Netflix’s Midnight Mass.

I know some people don’t enjoy the genre of gothic horror that Mike Flanagan has brought to the Netflix table with Hill House and Bly Manor – but I really enjoyed them.  That said, Midnight Mass is going to be a hard show to top. Every actor is acting their ass off. Every little flinch or nod means something. It’s a masterclass in telling a tight story with a satisfying finish.

Games – My year of video games has been one of massive amounts of Executive Dysfunction.  In my giant Steam game list.. I go and play a handful of garbage roguelikes and roguelites – decide to play something meaty – get distacted – forget what I was playing – go back to roguelites… so yeah, there’s a lot of time spent in fun popcorn like SNKRX, Curse of the Dead Gods, and SKUL.. there’s also an inordinate amount of time spent playing Dead By Daylight with Rob & friends.  So what game can I put at the top? 

First, an honorable mention has to go to Inscryption which, I won’t lie, will probably take the #1 spot by the time the ball drops for 2022… it is just fantastic in every way – and after Rob had played an hour of it, bought it for me because he knew I would fall in love with it.. and it really is a VERY particular James-sized-itch it scratches. That said, my top spot for the year is going to go to Enderall: Forgotten Stories – which, if you haven’t seen.. is free, and worth it. It’s a complete repaint of Skyrim. A new world. New voices. New quests. New magic. Harder, but not brutal… it made me fall in love with Skyrim again, and it’s kinda not even Skyrim.

Movies – I feel like this is ‘the big one’ but, honestly, this wasn’t as much of a year for big movies as it was big television.  I could do a list of just my favorite shows and list them off easily… when it comes to movies, I have watched so many ‘webcam party’ horror movies and nose-stuffed-up-their-butt art-horror this year that I really am frustrated with most of the genre. I also, as if there is any surprise, watch a lot of garbage movies with the full knowledge that they’re going to be bad… but dammit I love seeing actors clip through green screen monsters.

So, what was the best of the best?  Based on my ratings at Letterboxd, there are only three movies I gave above a 4.. and only one got a 5. The three movies that sit in the 4-star area are Malignant, which I know is a divisive opinion, but James Wan speaks my horror language – Coherence, which.. honestly, is the most interesting budget science fiction movie I’ve seen in years – and Spontaneous, which has flown under everyone’s radar and I legitimately think it could be this generation’s Heathers.

That leaves my one 5 star… the one movie I saw that made me tear up with how beautiful and beautiful sounding it was.  It’s a cliche from a living cartoon like me, but it is Pixar’s Soul. I don’t speak in Jazz.  I have an ear for music, but I don’t have an ear for any genre of music that includes ‘single-serving noodling’ … but Soul .. man, it was just synesthesia come to life.

So what were your favorite things? You know where to find us and let us know – and if we don’t talk, we hope that you and yours have a wonderful rest of 2021 and thank you for being here and letting us hijack your brain.

♫ Baby – have you ever wondered?  Wondered whatever became of me? 

I’m working on my podcast in NJ – ♫ and the rest of it really takes some effort to fit the rhyme scheme.

… ♫ something something c-a-s-teeeeee…. ♫ (It’s not that hard – PCR)

It’s Thanksgiving time, and there aren’t a lot of famous Thanksgiving shows, but one comes to mind. To that, we decided to take that show, watch its last episode and see if it sticks the test of time as well as the infamous Turkey Drop.  So do the gang at WKRP end their run with a cheer or a whimper?  Well, this is where you find out, on THE END: WKRP.

And from us to you – from our family to yours – we hope you have a wonderful holiday!

Ok, here we radio!

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♫ Country roads…
Take me home… 
OH MY GOD THERE’S A BEEFCAKE MOTH IN THE ROAD! ♫

That’s right – we are heading back into the Somethingverse and taking another of our countries favorite cryptids to task.  We turn our globe, or at least Google Earth.. who owns a globe these days? Anyway, we are going to West Virginia, mountain mama – and we are talking about The Tick’s best buddy, Mothman!  From his interesting beginnings in the middle of the 1900’s to his home as a tourist attraction – this cryptid is living the good life….. OR IS HE!?

Find out now, as we put on our mystery snorkle and head into… THE SOMETHINGVERSE: MOTHMAN

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Apparently, a group of people joining into a bunch of kids games for the chance to win a few million bucks is enough to get everyone on Netflix in a tizzy… well, if they can, so can we!

The Somethings are taking this week to review the biggest release in Netflix history, the top Halloween costumes, and an interestnig story about what someone will do to survive when faced with an entire army of cephalopods. Fine, that’s not what happens, but for a show named Squid Game, you would think there would be more squid…. but no… yet again, I’m the bad guy.

Either way – let’s get to our Something In Review: Squid Game

Ok, here we go!

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Hey Somethings, I actually had to go back and look through some of my old blog posts to see if I’ve talked about this, and I was surprised to find out that I hadn’t! If the ending of a horror movie ends with the director saying things like, ‘Well, what do YOU think it means?’ like they are your therapist, you may have just watched an arthouse horror movie.

“But Hatton,” you ask, “what IS an elevated/arthouse horror movie?”

Well, it’s a movie that is trying to hide a deeper message beneath its horror. This isn’t new, as films like Jacob’s Ladder (1990), Dawn of the Dead (1978), and even Godzilla (1954) were talking about one thing under the guise of scares. Nowadays though, it is a twofold defense mechanism for:

* Movies that have a deeper message
* Movies that want you to think they have a deeper message
* People who don’t want to admit they like horror movies

Movies like Get Out, with its obvious racial overtones use the vehicle of horror to really turn a topic on its head and make you uncomfortable in your own world. Mother is a story of Christian mythology. Babadook is about abuse. These movies tell an engrossing tale of scares while also at the end give you something to think about. Bad arthouse horror, on the other hand, gives you attempts at symbolism that are never explained and plotholes that you hope are intentional until you get to the credits and you end up confused. The truth is, a good percentage of horror movies out there have some other meaning, intentional or not, and brushing aside any movie because its message isn’t deeply imbedded enough is, at the very least, insulting to the people involved. To sit and look at a movie like Hereditary (2018) or Neon Demon (2016) and comment about how the deeper message is beneath the surface and the horror is what you feel and.. well, I could go on, is to ignore that horror has been telling interesting stories about the human condition since the first vampires were born of fears of porphyria and rabies.

In the future, at the end of a movie, you sit there scratching your head while your one friend who only vapes artisanal clove oil and refers to your fruit salad as a ‘reconstructed charcuterie’ tells you how deep the film you just watched is. It’s ok to hate the movie.. it’s ok to think it was stupid.. it’s ok to want a clear answer to your narrative tales.. and it’s ok to kick that dude out, because seriously, you don’t need that kind of negativity.

Back in the day, those 30 second Tiktok clips used to come in longer formats – 3 – 5 minutes at a clip… we called them songs.  A musician would then take 10 or so of them and make an entire album of them!  Crazy times.

To add to that, those albums used to have art and liner notes and production information and lyrics… and this was literally every song ever.  You can still see the remnants of these forgotten artifacts when you load one of those tracks on iTunes and see the square of prety colors.  Imagine that, on a shelf.. like you are some sort of art collector!  Amazing, really.

Well, the Somethings remember that time well and we settle in to talk about not the music – not the artist – but our favorite album covers.

Ready? Ok, here we go!

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Do you enjoy the Evil Dead series? Or are you a goody two shoes? goody two shoes goody goody two shoes

You don’t like that? ………..screw

Ok, I swear, I’m not just being pithy – it’s just hard to not get an edge of snark in your voice when you are talking about Bruce Campbell in his most famous role of none other than the chainsaw wielding, S-Mart selling, boomstick threatening, words sayin, Ash!

Did his three seasons of horror comedy knock those Deadites down or was that just pillow talk, baby?

Find out on this, the last of our SpoooOooktacular October episodes on, The End: Ash vs. Evil Dead

Ok here we……… groovy!

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