Legends Podcast

In 2002, Robin Williams was in his era of playing against type with roles in the Christopher Nolan thriller Insomnia, and in this film about a lonely photo minilab employee who becomes obsessed with a young family. Co-starring Connie Nielsen, Michael Vartan, and Gary Cole, this pic written and directed by Mark Romanek succeeded critically and commercially, and it was also the only film that Robin Williams ever recorded a DVD commentary for. Now we’re seeing what develops when we take a closer look at One Hour Photo!   Say cheese!   ITHACON 48 is April 5-6, 2025, at Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY! Details at https://www.ithacon.org/    For more geeky podcasts visit GonnaGeek.com   You can find us on iTunes under ''Legends Podcast''. Please subscribe and give us a positive review. You can also follow us on Twitter @LegendsPodcast or even better, send us an e-mail: LegendsPodcastS@gmail.com   You can write to Rum Daddy directly: rumdaddylegends@gmail.com You can find all our contact information here on the Networ

And this is Studio Ghibli’s 2001 classic from famed writer-director Hayao Miyazaki. When 10-year-old Chihiro moves with her family to a new neighborhood, a wrong turn sees her trapped in the world of kami, the spirits of Japanese Shinto folklore. Raking in almost $400 million in coin, the film stood as the highest-grossing film in Japan for almost 20 years. Widely regarded as one of the best films ever made, animated or otherwise, it became the first hand-drawn, Japanese anime and non-English-language animated film to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 75th Academy Awards. It also received North American distribution from Disney at the urging of Pixar’s John Lasseter, who worked on the English dub, raising its profile with audiences stateside and introducing us to Soot Sprites, No-Face, and Haku the Dragon. Now our hosts are here to get Spirited Away!   Someone needs a bath!    For more geeky podcasts visit GonnaGeek.com   You can find us on iTunes under ''Legends Podcast''. Please subscri

In space, no one can hear you scream. In sequels that are also prequels that tell standalone stories while respecting the original and tying together diverse material from comics to video games, no one can hear you scream about continuity. Return to the Alien franchise in this 2024 installment directed by Fede Álvarez (who helmed Don’t Breathe) and set in-between the first two films. While the outing succeeded at the box office, audiences were divided over the third-act twist and the decision to digitally resurrect the late actor Ian Holm as the film’s synthetic, Rook. It just scored an Oscar nom for Best Visual Effects, but what do our hosts make of Alien: Romulus? Are our hearts bursting through our chests with love for this flick, or did it give us indigestion?   For more geeky podcasts visit GonnaGeek.com   You can find us on iTunes under ''Legends Podcast''. Please subscribe and give us a positive review. You can also follow us on Twitter @LegendsPodcast or even better, send us an e-mail: LegendsPodcastS

We’re journeying from the jungles of Darkest Peru to Jolly Ol’ London Town in this adaptation of the beloved children’s stories by Michael Bond. The Bond is strong with Q actor Ben Whishaw who voices the precocious titular bear. The cast is stacked with talent, including Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Julie Walters, Jim Broadbent, Peter Capaldi, and Nicole Kidman in key roles, with Michael Gambon and Imelda Stauton lending their voice talents. The director is Paul King (he of The Mighty Boosh), here helming the picture to critical and commercial success, to the tune of two BAFTA nominations and over $300 million at the box office. But are our hosts as enamored with the end result, or did we find it… unbearable? Exit the intro, pursued by a bear: Paddington Bear.   Oh, bother.   For more geeky podcasts visit GonnaGeek.com   You can find us on iTunes under ''Legends Podcast''. Please subscribe and give us a positive review. You can also follow us on Twitter @LegendsPodcast or even better, send us an e-mail: Le

In the mid-aughts, America became obsessed with high fashion for some reason. Maybe it was Project Runway’s silver-haired imp Tim Gunn whispering in our ears to “make it work.” Maybe we were all bewitched by the well-dressed ladies of Sex and the City. But Manolo Blahnik and Jimmy Choo were suddenly household names. Enter Meryl Streep as the boss from Hell: Miranda Priestly, the editor-in-chief of Runway magazine. She’s bringing the fire and brimstone of haute couture to torture her new assistant, played by a fresh-faced Anne Hathaway, in this 2006 comedy written by Aline Brosh McKenna from the novel by Lauren Weisberger. The film was a massive hit, won multiple awards, and scored Oscar noms for Streep and costume designer Patricia Field, who reportedly spent over $1 million to clothe the cast. But does this Runway project make it work? Or does it seem as gauche and dated as last season’s trends? They say the devil is in the details, and this time, The Devil Wears Prada.   Gird your loins, everyone!   For mor

In March 2019, The Walt Disney Company officially completed its $71.3 billion purchase of 21st Century Fox and gained the film rights to several Marvel Comics characters for Marvel Studios, including Deadpool and the X-Men. After a long development period, Marvel Studios finally announced plans to incorporate the R-rated Deadpool franchise into the relatively family-friendly Marvel Cinematic Universe. In an unexpected twist, Hugh Jackman joined the cast to reprise his role as Wolverine, last seen in 2017’s Logan, teaming up with Deadpool in this multiverse-spanning movie that pays homage to the Fox films. The first R-rated movie directly distributed under Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures became the highest grossing R rated movie of all time, the second-highest grossing movie of 2024, and the highest grossing MCU outing since Spider-Man: No Way Home - another multiverse mash-up movie with legacy nods. Now we’re sticking our fingers where they don’t belong: right in Deadpool & Wolverine!   You are my Anc

Here we go, back to reviewing movies! It’s been a month since we’ve done this, hopefully we still remember where to put things. We’re jumping into 2025 with a review of a classic romantic comedy written by Nora Ephron and directed by Rob Reiner from 1989. Starring Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan as two opposites-attracts acquaintances who become friends who become lovers, this rom-com was named the G.O.A.T. by Vanity Fair in 2018. But will we have what their having? When Harry Met Sally… all bets are off!   Please consider making a donation to LA fire relief: California Community Foundation California Fire Foundation L.A. Fire Department Foundation Pasadena Humane Society Ventura County Community Foundation American Red Cross of Greater Los Angeles Center for Disaster Philanthropy Direct Relief World Central Kitchen   For more geeky podcasts visit GonnaGeek.com   You can find us on iTunes under ''Legends Podcast''. Please subscribe and give us a positive review. You can also follow us on Twitter @LegendsPodcast

Welcome to 2025! We’re excited to bring you an all-new slate of movies to review this year, including recent releases and classic films - but we’re going to shake things up a bit by holding our first-ever Movie Draft. That’s right, we’re taking turns picking the movies we want to review this year. What will make the cut? And what’s up with theme months like Aug-Heist and Chronovember? Don’t worry - all will be revealed. Now get out your Big Board and follow along at home! It’s the Legends 2025 Movie Draft!   For more geeky podcasts visit GonnaGeek.com   You can find us on iTunes under ''Legends Podcast''. Please subscribe and give us a positive review. You can also follow us on Twitter @LegendsPodcast or even better, send us an e-mail: LegendsPodcastS@gmail.com   You can write to Rum Daddy directly: rumdaddylegends@gmail.com You can find all our contact information here on the Network page of GonnaGeek.com Our complete archive is always available at www.legendspodcast.com, www.legendspodcast.libsyn.com

It’s almost New Year’s, so we’re looking back over the past year and counting down our Top Ten Anything of 2024! We also take some listener messages, catch up on news and trailers, share what we’ve been into over our holidays, and preview what’s ahead in 2025. It's a great time to be a Legend!   For more geeky podcasts visit GonnaGeek.com   You can find us on iTunes under ''Legends Podcast''. Please subscribe and give us a positive review. You can also follow us on Twitter @LegendsPodcast or even better, send us an e-mail: LegendsPodcastS@gmail.com   You can write to Rum Daddy directly: rumdaddylegends@gmail.com   Special Christmas Music: Christmas Rap Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/  You can find all our contact information here on the Network page of GonnaGeek.com Our complete archive is always available at www.legendspodcast.com, www.legendspodcast.libsyn.com

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! And nothing says Christmas like classic TV holiday specials! Over the next two weeks, we’ll be toasting and roasting two of the most famous from the duo of Rankin and Bass. Which of them belongs on the Nice List and which one deserves a shiny lump of coal in its stocking. This is Legends of Christmas! Airing fifty years ago this month, based on the book by Phyllis McGinley, this Rankin and Bass special deals with every child's worst nightmare: Christmas has been canceled! After centuries of delivering presents to every child on Earth, Santa Claus is suffering from exhaustion and decides to take the year off. That means it's up to Mrs. Claus to figure out a way to save Christmas, with the help of some elves. We also meet the Miser Brothers, Heat Miser and Snow Miser, who cause trouble for Mrs. Claus as she seeks to wake Santa from his stupor. Featuring the voices of Mickey Rooney, Dick Shawn and George S. Irving, the special received a live-action remake in 2006 and

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! And nothing says Christmas like classic TV holiday specials! Over the next two weeks, we’ll be toasting and roasting two of the most famous from the duo of Rankin and Bass. Which of them belongs on the Nice List and which one deserves a shiny lump of coal in its stocking. This is Legends of Christmas! Airing sixty years ago this month, the first Rankin and Bass Christmas special asked if you recall the most famous reindeer of all. Based on the children’s book by Robert L. May, originally published by Montgomery Ward, and made perhaps even more famous by the Gene Autry version of song written by May's brother-in-law Johnny Marks. The most famous version of all is the TV special produced by Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass, sponsored by GE, which aired on NBC and adapted the original story into an “Animagic” stop-motion saga featuring Rudolph, Hermey, Sam the Snowman, Yukon Cornelius, the Bumble, and more. An instant classic, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer kicked off

We're visiting the Kingdom of Arendelle for a Disney Animated movie based on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Snow Queen.” This icy tale makes for perfect pre-holiday viewing, and audiences agreed when they spent over a billion dollars at the box office to see it, making it the highest-grossing film of 2013 and the highest-grossing animated film of all time, at that time. And it wasn’t just audiences who felt the magic, critics agreed and the film racked up awards, including two Oscars: Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song. With one sequel already out and another on the way, the franchise featuring the voice talents of Idina Menzel, Kristen Bell, Jonathan Groff, and Josh Gad has become a cultural phenomenon - and Disney clearly has no plans to let it go. But will Frozen be enough to melt the heart of musical skeptic Beef, or will Lobster or Rum Daddy panic and run away to the mountains? Conceal, don’t feel, don’t let them know - at least not until the rating!    For more geeky podcasts visit

We’re toasting the twentieth anniversary of a film about wine, friendship, and love among the vineyards of the Santa Ynez Valley, California. Directed by Alexander Payne and based on the novel by Rex Pickett, this 2004 hangout/road comedy from Fox Searchlight became a critic’s darling, sweeping the “Big Four” critics’ awards and winning the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar, Golden Globe, BAFTA, WGA, and Critic's Choice awards for Payne and co-writer Jim Taylor. The movie also marked breakthrough performances for its entire lead cast: Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen, and Sandra Oh. The corky, uh, quirky comedy even affected wine sales, causing a spike in pinot noir sales and a dip in merlot sales. But will praise of this film die on the vine with our three hosts, or will we find that it goes down easy despite its vintage? Join us as we give you the straight story on Sideways!   For more geeky podcasts visit GonnaGeek.com   You can find us on iTunes under ''Legends Podcast''. Please subscribe a

Fall back in time with Legends Podcast! All month long, we’re talking about time travel, paradoxes, and being your own Grandpa. We’re back in 2014, to live, die, and repeat the process as the snake eats its own tail. Ethan Hawke plays a timecop who meets a stranger in a bar, played by Succession’s Sarah Snook. Once the stranger tells his story, none of their lives will ever be the same, while the lives of thousands hang in the balance amid a mysterious bombing spree. Based on Robert A. Heinlein’s classic short story  ‘—All You Zombies—’ and directed by the Spierig Brothers, this indie Aussie flick may not have reinvented the box office, but it might contain enough twists to make temporal sleuths happy. The outcome is not pre-ordained! Will our time travel month have a happy ending, or does this strange loop leave us feeling… not ourselves? This is Chronovember!   For more geeky podcasts visit GonnaGeek.com   You can find us on iTunes under ''Legends Podcast''. Please subscribe and give us a positive review. Y

Fall back in time with Legends Podcast! All month long, we’re talking about time travel, paradoxes, and coming out of the closet. We’re back with an indie film that combines two of our favorite genres: heists and time travel! In order to escape police after a robbery, two estranged siblings lay low in a farmhouse that hides them away in a different time, where they are trapped in a vise between past and future. Starring Adam David Thompson and Riley Dandy, this timey-wimey thriller was written and directed by Michael Felker in his directorial debut. Originally called Timeshare, the film was a standout in the 2024 SXSW Midnight section, and received a direct-to-video release a few weeks ago. The movie is called Things Will Be Different, and we couldn’t agree more! This is Chronovember!   For more geeky podcasts visit GonnaGeek.com   You can find us on iTunes under ''Legends Podcast''. Please subscribe and give us a positive review. You can also follow us on Twitter @LegendsPodcast or even better, send us an e-

Fall back in time with Legends Podcast! All month long, we’re talking about time travel, paradoxes, and finding a penny in your pocket. “Look, a penny!” Author Richard Matheson is best known as a master of the suspenseful twist. One of his most famous works, I Am Legend, has been adapted as The Omega Man, The Last Man on Earth, and the eponymous Will Smith version. For television, he contributed to Star Trek, created Duel and The Night Stalker, and penned some of the most famous episodes of The Twilight Zone. But one of his most enduring, and endearing, films is a low-budget romance starring Christopher Reeve (fresh off his turn in the tights as Superman) and Jane Seymour. The pair play a couple separated by sixty years but brought together by hypnosis-induced time travel in story that features a signature Matheson twist. We’re checking in to the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island to see if Somewhere in Time is worth the wait. This is Chronovember!   For more geeky podcasts visit GonnaGeek.com   You can find us o

Fall back in time with Legends Podcast! All month long, we’re talking about time travel, paradoxes, and resetting the day with your demise. When PR officer William Cage (played by Tom Cruise) is unwillingly sent into combat against an invading alien army, he unwittingly gains the power to rewind time… but only if he dies. He teams up with war hero Rita Vrataski (played by Emily Blunt), who previously had the same power, to attempt to defeat an alien horde that uses time as a weapon - by living, dying, and repeating. Directed by Bourne Identity helmer Doug Liman, this 2014 sci-fi actioner based on the Japanese novel All You Need Is Kill was a box office hit and established Blunt’s status as an action hero. Ten years later, we’re reviewing Edge of Tomorrow as our 700th episode and the kickoff to our annual tradition of watching time travel movies in November. This is Chronovember! For more geeky podcasts visit GonnaGeek.com   You can find us on iTunes under ''Legends Podcast''. Please subscribe and give us a

Legends of Halloween has come to the end of the road. A twisty cliffside road high in the Carpathian Mountains. And at the end of that road, there is a castle. Owned by a kindly old count named… Vlad. The year is 1992 and Francis Ford Coppola is bringing Bram Stoker's classic gothic horror novel to the big screen. Starring Gary Oldman in the titular role, the stacked cast includes Anthony Hopkins, Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves, Richard E. Grant, Cary Elwes, and Billy Campbell. The adaptation of the 1897 epistolary novel won three Academy Awards - Best Costume Design, Best Sound Editing, and Best Makeup - and debuted in first place at the box office, ultimately grossing over $200 million. Now we’re ending October where we began, with a trip to Transylvania and an interview with a vampire - but not just any vampire. This is Bram Stoker’s Dracula!   For more geeky podcasts visit GonnaGeek.com   You can find us on iTunes under ''Legends Podcast''. Please subscribe and give us a positive review. You can also follow u

This week, Legends of Halloween checks in with the inventor of pod casting, Seth Brundle. Brundle, played by Jeff, uh, Goldblum, is a reclusive scientist on the cutting edge of baboon-killing technology. While trying to crack the code of instantaneous teleportation, he recklessly experiments on himself. But when a common housefly gets caught in the machine, the result is an exercise in body horror that only David Cronenberg could deliver. The film, a remake of the 1958 classic, co-stars Geena Davis, who was at the time Goldblum’s real-life girlfriend, as the reporter and love interest Ronnie who delivers the classic line, “Be afraid, be very afraid!” The film won an Academy Award for Best Makeup, inspired a sequel and has even been turned into an opera scored by Howard Shore. Now we’re stepping into the pod to beam ourselves directly into your ears - let’s hope they stay attached! - as we talk about the 1986 version of The Fly!   For more geeky podcasts visit GonnaGeek.com   You can find us on iTunes under ''

Legends of Halloween takes a detour into Lovecraft Country with special guest comic book author Michael Watson. Based on the 1927 short story, H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space” follows the aftermath of a mysterious meteorite that crashes on a family farm in the dark woods west of Arkham, Massachusetts. Starring Nicolas Cage and directed by Richard Stanley, the film adaptation was meant to kickstart a shared Lovecraft cinematic universe, but wound up buried at the box office. And here to help with our review of Color Out of Space, we've got the creator and author of the Lovecraftian indie comic, ITHAQA, which expands the map of Lovecraft Country to include the Roaring ‘20s in Ithaca, New York. Stick around after our review to learn more about ITHAQA and find out how you can become a part of the cosmic horror!   Find out more about ITHAQA at https://www.ithaqacomic.com/ and subscribe to get free digital copies of the first two issues!   For more geeky podcasts visit GonnaGeek.com   You can find us on i