Tag Archives: Samuel L. Jackson

FilmWonk Podcast – Episode #82 – “The Hateful Eight” (dir. Quentin Tarantino), “Concussion” (dir. Peter Landesman)

Posted on by

Teaser Poster for "The Hateful Eight"

In this week’s podcast, Glenn and Daniel strike down upon Quentin Tarantino‘s The Hateful Eight with great vengeance and furious anger, but you will know that their name is FilmWonk, when they spend twice as long talking about Peter Landesman‘s Concussion. Note that given the fact-based narrative, we’re not too shy about spoiling the real-life NFL player deaths depicted in the film (55:16).

May contain NSFW language.

Still from "Concussion" featuring Will Smith

FilmWonk rating (The Hateful Eight): 3 out of 10
FilmWonk rating (Concussion): 6.5 out of 10

Show notes:

  • [02:07] Review: The Hateful Eight
  • [13:11] Spoilers: The Hateful Eight
  • [23:23] Review: Concussion
  • Check out Glenn’s combined review of Concussion and Spotlight here.
  • Music for tonight’s episode is “Apple Blossom” by The White Stripes, and “There Won’t Be Many Coming Home” by Roy Orbison, both from The Hateful Eight soundtrack.
  • Daniel called back to a film we saw at the closing night of the 2014 Seattle International Film Festival, called “Story of My Death”. We didn’t feel that film merited a full review, but you can check out the blurb we posted on our Facebook page.
  • We briefly discussed the 2007 double-murder-suicide of WWE wrestler Chris Benoit and his family – from what we’ve been able to find, concussion-related dementia was not considered as a possible factor in this incident by the police and medical examiner. Their focus was on drugs, including the possibility of steroid abuse. Subsequently, Benoit’s family sent his brain to be examined by the real-life Dr. Julian Bailes (Baldwin’s character in the film), who determined that it did have concussion-related neurological damage.

Listen above, or download: The Hateful Eight, Concussion (right-click, save as, or click/tap to play on a non-flash browser)

FilmWonk Podcast – Episode #41 – “RoboCop” (dir. José Padilha)

Posted on by

Poster for "RoboCop"

This week on the podcast, Glenn and Daniel are pleasantly surprised by another unnecessary remake of a 1980s film that manages to be a little bit more than the sum of its parts.

Check out our discussion below (49:00).

May contain some NSFW language.

FilmWonk rating: 6.5 out of 10

Show notes:

  • Music for tonight’s episode includes the track “First Day” from the RoboCop (2014) soundtrack, composed by Pedro Bromfman. It also includes a brief snippet from the original 1988 RoboCop theme song, composed by the late, great Basil Poledouris. I kept this cut brief because the soundtrack is out of print, so I was unfortunately unable to find a decent digital copy of the original track.
  • Read the full FilmWonk review of Elysium here.
  • We made a brief reference to philosopher Jeremy Bentham‘s concept of the Panopticon – you can read more on Wikipedia if you’re interested in the topic.
  • In case we lost anyone with our brief discussion on neurology and freewill, here is a quick rundown from Dr. Steven Novella at the NeuroLogica Blog regarding a 2008 study illustrating the decision-making phenomenon that we described:

    “The subjects were not necessarily consciously aware of their decision until they were about to move, but the cortex showing they were planning to move became activated a full 7 seconds prior to the movement. This supports prior research that suggests there is an unconscious phase of decision-making. In fact many decisions may be made subconsciously and then presented to the conscious bits of our brains. To us it seems as if we made the decision, but the decision was really made for us subconsciously.”

Listen above, or download: RoboCop (right-click, save as, or click/tap to play on a non-flash browser)