In this episode, I'm joined by my friend Cat Hamilton, from LA. We talk a little bit about the current state of the US TV industry (which Cat works in), its short-term reactions to the current Covid-19 crisis, and the future directions it might evolve into, to survive.
Speaking of evolution and survival, we then move onto the primary focus of the episode, in discussion of two sci-fi/AI-focused movies from the 2010s, Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2015) and Upgrade (Leigh Whannell, 2018), and our thoughts about them. We liked one of them a bit more than the other one. We also conversationally stray into Lethal Weapon, Dracula, Psycho, Red Dwarf , Arsenic and Old Lace and... Fawlty Towers, for some reason. I blame lockdown.
0.00 Intro
0.05 The state of the TV industry (in April 2020)
0.28 Ex Machina
1.20 Upgrade
2.28 Post-human chatter
You can reach the podcast on Twitter at @EGoat_pod (or tweet at me on @D_Faggiani) and email us with any feedback on escapegoatpod@gmail.com.
Cat works in TV editing in Los Angeles. She is the co-host of The Anime Movie Podcast.
All original intro, outro and other incidental music recorded and made available by kind permission of Richard Gilbert.
NOTES
I thought this piece, by Jaylan Salah Salman, was a good intro to some of the more feminist themes in Ex Machina. You might also want to check out Sympathy for the Other: the Science Fiction Horror Film in the Brexit/Trump era, by Darren Mooney.
