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This movie doesn’t really care if you enjoy watching it, and that made us enjoy watching it all the more.

The plot is really immaterial to the atmosphere and sense of foreboding it inflicts on you. A taxidermist with epilepsy is obsessed with control, since sometimes his body negates any control he has over his own self. This manifests in the fantasies he has of what the perfect crime would look like. After being invited on a hunting trip with his friend, he accidentally(?) shoots someone in the woods, which gets him involved in the criminal activities that someone was involved with, giving him the opportunity to put his money where his mouth is about being able to get away with the perfect crime.

The rest of the movie is seeing a man go from panicked to controlled and back again, as he tries to survive and prove his intellectual superiority, while always enduring the seizures that both steal his ability to act under his own power, but also give him the only sense of total freedom he has - when ‘the aura’ takes him, there are no choices left to him, and thus he’s utterly liberated.

It’s a weird movie. It’s a slow movie. It’s a ponderous movie, that moves at the speed of the protagonist. There are vast gulfs of silence. And yet I never ever felt bored, and I was always completely enthralled by what was happening. This is the last movie Fabian Bielinsky ever made, but it was the first he ever came up with, while he was still in film school, and in a way, it feels like his magnum opus. I’m grateful that I got to see it. Highly recommended.

NOTES AND WARNINGS

There’s violence against women in this movie. It’s “only” one slap, but bruises from more are shown at a certain point. It’s utterly condemned in the text, but fair warning. 

We go a lot into a mythological interpretation of the text in this discussion, since its ideas about fatalism and embracing the single path available to you are pretty clear. This isn’t the only way to read the film, but we figure it’s a pretty legitimate one. Heads up though, we definitely disappear up our asses for a bit, even if I feel it’s for good reason.

GIVE US YOUR MONEY

Our Patreon. We deserve your money. Any sort of reference to the movie I could make, no matter how jokey, as an implication of how else we’d get your money, would probably come off as a death threat, so I’m not going to do it.

There’s a cool fucking dog in this movie, give us your money.

(Recorded on May 11th, 2018.)

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It’s Lupe here with another episode of Nerd Heresy, featuring one of our favorite movies of all time, Nueve Reinas, AKA Nine Queens! Straight out of Argentina, home of the best basketball player of all time, Manu Ginobili, known for running a good hustle or two as well. It’s a small-time heist movie about two scam artists who get in over their head with the biggest scam of their lives when they get their hands on a perfect replica of some very expensive stamps, and the series of complications that come from them trying to get the ultimate payday. 

It’s a lot of talking, arguing, hustling, and clashes of morality and taste. If this was more popular, Juan and Marcos would be one your big gay Tumblr ships, simply from how perfect their interactions are. It’s a fun, fun, and entertaining movie, and it’s brought to you by Fabian Bielinsky, one of our favorite directors of all time, if just because he only made two movies before he died (RIP), and both of them are absolutely fantastic. More on that soon.

Thanks for listening! Tell a friend about our weird, eclectic podcast of random things that we like and don’t like. 

GIVE US YOUR MONEY

Our Patreon. We deserve your money, and this way, we don’t need to engage in a series of hustles, heists, and scams in order to get it.

(Recorded on May 10th, 2018.)

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The Woman Called Fujiko Mine is a show about being sick and tired of having roles forced on you. It’s a show about being done with men deciding who and what you are. It’s a show about reclaiming who you are in a world that keeps trying to interpret you as someone and something else.

It’s also the first Lupin story that’s written and directed by women. That’s not a coincidence. It’s also possibly my favorite Lupin story of all time, for that very same reason. Yamamoto Sayo has worked on plenty of fantastic stories, including Samurai Champloo and Michiko & Hatchin, and she was given a Lupin project with complete creative control.

What she did with that control was reclaim Fujiko Mine as a character who embodies the liberating fantasies of women, rather than simply the titillation of men. 

Watch this show.

NOTES AND WARNINGS

This episode gets real intense at the back end, when we get into one of the characters in the show and their relationship with dysphoria and desires to become a woman. It hit home really, really hard, and it’s a bit rough.

Content warnings for child abuse, sexual assault, dysphoria, and suicide. This show’s a rough ride, be ready for it.

GIVE US YOUR MONEY

Our Patreon. We deserve your money.

(Recorded on May 8th, 2018.)

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Turn-A Gundam is the best Gundam series unless you ask me tomorrow. It’s certainly in the top three for me, along with Zeta and the original. This is the culmination of everything that Tomino Yoshiyuki was doing with Gundam, and is the last product he considers to actually be Gundam, rather than something that’s commentating on or playing with Gundam. I would be forced to agree, after watching the whole thing, that this is the true end of Gundam.

We talk about the first half of this amazing series, and could have talked about it for far longer. Definitely worth a watch, but don’t expect a lot of giant robot fights. Turn-A Gundam is about the human cost of war, and every death matters.

GIVE US YOUR MONEY

Our Patreon. We deserve your money. Give us your money, or Tomino will kill another cyber-newtype in the second half of Turn-A Gundam.

(Recorded on May 8th, 2018.)

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Late to the party again! Lupe once more, commenting on how this series went to shit, except for the very very good fight scenes at the end. Look up the Achilles vs. Chiron and Siegfried vs. Karna fights on youtube or whatever, they’re worth watching even if you don’t give a shit about this show. Genuinely top-tier animation. Other than that, you’re good with missing this. There’s some other fun stuff, but nothing that escapes all of the garbage. 

We rant about the theology, and probably other things? The show brings up a lot of pretty boring Christian theology and fails to pay off on any of it. Our heroes espouse the glories of colonialist imperialism as a justification for opposing the villain. And other nonsense like that. 

GIVING US YOUR MONEY

Our Patreon. We deserve your money. Give us your money, or you’ll be plagued by the most bland of anime protagonists for the rest of your days.

(Recorded on May 1st, 2018. I remembered that we say it at the beginning of the episode.)

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(Lupe again, posting like ten minutes after the last one because I’m a terminal fuck-up but I need to catch up! We loved this cat movie! Did we give it an A-rank? Probably, if we remembered to rank it. Sometimes we don’t do that. I think A-rank is about right. The S-rank Ghibli movies are Spirited Away, Castle In The Sky, and Howl’s Moving Castle.

This is a fun one to watch for people who’ve already gone through a few of the Miyazaki films, though. The writer and director have different sensibilities, and they make a movie at once strange and familiar to what you’d usually expect from a movie produced by Studio Ghibli. 

I don’t know what Haru is thinking, though. If I’m getting a crush on any of these cats, it’s the fat fish thief.

CLARIFICATIONS

I’m not a furry.

GIVING US YOUR MONEY

Our Patreon. We deserve your money. Give us your money, or the mad cat king wins.

(I genuinely don’t remember when we recorded this, my bad. May 2018.)

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Sorry for the delay! Lupe here, on vacation, while Andre is on another kind of vacation where you work for eight-plus hours a day.

So yeah, this is gonna be pretty sloppy, apologies. Our ratings were a communal B-rank, I think? Around there. An enjoyable movie that would have been much more so without a big problem that we focus most of the episode on: a Mexican villain with a knife and a dearth of other characteristics. His stereotypical ferocity, violence, and savagery lend him a threat and intrigue that none of the other villains achieve, and yet his very existence is a reminder of where Latinos stand in the public consciousness. We were almost fine with it, until the unnecessary ending where he goes from being a violent murderer to being an attempted rapist as well. Both unnecessary (threatening to murder her daughter should have been more than enough to justify any violent fate he was dealt) and gross.

Also, no matter how fictionalized it is, violence against black folk, especially inflicted by mostly white characters while invading the black characters’ home, is a struggle to watch while still enjoying the film. We talk a lot about how media can influence people and real life, but we should also consider how real life influences how we consume media.

CLARIFICATIONS

We say ‘Knife Spic’ a lot in this episode. I should hope I don’t have to say that unless you’re a certain kind of person of a Latine persuasion, you shouldn’t be saying that shit. For what it’s worth, though: unless you are, don’t.

GIVING US YOUR MONEY

Our Patreon. We deserve your money. Give us your money.

(Recorded May 13th, 2018)

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The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

Andre Rank: — Lupe Rank: —

What with Brooklyn Nine-Nine being cancelled and un-cancelled in a day, we decided to look at cop film. We also look into the fact that copaganda is a real thing, from B99 to L&O to CSI and NCIS and Blue Bloods and SWAT. We may like these shows sometimes, but it’s important to understand the context they’re in. Our Patreon.

(Recorded May 13th 2018)

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Eega

Andre rank: S Lupe rank: S This is a fantastic romantic comedy about vengeance and protecting your loved ones, as well as the sheer amount of damage a fly can visit onto someone.

It’s hilarious, go watch it! On another note, Tumblr’s being weird about our posts and scheduling. I’m workin’ to fix it.

Our Patreon.

(Recorded May 3rd, 2018)

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Look, Kid Radd is one of the most amazing webcomics ever made.

We talk about other webcomics too, about the Megatokyos and the Ctrl-Alt-Deletes, and your Dominic Deegans, and a little about what we’re still reading today.

Our Patreon

(Recorded May 3 2018)

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Ultima, Ultima Online, and Shroud of the Avatar.

"I know when I eat corpse wax, I feel way more healthy." - Lupe

Ultima is video game history. We can't talk Ultima without talking about Richard Garriott, which we spend a few minutes on.

Richard Garriott, AKA Lord British, is the nerd every nerd thinks they are. He likes making interesting mechanics, and we tend to like them. He's kind of a nerd god. The old dead dude in Ready Player One is based on him, except Garriott is an actual person, rather than the bizarre character in the book.

Ultima games often  speak of you in the second person. You the player are the character in a lot of situations. You're also a furry, judging by some of the posters.

We talk about UO and what it is, and what Shroud of the Avatar is. There's a lot of discussion about crafting, and in the end, a discussion of falling damage.

Falling damage is the bane of Andre's existence.

Gendo meows from outside of the door, but we don't think the microphone picked him up much.

Andre isn't ready for a virtual pet. That's a level of commitment that's just a bit too far. Animal taming though, taming dragons, that might be worth it.

And a reminder, back in UO the most omnipotent PvP force is a buff, naked old wizard atop a pitch-black demon horse. And if you killed the man, you would then have to contend with the horse. They were also wrestling grandmasters. That's just what people got up to.

Shared at the end are a few secrets to killing Lord British.

If you find Andre in Shroud of the Avatar, you get a free fish!

FUCK-UPS Shamino isn't Garriott except where he's inspired by him some. Andre saw the guy read out a bit of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam on the fundraising stream for Shroud of the Avatar shortly after this episode.

Lupe started yawning at one point and never stopped ever.

Our Patreon.

(Recorded April 6th 2018)

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Fate/Apocrypha, Season One.

Andre: B Lupe: B-

Monkey's Paw Hunt, Europe Edition starts off.

We're half-invested in it. But it's got its issues. Like making us have to say 'Yggdmillenia.'

Namely with Astolfo's Sexual Assault Master (she dies at the start of season 2 at least. But christ that's uncomfortable.)

The farmer is the coolest, and he's not even a big part, because he's effectively a Goddamn satanist. It's beautiful.

Shirou Kotomine is cool as hell. We love him. We know the show is going to disappoint us theologically, as Fate hasn't exactly been great in having compelling arguments when it tries to do that (in stuff we've seen), but for the moment, he's super cool.

Every time Vlad fights Karna, it's like Frieza versus Goku, except Frieza transforms, and Goku just no-sells everything. Karna just looks completely not-challenged by the fight. And a lot of time is dedicated to these.

Mordred is our favorite. He's the best. THE BEST.

Jeanne d'Arc talks a big game about fairness and being a neutral arbiter and doesn't back it up with any actions at all.

Avicebron's position is also kinda weird. We're worried about where that's going, especially considering that the Yggdmillenia family is Nazis.

We also don't need Jack the Ripper in our life. Just at all. In anything. Ever again.

The history of England can go suck a fuck as far as Andre cares.

If you're into Fate, watch UBW. If you need something to watch, watch this instead of Zero, unless you just want badass fights and don't care about the philosophy, then Zero is fine. Our Patreon. (Recorded April 4th, 2018)

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If you like giant robots, just watch the original Mobile Suit Gundam. Do yourself a favor and just do it. The first three movies.

It’s a fantastic show, and it’s worth watching to give a firm grounding for the rest. This show helped instill in us a general disdain for works that didn’t appreciate human life. You don’t have to watch it first, but give it a shot. It’s still good.

It’s also part of the reason why we couldn’t deal with Pacific Rim: Uprising’s unironic embrace of child soldiers. 

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The new Battletech game is out today, and we're excited! The intro cinematic for the game that covers a bit of the history up to 3025 is around, and you can see some fun parts like Stefan Amaris shooting Richard Cameron in it.

Here's a short history of Battletech, both in-setting, and out-of-setting. We talk about each of the Great Houses and why the Capellans are the best of all of them, but any of them other than the Federated Suns are acceptable at least. Canopians best, of course.

Andre doesn't like the Clans, Lupe is alright with them but not their implementation.

Kerensky was a fuck, and nobody liked him for a reason.

Battletech's history is full of racism because of course it is, it's a tabletop property from the 80s, but at least it didn't have Heroic Nazis. Over time it gets a bit better, but it's still not Great. Space Mussolini is still there, in the Periphery, waiting.

If you want to lose your time in a wiki, there's Sarna. Andre has spent DAYS on Sarna.

We could have an entire episode where we discuss armaments and particular machines. We might do that after we're done playing the Battletech game. Which we're probably doing right now.

FUCK-UPS

Andre says the Warhammer is 85 tons. That's not correct. Warhammer is 70 tons. The Marauder is 75 tons.

Andre forgets when the Age of War was. Remembering happens, but yeah.

We say that someone involved in Robot Jox (1989) was involved in the creation of the Clans in Battletech. That was some bullshit we heard, and upon fact-checking, is absolutely incorrect. But they are very close. Halderman made the story for Robot Jox though, isn't that weird?

Our Patreon.

(Recorded April 6th, 2018)

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We take a moment to mourn Erin Popovich, as even though we don’t know her at all, we still feel her loss. And after that bummer, which returns at the end, we talk about Andre’s Dumb Bracket, and the teams that made the playoffs this year. In summary: First Rount WESTERN CONFERENCE Rockets beat Minnesota in 4. OKC beats the Jazz in 6. Pelicans beat the Blazers in 6. Warriors beat the Spurs in 5 (We recorded this before today’s game. I’d say we’re getting swept, but I can’t go back on it.) EASTERN CONFERENCE Raptors beat Wizards in 6. Pacers beat Cavs in 7. (Wishful thinking, We love LeBron, but we don’t think he can actually carry them.) Sixers beat the Heat in 6. (Embiid just too good.) Celtics over Bucks in 5. (This would make some people I like very sad.) Second Round Rockets sweep OKC in 4. Warriors beat the Pelicans in 5. Pacers beat Toronto in 6 (Expecting Toronto to choke.) Sixers beat Boston in 7 (This would be a pretty great series to watch.) Conference Finals Rockets beat the Warriors in 7 in some of the finest basketball ever seen. Sixers beat the Pacers in 5 games. I’m not sure how, but trust the process. Finals Houston Rockets win in 5 over the Philadelphia ‘76ers. Houston is UTTERLY INSUFFERABLE for the next decade, but they deserve it.

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Into the Breach is a puzzle game about giant robots fighting giant robots. It’s dressed up like a strategy game, but given the way things work, it’s much more puzzle-y in execution. We both give it high marks because it’s fantastic, it doesn’t have the child soldiers problem Pacific Rim: Uprising did, and it actually acknowledges that people exist in little ways. That’s more than most things do. Give it a play, and give us a listen! Our Patreon. (Recorded March 29, 2018)

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Cyberpunk’s big. We touch on some of the cyberpunk stuff we watched while growing up, and its commonalities, and how the genre’s shifted a bit. Further discussion is available on our Patreon. It’s important to note that it’s a weird commonality in cyberpunk, especially cyberpunk anime, seems to be women exploding. That’s fucked up, right? We didn’t realize it until halfway through this episode, too. Armor Hunter Mellowlink doesn’t, though. It’s pretty cool. You should check that one out, though it’s hard to find. (Recorded: March 30th, 2018)