Podcast: The Demented Encyclopedia #14 - The One With The Last Airbender.

Another Saturday leaving us... which means it's time for another episode of The Demented Encyclopedia!

This week, Travis and I discuss both the show and the movie versions of Avatar: The Last Airbender. This episode is a little different from usual. Neither of us had a "Recommend A...," and we're gonna have an extra long Film vs. Film next week, so we decided not to do one this week. As such, we decided to do another little segment at the beginning of the show entitled "Controversy Corner," wherein we discuss one of the many controversies surrounding not only this movie, but in Hollywood in general: Whitewashing casts.

From there, we go into what we like and dislike about both the series and the movie (hint: one is mostly "like" talk and one is mostly "dislike" talk. Dare you to guess which is which!). And then we finish up the episode with the only reason anybody listens to the show, The Mono-Dialogue of the Week.

As a bit of insider information, there is actually about 40 minutes of show that's been cut (which is actually a bit ironic considering what we were talking about). We actually decided to do 2 placeholder segments this week, but we decided to not include the second one in the final edit of the show, because the majority of it was a bit repetitious and not all that interesting. For those interested, this is pretty much what it was: We brought back the "If I wrote/directed" segment from our very first episode, focusing on the Last Airbender movie. If you remember the epic post I did a while back reviewing season 1 of the show, I basically went down the list, summarizing the episode, while Travis and I discussed if M. Night made the right choice in cutting or keeping the episode (or part of the episode), if he handled it well if he did keep it, and if we would keep it or cut it if we were in charge of the movie. For the most part, this roughly 40-minute conversation just reiterated what we spent the rest of the episode discussing, with only a few bits of new information here and there.

If you're interested, here are those bits (basically): Travis would have kept the "Imprisoned" segment in his movie but kept it more like the show (unlike M. Night), while I would have cut it completely; Travis and I have differing opinions on the character Jet (he likes him, I don't), but we still wouldn't have included him in our versions, so M. Night made a good choice there; Travis and I both would have included June the Assassin in our versions; and we both would have included both Pakku and his fight with Katara at the Northern Water Tribe in our versions of the movie. Overall, the basic summary of the segment was this: M. Night made decent cuts (and a couple questionable ones that he didn't), but he just handled what he kept too poorly.

And that's about it! I had to do one heck of an editing job to make it seem like that second segment never existed (with I believe only one instance near the beginning that implies otherwise, with one subject/verb agreement problem, as I cut out a couple words and even the 's' at the end of a plural word to make it singular... and then one instance near the end where I couldn't edit as clearly, so there's a very brief garble around the point it makes the jump). So I hope you enjoy the episode. It's one of our shortest now, actually. And make sure to keep an eye out for next week when we have our first returning guest host!

Thanks goes out to Kevin MacLeod's Imcompetech Website for the music. As always, you can use the player above to listen to the podcast, or you can search iTunes, where we are also available for download. The earlier episodes are being removed from the player for space, but you can still always download them on iTunes. Also, please become a Fan on Facebook... then you can give us your input for the podcast and will probably end up on the show during the D-Bag segment, as well as vote for which film in Film vs. Film won for the week. But as for now... enjoy!