It's been over ten years since Empire Records and its colorful employees came into our lives. Since then, the film has become something of a cherished, cult classic. My good friend and Empire fanatic, Susie Richards and I watch and discuss the movie together, via speaker phone. The story takes place roughly within a 24 hour period and centers around a small, independent record store. The place is in danger of being bought out by an evil, corporate chain called Music Town. It's up to Empire's underdog staff to rebel against the system and maintain their family unit of rock n' roll dysfunction.

Join Susie and I as we take a look at the 2003 Special Edition DVD (basically a Director's Cut), and ponder such baffling questions like:
What exactly happened to Deb to make her suicidal?
What really happened to Lucas when he was in Atlantic City?
Why has there never been a Volume Two Soundtrack Album?
Where's the rest of the footage still missing from the movie?
Why no definitive DVD (commentary, retrospective documentary, etc.)?
Just what the hell is Warren's real name, anyway?

After enjoying the podcast, head on over to Open Till Midnight for the ultimate Empire Records fan site. It's chock full of music info, trivia, custom MySpace layouts, desktop wallpapers and even an online store! I recommend the "You make me feel like a bath" t-shirt.

As John and I try for the third time to get his latest movie commentary uploaded, I thought it might be worth pointing out some contributions we've made of late to other podcasts. To hear me ramble for five minutes about scifi classic The Abyss check out the latest episode of PodCulture. To read John's thoughts on Sarah Michelle Gellar's The Return (among other things) head on over to the reviews section at Geekshow.us.

Coming soon: Empire Records.

The killer combination of illness (Stu), laziness (Stu) and dialup modem (John) means it's been over a month since a new episode was posted. But that's not to say new episodes haven't been recorded, as this second installment of John and Brandon's Lost pilot commentary amply proves. In your face Gods of Podfading!

As before, Brandon is on speakerphone for this episode so his half of the conversation, while generally intelligible, isn't as clear as John's half.

John and Brandon had seen the first few episodes of season 3 when this was recorded, but I don't think there are any major spoilers beyond the finale of season 2.