Welcome to Show #27!
Dave is joined this time by stunt ninja Brian Brown, who’s quickly becoming a regular all over FarPoint Media. For this, you can lay thanks or blame at Summer’s feet… this week, Brian is thankful because Highlander is one of his all-time favorite movies.
Dave and Brian go over the highlights of the movie, and some lively discussion about what does and doesn’t work for the story and the myth. It’s much easier to ignore the continent-hopping accents and origins than it is to ignore some of the plot problems. The humor and the wonderful acting by Clancy Brown truly shoot this movie to higher levels of appreciation, as well as some of the more unique camera work.
The boys also talk about the mystical quality of the swords in both the movie and the TV series… where did they hide those blades all the time? Theory 1: the coats and jackets had tesseract pockets. Theory 2: it was in the script.
As for those other movies, Dave lets us know his feelings on those abominations to the original myth, and some other storyline rewriting that happened in the series. Truly, as far as the movies go, there really is only one.
Voicemail: A comment on John Keats being the inspiration for “Hyperion”; John in Seattle suggests “Big Trouble in Little China” as a pulp companion to “Buckaroo Banzai”; Kurt in St George equates “A Question of Conscience” to “Far-Seer” in terms of book covers that inspire odd casual reactions, and wants to know if any of the Ninjas have read “A Bridge of Birds”.
Listener Feedback: Give us some! You can leave comments here for the show, or at the Kick-Ass Mystic Ninjas Forums.
Movies and Shows mentioned:
Promo: Firefly Talk
Promo: ADPOV: Support TD-0013 in the Arizona MS Walk, April 14, 2007
Wikipedia: Highlander
Link: Official Highlander Message Boards
Link: Highlander Official Store
Not dead. Resting? I’ve...
Hey, David and Brian (and Summer and Joe, too!)-
You guys mentioned a couple of times that it seemed odd that Connor was a “bon vivant” in flashbacks, but was stodgy in present day.
This is actually one of my favorite aspects of the movie, becuase I think it told of the arc of MacLeod’s life. At first he’s confused, and still learning about his immortality. Eventually, he’s excited about it, and having fun exploring its potential. (one of my favorite lines: “I apologize for calling your wife a ‘bloated warthog,’ and I bid you good day!”) Eventually, he’s done playing, and he’s just tired.
Finished listeneing to the episode 27. Summer, the show was left in great hands. I agree with Wiz’s comments on Connor. With the coming of the Gathering Connor is coming to a major turning point in his life. Either he will die or claim the prize. connor has lived a long time and the idea of dying probably isn’t easy to accept and even if he does win he has no idea what it will mean. Another thing to remember is that the last few months probably haven’t been easy. With every immortal on the planet grabbing his sword and hightailing it to New York he’s taken quite a few head recently and the constant conflict is weighing heavily on him.
I loved the show, I particularly like Highlander, the first one I watched was Endgame.
By the way, there are two Highlander movies coming this year.
Highlander: The Source and an animated movie called Highlander: Vengeance
Dave & Brian,
Great job, even though you were Summer and Joeless.
Except for the rewriting history aspects of the second one, it did have some pretty decent action sequences. Still it was no where near the first movie. So, are we going to see Zardoz added to the potential future topic list?
One of the funniest movie reviews I ever read was by Roger Ebert, and it was a lambast of “Highlander 2-The Quickening.” One of his scathing comments was “If there is a far-off land where natives worship bad movies, this film must have a place of honor.” I have never made it past the subway fight scene-the movie is just too heinous. The original film and the tv series, however, are both fun, escapist fare.
Hello,
I’m just catching up on old shows and I listen to this show this morning. I also agree with Wiz’s comment. After all between WWII and the time of the movie we can imagine that all immortals have moved to the US for the big final battle and that there has been a lot of fighting in the last decades of Connor life. No so fun anymore to be an immortal.
As for the prize, I always thought that the prize was becoming a mortal… Like “now you’ve won the right to live a normal life”.