Hola, Sneakers! Welcome to the 513th episode of Sneaky Dragon – and with a name like Sneaky Dragon, it has to be good!
This week: sour patch kids; pucker pals; almond joy; or government-sanctioned murder: iconic; origins are fun; a solid Bond in your heart; degrees of badness; degrees of bigness; degrees of wigness; birthplace of apples; missed; Ralph or Ralph; ems; fun movie messes; more Chang Shi complaints; long road to forgiveness; disappointing planet eater; breakneck transitions; the double names of LOTR; GI Bill cartoonists; grinding your teeth; lucky find; Jerry Cornelius; the Foundation of sci-fi: dream jokes; how are you doing it; it’s no mystery; governmental perfidy; feeding conspiracies; us vs. them vs. Covid; gambling labyrinth; mental viruses; the fictional president; the meme generation; TV diner trivia; Question of the Week – Sneakers respond; the tattletale heart; generous donations of garbage; hoof patrol; slow clapping; do you know the mushroom man; knife ladder; weird math; terrible transitions; and, finally, romantic brutes;
Question of the Week: What’s a movie that you enjoy, but is a fun mess?
Sub-question of the Week: Who is your favourite fictional character?
Thanks for listening.
We love when we can show off Sneakers artwork!
Inspired by Episode 512’s mushroom talk, Louise sent in this birthday e-card designed for her niece who came out to BC to pick mushrooms.
Canaan Grall was inspired by street performer strongwoman Mama Lou to draw this comic.
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I have no response for question #1, and too many for questions #2.
I cannot pick a favourite: I will tell you about many the I love.
Paddington – he is so full of goodness, sincerity and innocence.
Penelope from Thelwell – she is just so doggedly determined, she never gives up, even if her pony is dragging her through the mud/dumping her in a hedge/dropping her in a water jump. She never gets a pay off but she seems to know that if she doesn’t give up, what she knows is her due will come to her eventually.
Trixie from Trixie Belden – she has a very wholesome kind of bravery and fearlessness that is admirable.
Scout and Atticus – she’s all id in her impulsivity and physicality, while he’s all super-ego in his calm deliberation of every situation, but you can see from him a reflection of the person she will become. I love that.
Nick Carraway from The Great Gatsby – he’s adrift, he’s easily influenced by the others but yet he had a core of goodness that resides inside of him that makes him realize that all the trappings of the rich and their shoddy behaviour other others are poor reflections of what is truly important in life.
Willie Dunne from Sebastion Barry’s A Long Long Way – this character was so alive for me. He was treated unfairly and unjustly and he never let it get him down; he always wanted to do the right thing, and always tried so hard… sob.
Hi gents,
Loved this week’s episode (although that’s true every week.) Ian’s discussion of ‘How are you getting anything done?’ resonated strongly. It was wonderful hearing so many viewpoints on how to simply get by, stay motivated and – heaven forbid – actually be creative at a time when everything feels so fragile.
Like Ian, I often frame my days by all the things I didn’t get done, so I agree that we need to focus instead on the things we did achieve, no matter how small. Yesterday I managed – after many months of procrastination- to install a floating bookshelf in my study. Sounds like no big deal, but I have zero handyman skills so it was a big achievement. And I am happy to say that a day later it is still attached to the wall.
Re questions, I’ve found as I get older that I love a B-grade romcom or comedy more than any high art cinema. And I used to be a major movie snob in my twenties, preferring Arthouse and indie movies over mainstream releases. Now I don’t care if a movie is well made – as long as it is diverting and has a few decent laughs.
Favourite fictional character? So many!
Tintin, Charlie Brown, Mr Keating from Dead Poet’s Society and James Bond of course.
I forgot to throw down my perfect name for a horse mystery podcast – The Clue Factory!
Hands down, the best title. Genius.
The Red Shoes (1948) is a fun mess. It’s an iconic backstage movie that helped to establish the trope that ballerinas must be cray-cray, especially when torn between their personal life and their art. The wearer of the titular footwear is Moira Shearer. She was a dancer who could act, not an actor who can act like a dancer (see: Natalie Portman in Black Swan and Jennifer Lawrence in Red Sparrow.) There is a surreal ballet sequence in the film that goes into the mind of the dancer. As a girl, I didn’t like that they used camera tricks and special effects. Now I appreciate how they were breaking new ground in combining dance and the medium of film.
For a fictional character, it’s a classic match-up between Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Bennett. Both are intelligent, witty and strong-willed women going up against a social system that wants to keep them in their place. I’d say Jane wins out. She endures a lot of hardship but doesn’t compromise her morals. Coincidentally in both their stories, Jane and Elizabeth say no to respectable but loveless marriages of convenience to clergymen. I wonder if that seemed like a dire fate to independent-thinking women of the 1800s. My aunt was a minister’s wife from the 1950s to the 90s. Back then, clergymen’s wives were expected to take an active part in the life of the church. They often lived in manses they didn’t own so they were accountable to committees and were under the constant scrutiny of busybodies.
I have to hand it to Ian, he sure knows his Fantastic Four. I followed the FF for years and I remember buying the Galactus Trilogy from Mile High Comics in Denver through the mail order ad printed in the comics, #48 and #50 were $8.00 apiece and #49 was $12.00. My mother thought I was insane paying that much for funny books and I still have all three…signed by both Lee & Kirby. That’s a hard story to beat considering when it was written, for me it’s one of the classics of Marvel history. If Dave ever wants a different take on the story, try reading it from the perspective of Photographer Phil Sheldon in “MARVELS” written by Kirk Busiek and illustrated by Alex Ross. “MARVELS” takes a look at all these Marvel stories from our viewpoint as everyday bystanders in the Marvel Universe. The invasion of Galactus is far more horrific when told this way and through the lens of it’s main character, Phil Sheldon.
I had an interesting thought when you were discussing the artists who used the G.I. Bill to fund their training. Remember that Steve Rogers was an artist in Marvel Comics as well, I can remember it coming up somewhere in a story that he was working as a commercial illustrator. I also thought it was a nice nod to this in “Captain America The First Avenger” that we saw him drawing while he was in Europe with the USO. One wonders if he used his G.I. Bill money all those years after World War II and frozen in ice for art classes…
I know you don’t like “1941” or “The Great Race” and they’re probably high on your list of messy films but I really love both those movies, I guess because I grew up watching them over and over. For me they’re almost like live action cartoons come to life and I enjoy the huge cast of characters. If I had to choose a film that fits this criteria I’ll have to go with “Flash Gordon” from 1980. It’s cheesy, campy and gaudy but my God is it fun to watch Max Von Sydow as Ming the Merciless. The Queen soundtrack is fun also but it just looks so damned bad that it’s good.
Another movie would be Irwin Allen’s “The Story of Mankind” from 1957. It’s like a weirdly dark history lesson with a huge Hollywood cast playing historical roles. The story is set in motion due to the technological development of the H-Bomb which has caused the court of heaven to put mankind on trial. For the first time in COLOR we see Groucho Marx as Peter Minuit who swindles Manhattan Island from the Indians and Harpo Marx as Sir Isaac Newton. Chico Marx plays a monk advising Christopher Columbus about why sailing across the world would be a bad idea. It’s the Marx Brothers in color but they’re presented separately instead of together. I’ll only watch it to see them.
I have far too many favorite fictional characters to name. Was it for literary characters? If so, I’ll have to go back to my childhood and mention the enjoyable OZ books I read and re-read over and over. I really liked Tok-Tok, Jack Pumpkinhead and The Scarecrow as they developed over the span of L. Frank Baum’s fourteen book run. It sounds kind of infantile but those books got me to read as a kid!
Sorry, that was meant to say Tik Tok…