The movie was about saying goodbye, and how do you accept the end your situation/life. This will affect some more then others, and I freely admit to crying more then is usual due to several losses in the past 15 years

Not a kids movie, but John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness. You have God is evil, Jesus was an alien, quantum physics can decode holy texts, Alice Cooper as a possessed bum and the nerd from Rip Tide gets impaled on a bike. What's NOT to like?

So, when are you guys going to do 1776?

Well, to be fair, it was the British, and many Canadians outside of Ontario probably wish we'd burn Toronto down again. But, yeah, the rest of the world considers the War of 1812 a defeat for the US given we started it and ended up with none of the intended war gains, while the US considers it a win because for awhile it looked like we'd become a colony again but ended up fighting the UK to a draw. Plus the last battle in New Orleans (technically fought after the peace treaty) where we spanked the British sort of had it ending with a big win that came to be all anyone remembered.

(have I mentioned I'm a history geek?)

Blake's 7 was especially fun in that regard when I watched it on the local PBS station long ago. I had no information on the show, so the constant death of the cast at the end of each season was a surprise (and as I wasn't keeping track you never knew when a season was ending). It's just not the same knowing what actors are leaving ahead of time...

Then again, instead of just having to know one area's history Americans should know the details on why certain major immigrations happened to the US, and that tacks on quite a bit. All of British, European, Aztec, Mayan, and Native American history is to American history what the Old Testament is to the New Testament. Sure, you can ignore it, but you kind of need it to actually get the right meanings from newer books.

(my dad taught Jr High American history, so I'm a bit of a history nerd)

Finally listened to this and enjoyed it. As nobody mentioned it in the show I'll second the recommendation in the show notes that everyone read the Horatio Hornblower books. For you Trek fans, Kirk was originally pitched as "Hornblower in space". However, I'll also suggest you don't read the books in their official order but in publication order starting with Beat to Quarters (which is sometimes combined with the next two as Captain Hornblower). As is often the case, C.S. Forester started the series with his characters already in their element and went forward from there. Once the main character got to be an old man at the rank of Lord he went back and wrote a half dozen prequel books (Harry Harrison did the same thing with his Stainless Steel Rat series). They work OK if you do read them chronologically, but the author did assume readers of Midshipman Hornblower were already familiar with the character.

It's the Uchannel podcast, which you can find through iTunes. The subscription feed is

http://uc.princeton.edu/main/index2.php … ;no_html=1

There's also a video version for many of the lectures. There's a lull now as it's the end of the semester, but you often get stuff from the UK this time of year and it's interesting to hear their take on US problems.

A pistol with a silencer and lots of ammo clips. Or, if I just want the weapon for self defense, night vision goggles so I can get some of the local currency.

To be fair though a lot of anime have long titles like this that sound silly when translated, even the great ones. I mean, who'd guess that Super Dimensional Space Fortress Macross was the title of a good show? (although, to be fair, it was intended to be a parody even if the fans took it seriously ) It's even more fun when they use English titles because they think it's cool. One of the best cyberpunk shows is called... Bubblegum Crisis. Why? Because the creators said the situation was like a bubble that was about to burst. The sequel was going to be called Bubblegum Crush until they found out US fans thought it sounded like a soft drink, so they changed it to 'Crash'. Given how bad that show is though the new name is more descriptive then they intended.

To be a truly "so bad it's good" film, the creators have to have intended serious art and that's the case here. You also can't predict what will get this kind of attention, or try and intentionally create it. The creator of Rocky Horror learned that.

The original poster asked for other recommendations. I'll mention one well known in anime fandom: Photon Space Sailer Starlight Odin. This early 80's movie was an attempt to create a new franchise to replace the old tired Yamato/Star Blazers series. The plot: a new experimental space ship which looks like a 19th century clipper ship (with full sails) picks up a spaceship wrecked teen girl among ruins of an unknown alien race. The crew of cadets mutiny so they can go exploring, and this unarmed ship manages to defeat whole alien battle fleets while the girl keeps chanting "Odin... Odin!"

Yes, it's that good

For the dub they hacked a good hour out of it, but you really have to experience the uncut subtitled version which still gives the translator nightmares. The movie just gets so MUCH wrong, it's amazing. You can see what they were trying to do, and just watch the execution fail utterly. One example: to give the movie a modern flavor, they use a Japanese band singing English 80's metal music (verging on Hair Metal). Ok, cool, I can get behind that, and the opening scenes of the crew running to their post to the pounding beats is great. However, for whatever reason they only had the group write two (count them, 2) songs... and then reused each one a half dozen times. The pain...

Most anime fans just think of this film as unwatchable crap, but I firmly believe that understood properly it's a classic of how NOT to do things and can be enjoyed as such.