Final Fantasy  Film Follow-up

Posted: 16th December 2011 by Brian in Film
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Final Fantasy: The Spirits WithinHi, everyone. Well, we Podwits are nothing if not self-correcting.

In our last podcast I spoke somewhat ill of the 2001 film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, voicing my theory, based on the film’s apparent lack of relation to the vaunted Final Fantasy video game series, that Square (the production company) had produced a fairly independent science-fiction film and only slapped the Final Fantasy name on it to boost its audience appeal after, I surmised, it had focus-grouped badly.

Turns out that it was supposed to be a Final Fantasy film all along. Not only was it directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of the video game franchise, but it also shared some significant philosophical viewpoints and even visuals with a couple of the games, such as the idea of souls as the lifeforce of a planet.

So, uh, my bad. I cop to it, and hope that you will all continue to take my audible rantings for what they’re worth. Wait a minute, that didn’t come out right…

(Side note, apropos of nothing: The film’s Wikipedia entry alleges, without attribution, that Square intended for FF:TSW‘s heroine Aki Ross to be an actual honest-to-god S1m0ne. A fascinating and sadly missed opportunity if true…)

Just in time for the 25th anniversary of the film’s release, Intrada records is issuing a new special edition soundtrack CD for the most popular Star Trek film of all time, STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME.

It’s been a good couple of years to be a Star Trek soundtrack fan.  In the past few years we’ve seen special edition releases of the scores for STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN, STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK and STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER as well as an expanded release of the score for JJ Abrams’ STAR TREK.

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More From The Reader Mailbag

Posted: 15th December 2011 by J. Marcus in Cyber Mailbag

Every once in a while we like to open up the cyber mailbag here at Podwits.com and take a look at some of the comments we get from our readers.  Our readership are very important to us.  You are the backbone of this blogsite and it is only because of you that this blogsite and our signature podcast have enjoyed the success that we have seen to date.

And so we like to take a look at some of the amazing feedback we get from our readers.  Recently we received a rather long missive about a post that our very own Dion Baia was kind enough to post.  Dion reflected on the death of celebrated actor Harry Morgan.

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Christmas Around The World

Posted: 15th December 2011 by Yorkshire Girl in Uncategorized
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I love Christmas.. I love everything about it.. The atmosphere, the lights, the magic, family, the gifts! Okay… especially the gifts. There’s something about that man with a white beard and red suit climbing down the chimney that brings joy to our hearts young and old.

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According to TMZ, Clint Eastwood’s wife and two daughter have penned a deal with Kardashian reality show producer Bunim/Murray, to star in a family-oriented reality show.

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The brand-spanking new trailer for the sequel to 2009’s G.I.Joe: Rise of Cobra has been released and it looks… um ok, I guess.

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Galaxy 4Between its debut in 1963 and its initial cancellation in 1989, 695 individual episodes of Doctor Who were produced, and one of the great scandals of television history is that of those 695 episodes over a hundred of them (all from the show’s 1960s black-and-white era) were summarily erased by the BBC in the mid-1970s in an effort to recycle film and videotape stock and a host of other, more arcane financial and legal reasons. 108 half-hour episodes, in total, can no longer be seen by fans too young (like me) or too American (also like me) to have seen them on their initial BBC airings.

But, in the kind of good news that happens far too infrequently for my admittedly obsessive taste, make it 106 episodes, ’cause two of those missing episodes have turned up and been returned to the BBC archive.

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Blues Guitar legend Hubert Sumlin,  whose signature scream and snarl defined Howlin’ Wolf’s sound, died in Wayne, New Jersey this week at the age of 80.  A highly underrated guitar pioneer in the Chicago “Electric Blues” scene of the late 1940’s- to late 50’s, Mr. Sumlin is revered in the music, directly influencing musicians such as Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Robbie Robertson, Robbie Krieger and Jimi Hendrix, who was said to be fascinated on how Sumlin was able to attain the electric distortion on his Chess recordings.

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Brian’s got a chip on his shoulder and a bug up his butt about some new remakes in the Hollywood pipeline, J. and Dion try to talk him off the ledge, and many film buff hijinks ensue.

Plus listener comments and your Borgnine fix. Getcher red hot Podcast right hee-yah!

The good folks at Eon Productions have been the caretakers of the James Bond franchise, through thick and VERY thin for almost 50 years.  Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, Daniel Craig… These names roll off the tongue rather easily as all being the aliases of 007.  Thanks to the” miracle” that is cable television, I was able to reconnect with ANOTHER James Bond… One whose odds were even more against him than any other.

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