Law and Moreno go old school with lots of voicemails and banned text messages. Nope is the big review but they find a way to fit in lots more for your side-of-head-holes.
Head over to Patreon.com/BingeMedia to sign up for the Full Binge! This week Pete and Ammon record a commentary for Us and give their own reviews of Nope.
Pete, Law, and Ammon tackle voicemails and texts before heading into the television realm with The Boys, The Bear, and others and then fight their way to the top of What Did You Watch Mountain featuring full on battles with Thor: Love and Thunder, Men, Black Phone, and more. It’s is as epic as you want it to be.
Head over to Patreon.com/BingeMedia to sign up for the Full Binge! This week the boys record The Binge Blockbuster Bracky where they pit the top 40 grossing films of all time against each other is a fight to the death.
Is July 4th a Holiday in the States? I don’t care. You are forced to listen to Ammon and Law spoil the shit out of Stranger Things 4 and answer Google Voice and watch other things all night. Do it. Fire crackers! Stuff!
Head over to Patreon.com/BingeMedia to sign up for the Full Binge! This week the boys record The Tom Hanks Tournament where people get sad, angry and yell.
By the time 2007 rolled around, Die Hard had become legendary. As discussed in this very podcast, if they had stopped at 1995’s Die Hard with a Vengeance, the three of us would be praising just how fully entertaining the Die Hard TRILOGY is. But hence, 20th Century Fox had to quadruple dip into the Die Hard pot. The result, Live Free or Die Hard, is a film you either love or hate. Listen to hear two of us discuss how much we hate it. While the other defends it, only to finally determine that he hates is too.
But that’s not all. To make up for the lack of podcast last week, we also talk about 2013’s A Good Day to Die Hard. What, if anything worked about this seen as a train wreck fourth sequel? Whose body does director John Moore know the location of that he leveraged to get into the director’s chair? And how does Batch feel watching this film for the first time in his life? And, you get an already falling out of his chair drunk Ammon to talk about A Good Day to Die Hard, you will laugh at just how awesomely bad he feels about this film. No, he does not hold back.
Well, another month, another retrospective gone. I’d like to once again thank Ammon and Batch for joining me on this journey through the adventures of John McClane. Stay tuned. More with them by the end of the year.
By the time 1995 rolled around, the action genre was still seeing all the remnants of Die Hard’s success take shape in the form of its imitators. Die Hard on a ship. Die Hard on a bus. The movie going public was so inundated with imitations, that the prospect of John McClane returning for another adventure were looking to be dwindling away due to Hollywood’s common ability to over saturate the market with too much of a good thing.
But extrenuating circumstances forced two major players in the franchise to flex their action movie making muscles once again. First, Bruce Willis was in the position of sorely needing a hit. After taking control of what was reportedly a fantastic script in Hudson Hawk, Willis’s ego brought the production to its knees, as he had them do his bidding. Much to the film’s dismay. And the 1993 action yarn Striking Distance wasn’t doing too much fire burning at the box office either.
John McTiernan was also coming off a career slump, as the Arnold Schwarzenegger flop Last Action Hero was still on the tips of tongues of Hollywood executives learning that too much of a good thing, in action’s most successful star and the innovative director that put adventure filmmaking on the Hollywood map, was anything but. The re-teamup of these two in a sequel to their most successful film was all but inevitable. And we at the Aftertaste are here to watch it.
Once again join Batch, Ammon, and myself as we look at 1995’s Die Hard with a Vengeance, and decide whether the film seemingly made out of career salvaging desperation was either a good or bad result in our eyes.
Note: Due to our schedules being all over the place this week, there will not be an Aftertaste next Thursday. However, in two weeks, we will return with not one, but TWO reviews. One of Live Free or Die Hard, and the other being A Good Day to Die Hard. Also, keep an eye on this space as lots of surprises are coming down the pike.
Die Hard With A Vengeance (1995) (?/10, ?/10, ?/10)
Released in the summer of 1988, it didn’t take long for 20th Century Fox to realize that Die Hard was a hit, and almost immediately started putting together a sequel concept. However, this time their film wasn’t going to be based on anything by original novelist Roderick Thorpe. Instead, Fox already had the rights to the novel 58 Minutes by Walter Wager, and in a move that will be a theme to this series, just plugged almost all of our favorite characters from the original Die Hard film and made it the sequel lazily known as Die Harder.
But Hans Gruber isn’t the only piece of the 1988 film’s puzzle missing from this film. There is no sly hand of original director John McTiernan at the helm. Instead, we get the upstart, high on his action game Finnish director Renny Harlin at the helm. Join Ammon, Batch, and myself as we dissect whether the sequel’s outlandishly ridiculous concept is able to be overshadowed by the hard nosed action Die Hard 2: Die Harder contains. And whether the still full toupee wearing Bruce Willis brings his A game to another adventure containing John McClane being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Download the podcast that I like to call, Christmas in June. And don’t forget, we will be going down this road of one film a week until we get to the 2013 fifth film A Good Day to Die Hard.
The action landscape was certainly missing something in 1988. Sure, the first Terminator and Lethal Weapon movies had already come out and set the ball rolling. But, the genre still needed that one extra push. Something to come out of nowhere and change cinema forever.
Enter Die Hard. Directed by John McTiernan and starring then relative unknown Bruce Willis, Die Hard rapidly ascended to the top of many peoples’ 1988 Best of lists, and movie quips were no longer owned solely by Ah-nold. Instead, this Bruce guy came in and gave the art of a one-liner a true make-over by giving them, and this film as a whole, something Schwarzenegger and those around him couldn’t. He gave them a naturality.
Join me, Ammon, and Batch as we start our look at the entire Die Hard series by dissecting this first history-making film. I don’t think it’s a secret that we all love it. But how much? What books did the film base itself on? And is this REALLY the first film of the series?
We answer all these questions and more, below. So welcome yourselves to the party by downloading!
I go through obsessive phases regularly. As evidenced in my last few articles, the past month has been all about the PS4 I just got. It’s awesome, yeah, and it’s a gamechanger as far as social gaming goes for me, but as has been the case with each and every console I’ve bought, this system feels like a real step forward in a lot of ways. In terms of graphics and story, I’ve hit my first apex of the console, and it is Bloodborne.
While GTA V was the first and most important reason for getting the console, Bloodborne was the deciding factor between this and the XBOX One, mainly because of my love for Dark Souls I and II. Suffice it to say, this game does not disappoint. Later this week, I’m guesting on the Binge GameCast to talk a little more in depth about the game, but after spending a good 20 hours and what amounts to, according to forums, less than half of the main game, I’m happy to report that the game is enjoyable, creepy as hell and the most fun I’ve had with a video game in a while.
This isn’t, and never has been labeled as, a game for everyone, but if you enjoy the grind of the game, the satisfaction of achievement when you finally defeat a boss/clear an area, or a story that is easily more bizarre than most AAA titles then you can find a lot to like about Bloodborne, just like I have.
Of course, today is March 31st, the day that means one thing for Mr. Ammon Gilbert: tomorrow he can change his profile picture. Ammon, ladies and germs, is a champ in my eyes. Not many assholes would wear a shirt with a greasy/naked Gronk as matter-of-factly as he did, and for that the guy deserves props, so I’ll give them to him. I can recognize and respect a guy that owns up to his word, and to be honest I don’t feel too bad about admitting my enemy won this battle. After all, he still has to deal with the undying shame of throwing on 2nd and goal (at least until the Hawks win another title).
Sorry for the short article this week guys, fighting off a cold and my head is spinning. You can find me on this week’s Binge Cast, a guest appearance on the GamerCast and our weekly Better Call Saul cast, now featuring Luke “Skywalker” Norris! Take care and, as always, Binge On!