Metal Gear Solid

[School of Everything Else 2021]

This show was recorded a long, long time ago, pre-pandemic, and has been in cryo-storage, waiting to be unleashed. It's all about the 1998 seminal classic, Metal Gear Solid by visionary, genius, dirty old gimmer and maddening eccentric Hideo Kojima. It was an absolute linchpin of my formative years in gaming, and to my mind has only been bettered in the rest of its series dramatically speaking with Snake Eater.

For this show I went to the absurd lengths it took to acquire the GameCube remake "The Twin Snakes", allowing me to not only appraise that maligned shift in engine and ramped up post-Matrix style, but also to make a serious statement on the importance of not only remakes but remasters, and in continuing them down the line of machines, as lack of backwards-compatibility leaves more and more titles in an unplayable state for the average gaming enthusiast.

We go into the innovative metatextual gameplay, the crazy characters and foreboding, yet satirical atmosphere as we piece together what made this one such a massive winner. 

Guests:

Toby Jungius @TJungius of Through the Wind Door 

Derrick Ritchie @thenewdelboy

About Time

[School of Movies 2021]

Richard Curtis has only directed three films in his career. Usually he relegates himself to writing and producer roles, and you can always tell when you're watching one of his movies. Certain recurring character types and themes keep re-emerging.

The first directed was Love Actually, the second The Boat That Rocked, but this third and reputedly final effort is genuinely a cut above everything that came before. It's not without its issues, as we will go into on the show. Painfully British, painfully white, painfully upper-middle-class, and imbued with an adoring yet patronising view of woman.

But it has a huge heart. It's a time travel story that really gets how the philosophy underpinning its story can absolutely apply to our own lives, devoid of quantum physics. It also has one of cinemas all-time best Dads in it, in the shape of Bill Nighy. So we recruited the same time travel expert who helped me with my own book on that tricky subject, to help us discuss what about this film works so well.

Guest

Jesse Ferguson @TheDapperDM

from the Recorded Tomorrow Podcast

Resident Evil 3: Nemesis

[School of Everything Else 2021]

This show was recorded back in 2020 not too long after the remake of the 1999 game was released, so there will be speculation regarding which direction Capcom will take the series, rather than a focus on Resident Evil VIII (which at the time of release was launched just days ago).

This was to Resident Evil 3 (the sequel to one of my favourite games of the 1990s) in a way that its remake is to the remake of Resident Evil 2 (one of my favourites of the 2010s). And it was a pivotal moment for both the original and the remake, when Capcom took the series in a direction that began like the cautious survival horrors of the previous decade but then evolved into crazy action. And our discussion is about how that seems like an inevitable path once again, and why this cycle might not be that bad.

This show is being released after well over a year of pandemic, though recorded at the beginning. It remains the biggest in my lifetime, and people are scared. So there's still a certain strange appeal about the notion of confronting our fears and seeing them symbolically rendered into disgusting undead beasties we can shoot, stab and evade. That makes this game either wildly inappropriate for our times or the most appropriate.

Guests:

James Perkins @Mijmeister

Derrick Ritchie @thenewdelboy

The Falcon and The Winter Soldier

[School of Everything Else 2021]

Marvel's second TV show directly tying in with the MCU. What are we calling this now? As I write these words cinema is in a chrysalis, having gone to hide in there the moment James Bond looked like he might get another mission. And yet Falcon as a TV show is legitimately "Cinematic" in its presentation. I mean the dictionary definition of the word.  

But then, so is a lot of TV now. And WandaVision was the most Televisual a show could get, by design. And there's something frustrating for everyone who invested in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. or the Defenders shows, or those three who liked the way Inhumans was done. All this TV that purported to be part of this universe but was in fact filmed in a sealed pocket, unable to have any ramifications upon the wider saga. 

Whatever name gets conjured (still waiting on what that Lion King remake can be defined as) Falcon is an incredibly gripping six episode miniseries that retains the feel of the latter Captaon America films. But there's new ingredients now, and highs and lows exhibit themselves as it becomes apparent that some elements of this story of carrying the shield in a troubled world play better than others.

Guests:

Alasdair Stuart of Escape Artists Inc. @AlasdairStuart 

Greg Downing of Through the Wind Door @MightyGregDoge 

Austin Wilden from our Discord @WC_WIT