There are no spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War in these podcast reviews. There is one irritated Slacker as the reviews progress. I decided to listen to 18 podcast episodes as a lead up to watching Infinity War a second time. This is the chronicle of my own Marvel Marathon journey… Mad About Movies Podcast – I’m biased. These guys are my favorite. I get their humor. Also, they have an American Treasure segment at the beginning which is off topic, but a nice addition to my listening experience. Comedy Film Nerds – The guest and hosts are making a spoiler-episode for the culmination of 18 movies in the MCU, and they can’t remember key moments in past films. The jokes are humorous, but my anger couldn’t take their attempt at remembering the films that came prior…and forgetting so much. I do not recommend unless you like the comedy stylings of Aisha Tyler. Now Playing – The Movie Review Podcast – I cannot stand 2 of the 3 hosts of this show, but these guys do their research. I didn’t realize that Avengers 3 & 4 filmed concurrently, and the production cost 1 billion dollars for the two films. Out of that budget, 4 million was spent on actors. Of that 4 million, Robert Downey Jr. received 2 million. His agent deserves that ice cream-colored Lambo. Total Geekall – Screen Rant editors making their long awaited return. The quality of recording isn’t very good. If you can get past the crackling audio and different levels of the mics, then you’ll realize that most of the hosts know their content. Good ol’ DC Outlaw makes his return. Ben and Rob continued spreading their love for each other. I think Hannah is pretending to be an American named Molly. I believe that Anthony Ocasio was on house arrest so he could not attend the recording sesh. #AvengeOcasio The /Filmcast – A panel of hosts breakdown the film. It is divisive between them. They all agree the undertaking of arranging all these pieces to make a coherent film is impressive, but then you have the ultra-fanboy and film realist arguing their merits for why this is a great film and why this movie doesn’t deliver the way it should. Everyone makes great points. I don’t normally listen to this podcast, but I found this episode captivating and will become a future subscriber. Fatman on Batman (Marc’s review) – Kevin and Marc won’t be together for a week or so. So, they did separate reviews. Marc’s didn’t add much in the content department (compared to the 5 podcasts that I previously listened to). However, Marc performed the movie marathon. It was interesting to hear from a madman who watched 31 hours of movies to lead up to this one. I couldn’t do it, but I respect him since I’m basically doing the same thing on my own time with these podcasts. The Schmoes Know Movie Show - Schmoe-ville argues about the movie. I can’t remember if Kristian or Mark was supporting it and comparing it to a Game of Thrones season finale while the other just couldn’t get fully behind it. This was the first podcast for me from this group, and one of the hosts sounded like a character from The Good Place (Jason Mendoza AKA Jianyu Li AKA Jake Jortles) which I really enjoyed picturing that character making this podcast. I did enjoy listening to their discussion and recommend it because they made a few points that made me think. Filmspotting - Josh is exhausted from the MCU as am I with all these podcasts. Adam defends the directors for doing this massive undertaking of putting so many characters on the screen with a decent story. This is a common thread in all of the podcasts so far. Everyone is impressed by the execution of the film, but then the discussions become divisive when mentioning the plot and the motivation of Thanos and other spoilery things regarding the ending that I’m not putting in these reviews. They also made their Filmspotting Avengers: A filmmaking team of 5 living directors, composers, performers, or directors of photography who solve cinematic problems. It was a nice departure from other shows mentioning or ranking their favorite superheroes…and it’s not just because one of them was on a mission to save the romantic comedy...which we all can agree needs to happen. Film Reviews - Joe, film critic of WSJ, gives a 3-minute review. The bulk of it is a recap of the film. He called it "table-setting for the meal to come" and "too much set up with not enough pay off." He has some great descriptors in his imagery, and it is short. Because of the length, I liked it a lot. Fatman on Batman (Kevin’s review) - Kevin’s solo review of the movie is a typical Kevin Smith love-fest while recapping the entire film from opening credits to after credits. It took about an hour. I enjoyed that Kevin made the connection to the comic book version of this film being an Annual. This off-hand comment made me think. I remember those stories growing up. I loved my Spider-Man comics. Each individual story tailored for the hero I loved. Occasionally another hero would make an appearance in a Spider-Man comic, but it was still Peter Parker’s story. Then, the Annual would come out with so many heroes on the cover, but Spider-Man would be right there too. So, I’d buy it. I’d enjoy. But, ultimately, I would be disappointed because the hero’s journey that I wanted to follow was normally cut short so all of the other heroes could make their appearance. That’s how I feel about these giant team-up movies. I enjoy them. They are all in my top 10 of the MCU films, but movies like Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Spiderman: Homecoming will always be on top of my list because of their character focus. Kudos to Kevin Smith for making a comment that helped me come to that realization. Slate: Spoiler Specials - A gem by gem recap. They attempted to make another mundane recap podcast interesting by focusing on the journey of Thanos. They did make a few pitstops along the way to discuss other plot beats. This panel had one resident expert who I think I might be able to compete with along with the rest of the group who would turn to him every time they were unsure of the reasoning of a character’s motivation. I found the panelists interesting and added a couple archived spoiler podcasts to my playlist. NPR: Pop Culture Happy Hour - They didn’t seem too happy about this film, and the group critiqued the movie accordingly. They even talked about being preemptively angry about the next installment. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but this was the first panel that all agreed on focusing on the negatives. Most of these podcasts have been split down the middle or giant love-fests, so this one is the counter programming. Their angry discussion is short. The entire podcast is 25 minutes and they spend the later part of it talking about things that make them happy. The Reel - LA Times provides another podcast with another host named Mark describing the events of Infinity War. It’s another round-table discussion where nothing new was revealed to me about the film. One of the speakers revealed that he was a Days of Our Lives fan and compared the MCU to that. A giant soap opera where everything is reversible. Marvel Movie News - Let me begin by saying that this one had terrible audio quality with the volume levels changing between microphones and crackling. It felt worse than Total Geekall, but this podcast knows its info too. It helps when you have Marc Bernard from Fatman on Batman as a guest and someone involved with Marvel’s Runaways. I didn’t expect quality guests on what seems like a mom & pop podcast using the Marvel name to grab listeners, but as it turns out, this podcast is on the Popcorn Talk Network (which I never heard of before) along with a slew of other movie-based podcasts. I liked that they started off by listing records broken from the release of this film. 67 records shattered to be exact. Other podcasts mentioned ousting The Force Awakens and the amount of money, but this one actually talked for a little bit about the different records. Still, many were stupid records that I couldn’t remember moments after hearing them. The panel picks out favorite action moments, comedy moments, and moments in general. They also talk briefly about Deadpool’s letter, an Instagram post from Ryan Reynolds, along with the media appearances of the Avenger’s on the talk show circuit. Sound quality aside, the actual podcast wasn’t half bad. Collider Movie Talk - Another standard breakdown of a group loving the film. However, an offhand Star Wars comment combined with my newly found podcast marathon knowledge lead to an Avengers 4 theory that I really believe will happen. If you’re interested, I posted it on this subreddit called Spoilery Avengers 4 discussion. It is a private group, but just send a request to join. Tell them Perfect Slacker said you're cool....and then be cool because I just vouched for you. Reel Spoilers - (2 part episode) - WTF? A 2-part episode? The Fatmen on Batman could not record at the same time, so I kind of understood their excuse, but what is this podcast’s reasoning? They just broke up their review as a 2 part-er. Seriously, they're discussing the film for the same length that the film actually is. Come on! ScreenJunkies Movie Fights - Avengers themed movie fight with no actual spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War. I wanted to wrap up this journey with something different. The audio felt like a large studio recording with just one microphone. It had an echo that took me a bit to get used to. Once the show actually got into the argument section, I was hooked. It consisted of 3 rounds, and the top 2 moved into the speed round. Round 1: recast one of the MCU heroes. Round 2: Which Avenger should join the cast of Avatar? Round 3: If you could bring back all the characters in a particular movie franchise, which franchise would you choose and why? Then the speed round where one of the guests sounding like the Micromachine guy. This was exactly what I needed to end this marathon torture. It was fun to hear MCU talk that wasn’t Thanos this or Avengers that. Well, I did the work for you. I listened to them all. Now, it's time to go re-watch the movie with all this useless knowledge!
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Professor Procrastination/Legit Idjit/Perfect Slacker
is a self-proclaimed, semi-professional procrastinator that doubles as an pop-culture guru. Is he completely renarded? Perhaps. Is renarded a word that he invented on urban dictionary? It is. He is also the Legit Idjit on Facebook and a Perfect Slacker on reddit and Twitter. Categories
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