Nerd Lunch

Michael, Rob, and Pax meet in the Lounge to talk about hot towels, plastic cups, Dune 2, Oppenheimer, Past Lives, Marvel's Midnight Suns video game, King Kong and Godzilla movies, Thin Man movies, The Beekeeper, Wonka, Napoleon, The Artful Dodger, the live-action Last Airbender series, the first Perry Mason novel, Kitty Pryde comics, and much more.

Michael and Jess watch House of Frankenstein (1944), House of Dracula (1945), and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), the movies where Frankenstein's Monster, Dracula, and the Wolfman all share the story together. But first, we catch up on other horror movies we've been watching like Burnt Offerings (1976), Strangler of the Swamp (1945), and Lisa Frankenstein (2024).

Michael, Pax, Evan, and Noel reconvene the Top 10 Years Later panel to look back at their favorite movies from 2014. And, in some cases, re-evaluate if those films are still favorites.

Continuing our Planet of the Apes series and moving into the modern prequels, Michael, Rob, and Pax discuss Rupert Wyatt's Rise of the Planet of the Apes. It stars James Franco, Freida Pinto, David Oyelowo, John Lithgow, Brian Cox, Tom Felton, and Andy Serkis as Caesar.

The villain is a cliché, Bond is a clown, and the name of the movie is just embarrassing. Michael, Rob, and Karen talk about whether or not those factors affect the enjoyability of Roger Moore's penultimate Bond film. 

Michael, Rob, and Pax finish this month's Lounge talking about the first book in Seanan McGuire's October Daye series, Gargoyles comics, Greek mythology novels, The Wind in the Willows meets Agatha Christie, more Narnia, Gray Man, and Dresden Files, the hardest foods to give up from each food group, Argylle, Lisa Frankenstein, Dune movies, Madame Webb, Hilda, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, and Pax's bad day.

Michael, Rob, Pax, and Evan talk about important topics like backing into parking spaces, automatic windshield wipers and headlights, imaginary friends, The Holdovers, The Artful Dodger, jazz, Three Musketeers movies, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition by David Nirenberg, Moriarty: The Devil's Game, making time to write, and podcasts about JFK and Jack the Ripper.

Michael and Rob are joined by Adam Pope and William Bruce West from the Remember That Show? podcast to discuss and vote on comics' greatest villains, ultimately arriving at the Greatest Comics Villain of All Time. 

Michael and Jess talk about Bela Lugosi as Dracula in Tod Browning's 1931 classic, but also the famous vampire's children: Gloria Holden as Dracula's Daughter and Lon Chaney Jr as Son of Dracula.  But first, discussion of other horror (or horror-connected) movies: Gretel & Hansel (2020), The Midnight Meat Train (2008), The Sadness (2021), The Belko Experiment (2016), The Mean One (2022), and Poor Things (2023).

Having experienced the extravagance of Moonraker, Michael, Rob, and Karen are not upset at all when the Bond series goes back to basics in For Your Eyes Only. John Glen makes his directorial debut, Roger Moore returns as an age-appropriate Bond, and there are plenty of twists and turns with Carole Bouquet (sigh), Julian Glover, Topol, and... is that Charles Dance?

Michael, Rob, and Pax revisit Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes reboot to see if it's as bad as conventional wisdom and our panel's own memories say that it is.

Michael and Jacob Bean-Watson talk about Fox's final effort to get a Planet of the Apes TV series going, this time with a Saturday morning cartoon on NBC. (Michael probably says CBS in the discussion, but that was the live-action show. Fox partnered with a different network for the cartoon.) Return to the Planet of the Apes featured animation by Jonny Quest creator Doug Wildey and the voices of Austin Stoker (MacDonald in Battle for the Planet of the Apes) and Fred Flintstone himself, Henry Corden. There are plenty of problems with the cartoon, but also lots of fun. Especially when Jacob and Michael spontaneously create their own Planet of the Apes sitcom.

Michael, Rob, Pax, and Evan wrap up this month's Lounge with talk about Red Dead Redemption 2, revisiting Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, Gran Turismo, Meg 2, the Scream movies, more Elvis flicks, The Orange Years: The Nickelodeon Story, Season 2 of Reacher, Lupin, The Gilded Age, retirement plans, old technology, finishing the Philip Marlowe novels, Middlegame by Seanan McGuire, Star Trek: Memory Prime by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, Christmas heist movies, Noelle, The Mean One, Poor Things, manufactured backstories in movie series, May December, Knock at the Cabin, Apostle, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters and the Legendary MonsterVerse, Echo, Columbo villains, Hercules movies, the DC Cinematic Universe, and adaptations of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Michael, Rob, Pax, and Evan - yes, Evan! - sit around talking about neckties, JFK, the Script Apart podcast on Midnight Mass and Mission: Impossible, the Planet of the Apes, Rob’s new car, ice cream, salad dressing, vampire hairstyles, an oral history of Nickelodeon, Meddling Kids, variations on A Christmas Carol, Godzilla Minus One, Little House on the Prairie, American Nightmare, Mickey7, The Dresden Files, Changing the Way We See Native America, Brambly Hedge, Miss Marple, and The Chronicles of Narnia.

Michael and Jacob Bean-Watson watch the short-lived, but (let's just spoil it) excellent live action Planet of the Apes TV series starring Roddy McDowall, Ron Harper, James Naughton, and Star Trek's Mark Lenard. 

Michael, Rob, Kay, and Robert Zerbe look back at their favorite movies, shows, and books of 2023, check in on their pop culture predictions and resolutions from the year, and make new ones for 2024.

Michael, Rob, and Pax finish their exploration of the classic Planet of the Apes series with the fifth and final entry, Battle for the Planet of the Apes. There are budget issues and a confusing timeline to talk about, but also some great characters and cool dilemmas. 

Michael, Rob, and Karen Flieger kick off the new year with one of the most infamous Bond movies. James Bond goes to space and pigeons do double-takes in the over-the-top, Star Wars-inspired Moonraker. Is it fun? Is it garbage? Or is it both?

Happy New Year! We took a little break from our Apesathon during the holidays, but we're back with the penultimate entry in the original series: Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. It's a bold, challenging movie with some things to say about power and the civil rights movement. It also has a couple of endings and some continuity issues. Which all means that there's plenty to talk about.

Michael and Jess talk about the first three movies in Universal's Invisible "Man" series: The Invisible Man (1933), The Invisible Man Returns (1940), and The Invisible Woman (1940). Including that last one turned out to be a controversial decision, so we talked about that, too.