Show Notes
Welcome to our new season, "Director Double Bills". In each episode we will focus on a filmmaker and explore two of their films, one horror and one Science Fiction. We begin the season with a big one: JC himself – John Carpenter. We are joined by film critic Travis Johnson to explore Carpenter's impact on both genres and go deep into two of his greatest works – the 1981 dystopian classic Escape from New York (35:30), followed by what many consider to be his masterpiece, 1982’s The Thing (01:33:34).
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Check out Travis's work at Blunt Magazine: https://bluntmag.com.au/author/travisjohnson/
Hosted, produced, and edited by Liam Dunn and Lindsay Hallam Music composed and performed by Damo Alexander and Rosie Gilbey Artwork by Millie Hallam
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More from SciFrights
In this episode we are joined by filmmaker and programmer, Craig Williams, to explore the work of arthouse auteur, Claire Denis. We discuss her graphic tale of cannibalistic lust, TROUBLE EVERY DAY (20:06), and the dark psychosexual space prison film, HIGH LIFE (01:11:35). ***Please rate and review our podcast!***
In this episode we are joined by Mike Muncer, host of The Evolution of Horror podcast, to discuss Danny Boyle, a director who has been working steadily across many genres. We begin by going over Boyle's career, his signature style and collaboration with writer Alex Garland (14:04), then we get into the low-res digital frenzy of 28 DAYS LATER (21:20) and his one foray into Science Fiction, the psychological solar thriller SUNSHINE (01:15:10).
Continuing our new season on Director Double Bills, in this episode we focus on action auteur Kathryn Bigelow, exploring her 1987 vampire Western NEAR DARK (31: 57) and the 1995 cyberpunk tech-noir STRANGE DAYS (1:39:15). Joining us today to discuss these films is an incredible guest, author and academic, Professor Stacey Abbott, who wrote the BFI Classic on NEAR DARK.
We are joined by an incredible guest, comic book artist and author, Stephen R. Bissette, to discuss one of our favourite directors, David Cronenberg! We will be focusing on two key films: first up we’ll explore how a broken marriage spawns monstrous offspring in THE BROOD (41:40), and what happens when a scientist’s self-experimentation goes terribly wrong (when does it not?) in body horror masterpiece, THE FLY (01:52:35). ***Please rate and review our podcast!*** We highly recommend Stephen's book on THE BROOD: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/52562621-the-brood
We conclude our current season on A.I. and technofear, going down the rabbit hole into the deepest reaches of cyberspace, reaching across planes of reality and into the depths of depravity. To do this, we discuss Lana and Lily Wachowski’s era-defining Sci-Fi masterpiece The Matrix, and a recent film that really blew us away, Pascal Plante’s dark psychological thriller Red Rooms (01:17:10). We end with Honourable Mentions of films (and TV shows) that further warp the boundaries between reality and the online world (02:26:50).