Alcohollywood's spinoff mini-cast On Tap returns! Every so often, we'll be providing you with exclusive interviews, reviews and festival coverage alongside the regular podcast. Hope you enjoy!
To kick off our (semi-) inaugural installment, Clint reviews Leigh Whannell's upcoming sci-fi thriller Upgrade. After losing his wife and the use of his limbs after a tragic attack, a man (Logan Marshall-Green) equips himself with an experimental technological upgrade to regain the ability to walk - using his newfound powers to track down the men who killed his wife. It's lean, bloody and immensely entertaining, with more than a few neat tricks to spice up its bone-crunching action and enticingly rendered near-future world.
Along the way, Clint sits down with Whannell to discuss the conception of the film's cyberpunk world, choreographing intricate fight scenes, and finding the perfect voice for Upgrade's all-powerful technology. Take a listen!
(To read Clint's full review of Upgrade, head over to Consequence of Sound.)
For this episode, we crashed Hotel Moxy in downtown Chicago for their inaugural Moxy SoundOff Podcast Series, trapping ourselves in a little glass booth for the entertainment of our live audience. Since this live podcast took place in a hotel, and we've already done The Shining, we decided to tackle the second-greatest movie set in a hotel - Dunston Checks In!
This kiddie caper set in an art-deco Manhattan hotel stars Jason Alexander as your classic overworked '90s dad, who must suddenly contend with a jewel-thief orangutan loose in his hotel. Luckily, his adorable kids (including Eric Lloyd from The Santa Clause) have already befriended Dunston, and they set out to stop his former master (Rupert Everett) from... stealing stuff, I think?
To our great shock and horror, we ended up liking Dunston Checks In a lot more than we expected. Come listen to our astonished, modest praise of this slapsticky kid's flick, and check out our custom cocktail and drinking game here!
(Thanks to our sponsor Second City Training Center as part of the Chicago Podcast Coop!)
What does it take to change the essence of a man? This week, we find out (along with regular guest Derek Jarvis) as we dive into Steven Seagal's eco-friendly auteur explosion-fest, On Deadly Ground!
Seagal's sole director credit, On Deadly Ground features He of the Ponytail as oil-fire specialist/secret military badass Forrest Taft, a fixer for evil petroleum exec Michael Jennings (Michael Caine, doing his damndest to sound American) in the Alaskan oil fields. After he uncovers a conspiracy to knowingly allow their new super-rig to blow up just so they can keep the rights to Native American land, Taft teams up with perpetually useless Native representative Masu (Joan Chen) to bludgeon, explode, and gun down every single one of Jennings' mercenaries - you know, for Mother Earth.
On Deadly Ground is suffused with a healthy dose of Steven Seagal earnestness, gross native mysticism, and a hamfisted environmental message that would make Greenpeace execs wrinkle their nose. (Don't forget the incredible non sequitur bar fight that suddenly turns into a treatise on toxic masculinity.)
It's a crazy, crazy ride, so take a listen and check out our custom cocktail and drinking game!
(Thanks to our sponsor Overcast as part of the Chicago Podcast Coop!)
Related links:
Nathan Rabin's piece on Steven Seagal's alt-right novel The Way of the Shadow Wolves