The MacGuffin

In honor of the release of The Five-Year Engagement, Spencer and Greg look back on Jason Segel’s career.

With another year well underway, do you know what time it is? Why, time for another Dr. Seuss adaptation, of course! This go-around, the studio that brought us the highly popular Despicable Me (2010) is back with The Lorax (2012), directed by Chris Renaud and Kyle Balda and written by Ken Daurio. Now, to be completely honest with you, this particular story was not one of the Dr. Seuss books that I held very close to my heart; I was more of a How The Grinch Stole Christmas, The Cat in the Hat, and Green Eggs and Ham kind of a kid. I was slightly aware of what the story was about—regarding an imaginary creature and his attempt to stop a number of trees from being chopped down—but other than that I have to admit I walked into the movie with a pretty clean slate. A number of recent Dr. Seuss film adaptations have turned out fairly unmemorable, to put it nicely—would this one actually break ground?

When I walked in to the theater to watch Megamind (2010), I was expecting to see a bad movie.  The latest animated feature from Dreamworks did not look very appealing, the designs of the characters weren’t anything to be excited about, trailers didn’t do anything to help, and it featured a concept that has been done before.  Needless to say, my expectations were a little less than average.  Perhaps that was a good thing, because to my surprise, I ended up watching a good, entertaining film.  Yes, I know, I’m still puzzled with the fact that I actually just wrote that previous sentence about this movie.

Spencer and John look back on the world of film during the summer of 2010, revisit Grindhouse in advance of the release of Robert Rodriguez’s Machete, and give their DVD picks of the week.

Spencer and John reflect on the careers of Steve Carell and Paul Rudd in advance of the release of Dinner For Schmucks, discuss independent DVD distribution companies, and finish the episode with their DVD picks of the week.

Spencer is joined by guest host Laremy from Film.com for a discussion about the future of 3D animation, next they talk about revisiting franchises a decade after the last movie was released, and close out with Laremy sharing some of his guilty pleasure movies.