Tag Archives: single serving selection

Episode 60 – Zardoz

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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.

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Episode 59 – Halloween III: Season of the Witch

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…and now the earth will run with blood again!

We’re getting into the spirit of the spooky season with returning guest Kirby Green, and unmasking the underrated black sheep of the Halloween horror franchise: Halloween III: Season of the Witch!

Dr. Daniel Challis stumbles into a mystery after a man clutching a rubber mask is murdered in his hospital by a strange figure who immediately sets himself on fire. He soon joins the victim’s daughter on a quest for answers that leads them to a small California factory town behind the mask, this year’s hottest selling Halloween item. They are soon caught in an occult conspiracy involving a druidic cult, Stonehenge, murderous androids, and bloody mass sacrifice!

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Episode 58 – Hudson Hawk

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Catch the Excitement. Catch the Adventure. Catch the Hawk.

We’re breaking into the Vatican and trying to get a good cappuccino with Joe Preti as we reappraise the much maligned — and genuinely underrated — 1991 Bruce Willis box office bomb about daring heists and alchemical miracle machines: Hudson Hawk!

Eddie “Hudson Hawk” Hawkins is the world’s most famous cat burglar. He’s just gotten out of prison, he’s trying to go straight, and he just wants a good cappuccino. But instead he’s being blackmailed — by local mobsters, his parole officer, a pair of psychotic billionaires, and even the C.I.A. — into stealing the artifacts of Leonard da Vinci from the Vatican museum, so they can reassemble his legendary device for turning lead into gold, and destroy the world’s economy! So now, Hawk and his best pal Tommy have to save the world in just six minutes and change. How about it? “Side by Side“?

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Episode 57 – Sorcerer (1977)

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WANTED. Four men willing to drive a cargo of death to escape a life in hell.

This month, we’re going on a jungle suicide mission with Camp Director and President of Camp Quest NorthWest, Michael Warbington, and plunging into the gritty, globetrotting William Friedkin classic about desperate men looking for a way out of purgatory: 1977’s Sorcerer!

Four men exiled in a corrupt South American country, hiding from their pasts and unable to afford the bribes necessary to escape their fates, are given an opportunity to get out. An American getaway driver, a Palestinian militant, a disgraced French investment banker, and a Mexican hitman must drive two trucks across 218 miles of narrow mountain roads and dense jungle, to deliver a cargo of dangerously unstable dynamite to put out a raging oil fire. But if the rotten bridges, armed bandits, and leaking nitroglycerine don’t kill them, growing mistrust and despair just might.

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Episode 56 – Vengeance (2022)

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Find the story before it finds you.

This month, we’re joined by Chelsea Rustad chair of the Puget Sound Socialist Party and the author of Inherited Secrets: Memoir of America’s Groundbreaking Genetic Witness to  draw thematic connections between seemingly disparate elements and using that to get to the bottom of B.J. Novak’s directorial debut, Vengeance!

New Yorker writer Ben Manalowitz finds himself in West Texas after a late night phone call from Ty Shaw, the brother of a girl he used to hook up with. Ty’s sister Abilene has died of a drug overdose, but he is convinced she was murdered. And mistakenly believing that Ben and Abilene had a serious relationship, he wants Ben to help him avenge her death. Seeing this as a huge opportunity to build his career with a big true crime public radio podcast, Ben agrees to investigate. Ben smugly imagines a story about how tragedy and regret propel people in believing conspiracy theories to avoid accepting hard truths. But as he starts to dig, he begins to question: what if Abilene really was murdered?

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Episode 55 – The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

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“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

This month, we’re riddling in the dark and escaping the goblin caves with Kayleigh Casterline and revisiting J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic 1937 fantasy book that introduced readers to the world of Middle-earth, The Hobbit!

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys peace and quiet comfort, and never does anything unexpected to make the neighbors talk. So nobody is more surprised than him when he finds himself railroaded by the wizard Gandalf into accompanying a band of exiled dwarves on a quest reclaim their kingdom and treasure from a fire-breathing dragon! Now thrust into a wider world full of goblins, wood elves, secret doors, giant spiders and magic rings, the homebody Bilbo finds in himself a dormant courage and resourcefulness than he could have never imagined.

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Episode 54 – Shiver: Selected Stories by Junji Ito

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“I am a horror maniac who prefers to stay at home.”

This Halloween, we’re chugging down salad oil and hiding from our balloon dopplegangers with returning friend of the show, Kirby Green, and see if our sanity can can survive the brain-melting onslaught of Junji Ito’s collection of his shorter manga works, in Shiver: Selected Stories!

In this anthology of the legendary manga artist’s favorite short stories, we get just a little bit closer to stomach-turning madness. A rare vinyl record claims the hearts and minds of all who listen to it, driving some to theft and even murder. A mysterious jade idol inflicts a curse on those to keep it, boring countless holes into their bodies — bringing a deadly chill and becoming irresistible to burrowing insects. A hospital patient reports that the subjective length of their dreams is getting longer and longer, triggering a startling transformation in their mind — and their body. In these stories and more, we remind ourselves of the Ito’s uncanny ability to permanently stamp our brains with the most disturbing and visually stunning weirdness.

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Episode 53 – The Blues Brothers

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“It’s 106 miles to Chicago, we’ve got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark, and we’re wearing sunglasses.”

This month, we’re getting the band back together with the Station Manager of KTQA 95.3 FM in Tacoma (and former Illinois resident) Sam Mulvey. We’re on a mission from God to drive our car through John Landis’ anarchic car chase musical guest-starring a Mt. Rushmore of classic R&B/soul artists from Aretha Franklin to James Brown: The Blues Brothers!

Released from a 3-year prison sentence, “Joilet” Jake Blues is reunited with his brother Elwood and learn that the Catholic orphanage they grew up in is about to be shuttered unless it can pay an outstanding $5,000 property tax bill in the next eleven days. Now on a mission from God, the Blue Brothers must reunite their ne’er-do-well rhythm and blues band to put on a big show, no matter how many shopping malls they have to drive through. But first they must outrun a rival country western band, a gang of neo-Nazis, a heavily armed mystery woman, and seemingly every cop in the state of Illinois.

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Episode 52 – Django (1966)

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He killed for gold… He killed for his woman… He killed for himself!

After a month off, we’re back! And this time, we’re dragging a coffin through the desert with the Camp Director and President of Camp Quest NorthWest, Michael Warbington, and diving into the notoriously violent 1966 spaghetti western by director Sergio Corbucci, Django!

When a mysterious gunslinger named Django drags a coffin into a tiny border town caught in the middle of a bloody war between Mexican paramilitary bandits and a Klan of hooded racist Southerners, he sets off a bloody chain of death, vengeance, robbery, and even more death. But is Django here to save this town, or will he just bury it under corpses in his quest for revenge?

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Episode 51 – Phantasm

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Beware the ball, beware the tall man, beware the never dead.

We return this month to break into Morningside Mortuary and get some fuckin’ answers with returning guest Todd Maxfield-Matsumoto, because we’re digging up the 1979 psychedelic cult horror classic: Phantasm!

Living with his older brother Jody after the death of their parents, thirteen year old Mike becomes suspicious of a local mortuary and the frightening Tall Man who operates it. The brothers stumble onto a strange and dreamlike conspiracy involving murder, a maze-like mausoleum, stolen corpses, hooded minions, a murderous flying chrome sphere, and the unnerving supernatural being who controls it all.

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Episode 50 – The Green Knight

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“Honor. That is why a knight does what he does.”

With the New Year, we’re on a knightly quest to the Green Chapel to trade blows with returning guest Tobiah Panshin of the View from the Gutters podcast, to dive into David Lowery’s visually stunning and unorthodox adaptation of a 14th century Arthurian legend, The Green Knight.

When the supernatural Green Knight issues a yuletide challenge for any of Camelot’s bravest knights to try to land a blow on him — and receive an equal strike in return one Christmas later — King Arthur’s flawed and reckless nephew Gawain accepts without thinking. Easily decapitating his compliant foe, Gawain sees the Green Knight immediately rise again and remind him of his obligation one year hence. Embarking on a quest to the mysterious Green Chapel, Gawain contends with ghosts, giants and his own selfish nature, to see if he can live up to his promise — even if it might mean his certain death.

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Episode 49 – Santa Claus: The Movie

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The legend comes to life.

This Christmas Eve, we’re back in the studio to celebrate the season with Rebecca Friedman of KTQA-LP 95.3 FM, and dive into the 1985 holiday movie where Alexander and Ilya Salkind, the father and son producer team behind the Christopher Reeve Superman films try to make lightning strike twice with a mythic origin story for jolly old Saint Nick himself in Santa Claus:The Movie!

Rescued by a group of elves after being caught in a deadly blizzard, a 14th century toymaker fulfills an ancient prophecy to become an immortal holiday gift giver to all the children of the world. Colliding with the free enterprise crassness of the 1980s, Santa Claus is despondent after one his elves is manipulated into working for a unscrupulous and greedy toy executive who wants to steal Christmas for his very own.

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Episode 47 – F for Fake

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“Do you think I should confess? To what? Committing masterpieces?”

In our latest Single Serving Selection, we’re joining librarian and artist, Kit Laika to turn our critical eyes to the final film directed by auteur Orson Welles, a conventions-defying documentary about frauds, fakers, and art forgery: F for Fake.

Welles delves into the world of two (or is it three?) spectacular liars. One is Elmyr de Hory, notorious art forger who paints replicas of masterpieces so convincing that they’re said be hanging in many prominent museums, and even the original artists claim to have created them. The other is Clifford Irving, the novelist and writer who exposed Elmyr’s forgeries in a tell-all book, before being revealed as a charlatan and fraud himself. It’s a deeply philosophical and nonlinear exploration of art, authorship, and who the real phonies might actually be.

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Episode 46 – Wonder Twins by Mark Russell and Stephen Byrne

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“Wonder Twin powers — Activate!”

This month, we’re balancing teen angst and superheroics with returning guest Paul Hix of Waiting for Doom – the Doom Patrol Podcast to gush over over the hilarious satirical DC Comics maxi-series: Wonder Twins!

Exiled to Earth from the utopian planet Exxor, super-powered teens Zan and Jayna must now juggle high school with their after-school internship with the heroic Justice League! But they must also grapple with strange new Earth concepts like crippling debt, shocking inequality and mass incarceration; and they begin wondering if beating up costumed criminals and throwing them in jail is really making the world a better place…

Join our official RvtM Discord server!

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Episode 45 – Willow

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Adventure doesn’t come any bigger than this.

We’re back in the studio and ready to cross swords with Tobiah Panshin, the author of The Game Master: A Guide to the Art and Theory of Roleplaying, and dive into George Lucas and Ron Howard’s high fantasy tale of magic and child endangerment: Willow!

When a diminutive farmer, Willow Ufgood, finds a baby princess prophesied to destroy the evil Queen Bavmorda, he is recruited by magical forces to be the child’s guardian. Now, aided by a roguish swordsman, a wise sorceress, and an annoying pair of impish brownies, Willow must overcome his fears and save the entire realm from evil.

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