This time we discuss 12 Monkeys, the Terry Gilliam film adapted from La Jetée, an experimental short film.
Rankings!
Colin/James/Seth: Feature Film / Short Film
The time has come again for us to talk about a weird, slow science fiction movie, so I reached out to my favorite guest for such films, Ben DeBono from The Sci-Fi Christian.
Thanks to Joe Smith for suggesting it, and to the Oregon Museum of Science & Industry for screening it during this year’s film festival.
Find more of Ben’s work at http://thescifichristian.com/
Rankings
Colin: 2002 film/Book/1972 film
James: Book/1972 film/2002 film
Seth: Book/1972 film/2002 film
Ben: 1972 film/Book/2002 film/Soviet Version
Found this image on Reddit, comparing the last shot of Tarkovsky’s Solaris and Rembrandt’s “The Return of the Prodigal Son.” And I’m still pretty stoked to have picked up on this imagery. Huzzah for Survey of Art!
Peter Kuskie, who joined me for the Hugos There episode on Project Hail Mary, joins us for a discussion of the new movie, with some brief discussion of the book as well. For more book discussion, refer back to the Hugos episode.
The movie is a terrific adaptation and a great experience in the theater.
Amaze!
Rankings!:
Links:
Following up on our previous episode, we cover the latest season of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Sea of Monsters, which is by almost any measurement a better adaptation than the movie.
I’d been sick a looong time and wasn’t quite out of the woods at the time of recording, so make some allowances for how I sound. If I sound not quite all there, it’s only because I wasn’t. (I sound substantially better on the Hugos episode I recorded last week.)
Rankings:
James: Series/book/movie
Colin: Book/series/movie
Seth: Series/book/movie
We return to Percy Jackson and the Mystifying Adaptations with Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, the 2013 movie based on The Sea of Monsters, by Rick Riordan.
Will this movie right the ship and kick of the remaining three movies into a successful and beloved quintilogy? (It will not.)
We’ll reconvene next month for the Disney+ adaptation, which has a better chance of going the distance.
Rankings:
Colin/James/Seth: book/movie
We all attended a screening of the Star Wars Holiday Special in Vancouver, Washington a couple of weekends ago, and I reached out to one of the co-producers on the documentary film A Disturbance of the Force: How the Star Wars Holiday Special Happened, who happens to live in our town, and he agreed to host us for an informal discussion of the Special, the documentary, and his website.
https://www.starwarsholidayspecial.com/
https://www.instagram.com/starwarsholidayspecialdotcom/
https://www.disturbanceintheforce.com/
https://awfulagent.com/ebooks/a-disturbance-in-the-force/
If you live in the Portland area, check out the Kiggins Theater. They screen the Holiday Special every year, and also do lots of other fun events including the Oscar-nominated short films.
This time we cover the remake/re-adaptation of Stephen King’s The Running Man.
Rankings!:
It’s been 10 years since we covered this topic last, and we finally have a great adaptation!
We got to see the new Frankenstein adaptation in theaters and recommend you do the same.
Double-dipping this month, covering a couple of previously covered books that got new adaptations. First up, the absolutely delightful nonsense that is The War of the Worlds, starring Ice Cube.
Seth was under the weather after returning from doing the Cotswold Way hike in England, so to protect the other guys from germs, this was recorded on his backyard patio, so please forgive the neighbor dog’s squeaky toy accompaniment.
Rankings!
Post-credits scenes for this episode include some discussion of the Cotswold Way hike and meeting up with a friend of the podcast.
