Show #202: Love, Death & Robots Volume 2

Brian Smith is the vital component in our merciless machine that plows a furrow of destruction into more Love, Death & Robots. A trimmed down continuation of the Netflix adult animation anthology this batch of shorts still delivers everything we've come to expect: future dystopias, literary adaptations and just how wide or narrow some folks' understanding of Adult Animation really is! Another exciting game of Did This Really Need To Be A Cartoon? is played, we once again all reach for the diamond in the rough, and the reward of a Post-Podcast Repaste fit for the Post-Robocalypse awaits the survivors!

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Show #201: James Bond Jr.

Having dodged responsibility for long enough we undertake a dangerous mission to uncover the true identity of James Bond Jr. Is he an established brand's attempt to reach a younger audience? How does it involve the story of the Irish animation industry? And will this be more fun to discuss than initially expected? Keep your ears peeled and find out before it's too late agent, and do stop by the lab on your way out for a cunningly concealed Post-Podcast Repaste!

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Show #200: An Emotional Animation Exchange! aka No Sea For Old Lastman

 Against expectations this abberation in animation appreciation has racked up 200 instalments (plus about that amount again in extra-curricular activities) and we're in a celebratory mood. And what's a party without favours, as we each perused our respective repositories of cartoon knowledge in search of a fitting gift for each other. Dwayne classes up the joint with an Oscar winning adaptation of Hemingway's The Old Man And The Sea; Niall blows it all away via the spectacle of French action adventure Lastman; both invite moments of profundity and true kinship! These podcast boys have become podcast MEN.

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Show #198: Night Hood, aka Les Exploits d'Arsène Lupin

His grandson may be the one who gets all the attention these days but the OG Arsène Lupin was no slouch by any stretch. Maurice Leblanc's seminal gentleman thief character got his day in the sun back in 1996, taking a few noirish cues from spiritual successors such as Batman and Diabolik to thwart the real villains in a stylish 1930s setting. But is this incarnation the genuine article or merely wearing an elaborate disguise? Comic criminal chronologies, righteous disparagement of law enforcement and a mysterious Post-Podcast Repaste are the calling cards by which our infamy shall be known!

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SOTSM x DITB: The Anime That Didn’t Make Us #16 – Pollyanna, Violinist of Hamelin & Moby Dick

Niall checked up on Brian and Antony over on Dynamite In The Brain to see how they're coping during all this, only to find them once again in a state of imagined reminiscence for cartoons they could have been enjoying in their youth were it not for those pesky geographic barriers. This edition is more highbrow than most with not one but two literary adaptations; a fairly straight World Masterpiece Theatre joint in 1986's The Story Of Pollyanna, Girl Of Love and Herman Melville making the logical progression to outer space in 1997's Hakugei: Legend Of The Moby Dick, while 1996's Violinist Of Hamelin provides a nice classical music accompaniment that sounds better than it looks. We got your tele-learning resources right here pal!

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Show #186: Treasure Island (1978/1987)

It's the advent of a newer, leaner and less meaner incarnation of Secret Of The Sailor Madness where we watch some great cartoons of past and present for the good of our collective sanity! And what better way to mark our latest voyage into the realms of animation that elevate the soul than this vibrant adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic of literature courtesy of ace director Osamu Dezaki and his crack creative crew. We talk pirate portrayals, drunken children, elusive ambition and the dangerously attractive Long John Silver. It's a strange tide of format experimentation, so come aboard and ride these waves with us why dontcha!

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Show #182: Felidae

We learn a whole new definition of Le Chat Noir as we delve into the moggy murder mystery they call Felidae!

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Adapted from a best-belling book series by controversial German author Akif Pirincci, Felidae's matinee-friendly looking characters belie a pretty graphic thriller steeped in the murky atmosphere of a pulp novella. Does it have anything else going for it besides gruesome spectacle though? Frisky felines, misleading IMDB information and other pulp pussycats might help us pull it out of the bag!

Show #171: Edgar Allan Poe's Extraordinary Tales

The days grow shorter and the nights ever longer as the eeriest time of the year approaches, so why not bundle up with a good scary book? Or better yet why not a succession of frightening stories in animated form, such as Edgar Allan Poe's Extraordinary Tales?

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The writings of Edgar Allan Poe have been committed to film on countless occasions, his macabre short stories & poetry proving fertile ground for imaginative interpretation. Poe superfan and animator Raul Garcia took it upon himself to pay tribute to the man in this anthology piece featuring a stellar cast of horror film luminaries. Will this outing resurrect this ancient terror in the modern day? Or has the whole subject been done to death? Book talk, Halloween party plans and amazing restraint on Niall's part to not reveal the bizarre twist in The Murders In The Rue Morgue await if you dare!

Show #160: Rise Of The Guardians

We get a head start on the holidays, as in ALL holidays, with the calendar character compendium of Rise Of The Guardians!

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There was an idea, to bring together a group of public domain childhood mascots to see if they could be something more than the awkward mish-mash of having Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy together in one film sounds like it would be. Will this be a cacophonous tableau that doesn't need to work because kids will watch anything? (the approach that seems to be on the minds of a lot of folks behind Dreamworks' output). Or will it prove greater than the sum of its parts?
Accurate swearing, Tumblr nonsense and our picks for the hypothetical sequel await for your ears!

Follow Niall's Quixotic attempt at writing for 12 days straight about anime over on Juve-Niall Delinquency!

THE SHORT VERSION

Bad(ass) Santa

Fairy fetishes

Hard-boiled bunnies

Show #124: The BFG (1989)

Is this all just a dream? No! A delusional state brought on by this heat maybe but we can safely say that The BFG is definitely a real thing.

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The work of seminal children's author Roald Dahl has been adapted for the screen in live action form many a time but animated versions are few and far between. Surely the cartoon medium would be better suited for the fantastical imagery he conjured up and luckily such is the case here, a very humble production that captures all the goofy capering and macabre humour of his famous book. Boasting amazing design work and an immersion friendly pace it should stand as a good counterpoint to the handsomely made but frenetic big budget version courtesy of Steven Spielberg.

THE SHORT VERSION

Friendly giants

Not so friendly giants

Giant imagination

Show #93: I Was Having A Lovely Time Until My Mind Exploded

We travel to a world light years away in a galaxy of terror to seek new life and new civilisations on a Fantastic Planet, aka La Planete Sauvage!

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Based on the novel "Oms en serie" by Stefan Wul and brought to unsettling life by Rene Laloux and Roland Topor, Fantastic Planet is posited as an allegorical tale but succeeds better as a journey through a realm and a civilisation so incredibly far removed from our own. The brilliant production design and haunting visuals convey this alien nature beautifully, the brutal environment with its bizarre customs only thrown into starker relief by the similarities we can see to our own society.

THE SHORT VERSION

Education

Recreation

Local wildlife

Show #52: A Man Can Get Lonely

Back to our regular schedule with a much re-scheduled show on Aardman Animation's The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists!

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As usual when we newly crack into the works of a particular animation studio we start with their most recent effort. The Pirates In An Adventure With Scientists (a much better name than the American "The Pirates: Band Of Misfits") is pretty straightforward as far as narrative goes but more than makes up for it on the strength of it's visuals, production design, rapid fire gags and great performances from an excellent cast. To contrast all this positivity we have a grand old rant on our bafflement at the box office success of some terrible animated movies.

THE SHORT VERSION

Pirates!

Scientists!

A chimpanzee butler!