Podcast Episode 50

Thor's 50: The Thorscars: like the Oscars, but absolutely ridiculous

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Thor, Bladr, Loki, Frayja and the artist currently known as Hiemdale discuss the Oscars and talk about the actual best movies which came out last year, and the best movies that didn't come out last year but they saw for the first time. Longer episode this week because we cover a lot more topics than usual.

The official Thorscar winners for the first annual Pantheon Movie Awards are declared at about an 1 hour and 23 minutes into the episode.

Wriite in with your thoughts on the Oscars and this year in movies to HourOfThunder (at) gmail

Also! write in via email or call 754-444-THOR (754-444-8467) (same as a regular call to Florida, United States) to vote for the Who Did It Better questions which Loki posed as an awesome category/ question to the fans. (They are discussed by Loki in the second half of this episode, and are also printed below for your convenience)

¿Who Did it Better?:
-----The Matrix is in your dreams:
Inception (I know, 2010) vs The Adjustment Bureau

-----Wedding Pregame:
Hangover (or Hangover II) vs Bridesmaids

-----The "Arrangement":
No Strings Attached vs Friends With Benefits

-----Motherfucking Narration:
Born to Be Wild 3D vs African Cats

-----Found Footage Horror:
Paranormal Activity 3 vs Justin Beiber: Never Say Never

¿Who Did it Better: To the Wayback Machine!
------Crazy Girls Have All the Fun:
Sucker Punch (2011) vs Return to Oz (1985)

------It's Graduation, Get the Girl!:
Take Me Home Tonight (2011) vs Can't Hardly Wait (1998)

------Convention-al Misadventure:
Paul (2011) vs Galaxy Quest (1999)

------Dudley Moore versus Russel Brand:
Arthur (2011) vs Arthur (1981)

------Kurt Russel versus some dame:
The Thing: 2011 vs 1982)

------The Getaway Driver/ "Rules, I like that":
Drive (2011) vs The Transporter (2002)

---

This these words come out of our mouths: Oscars, The Artist, Jonah Hill, Money Ball, Aaron Sorken, Fright Night, Fright Night 3D, Winnie the Pooh, The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Transformers 3D, Transformers: The Dark of the Moon, Bellflower, Harold and Kumar 3D, Inception, Adjustment Bureau, the red carpet, oscar pre-show, dresses, boobs, immaturity, Joan Rivers, Third Eye Blind, Blue, Third Eye Blind's second album, the dark knight rises, Ad campaigns, dick jokes, Gieco, caveman, man of obvious intelligence.

Deep Space Nine, Trails and Tribble-ations Progressive, Flo, Hamsters, HamStars, Party Rock Anthem, Party Rock, LMFAO, Kia, Best Ad series, Old Spice, Bonnie and Clyde, An American President ,The Man Your Man Could Smell Like, isaiah mustafa, Wolverine and the X-men, x-men skyrim, wolverine, Cyclops, DC’s New 52, the best comic book relaunch in 2011, Grant morrison, 2007 Oscars, Jon Stewat, Once, The Swell Season, Falling Slowly, 80th Acadamy Awards, Glen Hansard, Markéta Irglová, People who are nice. Irish People, Scream 4, Scream 3, A Woman in Black, Daniel Radcliffe, mary marcy may marlene, Elizabeth Olsen.

And! Many more things that I'm not typing because my fingers were just eating by tribbles.

This week's cover photo via: http://firewireblog.com/2009/03/19/marvel-celebrates-wolverine%E2%80%99s-35th-anniversary-with-variant-covers-and-fine-art/

The two best things in visual music of the year.

I really love the Kia Soul ad which has their anamorphic hamster mascots dance to party rock anthem.

Char over at Because A Fire  first made me aware of this ad a few weeks ago. and if you have read this blog before, or listened to the Hour of Thunder Podcast you may be aware that I:
1. Love cars
2. have loved Kia since their ridiculous almost anarchic early 90's ads
3. Think the Kia soul is finally a car from Kia as cool as their ads.
4. Own hamsters because someone abandon them over night in the mailroom of my old apartment. (My friend Allison coined the term "Dumpster Hamsters" after the dumpster baby episode of Always Sunny.*
5. Think LMFAO is an awesome bad with music videos that are somehow even more fun than their music.

This video somehow combines everything in the above list into one minute of pure awesome:



File this one under "commercials which where clearly written to market a product specifically at me."




The other best thing to happen this year involving music being played over video footage, was They Might Be Giants music video for "Can't Keep Johnny Down" which was 3 minutes of Rip Torn bear knuckle boxing:




Rip Torn music video via Filmdrunk.com


Footnote(s):

*I named the largest of the hamster "Richard Hamster" in honor of Richard Hammond, the sexiest and shortest host of Top Gear.

Richard is the one on the left.
(Because A Fire also made me aware of this drawing. which was created by this lady, whose site has many other awesome drawings you should check out.)

Ka-Ka-Ka-Kia Ka-Ka-Ka-Kia Pet

My absolute favorite commercial from this year's Super Bowl was the ad for the Kia Sorento. Though I have to admit I've had a soft spot for Kia ads since I was in middle school. This was back in the late 1990's when Kia only had two car models, the Sephia and the Sportage. I was trying to find the ads I remember from back then, but youtube failed me. As did google image search when I tried to find a kia promo photo I remember being in their booklet at an auto show which depicted a guy driving in the High Occupancy Vehicle lane with 3 blow-up dolls as passengers sticking his tongue out at the people stuck in traffic in the regular lanes, while visible behind his car are the lights of a cop car approaching.

Actually after describing that ad, I'm not surprised Kia has made an effort to keep it off the internet. But that was the whole thing I loved about Kia ads, was they weren't trying to sell on the coolness of the car. They admitted, "Our cars are just average looking, but isn't this commercial awesome and hilarious!"

Though I couldn't find the ads that I remembered, I did find a funny one I hadn't seen before from this same time period. Its for the Kia Sophia, which may have been the blandest looking car of the last 15 years. The only car I can think of off hand that comes close to it in terms of sheer boring is the Saturn Ion. The front of the Ion was described by Automobile Magazine Design Analyzer Robert Cumberford as "being only significant it that it is entirely featureless, except for the droop at the bottom of the head lights which forms sad tired eyes."



The Sephia was just as boring, but not in such an amusingly descriptive way. I assume Cumberford never published a design analysis of the Sephia, as he probably kept falling asleep immediately after sitting down to look at the car. How uncool was did Kias look in the late 1990's? In the Dave Barry novel Big Trouble, two teenagers have this exchange: "Why did your dad buy a Kia Sportage?" "Because right now he feels like a total loser, so he thinks he deserves a loser's car."

Kia overcame there cars looking like total dork mobiles by making ads that focused on comedy instead of shots of their car doing doughnuts through the Mojave Desert. I'm not sure when this Kia Sephia ad is from but they stopped making the Sephia in the year 2000 so this ad is definitely from the era I was talking about:



This ad, especially in the second half, does a great job making fun of the luxury car ads from this same era which consisted of this same, guy standing next to a car setup. Except those luxury care ads consisted of the actor describing how the car was everything you ever wanted out of life. Since the Kia Sephia is obviously not what anybody wants out of life, the ad is not only parodying that ad style it is coming pretty close to making fun of the car itself as well. That is what I loved about the old Kia ads, they basically sold the idea that Kia must be awesome and ballsy to make ads this goofy, and made you want to be a part of a car company that was willing to do that.


I think the Kia Super Bowl ad really did a great job of continuing that tradition, but on a higher budget and on featuring a car people might actually buy out of choice instead of because its cheap and has a 10 year warranty.

I have to be some where, so I will do a second post actually discussing the Kia Sorento Super Bowl ad on Monday.


What will Danny say about Kia's superbowl ad?
Will there be as many typos in monday's post as their normally are on this blog?
Where did Danny have to go to?
Did he perhaps have to go because he is coming to your house to sneak up behind you as you are reading this right now?

Find all this and more on Monday!

There will now be a medium long intermission.