Tag Archives: dune

Fun Size Episode 69 – Two Degrees From Luke Skywalker

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This month, we’re back with Sam Mulvey to get nerdier than we have for a while.

Mike takes the rough draft of his new “Bechdel Test”-esque thought experiment about media worldbuilding for a spin and tries to punch holes in it.  Are our large shared universe worlds really as large and expansive as they appear to be, or is that just an illusion to hide something much smaller and more insular?

And in probably more depth and exhaustive detail than necessary, Mike talks about his love and fascination with J.R.R. Tolkien and his Middle-earth legendarium, and Sam gets the opportunity to talk more about Frank Herbert’s Dune than he’s ever done before on the show.

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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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Fun Size Episode 51 – Existential Dread and Animal Puns

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It’s a Captain Picard Day miracle!

After a five-month hiatus, we’re back….ish. We’re broadcasting remotely with KTQA Radio‘s Sam Mulvey and trying to shake some of the cobwebs out.

Casey meets a wild Keanu and we wonder ponder again the magical unicorn nature of his celebrity namesake. And on the opposite end of the moral spectrum, we predict the inevitable airlock assassination of future space-despot Elon Musk.

We try to unpack media Copaganda, our changing relationship with police-centric media and lament how a lot of the progress made in this year’s uprisings against police violence have slowly rolled back.

Sam fills us in on the radio station he’s been building, and we talk about all the media we’ve been watching and reading from our protective bunkers, trapped in a world we never made.

Also! We have a Discord server now! Join us!

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Fun Size Episode 44 – Walking With Dom

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We sit down with the notoriously Trek-skeptical Sam Mulvey to give our first reactions to the first episode of Star Trek: Picard. Is it what we wanted, and have modern iterations of Trek changed so much — or have become so rigid — that they’re just not for us anymore?

We talk about fake click-bait pop culture new sites, the trend that the lead-ups to movie releases are now even longer than the Presidential election, and wonder why so many fans are seemingly unable or unwilling to see the humanity of robotic and android fictional characters.

Also, Mike makes a desperate attempt to convince Sam that the Fast and the Furious franchise is something he might enjoy.

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Fun Size Episode 38 – The H.H. Holmes of Minecraft

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We sit back down with Sam Mulvey to learn that Keanu Reeves is now in a video game, and that he remains the best human. And we ponder…

Are there places on the internet, and in online gaming, where people are actually nice to each other? Are we doomed to transform into digital sociopaths when we’re given both anonymity and the means to kill strangers with lasers — and no consequences?

Plus, we’re approaching the upcoming reimagining of Frank Herbert’s Dune by Denis Villeneuve with optimistic apprehension. Deep breaths, everyone.

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Black Ops Episode 11 – A Bacterial Infection That Helps You Fight Crime

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In our latest episode, we join Sam Mulvey to dig into the question of adapting properties that we care about, and whether it’s important to even attempt fidelity to the source material.

From Watchmen to Dune; from Starship Troopers to Ready Player One. Is it sometimes the wisest choice to take a giant critical poop on a property when we translate them to a new medium? Plus, Mike saw Venom, and…yeah. We talk about what could have been  — a gloriously R-rated cannibal crime fighting movie.

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Podcasta la Vista, Baby! Episode 17 – Total Recall

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They stole his mind, now he wants it back.

It’s time to get our asses to Mars and regain our buried identities with returning guest Sam Mulvey of the Ask an Atheist radio show. This month, we’re plunging into the hyper-violent science fiction mind-bender: Total Recall.

Douglas Quaid is haunted by dreams of Mars. Becoming obsessed with traveling to the red planet, Quaid buys a virtual holiday with implanted memories from Rekall, Inc. For a little extra, he opts for the vacation package where he can live the life of a heroic secret agent. But when the procedure goes haywire, Quaid learns that he truly is a secret agent with buried memories. Now hunted by deadly assassins, he escapes to Mars to learn the truth and save the world… Or maybe he’s just been lobotomized and trapped in a dream world.

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Fun Size Episode 10 – Jodorowsky’s Still Alive

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Mike and Casey sit down with Kinsey Burke, Patrick Johnson, and Sam Mulvey to bat around a contentious and complicated topic: adaptations, reboots and remakes.

How faithful should a work be to its source material when it’s adapted from one storytelling medium to another? What happens when it deviates over time? What about when a beloved past work is rebooted in ways we cannot stand? Is it really worth getting worked up about, now that the floodgates are open?

And can a bad adaptation transcend the source material and become a wonderful hypnotic disaster? Is it time to make peace with changes to Game of Thrones, and the Ghostbusters remake?

Also, Mike fights — against all odds —  to protect a young friend from a 43 year-old movie spoiler.

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Episode 21 – Twin Peaks

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Log Lady

“That gum you like is going to come back in style.”

Mike and Casey are consulting our logs and getting a booth at the Double R Diner to share some damned good coffee and pie with returning panelists Roz Townsend and Pól Rua. Our topic: David Lynch’s surrealistic supernatural thriller/soap opera: Twin Peaks.

We get into the show’s weird and often contradictory tone, and its widely panned theatrical follow-up movie Fire Walk with Me.  We discuss its massive influence on shows like Lost and the X-Files, and try to figure out if Lynch was creating fantastical, challenging art, or just being pointlessly weird for its own sake.

Music: 
“Falling” from Twin Peaks by Angelo Badalamenti

Previously titled: “Happening v. Fargo”

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