School of Movies

Blade Runner

[School of Movies 2017]

[Note: This is a re-release of the original Blade Runner to coincide with our show on 2049 this week.]

Here's a short, and by no means exhaustive list of entertainment works influenced by this one movie... 

RoboCop, Akira, Back to the Future Part II, Ghost in the Shell, The Fifth Element, The Matrix, Futurama, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, I, Robot, Minority Report, Serenity, WALL-E, Battlestar Galactica, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Prometheus, District 9, Alex + Ada, Almost Human, Black Mirror, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Dredd, Chappie, Her, Ex-Machina, Valerian and Westworld.

This episode we discuss Ridley Scott's ponderous, flawed, but hugely impactful and striking vision of the future, and musing on the nature of humanity, accompanied by Vangelis, and one of the greatest scores ever put to film.

Guests

Taylor Nova of TheKidDogg

Collin Miller of The Cinema Cephalopod 

Harley Quinn (Seasons 1 & 2)

[School of Everything Else 2022]

The initial trailers for this one had me groaning. We were still pre-Birds of Prey movie so it was easy to assume the touchstone for this one was the first Suicide Squad movie, plus extreme cartoon violence and crudity. Well I was right about the second two!

Turns out this is one of the smartest, most psychologically explorative of DC's vast back catalogue of superhero TV. Primarily because it is framed first as a relationship drama, second as a comedy and third as a DC world. But even with that lowered priority and an emphasis on wild chaos there is still the flavour of authenticity about the vast majority of the characters. This writing and production team have paid attention.

And crucially, after teasing us with an early on meeting and lightning chemistry between Harley and Ivy in Batman: The Animated Series way back in 1993 we finally get to see them cultivate a close friendship onscreen... At least it *would* be ONLY a close friendship if this were Disney. So thank goodness it's not!

For this episode we steer clear of serious spoilers until a dedicated section at the end, so even if you haven't seen any episodes you can listen to this.

Ms. Marvel (MCU)

[School of Everything Else 2022]

This is our second show on Kamala Khan. The first was all the way back in 2017 when we talked about her first comic miniseries. I've re-released that show on the podcast feed so these two can be companion pieces. 

The Disney+ miniseries delivered almost exactly what we had been hoping for all these years. A bright, funny, courageous Pakistani-American girl hero. Instantly iconic and clearly in love with all things Marvel. 

We did not expect the drama to be quite so naturalistic and poignant, the family to be so much more interesting than the interdimensional shenanigans or the gut punch of the 1947 Partition of India which stands as the centrepiece. This real life event created millions of immigrant refugee stories and generational hurt across a cultural divide which exists to this day. 

Also the soundtrack is amazing!

Guests:

Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnew of Cinapse

Chris Finik @finmonster09 who assembles New Century's TV Tropes Pages and who writes fanfic (including a Dark Tower / Tiger's Eye crossover)

Nama Chibitty @namathenerd

Ms. Marvel (Comics)

[School of Everything Else 2017]

This is a reupload of our 2017 show discussing the first series of Ms. Marvel comics. It works as a great companion piece to our show on the 2022 MCU TV series. 

In 2013 a brand new Marvel character was introduced to the world, one who is very reminiscent of classic Peter Parker, a goofy, hapless, sweet-natured teenager who just wants to help people. She's also the world's premier, headlining Muslim superhero, and very much due a movie or TV series to bring her to mass popularity like those who came before her.

In tonight's episode we are joined by Alasdair Stuart, owner of Escape Artists and long-time comic-book expert, to enthusiastically discuss why the younger generations are already loving Kamala Khan, and why she's so important in the grand scheme.

You don't have to have read any of her comics, but by the end of this you will want to. 

Guest:

Alasdair Stuart of Escape Pod

Obi Wan Kenobi

[School of Everything Else 2022]

There are two things about Star Wars that seem endemic, inextricable from the process of engaging with the multitude of stories that have emerged over the many years since 1977.

One is that we always seem to return to Tatooine. It ties in with the fact that Star Wars plays on nostalgia. Even as early as 1983's Return of the Jedi they were bringing us back to that sand planet only actually named out loud at the tail end of The Empire Strikes Back. That movie also continued the long procession of Death Stars. But if we accept that these touchstones will mean that many people's first Star Wars will feature Tatooine, we can accept that this nostalgia and going back to that feeling when you were a kid, and could get excited about all sorts of things, that's the source of its power. George's movie was itself based on his own nostalgia for spacefaring adventure, cowboys and samurai. 

The other element that one must accept if one is to be at peace with Star Wars is that as that multitude of stories emerge over the years of our lives we are going to encounter not just one but a cluster over a period of time that disappoint us and make us feel like this saga has lost its way and isn't for us any more. But inevitably if that love was there to begin with, something will come along and surprise us in a good way. 

And for us that was Obi Wan. 

Guests:

Chris Finik @finmonster09 who assembles New Century's TV Tropes Pages and who writes fanfic (including a Dark Tower / Tiger's Eye crossover)

Austin Wilden @WC_WIT of Wits-Writing

The Lost Boys & Lost Men of Taika Waititi

[School of Movies 2022]

This is an exploration on the more personal, less studio-based films of Thor Ragnaraok and Love & Thunder director Taika Waititi. Most of you won't have seen all of them, and that is okay, you should listen to this episode in its entirety anyway. The show will give you more details to look for when you get to watching them.

03m: Eagle vs. Shark (2007)

25m: Boy (2010)

41m: Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)

59m: Jojo Rabbit (2019)

All of them have many factors in common, but the unifying factors are parents not being around, and lonely boys going through a transformative journey.  There is dark, offhand humour, spectacular immaturity, sudden unexpected pain and loss, and resolutions that are as soothingly healthy as they are oddball. Altogether, Waititi is one of the most riveting directors of our time, and it brings us a lot of joy to study his repeating themes along with you. 

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

[School of Movies 2022]

This one hit us mere hours after the finale of Moon Knight. It has been six years since the first Doctor Strange hit in late 2016. To the point where the dangling threads of that film are ignored, because Stephen has made four more appearances since then, and been instrumental in deliberately instigating The Snap.

But even that is mostly pushed to the side as this film becomes the follow-up to the first Disney+ Marvel TV show, WandaVision. And the handling of that factor by dream director for many; Evil Dead and Spider-Man-helmer Sam Raimi has caused this to become one of the most polarising of MCU movies. 

We needed several months to think hard about it, and this is what we really wanted to say. Many thanks to our brilliant guests for lending perspective and also putting into understandable words how time and dimensional travel seems to work within Marvel's Earth 616 (movies and TV not comics). 

Guests:

Chris Finik @finmonster09 who assembles New Century's TV Tropes Pages and who writes fanfic (including a Dark Tower / Tiger's Eye crossover)

Jesse Ferguson @TheDapperDM

from the Recorded Tomorrow Podcast

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom & Dominion

[School of Movies 2022]

Two films about dinosaurs as a metaphor for our own existential fear of extinction.

We've held back on talking about the second film, released in 2018 because I was waiting on the onscreen consequences of the big decision at the end. While some folks considered Fallen Kingdom to be the worst in the franchise (I even saw a video declaring it the worst movie ever made - clearly somebody who has never seen Swamp Shark) we actually quite like it.

Don't get us wrong, it's dumb as a sack of hammers, but there are qualities that win it points with us that the other sequels don't have, not least of which is the director of the Orphanage, one of the finest ghost stories ever put to film, Juan Antonio Bayona.

After that I tell Sharon all about the third movie (we keep all spoilers for that section). One could say Jurassic Park needed no sequels, but when has NEED ever factored in when the prospect of a billion dollars was on the table?

Vampire’s Kiss

[School of Movies 2020]

After the sexy teen rebels of The Lost Boys we delve into the cutthroat underworld of New York big business and the predatory nature of its ambitious executives, hollow inside and devoid of a soul, trying to fill that emptiness with delusions that their success excuses them from the people they hurt to achieve their power.

Listen, when you bring in Nicholas Cage and tell him to just go nuts with a role you're paying for spectacle not subtlety. This began as a Quick Review but quickly became one of the funniest shows we've recorded, centring around one of the weirdest performances we've witnessed. 

FACE/OFF

[School of Movies 2022]

The third in the Rage Cage trinity, released less than a month after Con Air, this movie saw our boy Nick set against John Travolta, who was at the time flying high on the success of Pulp Fiction a few years previously. 

The premise of "Good guy wears bad guy's face" is completely nuts for a start, but what it allows us to see onscreen is two extremely intense actors performing as both a wackadoo international terrorist-for-hire and the broken, obsessed FBI agent hellbent on revenge. Science and physics are utterly abandoned in favour of comic book logic, but the proceedings remained nonetheless a slick bullet ballet just oozing with star-power as the two leads try to out-weird each other. 

Action maestro John Woo had only just begun to direct films for a western audience (following Hard Target and Broken Arrow) but this might be the most fondly remembered.

Guests

Hollywoo Actress  Maya Souris @Mayasantandrea

Jason "Chewie" Slate @TheManaPool