Skull-Face Island Movie Podcast presented by Geeks Of Doom
Episode 04: Champagne With My Campaign

Hello! It’s Adam Frazier aka FamousMonster and it’s time for another transmission from Skull-Face Island. David Allen, Tim Grant and myself haven’t slept in days – we’re too busy watching the 25th Anniversary of Discovery Channel’s Shark Week. I mean seriously, how can you afford to sleep knowing there’s Grade-A programming like this being broadcast over the airwaves? Hey, speaking of sharks…

ParaNorman
Directed by Sam Fell and Chris Butler
Written by Chris Butler
Starring Kodi Smit-McPhee, Anna Kendrick, Casey Affleck, John Goodman, Jeff Garlin, Christopher Mintz-Plasse
Focus Features
Rated PG | 93 Minutes
Release Date: August 17, 2012

Produced by Coraline creators Laika, ParaNorman is a kid-friendly, stop-motion animated spookshow – a witches’ brew of ’80s classics like Monster Squad and Beetlejuice, with a dash of 1993’s Hocus Pocus and a pinch of Gil Kenan’s Monster House.

The film takes place in the small New England town of Blithe Hollow, where a centuries’-old witch’s curse has unleashed a horde of puritanical zombies upon the townspeople. If there’s one thing worse than puritans, it’s undead puritans. Turns out the zombies were villagers way back when who, thanks to moral panic and mass hysteria, condemned a young girl to her death for practicing witchcraft.

Blithe Hollow’s only hope is a misunderstood, horror-obsessed boy named Norman Babcock (voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee), who has the ability to speak with the dead. Aided by best friend Neil (Tucker Albrizzi), his sister Courtney (Anna Kendrick) and Neil’s big brother Mitch (Casey Affleck), Norman will face ghosts and ghouls to save his town from a 300-year-old witch with one Hell of a grudge.

One of the biggest roles that had been still uncast for the upcoming third season of HBO’s hit fantasy series Game of Thrones, was that of Mance Rayder, king of the Wildlings.

Now comes word that producers have found their Mance, and he happens to have some prior experience with HBO shows. It’s being reported that Ciarán Hinds has been cast as Mr. Rayder, ending an extended run of fan speculation and wishing.

Jaws
Blu-ray
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Starring Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary
Universal Studios Home Entertainment
Release Date: August 14, 2012

One night during a party on the beaches of Amity Island, a New England community primarily known as a summertime destination, a young woman (Susan Backlinie) goes for a nude, moonlit swim in the ocean and is attacked and killed by an unseen force beneath the surface. The next morning her remains wash up on shore and are discovered by Amity police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider). Determining the woman’s death to be a shark attack the chief attempts to close the beaches in order to prevent further casualties, but is stonewalled by the town’s mayor Vaughan (Murray Hamilton), cautious to protect Amity’s reputation with the Fourth of July coming up. Some time later a little boy is eaten by the shark while playing in the water. His distraught mother offers up a sizable bounty to anyone who can kill the shark, bringing carloads of fishermen and hunters to Amity ready to claim the reward.

Marine biologist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) also arrives on Amity to assist Brody and based on the bite marks left on the remains of the first victim he believes the shark is a great white, unheard of in the waters off Amity. The beaches remain open despite failed attempts to kill the shark and when the tourists descend on Amity for Independence Day the attacks intensify. With the lives of Amity’s citizens, including Brody’s own family, and the town’s future hanging in the balance, Brody and Hopper team up with local fisherman Quint (Robert Shaw) and head out to sea to confront and destroy the great white. It’s only after they’ve encountered the beast that they realize their enemy has been grossly underestimated. One thing’s for sure: they’re gonna need a bigger boat.

August 12th was Vinyl Record Day, marked by the date Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, so it’s become a day to celebrate the old time traditions of sonic yesteryear, and spin your favorite tunes on those old 33 1/3, 45, and 78 sized spherical objects made out of wax called “records.” And I’m here to give you my Top 12 favorite vinyl records of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, along with a bunch of honorable mentions, but before we get to that, let’s talk a little bit about this thing called “vinyl.”

Up until the mid 1980s, when CDs started to become the musical norm in how one listened to their music proper, records were the norm of the people; not just a communally popular way to hear songs, but it became a giant subculture of the fabric of life, a hobby, a key element in creating parties, in creating gatherings and get-togethers, a source of fun competition in who would have more records than whom and who would have the rare cool records, in essence, vinyl hoarding was a collector’s and layman’s dream for decades upon decades.

With its outer cardboard casings known as “sleeves,” bands and musicians of all musical genres were able to express themselves not only in the music they created, but by the art that was presented on the front and back covers, which spawned an entire new artistic medium in a sense. In a way, every day should still be a Vinyl Record Day in some regard, and as the way music is bought and downloaded these days, in binary coded “bitted and byted” digital forms, not only has the way of the vinyl passed in essence, but also all the visual accoutrements that came with it. It has become a relic of the past like a rotary telephone or a CB radio, a dinosaur’s regime, which ultimately is hence even a more urgent reason to preserve the memory and image of the record alive in the 21st century.