Hola, Sneakers! Welcome to the podcast that’s afraid of bears!
This week: bleach ball; the Patron age; burger flipping; man vs. bear; bearing our feelings; country fried; W for the fail; best burgers; sequel rights; imprisoned bear; scaredy-cat; walk and talk; too much saga; the newly dead game; alien signs; running start; Moscow mewl; dead right; peak Pixar; a sequel too far; when spider meets octopus; time to terminate; Aussie rules; civil service; great expectations; it’s Winter time!; and, finally, secret sequels.
Question of the Week: What is your favourite sequel?
Sub-question of the Week: What is a sequel that never should have happened?
Thanks for listening.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Hi gents,
Hope that Ian is fully recovered from his Covid adventure and that David is fully inspired by his travels to the Schulz museum. Covid I can happily pass on ever having again, but I was lucky enough to visit the Peanuts museum in Tokyo earlier this year. It was an absolute delight which rewarded the long time Schulz fan with an immersive combination of original artwork, archival materials, video projection and sculptures. None of it felt tacky and it was designed with a joyfully Japanese mixture of respect, understatement and appreciation. Visiting with my daughter was a memory that will stay with me forever. We also had lunch at the nearby Shaun the Sheep cafe, which was hilarious.
Flashback two episodes to your discussion of dried fruits and some confusion about what fruits they originate from. Almost all dried fruits are just what they are. Dates come from the date palm tree. Figs are simply dried figs.
Prunes however are dried plums; one of the only fruits to have an alter ego when it is dehydrated. For some reason this name switch for plums implies that other fruits also begin as something else. Not so.
Anyhoo, a few thoughts on ill-advised sequels.
I will never forget watching the steaming pile of nonsense which was Highlander 2. My friends and I were fans of the original and had watched it endlessly on VHS in the 80s, so we headed eagerly to the cinema to see the sequel on opening weekend. The movie was so bad in every way. The first scene is set on another planet, and it gets worse from there. How they ever got Sean Connery back for a brief, incoherent cameo is a mystery. It’s a train wreck of a movie.
Dishonourable mentions to The Next Karate Kid and Robocop 2. And Robocop 3.
That though is the inherent issue with sequels. We love a great, original movie and want to spend more time with the characters and in the world of the movie. And studios want to make money and minimise risk. Hello Jaws 4: the revenge.
Hey, Ian, Dave and the worldwide tribe of the Sneakerati…
One recent sequel I enjoyed from first to last was Glass Onion, the second Knives Out movie from Rian Johnson. Such a clever and funny script, great direction and engaging performances all round. Daniel Craig, who looks to be having the time of his life in the detective role, and I don’t blame him. My hopes are high for the third outing.
Going back a while, The Rescuers Down Under was, unexpectedly, miles better than the original Rescuers, even if it’s not a classic. Of course, my fondness for that film might have something to do with it being the very first movie I took our son Hamish to see in the cinema, like 30 plus years ago, yikes! A special memory. And as long as we’re talking cute mice cartoons, Fievel Goes West kicks An American Tail’s butt!
As for sequels that never should have happened: Shrek 2 was such a cynical cash-in that it was hard to believe any of the original creative team could have been involved. Still, it went ker-ching at the box office and spawned plenty follow-ups and spin-offs, so what do I know?
Ian, I hope you and Pia are well again, and, Dave, that you and Lezah had a wonderful road trip to Schulz-land and other places. Stay well and stay sneaky!
Ian – Welcome back from your enforced trip to Covidistan: hope you’re feeling chipper and are ready to wrap your lips around some choice tidbits of script from your correspondents.
Dave – Welcome back from your trip to America that took you absolutely nowhere near Butler, Pennsylvania in any way whatsoever *WINK*.
Mick’s comment reminded me to look up the difference between a currant, a raisin, and a sultana – which sounds like the setup for a pun if ever there was one. The short factual answer: they’re all different types of grape: red, white, and seedless in that order. Whilst sultanas provide sweetness, raisins soak up flavours – hence rum’n’raisin ice cream – the Russian Roulette of ice cream choices. Will you get a delicious juicy flavour burst, or an acrid gobful of diesel-bitter misery? You won’t know until it’s too late.
In typically perverse fashion I’m going to pick up on your mention of Chinese Martial Arts sequels to sing the praises of a few favourites:
– ‘Once Upon a Time in China II’ is a well regarded classic, and worth a watch to see Jet Li and wire-fu at their best:
– Drunken Master 2, which I managed to catch on re-release in a US flea-pit, is an awful lot of fun, and a huge improvement on the original, with lavish camerawork, top notch production design, and of course amazing choreography, from group mayhem to one-on-one bouts showcasing gymnastic excellence. The core conceit – that a swig of booze can improve your fighting ability – is wildly silly, but Jackie Chan throws himself into it with such gusto that you just don’t give a hoot.
– But my favourite is another Yuen Wo Ping classic: ‘Shaolin Drunkard’, a quasi sequel to ‘Miracle Fighters’. Both movies star Yuen Yat Chor and a bunch of the remaining Yuen Clan, and mix classic kung fu skills with a bunch of party tricks and pantomime gags, presumably cribbed from their Chinese Opera days. Everything is thrown into the mix, from battling sorcerers, beautician-assassins, and Rube Goldberg burglar alarms, to wizards setting fire to their hands to fight vampiric baddies.
Both films are hugely inventive: Miracle Fighters has just been given a Blu-Ray release by Eureka. Given its obscurity, it isn’t hard to avoid ‘Young Taoism Fighter’ – the third in the series – but don’t get lured in by the prospect of the Watermelon Monster; where the first two are absurd genius, the third is just silly for the sake of it – and what could be more tiresome than that. Which immediately takes the mind to the dire Tim Burton ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and its witless sequel.
Wishing you and all Sneakers in the northern hemisphere the sunniest of summers – where are you all off to this year, I wonder?
Peter.