This time on Culturezoo, despite a bad internet connection at the beginning, we talk about the 2000 classic, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, by Ang Lee.

The recap is over, time for some discussion. On this episode we have a special guest, Steve, who bares his Oz-scarred soul for us.

On this episode we tackle the forgotten 80s gem, Return to Oz. This is a film released by Disney that Disney tried to bury in their vault. It’s actually pretty cool in a very 80s sort of way. In Part 1 we do a recap. In Part 2 we discuss the film.

This week on Culturezoo we discuss the gorgeous 2010 animated film, The Secret of Kells. We’re joined by special guest, Jack on this one.

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It’s the inaugural episode of our Bad Book Blitz where we read the Amazon excerpt of a “bad” book and decide if we would keep reading. Tonight we read the lengthy prologue and first chapter of “The Days of Elijah, Book One: Apocalypse” by Mark Goodwin.

Our final Out of the Silent Planet episode! We chat about the literary framing device that Lewis unveils in the final chapter and then give our final thoughts on this novel.

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In our penultimate Silent Planet episode, we reach the climax of the book in which Weston confronts Oyarsa and has to take some tough medicine and we return back to Earth and England and finish up with a “pint of bitter”.

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Ransom makes it to Medilorn and comes face to face with Oyarsa. Misunderstandings abound and humans come out not looking all that great.

The short story we reference in the discussion is called “Forms of Things Unknown”. It’s released in the collection “Of Other Worlds”.

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Ransom engages in something between a hunt and a battle with an extraterrestrial shark and ends up finally meeting the dreaded Sorns. We talk a bit about the mythology of Malacandra and non-heroic protagonists.

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In these chapters Ransom gets to know the “natives” and discovers a culture that is both remarkably similar and different from anything on Earth. Conversations about life, death, religion, and pleasure ensue.

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Ransom makes it to Malacandra and promptly flees. After wandering through the Malacandran landscape and fighting off fits of madness, he has his first real encounter with one of the native, sentient species, a Hross.

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Ransom goes from terror to courage, Earth to Malacandra this week and things get theological as we tackle the next three chapters of Out of the Silent Planet.

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It’s time for our Culturezoo summer series! For the next seven episodes we’re going to do a bi-weekly book club where we read three chapters of a book and… um… talk about it. The book we’ve picked is Out of the Silent Planet, by C.S. Lewis. In this episode we cover Chapters 1-3 where we meet Ransom, along with Weston and Divine who kidnap Ransom away from our terrestrial sphere.

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In what may be an act of extreme foolhardiness, Levi, Rosalyn, and Zach attempt to review the entire Star Wars Disney canon, even movies that haven’t come out yet. We spend most of our time talking about The Force Awakens, Rogue One, The Last Jedi, and Solo.

This is a special Culturezoo episode where we are joined by Sam (11), Jane (9), Lucy (8), and Charlie (6) and talk about one of our family’s favorite comic trilogies, Zita the Spacegirl by Ben Hatke. We cover all three books Zita the Spacegirl, Legends of Zita the Spacegirl and Return of Zita the Spacegirl. We learned a lot of lessons from these books and had a great time talking about it.

This podcast about Princess Kaguya is being released on the day that it’s director Isao Takahata passed away. This is his final film and maybe his best. We spend a lot of time trying to wrap our heads around this beautiful, thought-provoking film and things get theological towards the end. Some of the things we talk about: Why are so many of the messages in this film radically different then anything you’d see in a western film? Who is the antagonist? Is heaven actually the villain of the story? Is one of the themes the tension be creation and creator? We might be totally off but it’s a movie that made us think.

Rest in peace, Mr. Takahata. We’re grateful for your work.

Note: We don’t include The Castle of Cagliostro for some reason. We really should have discussed it though. I guess we kind of forgot about it and when we remembered, it was too late to go back and record a podcast about it. Too bad. It’s such a great movie.

For those of you who made it through this miniseries, thanks for hanging with us. We have one more short Miyazaki recap after this, which will be out next week. Then we’re back to an old favorite of ours: The Star Wars Prequels.

Merry Christmas!

As a special bonus, 13-year-old geek intern Jack joins us for a quick graphic-novel recommendation at the beginning of the podcast.

Next week we tackle Kiki’s Delivery Service.

Next week: My Neighbor Totro!

On today’s episode Levi and Rosalyn cover Miyazaki’s first feature-length film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and yet we end up talking about Tolkien and fairy tales for most of the podcast.

Also we will try to post some fan art of the film over this week.

Next week: Castle in the Sky!

On this episode of Culturezoo we discuss the Cartoon Network animated miniseries, Over the Garden Wall. It’s one of our favorite cartoons in recent memory. Heavy spoiler alert for this podcast.

After going through the episodes we chat about the hidden meanings and allusions in this cartoon and finally wonder why more fantasy creators aren’t mining American history to create equally unique settings and stories.

Enjoy!

• We open the discussion talking about how we didn’t see Superman V Batman and why we don’t plan on it.
• We chat about how comics just aren’t as good as they used to be.
• We dive into how Jonny Crossbones is a little slice of heaven by pulling inspiration from the pre-1980s greats of comics like Herge and others.
• We talk about how comics aren’t empowering women very well and how Jonny Crossbones does it right.
• We drop big hints that we’d love to do an interview with Mr. McClaine on the podcast.

This episodes begins with Obi-Wan’s fight with Jango Fett and continues to the bitter end when credits roll.

We specifically discuss the scenes in Act two: beginning with Dexter Jettster’s space-dinner and ending with Anakin and Padme leaving Naboo.

Also, we completely ignore the movies… by Rankin/Bass, of course! Wait, what they made more movies?

Hope you enjoy this very special Culturezoo.

On this week’s Culturezoo, Levi and Rosalyn back away from Star Wars for a bit to discuss the 1987 mini-series comic, Batman: Year One, by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli.

• We open with a brief discussion of the various incarnations of Batman over the years.
• We cover the plot of Year One including David Mazzucchelli’s gorgeous ink and Commissioner Gordon’s ridiculous inner monologues. Seriously he can’t shoot a gun at a target without having an existential crisis.
• We finally opine about everything that’s right and wrong with this comic and specifically blame Frank Miller for taking the fun out of comics and making them stupid for the past thirty years.
• We can’t resist indulging in a bit of Star Wars: The Force Awakens discussion to wrap things up.

Thank you to everyone who came along for the ride on this one. Sorry we get so worked up over this. Hopefully all you fellow Star Wars geeks out there found something worthwhile in our lamenting of this film.

Hey! Fun bit of trivia! Apparently they’re still making Star Wars movies. Who knew? Word of warning though: if you’re making 7+ movies, you gotta be prepared to beat the impossibly high standard set by the Land Before Time saga.

• We stumble over French pronunciation like true Americans.
• We talk about Herge’s unique “Linge Claire” style.
• We ponder the mysterious appeal of Tintin.
• Finally we dissect the plot of The Blue Lotus.
• Rosalyn fades into the background and Levi’s voice is really loud. We’ll fix this next week.

Outline:

• 8-year-old Sam gives his thoughts on Ant-Man.
• A quick detour into Force Friday topics.
• Levi and Rosalyn try to give a quick introduction to the world of Bone for those who are unfamiliar.
• We talk about some of Jeff Smith’s influences: Carl Barks and Walt Kelley.
• We give a meandering description of the plot of Out From Boneville, The Great Cow Race, and The Eye of the Storm.
• We chat about the different versions of the comic: color vs. black and white. Is there a better way to read it?
• Is this arc one of the best stretches in a comic series ever?

Show outline:

• 0-6 minutes: we chat about the comic All-Star Superman with one of our younger guild members Jack Nunnink.
• 6-60 minutes: we open Bloom County, discussing the characters, some favorite plot arcs, and what we think makes the strip so great.

1. Thrill as Levi and Rosalyn try to make their way through the simple yet somehow complex plot: unicorns are touched, english accents are lost, jokes fall flat, and everything looks gorgeous.
2. Is this the best looking movie ever?
3. Is it a good movie? A bad movie? Kinda both?

On this episode we discuss in detail Spider-Man Annual #1, The Sinister Six, which marks the first (somewhat embarrassing appearance) of the dreaded Sinister Six.

1. Will Spidey ever regain his powers? Answer: Yes. Very quickly and easily.
2. Will the team-up of, not one! not two! but six! super villains be the web slingers ticket to an early grave?! Answer: not with this plan it won’t.
3. Will Aunt May finally come out of the closet as a dry corpse?!
4. Steve Ditko? Good or Bad artist?

Levi and Rosalyn discuss all these and more on Episode I of Culturezoo.

Note: The audio clips a bit on this episode. We’re still getting used to the mic. We’ll fix it next time.