We’re Hosting Another Movie Screening to Benefit PNW Starbucks Workers United!

We are proud to announce that Radio vs. the Martians! is going to be returning to The Beacon Cinema to sponsor a third theatrical screening to benefit the Pacific Northwest Starbucks Workers United relief fund! And this time, we’re watching John Carpenter’s angry science fiction send up of free market capitalism in Reagan-era America: They Live!

When: Thursday, June 1st @ 7:30 pm

Where:  The Beacon Cinema at 4405 Rainier Ave S., Seattle, WA 98118

Cost:   Tickets at $12.50 each, with all admissions for PNW Starbucks Workers United

You can buy tickets now, but seats are limited!

RADIO VS. THE MARTIANS presents …JOHN CARPENTER’S THEY LIVE

With a filmography as diverse as John Carpenter’s, it can be easy to forget just how many our favorite movies he directed in his decades-long career. Seemingly alternating between box office gold with HALLOWEEN and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK and commercial bombs that have since been re-evaluated as legitimate genre classics like THE THING and BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, it’s inevitable that a few are going to be overlooked. Such a film is his 1988 pulpy science fiction tirade about media brainwashing and rapacious greed in the waning years of Ronald Reagan’s Morning in America: THEY LIVE.

Professional wrestling’s bad boy, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper stars as Nada, a homeless drifter who comes to Los Angeles looking for work and stumbles upon to a pair of sunglasses that pierce the veil of a global conspiracy between a race of aliens who have already enslaved Earth through subliminal advertising and their human ruling class collaborators.

Piper’s often unhinged performance is a revelation. He gifts us some of the greatest ad-libbed one-liners in cinema history and, most famously, a nearly six minute-long fight scene with co-star Keith David where Piper reportedly asked David to actually hit him. You know, to make it look good.

THEY LIVE is like a mash-up of the sensibilities of Roger Corman and Noam Chomsky. This is a deliciously angry movie that isn’t concerned with creating the most thoughtful critique of obscene wealth disparity and corporate propaganda. This movie is pissed off, sometimes incoherently so. And in a world where the crimes of the richest 1% have gone intergalactic, THEY LIVE isn’t satisfied with making speeches. It’s too apoplectic for that. It wants to shoot aliens and blow up satellite dishes and burn this sucker down. Never has this movie never felt more terribly relevant.

This screening is sponsored by the RADIO VS. THE MARTIANS! podcast as a benefit for the PACIFIC NORTHWEST STARBUCKS WORKERS UNITED labor union, and 100% of the admissions will be donated to their Relief Fund.

We’re Hosting a Movie Screening to Benefit PNW Starbucks Workers United!

This December, we are proud to announce that Radio vs. the Martians! is going to be sponsoring a theatrical screening of the craziest, bloodiest martial arts film of all time, Riki-Oh: the Story of Ricky, to benefit the Pacific Northwest Starbucks Workers United relief fund.

When: Thursday, December 8th @ 7:30 pm

Where:  The Beacon Cinema at 4405 Rainier Ave S., Seattle, WA 98118

Cost:   Tickets at $12.50 each, with all admissions for PNW Starbucks Workers United

You can buy tickets now, but seats are limited!


RADIO VS. THE MARTIANS! PRESENTS…. RIKI-OH: THE STORY OF RICKY!

You’d be hard pressed to find a movie as strange, bloody, absurd, or thrilling to watch as RIKI-OH: THE STORY OF RICKY, but this 1991 Hong Kong martial arts splatterfest is truly something special.

Directed by Shaw Brothers veteran cinematographer Lam Ngai Kai and headlined by a then-18 year old Fan Siu-wong as kung fu Hercules and flautist, Ricky Ho, this crowd-pleasing cult film really tests the limits of good taste and how many ways one can creatively destroy a human dummy on film.

In the far future year of 2001, all prisons have been privatized into for-profit businesses (can you even imagine?). The latest inmate is the eponymous Ricky, convicted of manslaughter for avenging his girlfriend’s murder with his inexplicable superhuman strength and mastery of Qigong.

What follows is structured much like a video game, as Ricky battles a super-powered menagerie of increasingly bizarre and gimmicky convicts deputized by the prison’s evil Warden and his hook-handed Assistant Warden (played with a cartoonish glee by Siu-wong’s own father, Fan Mei-sheng), whose glass eye bafflingly doubles as a mint dispenser. Just go with it.

As Ricky is elevated to an almost Christ-like champion of the facility’s abused and oppressed prisoners, he literally destroys his opponents with his bare hands, impressive fight choreography and some charmingly hilarious special effects.

This screening is sponsored by the RADIO VS. THE MARTIANS! podcast as a benefit for the PACIFIC NORTHWEST STARBUCKS WORKERS UNITED labor union, and 100% of the admissions will be donated to their Relief Fund.

Black Lives Matter

On May 25th, a 46 year-old black man named George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis. The cop, Derek Chauvin, choked Floyd against the pavement with his knee for over eight minutes until he died. In full view of cell phone cameras. While other officers looked on and did nothing.

Without that cell phone camera, George Floyd’s story would have ended there. Not only was Chauvin not fired immediately, it was only after nationwide protests in nearly every major city — protests that police have uniformly and predictably escalated into brazen violence — that he and other officers were finally charged with Floyd’s murder.

And through all of this, the police have done everything in their power to deflect blame, avoid accountability, and provoke an already tense situation into a violent one. So far, we have seen police:

We wish it ended there.This is just over the past nine days.

Policing is utterly broken and is entrenched in an oppressive and racist system that has rarely gotten more than a finger-wagging and empty moralizing from politicians in either political party. George Floyd’s murder is part of a pattern of racially targeted abuse and murder that goes back over a century. The cops act with brutal impunity because they know they will not be held accountable. They do it again, and again, and again. And it needs to stop NOW.

Radio vs. the Martians! stands unequivocally with the protestors who are putting their bodies and freedom at risk in the heart of a global pandemic to counter the racist murder of George Floyd, and all of the murders and assaults that preceded it. We reject the police violence that transcends this one killing, and call for the entire institution to be rebuilt. The police unions to be busted down, their leadership fired and prosecuted for their part in the escalating violence and assault on protestors. They need to be made fully accountable to the communities they operate in.

We also have no time for the hand-waving and pearl clutching of those who have more anger for a burned police station or a looted store than they do for the dehumanizing and unrepentant racist violence against human beings. Stuff can be replaced. Human lives cannot. If you want to scold someone about violence, tell it to the cops.

As director James Cameron once said when he explained why he made the villainous T-1000 an L.A. police officer in Terminator 2:

Cops think of all non-cops as less than they are — stupid, weak, and evil. They dehumanize the people they are sworn to protect and desensitize themselves in order to do that job.

To that end, our show is making a $500.00 donation to the Freedom Fund of Black Lives Matter Seattle-King County. This will be used to bail out those arrested during the protests in Seattle. The cash bail system is an inhumane way for the police to keep people who have not been convicted of a crime locked up if they don’t have the economic privilege to afford their own freedom.

We ask that you make a donation of your own, to this or another organization fighting for racial justice. Take a screenshot of your donation confirmation, post it to social media, and then link to it in the comment below.

Stay safe. Take care of each other. And fuck the police.

PATREON EXCLUSIVE: Vote for the Second Panel Episode Topic of 2020!

On our current episode schedule, we produce two full panel episodes of Radio vs. the Martians! every year. Casey moderates one of these discussions, and Mike moderates the other.

Last spring, Mike moderated a talk about Spider-Man. Later in the year, Casey did same for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine!

For our second panel episode of 2020, Casey will be moderating again. And we’re letting our supporters on Patreon choose what we’re going to talk about!

Our patrons will be able to choose from:

HANNIBAL UNIVERSE Centering on Thomas Harris’ classic ur-bad guy, Hannibal Lecter, the series stems from a quartet of novels about the infamous cannibal serial killer, and the FBI agents who pursue him. The series has spawned five films, a brilliant television adaptation and a 100 million terrible Anthony Hopkins impersonations.

 


ZATOICHI THE BLIND SWORDSMAN – A wandering masseuse in Japan’s feudal period, Zatoichi is a blind man with a big heart and extraordinary swordsmanship helping right what once went wrong among the exiles and outcasts. Zatoichi was played exclusively by a single actor through 26 films, 100 episodes of a TV series, in a career spanning almost twenty years. The Blind Swordsman became a familiar samurai trope and legendarily revered Japanese character.

SEGA – The notorious underdog in the console wars of the 1990s, Sega went head-to-head against the House of Mario for over two decades. From the early arcade days, to resurrection of console gaming in the mid-80s and into the new millennium, Sega’s inventiveness and sheer moxie won over millions of adolescents before quitting the console market. But, the legacy of Sega’s IP (Hey, kids, you remember Sonic the Hedgehog, right?), their classic hardware design and their bad boy attitude survive.

NINE INCH NAILS – A new experiment: talking about music! The band that launched Industrial into the mainstream, Nine Inch Nails. Evolving their sound from synth-drenched new wave through the grunge rock era and coming into its own highly experimental heavy pop in the mid-90s, they presaged the death of rock n roll. Constantly experimenting, the band would move to become award winning composers for film and TV.

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (2003) – The remake to end all remakes! Who could have guessed that adapting a middling Star Wars knockoff from the late 70s, weaving together a serialized story about a human diaspora fighting against a race of malevolent robots bent on human extinction and producing it for basic cable could have ever been so good? Borrowing from current events, it was the poster child for smart, engaging science fiction in long form. So say we all!


LOBO – DC Comics’ favorite bounty huntin’ bastich! A Villain-turned-comedic-anti-Hero, Lobo is the wise-crackin’, nigh invulnerable heavy with no time for bullshit. Traveling the galaxy on his flying motorbike, Lobo is a tracker who, once he has accepted a job, must see it through. And woe to the many, many worlds and would-be challengers that run afoul of this immovable object. Raunchy, yet heartwarming, foul yet funny, Lobo embodies a corner of the DC Universe that’s been largely untouched in the current wave of big screen  adaptations. (Thank Zod for that!)


DENIS VILLENEUVE – French-Canadian film director almost single-handedly holding up the big budget, art house sci-fi film genre. A storytelling “wizard,” his credits include Sicario, Prisoners, Arrival, and Blade Runner 2049, his upcoming project is a two-film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune. With a unique talent for making critically lauded, idea-driven, R-rated movies, his success so far is both anomalous and inspiring.

It’s not too late to become one of our Patreon patrons and get in on this action! Join us! Even just a buck a month makes you eligible to vote!

Ask Us Anything Right Here!

In the month of December, Mike and Casey will participate in the first Ask Us Anything episode of Radio vs. the Martians!, exclusive to Patreon!

We will answer (nearly) anything you ask us about any topic, even stuff that we don’t normally tackle on the show — about ourselves, the things we believe, opinions (pop culture or otherwise) and anything you’d like to know about us!

Even though the podcast with our answers will be exclusive to our Patreon supporters, we want to open up questions to everyone. Ask a question in the comment thread below to be included in our December podcast.

So…Ask Us Anything! What would you like to know?

Join Us for the Third Annual Captain Picard Day Celebration!

It’s Back! So Tug down your on shirts and put your party shoes on!

Join Mike and Casey for our third annual Holiday Season gathering!

We’ll be at the Poodle Dog restaurant in Fife, in their Board Room for good food, good conversation, general cheer, and nerdity.

Where: Poodle Dog Restaurant in the “Board Room”
1522 54th Ave E, Fife, WA 98424

When: Saturday, December 15th, 2018 from 5:00pm to 9:30pm..or whenever!

Be There and Be Square!

For Our 5th Anniversary: Announcing Terminator Month!

Duh-dun dun duh DUH!!

January 2018 is the fifth anniversary of Radio vs. the Martians! and we’re doing something big.

This January, we’re launching what we’re calling Terminator Month! We’ll highlighting all four of the Schwarzenegger-led films in the science fiction/horror franchise franchise that made him a household name: Terminator.

Every Sunday in the month of January, we’ll be back with a new episode of our Arnold Schwarzenegger podcast celebration, Podcasta la Vista, Baby!

  • January 7th: The Terminator with Matt Goodman
  • January 14th: Terminator 2: Judgment Day with Joe Preti
  • January 21st: Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines with Dave Brouillette
  • January 28th: Terminator: Genisys with Sam Mulvey

It will be a month of explosions, time travel, post-apocalyptic wastelands, killer robots, helicopter crashes, catch phrases, murder, catch phrases and total vehicular mayhem!

So, come with us if you want to live!

Because Sometimes Life Happens

As the title of this post implies, the complications of life sometimes drive us to make adjustments. Well, life happens.

Oh, don’t worry. Nobody is dying. Nothing is on fire. Nothing is fucked.

But we’ve found that with the growing complications of adult life, it can be a lot more difficult to spend a couple months trying to consume all the media you can find about a pop culture topic like Batman or Star Trek, composing our thoughts in interesting and funny ways, and producing a 90+ minute podcast about it.

We don’t say it a lot, but it’s a lot of work. It’s work we adore, but work nonetheless.

Sometimes it means months of prep work and dozens of hours of writing and research going into our full panel discussion episodes. And it’s time we simply don’t have to produce the panels as frequently as we’d like.

First, the bad news is that for the time being, you won’t see nearly as many full panel episodes of Radio vs. the Martians! as you’ve grown accustomed to.

Starting this month, we will produce approximately three panel episodes a year. We’re going to make them count, and make them good.

Now, the good news is that our monthly “Fun Size” episodes are going nowhere. We will continue to put them out as scheduled in the last week or so of every month.

What this means that you will see a lot more episodes of our sister podcasts Podcasta la Vista, Baby! and Hex & Violence to fill up our dance cards.

For most of the year, expect those two shows to alternate from month to month, only to be interrupted tri-annually for a full panel episode in the classic style.

So, breathe and relax. We’re not going anywhere. Some things are going slower. Some things are speeding up. And at the beginning of next year, expect one giant surprise we can’t wait to share with you.

Thanks for sticking with us, listeners. We’ll make it worth your while!

 

Join Us for the 1st Annual Captain Picard Day!

There won’t be a new episode of the podcast this month, as Casey and Mike are taking a short break for the holidays…but they want you to join them!

That’s right! We’re hosting what we hope will be a new annual holiday tradition by the 24th Century! We’re hosting a little holiday get-together in honor of Captain Picard Day!

If you’re in the Seattle-Tacoma area, come meet the Radio vs. the Martians! guys and join us in raising our glasses to one of Starfleet’s finest commanding officers,  the player of one mean flute, and role model to children everywhere!

We’ll eat! We’ll drink! We’ll use salty language! We’ll talk endlessly about nerdy stuff and do Patrick Stewart impressions!

WHERE: 

Doyle’s Public House   

208 St. Helens Ave South
Tacoma, WA. 98402

WHEN:

Saturday, December 17th

2:00pm to 6:00pm

RVSP here if you’d like to join us!

Brand New Reward for Patreon Subscribers!

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We are thrilled to announce a brand new Reward for our subscribers on Patreon!

As Patreon subscribers, if you subscribe and donate any amount over $1 a month, you will receive exclusive access to what we’re calling Radio vs. the Martians! “Black Ops” episodes!

These are sporadic off-topic, off-the-books episodes of the podcast, and available only to Patreon subscribers!

And that’s on top of our regular panel episodes of Radio vs. the Martians!, our monthly “Fun Size” episodes, and our Arnold Schwarzenegger celebration podcast, Podcasta la Vista, Baby!

Subscribe today to get the first exclusive bonus episode, only on Patreon!

Podcasta la Vista, Baby! goes Bimonthly in May!

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Starting in April, our spin-off show, Podcasta la Vista, Baby! will go from a quarterly celebration of the cinematic legend of Arnold Schwarzenegger to a meaty, double-barrelled bimonthly experience!

That means every year, you will get 50% more muscles, 50% more explosions, and 50% more absurd macho bullshit, starting with Arnie’s first starring role in Hercules in New York in May!

How does this affect our main program, Radio vs. the Martians!, you might ask? Our panel episodes will move to a bimonthly basis as well, giving us even more time to write, schedule and gorge ourselves on delicious (and not-so-delicious) popular culture to make our panel episodes even better and more ambitious than ever!

But fret not, loyal listener! We will still have monthly installments of our Fun Size episodes to pick up the slack and keep you abreast of all of our non-Arnold related tirades and fan gushing!

Great things are on the way, folks!