The Father Of All Christmas Movie Nights

On Friday we had our Special Christmas Movie Night and I've finally got the will power together to write about it. Three children's films about Santa Claus: Miracle on 34th Street, Santa Claus the Movie and The Santa Clause.

Miracle On 34th Street (1994, Dir: Les Mayfield) is a remake of a 1947 film of the same name, and stars Richard Attenborough as Kris Kringle, a white haired man who replaces a drunk Santa Claus and goes on to be the best Cole's store Santa ever. There's a little girl who is the daughter of the marketing manager of the sore who doesn't believe in Santa, so they try the experimental method: she asks Kringle for a father, a house and a brother. Meanwhile the evil store across the road uses every means, both fair and foul... actually, they just use foul means, which is probably why they're the evil store. Frankly, the boss of the evil store ("Shopper's Express") doesn't seem to have a very good handle on marketing, or even on how capitalism works. He seems more interested in destroying his competitors than, say, making money. Meanwhile, after Kringle advises a customer that they can get a certain toy cheaper elsewhere and they swear undying loyalty to Cole's, Cole's come up with a compromise: If they don't have it, they'll track it down for you. It's a great bit of PR, and the best part is, they didn't have it, so they wouldn't have sold it anyway.

Still, enough economics. Let's get to the heart of this film: the court case. Heckler, who has some experience of being in court, was surprised by the events in the courtroom, and most importantly by the fact the court was sitting a all on Christmas Eve; in this country judges are too work-shy to hold court on Christmas Eve (exception: to my knowledge magistrates will hold hearings to determine bail). There's much amusing evidence (a reindeer as a witness; the prosecutor's son identifies Kringle as Santa Claus etc.) Eventually the little girl bribes the judge with a $1 bill, which happens to have "In God We Trust" circled on it, and he makes this the slightly incoherent precedent for ruling that Santa Claus exists, and also exists in the person of Kringle.

Anyway, kid's film based on a 1947 film. I've not seen either film before, but after about 10 minutes I started describing the changes each character would go through until Beretta told me to stop. But the predictability is part of it's charm, and despite everyone getting their Christmas wishes at the end, and a court ruling to that effect, the question over whether Santa Claus exists or if he just exists as the Spirit of Christmas in all of us is left open-ish. 8/10 Humbugs (That's good by the way).

No such ambiguity in Santa Claus The Movie (1985, Dir: Jeannot Szwarc); we begin with the Santa Claus origin story. A big jolly bearded guy called Claus who likes giving gifts to kids on Christmas Eve finds that he's been prophesied to become a big jolly bearded guy who gives gifts to all the kids on Christmas Eve, only some elves will make the toys and look after the reindeer and stuff[1]. All goes well until the 20th century when an elf called Patch (Dudley Moore) tries to automate the toymaking. All the toys fall apart and the bratty kids unfortunate children all burst into tears. Patch leaves and decides to make a toy so good that Santa Claus will have faith in him again. He falls in with an evil toymaker[2], who, by coincidence, is the uncle of our female child lead, the only friend of our male child lead, a streetkid who has been befriended by Santa Claus.

Of course the evil toymaker makes Patch's toys explosive, but eventually good triumphs and evil is punished and Christmas is safeguarded forever hooray! Anyway, pleasant enough, but I saw it back when I was 12? 13? something like that and felt it was for younger kids. 4/10 Humbugs (disappointing)

Finally The Santa Clause (note final "e") (1994 Dir:John Pasquin). I'll note that I voted for some Muppet Christmas nonsense before every film, but no, Heckler had to keep on with the theme. Tim Allen is giving his son a rubbish Christmas, when he scares Santa Claus, who falls of his roof and dies. Allen fails to read the smallprint, gets into the sleigh, dresses in the clothes travels to the North Pole, delivers all the gifts etc. etc. His son loves this. His ex-wife thinks he's going crazy and has Allen's visitation rights terminated[3]. Allen grows a beard and gets fat. Eventually he convinces even his ex-wife and her new partner, a psychiatrist, he is Santa Claus by giving them the gifts they didn't get when they were children the Christmas they stopped believing (The Dating Game board game and an Oscar Meyer wiener-whistle). Frankly, why is this the film that spawned two sequels? Heckler suggested we watch the sequel (it was what, 1 in the morning by then?). I said if we do, we have to watch Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause immediately afterward. He folded. 3/10 Humbugs (Bah!)

Anyway, we've fulfilled our contractual requirement to have a Christmas special, and that's the important thing. Best part: Mulled Cider (If I say so myself). Luckiest viewer: Beretta who saw half of Miracle and about a quarter each of Claus and Clause as she fell asleep, poor thing; I suspect that that was a much more interesting film, albeit a less coherent one, than any of the films we saw. She was unamused to wake up with the Santa Claus beard and hat on.

Have we learned anything from these films? Firstly, you can have too many Santa Claus/Spirit of Christmas films in one evening. Secondly, you shoudn't call elves elves, instead "the little people" is the correct term[4]. And finally, that the ony place Christmas occurs is New York City and it's surroundings, the North Pole and cold and snowy historical Scandogermany.

[1] As opposed to the actual origin story, which is slightly more interesting.
[2] We see before the senate subcommittee on toy standards, a toy panda stuffed with sawdust, nails and broken glass.
[3] "What sort of Mickey Mouse court is this?" asked Heckler. It's a Disney movie.
[4] I disagree; I understand the preference is for "The Fair Folk"; "The Little People" is to avoid confusion that arises using the term "Fairies".

Review From The Past: The Secret Service

(Parts of this borrowed from a very close friend of mine who remains pseudonymous)

In the 1969 series The Secret Service, Father Stanley Unwin is a middle-aged Model-T driving priest who moonlights as a spy, or more specifically a counter-spy stopping various foreigners and criminals from doing bad stuff to British commercial interests. This Gerry Anderson series mixed puppets and live action.

So the usual things to happen are; Father Stanley Unwin's first response is to shrink Matthew, he uses Stanley Unwinese (a made up language demonstrated in this scene from a Carry On film) to get out of difficult situations, his Model T Ford, Gabriel drives across Westminster bridge and B.I.S.H.O.P (British Intelligence Service Headquarters Operation Priest) gives them an unlikely task.

As an example, I've put together some sort of review for my notes for the episode School For Spies. In this episode, foreigners have created a school which trains spies to blend into English society by pretending to be priests, but rather than answering to BISHOP, they're lead by the evil Archdeacon. One of them gives themselves away by preferring pop music to hymns. As is often the case, Father Unwin smuggles Matthew into the bad guys headquarters in his briefcase, but they fail to check his luggage. Trailer

For some reason this wasn't picked up for a second series, which left Gerry Anderson free for his next project UFO.

Reviews From The Past: Star Maidens

I note in this post Heckler promises that reviews will follow. But they haven't. Clearly it's time to deal with that.

He says "Star Maidens - a 1970s social commentary on sexism "

Well I suppose so. It's a 1976 Anglo-German sci-fi series in which two men from the planet Medusa, which is ruled by women in glitter, mini-skirts, sequins and outfits with holes cut in them, escape to Earth. During one of the efforts to recapture them, an Earthman and Earthwoman from the Institute of Radio Astronomy[1] end up on Medusa.


Essentially neither side can believe that the society of the other works; partly this is because Medusa is completely crazy, and partly because it's Earth in the 70s. Frankly most of the episodes were overlong, incoherent and full of predictable cliches and table-turning "You didn't act like a man at all - you showed courage and... I almost felt like an equal down there." "Thank you Octavia." "Get that man back to some useful work."

We watched this so you don't have to. If you like camp, dated, silly shows from the 70s, go ahead - the episode where some radical feminists on Earth get hold of Medusan gun and attempt to stage some sort of revolution, while 2 Medusans are trying out Earth lifestyles is especially recommended. Otherwise you can probably get by perusing this site which gets bonus points for daring to ask this question about the show "Wasn't it a bit... well, pervy?"[2]

[1] With the unfortunate acronym IRA. I can imagine their call to the Ministry when they detect the approaching spacecraft. "Hello? This is the IRA. We have an urgent warning for you..."
[2] Damn it, forgot to mention the "Perving scene" in Alien Apocalypse.

The Secret Origin Of Heckler And Kochk

Like all superheroes movie review bloggers, Heckler and Kochk have an origin story. Sadly it isn't that local news outlets, hearing of our wit, charm, and encyclopedic knowledge of the last 100 years of film, drove a truck full of money up to the entrance to our movie-lair[1] and begged us to send them the least of our thoughts on sci-fi and whatever else came to mind in receipt of which they would toss bundles of banknotes in our direction. Until now the true story has remained a mystery but now I can reveal it.

It was, unless I'm very much mistaken, Thursday 10 April this year. According to my notes we dined on Chinese take-away and pink fizzy wine. We watched two episodes of Star Maidens, the film Slither, three episodes of the Secret Service and one of Buck Rogers (the 30s version).

Frankly, looking at that list, I'm surprised we came out alive, let alone formed a blogging partnership. We may have been celebrating as we had finally finished both the Secret Service and Star Maidens that night, and decided to recount our experiences for others so they wouldn't have to sit through them. Hence: We Watch Bad Sci-Fi So You Don't Have To.

As for Heckler and Kochk, we took those names in honour of the Wheelsey Police Department, who, when confronted with the fact that Grant Grant has turned into an invincible squid beast who mutilates cattle, open up their gun locker to reveal a whole set of mismatched guns rather than the rack of identical weapons we're taught to expect. Our attempts to identify them included the "other" H&K and someone blurted out "Heckler and Kochk - We Watch Bad Sci-Fi So You Don't Have To."

We spell Kochk differently to avoid search engine results for people looking for gun who can spell, and also because it amuses Heckler. He likes knob jokes.

Heckler tells the story differently, but he's wrong, or at least wronger than me.

[1] Heckler's flat. I note that it is a basement flat, or secret bunker as Heckler prefers to call it.

Review From The Dawn Of Time: Slither

For a variety of reasons I was looking at my notes and discovered the reviews of the things we watched the very night we decided to name ourselves Heckler and Kochk! As might be expected they're almost incomprehensible, firstly because it was dark when I made them, but also because we'd been drinking pink fizzy wine[1]. Nevertheless, let's take a look at our work from the very dawn of H&K.

Our main feature was Slither [2](2006, Dir: James Gunn) starring Nathan Fillion (Firefly, Desperate Housewives, Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog), a comedy/horror/sci-fi monster movie. Here are my notes, as I can best make them out

Asteroid or Meteor?
I've been to karaoke nights like that.
I honestly don't believe V__ was wearing a skirt that short[3]

At this point the picture appears in my notes.

"I'm surprised you're able to lift a mug, you've been carrying that torch for so long."[4]
Nice Bra - She's a bit ropy looking.
She's getting a horrible thing in her belly-button
Huh huh breasts huh
If only D__ would stop running his life like a 30s serial villain.[5]
Heckler and Kochk gun
Subtly knob-shaped mountain[6]
The Curling Tongs! Yes! That's the last thing it's be expecting!
It's like watching a film with a small child or possibly a giant penis on legs[7]
"Well that is some fucked up shit."
She's hidden those scissors in her pants!
He's merely full of alien semen.

Anyway, the plot. An alien arrives in some rural American town and takes over Grant Grant. Grant then impregnates a local woman with his tentacles, and she gives birth to lots of alien slugs who take over the townsfolk turning them into zombies. There's also a love triangle as Bill Pardy (Fillion) is in love with Starla Grant, Grant's wife, and despite being an alien, Grant is still in love with Starla.

But is it really the plot we're looking for in this type of film? And is it comedy-horror or horror-comedy? The trailer can't seem to decide either.

All this is beside the point of how and why we named ourselves Heckler and Kochk, although I've subtly hinted at the exact moment, but I'll answer that question another time.


Anyway the important things: The V__ film classification board has rated this film as "Gruesome". enjoyed it a lot; in general I'm bored by horror films about 45 minutes in, but this one entertained me. However Heckler disagreed, and, as in my notes, here he gets the last word: "I'm not impressed by that film for this reason: it seemed neither a horror nor a comedy film."


[1] It's the manly thing to do!
[2] Not to be confused with Slither (1973 Dir: Howard Zieff) a comedy-crime-thriller starring James Caan, or for that matter Sliver (1993 Dir: Phillip Noyce) a silly thriller about voyeurism and surveillance starring Sharon Stone and William Baldwin.
[3] This was some byplay involving Star Trek figures recreating a scene from a night out.
[4] Corrected to conform with the IMDb quotes page.
[5] I'm not sure if this was byplay or our occasional "joke" in which we identify a character in the film with a friend.
[6] This is a reference to a Tank Girl script in the back of the Tank Girl Novel Armadillo.
[7] Why we chose "We watch bad sci-fi so you don't have to" as our subtitle over "It's like watching a film with a small child or possibly a giant penis on legs" I don't know.

The Day The Earth Stood Still: One More Time

Remakes are generally bad. Worse still, from the Point of View of Heckler and Kochk, are remakes that are bland; versions of films that are not only less interesting than earlier versions, but give us nothing to stick the stilettos of our wit into.

The Day The Earth Stood Still is released on 12 December 2008. For some reason we have not been invited to any previews. Regardless, we endorse the Crotchety Old Fan's The Day The Earth Stood Still To Watch The Original Movie on 10th December. How can you compare remake and original if you haven't seen them both?

(I note that there is some good stuff in the trailer, but it being an explicit remake means that 1. it must be compared to the original and 2. it must explain why Gort, a robot, is wearing underpants. These are the rules; I don't make them, I just enforce them.)

Howl's Moving Castle

Howl's Moving Castle is a 2005 Studio Ghibli film, based on a Diana Wynne Jones children's book (that I haven't read). Howl is a wizard who encounters our heroine Sophie. Everyone knows that wizards steal the hearts from beautiful girls[1], but this isn't the danger she finds herself in; instead the Witch of the Waste ages her from 16 to 90 years old[2], and tops off the curse by making her unable to tell anyone about it. Sophie leaves town and heads into the waste to look for a wizard to help her and comes across Howl's Moving Castle (Trailer has some good shots of the castle)

Sophie under the transparent alias "Grandma Sophie" becomes the castle's housekeeper, and meets up with an enchanted scarecrow, Howl's apprentice and Calcifer, a fire demon who powers the castle. Unable to tell anyone about her curse, she ends up having to help Howl when a war breaks out and he's drafted under two of his aliases.

It's a great cartoon, and I find it visually fascinating as it shows a fantasy-European 19th century kingdom seen through the eyes of Japanese animators. Best of all, although so brief and backgrounded that you can almost miss it, is that at the end it's revealed that the story we thought we were watching might actually be a subplot of another, bigger story that we thought was a subplot; since we've just seen a magical and entertaining film this other story is even better in my imagination.

The American cast for the English version are very good. Highly recommended.

[1] This turns out to have a grain of literal truth, as well as the obvious metaphorical truth
[2] This is Sophie, a teenager's, estimate; I'd say more like a fit 70 years old. From the interview on the disc with Diana Wynne Jones it seems this was based on something that happened to her in her 40s - from memory she hurt her back and suddenly had to walk everywhere slowly, painfully and with a cane, as though she'd suddenly become 90.

No Movie Night: Shampoo

I can't make movie night this week, and last time when that happened and I didn't think Heckler was taking this blog seriously enough (which admittedly isn't very serious) I posted about a music video. Guess what?

(Link)
It's Shampoo's 1994 hit Trouble. They were pretty much one hit wonders in this country, but were big in Asia for a while. Wikipedia says:

Shampoo combined a poppy girlishness and a love of all things plastic, kitsch, and pink (the album artwork for 'We Are Shampoo' featured a collage of Barbie dolls and sweet wrappers) with a punk sensibility.... Playing on an image that was part Johnny Rotten, part stubborn infantilism, part lipstick lesbian and part razor-sharp wit, Askew and Blake tended to confuse both journalists and record-buyers as to who exactly was their target audience.

Getting any of that from the video? Here's what I notice:

1. Although these are grown women the video makes them look like teenagers dressed up as women. Partly this is the makeup and clothes, but partly it's that the camera always looks down on them to make them look shorter. Note also that the camera always looks UP at the Dad who's waiting for them, making him look taller. Also, the girls are never in shot with the Dad.

2. Despite this, they stride across the London landscape like they own it - full of confidence.

3. I love Jacqui Blake's suit - it's really Glam.

When I hung around the College Radio Station we got sent one of the forgettable follow-up singles, Viva La Megababes (which I've just listened to for the first time in 14 years). Frankly it's rubbish. But the B-side[1] was a storming version of East 17's House of Love (I can't find a free version of Shampoo's version on the internet, although I bet I could if I knew any Japanese). Two good pop songs is more than most pop groups ever manage. Anyway I've dug myself in far enough; hopefully the next post will have some actual Sci-Fi!

[1] It was actually on a single-sided 12" picture disc.

Tron

Tron (1982). Jeff Bridges is sucked inside a computer, where he discovers that all the programs look like the people who wrote them. The evil boss has a master control program that is doing all kinds of evil stuff. The only one who can stop it is the Tron program, programmed and played by Bruce Boxleitner. To do this they have to fight there way through a variety of computer games.

It's a Disney film and, if not entirely for kids, certainly kid-oriented and is rated "not Gruesome" by the V__ movie preview board. It looks fantastic - some of the objects look dated, but they look like a CGI company today made some retro-looking space invaders. The plot makes no damn sense at all. Bridges and the Cindy Morgan's program seem to have a romantic subplot, but it doesn't go anywhere, and when he comes out of the computer, she seems to be equally good friends with Boxleitner and Bridges. We enjoyed it immensely. Here's the iconic Lightcycle scene.

It's a must-see if only because it is constantly referenced in computer-nerd circles.

The Mystery of Steve Trevor Junior

We've now finished the first series of Wonder Woman, in which she fights Nazis in WWII both as Wonder Woman and Yeoman First Class Diana Prince, with the aid of Major Steve Trevor, who appears to be part of USAAF Counter Intelligence, although he seems to perform security audits and spy hunting missions wherever something odd, unusual or just plain silly occurs. In Series 2, we move forward to "The Present Day", 1977, and Wonder Woman again leaves the amazon society of Paradise Island to find out what the hell the Society of Men is up to, and especially why they're messing about with nuclear energy. She joins up with Steve Trevor Junior, who works for the Inter-Agency Defence Command who perform security audits and spy hunting missions whenever something odd, unusual or just plain silly occurs; as Diana Prince she works for IADC as well.

During some of the more boring quieter scenes we thought about this. In 1942 Major Steve Trevor has no obvious wife or other romantic liaison, except for flirting with Diana occasionally. Clearly Steve Trevor Junior is not Diana/Wonder Woman's son, or she wouldn't have been quite so surprised to see him[1]. We're clearly meant to think that Major Trevor, shortly after Wonder Woman left got married and had a child in, say, 1944. This would make Steve Trevor Junior 33 years old. And here's the problem. Steve Trevor doesn't look to be in his early 30s, he looks to be in his early 40s (unsurprisingly as Lyle Waggoner, who played him, was born in 1935 - see pictures). Obviously, he might just look old for his age, but I have a more interesting theory.

Let's give Steve Trevor Junior a 1935 birth year. The question is now, where were Major Trevor's wife and child during the first series. And the answer is somewhere in the western US[4] after a messy divorce. The messy divorce that, despite being an excellent pilot and a complete idiot when it comes to investigating and the greatest war in US history starting, got him transferred out of his unit and to a dead-end desk job in Washington with USAAF Counter Intelligence. (I note that his boss, General Blankenship is smart but rubbish at managing hotheaded idiots like Trevor, which is why he's heading counter-intelligence rather than attempting to command a wing or air division of hotshot fighter pilots).

Clearly his many run-ins with Nazi agents, and the end of his association with Wonder Woman lead to some kind of reconciliation, to pass on the stories of his time with Wonder Woman to his son.

That's my theory, based on the very slim evidence available. Any thoughts?

Finally, no Wonder Woman post is complete without a video of her in action. Anyone for Bullets and Braclets?


[1] How do the amazons of Paradise Island reproduce anyway[2]? If Steve Trevor Junior, who appears to be the twin of Major Steve Trevor, were the son of Trevor and Wonder Woman, then I'd try and think through some sort of cloning/parthenogenesis theory, but as he isn't and it makes no sense, I'll stop here.
[2] Queen Hippolyta sculpted Diana[3] out of Clay but she also has a younger sister; despite the incredible longevity of the amazons, new ones do appear.
[3] Amazon society appears to be mostly Greek in origin, and Wonder Woman is 2700(?) years old, so why is she Latin Diana rather than Greek Artemis?
[4] Taking my cue from Lyle Waggoner's biography, it would be Kansas City.

You Ask, We Answer

Somebody turned up on Heckler and Kochk from Ask.com with this question

Was having discussion with someone about the cello and we both remembered that Stringfellow Hawke always played this classical piece for the cello on Airwolf that I really like but neither of us could remember the name.

Previously this site was almost worse than useless on this topic, but I'm now going to try and answer. Google is my friend on this one: the track is Eagle's Serenade and so far as I can tell the composer was Sylvester Levay. You can hear it in this youtube video.

Sadly, the person wanting this information has probably left, and will never return. Still, if anyone has a question for H and/or K, let us know and we'll come up with some sort of response.

On related note, the visitor counter tells me someone has gone all the way back through the archives. I can only apologise.

Heckler And Kochk Theme Song

As I'm sure you've all worked out, "Heckler and Kochk" scans to the theme tune of "Blankety Blank". So every movie night when we're grabbing beers from the fridge, pulling down the screen and cleaning the whiteboards, Heckler and I dance around to this tune. There tend to be slightly less circa 1980 minor celebrities amongst our guests though.

As it happens "Mystery Guest" also scans to it, so whenever we have a mystery guest, that's sung too.

After all that, bad sci-fi looks much more appealing.

Judge Dredd: Goodnight Kiss

Back when I was in school, especially in the 3rd-4th years (age 13-15) the weekly arrival of 2000 AD was one of the highlights. As far as I can recall I never actually bought a copy[1]. As we all knew, Dredd was too obvious, too blatant, a hero for 9 year old boys and politically unaware violence fetishists. Johnny Alpha in Strontium Dog was where the action was at: a strip for both male and female teenagers and politically aware violence fetishists.

Obviously they killed him.

Dredd though is still going strong[2] and Heckler acquired Goodnight Kiss, a story of Judge Dredd co-starring Jonni Kiss, a judge killer who kills judges by snogging them kisses his victims before killing them, then passed it on to me.

So, yes. Violent. Blatant. Mostly unsubtle. Dredd has a few moments of introspection when he's crucified and hallucinates everyone he's ever killed (a bodycount that even impresses Judge Death). There's also an homage[4] of the crucifiction scene from the Conan story A Witch Shall Be Born (recreated faithfully in the movie(from 3:00)). The closest to a moment of sadness belongs to the Lawmaster bike of Dredd's partner, requesting clarification of the location of the partner. Other than being very tough indeed, Kiss only plan seems to be to get a gang of dupes to weaken his target before he performs the coup de grace.

I enjoyed it quite a bit. Not quite enough to buy more Dredd (not for a while - maybe when nostalgia overtakes me or the TV claims there was a film) but maybe it's time to track down some Strontium Dog collections...

[1] Something else I'm not an owner-reader of.
[2] In theory many of the stories in 2000 AD run in realtime, so having been published for 31 years, Dredd is 31 years older than in his first strip. In Goodnight Kiss, Dredd points out to Kiss that he's 30 years older than him, and has been shot, stabbed, burnt, electrocuted and had every bone in his body broken more times than he can remember[3]. The wikipedia intro is probably enough information if you're not familiar with Dredd. However, the entry seems to have been vandalised as it claims there was a film. There is no film. There is no film. There is no film.
[3] Does this include the ossicles?
[4] Or theft if you like.

Candle In The Wind: A Very Brief Review Of House Of Wax

House of Wax is a very loose remake of the 1953 film House of Wax, itself a remake of the 1933 film Mystery of the Wax Museum, based on a short story or a play by Charles Belden called The Wax Works[1]. It has extraordinary wax effects and a superior cast grafted onto a fairly standard Teen Horror plot (kids on a road trip break down near a weird old town, they split up and nasty things happen to them). I don't have the notes with me, so can't tell you the exact time when it becomes gruesome[2], or the time that Paris Hilton starts running around in her bra and pants[3] (a role for which she won both the Teen Choice Award for Choice Scream Scene, and the Golden Raspberry for Worst Supporting Actress). All in all, missable but some excellent effects towards the end. Some good stuff on the soundtrack too - Beretta noted New Dawn Fades by Joy Division.

From Youtube: The Trailer (gruesome), The Gag Reel (which shows one or two bits with wax effects), a pretty funny video where one of the actors has qualms about being covered in hot wax, the final bit where the House of Wax, which is made of wax, burns down (from maybe 2:40 onwards) and Joy Division's New Dawn Fades. All the videos in a playlist and also below, but it doesn't always work when you embed a playlist:


Update: I've changed the footnote numbers so they make sense. Hooray!

[1] I've done a swift google, but frankly don't feel the need to go further to track down the origin, unless we start to work our way backwards through the predecessors.
[2] I think we may have disagreed; the prologue is pretty unpleasant but more by implication than actual nastiness. V__ wasn't with us to give a definitive answer.
[3] This caused more disagreement. "Nudity at 1h4m (or whatever it was)" said Heckler. "Nude?" says I, "She's running around in her bra and pants. They're clothes! Covering up her rude bits!" "You write what you want in your notes," said Heckler, which I had no answer to.