Category Archives: Entertainment

371. In Conversation with Rob Ager from Liverpool (PART 2: Film Analysis / Hidden Meanings / Stanley Kubrick / Conspiracy Theory)

This is part 2 of my conversation with Rob Ager from Liverpool, who makes documentaries about films and publishes them himself on his website Collative Learning. If you haven’t heard part 1 yet, you should check that out before listening to part 2. In this conversation we talk about Rob’s approach to film analysis, hidden meanings in films, the work of Stanley Kubrick and the conspiracy theory about the moon landing. More details below.

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Click here to visit Rob Ager’s website collativelearning.com

In part 1 we talked about Liverpool and what it’s really like to live there. Then we talked about how he developed his approach to film analysis. In part 2 we talk about films in more detail, including some of the films which struck a chord with him when he was younger, and films which have inspired him to make his analysis videos. We focus on the work of Stanley Kubrick, a filmmaker whose work has really fascinated Rob over the years. We also discuss the idea that directors add hidden messages into their work, and how this is sometimes interpreted wrongly by viewers and critics. We also discuss the so-called conspiracy theory about Stanley Kubrick and the moon landing, and whether there are hidden messages about this in the film The Shining.

Links & Videos

Rob’s website http://www.collativelearning.com

Some interesting videos from Rob’s YouTube channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcxLFZdZPw0
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370. In Conversation with Rob Ager from Liverpool (PART 1: Life in Liverpool / Interest in Film Analysis)

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Today on the podcast I’m talking to Rob Ager from Liverpool, who is probably best known for his film analysis videos on YouTube in which he discusses classic Hollywood thrillers, sci-fi and action movies in quite astonishing levels of detail, often focusing on deep psychological and political themes and hidden messages that most viewers probably wouldn’t even notice. His videos are carefully constructed documentaries, made for educational purposes and all of them feature a voice-over commentary by Rob in which he analyses the film and gives his observations.

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Click here to visit Rob Ager’s website collatedlearning.com

I think I first came across Rob’s work on YouTube about 5 or 6 years ago. Sometimes I start watching YouTube and I get sucked into a kind of YouTube worm hole. That’s where you start watching one video, and that leads you to watch another one and then another one and eventually you find yourself watching something really fascinating and unexpected and that you wouldn’t normally have come across. I think that’s what happened with Rob’s videos. I think I first came across a short documentary he made about a horror movie called The Thing by John Carpenter, which is one of my favourite films. It’s really scary, tense and well directed, and it has a terrifying monster in it. Also it has a complicated story line which creates an eerie sense of paranoia that invites the viewer to speculate on who is or who isn’t a monster. It was really interesting to listen to Rob talking about The Thing in so much detail and it made me think about the movie in ways that I hadn’t considered before.

Then after that I kept noticing other videos by Rob and I would always watch them with interest. He has videos about The Matrix, Star Wars, The Shining, Alien and more.

Sometimes I find his comments to be a bit too specific, like he is perhaps over-analysing the films, but then again I think this is what’s great about movies – that everyone can interpret them in any way they want – and that a film might mean one thing to you, but mean a completely different thing to someone else. Even the director of the film might have a very specific message in the movie, that most of us don’t even notice. I think most modern film makers understand these ideas and they often leave their movies open to interpretation. Think, for example about the ending of Inception starring Leonardo DiCaprio – what does it really mean? We’re supposed to imagine and discuss our own interpretations of it, and I think it’s one of the strengths of the film and one of the reasons it is so popular. Everyone can leave the movie with their own theory on what it was about and what had happened at the end. Rob Ager takes this principle – that there are multiple readings of a movie – and really runs with it in his documentaries, suggesting that many of these great films that we love could in fact be about political events in the real world, our deep desires and psychological motivations or even about hidden power structures.

Another interesting thing for me is that Rob comes from Liverpool. He’s a scouser (that’s the word for people who come from Liverpool) and he speaks with a scouse accent, which really reminds me of the people I used to meet, talk to and work with when I lived in Liverpool years ago. The Liverpool accent is really distinctive, and I always want to feature different British accents on this podcast, so on this one you’ve got the chance to get used to listening to a scouse accent, or Liverpool accent.

Also, I think Liverpool is a fascinating city and not enough people know about it. Most people know The Beatles or Liverpool and Everton football clubs, but there’s more to Liverpool than that. I’m hoping that Rob will tell me a few things about what it’s really like to live and grow up in this important English city.

His website – CollativeLearning.com reveals all sorts of interesting things – like that fact that Rob is a filmmaker himself and he is very prolific with his analysis videos. He has loads of documentaries which you can download from the website. What becomes clear after reading and watching his work is that Rob is a very observant and articulate person with a great interest in film, but he is also knowledgeable about a wide range of academic theories and he incorporates ideas from psychology, sociology and philosophy in his film analysis. All of that reminds me a lot of the things I read and wrote about while doing my Media & Cultural Studies degree at university in Liverpool. What’s also notable about Rob though is that he has received no formal academic education or training in all of these subjects – he’s completely self-educated.

I’ve never spoken to Rob before, and I’m recording this introduction before our interview, which is due to start in just a few moments. I’ve got no idea how the conversation will go or what directions our conversation will take but I really hope it’s an insightful and engaging listening experience and that Rob and I get on with each other. I suggest that you listen out for differences between my standard Southern British RP accent and Rob’s accent, and let’s see what kind of vocabulary emerges from our talk.

Alright, it’s time to speak to Rob now. So, here we go.

Conversations starts (after I remembered to press ‘record’ on my device)

Links & Videos

Rob’s website http://www.collativelearning.com

Some interesting videos from Rob’s YouTube channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcxLFZdZPw0

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369. Pokémon GO – It’s just a game, OR IS IT?

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Today I’m talking about Pokemon Go. It’s a global phenomenon and there are lots of things to say about it. It’s not just a stupid game, there’s a lot more to it than that. So, in this episode I’m going to describe Pokemon the game, then talk about Pokemon GO, including what it is, how it works, what people are saying about it, why it’s so significant, what some of the good points and bad points are, and what this might mean for the future.

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Introduction

It’s the craze that’s sweeping the world. Pokemon Go was released as a downloadable app for iPhone and Android about 3 weeks ago and suddenly millions of people around the world are playing it, everyone’s talking about it and the app is currently the #1 download on the iOS and Google Play app stores. It’s threatening even Twitter in terms of its number of active users. Just a few days after the release of the game, which can be downloaded onto your smartphone free, Nintendo’s stock market value soared, rising by a massive $11 billion. The number of downloads of the Pokemon Go app is estimated at over 100 million.

I wonder if it has arrived in your country yet. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve either heard about it, seen stories about it online, seen people playing it in your area, or have actually downloaded and played the game yourself. Some people are addicted to it and can’t stop playing it. Other people just can’t stand it and think it’s a load of complete nonsense.

Just the other day I went out for a drink with my wife and we counted 11 people playing Pokemon Go just in the streets near our house. On my lunch break from work the other day I looked around the little garden area where I sat with my sandwich and noticed about 3 people who were obviously playing it. Even some of my students in class were playing Pokemon Go during lessons. Apparently, the British Council is a Pokemon Gym, where other Pokemon players can get together to challenge each other to Pokemon battles. Next time you’re out and about, look for small groups of people wandering around staring at their phones. That happens a lot anyway, but it’s an even more common sight to see at the moment. If you get the chance to glance at their screens, you might see them attempting to throw little red and white balls at wild little creatures that they can see. They’re probably playing Pokemon.

If you don’t really understand what I’m talking about here, don’t worry because I’m going to explain it all as clearly as possible in this episode, while also discussing some of the positive and negative aspects of this game.

Wherever you stand on this new phenomenon – maybe you think it’s brilliant, you might think it’s the end of the world, or maybe you have no opinion about it at all. In any case I think there’s no arguing that this game represents something significant about global culture. It’s being played everywhere – I’ve even seen photos of it being played in war-torn parts of Syria. Apparently the whole world is captivated by the desire to capture Pokemon. It has arrived with some controversy, as we will see.

The game itself might be a flash in the pan – just a brief craze that will last for a summer and then disappear – in fact I’ve come to the subject a little bit late because the general media buzz around the game has probably peaked now, but it does represent an interesting development in global culture – in gaming, technology, lifestyle, how we interact with public spaces and also ways in which huge companies are collecting and using our data. It’s definitely worth talking about.

Is this just a fun, social game or is it part of some sinister plot by corporations intent on gaining access to yet more of our personal data?

That’s what I’d like to talk about in this episode. If you’re a vocabulary hunter – listen carefully to hear the right words and expressions we use when talking about Pokemon and the issues surrounding it.

I should state right now that this story is developing pretty quickly and by the time you listen to it the world of Pokemon might have changed a bit, with possible updates to the app and other peripheral products that might come onto the market. Also, I am not the world’s Pokemon expert or anything, but I think I know enough about it to be able to talk on the subject in this episode. You might be more familiar with the ins and outs of Pokemon than me. If you’re an advanced Pokemon player then feel free to get into the comment section to give your opinion or add any details I might have missed. Also, if you’re new to Pokemon I want to know what you think as well.

Let’s get started

1. What is Pokemon?

– We know from my conversation with Alex Love that Pokemon is a portmanteau word from Japan which means “pocket monster”.
– It’s a franchise owned by The Pokemon Company (a sort of consortium of three companies Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures.) The first version of the franchise was a Game Boy game created in Japan in 1995. Pokemon Red and Yellow, then Blue and then Silver I think. Then there were TV shows, movies, trading cards and a Monopoly game. It has massive levels of appeal and a generation of kids grew up playing it. I was a bit old for it because by that time I’d moved on to more grown-up stuff like GoldenEye and Tekken and stuff like that (yes, I was still playing computer games).
– First time I heard about it.
– Playing cards in Liverpool HMV. “Have you got any Pokémon cards??”
– The principle of the game, as far as I understand it.

2. What is Pokemon Go?

– How the app version of the game works
– Pokestations – I think these are points of interest from Google Maps – interesting spots that I guess a lot of people have taken photos of or something – some point of interest. These have been converted into Pokestations in the game. If you go there you can collect more Pokeballs. For example, there’s a fountain outside my building and that’s a pokestop, then there’s a sandwich bar on the street, that’s a pokestop. At the top of the street there is a kid’s merry-go-round and that’s a pokestop too. ON the map you see different pokestops and it encourages you to go and visit them. When you get there you click on the pokestop in your phone and it shows you a photo of the thing. It could be another landmark, like a plaque on a wall with a bit of local information on it – for example a plaque that shows you that Picasso used to live in the building. There’s one of them near me too. That’s quite cool because you might not have discovered it otherwise, but to be honest I don’t think Pokemon can really be credited with teaching people about their local area. Honestly, if you find local points of interest through Pokemon you’re probably not that interested in the point of interest. Realistically, how long will a Pokemon player stop to read a plaque about Picasso when they have other Pokemon in the area to catch. In fact, it could be considered disrespectful to the landmark to create a pokestop there because what happens is that you just get these groups of people turning up, not looking at the landmark, just standing around like PokeZombies with their heads in their phones.
– Controversy – there have been a few incidents in which people have got very angry with Pokemon players playing at certain locations. For example, at war memorials where you should be very respectful. Standing around catching Pokémon at a World War 2 memorial is not really appropriate I think, especially if players are wandering across the monument, or standing on burial sites. Apparently Pokémon has been banned at The Auschwitz museum in Southern Poland, which is the site of one of the biggest WW2 Nazi death camps has asked Niantic Labs to block Pokemon users from playing there, after there were complaints from people who saw a lot of people playing the game while visiting. That’s totally fair I think – it’s really disrespectful to be playing Pokemon at a place like that.

– Then there are Pokemon Gyms where you can battle with other Pokemon trainers and develop your Pokemon. As I said, the BC is a Pokemon gym apparently. If you beat all the other Pokemon trainers there you’ll be the owner of the gym and your winning Pokemon is like the master of the gym, and I think your Pokemon is then displayed on the roof of the gym when you check the map in the app. So, if you look around you can see some gyms in the distance, with huge monsters guarding them.
– Other content too – there may be other interesting features within the game – other locations and interactive elements at various locations.
– In-app purchases.
– Venues might use it as a way of attracting people. “Lure modules” can be dropped at certain locations to attract higher numbers of pokemon (and then users who want to catch them)

What’s the appeal?

I think we are wired for collecting things – it’s the impulse to be hunter/gatherers. That’s a basic human instinct – to go out and find things, search the area, look for treasure, look for food or resources, keep a collection, build strength, even breed and rear animals which you can use as assets in your life, compete with other people. I suppose this comes from the many hundreds of years that humans evolved as hunter-gatherers or something, except now those instincts are what drives our interest in these games, which we play for their own sake. I don’t think we can gain anything material from these things. I guess only business owners can benefit if people are being lured to your businesses because of it. Then there’s the game makers who obviously are making money from in-game purchases, the general brand value, share-price value and the sharing of data collected from the game. There are lots of revenue streams.

Also there’s the novelty of the augmented reality. It’s pretty engrossing and captivating.

The future?

This is the first really big augmented reality game. I expect we will see more and more games that will use augmented reality, which essentially means that the real world will be the playing field in which the game is played, instead of going around in a virtual world, the game world is somehow mapped onto the real world. Now if we run with this idea, this could mean that in the future more people will be going around in the street playing a game. They might be interacting with the physical world around them, but in ways that you can’t see if you’re not playing the game. If you add different technology into that, it could be a huge step. Imagine using Oculous Rift or some kind of 3D headset but you’re not walking around the game world, you’re walking around the real world but with augmented reality. So, potentially we might be able to walk around with a headset, interacting with the real world, but seeing it in a completely different way. From the inside you might be battling with aliens in your street, or collecting treasure in the park, or possibly just touching objects in the real world in order to achieve things. In the game it would be amazing because there would be actual physical feedback from playing the game. But from the outside, you’d look like you’re on acid I expect. You’d look like you were on magic mushrooms – wandering around reacting to things that aren’t there. There are also the obvious safety issues with that. Also, perhaps it might be possible to play the game in the real world – using the real world map, while sitting at home on your sofa. That might mean that you’re controlling a drone which is flying around, or travelling around on wheels in the real world, while you are either watching a screen at home, or sitting at home wearing a 3D headset which essentially allows you to see from the perspective of your drone as it travels around outside your house or somewhere else in the world, interacting with real things and people. The mind boggles!

It could also be used not for gaming, but for general life – e.g. sending your drone robot to the supermarket to collect your shopping or to pick up your kids or something. We’re really not that far away from that sort of thing, but there are of course loads of legal issues that go along with that – relating to the safety of it, and who is responsible for what these drones do, or what people do when they’re playing an augmented reality game, and the implications of letting drones operate in public spaces – that’s related to privacy and health hazards and so on.

It’s certainly pretty crazy – and Pokemon Go is just the first step in this direction. We might not see it in the next 2-5 years, but in 10-15 years we might see this sort of thing. God knows what the world will be like then. I will probably have kids, possibly teenage kids at that time. I can’t imagine what kind of world they’ll be living in. They’ll probably be robo-kids, let’s face it. Will that be good or bad? Who knows.

3. Arguments for

– exercise (my student walked 20k in 2 days)
– a way to explore areas. Imagine combining it with tourism. You can discover interesting landmarks in your area.
– it’s harmless fun. It’s just fun! What’s wrong with that.
…or is it?

4. Arguments against

– safety (not looking where you’re going, playing while driving, going into areas that are not safe, muggings – slightly paranoid maybe?)
– bizarre social patterns and human behaviour – e.g. large groups of people all stampeding across a field to catch a pokemon, not looking where they’re going.
– trespassing, or nuisance
– personal data – it’s connected to your google account – Pokemon Go had full access to your Google account. This made it pretty exposed to a hack – anyone with access to the game’s servers would be able to access everything in your google account and yep, that means your email, photos, navigation history and so on. They’d be able to know where you live and what you look like and possibly stuff like your bank details and other sensitive info that you have put into emails. However, Niantic (the game developer) has released a statement that they’ve changed the app so that it just requires basic info and not your full account. Google also say they’re working on limiting permissions to basic profile data. Still, it seems pretty dodgy right? And this is the same story we’ve seen from other apps and I think it is a major part of modern life. Personal data – it’s a hugely desirable thing for companies and has become a precious commodity in business. Here’s the pattern: Social networks or other lifestyle apps offer us addictive and immersive experiences and services. We become hooked on them and engrossed by the speed at which we can do things, like play fun games, discover information, publish our photos or whatever. But while we’re distracted but that, the app collecting our personal data, claiming rights over the information we publish or allow access to and is then using all of that data as an asset which they can sell – to god knows who! People want our data though, presumably to be able to create fine-tuned marketing campaigns to get us to buy things or do things. Now, this is still a bit unsophisticated – you’ve heard me talk about how I find Google Ads to be stupid because they try to sell me shoes I’ve already bought. But in the future, who knows how sophisticated they will get when it comes to marketing to us, or using our own preferences. One day as our reality is more and more augmented by technology and the internet, we might find that our augmented version of reality are being shaped by the data that is collected about us. What I mean is that our reality could become mediated significantly by third parties that we don’t know, and who want to take advantage of us for their own profit. This is when the future sounds like some kind of science fiction nightmare in which even our sense of reality is manipulated so that we can be exploited by corporations. Perhaps that’s a bit paranoid, but the question is: Are we being too careless with our personal data? Are these apps just harmless games or are they more sinister than that? In Pokemon we are trying to “catch ’em all” but maybe for the companies that make these games it’s a case of “gotta catch all your personal data”.

– Google is mapping the world. At the moment, all public spaces are being mapped by Google. You can use Google maps and google street view to see an almost 3D version of the world. Since Pokemon Go is connected to Google, are they using our cameras to scan everything as we play the game? The app gives the game and Google access to your camera. Maybe they’re using the images to create scans of everywhere that we play the game, particularly the interiors of buildings, private spaces – including our homes. Maybe Google is using Pokemon to scan the interiors of our homes. It’s possible. This sounds a bit like a conspiracy theory, but it’s possible.

In the end, it’s about trust I think. Do you trust these companies? You might think – you’re crazy – Google wouldn’t use that data in ways that would harm us. But why do we automatically trust these companies? Who are they giving this data to? If it’s private companies, those transactions probably happen behind closed doors, not in a way that can be scrutinised by the public.

It’s not too crazy to imagine that our personal data, our images, even scans of the interior of our homes – all of these things could be being given to shady people that we don’t know and who don’t really care about us. In 50 years, who knows what the state of the world will be and who will be in power. I don’t like the idea that they might have all my info at their fingertips.

Technology is amazing. It could allow us to do so many incredible things. It has opened up the whole world to us, with the internet and everything. But it also could bring about massive levels of manipulation and limitations to people’s basic liberties. It would be ironic if the internet, which started out as this huge libertarian, open-sourced project, could ultimately be used as a way to keep everyone under control. I realise I now sound like a conspiracy theorist, because I’m just speculating, but it’s interesting isn’t it? It makes you think. It makes me a bit scared and I’m not sure where I stand on it.

A note on conspiracy theories – a lot of that is based on speculation, false logic, supposition and confirmation bias. Once you get the idea in your head that the world is controlled by shadowy, unknown powerful groups then it’s possible to interpret absolutely any phenomenon in the world as an extension of that. In reality, the world is probably a lot more chaotic and less sinister than we think. Pokemon Go is probably a little bit sinister – and that’s exaggerated by the fact that it appears to be a cute and innocent game, but I imagine that it’s no worse than just a little bit sinister. They want to get our data to sell it to marketing companies who are all desperately struggling to find ways of using it correctly. In the end, perhaps it will not be that bad and it’ll just be easier to buy shoes that you like. Either that, or we’ll all be enslaved by evil spider robots which steal all of our electromyography – they’ll steal all our body’s electrical impulses, so they can keep themselves alive in order to play Robo-Pokemon and feed batteries to their robot-children, like in The Matrix. Worst-case scenario.

5. Let’s play Pokemon Go! Maybe in an episode soon – would you like that? Let me know

WHAT DO YOU THINK? Leave your comments below :)

358. Fête de la Musique / World Music Festival in Paris

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Join my wife and *me as we walk around the streets of Paris during the annual World Music Festival. You’ll hear live music, descriptions of the scene, a couple of conversations with people we met, and the sounds of this amazing evening in the city of light. It’s another long episode, but I hope you listen to all of it because I just really want to share the atmosphere and moments of this special event. Check below for photos.

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This episode was recorded yesterday evening on 21 June, which is the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere, the longest day of the year. It’s also World Music Day and here in Paris there is always a big music festival on this date, called “Fête de la Musique”. In Paris the whole city comes alive all night as live bands and musicians perform music on every street corner. The whole city becomes a big festival and it’s one of the best nights of the year here. The streets are filled with people partying, having a good time, drinking, socialising and dancing to the music.

So last night my wife and I went out to walk around the area and get into the spirit of the festival and in fact my wife suggested that I do some recordings so I could show another side of life in Paris, because it’s not all just Euro 2016, floods, strikes and terror alerts. There are loads of amazing things going on. Yesterday we had a brilliant evening and I’m really glad I captured it on the podcast.

So, I invite you to join us as we take a stroll through the streets of Paris on this hot summer evening, taking in the various musical performances, getting into the spirit of the evening and meeting a few people along the way. I met a few people during the evening and recorded short interviews with them. They were mainly Brits (a couple of guys from England, a French guy and a Belgian guy who spoke good English and two guys from Northern Ireland) and I asked them a couple of questions about the big stories of the moment like the football and the EU referendum.

You will also hear plenty of live music which I recorded yesterday. On every street corner there was a different band or a DJ playing. There were some moments when I chose just to record the music and not to speak, so you will hear some little musical interludes sometimes in which I’m not actually saying anything and it’s just live music, so you can soak up the atmosphere of what turned out to be a really brilliant evening in Paris. I hope you enjoy being part of it and that you can use your imagination to picture the scenes. The sounds should be in stereo too, so if you’re listening on headphones it should sound pretty cool.

There are some photos on the page for this episode (below), so check them out!

Now, I will let you listen to my audio diary of la fete de la music in Paris. I really enjoyed recording this episode and I really hope you enjoy it too and that you get into the atmosphere of this evening of music and good vibes!

Photos

Film Club: X-Men Apocalypse (Review) SPOILER ALERT –> it’s terrible!

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This is the final episode in this superhero series and simply put, I’m going to talk about the latest X-Men movie. Now, you might not be into the superhero stuff and I totally understand, but let me give you a heads up about this episode. Basically, I didn’t like the film and so I’m more interested in making fun of it than talking about it seriously. So, that might make it more fun to listen to than the other superhero ones I’ve done lately. You can just kick back and enjoy me taking the mickey out of this film.

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Honestly, I really enjoyed recording this. It was more fun than watching the film itself. Sometimes talking about a film is far more enjoyable than actually watching it, especially if the film is a cheesy mess full of cliches, incoherent plot-lines and stereotypical bad guys. So, even if you haven’t seen the film I invite you to listen to this episode, have a bit of a laugh and then move on to the next episode. There are no major plot spoilers in this review. So don’t worry if you haven’t seen it – but my general opinion of the film might have an influence on your enjoyment of it – or maybe not. Perhaps you’ll completely disagree with me.

It’s called X-Men: Apocalypse. It’s actually the 3rd film in the rebooted X-Men franchise and about the 6th film in the X-Men series as a whole, if you don’t include the two Wolverine films and the Deadpool movie. I went to see it the other day, and immediately after coming home I recorded this review.

You know the X-Men, right? … (some improvised stuff about the x-men here)

So, on to the review.

So, imagine me walking home after watching the film, getting into my flat, picking up my microphone and immediately starting to record these comments before I’d even taken off my jacket.

That’s the context, so let’s go, and I’ll speak to you again after my film review.

Review begins

So, that’s what I thought of the film. I thought it was a stinker! But I did kind of enjoy watching it. Mainly so I could then make fun of it afterwards.

I was a bit critical of the film. I wonder what you think of it if you’ve seen it. I should also say that it’s far far easier to criticise a film than to make one. Ultimately, it’s really really difficult to make a feature film. I think that most of the films that get made aren’t very good. We only see the ones that get published and given worldwide releases. So, it’s all well and good me talking about how bad it was, but I should give some credit to the filmmakers for actually making the effort in the first place. The audience reaction here though – it paled in comparison to the Captain America movie.

Again, let me know your thoughts in the comment section. I always look forward to reading your comments there.

Some comments from Facebook

Question: Who’s the best superhero?

Francesco: Definitely you Luke! ☺

Hamza: My parents – because they deserve all the respect and the best they give me everything they could, I’ll never forget thier sacrifice <3

Aritz: Hard decision… Batman or Spiderman?? mmmm I’ll go for the latter as we could have now a different debate: should Batman be considered a superhero?

Hien: I always admire soldiers who never betray their country even though they were tortured terribly in war.

Carmen: Deadpool, for sure. He can’t be killed, he’s got a cheeky sense of humour AND he’s aware of his own existence in the books/films he’s in and breaks the 4th wall all the time.

Luciano: Conan, The Barbarian!

Hoang Minh: Dear Luke, please make a podcast about this subject :))

Ricardo: Superman for sure!!

Jean: Super Luke! For sure!

Francesco: Deadpool because he’s a badass.

Тима Салихов: I think is Superman :) Because he is Superman :)

Virginia: Wonderwoman. She’s a Woman!

Gloria: ” El Chapulín Colorado” ( mexican Superhéro ) although he is a coward he manages to overcome his fears . By Chespirito. ❤️

Ricardo: My favorite superhero is Spider-Man because he fights to win his money like me. He is not rich like Batman although Batman kicks ass.

Lê Vũ QC: Iron man because of RDJ’s fantastic potrayal.

Ethan Lee Ok. So the answer is captain america and here’s why: (Roy Wood Jr. Stand-Up 06/12/14)

Anton: Sherlock Holmes without any doubt.

That’s the end of this episode, and also the end of this series on superhero films. The plan now is to turn to more real-world issues because there the UK is due to have its referendum on the EU in less than a month, and there’s plenty to talk about.

OK film fans, that’s it then. Speak to you soon. Bye!

Luke

349. Who’s the best superhero? (with Paul Langton)

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BOOM! POW! BANG! SMASH! Well then! Yesterday I posted an episode called “Can I have a quick word?” and basically in that little episode I expressed my concerns that I was posting too much content and that people would stop listening because they couldn’t keep up. Sometimes I worry too much and since I do this alone I do let these concerns bounce around in my head too much. Clearly I underestimated the devotion and motivation of the LEPsters (just a brief lapse of judgement I assure you) because I immediately got loads of positive and encouraging responses for listeners. My phone has been going crazy with notifications of comments on my website because people have been writing to reassure me that everything’s fine. The general message from people is essentially “No Luke, don’t worry – you can’t post too much stuff, we love it! There’s no need to be worried about posting. Just post all the episodes you have – we’ll either gobble them up like hungry dolphins or we’ll save them for later like squirrels. Yes, we will stock them up like Squirrels hoarding nuts before winter. Except in this case the squirrels are learners of English and the nuts are episodes of my podcast.”

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Well, alllllrighty then, that makes me feel much better about myself and thank you for the vote of confidence. Of course, I shouldn’t be surprised – you’re my people, right? My podcast people!

Another thing that I noticed from the comments is that a lot of people are keen to listen to me talking about Brexit. I do have Brexit episodes coming soon, but first let’s finish this little series about movies – and we continue with that theme in this episode and the next one too.

Just before we start here, let me just remind you of my podcast sponsor and that’s italki – I’ve had some positive reports from listeners who are using it and finding it to be a professional and effective service with some friendly and efficient teachers – remember that you can get a discount with italki when you visit through my website. Click an italki logo on my page to get started and the path to fluency in English will open up before your eyes, like a… like a path I suppose. http://www.teacherluke.co.uk/talk

Paul Langton – Ex-Nerd, Former Fanboy,

The whole time I was recording the last episode of this podcast about the new Marvel film, I was thinking – “I should talk to someone who really knows about this subject. I should speak to a geek. I need a nerd. I know, I’ll talk to my mate Paul Langton.” That’s Paul Langton – not Paul Taylor. You might remember Paul from previous episodes such as The Brighton Comedy Festival episodes, Friday Night Banter (aka The Drunk Episode) and On a Boat (aka The Drunk episode 2). These days Paul is a proper grown-up man and everything. He’s married and runs marathons and things like that, but before that he used to be a big time Marvel fanboy and comic book collector.

Basically, he was a nerd up until he met his girlfriend (now wife), because I imagine that she’s not into that sort of thing (she’s a normal grown-up, then) So, he’s an ex-nerd (that’s an ex-nerd not an X-Man – no, he’s not an x-man – he is still a man – he hasn’t had a sex change, he’s not an ‘ex-man’ (hilarious joke).

He’s an ex-nerd, a reformed geek, a former fanboy, but he still knows pretty much everything a person could or indeed should know about Marvel superheroes. So, what better person for me to talk about this subject with? Except Stan Lee maybe. But I couldn’t get Stan Lee – so Paul Langton will suffice.

Obviously, if you’re a Marvel movie fan – you’re probably going to like this. But also, if you are a learner of English who likes a challenge – this is definitely for you too…

…because this is a pretty fast conversation I reckon. My teacher-sense (it’s like spider-sense) is tingling. That’s a kind of 6th sense I have as an English teacher. It tingles when I think something might be difficult for learners of English. My spider sense is tingling a bit with this episode.

The conversation contains a lot of references to comic book culture and Paul speaks quite fast. Two things there which could be barriers to you bathing freely in a lovely warm bath of pure English pleasure during this episode (did you know that’s what I aim to give you in every episode? The sensation of bathing freely in a lovely warm pool of pure English pleasure? Well, it is). So, it might be a bit geeky and fast.

Another challenging aspect of this is that the sound quality is not perfect. It’s no worse than the average dodgy Skype call, but there are a few times where the signal drops out and Paul’s voice isn’t perfectly clear. You could watch out for the language I use to deal with bad connections during a phone call.

What about the way Paul speaks?

Paul is known for being a bit of a motormouth. That means that he talks a lot and he talks quickly. Perhaps it’s his Irish background, because the Irish are known for being big talkers.

Paul’s Mum was Irish I think, but Paul himself was born and raised in central London, so he’s a genuine Londoner with a London accent. He’s not a cockney because cockneys have to be born in the East End of London. Paul was brought up in central London, so he’s not a cockney but he does sound a bit similar to one.

So, you’re going to hear Paul speaking pretty quickly, in a London accent, over a dodgy Skype connection, talking about a specific subject. All these things might make this conversation difficult for you to follow, and that’s why my spider-sense – sorry, teacher-sense is tingling a bit.

By the way, I don’t mean to patronise you of course, I’m sure lots of you won’t have problems understanding this. I just reckon it might be a bit tricky for some of you. So…

Here is a suggested approach for how to listen to this episode.

1. When you understand something in this conversation, you should feel really good and happy with your English. With every single thing that you understand and every phrase that you identify – you should give yourself a good slap on the back, and with every slap on your back (even if you don’t do it) you should feel an ever-increasing sense of warm satisfaction and achievement. Well done you – you understood it and you’re very good at this. No seriously, as you understand more and more, you’ll find that you feel more and more confident and happy with your English and that’s very healthy.

2. But if there are parts that you don’t understand – don’t let it stop you.
This is important to remember because we know that if you only listen to things you understand perfectly, and you give up when things gets difficult – frankly – you won’t make progress.

Challenging yourself with more complex things will help you make more progress. You have to push yourself, even if you feel resistance. I know a lot of you know this because you sometimes tell me things like this “Luke, I understand you perfectly but not other people I hear.” Well, you need practice! You are familiar with my voice and I do speak clearly (but not slowly in my opinion). So, you need to do plenty of practice of listening to other people and you can do that with episodes like this.

So, understand what Paul is saying and when the episode is over you can feel good about yourself. Feel good about the things you understand, and don’t be bothered by the bits you miss as you listen to the whole thing.

So, with those comments in mind, let’s now dive into this conversation with my friend Paul Langton the official LEP comic book consultant and Marvel expert.

Oh, and here’s a quick task for you

Can you guess which character Paul thinks is the strongest? Who’s the strongest character in the Marvel universe according to Paul? Who’s the best superhero? To find out, you’ll have to listen until the end.

Another thing to look out for is the specific language Paul uses to efficiently describe these characters. There’s lots of descriptive vocabulary in this episode for you to pick up.

I will talk to you again briefly on the other side of this chat.

But now, let’s listen to this conversation with Paul Langton…

Conversation begins

Some questions I asked Paul during the interview

Hello Paul, how was your day?
What do you do?
How do we know each other?
Have you been on this podcast before?
You created my superhero alter-ego: Luke Johnson. (He hasn’t appeared on the podcast for quite a while, but perhaps he’ll be re-awakened by your presence)

Let’s not get bogged down in too much comic-book lore, but I’d like you to give your comments and knowledge as we explore super heroes in more detail, and ultimately fight them against each other in order to see who is the most powerful.

First of all…
What are your credentials as my nerd consultant / comic book expert?
Have you seen Captain America: Civil War?
What about the other films in the MCU? Quick thoughts?
What do you think of the MCU, as a comic book fan?

Tell me about the main characters in the Marvel universe.
Tell me about their origins, their true identities, their motivations, their abilities/powers, their weaknesses.
Let’s start with The Avengers – the characters which have been revealed in the MCU so far.
By the way – we can’t cover everyone, so some have just been missed out. Sorry fans!

Definition of a superhero: These are enhanced people. They’re mostly human, some are gods, some are aliens, some are robots or in some cases computer programs.

They’re enhanced by one or more of these things: super abilities, tech, special training.

For example, Captain America has super abilities from the special serum he was exposed to when he became a super-soldier, he is armed with tech – a shield made from vibranium, and he has received special training as a soldier – he’s learned to fight using a combination of fighting styles.

They have origin stories which affect their motivations. They sometimes have to hide their identities from the public.
Despite being enhanced superheroes, most of them have weaknesses of some kind which mean they are not completely flawless.

So, let’s talk about the characters with these things in mind:
their origins
their true identities
their motivations
their abilities/powers
their weaknesses

(some of these might be considered side-characters rather than genuine superheroes)
Captain America (Steve Rogers)
The Winter Soldier (Bucky Barnes)
Falcon (Sam Wilson)
Iron Man (Tony Stark)
War Machine (James Rhodes)
Thor
Loki
Nick Fury
Black Widow (Natasha Romanov)
Hawkeye (Clint Barton)
Hulk (David Banner)
The Guardians of the Galaxy
Thanos
Ant Man (Scott Lang)
Black Panther
Spiderman
Ultron
Vision
Scarlet Witch
Quicksilver

Marvel characters in other films:
Wolverine
other X-Men

Who’s the best?
Listen to hear what Paul thinks.

Conversation ends

Hello again – So, you listened to the whole thing – NICE ONE!

One thing I’d like to say right now is that conversation was very rich with vocabulary. I think Paul did a very good job of being extremely succinct in his descriptions of each superhero and he did it with some very nicely chosen bits of vocabulary. It would be worth listening to that again and it would be good if I did a vocabulary review episode based on that. In fact I’d like to do vocabulary or language reviews of many of these episodes and it’s something I’m considering doing, perhaps as part of a paid area of my website where I could offer you specially designed learning materials based on episodes of the podcast. I could call it the learning zone and it would be available to super-hero LEPsters and dedicated language learners who would be happy to pay a few pounds lots of extra content. Just an idea at this stage…

I hope you got to know all those superheroes even better after listening to this conversation, because not only have you just improved your English a bit, you’ve also improved your knowledge of popular culture. I think the more you know about these Marvel films, the more you can enjoy them.

If you haven’t seen the latest Captain America film – go out and see it. It’s a lot of fun.

So, in the end you heard that Paul thinks _________________ is the strongest superhero. But what do you think? Do you agree? Who’s the best superhero in your opinion?

Who do you think would win in a fight between these characters?
The Hulk vs Superman
Iron Man vs Batman
Captain America vs Spiderman
or any other combination of characters. You decide.

_____?_ vs _?_________

It could be fun to talk about those situations on the podcast, but there’s no time left in this episode. So, you can carry on the discussion in the comment section. Just find the page for this episode on teacherluke.co.uk and do some writing – who’s the best superhero and why?

Now, there’s one more superhero episode in this mini comic-book series. Yes, the season is going to continue because there is now another film in the cinemas and that’s the latest X-Men film, “X-Men: Apocalypse”. I saw it a few days ago and as soon as I got home I recorded an improvised review of it. You’ll have to wait for the next episode to find out what I think, but I’ll give you a clue – I thought it was pants.

That’s the end of this episode. Speak to you soon. Bye!

Luke

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348. Film Club: Marvel / Captain America Civil War (Part 2)

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Here is part 2 of this episode about superhero films and the Marvel cinematic universe. Before you listen to this I suggest that you listen to part 1. Click here for part 1. Where was I at the end of the last episode? I was giving you my history of superhero movies over the last 30-40 years, and the plan is to go into more detail about the recent Marvel films and then review the new Captain America movie. So, let’s continue.

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PART 2

…There was that Incredible Hulk film directed by Ang Lee from I guess around 2002 or 2003. I thought that was actually pretty good but the special effects were a bit dodgy. They didn’t quite get the Hulk right – he looked a bit like a big green angry floaty baby having a tantrum, but the character development was good and I thought Eric Bana did a good job as the main character and there was an amazing scene where hulk fights with his father underwater. Then we had those Fantastic 4 films, which were pretty crap – nothing to mention really. And then there was that new Fantastic Four film that came out last year, which was a disaster so the less said about that the better. The X-Men films which have gone up and down in terms of quality, although I enjoyed the reboot with new actors like Fassbender, James McAvoy and Jennifer Lawrence. Also, I really like Wolverine as a character. He’s probably the outstanding character from the X-Men series and he has had a couple of solo films which have been mixed. I think Wolverine is a character who deserves better films. X-Men movies are always better when Wolverine is involved. There’s a new X-Man movie, which has just come out – X-Man: Apocalypse, and I’m going to see that later today. For some reason it’s all about superhero films at the moment.

So, those Marvel films that I just mentioned are not in fact made by Marvel and they have been a bit mixed in terms of quality but one thing’s for sure – audiences love these characters and if they’re done right then the films are guaranteed to be a huge success. Also, I guess Marvel saw the box office success that DC achieved with the new Batman films, especially The Dark Knight and decided that they would like a piece of that pie.

Marvel’s plan (I think headed by an executive Kevin Feige) was to start financing and producing their own films, rather than licensing them to other people like Sony, 20th Century Fox etc, with characters that they had exclusive rights to, and build a catalogue of awesome films which are all set in the same universe. This would also allow the studio to have creative control, which is a good idea because nobody knows or cares about these characters more than Marvel themselves, except maybe the guy who created most of them – Stan Lee. The characters that were left were principally those involved in the Avengers storyline – so, that’s Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, Thor, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Falcon, Black Panther, Nick Fury and others.

The overall plan was to establish these characters in their own films, which would essentially be origin stories for the characters, and then bring those characters together at regular intervals in big event movies that would be so irresistible to audiences that all the box office records would be smashed and they’d make tons of money.

That’s exactly what they’ve done.

Starting with Iron Man in 2006, Marvel have brought out 13 films in the last 10 years, not to mention a few TV spin offs like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, Agent Carter and Daredevil (and some others too).

Captain America: Civil War is the 13th film in the series and it marks the beginning of Phase 3 in Marvel’s Cinematic Universe.

Yep, the MCU is releasing films in phases. You could consider these films to be like massive, feature-length, high-budget episodes in a huge cinematic series. Every film adds elements to this larger universe. This is a very effective marketing strategy because the success of any one film in the MCU leads to the success of the series as a whole and the movies in which more than one character feature instantly gain a certain value. I mean – it’s exciting when Tony Stark appears in a Hulk movie, or when Ant Man turns up in a Captain America film, or even better – when they all feature in the same movie on the same team, or even against each other.

Oh and by the way, I haven’t mentioned Deadpool yet. So here I am mentioning Deadpool.
Deadpool is a very popular Marvel character who seems to exist in the X-Men universe. He’s a bit different because he is very comical – he constantly breaks the fourth wall – plenty of comments to the audience, winks to the camera and tons of jokes. I haven’t seen the Deadpool film, but apparently it’s brilliant.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe (13 movies so far, plus some spin-off TV shows)

Here’s a summary of the 12 films we’ve had so far and how they fit into the 3 phases of the MCU. Captain America: Civil War is the 13th. I’m reading from the Marvel Cinematic Universe Wikia. Again, I’m no expert, so forgive me if I get any little details wrong. Please feel free to add your comments. The only film I haven’t seen is the Incredible Hulk movie, and I gather that it’s the weakest of the series.

Phase One (origins stories of the superheroes – the creation of the avengers)
http://marvelcinematicuniverse.wikia.com/wiki/Phase_One

Phrase Two (The heroes continue to work alone, new characters are introduced, the infinity stones are revealed to be powerful artefacts that can affect the universe, Thanos is the big bad guy who wants to get all the infinity stones and dominate the universe, The Avengers face the aftermath of their destructive battles to save the world)
http://marvelcinematicuniverse.wikia.com/wiki/Phase_Two

Phase Three (Things get complicated for the Avengers after the damage they caused while fighting various bad guys – should the superheroes be subject to government control or not? the team gets split up, Thanos continues to try and collect infinity stones)

Captain America: Civil War – My Review

I’ll avoid major spoilers.
First thoughts – the action is absolutely wicked. It opens with some amazing fighting by Captain America and his team. He’s got a brutal fighting style and there’s quite a lot of realism in these fight scenes, even if he is an enhanced human. He’s a bit like Jason Bourne, but super-strength. So there’s some bone-crunching combat with Captain America and the others doing all their martial arts and so on. From the start it’s exciting, fun and it puts you on the edge of your seat. It seems original in its realism.
Right mix of realism and comic book fantasy.
*Written notes* – I’m reading from some notes I wrote on paper after I watched the film.

Characters
The Winter Soldier is ace. He’s like an out of control Captain America and he’s got a bionic arm.
Black Panther is pretty cool – even if he is dressed as a panther and I think that’s a bit silly. I’ve always had a problem with characters who have little pointy ears on their suits. But he is mysterious and he’s got wicked style and brilliant martial art. We don’t know much about him at this stage, probably because they’re going to make a Black Panther movie at some point. What I know is that he’s the king of a country called Wakanda, and he does have super powers.

For example there’s a scene in which he is being chased through the streets by Captain America. All the characters are running at about 50kph, including the Black Panther. It’s really well done. Also, they managed to set up his character motivation very efficiently in just a few scenes. The actor who plays him has a certain quiet charisma. I’m looking forward to seeing more from him.

Black Widow – Natasha Romanov is played by Scarlett Johanson and she looks really hot in this film, again. But Black Widow is a lot more than just eye candy of course – she is a formidable character with really impressive fighting skills and an important place within the team.

Ant Man has some great moments in this movie, and Paul Rudd brings a lot of comic charm to the role again.
No surprise that Spiderman is in this one and his appearance is great. They’ve cast a very young actor to play him, and that’s a good move because Spiderman is best when he’s an adolescent just discovering his powers. His appearance is great fun and it’s fantastic to see Spiderman interacting with other Marvel characters finally.
Falcon is not developed as a character much, but as a hero he has some really cool moments – like this amazing double kick that he does, and the way he uses his falcon-drone.
There are other characters too.

The main villain is quite understated but is more original than a lot of movie bad guys.
I’m going to talk more about the individual characters in the next episode when I talk to my Marvel expert friend Paul Langton.

Themes & subtexts
There are political themes and personal themes.
Iron Man’s story = the weapons dealer who realises that military strength needs to be subjected to government control.
Captain America = the soldier who believes that The Avengers are essentially the good guys, and therefore they should be free to use all the power they have at their disposal.
The whole thing could be about US military policy.
The franchise manages to somehow heal wounds of 9/11 by framing the large-scale destruction in New York as a victory for our heroes, albeit a victory at a cost. The films then go on to explore notions of military power, and the complex sense of responsibility that goes along with that power. The Avengers have an obligation to protect the people of earth at all costs, but what about the collateral damage that happens as a result of their fighting?
This centres around an agreement that the UN wants the Avengers to sign, which essentially gives the UN the power to overrule the Avengers, so they essentially work for the UN. Tony Stark thinks it’s necessary, to prevent other catastrophes.
Captain America essentially believes that you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs.
This is a pretty complex moral problem.
Should the team be given total freedom – to cross borders etc at the cost of some loss of life?

So those are some themes.

Which one do I agree with Iron Man or Captain America? Which one do I prefer?

In terms of their positions – I sort of agree with both. I think they should be accountable to someone – like the government, but there’s always a chance that governments will become corrupt. So, signing an accord to register The Avengers as ‘government controlled asset’ seems a bit sketchy. Governments always end up being corrupt. But The Avengers can’t just go around causing collateral damage without being accountable for it, so they should have some regulation. It’s a tough call.

In the end the film doesn’t quite deal with those complex political questions and instead it turns into a personal story (because politics is a bit heavy). I think they’ve left it up to us to decide who we think won the civil war. And remember, winning the battle and winning the war are not the same thing. It’ll be interesting to see how the relationship between Cap and Iron Man continues.

IN terms of screen time – I prefer Captain America in the action sequences, and Tony Stark in the dramatic sequences.
Cap is a brilliant soldier and his fight scenes involve a lot of hand to hand combat which is usually done really well, but his dramatic scenes can be a bit dry. He’s quite a simple character really – just a wholesome guy who wants to do the right thing. He’s a little bit bland.
On the other hand, Tony Stark/Iron Man is a fascinating mix of intellect, ego, arrogance and conflicted emotion. Robert Downey Junior is a fascinating actor, with tons of charisma and humanity. You also get the sense that he’s on the edge all the time, which gives Tony Stark a really exciting, dangerous and human quality to him. But I find his action scenes less interesting because essentially it’s a suit flying around – it’s all computer graphics and I find that less appealing – even though the studio has done a really great job on the special effects. Iron Man is a lot better than most other special effects we’ve seen in other movies. You get this feeling that it’s real, it’s heavy and it’s an incredibly complex piece of engineering. But I just prefer Captain America’s bone-crunching stunt work.
Also, I’m never completely convinced by how powerful Tony Stark’s suit is. How powerful are those energy blasts that he has? Can’t he just shoot Captain America’s head off with that?

Problems
– it’s a bit too long (it’s even longer than this episode of the podcast). It was so long that I had to take a toilet break. That’s always like a secret agent mission. A ninja mission. Sneaking out to go to the loo during a film at the cinema.
– I have an issue with the powers of some of these characters. There’s quite a lot of grey area.
E.g. what is Scarlet Witch’s power exactly? If she can control objects, even large ones, then can’t she just pick people up and fling them about, or send them into space? I suppose it takes her a lot of energy and effort. I’m not sure where her power comes from – I think it’s from Loki’s septre, but I’m not sure.
What about The Vision? Can he just be stopped with an electromagnetic pulse? Can you just turn off his wifi? Can you unplug him? If you spin a rainbow umbrella in front of his face will he just pause?
If I ask him to do too many things at the same time will he crash?
He looks a bit silly too. It works in the comics, but in live action he’s strange – especially since I think he can choose how he looks. Why that look? And he’s wearing a sweater in order to try and blend in.
I’m nit picking. Perhaps he’s just discovering his powers. We’ll probably learn more about him in future episodes. I hope so because he’s actually quite interesting. He can lift Thor’s hammer for example.
In the film the Avengers become divided and actually fight each other, but I’m never really convinced that they really want to do damage to each other. So, the fight sequence seems a bit like American Wrestling – big characters beating each other up but you never really believe they’re trying to hurt each other for real, but the large battle sequences are handled very well and there are some interesting twists and humourous surprises.
There are a few plot holes in the film – like aspects of the story that don’t make sense, for example the inconsistencies or vagueness of the super powers of the characters, but really these films don’t need to make sense and I don’t really care about these issues when the film is so enjoyable, dramatic and funny.

So, overall, this film is a bit long but it manages to cram in some really interesting character development, some big themes, a mix of realism and fantasy in the action sequences and some dazzling moments of spectacle. If you like superhero films, this has got to be one of the best so far.

What did you think? Have you seen it?
What about other Marvel films? What do you think of them? Which is your favourite?
Also, did I miss anything important?
Please leave your comments and remember not to give away any big spoilers.
Thanks for listening!

Additional
This is the first in a trilogy of superhero-themed podcast episodes. The next one will be that conversation with my Marvel-geek friend Paul Langton in which we talk about the characters in more detail and decide who is the strongest, and the 3rd part is another movie review – yep, just this afternoon I went to see another superhero movie, X-Men: Apocalypse. I have some fairly strong opinions on that, but you’ll have to wait for that to find out what I think of the film.

That’s it for this one! BYE!

347. Film Club: Marvel / Captain America Civil War (Part 1)

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Hello everyone, welcome back to the podcast. I hope you’re doing alright today. Do you remember that in the last episode I had just come back from seeing the latest Marvel movie – Captain America: Civil War, and that I said I would talk to you about it? Remember that? Well here it is. You are now listening to a new episode of Luke’s Film Club, and this time I’m talking about the Marvel movies with a particular focus on the latest Captain America film. By the way, I’m going to talk about a lot of Marvel movies in this episode and I will do my best to avoid spoilers. I am only going to mention information which is basically common knowledge. I don’t think listening to this will really spoil your enjoyment of any of the films in the marvel universe. So, you shouldn’t worry about spoilers.

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Why am I talking about Marvel films and superheroes?

We like movie-related episodes, don’t we? I certainly like to record them and it seems that you like to listen to them. Enough said – but I’ll continue. I call these episodes “Luke’s Film Club” and in the past I’ve covered films like Taken, Kingsman, Star Wars, Back to the Future and others. Also, people like movies don’t they? People like movies. I like movies, you like movies, we like movies – everyone likes movies. Therefore, talking about movies seems to be a natural thing to do. And to bring this back to learning English, perhaps you will end up talking about movies in your English conversations, so you should know how to talk about this subject. It’s probably helpful to listen to me talking about films then isn’t it? We all know that listening is connected to your awareness of how speech is produced, which is connected to pronunciation, which is connected to your own production of speech. So – improving your listening will have a knock-on effect on your speaking. Also, if you’re wondering what to talk about with people you meet, or your language partner or teacher on italki for example – this could be a good idea.
In fact, you could start your conversations with typical questions about movies.
“Have you seen the latest Marvel movie?” or “Do you like superhero movies?”
“What have you been up to?” – “Well, I saw the new Captain America film” – “Oh really, how was it?” etc.
Those might be some good starting points for conversations about super heroes.

So, have you seen the new Captain America film? In fact, have you seen any Marvel films or recent superhero movies?

I’d be surprised if you hadn’t, because they’re really popular these days and there are so many of them that they’re kind of unavoidable. But if you haven’t seen Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America or The Avengers then that’s ok. Perhaps this episode can be a sort of introduction to a film series that you’re not familiar with. And if you have seen some Marvel films and you just can’t stand them – well, perhaps listening to my take on this subject might help to change your mind. And, if you have seen most of these superhero films and you pretty much liked them, then great! In any case, I hope you just enjoy listening to me going on about some popular culture in this episode (or episodes).

There are plenty of good reasons to talk about Marvel films, but I was prompted to do this episode by a request from a listener called Mayumi. Hello Mayumi, yes I am mentioning you again. It seems Mayumi is a bit of a film nut like me – you might remember her Star Wars themed photo in the photo competition recently. Here’s her comment from my website just the other day.

Mayumi’s comment

“Hi Luke, I hope you’re well. Recently, I’ve been missing your movie episodes like the one you did about “Taken”. The new Marvel one just came out and have you already seen that? If so, how was it?? If my memory serves, you haven’t talked much about Marvel things yet, have you? I’d love to listen to your thoughts if you like them! I personally enjoy watching Marvel films often because I don’t have to be too emotional or worried and it’s fun to watch great VFX. Cheers, bye!”

So – talk about Marvel movies, superhero stuff and Captain America? OK!

I’m not a megageek, I’m just a bit of a geek. I enjoy Marvel films but I’m not a complete fanboy. (Define: nerd, geek, fanboy) I am a fan of comic book films but I don’t profess to be an expert on all the history of every comic book character. I’m not that emotionally invested in superheroes and their stories in the same way that some of these fanboys are. I mean, I’m not going to get angry if the movies don’t follow the plot of the comics perfectly. I don’t mind about that. I just want to watch some entertaining films.

So, I’m not a fanboy but I am a fan. Also, I do have friends who are fanboys – like my mate Paul Langton who knows loads about comic book characters, including all their original backstories, the origins of their superpowers, who would be the champion if they all had a big fight and everything like that. In fact I spoke to Paul about superheroes on the podcast just yesterday, and you’ll be able to hear that conversation on the podcast soon.

So I’m no expert but I’ve seen most of the films and I’ve read some of the comics.
Loved comics as a kid, but my parents frowned on them. I couldn’t really justify spending all my pocket money on comics, and anyway I had nowhere to buy them because I grew up in the middle of nowhere.
I had a few comics, which I bought when on holiday in the USA.
The Marvel characters were the best.
I was always a bit of a Spiderman fan.
I thought Iron Man looked wickedly cool but I never read any of his comics.
I also used to have an Incredible Hulk t-shirt, which pretty much made me a fan by default. I used to chase my brother and his friend around the house wearing the hulk t-shirt and they’d run away from me like I was the hulk. Good times.
Marvel TV shows and cartoons – Any time a comic book related TV show came on the TV it was always brilliant. The Incredible Hulk TV show was a classic – that one featured classic moments when Bruce Banner turned into the Hulk and you see his clothes tearing and his skin turning green – and the hulk was played by a body builder called Lou Ferrino and the hulk scenes were mostly shot in slow motion to make him seem heavier. It was funny that all his clothes ripped off except his pants. They somehow stretched. The Incredible Hulk TV show was also incredibly sad – because at the end of every episode he had to leave town. He was very lonely, and there was that lonely music. I think that communicated loneliness pretty effectively, even as a kid.
There was a live-action spiderman show too, which was awesome because, well, it was spiderman – and he was full of wisecracks and the usual fun Spiderman stuff. Also there were animated TV series, particularly the X-Men series and another Spiderman series. There were probably other Marvel-related TV shows and some movies as well that I saw as a kid.
By today’s standards they would look terribly crap, but in those days they were just amazing.

Marvel Movies vs DC Movies
DC has the two most famous characters, but Marvel seem to be winning the movie wars. Other than Batman, Superman and perhaps Wonder Woman – the other DC characters are not that great – but I’m sure there are people listening to this who would disagree with me. We will be seeing more from DC in the future, with films like Suicide Squad this year, Aquaman, Wonder Woman and more.
Yes – just when you thought we couldn’t have any more superhero films, the next few years are going to see even more of them, so get ready. Marvel are in full swing and DC have only just got started. I wonder if we’ll all be fed up with superheroes within a couple of years. “Superhero fatigue” – it’s a genuine concept that movie critics and industry people use to refer to the idea that we might all just get fed up with superhero films and then stop watching them. The phrase was used over the last couple of years, after a couple of superhero movies didn’t do as well as expected. For example, last year there was a Fantastic Four movie, produced by Fox – and it was a huge flop. Also, the Avengers sequel “The Age of Ultron” didn’t take as much money as people predicted. Personally I think superhero fatigue is a myth. There is clearly still a big interest in superhero films, especially if they are done right. Fantastic Four was a failure because of casting decisions and because it was, by all accounts, a really bad film. And anyway – perhaps those particular characters are not that interesting. They certainly weren’t presented as very interesting. That film is an exception. Avengers: Age of Ultron might have taken less money than the previous one, but perhaps the bar has been set very high! Anyway, regardless of last year, this year has been a hit for superhero movies and Captain America Civil War has apparently been smashing box office records for Marvel yet again.

In my opinion – Hollywood has been producing superhero movies for quite a long time now, but it’s only recently that they’ve been any good. I feel like Marvel studios have cracked the code for superhero movies now – and finally the fun, action and character development that we enjoyed in the comic books is now translating onto the big screen. Not that we haven’t had good superhero movies before (Some Batman movies have been good – I’ll come on to that in a moment) it’s just that in my opinion they’re now getting better and better.

Superhero movies in the past – A kind of history of superhero films

Superman movies from the 80s, with Christopher Reeve (and Gene Hackman).
Batman movie from the 60s, then the 90s films – Tim Burton & Michael Keaton – two good films, then the franchise went steadily downhill as the films were directed by Joel Schumacher – culminating in the god-awful “Batman & Robin” in 1997.
Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr Freeze? “Everybody freeze!” and “Ice to see you!” etc. Terrible.

Also in 1990 there was a great superhero film called Darkman which stars Liam Neeson. It’s directed by Sam Raimi, who later did the Spiderman films. It’s brilliant and I suggest you find it. Liam Neeson, Darkman. Apparently it’s on Netflix – find it, hunt it down, and watch it.

There was another couple of Fantastic Four movies in the early 2000s. Unremarkable and original, except that Chris Evans played the human torch, and now he’s Captain America. He’s probably the only actor to have played two different Marvel characters.

Ang Lee directed a Hulk movie (most people dislike it), Sam Raimi directed a trilogy of Spiderman films (most people like them). More on those films later.

Also, there have been loads of X-Men films which have done relatively well in the box office.
One thing to note here is that Marvel studios don’t own the rights to all their characters in movies. In fact, before Marvel became a film studio, they were still a comic book publisher and in the 90s and 2000s they were seriously running out of money, so they sold the movie rights for a few characters to different film studios. Spiderman was sold to Sony, X-Men was sold to Fox. The result was that these studios made superhero films in their own way.

I expect Marvel watched those films and thought – we could do better than this. Later they managed to set up Marvel studios and start producing their own movies, with characters they still had the movie rights for – The Avengers, basically. That caught everyone by surprise, because… they were good films. More on that in a bit.

Now, back to the pre-MCU movies

Christopher Nolan revived the Batman franchise in the 2000s with Batman Begins and then The Dark Knight, also The Dark Knight Rises. They were ‘game changers’ for the superhero genre. They were very serious, had adult-themes, dealt with complex morality and gave the genre a sense of weight and quality, rather than being just colourful kids films.

There was a new Superman film called “Superman Returns”, which was basically another origins story.

The main success seems to have been Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy.

DC have brought back Superman, letting Christopher Nolan produce the film “Man of Steel” a couple of years ago, and more recently the film “Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice”. Although they have their fans, those new Superman films are considered to be flops I think. Man of Steel divided opinion, and Batman vs Superman seems generally to be considered as a flop.
DC are going to make other films based on their other characters, and eventually create a Justice League film which is a sort of showcase of all the main DC characters in one movie together.

It seems like a very similar strategy to the one Marvel are using, except that most of the films they’ve done so far have been crap except for a couple of Batman movies. That’s debatable of course – some thought that Man of Steel was alright. I thought it was half good. I liked the character development – like the scenes with Kevin Costner. But the action scenes took me out of the movie. I felt emotionally unengaged with a lot of it, I thought the Louis Lane character was underused and again it felt far too serious than it should be. I haven’t seen Batman vs Superman, but it seems that critical reaction to that film is also mixed.

What do you think? Have you seen the new Superman films? Superman vs Batman? Give me your quick movie review to any of the films I’m talking about here.

So, DC are still struggling to get a grip on the movie universe in the same way as Marvel, although I expect both of those Superman films have taken a lot of money, even if they’re not that good – because people want to see Batman fight Superman, right? Perhaps DC’s next film release, Suicide Squad will be really popular with fans. We’ll see. Let’s say that DC are still finding their feet at this moment.

Marvel on the other hand are doing really well today. They’re now into Phase 3 of their movie series (yes, we’ve already had phase 1 and 2) and so far they’ve managed to not only avoid any genuine flops, but they have also made a few really successful films and they seem to be getting better. Captain America Civil War is a big hit with audiences, critics and the box office.

So what’s the story of the Marvel cinematic universe?

Around 10-15 years ago Marvel decided to make movies themselves. Previously they were comic book publishers who licensed their characters to other studios, with fairly mixed results – some good films, some bad – on the whole it’s been inconsistent. E.g. Sony have made a bunch of Spiderman films. First there were the ones with Tobey Maguire, directed by Sam Raimi. They rebooted the franchise, starting from the beginning – telling the origin story of Spiderman and then having him grow up and deal with all the usual problems that Spiderman faces as a young superhero in the big city. Then Sony decided to re-reboot the franchise with Andrew Garflield in the role of Spiderman. I guess that was simply because audiences love Spiderman, and the studio felt like it could make a bunch of new money by essentially telling the same story all over again. It feels like Spiderman has been rebooted so many times that every Spiderman film is basically telling us the same story every time, but audiences love Spiderman so much that we don’t really mind. In fact, Spiderman has now been rebooted AGAIN in this latest Captain America film. I think Marvel managed to negotiate with Sony in order to get Spiderman in the Avengers universe. Well done Marvel, because the addition of Spiderman is a very popular move and it’s bound to please audiences and accountants at Marvel headquarters. And yes, we’re going to have a new solo Spiderman film at some point soon which is some sort of collaboration between Marvel and Sony, and that looks pretty promising because I think they have finally got Spiderman right in this latest film.

How are you doing everyone? Are you confused yet with all these different superheroes and their movie franchises? I hope you’re not suffering from superhero fatigue.

END OF PART 1 – CLICK HERE FOR PART 2

345. ELTon Award Nomination / Phrasal Verbs & Idioms / Brooklyn / The Revenant / Museum of Natural History & More (Ramble)

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Breaking News! LEP Nominated for a British Council ELTon Award for Digital Innovation.
In this episode you’ll hear me talking about what’s been going on since I recorded the last episode, including: LEP’s nomination in the British Council ELTon awards, Leonardo DiCaprio fighting a bear in The Revenant, my adventure to the American Museum of Natural History and more. Also – for all the vocab hunters out there – watch out for some phrasal verbs and idioms.

[DOWNLOAD]

Luke’s English Podcast is nominated for a British Council ELTon Award!

The first thing I’d like to say is that I have some great news for the podcast, and certainly great news for me, and I’d like to share it with you. I’ve been nominated for a British Council ELTon award. This is really fantastic and I feel absolutely delighted. The ELTons are basically the Oscars of the English teaching world. Really, they are. It’s a real honour to be nominated for one. It’s top-level stuff. The ELTons are run by the British Council and by Cambridge English – these are top institutions in the world of English teaching. The ELTons happen every year and they celebrate and reward innovation in English language teaching. I’m nominated in the Digital Innovation category along with 5 other nominees. http://englishagenda.britishcouncil.org/events/eltons/years-eltons/years-eltons

You might be thinking – can we do anything to help you win? Is there a vote or something? Nope. It’s all decided by a panel of judges and they are taking it very seriously, with judging being done following a very thorough and impartial method. I am aware that at this moment, some industry people might be investigating my podcast. Some of the judges might be listening to this right now in fact! If you are a judge in the ELTons or a bigwig of the TEFL industry – hello! Welcome to my podcast. I hope you like it. I hope you consider it to be a genuine innovation in the world of EFL, in its own way. I’m delighted to be nominated and to receive some recognition from the industry after working on this podcast for over 7 years! Let me introduce you to my audience. TEFL industry people, meet the LEPsters. Industry people – lepsters. LEPsters – industry people. There. You’ve been introduced! Everyone’s very nice and friendly around here so just make yourself comfortable. Pull up a chair. Can I take your coat? Feel free to have a biscuit or a cup of tea, or indeed both if you fancy that. Anyway, just relax and take it easy. This is a no-pressure zone. There are some bean bags over there if you want to get more comfortable. Mi casa su casa. That’s Spanish – I don’t normally do that. It’s pretty much 99% English here. Anyway, I’m rambling… but that’s the idea of this podcast as you will see if you stick around!

OK that was a little nod to the ELTons judges or any other high level industry executives listening to this.

There is a red-carpet award ceremony on 2 June and I’ll be going to that. I don’t think I’ll win – I’m competing with some excellent work by the other nominees and I wonder if my work on a podcast will be recognised – I have no idea. I do think podcasting is an innovation because I think it allows teachers to connect with learners of English in a new way and it allows learners to connect with the English language in a new way. I’ve got a sort of long-running relationship with my listeners that I think is tremendously important in allowing you, my listeners, to really plug yourselves into an authentic source of English. I could go on about that more, but I won’t here in this episode. I’ll just say I’d be surprised and completely bowled over to win because the other nominations are brilliant, but I really hope I do win of course because that would just be incredible and unexpected.

As I said – I’ve basically been working away on this podcast on my own for years and, well, you know the story. But anyway, I’m delighted to be nominated. Please keep your fingers crossed for the podcast. I think the more established it becomes the more I am able to do this podcast regularly, and I have so many plans for other entertaining online services for learners of English which I could work on if I had the chance.

So, back to this new episode of the podcast

I’ve been away from the podcast for about 3 weeks! I’m very happy to be back because there are so many things to talk about. Some of those things are about what I’ve been up to (which are not that important really) and other things are about what’s been going on in the world in general (more important), because it seems to be an intensely busy and dynamic time at the moment with all sorts of big events in politics, sport, entertainment and stuff like that.

5 Phrasal Verbs and 5 Idioms

What about Language? Will there be language teaching in this episode?
Well, mainly in this episode I’m just talking to you directly about some topics and anecdotes. But if you are in the mood to focus only on the language, and you couldn’t really give a monkey’s about what I’m saying (ha ha) then here is a little task.

During the course of the episode I am going to use (at least) 5 phrasal verbs and (at least) 5 idiomatic fixed expressions, at certain points.

I’ve randomly chosen these words and expressions from a couple of dictionaries that I have just lying around. This time I’m using the Cambridge Phrasal Verb dictionary and the Oxford Idioms dictionary. Both very nice dictionaries published by very lovely publishers, (hello industry people).
So your challenge is this: Try to notice the 5 phrasal verbs and the 5 idioms as they come up in this episode.
Got it? I’ve picked out 5 phrasal verbs, and 5 idioms and I’m just going to randomly include them in the episode as I go – that’s going to be difficult for me because I don’t want it to be too obvious and easy – and you just have to notice them.

So, as we move forwards you’ll be looking out for any phrasal verbs that come up, and you’ll be keeping your eyes peeled for idioms. I say keeping your eyes peeled – obviously, you’ll be trying to hear them not see them, but you know what I mean.

Don’t you?

Do you know the expression ‘keep your eyes peeled‘?
Well, that was an idiom. ‘To keep your eyes peeled (for something)’ means to be on the lookout for something – to be ready to see or notice something. It means ‘keep your eyes open’. You can imagine an orange – you know you peel and orange – remove the skin. Similarly you can keep your eyes peeled – keep the eyelids open. I like that one. In this case of course you’re listening not looking, but still… Perhaps the equivalent for your ears would be ‘prick up your ears‘ – like a wild animal in a field that hears something, its ears go up a bit – like a cat or a fox, you can imagine its ears suddenly standing to attention. It’s pricking up its ears. So, prick up your ears. If you’re reading a transcript of this then you can keep your eyes peeled. Look out for idioms and phrasal verbs, or listen out for idioms and phrasal verbs.
And yes, there were a couple of phrasal verbs. “Look out for” and “listen out for” – they’re quite easy ones really because the meaning of the phrase is quite obvious, quite literal. Others might be idiomatic – the meaning might be less obvious.

Phrasal Verbs

They’re very common in English. They’re not slang, but they are often a bit more informal than the longer equivalents. They are used all the time in many situations, and are absolutely essential if you want to learn natural English – British and American. Some of you know all about this because you listen to my other podcast, “A Phrasal Verb a Day” – and if you haven’t heard of that, just go to https://teacherluke.co.uk/pv to check out my phrasal verb podcast where you can learn a different phrasal verb in each episode – and I teach them to you properly, quickly, without any messing about or rambling.

Click here for my phrasal verb podcast: teacherluke.co.uk/pv

So we’ve already had 2 idioms and 2 phrasal verbs and the episode hasn’t even started yet. “To listen out for something”, “to look out for something”, “to keep your eyes peeled” and to “prick up your ears”.

So, I’ve set up a language challenge for the episode – just try to notice 5 phrasal verbs and 5 idioms. At the end I will tell you the answers – I’ll tell you which phrasal verbs and idioms I picked from the dictionary, and I’ll explain what they mean.

Now, there are so many things to talk about that I’m not sure how long this is going to take. I will just keep recording and when I get to about an hour I’ll pause and carry on in the next episode. IS that alright by you? Yes? I’m glad you said that because you haven’t got any choice really have you. No, you don’t.

Anyway, let’s get started properly. I’m going to now ramble on about various things including some personal news, some travelling stories, some world news, some politics, some movie-related stuff and probably some other things that just come to mind while I’m talking – and remember to watch out for those 5 phrasal verbs and 5 idioms.

JINGLE

Mayumi’s comment: “Hi, Luke. Hope you are well.”
Hi Mayumi, I’m fine thanks. In fact I’ve been really busy lately so it’s good to be back.

Columbo “My wife…”

The podcast episode continues…

Did you notice any phrasal verbs and idioms?

Do you remember that at the beginning of the episode I chose 5 phrasal verbs and 5 idioms from the dictionaries?

I only used 1 phrasal verb and 2 idioms from the list. Here they are:

to come up against something – “Leonardo DiCaprio comes up against all kinds of problems in the film” = to face difficulties http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/come-up-against

to be on the edge of your seat – “I was on the edge of my seat while watching The Revenant” = to be very excited and interested in something you are watching http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/on-the-edge-of-your-seat-chair

to get your knickers in a twist – “This guy was really getting his knickers in a twist in the museum” = to get upset or angry http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/get-your-knickers-in-a-twist

Part 2 – coming soon

344. A Totally Terrific Talk on the Terrace with The Tangential Trio (feat. Tom Morton)

33 Replies

What? Another new episode? Slow down Luke! We can’t keep up! OK I will slow down, I promise. I am going away on holiday tomorrow and I will be quiet for a couple of weeks so I just wanted to upload another podcast before I go. While I’m away you’ll have a chance to catch up with all these new episodes. This is #344 and it’s another rambling conversation with podPALS Amber & Paul, but this time we’re joined by a fourth member of the team. Could this be The Fantastic Four that LEPster Olga mentioned in a recent comment? Only you can decide… Topics of conversation include: jingles, voice overs, the Queen’s birthday, the monarchy, Princess Diana and more…

[DOWNLOAD]

Groovy background music c/o http://www.bensound.com

Introduction

I’m not going to spend much time on an introduction to this episode (yeah, right) except to say that in this episode you’re going to hear another a fast conversation between 4 native speakers, recorded for you to listen to.

You’ll hear the pod-pals – that’s Amber, Paul & me (The Thrilling Three or the Tangential Trio) having our weekly chat on the terrace in the sunshine. But this time we are joined by a 4th member to our team in the form of Tom Morton, a friend of ours from the stand-up comedy scene here in Paris. You might remember that Tom has been mentioned briefly on this podcast before and that we’ve established that he looks a bit like Dave Grohl the drummer from Nirvana and Tim Curry the actor from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and… that’s it! That’s all you know at the moment!

Tom

So, just to fill you in a bit – Tom is a professional actor and voice-over artist. He’s done voice-overs for TV and radio advertisements for companies like Mini, L’Oreal, Sky TV, McVities biscuits and Nintendo Wii. He’s is half English and half French and speaks both English and French like a native. “What’s Tom’s accent?”, you might be wondering. Well you’ll find out for yourself in a bit when you listen to him, but in English he speaks with received pronunciation, which is essentially that neutral accent that we associate with the BBC and the universities – no particular regional inflections although he spent lots of time in West London when he was growing up. So, he speaks a bit like me basically, but he has his own unique sound of course, as you will discover in a moment. As ever I am keen to know what you think. What do you think of Tom’s voice? Leave your comments on the website.

Here’s what you’ll hear in this episode

First you’ll hear the three of us give Tom a sort of job interview as part of his initiation onto the podcast. After a couple of minutes though, the job interview goes downhill and is abandoned. We then just mess around, letting you get to know Tom a bit, doing improvised voice-overs on a few royalty-free Apple jingles, before the conversation goes off on a number of tangents (what a surprise). And those tangents cover these things:

the complexities of explaining puns and jokes in English
doing voiceovers on adverts for the ‘megaknife’ – a knife that is so sharp it can cut through a shoe
the Queen’s birthday
what British people think of the monarchy
the death of Princess Diana
public reactions to tragedies like when a famous person dies (this was recorded just a few hours before we all learned that another celebrity had died – the American musician Prince – just another legend who died this year after Lemmy, David Bowie, George Martin and a bunch of other people including British celebrities Terry Wogan, Paul Daniels, Ronnie Corbett and Victoria Wood – you might not know who they are but they were all much loved comedians and entertainers who died this year) So – public reactions to the death of famous people
when old people say racist things, like Prince Philip or your grandparents
Amber’s son Hugo has learning a new word
getting a letter from the Queen on your 100th birthday
the drama of Paul and Luke getting attacked by flying insects (ladybirds)
Amber’s story about a woman she saw whose scarf had slipped between her bum cheeks making it look like she had a tail
the moment one of my neighbours burps very loudly in the background from another apartment (I’m pretty sure you can’t hear it)
then finally, which members of The Fantastic Four we would be – I’m Mr Fantastic (because I’m the leader I suppose), Amber is the invisible woman (because since she had a baby she’s become invisible to men), Paul is The Human Torch (because he’s on fire sitting in the sun, and because he’s so hot right now in the world of comedy), and Tom is The Thing (neither French nor English, just an amorphous blob).

It’s a real mix of both serious and light-hearted topics, and yes, I am aware that the conversation moves pretty fast and we talk over each other quite a lot – that’s just what happens when a bunch of friends get together like this. It might be a difficult episode to follow – or maybe not – maybe you’ll have absolutely no problem keeping up with this, but in any case I hope you just enjoy listening to another completely spontaneous conversation between a group of Brits who are getting a bit too much sun on their heads.

You should know that there’s some swearing in this episode – there you go, you’ve been warned.

Also, we’re not talking about the results of the interactive lying game from episode 343 yet – that’s going to come in an another episode soon.

So that’s enough introduction. I will now just let you listen to another outdoor episode of LEP featuring the The Talkative Trio with Tom Morton.

LEP JINGLE MASHUP 1

Conversation begins

LEP JINGLE MASHUP 2

That’s it! Check out the page for the episode. There are a few notes and a brief summary of some of the main points in that conversation, so if you didn’t understand something you can just google it or wikipedia it!

Just a reminder about italki before I say anything else. With italki you can have your own rambling conversations with native English speakers if you like, or if you prefer you can have properly structured English lessons too, and all from the convenience of your own internet connection at home, or anywhere else really. They have loads of qualified teachers to choose from, and when you buy some lessons italki will give you a voucher worth 100ITC which is a nice discount on future English lessons. To get that offer and to check out italki go to teacherluke.co.uk/talk or click an italki logo on my website.

I’m going to be on holiday for about a week and then I’ll be very busy marking student exam papers so I don’t know when I’ll be able to upload a new episode. But I’m sure it won’t be that long, and anyway I’ve given you so many new episodes lately you could probably do with a little break too – or maybe not! Maybe you’re desperate for more. Don’t forget to check out my other podcast – A Phrasal Verb a Day. There are now over 130 episodes of that. The episodes are much shorter and I get straight to the point in every single episode and just focus on teaching you a new phrasal verb every time – and you shouldn’t underestimate the importance of phrasal verbs in English. They’re a vital part of fluent, natural English. So check out teacherluke.co.uk/pv for the episode archive – some of them have videos too.

Right – enough rambling! I’m off! I’ve got lots of exam marking to do! Have a nice day or night or morning or whatever and I’ll speak to you soon. Cheers! BYE!

Photos (clockwise – left to right) Princess Diana, a ladybird, Fantastic Four logo, The Queen, Tim Curry, Dave Grohl, LEP logo.

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Links & Videos

*Conversations starts (after I remembered to press ‘record’ on my device)*

Links & Videos

Introduction

Let’s get started

1. What is Pokemon?

2. What is Pokemon Go?

What’s the appeal?

The future?

3. Arguments for

4. Arguments against

5. Let’s play Pokemon Go! *Maybe in an episode soon – would you like that? Let me know*

WHAT DO YOU THINK? Leave your comments below :)

Photos

*Review begins*

Paul Langton – Ex-Nerd, Former Fanboy,

Obviously, if you’re a Marvel movie fan – you’re probably going to like this. But also, if you are a learner of English who likes a challenge – this is definitely for you too…

What about the way Paul speaks?

Here is a suggested approach for how to listen to this episode.

Oh, and here’s a quick task for you

*Conversation begins*

*Conversation ends*

___________?_____________ vs ___________?_____________

PART 2

The Marvel Cinematic Universe (13 movies so far, plus some spin-off TV shows)

Captain America: Civil War – My Review

Why am I talking about Marvel films and superheroes?

So, have you seen the new Captain America film? In fact, have you seen any Marvel films or recent superhero movies?

Mayumi’s comment

So – talk about Marvel movies, superhero stuff and Captain America? OK!

Superhero movies in the past – A kind of history of superhero films

Now, back to the pre-MCU movies

What do you think? Have you seen the new Superman films? Superman vs Batman? Give me your quick movie review to any of the films I’m talking about here.

So what’s the story of the Marvel cinematic universe?

END OF PART 1 – CLICK HERE FOR PART 2

Luke’s English Podcast is nominated for a British Council ELTon Award!

So, back to this new episode of the podcast

5 Phrasal Verbs and 5 Idioms

Phrasal Verbs

*JINGLE*

Columbo “My wife…”

Did you notice any phrasal verbs and idioms?

Part 2 – coming soon

Introduction

Tom

Here’s what you’ll hear in this episode

*Conversation begins*

Cookies on teacherluke.co.uk

Conversations starts (after I remembered to press ‘record’ on my device)

5. Let’s play Pokemon Go! Maybe in an episode soon – would you like that? Let me know

Review begins

Conversation begins

Conversation ends

_____?_ vs _?_________

JINGLE

Conversation begins