Video Games, Comics, Movies, Music… We cover it all.
July 9, 2017 Leave a comment
Featuring John “MusiM” & Randy “Splooie”
Music by MusiM. Buy the music at musim.bandcamp.com
This week we discuss: Dead or Alive VR, Shadow or Mordor, Baby Driver, Glow, and a little Warframe.
Find us @CarouselPodcast or email us at CarouselPodcast at gmail.com with questions, topics or comments!
December 11, 2015 Leave a comment
It’s a one on one episode this time, featuring John “MusiM” & Scott “Artisan002”
Music by MusiM. Buy the music at musim.bandcamp.com
This episode we discuss Creed (the movie, not the band), Rocky (the film, not the picture show), Darkest Dungeon, Steam Link, The Steam Controller, Divinity: Original Sin, Warframe, Batman, Superman, Batman v Superman, and really provide the voltage for this DC talk.
September 29, 2015 Leave a comment
Featuring Jake “TheOtherJZee”, Joey “Nebula”, John “MusiM”
Music by MusiM. Buy the music at musim.bandcamp.com
We discuss The Wolf Among Us, Metal Gear Solid V, Joe Hill, Locke and Key, Stephen King, Punisher, Elektra, Jessica Jones, The Mist, Dark Tower, & Head Full Of Ghosts.
September 15, 2015 1 Comment
Featuring Jake “TheOtherJZee”, Joey “Nebula”, John “MusiM”, Scott “Artisan002”
Music by MusiM. Buy the music at musim.bandcamp.com
We’re back and we’re biweekly at 8 pm Central! We discuss Z Nation, Hannibal, Contracted, State of Emergency, Stakeland, The Girl with all the Gifts, Maggie, The Last of Us, Life After Beth, Constantine, Devil’s Advocate, John Wick, Keanu Reeves, Point Blank, Supernova, Heroes of the Storm, Moba, Warframe, Destiny, Rocket League, Twisted Metal, Toy Soldiers War Chest, Assassin’s Creed, Nova Blitz, Hearthstone, Fract OST, STellar 7, Saints Row, Alias, Teen Titans, and AKA Jessica Jones.
July 9, 2014 3 Comments
I feel basically every spectrum of the emotional wheel on this, but The Carousel is stopping. Maybe it will start again, maybe it won’t.
I’ve really lost any ambition behind it. Sure its always a blast having friends over for concentrated art discussion with an audience we can interact with to an extent. And I’ve made a ton of irreplaceable internet friends and even meet a few of them in real life. But this podcast is just too much of a pain in the ass for me to do anymore currently. The scheduling problems, the hour or two it takes to edit and post, the irregularity caused by the scheduling problems, and the fact that no one’s opinion on a video game or movie really matters that much if at all. Like how I snuck that last one in there?
I’m just tired and I have too much to do. And I’m not the only one as is obvious from the scheduling problems. Between a job that I have to work 50 hours a week on to an album that I’m incredibly excited about releasing to Suzy’s upcoming con schedule, there just isn’t much time. Or money for that matter. Too much of my equipment is dying. 1 Rhodes NT1 mic is dead with my M-Audio not far behind. The mixer we use is slowly but surely dying as all the audio cut in and outs on the recording is telling.
I know, I know, I’m not supposed to be this personable on the net. Just stick to the opinion on the games and movies and stuff. But that’s really not me. I’m a relatively open guy. And the reality is being an adult is the worst thing that can possibly happen to anybody.
There will probably be things posted on the site. And the Facebook community is still freakin’ awesome! Of course part of what I love about the Facebook community is it basically has nothing to do with us, its just a bunch of fans sharing news and predictions.
Anyway, I wish you all well and with any luck The Carousel will return in some form. I might even make the audio version of that last one we recorded a month ago. But for now, The Carousel has stopped turning. Thank you for all the you’ve spent with us.
June 3, 2014 1 Comment
It was around 1984 when I first caught the rerun of Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends titled “A Firestar is Born”. You’d be forgiven for not knowing who Firestar is. She was made up for the TV show and later added into the comics as a Hellion (Hellfire Club) and later inducted into the New Warriors where she hooked up with Vance Astro, leader of the Guardians of the Galaxy before Star Lord. Well, I mean before in that he was in comics leading the Guardians before Star Lord but it was actually in the future so it was after Star Lord. Getting side tracked.
The point is, this was my introduction to the X-Men. Cyclops, Storm, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Professor X, they all showed up. Juggernaut was the enemy. Wolverine had a voice actor who thought he was Australian or something, got his claws stuck in a brick wall. I wouldn’t know until a decade or two later that while I was enjoying this cartoon, in the comics Kitty Pryde was finding her place on the team under Storm’s tutelage, Wolverine was dealing with the fallout of his wedding to his biggest comic book love Mariko, Rogue was trying to get the team to trust her (after all she used to work for Mystique and put Ms Marvel in a coma), and Professor X was about to leave the X-Men to hook up with the love of his life Lilandra in space (thus leaving the X-Men for quite some time).
There isn’t a point in my life where the X-Men weren’t. Even when I stopped buying comics in high school, I re-read the ones I already owned, hunted down a copy of Pryde of the X-Men, and watched recorded episodes of the 90’s Fox X-Men TV show. So when I say the X-Men movies are really not the X-Men to me, I hope you understand the weight.
The X-Men at their essence are a team of rejects, of social and racial outcasts. The most ethnically diverse team the majority of the time out there. To see them reduced to their powers in a Wolverine support squad in the movies has been heart breaking. The parts the Avengers movies get right is the characters, their flaws, the things that make them happy, their costumes, their essence is still there. X-Men doesn’t have that.
I wish I could say Days of Future Past was a step in the right direction but it clings onto those 90’s leather outfits and Cyclop’s “Hey Logan, stay away from my girl” mentality. Do you know anything about the original Days of Future Past? Do you know about Nimrod, Wolverine’s death (along with most of the other future X-Men including Franklin Richards whom Fox owns the rights to), and that it starred a strong female protagonist named Kitty Pryde? Fox and their writers were afraid you, the audience, couldn’t handle a Kitty Pryde lead movie. They were afraid without Wolverine on the front poster no one would show up despite how well First Class did on a meager budget, duct taped together as it was.
Personality wise, this movie missed the mark for me on almost all counts. The largest affront was carried over from First Class which was Beast. They took away all his confidence in literature and the literature romantic and only left his insecurities. Now just a thug to carry and punch for the professor while looking uneasy and nervous.
But then they add in the old Singer cast with all their problems. Bobby aka Iceman with the personality of Cannonball. Kitty Pryde who… well let’s be frank, she doesn’t have a personality or background or story other than being Bobby’s girlfriend in the movies. Storm who is Halle Barry with a bad haircut making funny faces. Colossus who can turn into metal. Professor X who cares desperately what Logan thinks of him most. Magneto who enjoys saying “Charles”. And Wolverine who enjoys reflecting on the first 3 X-Men movies that launched Hugh Jackman’s career. They really should have been named Wolverine, Wolverine 2 United, and Wolverine 3 The Last Stand. Wolverine whose greatest movie love was Jean Gray. Or Silverfox, that woman he married once. Wolverine the rebel who doesn’t actually rebel against any of his teammates in the movie. Matter of fact aside from disagreeing with mutant cures, sentinels, and killing off the human race is actually a pretty agreeable guy in the movies.
And then the new characters, we can’t forget those! Blink, Warpath, Sunspot, and Bishop who have powers and who Fox hope will make you think the movie is ethnically diverse even though all the characters with backgrounds and multiple lines of dialog are white. Trask who is in the movie for at least 5, maybe even 10 minutes. And then there’s Ink who is not a mutant, nor does he have any lines. And unnamed black guy in the Vietnam camp who has a sick stare (he makes people sick by looking at them). That has to be… I dunno, maybe they retooled Pestilence into something completely different? The internet says its Spyke but Spyke isn’t really in the comics and grows bone spikes.
Magneto and Xavier’s carry overs from First Class received the best treatment due to First Class being the best movie representation of them. Magneto and Xavier were friends in the comics prior, even if it was a retooling of continuity after the fact. There are always divergences (Xavier was pretty much always bald, they turned Magneto into a baby once and then grew him up be 30 or so) but the essence of these characters in First Class was pretty spot on. No Magneto didn’t have a revenge quest against Sebastian Shaw but if the comics Magneto did have a revenge quest, it might have looked like that.
Fast forward to Days of Future Past and now we get a junky, whiny Xavier. Look, I’ll be the first to tell you Xavier has always been an asshole. He militarized teenagers for years (not to mention had a sexual thing for them). He worked to change the populace’s mind but when it came down to an individual he wasn’t above re-writing their brain. He abandoned his actual children at every turn. Basically the only ones close to him he ever seemed to treat with any decency was Lilandra and Magneto. But a junky? And on top of that a junky for a mutant cure? Yeah no.
Magneto was Magneto though, through and through. A man of conviction. A man whose manipulations were subtle and not the work of an evil mastermind, but of a private man. Magneto who has a plan all to his own and will act with little if any remorse. Oh sure in the comics, Eric has his spells of doubt. These are his good guy periods typically when he’ll lead New Mutants or join the Hellfire Club in an attempt to benefit the X-Men. But overall, he is sure of his place. Magneto is why I liked Days of Future Past the movie at all.
The Sentinels themselves didn’t matter. They were just a clock for the film in an attempt to add tension. I didn’t realize Kitty Pryde was sitting there with Wolverine in the future until midway through the movie when Wolvie had a bad dream and cut her. I’m not so sure the Sentinels should have mattered. Trask should have mattered but he didn’t. He was just another piece of machine. They kept him alive though, possibly to make a Master Mold or Nimrod in future films. Or reveal him to be the shape changing Apocalypse, would make sense with all those dead mutants mentioned.
And there’s Mystique who really isn’t anything like her comic counter part. She was a good character in First Class. In Days of Future Past she was what everyone was after and not much else. Could that have been fixed by staying true to her comic self? No idea. I do however find it funny that the movies made her comic outfit look modest. Now what really would have been nice would be if she had recruited those mutants she saved to be her Mutant Liberation Front or Freedom Force. Mystique is a strong willed leader. I hear movies are afraid of those qualities in females.
So no, I didn’t love Days of Future Past. As a time travel movie, it came off as Singer celebrating his previous X-Men movies. As a period piece, it was okay. The Kennedy part was idiotic and poorly written, which in my opinion undermined the credits teaser because now every mystery in history has the same answer – a mutant did it. But I didn’t love Days of Future Past and despite its premise and namesake I will be extremely surprised if it stands the test of time.
May 18, 2014 Leave a comment
Featuring Joey “Nebula”, John MusiM, and Sam “the Red Shirt”.
Music by MusiM. Buy the music at musim.bandcamp.com
Join us as we chat about Shadowrun Returns, Titanfall, Borderlands the Pre-Sequel, Thomas Was Alone, Arkham City, Hornblower, Birds of Prey, Death of the Family, Game of Thrones, Ripper Street.
April 6, 2014 Leave a comment
Livestream: http://www.twitch.tv/carouselpodcast/b/517434125
Featuring Joey “Nebula”, John MusiM, and Ryan.
Music by MusiM. Buy the music at musim.bandcamp.com
Join us as we chat about Captain America The Winter Soldier, Veronica Mars, The Lego Movie, Infamous Second Son, South Park the Stick of Truth, Facebook buying Occulus, and The Room.
April 5, 2014 Leave a comment
Featuring Addie “Addie”,Joey “Nebula”, and John MusiM.
Music by MusiM. Buy the music at musim.bandcamp.com
And we do a full on spoiler cast of Joe Hill’s comics series Locke and Key
March 2, 2014 Leave a comment
Livestream: http://www.twitch.tv/carouselpodcast/b/507523692
Featuring Joey “Nebula” aka “Big Daddy Joe”, John MusiM, Scott “Artisan002”, and Stretch.
Music by MusiM. Buy the music at musim.bandcamp.com
Join us as we chat about Ex-Heroes, Green Arrow, Lego the Movie, Rick and Morty, Anchorman 2, Deadpool, Titanfall, Payday 2, Anno 2070, and Dinosaurs.
because we're awesome sometimes.
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