Tag Archives: dystopia

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

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[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.

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

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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!

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Fun Size Episode 17 – Unforgiven Meets Little Miss Sunshine

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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.

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