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Monday, October 31, 2016
Today's Episode is on GG Podcasting!
Looking for the latest episode of Random Reviews and other Ramblings? It's on our new website: GG Podcasting. If you listen to the podcast through your browser, this is where you're going to find all future episodes. If you're subscribed through a podcast subscription service such as iTunes or Google Play, there's nothing you need to do; The podcast will continue downloading automatically for you!* Here's the RSS feed.
Monday, October 24, 2016
We have a new website!
Dear Random Reviews and other Ramblings subscriber,
We have a new website! It will be ready for your viewing and listening pleasure in early November. What does that mean for this blog? It will no longer receive updates, the audio links will become obsolete, and its sole purpose will be to capture traffic and redirect it to the new hub containing our podcasts. If you subscribe to RRR through a service such as iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, etc., AND you have a setting set to download all episodes you haven't listened to, you're going to be in for a surprise unless you act soon. All of the audio files for the podcast are moving to the new domain and the RSS feed will be pointed at the new files. Your podcast-listening software will think there are over 50 new episodes to listen to and download them all and ruin your day! Update your settings now and save your precious data limitations!
Looking forward to seeing you on the new website,
Geoff
Episode 54: Miele
A woman who helps terminally ill people end their suffering faces a moral dilemma when a physically healthy man seeks assistance in ending his life.
In Episode -2: How to Die in Oregon, Gordon and Geoff watched a documentary about legalized assisted suicide in the state of Oregon. 56 episodes later, we have returned to the subject in the form of a foreign film from Italy. Miele, also known as Honey, also known as Irene, is a drug dealer of death. Her clients are terminally ill patients who are unfortunately unable to legally commit suicide so they use our protagonist's elaborate drug trafficking of canine barbiturates. Irene cares deeply about her work and it shows when she is duped into selling the drugs to a perfectly healthy individual. The plot focuses on this conflict but also takes a lot of dead-end ventures that try to make Irene's character more complex. Despite all the red herrings and a plot that goes nowhere, we actually walked away from this movie fairly content. It was well-paced, the acting was good, and the subject was interesting. Maybe it's the mountain of bad movies we trudge through that has made this bad movie appear mediocre so keep that in mind. We don't recommend it but we didn't hate it either is what I'm trying to say. After the news, Gordon brings in Shin Godzilla and then I lose our foreign movie bet as we end up rolling Chic! for next week, our fourth foreign film in a row!
| Gordon: | ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ |
| Geoff: | ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ |
This episode may contain spoilers for the following:
Monday, October 17, 2016
Episode 53: Plot for Peace
Follow the true story of Jean-Yves Ollivier, an Algerian-born French businessman whose political efforts helped end apartheid in South Africa.
This is a bizarre documentary about a French philanthropist who claims to actually be the one responsible for ending apartheid in South Africa by being the catalyst resulting in Nelson Mandela's freedom. We already learned about Nelson Mandela in Episode 19: "The 16th Man," an ESPN 30 for 30 documentary about the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Being an excellent ESPN doc, the focus was on Mandela's vision and how sports played a huge role in accomplishing that. Unlike that movie, this documentary does a great job showing how bad things were in South Africa. It's graphic, violent, and doesn't try to convince you that rooting for the national rugby team is what it's going to take to save the country. Instead, they try to convince you that a solitaire-obsessed obese man, wearing suspenders with naked men on them, who sits in an armchair made from the skins of at least thee endangered species is batman. It's hard to take the guy seriously given the way he was presented and the message came off as braggadocious (we have the best words, folks) and trying to undermine Mandela's achievements. Everyone interviewed in the film speaks English except for our hero, Mr. Ollivier. That would be fine but in addition to showing clips of interviews with him, they also had him narrate the movie. Like I already stated, it was really bizarre, and just added more evidence to our theory that the reason this movie exists is because Ollivier funded the entire thing, and wanted to as well-remembered as Nelson Mandela. After the review, Gordon brings in his review of Snowden and then talks about Gears of War 4. Next week, we're watching Miele, which is another foreign movie! That's three in a row! When did we start trudging through the bowels of Euroflix?
| Gordon: | ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ |
| Geoff: | ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ |
This episode may contain spoilers for the following:
Monday, October 10, 2016
Episode 52: Counter Investigation
When a man convicted of killing his daughter tirelessly pleads his innocence, an overworked police captain reconsiders the case.
Whether you see the plot twists coming or not, this is a very enjoyable read. Yup, a read because if you're listening to this show, chances are you don't speak French. This is a movie about how a child-rapist-murderer-guy commits this evil crime in order to score one of the nicest looking studio apartments I have ever seen. If you go to prison in France, apparently you get your own room with television, books, in-room meals... The works! I bet if you were a wanted French criminal, you could probably work out a deal where you turn yourself in and score an internet connection so that you could listen to Random Reviews and other Ramblings and jerk off (at the same time) every day for the duration of your prison sentence. Anyway, beyond being stunned by the luxurious punishment France enforces, this is actually a pretty decent movie. There are two good twists that I enjoyed and Gordon claims to also have enjoyed even though he saw them coming from his moon yacht, which is powered by Reddit karma. After the news, I bring in two short reviews of Jupiter Ascending and The Brothers Bloom. Next week, we're watching Plot for Peace.
| Gordon: | ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ |
| Geoff: | ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ |
This episode may contain spoilers for the following:
Monday, October 3, 2016
Episode 51: The Mend
Returning from a vacation, a depressed New Yorker finds his brother living in his apartment uninvited, leading to some strange entanglements.
Last week, we didn't think the movies could get any worse than the two we had to watch in our 50th episode celebration. This week, it's my displeasure to bring you our second double-zero rated movie. The Mend is about a guy living in a shitty NYC apartment with his leech of a girlfriend. Maybe vampires and other things that suck blood are his fetish or something because he decides to slide a ring onto one of her tentacles while on a vacation to Quebec. Not wanting to let a vacant apartment go to waste, his homeless brother seizes the opportunity to move in with his homeless fuck-buddy and her kid. Leech boy ends up returning home leech-less and they decide to do drugs for a week. The leech comes home, the homeless people are still homeless and everything is still shitty when the credits roll. What in fuck? Next week, we are watching Counter Investigation.
| Gordon: | ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ |
| Geoff: | ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ |
This episode may contain spoilers for the following:
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