Episode 60 – Zardoz

Into a world of eternal life, he brought the gift of death

This month, we’re eating green bread and refusing to go to Second Level meditation with Joe Preti of the late View from the Gutters comic book podcast to dive into the weird and psychedelic science fiction cult film, 1974’s Zardoz!

In the year 2293, Zed is a murderer disciple of Zardoz, a floating stone god who arms and commands him and other “exterminators” to roam the post-apocalyptic wasteland and kill human survivors. After learning the terrible truth of Zardoz – that the god is actually an airship –  the disillusioned Zed stows away aboard his “god” and is delivered into the Vortex, a hidden city of immortals that created Zardoz to manipulate humanity. Thrust into a bored and stagnant society that has forgotten about passion, sexuality and death, Zed’s very presence threatens to tear their fragile civilization apart.

Black Ops Episode 3 – Sorry, Richard Roeper [DECLASSIFIED!]

[As we continue our show hiatus, it has been decided by the fine people who support us on Patreon that we are going to make public — or ‘declassify’ — one of our Patreon-exclusive Black Ops episodes every month. This month, our patrons have personally selected this episode to help fill the gap! Consider it a look back at the ‘Before Times’]

Original Patreon release date: August 17, 2016

We finally check in with our young friend, Sean Duncan — who had managed to go through life without ever having the ending of the 1973 dystopian science fiction movie, Soylent Green spoiled for him. Truly a remarkable feat.

He’s now seen it and lets us know what he thinks of it. Plus, we talk about the social politics of spoilers.

Black Ops Episode 14 – More Stuff in the Basement [CLIP]

In our new episode, exclusive to our Patreon supporters, there’s some more stuff to clean out the basement.

Casey loves science fiction, but has grown tired of the ubiquity of sci-fi that treats dystopia, calamity and apocalypse as inevitability.  What happened to looking for positive alternatives and aspirational worlds in our genre media?

Is it a symptom of our inability to imagine that we can overcome the things that make the modern world a scary place, and instead just imagine futures where our problems are exactly the same, or  just amplified?

To unlock this episode in its entirety — and many episodes more! — just support us on Patreon with at least one measly dollar a month!

Join us!

Fun Size Episode 17 – Unforgiven Meets Little Miss Sunshine

We continue our chat with Joe Preti, and give our spoiler-iffic review of Hugh Jackman’s final turn as the mutant superhero Wolverine in Logan.

Have we hit peak superhero at the box office? Can a comic book adaptation transcend being just being a fun, popcorn crowd-pleaser, and become an emotionally potent piece of art? Is it time for the studios to stop bombarding us with constant references, callbacks and post-credit scenes, and just make a compelling story with powerfully written characters and strong performances?

Spoiler: The answer to all of these questions is yes.

Plus, we get derailed talking about Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. And try really, really, really hard to say something nice about it. Oh, boy.