Movie Review: The Way

So, I’ve decided to try to cut a few minutes out of the podcast by limiting the movies I talk about on the podcast.  I will still probably pull one recent DVD release to talk about that I think is interesting but considering I can watch anywhere from 2 to 7 movies a week, I figured the Tumblr would be a good way to talk about all of the extra things I’ve watched that aren’t extremely podcast worthy.



The first of these is the movie The Way.  This movie was a limited release in theaters in October 2011.  As podcast listeners probably know, 2011 was one of those years where I literally tried to watch pretty much everything released in theaters for the entire calendar year, whether in the theaters or later on DVD release.  I’m also trying to do the same thing for 2012 (and hopefully onward as time permits).  To prove how insane I am this is my 173rd movie watched from 2011.  I have two more on my list (Sherlock Holmes 2 and Arthur Christmas) to end it at a nice even 175.  Enough about my insanity, let’s go on to The Way.

The Way was written and directed by Emilio Estevez and stars his father Martin Sheen.  This is the sequel to D2: The Mighty Ducks and revolves around the character of Tom, played by Martin Sheen, who is a California Doctor that unexpectedly gets a phone call that his only son, played by Emilio Estevez (Charlie Sheen does not exist in that universe, which is awesome), was killed on the first day of doing this 2-month long walk called the Camino de Santiago. Tom goes to France to pick up his son’s belongings and instead of going back to California, he decides to complete the walk that his son started, sprinkling his son’s ashes along the way at memorable points.

I really enjoyed this movie far more than I thought I would.  This was a powerful and inspirational story that didn’t rely on beating you over the head with a religious theme. There were some undertones but considering how the walk is steeped in religious iconography, it could have gone more that way (pun intended) but instead focused on the characters.  Martin Sheen gave a tremendous performance and the supporting cast of trekkers, who were all doing the walk for different reasons, were all were interesting and provided rich, deep characters to surround Tom.

I would whole heartily recommend this flick if you’re looking for a movie that warms your soul and feel like backpacking across Europe but are far too lazy to do so.

Episode 15 Notes

Here are the official show notes for Episode 15: Don’t Judge a Book by it’s Toilet.  Anthony starts off the show talking about going to see Dave Coulier do stand-up and what was his mystery drink.


Movies:

This week in movies we talk about all of the movies we’ve watched this week including:  Anthony seeing Katy Perry: Part of Me for the third time, Brent seeing The Dark Knight Rises again,  Moonrise Kingdom, and Silent House.

Random Words From Brent

It’s clear there hasn’t been much of an update with this Tumbls recently.  Why is this?  I can’t say for sure.  It’s some sort of combination of laziness and trying to figure out what to write about that would appeal to the few individuals that read this.  All while simultaneously trying to make this interesting to outside parties in hopes of branding our podcast and increasing our audience.

The one thing that we knew going into the podcasting universe was it was going to be hard to make a dent in the current landscape.  This has more than proven to be true.  It’s a world populated by Ricky Gervais, Kevin Smith, Adam Carolla, Chris Hardwick, amongst millions of others.  This isn’t to say I’m comparing ourselves to those individuals in any way (we are far inferior), but those are people with a built-in audience, who can start a podcast and have thousands of listeners instantly.

We knew going in it was going to be a difficult to attract new listeners to a podcast done by basically two normies. Don’t get it twisted, I’m extremely happy that anybody listens at all.  We live in an era where entertainment options are at an abundance and for anybody to be able to spend an hour and a half every week to listen to our podcast is amazing.  I truly couldn’t be more grateful and it kind of blows my mind that anybody would listen to it at all.  That’s not saying anything about the quality of our podcast, I really enjoy it, I just have low self-esteem.

So, I’ve been thinking about possible events that we could do to try to increase our audience.  Going the Geekdrome approach and having a Kevin Smith-level talent as a guest would be the “easy” way of increasing listeners, of course getting them onto the podcast would be a much more difficult ordeal.  I believe we’ve shamelessly plugged the podcast on our own respective twitter accounts that anybody that follows us on their has made up their mind.  I think there are a few internal tweaks we could do to make it more appealing to listen to and possibly having more frequent guests (finding anyone willing has been difficult) to change the dynamics could help increase word of mouth.  But we need a few more mouths in the first place and trying to figure those out have been a challenge for just two normal dudes who love movies, TV, comics, video games and food.

This entire blog may sound like a bitch session but it’s far from it. I know we were never going to be international megastars from doing this podcast, but I’ve always strived to make an enjoyable product that anyone can listen to or read and enjoy.  I love our podcast.  I love doing our podcast and it’s probably the highlight of my week.  I love to watch movies, watch TV, read comics, play video games, and eat food.  To have an open forum to talk about it with my best friend on a weekly basis is fantastic.  Wish we would have started this years ago.

So that gets me to the Tumbls.  I think the Tumbls could really help the podcast reach a larger audience if we write about the right things.  I’ve kind of gone back and forth on this.  Do I make it an extended version of the podcast?  Just use it for show notes?  Do I just post about really good deals on Amazon that relate to the podcast?  Do I talk about all forms of new media coming out and recommend which things to check out?  Should I use it for news items? Should I post 1 thing a day?  27 things a day?  Should we do less movie/comic reviews and throw some on the Tumblr instead? Or just scrap it altogether?  I guess, I’m asking out to anyone that possibly read all this to help us.  What would you like to see us do?  Which direction do you want to see the podcast go in?  Any constructive criticism, praise would be acceptable too, for us would be greatly appreciated.

I’ve wanted to write about the world that AB Conversation covers for a long time.  I did a few reviews in the high school newspaper, a Mario Kart Wii review in my college newspaper, and a ton of writing on the Internet about wrestling figures way back (including working on the biggest wrestling news site on the planet and being the editor and main writer on the best site dedicated to action figure news).  My biggest regret was not doing more writing at that time and trying to make a go at writing instead of settling for accounting.  Not that I’m bad at accounting, I’m actually ridiculously good at my job, but there are a lot of times where it’s just not that interesting.  I would much rather be sitting at home watching a bad movie and writing about it then entering payroll or purchase orders.  I do want to use this Tumblr to expand on this desire and hopefully it’ll get those writer juices flowing once more.  I just need to figure out the right track of things to talk about and I will do that.  That’s where I need some guidance.

Thank you!

Episode 14 Show Notes

Here are the official show notes for Episode 14: Hey Fred Willard - “Wha Happened?”

Movies:

This week in movies we talk about THE DARK KNIGHT RISES! We also discuss The Three Stooges, Lockout, and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.

Episode 13 Show Notes

Here are the official show notes for Episode 13: This Episode Smells Like Box.  The show starts off with discussion of Anthony’s new web short, starring the infamous Mexitwins.



Movies:

This week in movies we talk about all of the movies we’ve watched this week including: Moonrise Kingdom, Magic Mike, and Casa de mi Padre.

Episode 12 Show Notes

Here are the official show notes for Episode 12: Mexitwin Powers Activate. In which we recount our Chicago trips this week; Anthony meeting his online Mexitwin pals and Brent seeing Tenacious D.




Movies:

This week in movies we talk about all of the movies we’ve watched this week including: The Amazing Spider-Man, Katy Perry: Part of Me, Jeff Who Lives At Home, and We Need To Talk About Kevin.