Podcast appearances and mentions of van peebles

In this episode of Kermode on Film, Mark is joined by Mario Van Peebles and Mandela Van Peebles, to talk about their film Outlaw Posse, shown as part of the BFI season Black Rodeo: A History of the African American Western. And he talks to Bernard MacMahon and Allison McGourty, the director and producer of the high grossing new documentary Becoming Led Zeppelin.Sit back and enjoy Part 1 of this MK3D show recorded live at the BFI Southbank on Monday 10 February 2025.In Part 2, Mark is joined by a star of stage and screen Fiona Shaw, and composer, musician and superstar Warren Ellis.Thanks for listening, and remember, keep watching the skies.———————The opening title sequence of Kermode on Film uses quotes from:- Mary Poppins, directed by Robert Stevenson and distributed by Walt Disney Motion Pictures – quote featuring Julie Andrews.- Nope, written, directed and produced by Jordan Peele, and distributed by Universal Studios – quote featuring Keke Palmer.- Withnail & I, written and directed by Bruce Robinson, and distributed by HandMade Films – quote featuring Richard E Grant.- The Exorcist, written by William Peter Blatty and directed by William Friedkin, distributed by Warner Brothers – quote featuring Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair.We love these films. We urge you to seek them out, and watch them, again and again.They are masterpieces!Kermode on Film is an HLA Agency production.Cover photo by Julie Edwards.This episode was edited by Alex Archbold Jones.© HLA AgencyHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.#MarkKermode #MK3D #KermodeOnFilm #BFI #BFISouthbank #MarioVanPeebles #MandelaVanPeebles #OutlawPosse #GhandiFilm #AliFilm #MalcolmX #MohammedAli #LedZeppelin #BecomingLedZeppelin #AllisonMcGourty #BernardMacMahon #SafetyLast #HaroldLloyd Films and TV series mentioned in this episode:Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.Films mentioned in this podcast:VertigoJeanne Dielman 23 Quai du Commerce 1080 BruxellesOutlaw PossePosseBaadasssss! (2003)Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971)Gandhi (1982)Ali (2001)Becoming Led ZeppelinAmerican EpicSafety LastNapoleon (1927)Napoleon (2024)People and bands mentioned in this episode:Chantal AckermanMario Van PeeblesMandela Van PeeblesMelvyn Van PeeblesJohnny CashWhoopi GoldbergBernard MacMahonAllison McGourtyRobert RedfordRobert PlantJimmy PageJohn Paul JonesJohn BonhamCarter FamilyPink FloydThe WhoCarl DavisGaylord CarterAbel Gance Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Most people may not remember the Lambert and Van Peebles led movie that co-starred Denis Leary and Sir Patrick Stewart... and there's a reason... Will and Matt however, are not two of the many fortunate ones. Enjoy as they discuss the forgotten Butch Cassidy style film that makes no sense. DISCLAIMER: Language and Spoilers!GUNMENdir. Deran Sarafianstarring: Christopher Lambert; Mario Van Peebles; Denis Leary

Episode 452.Father and Son: Mario and Mandela Van Peebles.Legend Mario Van Peebles joins me to talk about his newest film "Outlaw Posse", New Jack City, his father and legend Melvin Van Peebles.We also joined by Mario's son, Mandela who is a wonderful actor in his own right who co-stars with his dad in "Outlaw Posse" Mario talks about how #whoopigoldberg casting herself, making a western, working with his son and so much more.I have always been a huge fan of Mario's work and getting a chance to speak with him was immensely enjoyable.#90s #90smovie #90stv #newjackcity #mayorofkingstown #fyp #western #blazingsaddles #80smovies #80stv #80s https://linktr.ee/mondaymorningcritic

In today's Hot Topics, the co-hosts discuss Trump's VP shortlist and a Secret Service report indicating Pres. Biden's dog Commander has had 24 biting incidents. Wendy Williams' niece Alex Finnie joins to share updates on her aunt who has been missing from the public eye, and discuss the "complicated" reasons why Williams wanted to document her struggles with cameras for the new documentary, “Where Is Wendy Williams?” Mario Van Peebles stops by to share the importance of social consciousness in his work and why collaborating on-screen is a Van Peebles family tradition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Aaron is joined by award winning director, Alfred Preisser. In 2006, Mr. Preisser directed the acclaimed 2006 revival of 'Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death', during which time he became close friends with Melvin Van Peebles. Preisser went on to act in Van Peebles' final film 'Confessions of an Ex-Dufus Itchyfooted Mutha' and work on the staged Opera of 'Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song'. We are honored that Alfred took the time to speak to us about the time he spent with Melvin.Mr. Preisser's work has been recognized with The American Theatre Wing Award for Outstanding Artistic Achievement, The Drama Desk Award, The Edwin Booth Award, The Lucille Lortel Award, and two Obie Awards.Aflred Preisser: https://www.alfredpreisser.com/Email us: behindtheslatepod@gmail.comInstagram: @behindtheslatepodTikTok: @behindtheslatepodYouTube: @behindtheslatepodcastProducer: Greg Kleinschmidt Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It is our first episode on the life and work of the revolutionary artist, Melvin Van Peebles... only Mr. Van Peebles will not be appearing. In order to understand the themes, imagery and messages within his films, we are going to tell a story of African American representation in American drama. We'll meet a Caribbean immigrant who founds the first black owned theatre in the U.S., a gangly white actor who made one of the most dangerous pieces of art in human history, a lower Manhattan wunderkind who would come to be known as 'King of all Dancers' and of course, the South Dakota Homesteader turned father of African American independent cinema, Oscar Micheaux!Email us: behindtheslatepod@gmail.comInstagram: @behindtheslatepodTikTok: @behindtheslatepodYouTube: @behindtheslatepodcastJoin our weekly film club: https://www.instagram.com/arroyofilmclubProducer: Greg KleinschmidtSources:‘White People Do Not Know How to Behave at Entertainments Designed for Ladies and Gentlemen of Colour' by Marvin McAllister'The African Grove Theatre and Company' by Jonathan Dewberry‘Stephen C. Foster and Negro Minstrelsy' by Robert P. Nevin‘Select Committee on the Slave Trade. Evidence by Thomas Trotter'‘Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America' by Sterling Stuckey‘Black Magic a Pictorial History of Black Entertainers in America' by Langston Hughes‘American Notes' by Charles Dickens‘Red Summer' by Cameron McWhirter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this talk, Racquel Gates presents her experience working as consulting producer on the Criterion release of Melvin Van Peebles: Essential Films. A legendary filmmaker whose unique personality is just as well-known as his body of work, Van Peebles made an indelible impact on both Black film and independent cinema. How, then, to present new insights on Van Peebles in a way that built on viewers' existing familiarity with the filmmaker and his work while avoiding cliches and hagiography? In “Reintroducing Melvin Melvin Van Peebles,” Gates considers the history of her own research on Van Peebles's films, and details the pleasures — and challenges — of trying to create a bridge between the worlds of academic film studies and more public facing consumer film culture. Racquel Gates is an Associate Professor of Film and Media at Columbia University. Her research focuses on blackness and popular culture, with special attention to discourses of taste and quality. She is the author of Double Negative: The Black Image and Popular Culture (Duke, 2018), and is currently working on her second book, titled Hollywood Style and the Invention of Blackness. In 2020, she was named an Academy Film Scholar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Melvin Van Peebles' SWEET SWEETBACK'S BAADASSSSS SONG was a monumental moment for Black cinema and a gamechanger for cinema as a whole. Not only are we joined by the great Michael Jai White, whose BLACK DYNAMITE was a direct descendant of SWEETBACK, but his friend Mario Van Peebles (son of Melvin, and star of BAADASSSSS!, which tells the story of the making of today's film) pops in to drop some wisdom on us!Then, we play a quiz about the celebrity children of celebrity parents.What's Good :Alonso: OmsomDrea: Finishing taxes earlyMichael: Division of labor, domestically speakingIfy: Birthday Trip!ITIDIC:Camila Cabello Cinderella Is Winning #OscarsFanFavoriteChanning Tatum Says ‘Magic Mike' Training Regimen Might Not Be Healthy/RealisticStaff Picks:Drea: COFFYAlonso: THE LIVING ENDMichael: THE MACKIfy: BLACK DYNAMITEBuy Alonso's book - I'll Be Home for Christmas MoviesWith:Ify NwadiweDrea ClarkAlonso DuraldeMichael Jai WhiteMario Van PeeblesProduced by Marissa FlaxbartSr. Producer Laura Swisher

Bonus Episode: Before we get into February's theme of Soul Cinema, we take a deep dive on an influential director who lives up to the initials that make up his name. Tune in as Chris digs into being a renaissance man, sharing the history, art, and ultimately the raw talent of the one, the only, Melvin Van Peebles. Join Us! Check us out at LSCEP.com Like, Review, Subscribe! Works Cited: Alexander, George. Why We Make Movies : Black Filmmakers Talk About the Magic of Cinema. 1st ed. New York: Harlem Moon, 2003. Angio, Joe. How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (And Enjoy It). Breakfast at Noho, LLC. 2005. 85 Mins. Blu Ray. Bogle, Donald. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. 5th Ed. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing Inc., 2016. James, Darius. That's Blaxploitation! : Roots of the Baadasssss 'Tude (rated X by an All-Whyte Jury). New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1995. Loeb, Anthony, John Cassavetes, Joan. Tewkesbury, Steve. Shagan, Bill Butler, Buck. Henry, William. Friedkin, and Melvin Van Peebles. Filmmakers in Conversation. Chicago, Ill: Columbia College, 1982. Martin, Douglas. Melvin Van Peebles, Champion of New Black Cinema, Dies at 89. New York Times. 9/22/21. Accessed on 1/28/22 from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/22/movies/melvin-van-peebles-champion-of-new-black-cinema-dies-at-89.html Trunick, Austin. Interview: Mario Van Peebles on the Legacy of His Father's “Story of a Three-Day Pass.” Under the Radar Magazine. 5/7/2021. Accessed 2/3/22 from https://www.undertheradarmag.com/interviews/interview_mario_van_peebles_on_the_legacy_of_his_fathers_story_of_a_three_d Van Peebles, Melvin, and Mario. Van Peebles. No Identity Crisis : a Father and Son's Own Story of Working Together. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/lsce/message

Ian and Pat continue their look at Melvin Van Peebles' filmography. Criterion recently released Melvin Van Peebles: Essential Films, a packed and gorgeously packaged Blu-ray set that contains Watermelon Man (which they talked about in February) and the writer/director's groundbreaking follow-up, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song! The 1971 proto-Blaxploitation movie centers on a sex worker named Sweetback (Van Peebles) who finds himself on the lam after beating up two White cops in defense of a Black Panther, whom they rough up while in custody. Using his connections, cunning, and, um, natural talents, Sweetback evades the authorities while igniting a revolutionary spirit in a community that's fed up with police harassment and disenfranchisement.In this charged and very wide-ranging discussion, Ian and Pat talk about the film's shocking content; Van Peebles' cutting edge use of editing and meta-storytelling; and why it spawned a vital 1970s movie genre. They also delve into modern issues of race, inspired by questions the film raises, and look ahead to next month's annual holiday movie review.It's a weird, messed-up, poignant show--or as we like to think of it, "Baadasssss"!Timestamps:Intro: 0:00 - 1:09Sweet Sweetback Discussion: 1:10 - 54:08George Carlin and "Guilty White Liberals": 54:09 - 1:05:56Holiday Cheer (Planning Our Annual Christmas Movie Review): 1:05:57 - 1:16:08Outro: 1:16:09 - 1:18:33 Show Links:Watch the Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song trailer.Order Melvin Van Peebles: Essential Films from The Criterion Collection.Watch Ian and Pat discuss Van Peebles' Watermelon Man (recorded earlier this year).Keep up with Pat at HollywoodChicago.com.Subscribe to, like, and comment on the Kicking the Seat YouTube channel!

our show

Influential director Melvin Van Peebles died on Tuesday night at home in Manhattan. The 89-year-old director was best known for his independent films Watermelon Man (1970) and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971). He was also the father of Mario Van Peebles, with whom he wrote and directed the movie Panther in 1995. The elder Van Peebles told NPR that year he considered that film a history lesson for kids too young to remember the Panthers' community activism. SHOW CREDITS Host: Keko - http://twitter.com/therealkeko Co Host - Magdalena Producer: Mac Redd Guest: Richard Milner Music Guest: na Background Music: Youtube.com/ nk music Background Video: Youtube.com/ the Dronalist Donation: https://cash.app/$folksalert Phone: 646-54-FOLKS Email: info@folksalert.com Web site: http://folksalert.com IG: http://instagram.com/onlyfolks_ Twitter: http://twitter.com/folksalert

In the chaos of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the mass evacuation, a number of unaccompanied minors ended up on flights out of the country. Now comes the difficult task of reuniting them with families or helping them find new homes. Also, if you're in the market for a puffy vest this winter, you may need to be patient. The shipping bottlenecks occurring at California ports continue to have an outsized impact on US retailers like Eddie Bauer. And the world mourns the loss of pioneering Black filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles, who died on Tuesday at the age of 89 in his home in New York. Van Peebles was known as the “godfather of modern Black cinema” with themes of resistance and Black liberation.

Melvin Van Peebles, the pioneering African American auteur behind the 1970s films Watermelon Man and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, has died. He was 89. Van Peebles, the father of actor-director Mario Van Peebles, died Tuesday night at his home in Manhattan. His family, The Criterion Collection and Janus Films announced his death in a statement.   “In an unparalleled career distinguished by relentless innovation, boundless curiosity and spiritual empathy, Melvin Van Peebles made an indelible mark on the international cultural landscape through his films, novels, plays and music,” the statement read. “His work continues to be essential and is being celebrated at the New York Film Festival this weekend with a 50th anniversary screening of his landmark film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song; a Criterion Collection box set, Melvin Van Peebles: Essential Films, next week; and a revival of his play Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death, slated for a return to Broadway next year.”   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Melvin Van Peebles, the pioneering African American auteur behind the 1970s films Watermelon Man and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, has died. He was 89. Van Peebles, the father of actor-director Mario Van Peebles, died Tuesday night at his home in Manhattan. His family, The Criterion Collection and Janus Films announced his death in a statement.   “In an unparalleled career distinguished by relentless innovation, boundless curiosity and spiritual empathy, Melvin Van Peebles made an indelible mark on the international cultural landscape through his films, novels, plays and music,” the statement read. “His work continues to be essential and is being celebrated at the New York Film Festival this weekend with a 50th anniversary screening of his landmark film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song; a Criterion Collection box set, Melvin Van Peebles: Essential Films, next week; and a revival of his play Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death, slated for a return to Broadway next year.”   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Martin Kessler is back to talk Van Peebles, Citizen Kane, and much more.

Martin Kessler is back to talk Van Peebles, Citizen Kane, and much more.

Martin Kessler is back to talk Van Peebles, Citizen Kane, and much more.

Welcome to another episode of Toilet-side Wrestling Talk! Today's guest is Renee Van Peebles! We discuss her first day of training, whether it's tougher for a female to flourish in the business, how she hooked up with Myles Mercer and C-Red, and we even find out if she's ever had her picture hung at a post office! ———— Instagram: @theyoungonervp Facebook: Renee Van Peebles For merch: https://www.prowrestlingtees.com/wrestler-t-shirts/da-soul-touchaz

The end of the the MacLeod Trilogy was an action dud, but lots of tangents for other possible movies. Solid premise for a movie but falls mostly flat. Van Peebles is the man though. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

This week on the podcast, we went long on an American filmmaker like no other: Melvin Van Peebles. Known for groundbreaking classics like Watermelon Man and Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Song, Van Peebles invented entirely new cinematic languages while offering trenchant visions of Black American life and masculinity. In 1968, the director made his feature debut with The Story of a Three Day Pass, a dazzlingly multi-layered film about an African-American soldier's dalliance with a white French woman in Paris. With the film returning to screens this week in a brand-new restoration, we reached out to two Van Peebles superfans: filmmaker Ephraim Asili, director of The Inheritance, and writer and film editor Blair McClendon. We discussed Van Peebles' work and fascinating life, and even got a peek into Ephraim's extensive collection of Melvin Van Peebles ephemera. Don't forget to sign up for the Film Comment Letter! It's a free digital newsletter that will deliver original writing by Film Comment contributors directly to your inbox every Thursday. Sign-up today at filmcomment.com.

Celebrated writer, director, and producer Mario Van Peebles sits down with us to discuss the re-release of his father's landmark debut film, The Story of A Three-Day Pass. Van Peebles shares his thoughts on a multitude of issues as well as his father's legendary achievements on the latest episode of Conversations

Celebrated writer, director, and producer Mario Van Peebles sits down with us to discuss the re-release of his father's landmark debut film, The Story of A Three-Day Pass. Van Peebles shares his thoughts on a multitude of issues as well as his father's legendary achievements on the latest episode of Conversations

My guests today are currently sailing the world while running a business! CLARYTI co-founders are spreading awareness on plastic pollution in the ocean through household cleaning products. Their mission is to eliminate the 3rd largest contributor of plastic pollution in the ocean -- household products -- by creating non-toxic plastic-free cleaning products that people love!Welcome, Nixie Marie and Cameron Van Peebles.They are so creative, fun, and smart. This conversation had some new perspectives and reasons to be optimistic that I hadn't considered. Show notes are here: https://halfhippiepodcast.com/episode/020Where to find Claryti onlineWebsite Instagram Also follow @halfhippiepodcast on Instagram for more resources and goodies related to today's episode.

There can be only one, but Highlander's had a surprising number of media adaptations and spin-offs over the years. We take a look at all of them and even get some behind-the-scenes gossip about the infamous comic book tie-in: Highlander 3030. ----more---- Episode Transcript   Episode 05 [00:00:00] Mike: It's fine. It's fine. I'm not bitter. Mike: Welcome to Tencent Takes, the podcast where we make comics trivia rain like dollar bills on Magic Mike night. My name is Mike Thompson and I am joined by my cohost, the mistress of mayhem herself, Jessika Frazer. Jessika: Muahahaha! It is I hello, Mike. Mike: Hello. If you're new to the podcast, we like to look at comic books in ways that are both fun and informative. We want to check out their coolest, weirdest and silliest moments, as well as examine how they've been woven into the larger fabric of pop culture and history. Today, we are traveling through time and talking about the 35 year legacy of one of the strongest cult franchises around, Highlander. But [00:01:00] before we do that, Jessika, what is one cool thing that you've watched or read lately? Jessika: My brother has some copies of classic Peanuts Comics, and it's so much fun. It's good, wholesome, fun. And Snoopy- related media always makes me nostalgic. And Mike you've mentioned before that we're in California in the San Francisco Bay area, but fun fact, I live right near Santa Rosa, which is the home of the Peanuts creator Charles Schultz when he was alive. So there's a museum there and an ice skating rink. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Which is super awesome And Snoopy on ice was huge when I was a kid. And that is definitely the place I also learned to ice skate. By the way, they throw a mean birthday party, just saying, not right this second. Not this second. [00:02:00] We should do it is what I'm saying. Mike: We should do it for ourselves. Jessika: No, that's what I'm saying. Oh, I don't have children. Mike: But we do. Jessika: Yes, they can come with us, like they're invited. Mike: I mean, are they? Jessika: Look at you hesitating. Mike: We took the kids to the Peanuts museum right before the lockdowns happened. that really Jessika: That's really lovely that's nice got to do that. Mike: There’s a lot of cool stuff to do. It's really interactive. It's also just a really fascinating experience because there's so much about the Peanuts during their, what 50 year run give or take. It may not have been that long. It may have been 30 or 40, but it was a long time, and I really dug it, like there was a lot of cool stuff, so yeah . And also the cool thing about Santa Rosa is they've also got all those Snoopy statues all over town too. Jessika: They do. Yeah. All the [00:03:00] Peanuts characters actually. Cause they, the Charlie Browns and the Lucy's now and the Woodstocks. Yeah they're all over the place. But that used to be something fun we could do as a scavenger hunt, and actually that's something you guys could still do even with the lockdown. Cause most of them are outside is just find that list of where all the Snoopy's or whatever character is and go find them all. Cause we did that at one point, like as an adult, obviously. Well, what about you, Mike? Mike: The complete opposite of something wholesome. Jessika: Perfect. Mike: We didn't actually have the kids for a few days. They were with their dad and we couldn't find anything new to watch. So, we wound up bingeing the entire series of Harley Quinn on HBO Max. Jessika: Oh, you’re ahead of me then. Damn you. Mike: This is my third time going through the series. We've just gotten to the point where we turned it on when we want to watch something that's kind of soothing in a way, even though it is not a soothing TV show. But I still am [00:04:00] having these full on belly laughs where I'm breathless at the end and it's just, it's so smart and funny and absolutely filthy with the violence. And then there are these moments of sweetness or genuine reflection, and it's just so damn refreshing. I was never much of a Harley fan, but this show and then the Birds of Prey movie really made me fall in love with that character. Also side note, Michael Ironside who played General Katana and Highlander II. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: He shows up in Harley Quinn doing the voice of Darkseid, which is a character he's been voicing since the nineties when he first started doing it for the Superman animated series. Jessika: Oh, damn. Mike: So, just a little bit of symmetry there. Mike: All right. So before we begin, I have to say that this episode wound up being a rabbit hole full of other rabbit holes that I kept going down. So, I want to give a little credit where it's due for a ton of my research. I really wound up leaning on two books: John Mosby's Fearful Symmetry [00:05:00]; and A Kind of Magic: The Making of Highlander by Jonathan Melville. Likewise, there's a YouTube series called Highlander heart hosted by Grant Kempster and Joe Dilworthand, and an associated Facebook community with the same name that were just invaluable for my crash course. And finally, I want to give special, thanks to Clinton Rawls, who runs Comics Royale, and Matt Kelly for taking the time to chat with me because they didn't have to, and they provided me with some really useful information for this episode. Jessika: Yeah, I'm super excited about what lies in store. What's really funny is I've actually, I feel like a kid before it test. Mike: Right? Jessika: like I'm a little nervous because I've been cramming so hard for this Mike: We both have. Jessika: No, you, especially you, especially like you should be much more nervous than me, Mike. No, I’m just kidding, please don't take that on. Oh, but yeah, no I'm super excited and really ready to talk about all of this stuff and learn more because I've just been consuming the media and the [00:06:00] comic books. But, you’re going to give me some back knowledge that's gonna blow my brain and I'm excited. Mike: Oh, well, I'll try to live up to that high expectation. Let's assume that you didn't know what the topic of this episode was. And if someone asked you what cult property from the 1980s. Spawned five movies, two TV series, a Saturday morning cartoon, an anime film, several video games, multiple tabletop games, audio plays, roughly a dozen novels, and four okay, technically six different comic books. What would your first answer be? Jessika: Oh, goodness. What's funny is probably not Highlander. I'd probably I would say like Batman, honestly, Mike: Yeah I would've gone with something along the lines of G.I. Joe. Jessika: Oh, yeah. Mike: Or some weird Saturday morning cartoon, something like that. I never would have guessed Highlander. I never would have assumed that. but it's just, it's really surprising to see how [00:07:00] much has been generated out of this initial movie. Were you fan of the movies or the show before we started bingeing everything for this episode? Jessika: So I was actually a fan of the show via my dad who had it on hadn't watched the films before, because I was born in 1986 fun fact. Mike: Right. Jessika: I was born when this thing was sent into the world. We both were at the same time, apparently. I didn't have that exact experience of growing up watching it, but he definitely had the TV show on in the nineties Mike: Okay. Jessika: So that was what I was familiar with and I loved it and I would run around chopping things; I'd be at work, I was actually like when I got older I'd be like, there can only be one, and I’d like have to like swipe at someone. Mike: It’s such an iconic line. Jessika: iIt is! it transcends. Absolutely. Mike: Yeah. I was pretty young when the movie came out and the show was how I became aware of it. And then when the show was airing, I was in high school. And then I became [00:08:00] aware that there was a movie that had inspired it. And so I was able to rent that when I was old enough to be trusted, to go rent movies on my own by my parents. Back when we couldn’t stream everything. Jessika: Oh my gosh. Mike: And there were rewind fees, Jessika: Oh, my gosh. Be kind rewind. Mike: Speaking of things from the eighties: it’s funny we'll talk about it later on, but the show really brought in, I think a lot of people that otherwise wouldn't have been fans. Before we start talking about the comic books, I really want to take a few minutes to talk about all the media and content that spun out of Highlander because it's a lot. And it was honestly in a couple of cases, really surprising. I didn't know about half of this stuff before I began researching for the episode, and then. Like I said, it was just constant rabbit holes that kept on leading me down more and more research paths. And it was really fun. But I want to talk about all this now. Jessika: Perfect. This is exactly what we're here for, and I think that people want to hear it too. [00:09:00] Mike: I hope so. Okay. So why don't you summarize Highlander? If you had to give an elevator pitch, Jessika: The film follows the past and present of Connor MacLeod, an immortal who is just one of many vying to be the sole victor in an age old battle, where in the end, there can only be one. Like very simply a lot more to it, but like how much of an elevator pitch. Mike: I think that's pretty simple. It's about an immortal who basically keeps on fighting his way through history and there's these really wonderful catch phrases that get us hooked. The movies got actually a really interesting origin story of its own. It was written by this guy named Gregory Widen when he was in his early twenties. That was when he wrote the initial screenplay. But he had already had a really interesting life up until then. He was one of the youngest paramedics in Laguna Beach at that point in [00:10:00] time. And then he went on to become a firefighter while he was still a teenager. By 1981, he'd also worked as a DJ and a broadcast engineer. And then he signed up for a screenwriting course at UCLA and he wrote this feature length script called Shadow Clan. And it would go through a number of changes before it became Highlander. But the core theme of an immortal warrior named Connor MacLeod wandering across the centuries is there. He wound up getting introduced to producers Bill Panzer, and Peter Davis who decided to option the film. And then they hired the screenwriters, Larry Ferguson and Peter Bellwood to rework the script into what we eventually had wind up in theaters. And once the movie was green-lit, they brought in Russell Mulcahey to direct it. And I vaguely knew that Mulcahey had been doing music videos before this, for the most part, he had one other cult movie ahead of time. It was a horror movie, I think, called Razorback. But I didn't realize which music videos he'd been making until I started doing all [00:11:00] this research. So I'm going to give you a small sampling and you're going to tell me if you've heard of these. Jessika: Okay. Sure sure sure. Mike: Okay. The Vapors “Turning Japanese”. Jessika: Uh, yeah. Mike: Yeah, okay. The Buggles “Video Killed the Radio Star”. Jessika: Wow. Yes. Mike: Duran Duran Duran’s “Rio”. Jessika: Wow. Mike: And Elton John's “I'm Still Standing”. Jessika: Yeahwow. That's actually a variety of characters. Mike: Right? But also those all really iconic music videos. Like not only songs, but music, videos cause those were all in the very early days. And the dude's entire portfolio is just iconic. If you think about the music videos that really defined the genre Jessika: Yeah, sometimes you just got it, I guess. Huh? Mike: He has a lot of those music video elements. A lot of times in the movie, it feels like a music video, like when Brenda's being chased down the hall by the Kurgan and it's got all that dramatic lighting, or that opening shot where they're in the [00:12:00] wrestling match and you see the camera flying through everything. Jessika: Yes! Mike: That was wild. That was really unusual to see camera work like that back then. The movie was distributed by 20th century Fox. And I think at this point, We'd be more surprised of 20th century Fox did a good job of marketing weird and cool, because they really botched it. They wound up forcing cuts to the movie that created really weird plot holes because they didn't feel that audiences needed it or what would understand it, and they wanted to make it simpler, but it really made things more confusing. European audiences on the other hand, really embraced the film because they got a much better version. So case in point, I'm going to show you the two main posters for it. This is the American poster for the movie. Jessika: Mmhmm. Oh, wow, he’s scary. Wow wow wow, okay. Before I even say any of the words, what you first see is Connor [00:13:00] MacLeod, but it's this awful grainy picture of him. He looks like there's something wrong with his face, which he shouldn't necessarily. And he looks like he's about to murder someone. He's like glaring off into the distance. And at the top it says, Oh, it's in black and white, by the way. at the top it says, He fought his first battle on the Scottish Highlands in 1536, he will fight his greatest battle on the streets of New York city in 1986. His name is Connor MacLeod. He is immortal Highlander! Credits at the bottom, rated R, absolutely rated R. Mike: Also, I feel like featuring original songs by Queen does not get the billing that it should. Jessika: I agree. I jammed my way through that film and this just the whole series, [00:14:00] actually the whole franchise I jammed my way through. Mike: Yeah. And if you listen to the kind of Magic album that is basically the unofficial soundtrack to the movie, and it's so good I don't know how they got those perpetual rights to Princes of the Universe, did. Every time I hear that song, I get a little thrill up my spine. All right. So here's the poster though for the European release. Jessika: All right. So, Ooh, this is totally different. This is Whoa. This is way more exciting. Okay. First of all, it's full Color, my friends, right in the middle in red it says Highlander right under it “There can only be one” in yellow. Oh it's amazing. There's a little sticker at the bottom that says featuring original songs by queen. Look it, trying to sell it, I love it. And then there's Connor MacLeod in the center of the screen [00:15:00] dramatically head back eyes closed screaming his sword thrusts forward and behind him is the Kurgan, oh my gosh so good. It's so - Oh, and a backdrop of New York city. All in lights. It's beautiful. Mike: Yeah. It’s one of those things where basically, that documentary that we watched seduced by Argentina, they talk about that where they're just like 20th century Fox fucked us. Jessika: And I didn't realize how much until, because I did watch that as well. And I'm like how bad could it be? But I that's pretty bad. It's a pretty big difference. It's like watching, that'd be like going, expecting to see like psycho or something. Mike: Honestly, I keep on thinking of Firefly and Fox and how they just totally botched the marketing for that show and then the release, and issues with Joss Wheden aside. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: It’s one of those [00:16:00] things where again, it's a really beloved cult property with a really devoted fan base, even, 5 years after it was released, shit, almost 20. Jessika: And I do love Firefly, again, Whedon aside. Mike: I do too. Jessika: And it makes me a little sad think about it because it had so much potential. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Oh, it's so rough. It's rough to see. Mike: Yeah. What were your overall thoughts on the movie now that you've seen it because you hadn't seen it before this, correct? Jessika: No. I had only seen the TV show and probably rightfully so, because that was much less violent. I mean, much less graphically violent. They were still beheading motherfucker every episode, but, versus the film, which is like blood and like half a head and wow, there, it goes the head. But I actually really liked the movie. It was adventurous, it was thrilling and told a fairly cohesive and interesting storyline which unfortunately had an ending. But it still took us on an emotional journey. [00:17:00] Mike: Yeah, and I feel the same way. Jessika:: And how all the camp that I love from the 1980s and the special effects are just chefs, kiss love it. Mike: There is something so wonderful about the special effects from the 1980s, because they're so earnest all the time. And at the same time they look so cheesy by comparison now. Jessika: But you can tell they were trying so hard. It's almost like a little kid who's just learning to finger paint and they walk up and they're like, I did this thing. It's so good. You're like, it is really good. It's really good for where you're at. Mike: Yeah, exactly. Highlander is very much a quintessential eighties film to me, and there's both that nostalgia factor, but also it's a pretty tight little film. It doesn't really try to do anything too grandiose or too world-building because I don't think they expected to really make the sequels that they wound up doing. Which speaking of which we should discuss the sequels. [00:18:00] Mike: Like, I feel like you can’t discussion without talking about the sequels. And honestly the first time I ever heard of Highlander as a brand really was when I was visiting family in Texas And we were watching a Siskel & Ebert episode where they were thrashing Highlander II. Jessika: Dude, Siskel and Ebert I'm sure hated this. This does not surprise me in the least. Mike: I don't remember much about it, I just remember being like, oh Sean Connery's in a movie, well that's cool. Because my parents had raised me on all of the Sean Connery James Bond movies. Jessika: Yeah casting, come on. Why? Why? They had a French dude playing a Scottish guy and a Scottish guy playing a Spanish Egyptian guy. It's. Mike: I believe label was a Hispaniola Egyptian. They kinda darkened up Sean Connery a little bit too. I'm not sure. Jessika: It felt that way. I was just hoping he had just been under the tanning beds, but no, I think you're right. [00:19:00] Mike: Highlander II was definitely the most infamous of the sequels. And I mean a huge part of that is because it had such a batshit production and there’d been so many different versions of it. It was so bad that Russell Mulcahey reportedly walked out of the film premiere after only 15 minutes. There's this great documentary that you and I both watched on YouTube, it's split up into a bunch parts, but it was a documentary they made for the special edition of Highlander II. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: It was the third release of the movie that they put out because the first one was basically the bonding company for the films. Investors took over the production and assembly of the movie due to the fact that Argentina, where they were filming. And they had gone to Argentina because a, it was gorgeous, but B because it was supposedly going to be a third of the cost Jessika: Yeah. Mike: To make a movie there than it would elsewhere. Argentina’s economy collapsed and went through hyperinflation. And as a result, everything just went haywire. But they went back years later and they not only recut the [00:20:00] movie, but they refilled or added in certain scenes I think four or five years later. And then on top of that, they did the special edition a few years after that, where they redid the special effects. And I don't know it's kind of funny because it's not a bad movie now. It's not terrible. I feel it's an enjoyable film in its own way. But it's also funny where you watch that documentary and they're talking about the stuff that they're so proud of. Russell Mulcahey was talking about how proud he was of that love scene. I'm using this in quotes, love scene between Virginia Madsen and and Christopher Lambert where they just decided to do it up against the wall of an alley? Jessika: That’s always an interesting choice to me. Like you really cannot wait. Mike: Yeah. And then he was like, I thought that was a really hot scene. And I got to sit there and I'm like, I don't, I can't view this through the lens of, a 20 something guy in the 1990s. I don't know what my interpretation of it would have been then, [00:21:00] but watching it now watching it for the first time when I was in my twenties and the, in the early aughts, I just was like, this is weird and sorta dumb. And also they don't really have a lot of chemistry, but okay. Jessika: Yeah, it just kind of happens. They're just like, Oh, here you are. Mike: Yeah Right I don't know. At the same time it was cool to see they did all those really practical, special effects where they actually had them whipping around on the wires on like the weird flying skateboards and stuff. I thought that was cool. Jessika: I thought that was neat too. And how he was like, yeah, I actually got on top of the elevator and he was excited. Now he got on top of the elevator. Mike: And then they basically just dropped it down, like that's wild. So how about Highlander three? Jessika: Ahhh… Mike: Yeah, that’s kinda where I am Jessika: It’s very forgettable in my book. Mike: I feel like you could wipe it from the timeline and no one would care. Really, it felt like a retread of the first movie, but with the shittier villain in a way less interesting love story. honestly, it was a bummer because Mario [00:22:00] Van Peebles, the guy who plays that the illusionist I can't even remember his name. It was that forgettable. Jessika: Yeah, no, I can't either. Mike: Mario van Peebles is a really good actor and he's done a lot of really cool stuff. And it just, it felt like he was the NutraSweet version of the Kurgan Jessika: I like that. Yes. Yes. Mike: All of the mustache twirling, none of the substance. Jessika: It leaves a little bit of a weird taste in your mouth. Mike: Right. Splenda Kurgan! Moving on Highlander, Endgame. Jessika: What I do like about this film is that in both the TV series, as well as the film, there is the actual crossover. Connor shows up in Duncan's world and Duncan shows up in Connor's world and there is that continuity, which is good. And I do appreciate that because, before I got into this, I assumed that the character was interchangeable and we were just seeing different actors James [00:23:00] Bond situation. And when I went back and realized like, Oh no, he's his own character, they're blah, you know. Mike: I dunno I saw this in theaters I love the show and I appreciated that it felt like an attempt to merge the movies in the series and of the movies, I feel like this actually has the strongest action scenes. There's that bit where Adrian Paul faces off against Donnie Yen. And I was like, that's gotta be really cool to be able to sit there and show your kids much later in life: hey, I got to do a martial arts scene with Donnie Yen and he didn't kill me in the movie. that's pretty dope. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: Again, it felt underwhelming. It just wasn't all that interesting. And also I spent years being mad at that movie because the trailer brought me into the theater expecting something way different than what we were going to get Jessika: Okay. And I don't know that I saw the trailer. Mike: It has, it has a bunch of scenes with Magic where Connor and Duncan jumped through a portal [00:24:00]. Jessika: What? Mike: And a sword gets thrown at Jacob Kell and he catches it midair. And then he does something else where he's holding a sphere where you see Connor's face screaming and then it shatters. Jessika: What’s with all this weird, extra scene stuff in these trailers. I don't understand. Mike: Yeah, it turns out that this hasn't, this has never really been officially confirmed, but reading between the lines yeah, it’s been confirmed. They basically filmed extra scenes just to make it more appealing for people. So they would show up to the theaters. Like they filmed scenes, effectively they filmed scenes just for the trailer the director when he was asked about it in Fearful Symmetry. He basically said, yeah, I know there was some stuff that they filmed for marketing afterwards, and I wasn't involved with that. And then I think it was Peter Davis that was asked about this for the book. And he basically said, Oh, this is a really standard practice. People, or accompanies [00:25:00] film stuff for for marketing purposes all the time. And that's where he left it. Jessika: Oh, okay. to know. Mike: I was really grumpy about that, but that said I've softened a little since then. Do we even want to talk about the Source? Cause I feel like that's something that we shouldn't talk about in polite company. Jessika: No pass. Mike: Okay. Jessika: It happened? Mike: It happened, it was a thing that happened that was going to be a trilogy. They were planning to make that into a trilogy of movies. Jessika: Ohh rough times. Mike: Oh it's real bad. I don't think you were able to watch this, but Highlander, the search for vengeance. It's the anime. Jessika: No, I couldn't find it. Mike: Yeah. It's not available for streaming and it really it's really a bummer because it's actually pretty good. I'm not quite sure how to qualify it because it's not a live action movie and it doesn't star Duncan or Connor, but it's a full length anime. It's a full length movie in its own right. It focuses on Colin MacLeod who he’s [00:26:00] an immortal, who's technically part of the MacLeod clan. He's born as a Roman Britain and then he's adopted into the MacLeod clan after he fights alongside them later on. They keep on doing this. They keep on going back to dystopian SciFutures, which I kinda like, Jessika: I love, bless their little hearts. Mike: Yeah. A lot of the story actually takes place in this post-apocalyptic 22nd century, New York. And I haven't seen this in about a decade because it's not available on streaming. I don't have the DVD anymore. I really should pick it up before it goes out of print. But the movie fucking slaps. It was directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, he was really big in the nineties. He did Ninja Scroll and Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust. He's known for really cool looking movies that are also really violent at the same time. Like you look at his characters and you're like, Oh yeah, no, they all look interchangeable because they're also similar one movie to another, Jessika: Oh, I see. Mike: But they're really cool. And the movie was written by David Abramowitz, who was the head writer [00:27:00] for the TV show. So it felt like a pretty legit Highlander story. Honestly, if we had to talk about this and ask which of these movies or the sequels were our favorites, I would probably say the Search for Vengeance. Because I loved it so much, but since that wasn't a theatrical release, we'll exclude that and you didn't get to watch it. Of the sequels, which did you enjoy most? Jessika: Mike, why don’t you go first. Mike: Okay. I'm a little torn, I guess I enjoyed Endgame mainly because it feels like part of he in quotes, real Highlander story, I guess it's the least terrible of the sequels. And it brought in my favorite characters. The final version of Highlander II, is I don't know. I don't hate it. It honestly feels like a cool dystopian cyberpunk story with some bizarre Highlander lore shoehorned in, but at the same time, it's not the worst thing I've ever watched. How about you? Jessika: Funny [00:28:00] enough, I was going to say Highlander II, but maybe just a bit more so if it were its own standalone movie and not try to be a part of the Highlander franchise. The idea of the shield is super interesting and I think they could have elaborated more on the lead-up and the resolution of that issue rather than having to also make it about the Immortals in their forever game. Mike: Yeah, I agree. How do you feel about moving onto the TV series? Jessika: Oh, I am pro. Mike: Okay. I personally feel like this is the property that sucks all the air out of the room when you're talking about Highlander. Jessika: Oh no. Mike: Yeah, I mentioned that this is how I really got introduced to the brand. I started watching it in high school, around season three, which was when it was really starting to get good. The first two seasons I feel were kind of when they were ironing out all the rough spots. But I wound up watching it through the end. So if you're listening to this podcast and you have never seen the [00:29:00] show Highlander, the series ran for six seasons, which is a good length of time for any TV show. And it followed the adventures of Duncan, who was another member of the MacLeod clan. He was a distant cousin of Connor. And the show bounced between Seacouver, which is a fictionalized version of Vancouver in Paris. And it basically retcon things so that the original movie didn't end with The Quickening, but that the battle between the Kurgan and Connor was it's implied, it was the start of The Gathering. That's my interpretation of it. Jessika: That was what I got too. Mike: Yeah. And Christopher Lambert, he shows up in the pilot to help set things up and get them moving. But I think that's the only time we ever really seen him on the show. Jessika: Correct. He's really just an intro. He's in that first episode only. Mike: You have rewatched it as a have I . We haven't watched the entire series all the way through, but we've watched a lot of episodes. Jessika: Correct. Mike: How do you feel [00:30:00] it measures up today? compared to that nostalgic view that we had before, Jessika: I had a lot of fun watching it, actually. definitely super cheesy. I don't love all of the characters I watched a lot of the first season, then I bounced around I think I did the top, like 25 on a list that you sent me. But Duncan’s just so codependent sometimes with his characters and it's like the one time the Tessa goes on a hike by herself, she gets kidnapped by an, a mortal and it’s like, oh my God, she can't even go on a fucking hike, are you joking me? And the one time he goes to the store by himself, he gets kidnapped and it's like, oh, come the fuck on you guys. Mike: Yeah, I feel like it generally holds up pretty well. It's a little uneven, but when it hits , it really hits. And it's a lot of fun. And considering that it was a relatively low budget show on basic cable in the early to mid-nineties, there's a lot of stuff that has aged way worse. [00:31:00] Jessika:: Absolutely. It exceeded my expectations on the rewatch, for sure. Mike: Yeah, and I have to say that one really cool thing about Highlander is it's got a really large female fan base. And I suspect that the show is really responsible for that. Jessika: I would agree. There's a few reasons. Mike: Are six of those reasons. Duncan's abs? Jessika: Like 10 of those reasons are all the times he gets surprised in a bathtub. I know I messaged you while I was watching them, because I was like Duncan got surprised in a bathtub again. Mike: I don't remember which episode it was, but there's one where he is surprised while he's in a bathrobe and he's got, it's not even tighty whities, it’s like a bikini brief, and watching that, I was just sitting there going, thank you for this gift. Thank you. Thank you for this visual treat that you have given us in the middle of my very boring work day. Jessika: It’s [00:32:00] also that there are such a wide variety of female characters. I would say, Iit’s not just the other female person he seeing or whatever, the love interest, there are other female Immortals and they a lot more frequently than they do in the films. I can't recall if they have any female immortals in the films. Mike: They do in Endgame. Jessika: Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I thought there was, there were some in there, but that’s tailing into, I mean yeah. Mike: Yeah. And the Source had them too, but meh. Jessika: Oh yeah. Mike: I will say that the show was pretty good about writing pretty strong female characters, I felt. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: And we'll talk about Amanda in a little bit, but I have to say that I really liked how she was written and how Elizabeth Grayson played her through the original series and then her own afterwards. I dunno. I, what do you think is the sexiest thing about Duncan MacLeod? I'm curious. Jessika: He seems [00:33:00] really like trustworthy, but like and sexy trustworthy. It's like, he'd be the dude. I called if some guys were fucking with me. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: I kept on thinking about how there's this Tumblr post that's been going around the internet, regularly, and it's this discussion about which Disney men women find the sexiest guys always thinks it's Gaston. Jessika: Oh lord, why? Mike: It’s that male power fantasy thing where they're just like, oh no, like he's like really charming. And he's really muscly. And the counterargument from women is usually A no Gaston sucks and B we all like Roger from 101 Dalmatians. Jessika: Oh yeah. Roger. Mike: Which, Roger is very much my personal role model. The dude's a talented musician, he loves animals and he's got that great, a snark where he literally is trolling the villain when she comes to his house with a motherfucking trombone from upstairs [00:34:00]. And I think Duncan's a little like that. Like he's cultured and he's worldly and he's got this wicked sense of humor. And he's also the type of dude who has no problem reciting poetry in public or making his partner breakfast in bed. Jessika: Yeah, absolutely. Mike: So it just it was something that came to mind while I was rewatching all this stuff. Jessika: Yeah. just as like a wholesome guy. Mike: Right? Jessika: He always has good intentions. So that's actually what it feels like. He's always coming at things with good intentions. Mike: Yeah, and he's not perfect, but he's always trying to do the right thing, which I really appreciate. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: What was your favorite episode? Jessika: I went back and forth. I really like the Homeland episode, and like I said, I've really only watched a good chunk of most of season what I would say, and then so kind of bounced around, but season four, episode one. It was really sweet to see [00:35:00] Duncan take the obligatory trip back to his Homeland to pay respects. And it also had a good lesson in not judging a book by its cover as the main character assumes that Duncan is just an ancestry tourist, which was super interesting. She was super hating on it but I was like this is interesting instead of visiting what once was literally his home during formative years. So it was just such a wild thing to see her be like, what are you doing near those graves? And he can't really be like, they were my parents because you cannot even read them. They are so old. Mike: The funny thing is I didn't rewatch that episode during our refresher, but I remember watching that episode when I was about 15 or so. Because it's stuck out to me. Jessika: It’s really good. And of course, Duncan, he always has a good intention. The whole reason he went back was because he figured out that somebody had been [00:36:00] pilfering graves Mike: Yeah. Jessika: And he had to return what was in this grave. Mike: I know he's making the rest of us look bad. So mine is, it's unusual suspects. It's from season six, which I feel is actually pretty weak season overall. And it's this really silly one-off episode, starring Roger Daltry of the Who fame. He plays Hugh Fitzcairn, which is a character that he shows up in plays a couple of times throughout the series. And at this point in time in the story, he was dead, but it's a flashback to the 19 teens or 1920s. 1920s, because it ends with the stock market crash, but it's a take on the British country, house murder, mystery genre, and it's really fun. And it was just this really refreshing moment of levity after what I felt our run of really heavy, and in my opinion, not very good episodes. The end of season five and the beginning of season [00:37:00] six are all about Duncan confronting this demon named Aramon and it's weird and it's not very good. And I really don't enjoy it. This is all my opinion. I'm sure that I'm insulting some Highlander fan who absolutely loves this, but it's a fun episode in its own. And then it's a good moment after one that I didn't really enjoy. And so it's got that extra refreshing bonus. I just, I want to note, it's really funny to me how intertwined Highlander has always been with rock and roll and music in general, because they had Mulcahey who do it, doing all these music videos and stuff. And then they kept on having musicians show up as guest stars. I think it was there's a character named Xavier St. Cloud, I think who was played by one of the guys from, again, I think, Fine Young Cannibals? Jessika: Yeah, I think I actually watched that episode. Mike: I think he was using nerve gas to kill people. Jessika: Yes I did watch that episode. That was a wild one. Yeah. Mike: Yeah, and I think he shows up later on too. [00:38:00] I can't remember but anyway, I really appreciate that they gave Roger Daltry of all people, this character, and he just really had fun with it and they kept bringing him back. Jessika: Yeah. He was a good character every episode he was in my other favorites was the one where they had Mary Shelley and he was in that one too. I believe. Mike: I think so. Yeah. No, it was, the series was really fun, and I liked that we can sit there and pull all these episodes just from memory that we really liked. Jessika: Absolutely. Mike: So season six , they were trying to find a new actress who could carry her own Highlander show. And so they tested out a bunch of different actresses in season six and gave them either really strong guest appearances, or they were basically the main character for episodes. But they wound up not going with any of them. They went with Elizabeth Grayson and gave her the Raven where she reprised her roles Amanda. Did you watch any of that? Did you get a chance to? Jessika: I watched the [00:39:00] first and the last episode of season one, I can only find the first season. Is there only one? Mike: There’s only one season, it didn’t get picked up again. Jessika: Oh then there you go. Then I could have only, I know I was scratching my head. Worried about where else do I find this? Mike: Well, and it ends on a cliff-hanger. Jessika: Yeah, exactly. That's where I was like, let's go. Mike: It ends with Nick becoming immortal. Jessika: Oh, see, I didn't quite finish it. Cause I was hurriedly setting it up in the background. Mike: Yeah it was fine. I thought Elizabeth Grayson is really charming in that role, but at the same time, there wasn't a lot of chemistry initially between Amanda and Nick, I felt at the very beginning. Jessika: I agree, not in the first episode. Mike: By the end of the season, it was there, and I think they were also, as is the case with most shows first seasons, they were trying really hard to figure out what they wanted to do. And so originally it was a cop show with an immortal, which there are certainly worse pitches that I've heard. Jessika: Yeah. No, I agree. Mike: But yeah. sad that it didn't get to go further [00:40:00] Jessika: I'm tempted to go back and watch all of these things. I may have to do a pallet cleanse of something different. I may have to go back to my Marvel watching. Mike: On top of this, there was a Saturday morning cartoon called Highlander, the series or Highlander, the animated series, and it was set in the future. It's in a weird alternate timeline. It stars another MacLeod. It's fine It's a Saturday morning cartoon. I didn't even care enough to really go back and watch it because being that great. They did some interesting stuff. Like they brought Ramirez back if I remember, right. And then they also had a thing where instead of beheading other Immortals, the main character had an ability where he could be voluntarily given their power. Jessika: Oh. Mike: So he had all of their knowledge and power. And again, it’s again in a dystopian future where another immortal has taken over the world. Jessika: Wow. They just love their dystopian future. Mike: They really do. But yeah, it's fine. I think it's streaming on Amazon prime. I was just so focused on everything else that I didn't get a chance to go and [00:41:00] rewatch it. Jessika: Huh, good to know. Mike: We're going to go over all the other various pieces of media real quick. and then we've got one side tangent and then we're going to go through comic books, but. Jessika: I'm so excited. Mike: Books, Highlander wound up having a pretty substantial literary footprint. The original movie had the official novelization. There wasn't really anything after that until the show came out and then the show had 10 novels and an anthology and an official behind the scenes kind of book called the Watchers Guide and it's full of essays and interviews and photos. And since then, there've been a couple of non-fiction books, like Fearful Symmetry, which is about everything Highlander related. And it's almost like a textbook, but it's pretty good. And then there's also A Kind of Magic, which is more focused on making of the original movie. And those are both actually really good. I liked them a lot. They were really easy to read. [00:42:00] There were audio plays, which I keep on forgetting audio plays are a thing at this point, but it's by this company called Big Finish in the UK. They do tie-in audio dramas for television properties. Most famously they do Dr Who. They wound up doing two seasons of audio plays. The first had Adrian Paul reprise his role as Duncan and they take place after the series ended. And then also after the events of Endgame, you can't really find them anymore. Because they just, the license expired so they aren't selling them as far as I'm aware. Jessika: That's super interesting though. Dang. Mike: Yeah. And then the second season focuses on the four horsemen Immortals, remember Jessika: Okay. Mike: Do you remember them? Jessika: I sure do. Mike: Because we were talking about this a little bit, but it was all about Methos and the other guys that he hung out with when he was effectively, a comic book villain who would've if he’d had a mustache to twirl, he would have done it. Jessika: So quickly. Yes. Mike: I thought that was really interesting. There were a couple of people in the Highlander Heart [00:43:00] group who talked about it and they seem to really like them. I can't comment, but it was really neat. Games, this is the one that's really interesting. Highlander actually has been turned into a number of games over the years. There's a couple of tabletop games we're going to breeze through. So there was two different card games in a board game. One of the card games was released back in the nineties, it was a collectible card game. And this was right when Magic: The Gathering was really hot and everybody was trying to get in on that action. And then recently there's a new one called Highlander: The Duel. And it's a deck-building game where you play as Connor or the Kurgan going up against each other. And just a couple of years ago, there was a board game that got kick-started, it was in 2018 and it's this fast paced game for two to six players. The reviews across the web were pretty positive. And again, it's one of those things where it's Immortals battling for that mysterious prize. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: But it's cool. Jessika: Nice. Mike: I’m actually pretty surprised [00:44:00] we never got like a tabletop RPG because they are not precious about applying the license for Highlander to stuff. I'm amazed that nobody went to them and said, Hey, we can make this cool historical RPG where we sorta start having players wake up and then they have flashbacks or whatever. And Jessika: Yeah Oh that would have been cool Yeah Mike: Right? But yeah we never got anything like that which I was really I actually that was the one thing I expected and was surprised to see that we never got. Okay. So we're going to go into mini tangent with video games even though they aren't technically related to comics. The first game for Highlander was a 1986 tie-in release for home computers. It was a really simple fighting title. It wasn't well received. It was apparently pretty bad. So after that the animated series had a tie in called Highlander: Last of the MacLeods. It was released on the Atari Jaguar CD console. If you remember that. Do you remember the Atari Jaguar? Jessika: Oh my god, no. I don't. [00:45:00] Mike: It kinda got lost in the shuffle in the early to mid nineties of all the different consoles that were coming out. But you can find footage of this on YouTube and it's one of those early 3d games. And so it got a lot of praise for his exploration elements and animated video sequences, but it also got a lot of criticism for its controls in combat. After that there was actually going to be an MMO called Highlander, The Gathering. And it was in development by a French studio called Kalisto entertainment, which was honestly weird because Kalisto's catalog up until now were mostly middling single-player games. They'd gotten famous for a series called Nightmare Creatures, but they also did a Fifth Element racing game on PS2 that I had and was actually pretty fun. Anyway, Kalisto went bankrupt before the MMO could come out. Jessika: Oh! Mike: And none of the folks who, yeah, that's video games. Jessika: Fair enough. Mike: So they went bankrupt. The MMO hadn't come out yet. And the folks who wound up with the rights afterwards just decided to kill the project. There's [00:46:00] one other game. That's become the source of a lot of speculation. And it's only known as Highlander: The Game it basically came about because Davis Panzer productions that's, the guys who own the rights to Highlander, and SCI, which was this holding company that owned a bunch of video game groups. They decided to ink a deal, to make a Highlander game. They announced that they basically had done a partnership back in like 2004, 2005. And at the time SCI owned Eidos who was the publisher that gave us Tomb Raider. So they were a pretty big name. The game itself was formally announced by Eidos in 2008 and the development was being handled by another French developer called Widescreen Games. It was going to be an action role-playing game. It would star a new Immortal named Owen MacLeod. The story was going to be written again by David Abramowitz and that added some [00:47:00] serious legitimacy to the project for fans. Actually, why don’t you read the summary. Jessika: Would love to my pleasure. Summary: Owen is captured and enslaved by Romans who force him to compete as a gladiator. During this time, Owen dies only to come back to life. Methos, the oldest living immortal approaches Owen to be his mentor. He teaches Owen about the game and how he and other Immortals can only be slain by beheading. As with other immortal MacLeods Owen is pursued throughout his life by a nemesis. This enemy proves to be extremely powerful. One that Owen is unable to defeat Owen learns of a magical stone, fragments of which are scattered all over the world. Throughout the game, Owen embarks upon a quest to recover these fragments and restore the stone in an attempt to gain the power to overcome his foe. [00:48:00] So dramatic. I love it. Mike: What's Highlander without any drama? But that sounds rad right? Jessika: Oh, it sounds amazing. Mike: The game was announced with a trailer in 2008 that really only showed some of the environments from different eras and then it ended with an image of Owen, but it looked promising. And then there wasn't much else after a couple of years of pretty much nothing but radio silence, Eidos wound up canceling the game and that's where a lot of the speculation has started. There's not a lot of information on Highlander: The Game. I keep waiting for one of those gaming history YouTubers to get ahold of an old dev kit and then do a video with a build, but that hasn't happened yet. So really it's all kind of speculation and wishful thinking about what could have been. And it also seems like some of the details are getting muddied as time goes on. Like Fearful Symmetry talks about the game of it but they [00:49:00] have the segment. And again I want you to read this. Jessika: Sure sure. The gam was so far along in its development stages that segments including backdrops and some of the gameplay options were presented at a Highlander Worldwide event in Los Angeles 2006 and got a very positive reaction. The beautifully rendered backdrops were almost movie quality and included the likes of Pompei, a dark forest in the Highlands, New York, and Japan as gameplay locations and introduced us to another MacLeod, Owen, the same surname but a much earlier vintage. Mike: Yeah, so, I think Mosby is a little overly enthusiastic about all of this, and this is because I think Mosby doesn't have much familiarity with how game development works. It sounds like they had concept art on display and were discussing gameplay [00:50:00] rather than showcasing a build of the game. Concept art and design discussions are things that happen very early in game development. But if you're an outsider, looking in this stuff could easily be interpreted as things being much further along than they were. Jessika: Ah. Mike: Yeah. Now that said, I did work in video games for almost a decade, and a few of my coworkers were actually involved with Highlander the game. Jessika: What? Mike: Every one of them over the years has told me the cancellation was a mercy killing. And again, this is from multiple sources, so I'm not going to name or identify because, I don't want to make things awkward for them. But basically the game was garbage . It's not really surprising to hear cause widescreen never really made a good game, the best reception that any of their titles got was just kinda mixed. But earlier this week, I actually called one of my friends. Who'd been [00:51:00] attached to the project because I wanted to get more information about this game before we recorded. Jessika: We need to get you a new shovel, you dug so deep for this. Mike: With both hands. But, they confirmed what I've been hearing from other people the gameplay itself wasn't just bad. It was boring. The biggest problem was it didn't know what kind of a game it wanted to be. Basically, it was trying to do everything all at once. There were a bunch of traversal elements, which didn't really make a lot of sense. Like why would you climb a Manhattan skyscraper when you're a roided out dude with a sword? Couldn't you just take the elevator? Or I don't know the stairs? There was going to be a bunch of Magic elements in the gameplay, which, isn't really, that's not really a thing in Highlander. There's that fantasy element because we're talking about Immortals who can't die unless you cut off their heads, but generally Magic isn't a part of the accepted Canon. And then the combat, what they were aiming to do something like [00:52:00] God of war, which was really big at the time. But, it wasn't great. My friend also pointed out that Owen looked like a bodybuilder, but his fashion sense was from that industrial metal scene of the late nineties, which neither of those things really fits with the Highlander aesthetic because Adrian Paul was arguably the most in shape of the Highlander actors. But even that was, he was a dude who was like, yeah, I could achieve that if I was really good about my diet and then just worked out aggressively but not like Hugh Jackman does for his Wolverine roles. Jessika: Yeah, yeah. Mike: So I'm going to send you a screenshot of what Owen looked like in the key art the initial title it does. Jessika: What? It looks like Criss Angel. Mike: Right. And they're trying to recreate that iconic pose of The Quickening from the first movie that Connor does at the very end where he's getting raised up and, by the rails of Lightning, or the wires [00:53:00] of lightning. Jessika: Yeah, I get what they were trying to do. Mike: Yeah,I wanna know, what the fuck is up with those weird straps with rings that are going down his legs. Jessika: I don't really know, I was trying to figure that out myself. So just so that everyone can really get the picture that we're getting here and you'll, you might understand why it's taken me so long to describe it. I had to take it all in first. Mike: Yeah, it’s a ride. Jessika: It’s all very monochromatic. And the background is of course, a cut of the statue of Liberty, the backdrop of parts of New York that I'm sure aren't even next to each other, which is always funny. And then what is this? Is this the new guy, or is this supposed to be Duncan? Mike: Yeah, this is the new guy, Jessika: It’s Owen. Mike: Yeah. It's Owen. And then Connor and Duncan were supposed to appear, supposedly. I know Peter Wingfield was recording his lines for Methos. Jessika: Well, if they haven't killed off Methos that makes sense. And I don't know in the series if they have, and maybe Duncan makes [00:54:00] sense if he hasn't died yet, but. Mike: Yeah they can't kill off Methos, Methos was my first gay crush. Jessika: Yeah. He's. Slightly problematic in a couple episodes, but he's a great character overall. But he's very Chriss Angel, he's wearing like a trench coat and that has to be some sort of a lace undershirt or something. Mike: lAnd he’s got like a weird really, like baggy leather pants. Jessika: Yes. Which cannot be comfortable. It's doing this weird pooching thing in the front. Mike: Yeah, and then I think I saw another screenshot where it looks like he's wearing skater shoes tennis shoes as well. Jessika: Oh, Vans Off the Wall, man. Mike: Just once I want to see a MacLeod in the movies with a good fashion sense. Jessika: Yeah, I mentioned that I wanted to cosplay as Duncan, which overall would be a great idea. But then I was looking through his outfits and I'm like, what do I wear? Do I wear this weird white tank top with these like acid wash jeans [00:55:00] and a belt? Or is this the one where I'm wearing like five shirts and a long jacket? Is it that day? Mike: You know who he looks like that guy, Canus. Jessika: Yes! Yes, does. He has the lace shirt and everything. Mike: And the dog collar. Jessika: Oh my god, it was so funny. I told you, I think it was trying to be edgy. Mike: Yeah, and instead it comes off as really queer-coded. Jessika: It really does though. I know, my little queer brain was like bling. Mike: Yeah, It feels like they weren't really getting the essence of what Highlander actually was and who these guys were, because usually the Highlander characters are a little bit more believable and ordinary because that's the whole idea is that they're walking among us and we have no idea unless they tell us. Okay. On top of all this. So remember how I mentioned that trailer was just showcasing environments for the [00:56:00] game. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: There was a reason for that. The reason was that they couldn’t get the character models to work. Jessika: Oh! Mike: So the shot of Owen at the end it's actually just animated key art it's the same it's the same art that you just saw. It's that image. It was just slightly animated. And then they released a couple of screenshots for the game, but apparently they were really heavily photo-shopped well, beyond industry standards. So, it was one of those things where, this was a turd and it needed to be flushed. And it finally did. But Widescreen went under about a year after the game was formally announced. They were working on another big project and apparently that got taken away, and as a result, it just caused the studio to implode. By this point in time Square Enix the guys do all the final fantasy games had bought Eidos and they formally canceled it. We're not sure why exactly, my guess is that it was probably, they just looked at cost it would take to finish this game and then the [00:57:00] amount that it would need to sell in order to be profitable or to meet their sales expectations for it and they just thought it wasn't worth it. But yeah, my friend actually said they were embarrassed to work on it and they would have been fine even if it had been an average game, but it was just bad. Even one of those kind of middling average games, I think that would have been fine, that would have lived up to the Highlander bar. Finally, there's that Highlander game that spark unlimited was working on. I never even heard a whisper about this until. We watched that episode of Highlander Heart focusing on video games, and they brought Craig Allen on to talk about the project. Based on what we know now, I think this might be why Square Enix was holding onto the rights for another year after they shut down Highlander, the game, just because they had this other title, theoretically in development or very early development. Based on the footage that they have, it looks like they had at least done enough development work to put together a vertical slice that they could show for pitch [00:58:00] purposes and at conventions. But I thought it was really promising looking overall. What did you think? Jessika: I thought it did look really interesting the game play itself I did like the idea of having a female Highlander. That being said, they had this whole concept about what Craig Allen was calling beautiful damage. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: And it was this whole thing about, oh it was the first female Highlander and her looks go when she gets damaged, and that's her whole motivation is to stay pretty. And I just, that gave me a huge headache, and it of course was super male-gazey I mean, the game itself seemed that way. Mike: It was weird because I would love to see women and Highlander being built a little bit more like warriors, like a little bit more muscly, which would be in keeping with people who battle across the centuries. [00:59:00] They don't need to be super jacked like the Amazons in Wonder Woman, but making them look like stick thin suicide girl, punk rock chick from the late aughts. Didn't quite gel with me. I understood what he was talking about though, because that was the thing where they were starting to do permanent cosmetic damage in video games. That was something that was really big in the Batman Arkham games. Every time that you got knocked out, you'd come back and you'd have a little bit more of your outfit chipped apart. So, after a while Batman's looking pretty ragged and you realize maybe I'm not as good at this game as I think I am. Jessika: Yeah And the concept itself is really interesting It just I guess was the way it was phrased by this person. And it very much was he was so proud of the fact that it was the first Highlander female in a video game. And then everything was just like so incredibly sexist. I was excited that I wasn't Mike: We're also viewing it, with the lens of 2021 at this point. At that time, [01:00:00] that was before they had relaunched Tomb Raider, in 2013, 2014, where they made her much more realistic. She was still very fit, but she wasn't the Lara Croft that had generated a lot of criticism. I think possibly, I don't know, but I hope that it would have been marketed a bit differently if it had been done today. That said we also don't know exactly what it would look like as a final product. Jessika: Oh absolutely, yeah. Mike: It’s, I agree. It's a little bit problematic viewed through the current lens. At the same time, like a lot of the Highlander properties when it was being done, I think it was kind of just par for the course. Jessika: Yeah, fair enough. But, I did like the idea of having a female Highlander and having her have a whole story regardless of whether it's the first one to be completely [01:01:00] tragedy laden which was the other comment like her experience a ton of loss because she's female and experiences empathy unlike the male characters. Mike: I really didn't like that. Actually. I thought that was. I mean the, the whole thing where they were saying we wanted to focus on lifetimes of tragedy as opposed to enjoying multiple lives. And I'm like, that's the whole purpose of Highlander. That's what I really like is when you sit there and you watch them having fun and doing all this interesting stuff. Jessika: Women aren't allowed to have fun, Mike. Mike: Apparently. Jessika: We just have to have lives full of tragedy and pining for people that we've lost in our lives. Mike: Well, yeah. And we all know that the dudes don't have feelings, so we just, you know, go on and enjoy things. Jessika: That does suck that Hugh they don't give men the ability to have that capacity or give them the the credit to have that capacity. Mike: I will say, I am sorry that this one didn't get further along the development [01:02:00] stages, because it certainly seemed like it had a lot more promise than the title that was canceled right before it. Jessika: Yes, the gameplay itself looked more interesting, it looks more complex, it easier to navigate. What they were showing us was really intense. Mike: I really liked that whole idea of being able to view the environments in two different eras. It reminded me a lot of another Eidos game called legacy of Cain soul river, where there was a spiritual world and then a physical world. And you could flip back and forth between them, which was kind of cool. Jessika: Oh, that’s neat Mike: Yeah. I dug that. I liked the idea of exploring the same environment in two different areas. I thought that was really neat. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: Let's move on to Comics. Jessika: Sounds great. Mike: Okay, so, I’m curious. When do you think that Highlander got big enough to get a comic book? Jessika: I don't know maybe late nineties Mike: 2006. Jessika: Wow [01:03:00] That's later than I had expected. Mike: Yeah. There wasn't a comic adaptation of the movie when it came out, which is weird, there wasn't one here in the States. Highlander Heart, in their YouTube podcast, noted there was a series of five newspaper comic strips that were published as part marketing promotion. The hosts weren't entirely certain if they're exclusive to Europe or not. I don't know. I haven't been able to really find much reference to it. After the movie came out, though there was a two-part comic adaptation in Argentina. It was published through El Tony Todo Color and El Tony Supercolor they were sibling comic anthology magazines, and here's the weird twist. It looks like this was an unlicensed adaptation. Jessika: Mmhm, interesting. Mike: So now we're going to take another side tangent. The important thing that you need to know is that Argentina had just come out of a brutal military dictatorship that came about as part of Operation Condor, which is this horrific program the United States was involved in. And it isn't really taught about in high school history, at least it [01:04:00] wasn't when I was going through high school and I went to a pretty good one. did you ever learn about that? I'm curious. Jessika: No, I did not. Mike: Okay I'm giving you an extremely TLDR read of this, but basically this was a program in the seventies and eighties when the US backed military dictatorships across South America. So our country helped these groups, kidnap, torture, rape murder, thousands of political opponents, like Argentina was especially brutal. There were literally death squads, hunting down political distance across the country. It was a really horrific time. I want you to read this summary of what was going on during that time, actually. Jessika: Give me the really fun stuff I see. Mike: Sorry. Jessika: No you're good. It is estimated that between - 9,000 and 30,000 that's a huge span. Mike: I know, it’s such a margin of error I don't understand. Jessika: Lack of record taking will get you there quick, I think. I'm going to start over, but we’ll leave that in. It is estimated that between [01:05:00] 9,000 and 30,000 people were killed or disappeared, many of whom were impossible to formally report due to the nature of state terrorism. The primary target, like in many other South American countries participating in Operation Condor, were communist guerrillas and sympathizers, but the target of Operation Condor also included students, militants trade, unionists, writers, journalists, I don't love this, artists, and any other citizens suspected of being left-wing activists - well take me the goddamn way away. Mike: Right. Jessika: Including Peronist guerillas. I don't love that. Mike: No it's really awful. And based on that list of targets, it's not surprising that there was a lot of media suppression during this time. Democracy returned to the country in ’83, and there was this explosion of art across the mediums. Argentine Comics [01:06:00] saw this Renaissance period. A lot of them though, weren't really licensed and let's be honest. It's not like there's an internet where IP owners could monitor stuff like this and shut it down when they learned about it. There was also this drastic comics increase in the area due to create or publishing Zines because the eighties was the decade where personal computers suddenly became commonplace and all of a sudden pe

It’s that time again, a new season is here. Lend us your shitty little ears for the premiere of Season 8: Mario Van Melvin. This exploration of Mario and Melvin Van Peebles will once again find your hosts discussing a range of genres and exploring the myriad sins and shortcomings of Hollywood gatekeeping. Episode 1 focuses on the lone co-directorial effort from one of cinema’s few father-son directing pairs: Gang in Blue. It’s an ultra-timely story of police brutality and systemic racism, featuring white supremacist antics that look all too familiar in 2020. The boys welcome Danny Benson of the Not So Macho Fans podcast who offers an overview of the elder Van Peebles’ career as well as his thoughts on this intermittently thrilling made-for-tv drama. Reel Rap Recommends A.) a film from the same year as the film discussed on micB.) a film featuring one of the same actors as the film discussed on micC.) a film that’s connected to the film discussed on mic in some other wayA.) Scream (1996, dir. Wes Craven)It might be my favorite horror movie. You don’t like it? Well I guess you don’t like thrills, spills, and chills. All of the sequels are good too. B.) Nixon (1995, dir. Oliver Stone) ft. J.T. WalshFolks, it’s a goddamned shame that we’re being subjected to Adam McKay’s bullshit while Oliver Stone is still with us. Nixon is one of those three-hour-plus movies that I could watch every day.C.) The Wolf of Wall Street (2013, dir. Martin Scorsese) ft. a reference to GrenadaOne of the lawyers prosecuting Jordan Belfort refers to him as “a Grenada.” He means that Belfort doesn’t stand a chance in court. The same actor shows up in The Irishman and The Trial of the Chicago 7. Besides maybe the guy from Burn Notice, I don’t think there’s ever been someone with a more insufferable face. In WoWS, it’s nearly (but not quite) enough to make you root for Belfort. Annotations and ApologiesEternal apologies to Danny for getting the name of his podcast wrong. Bennett used the term “neck-bearded” to describe the roving bands of white trash who “defended” Fishtown back in June. This was not only inaccurate, but completely insulting to all of the fine neck-bearded people in Philadelphia and across this country.Meanwhile . . . On the latest Patreon-exclusive episode, the boys discuss Kelly Reichardt’s 2013 masterpiece Night Moves. Give the Gift of Reel Rap Why not share Reel Rap with the Reelheads in your life?Become a ReelheadWhat are you waiting for? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit reelrap.substack.com

In an exclusive intimate interview #actor, #producer, #director and #musician #MarioVanPeebles talks about his career, being black in show buisness and in America. Van Peebles can be seen in the new film #AClearShot on all VOD platforms.

Couple of the Week: Nixie Marie and Cameron van Peebles Due to the nature of this month being “love month” aka Valentines day, Nixie decides to bring on her beloved partner, Cameron Van Peebles. They share their story on how they met and the growth they have both experienced while being in a healthy and supportive relationship with each other. Learn how they share different perspectives on life but still find balance and passion for each other's beliefs. Cameron also shares how finding the right person for you is in you finding your joy and loving your life. They also share the vision behind their first collaboration together, CLARYTI and how both of their dreams are beginning to take shape as they merge forces and define their roles as lovers and business partners. What we chat about: The beauty of moving beyond the honeymoon phaseWhat makes a relationship healthy and thrivingEmbracing differences and growing togetherBeing authentically YOU and following your joy to the relationship that is right for youSupporting and bringing out the best in each other Merging dreams and starting a business with your belovedTo further explore our newest adventure, CLARYTI, that we discussed on the show visit www.claryti.com/goddess! www.instagram.com/claryticleanGet 30% Off a Zero Waste Cleaning Kit Join our Goddess Self Love Challenge!A 7-Day journey to connect with your inner Aphrodite for love, beauty, and sexuality!Journey Begins February 14thWhat you will get: - Daily Guided Meditation + Self- Love tasksEnter for a chance to win a journal and planner from Magic of I! https://www.iamgoddesscollective.com/self-love-challengeSister Support: Join The Goddess Life Membership by visiting https://www.iamgoddesscollective.com/membershipFor more Goddess conversations join our women's facebook group:https://www.facebook.com/groups/1078258585615424/?ref=bookmarks) Receive 25% off A Yoga Wake Up subscription by using code bit.ly/goddessyogawakeup See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

ICYMI: The Mo'Kelly Show Presents – The latest on the Impeachment Inquiry with guest Jessica Levinson…PLUS - FloriDUH News, WTF News AND an in-depth interview with father-son duo Mario & Mandela Van Peebles on their new film “A Clear Shot” on KFI AM 640 – Live everywhere on the iHeartradio App

This Sunday Sept. 29th, 2019 - The Film Review Podcast Live (#TFRPodcastLive) - The Husband and Wife Team have a special call-in guest: Nick Leisure, Director. We talk to him about his work in Hollywood, and his new movie 'A Clear Shot'. 'A Clear Shot' will make its Los Angeles premiere with red-carpet arrivals, Saturday October 5th, 2019 at the TCL Chinese Theatres! And, we have him on TFR, the director of 'A Clear Shot'. The movie stars not one Van Peebles, but two-- father and son, Mario and Mandela Van Peebles! You won't want to miss this episode of The Film Review Podcat Live! ------------ The Husband and Wife Team discuss yet another Blaxploitation Horror Movie, that has a little comedy added. We are speaking of no other film but 'Petey Wheatstraw: The Devil's Son-In-Law', starring Rudy Ray Moore as Petey Wheatstraw! # 5 on TFR's All-Time Blaxploitation Horror Movie List. | Chime-in Line - 213.943.3358. | Catch Up on the Top-10 - Subscribe to the Channel - https://lnkd.in/g3fUR58 New Movie Review to be announced! Topic: How Independent Film Is Made on A Shoestring No-sring Budget, through having a mind like Oscar Devereaux Micheaux. ----------- The Film Review: Movies Music Culture Politics Society Podcast Hosts: Crazy Dee & Tracey | Guest: Nick Leisure © 2019 Lordlandfilms.com, All Rights Reserved.

For the 45th episode, The Kahuna Kids delve deep into the Van Peebles-Verse by discussing Marios tribute to his father and what went into the making of Melvins independent cult classic. Find us here:FacebookTwitterInstagramiTunes or Apple PodcastsStitcherGoogle PlaySpotify© 2019 TheBosNet Family All Rights ReservedKush And Kai, Kush Hayes, Kush, Kai, Baadasssss!, Mario Van Peebles, Melvin Van Peebles, Van Peebles, Sweet Sweet Backs Baadasssss Song, Raain Wilson,

This week as a companion piece to last weeks One World Horror Movie Titles, we are going to bring you our TOP 5 HORROR MOVIES WITH LONG TITLES!!! In addition, there is some pretty strange horror news and the good and bad movies of the week.http://www.postmortemshow.comhttp://www.patreon.com/postmortemshow

Call me Van Peebles, son, cause i'm going Solo on this episode. If you get that joke, then good for you: You've seen a terrible movie. This episode is probably just as bad, but less entertaining as I manage to ramble on for over 30 minutes. I talk about some TV shows and online gaming that I've been digging lately, I talk a little about setting up a home gym to get back into a solid fitness routine, I rant about a few things, and I read a pile of iTunes reviews. This was an interesting experience and I hope you enjoy listening! Website: https://media.zencast.fm/starkcast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/starkcastpod Twitter: @TheTubbyNinja Email: starkcastpod@gmail.com StarkCast Intro & Outro Music by James Wetzel This podcast is powered by ZenCast.fm

Topics: The Black Church, Jessie Jackson, Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, Shaft, & Soul Train. (Bonus Artist: Luck Pacheco)   1971 Overview Snapshots 1.    Richard Nixon still President 2.    Vietnam War still going: (year 16 of 19) 3.    Deaths: 2,357 of 58,318 total 4.    Congressional Black Caucus created 5.    Soledad Brothers (California) and Attica (New York) prison riots 6.    The Supreme Court rules unanimously that busing of students may be ordered to achieve racial desegregation. 7.    Maya Angelou’s, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Nikki Giovanni all publish books 8.    Beverly Johnson is the first black woman to appear on the cover of a major fashion magazine (Glamour). 9.    QUESTION: Because schools are socializing and educational institutions, did busing “undercut” black identity and intellect or help us get along better in a diverse world and learn more? Jesse Louis Jackson Sr.: Civil rights activist, Baptist minister, and politician from Greenville, South Carolina, U.S. 10.    Breakout Year: The "Black Expo" in Chicago, attend by 800,000+, to encourage black business and he organizes People United to Save Humanity (P.U.S.H.) 11.    FYI: Graduate from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign 12.    Started working for Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965 13.    Jackson participated in the Selma to Montgomery marches. 14.    Became known for commanding public attention since he first started with MLK. 15.    MLK was impressed by JJ’s drive and organizational abilities but was also concerned about his ambition and attention-seeking. 16.    1971 he grabs the MLK legacy and becomes the de facto face of the “Black Church”. 17.    QUESTION: I appreciate Jessie, but why don’t I trust him? The Black Church: Always in the Mix. (JJ  18.    The phrase "black church" refers to Protestant churches that minister to predominantly black congregations. 19.    Segregationist discouraged and often prevented blacks from worshiping with whites.  20.    This created culturally distinct communities and worship practices that incorporated African spiritual traditions. 21.    Gradually, slaves developed their own interpretations of the Scriptures. Finding inspiration in stories of oppression and deliverance like Moses vs. Pharaoh. 22.    Question: First image that comes to mind? 23.    Key event: Philadelphia, PA 1787 – Birth of the “Black Church”: Richard Allen founded the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). The first fully independent black denomination. 24.    The AME church put a high premium on education, tended to attract the middle class, and produce black leadership. 25.    After the Civil War, "Baptists" grew rapidly, due primarily to a more independent governing structure. 26.    Baptist churches are governed locally, by the congregation. 27.    Major Difference Between Methodist and Baptist: The Method of Baptism [Pentecostals require additional reading] 28.    Who: Methodists baptize infants. Baptists only baptizes those capable of understanding. 29.    How: Methodists baptize with immersion, sprinkling, and pouring. Baptists only with immersion. 30.    Question: Any special memories about you or someone else being baptized? The Civil Rights Period: The Baptist “Come Up” 31.    Black churches were the heart and soul: acting as information hubs and centers of solidarity, while also providing leadership, organizational manpower, and moral guidance during this period. 32.    Notable minister-activists: Martin Luther King, Jr. - Baptists (Atlanta, GA), Ralph David Abernathy - Baptist (Linden, AL), Bernard Lee - Baptist (Norfolk, VA), Fred Shuttlesworth - Baptist (Mount Meigs, AL), Wyatt Tee Walker - Baptists (Brockton, MA), C. T. Vivian - Baptist (Boonville, MO) *Obama awarded him The P.M.o.H. in 2013.  Practices 33.    Main features: African ritual, slave emotionalism, and speaking/story-telling eloquence.  34.    Services: devotional prayer, singing by the congregation and choir, and the minister's sermon. 35.    Many ministers use drama, poetry, and the "call and response" tradition to connect with and energize the congregation. Question: Have you ever visited a “white” church and felt the difference? Politics and social issues 36.    Tendency to focus more on social issues. (poverty, gang violence, drug use, prison ministries, racism, etc.) 37.    Generally, more socially conservative [i.e., same-sex marriage, LGBT issues, women's rights, etc.] Present Day: Quick facts (Pew Research Center’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study) 38.    Roughly eight-in-ten (79%) Blacks self-identify as Christian.  39.    The share of African Americans who identify as religiously “unaffiliated” has increased in recent years, mirroring national trends. 40.    This shift may help explain the popularity of non-church led activism, such as Black Lives Matter, Contributions of the Black Church 41.    The church has housed and fed the poor, assisted with psychologically negative and destructive habits, helped others overcome social and economic oppression, provided leadership development, supported the black family structure, acted as a social network and liaison for businesses, educated youths and adults, mentored "at risk" youth, provided job development skills, offered scholarships, built recreation centers, provided prison aftercare and drug prevention programs, and many other things. 42.    Functioned as a primary repository for "Black Culture", housing much of our history and traditions. Conclusion: 43.    Historically, the Black Church has been a major agent for socioeconomic and religious empowerment since the post-slavery era. 44.    It has acted as a reliable ally and sanctuary to the black community. Question: Will the Black Church be as vital to the next generation? Economics 45.    Unemployment Rate = 5.8% / Minimum Wage = $1.60, up .15c ($64w, $3,200y, ~$19,800 in 2018) Music 46.    Top Singles for the entire year of 1971 (Source: http://billboardtop100of.com/1971-2/) (*) = Black Artists / (it took 40 songs to get 10 black artists) -1    Three Dog Night: Joy To The World -2    Rod Stewart: Maggie May / (Find A) Reason To Believe -3    Carole King: It’s Too Late / I Feel The Earth Move -4    Osmonds: One Bad Apple -5    Bee Gees: How Can You Mend A Broken Heart -6    Raiders: Indian Reservation -7    Donny Osmond: Go Away Little Girl -8    John Denver: Take Me Home, Country Roads -9(1)    Temptations: Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me) -10    Dawn: Knock Three Times -11    Janis Joplin: Me And Bobby McGee -12(2)    Al Green: Tired Of Being Alone -13(3)    Honey Cone: Want Ads -14(4)    Undisputed Truth: Smiling Faces Sometimes -15(5)    Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose: Treat Her Like A Lady -16    James Taylor: You’ve Got A Friend -17(6)    Jean Knight: Mr. Big Stuff -18    Rolling Stones: Brown Sugar -19    Lee Michaels: Do You Know What I Mean -20    Joan Baez: The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down -21(7)    Marvin Gaye: What’s Going On -22    Paul and Linda McCartney: Uncle Albert-Admiral Halsey -23(8)    Bill Withers: Ain’t No Sunshine -24    Five Man Electrical Band: Signs -25    Tom Jones: She’s A Lady -26    Murray Head and The Trinidad Singers: Superstar -27(9)    Free Movement: I Found Someone Of My Own -28    Jerry Reed: Amos Moses -29    Grass Roots: Temptation Eyes -30    Carpenters: Superstar -31    George Harrison: My Sweet Lord / Isn’t It A Pity -32    Donny Osmond: Sweet And Innocent -33    Ocean: Put Your Hand In The Hand -34    Daddy Dewdrop: Chick-a-boom -35    Carpenters: For All We Know -36    Sammi Smith: Help Me Make It Through The Night -37    Carpenters: Rainy Days And Mondays -38    Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind -40(10)    Jackson 5: Never Can Say Goodbye 47.    Question: Best Single? Top Albums 48.    Jan - ...To Be Continued, Isaac Hayes 49.    Feb - Curtis, Curtis Mayfield 50.    Apr - Live in Cook County Jail, B.B. King 51.    May - Maybe Tomorrow, The Jackson 5 52.    Jun - Aretha Live at Fillmore West, Aretha Franklin 53.    Jul - What's Going On, Marvin Gaye 54.    Jul - Shaft    Soundtrack, Isaac Hayes 55.    Question: Best album? Key Artists 56.    Marvin Gaye: American singer, songwriter and record producer. Gaye helped to shape the sound of Motown in the 1960s, first as an in-house session player and later as a solo artist with a string of hits, including "Ain't That Peculiar", "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)" and "I Heard It Through the Grapevine", and duet recordings with Mary Wells, Kim Weston, Diana Rossand Tammi Terrell, later earning the titles "Prince of Motown" and "Prince of Soul". 57.    During the 1970s, he recorded the albums What's Going On and Let's Get It On and became one of the first artists in Motown (joint with Stevie Wonder) to break away from the reins of a production company. His later recordings influenced several contemporary R&B subgenres, such as quiet storm and neo soul. Following a period in Europe as a tax exile in the early 1980s, he released the 1982 Grammy Award-winning hit "Sexual Healing" and its parent album Midnight Love. 58.    Aretha Louise Franklin: American singer and songwriter. Franklin began her career as a child singing gospel at New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, where her father, C. L. Franklin, was minister. In 1960, at the age of 18, she embarked on a secular career. 59.    In 1967, Franklin achieved commercial acclaim and success with songs such as "Respect", "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman", "Spanish Harlem" and "Think". 60.    By the end of the 1960s decade she had gained the title "The Queen of Soul".  61.    Franklin eventually became the most charted female artist in the history. 62.    Franklin has won a total of 18 Grammy Awards and is one of the best-selling musical artists of all time, having sold over 75 million records worldwide. Franklin has been honored throughout her career including a 1987 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in which she became the first female performer to be inducted. She was inducted to the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. In August 2012, Franklin was inducted into the GMA Gospel Music Hall of Fame. Franklin is listed in at least two all-time lists on Rolling Stone magazine, including the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time; and the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. African-American Cinema 63.    Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song is a 1971 American independent action thriller film written, co-produced, scored, edited, directed by and starring Melvin Van Peebles. His son Mario Van Peebles also appears in a small role, playing the title character as a young boy. It tells the picaresque story of a poor black man on his flight from the white authority. 64.    Van Peebles began to develop the film after being offered a three-picture contract for Columbia Pictures. No studio would finance the film, so Van Peebles funded the film himself, shooting it independently over a period of 19 days, performing all of his own stunts and appearing in several sex scenes, reportedly unsimulated. He received a $50,000 loan from Bill Cosby to complete the project. The film's fast-paced montages and jump-cuts were unique features in American cinema at the time. The picture was censored in some markets and received mixed critical reviews. However, it has left a lasting impression on African-American cinema. 65.    The musical score of Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song was performed by Earth, Wind & Fire. Van Peebles did not have any money for traditional advertising methods, so he released the soundtrack album prior to the film's release to generate publicity. Huey P. Newton celebrated and welcomed the film's revolutionary implications, and Sweetback became required viewing for members of the Black Panther Party. According to Variety, it demonstrated to Hollywood that films which portrayed "militant" blacks could be highly profitable, leading to the creation of the blaxploitation genre, although critic Roger Ebert did not consider this example of Van Peebles' work to be an exploitation film. 66.    Release date: April 23, 1971 / Budget: $150k (~920k today) / Gross: $4.1m (~25m today) 67.    Shaft is a 1971 American blaxploitation action-crime film directed by Gordon Parks and written by Ernest Tidyman and John D. F. Black. The film revolves around a private detective named John Shaft who is hired by a Harlem mobster to rescue his daughter from the Italian mobsters who kidnapped her. The film stars Richard Roundtree as John Shaft, Moses Gunn as Bumpy Jonas, Charles Cioffi as Vic Androzzi, and Christopher St. John as Ben Buford. The major themes present in Shaft are the Black Power movement, race, masculinity, and sexuality. It was filmed within the New York City borough of Manhattan, specifically in Harlem, Greenwich Village, and Times Square. 68.    Shaft was one of the first blaxploitation films, and one of the most popular, which "marked a turning point for this type of film and spawned a number of sequels and knockoffs." The Shaft soundtrack album, recorded by Isaac Hayes, was also a success, winning a Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture; and a second Grammy that he shared with Johnny Allen for Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement; Grammy Award for Best Original Score; the "Theme from Shaft" won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and has appeared on multiple Top 100 lists, including AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs. Widely considered a prime example of the blaxploitation genre. Shaft was selected in 2000 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." 69.    Release date: July 2, 1971 / Budget: 500k (~3m today) / Gross: $13m (~80m today) 70.    The film was one of only three profitable movies that year for MGM,  71.    It not only spawned several years of "blaxploitation" action films, it earned enough money to save then-struggling MGM from bankruptcy Television: 72.    Soul Train is an American music-dance television program which aired in syndication from October 2, 1971 to March 27, 2006. In its 35-year history, the show primarily featured performances by R&B, soul, dance/pop and hip-hop artists, although funk, jazz, disco and gospel artists also appeared. The series was created by Don Cornelius, who also served as its first host and executive producer. 73.    Some commentators have called Soul Train a "black American Bandstand," 74.    Cornelius acknowledged Bandstand as a model for his program, but he tended to bristle at the Bandstand comparisons. 75.    Cornelius, with help from Jesse Jackson, openly accused Dick Clark of trying to undermine TV's only Black-owned show, when Clark launched "Soul Unlimited". 76.    Cornelius was relatively conservative in his musical tastes and was admittedly not a fan of the emerging hip hop genre, believing that the genre did not reflect positively on African-American culture (one of his stated goals for the series). 77.    Rosie Perez testified in the 2010 VH1 documentary Soul Train: The Hippest Trip in America that Cornelius also disliked seeing the show's dancers perform sexually suggestive "East Coast" dance moves. 78.     This disconnect (which was openly mocked in an In-Living Color sketch where Cornelius and the show were lampooned as extremely old and out of touch) eventually led to Cornelius's stepping down as host in the early 1990s and the show's losing its influence. Black Church Sources: https://thewitnessbcc.com/history-black-church/ https://aaregistry.org/story/the-black-church-a-brief-history/ http://news.gallup.com/poll/200186/five-key-findings-religion.aspx [2016] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Black_America#Baptists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Black_America http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/02/07/5-facts-about-the-religious-lives-of-african-americans/

Una puntata Van Peebles come mai prima! Prima le Van News: Catch 22 con George Clooney, sorpresa The Expanse, una probabile SheRa The Princess of Power, Barack e Michelle Obama che si buttano nel mercato delle serie tv, lo spin-off Pennyworth e 10 After Midnight – la prossima serie firmata Guillermo del Toro. Bando alle […]

Click the post for details on this episode! Hello and welcome back to another episode of Open House, your host Randy Seidman here excited to bring you another two hours of the grooviest beats. Today’s episode is a special one – my headlining set recorded at the Jungle Experience in Thailand this past summer in … Continue reading

Click the post for details on this episode! Hello and welcome back to another episode of Open House, your host Randy Seidman here excited to bring you another two hours of the grooviest beats. Today’s episode is a special one – my headlining set recorded at the Jungle Experience in Thailand this past summer in … Continue reading

Click the post for details on this episode! Hello and welcome back to another episode of Open House, your host Randy Seidman here excited to bring you another two hours of the grooviest beats. Today’s episode is a special one – my headlining set recorded at the Jungle Experience in Thailand this past summer in … Continue reading »

Click the post for details on this episode! Hello and welcome back to another episode of Open House, your host Randy Seidman here excited to bring you another two hours of the grooviest beats. Today’s episode is a special one – my headlining set recorded at the Jungle Experience in Thailand this past summer in … Continue reading »

This week's episode is about Mario Van Peebles' “New Jack City” (1991). We look at the context of the film's release, Van Peebles' choices behind the camera, and cast who try their utmost to keep the film afloat as it threatens to crumble under its own weight. We also discuss Arnott's Shortbread Creams. ↳ Skip to the movie: 07:48

This week on Black on Black Cinema, the crew discuss the 1970 comedy-drama film, Watermelon Man, directed by Melvin Van Peebles and starring Godfrey Cambridge and Estelle Parsons. The story of an unlikeable (by everyone) white man named Jeff Gerber who wakes up one day as a Black man in the 1970s. Challenging notions of white liberalism, disparity, and pushing the envelope of racial comedy in its time, Watermelon Man pulls no punches. More than simply a morality tale, Van Peebles takes a stab at the heart of what it means to be a man of color during that time.

Click the post for details on this episode! Cameron Van Peebles is an established veteran of the Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami dance music communities with a storied career going back well over a decade.  Since his initial performances in the late 1990s, Cameron has consistently created new visions of deep, thick beats layered with … Continue reading »

Click the post for details on this episode! Cameron Van Peebles is an established veteran of the Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami dance music communities with a storied career going back well over a decade.  Since his initial performances in the late 1990s, Cameron has consistently created new visions of deep, thick beats layered with … Continue reading

Click the post for details on this episode! Cameron Van Peebles is an established veteran of the Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami dance music communities with a storied career going back well over a decade.  Since his initial performances in the late 1990s, Cameron has consistently created new visions of deep, thick beats layered with … Continue reading

Click the post for details on this episode! Cameron Van Peebles is an established veteran of the Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami dance music communities with a storied career going back well over a decade.  Since his initial performances in the late 1990s, Cameron has consistently created new visions of deep, thick beats layered with … Continue reading »