On this week’s podcast we talk about Mike Massimino who just announced he’s leaving NASA, the beauty of the first Ninja Turtles movie, the ugliness of Secret of the Ooze, San Diego Comic-Con, and more. All while still managing to give you your weekly dose of Editors’ Picks. Enjoy!
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For Editors’ Picks this week, Dan beat me to picking the original 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie:
Go back and watch the original 1990 Ninja Turtles movie. A lot of things from your childhood won’t necessarily hold up to your nostalgic expectations, but the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a really solid film. Before you go see the new one in a few weeks (and probably hate it), go watch the first one and remember what a great job it did ingraining the Turtles’ personalities and entertaining action/comedy tone in the minds of an entire generation.
Then, AND ONLY THEN, should you check out my pick this week, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Secret of the Ooze:
Over the weekend Dan and I went to see a double feature screening of the first two Ninja Turtles. As Dan just said, Part 1 really holds up and remains to this day a really great movie. The Secret of the Ooze… doesn’t. Like… at all. It’s a deeply flawed movie. Its timeline is unclear. There’s no explanation for how Shredder survives being casually murdered in the first one. It’s much sillier in tone overall, and the character of Keno isn’t developed at all.
And that’s all before the Vanilla Ice dance club cameo. It’s a mess.
BUT if you watch them back to back, it’s actually kind of fun. I’m not a big fan of watching bad movies on purpose, but something about seeing how far this franchise feel from the course of one film to the next makes it worth checking out—particularly if you can catch a double feature at a movie theater with a bar and a few friends.
Carolyn is into The Strain:
This week I picked Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s FX show The Strain, although in the light of a new day I think that recommendation needs to be amended. I don’t know if The Strain is necessarily a great show, or even a show that deserves a considerable run. But if you’re a fan of the vampire or post-apocalyptic genre, and/or if you read the Strain trilogy (also by del Toro) that the series is based on, it’s absolutely worth your time. There have been moments for me in the series where it has been impossible to suspend disbelief, from unbelievable character choices to vampire logic that seemed absurd even in the show’s heightened universe, so if you don’t already have a high tolerance for vampire cheesiness (I’m talking 1979 Salem’s Lot here) The Strain might not be for you. It does have Lord of the Rings’ Sean Astin though, and that makes up for almost everything.
Victoria likes not staving. Also, Don’t Starve.
My pick this week is Don’t Starve, a independent game available on Steam that I mentioned picking up during their summer sale a few weeks ago. You are dropped in the middle of a landscape without any instructions and must survive by collecting food and supplies in order to keep your hunger meter, as well as your physical and mental health meters, in check. Also, there are monsters everywhere. It’s sort of like Hatchet mets Edward Gorey. My record is 22 “days,” which isn’t that much when you consider that players have gone for hundreds, setting up camps and farms and exploring the wilderness. Playing for longer amounts of time unlocks new characters as well—my favorite so far is Willow (they all have W names), but they all have their own strengths and weaknesses. Oh, and I almost forgot: though the game autosaves for you while you’re alive, you can’t go back in time if you die. The game just ends and you have to start over. So you could be one of those people who have a 300-day long game that just abruptly ends when you get attacked by a giant tree. Yaaay.
(image via U.S. Department of Agriculture)
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