Episode 83: Transcript
Episode: 83: Summer Preview! What We’re Pumped to Watch and Read This Season
Transcription by Keffy
Charlie Jane: [00:00:00] Welcome to Our Opinions Are Correct, a podcast about the meaning of science fiction and the entire universe. I'm Charlie Jane Anders. I'm the author of the brand-new young adult space opera novel Victories Greater Than Death.
Annalee: [00:00:13] And I'm Annalee Newitz. I'm the author of the new nonfiction book Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age.
Charlie Jane: [00:00:23] And this is our first ever summer preview. We're just going to go through all of the summer entertainments that we're excited about in movies, TV, books, and possibly vivid, lucid dreams. And we're going to talk about why this is kind of an unusual summer for entertainment and why we're excited. So put on your bathing suits, it's time for summer fun.
[00:00:45] Intro music plays: Drums with a bass drop and more science fictional bells and percussion.
Charlie Jane: [00:01:12] So Annalee, what's a movie coming out this summer that you're excited about?
Annalee: [00:01:16] Alright, let's start with Army of the Dead because everybody has been asking when we're going to get a zombie movie that is also a caper. And a kind of delightful tale of stealing some gold. And this is Zack Snyder's return to the zombie genre which actually launched his career. He's the guy who popularized the fast zombie in the United States. I think probably 28 Days Later was the first fast zombie story, but it was quickly followed by Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead. So I'm really excited to see how our characters manage to break into a zombie-infested Las Vegas vault.
Charlie Jane: [00:02:09] Yeah, with Tig Notaro.
Annalee: [00:02:10] Yes.
Charlie Jane: [00:02:11] I think Tig Notaro’s the reason why I’m gonna watch that movie with you. Hopefully we’ll watch it together.
Annalee: [00:02:15] I totally. Yes, the Tig Notaro thing. Look it up. There's a whole backstory as to why she's in this film. Alright, Charlie Jane, what are you excited about?
Charlie Jane: [00:02:25] So you know, I'm excited about the next Pixar movie. I actually feel like Pixar has been kind of back on its game lately. Like I really loved Soul. And their next movie is called Luca, and it's basically about a boy living on the Italian Riviera and there's like lots of gelato and pizza and stuff. So that's exciting. But he makes a new best friend who—they become inseparable quickly, but the boy doesn't realize that his new best friend is actually secretly a sea monster. Which I just love. You know, boy and his sea monster best friend. That sounds… how could that not be good?
[00:02:57] Annalee, what's another movie that you're excited about?
Annalee: [00:03:00] Sorry, I’m still just like, sizzling with excitement over a boy in his sea monster.
Charlie Jane: [00:03:05] I know!
Annalee: [00:03:05] Like, that's basically a documentary about my childhood. So that's really cool. So I am really excited about F9.
Charlie Jane: [00:03:15] F9!
Annalee: [00:03:15] As all right-thinking people are. I am a huge Fast and the Furious stan. I've followed the entire epic journey, including through some really weird places that got kind of cyberpunk at certain points. Anyway, so the new film was delayed, it was supposed to come out last year. It is exciting because Justin Lin, who kind of popularized the series, and it's his brainchild, he's back directing. He also co-wrote it. So that's exciting. And it focuses… it picks up right where the previous film left off. And it focuses on Dominic, played by Vin Diesel, and his—
Charlie Jane: [00:03:58] Vin Diesel.
Annalee: [00:03:58] –relationship with his younger brother who has become a deadly assassin who's working against the family, and has a grudge against Dominic. And so it's, as usual, it's all about family and sometimes family can be a little dysfunctional. So I'm hoping that at the end, Vin and his brother can kiss and stuff that's like my goal. Or like maybe they can just have sex with a car which would also be really fun.
Charlie Jane: [00:04:26] I think have sex with a car. I've still never seen a Fast and the Furious movie all the way through. I've seen about half of one of them. I really need to remedy that.
Annalee: [00:04:33] I feel like every time you tell me that I just I just wipe it out of my mind because it’s too upsetting. So okay, so the next thing that you're excited about let's just not even talk about your problem which is not having watched any Fast and the Furious movies.
Charlie Jane: [00:04:45] So, as you know, I'm obsessed with the Purge series of movies. I'm like kind of a Purge stan.
Annalee: [00:04:51] I think that the Purge—this whole podcast is a Purge stan, I think we're all Purgies.
Charlie Jane: [00:04:54] Pretty much.
Annalee: [00:04:57] Purgers.
Charlie Jane: [00:04:57] So the fifth and apparently final, they’re claiming it's now the final Purge movie is called The Forever Purge, which is kind of an interesting title. Actually, so the thing that they're doing is spoiler alert, the third Purge movie, Purge Election Year saw a presidential candidate who was basically Hillary Clinton take office and get rid of the Purge. And that was like, you know, it's weird that we're living in a worse timeline than the Purge series at this point. But their version of history is that Hillary Clinton became president and eliminated the purge. And so in the fifth movie, basically, it's about a Mexican family who are fleeing from drug cartels, and they end up on a ranch in Texas, where the people on the ranch decide, I guess the ranch owners decide that even though the purge is no longer happening nationally, they're going to hold their own private purge, with this Mexican family as the starring role.
[00:05:53] And so it's basically that the previous purge movie was really about like a Black neighborhood in Staten Island being overrun by militia members, basically. And so we're now taking that to Mexicans and Mexicans who crossed the border being subjected to the purge and so this this series basically is just continuing to stab us in our already bleeding wounds of American dysfunction, basically.
Annalee: [00:06:17] Like class warfare, race warfare, God I love that series. I just love how on the nose it is and just over the top and delightful.
Charlie Jane: [00:06:26] It's really insane.
[00:06:28] So Annalee, tell us about a green-themed movie that you might be interested in.
Annalee: [00:06:33] Yeah, it's not the Green New Deal. It's The Green Knight.
Charlie Jane: [00:06:37] There could be a crossover. There could be a crossover where the green knight causes the green new deal.
Annalee: [00:06:40] The Green Knight New Deal.
Charlie Jane: [00:06:42] He introduces Medicare for All.
Annalee: [00:06:46] That is actually the movie I would like to see. That would be great. Like Dev Patel is the guy who brings you the green new deal and is like super snacky. That's basically the plot of The Green Knight.
Green Knight Clip: [00:06:57] Tell me a tale of yourselves so that I might know thee.
I have none to tell.
Yet. You have none to tell, yet.
Annalee: [00:07:11] It's, the Green Knight, as everyone knows, is based on a medieval English poem that is extremely trippy. The poem is all about a guy. It's pretty long poem. It’s not like a short imagistic poem and it's about one of the Knights of the Round Table, Sir Gawain and he must face himself, basically. He goes through a moral trial where he's sort of tempted by a lot of different things. But based on the previews, obviously, Dev Patel is in it, who is just like super great, playing Gawain, and it looks like it's gonna be really trippy. And as it should be, because the original poem is just frickin’ weird. And the knight himself, the glimpse that we got of the knight in the trailer is also making my heart sing. So I'm just, I'm down for a trippy, medieval romp, with swords.
[00:08:08] So tell me your next pick, Charlie Jane.
Charlie Jane: [00:08:09] So I'm just gonna go really quickly through a few movies that I'm excited about, because there’s a lot.
Annalee: [00:08:14] Yeah, give us like a rapid fire—
Charlie Jane: [00:08:15] I’ll give you the lightning round. So, there’s a Cinderella movie coming out which we don't even have a trailer for yet, which is weird because it comes out soon, with Billy Porter from Pose as the fairy godmother. And I'm just like, okay, that's an automatic, yes.
Annalee: [00:08:28] I'm in, yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:08:29] There's a new Space Jam movie, where the kind of Warner Brothers cartoon characters are playing basketball, and I don't even know anything about it, but I'm already excited about it. There's another Suicide Squad movie, but this time, it's directed by James Gunn. And it has Peter Capaldi from Doctor Who as a super villain who's forced to team up to fight bad guys. It's got, it's got basically everybody. And it's got some of my really favorite obscure DC Comics characters, like Peacemaker in it. And they're actually making a spin off show about Peacemaker. So I'm super excited for that. The trailer looks incredibly fun. There's Free Guy, which is Ryan Reynolds as a video game NPC who kind of gains awareness somehow. And that looks incredibly fun. So you know, why don't you wrap it up, Annalee? What's the final summer movie pick that you're excited about?
Annalee: [00:09:19] Well, I'm really excited about the reboot of Candyman, which is based on one of my all-time favorite horror movies from the 1990s. And I'm just really excited to see where they take it. The original movie was terrifying. It was also very political. It's about gentrification in Chicago and the victimization of the Black community, and also the revenge of a very, very angry Black ghost. And I think, now’s the time to be telling the story again, for sure. And I just, I cannot wait to see it.
Charlie Jane: [00:09:56] Yeah. And so for our listeners, we're gonna some other upcoming movies in our show notes, but we don't have time to get through like all the summer movies in this episode.
Annalee: [00:10:04] Yeah, but there's others.
Charlie Jane: [00:10:06] There’s more.
Annalee: [00:10:06] These are not the only movies coming out. But now let's move on to talking about TV shows we're excited to see come back or come forward or whatever. To debut, I should say. Charlie Jane, what are you excited about?
Charlie Jane: [00:10:20] There's pretty much one show that I'm just like dying to see come back and that is Legends of Tomorrow. This season of Legends Tomorrow is all about aliens. And actually, we have a clip from the trailer.
LoT Clip: [00:10:32] We have messier missions. Sara has been abducted. We have to find her.
There are aliens scattered throughout history.
Charlie Jane: [00:10:38] So as you could hear, Sara has been abducted, there's aliens scattered throughout time. It's gonna be just another wacky romp with the crew of the Waverider fighting aliens.
[00:10:51] Annalee, what's a show that you're excited about this summer?
Annalee: [00:10:53] I am really excited for the, I guess it's a miniseries of The Underground Railroad, which is Barry Jenkins, who is of course an incredible filmmaker here doing some TV. It's based on the Colson Whitehead novel.
Underground RR Clip: [00:11:11] Where did they go? The ones that run away and never return?
Annalee: [00:11:18] The thing that's exciting about this story is that it is both realistic in a lot of ways. But it's also magic realism, there's actually a literal railroad people are riding to escape from enslavement in the South. And so it just adds this element of surrealism to the story. And I will just say one more thing about it, which is that I was reading Colson Whitehead’s novel when Trump was elected. And, like, I was literally in the middle of the novel, and I have these incredibly vivid memories. I happened to be in New York on business at the time it happened. And so I was sitting by myself in an ice cream shop, and everybody was just sad. And people were crying and like bingeing on ice cream. And I was like, sitting there eating my salty caramel chocolate ice cream with this book propped open in front of me and just feeling like the world was ending. And it also gave me, weirdly, a sense of hope. So I'm really glad to be revisiting this story at a time when I'm actually feeling a little bit more genuine hope for the country. So anyway, that was a personal digression. Let's go back to TV that we're excited about.
[00:12:32] What’s another show that you're excited about, Charlie?
Charlie Jane: [00:12:35] So the final season of Pose is launching in May and Pose is one of my all-time favorite TV shows it is a huge leap forward in representation of trans people in television. It's also a show that, it’s about ballroom and about these marginalized communities that, like, queer people of color, and like a lot of trans people of color, finding their identities through these like elaborate performances. And it's a show that increasingly has kind of moved into a space of magical realism and the supernatural as it's going on. Season two had a lot of ghosts and a lot of very interesting, weird fantasy sequences. And I feel like it's a show that is using the language of the supernatural to kind of talk about these marginalized people's lives in a way that expands it and shows the hugeness of their struggles and I'm just afraid that the new season is gonna make me cry my face off, especially if anything happens to Pray Tell, Billy Porter's character who already is struggling with HIV. So, fingers crossed. I'm very nervously excited.
[00:13:37] So Annalee, what's another show that that you're excited about?
Annalee: [00:13:40] Well, I think a lot of us are very excited about Loki which is coming in June.
Charlie Jane: [00:13:44] Loki!
Annalee: [00:13:44] This is going to be, I guess, the bookend to Wandavision and Falcon and the Winter Soldier. And it looks really fun. I love the character of Loki like half of the internet does and I'm just excited to see him, Tom Hiddleston running around grinning and being cute. What’s another show you're excited about?
Charlie Jane: [00:14:06] So there's a show that I haven't seen a trailer for it. There's like very little information, but it allegedly is coming this summer. There's a show called Shmigadoon! in which Keegan-Michael Key from Key and Peele gets trapped in a 1940s town. And everybody does giant musical numbers all the time. And you cannot leave the town until you find true love and it just sounds… I mean, I honestly, I feel like at this point I would watch Keegan-Michael Key do anything because he's just always delightful. He pretty much stole that movie we watched recently, the prom movie, which had Meryl Streep and stuff in it and Keegan-Michael Key just ran away with that movie. He's just so great. And I think it's super fun.
[00:14:45] So Annalee, what's another show that you're excited about?
Annalee: [00:14:49] So the awesome spin off of What We Do in the Shadows called Wellington Paranormal is back for a third season, I believe. This is a delightful comedy about sort of bumbling paranormal investigators on the Wellington police force. It's really cute. It's fun if you like goofy comedy. It's just a treat. So highly recommend it.
Charlie Jane: [00:15:16] I think it's coming to the US TV for the first time ever actually, I think it's never been shown in the US before.
Annalee: [00:15:20] Ooh, well, I've been watching it somehow through the magic of the internet. So go ahead and check out the other seasons as well. So what else are you excited about?
Charlie Jane: [00:15:30] You know, a show that's close to both of our hearts, I think is Tuca & Bertie, which, oh my god, Tuca & Bertie. You know, it's been a roller coaster. That show was canceled on Netflix and then it was picked up by Adult Swim. And so we're finally, finally getting a second season of Tuca & Bertie. Honestly, I was gonna just like have to, like run down the street throwing things at people on the street if we didn't get another season of Tuca & Bertie. Like, throwing soft objects. I would be throwing like, little fuzzy balls, maybe, at people on the street if we didn't get a second season of Tuca & Bertie. Because that show just gives me so much life.
Annalee: [00:16:07] I love it, too.
Charlie Jane: [00:16:08] It's just beautiful. And so you know, tell us one more show that you're excited for, Annalee, that I think I'm also excited for.
Annalee: [00:16:15] So I am very excited about the return of Motherland: Fort Salem.
Charlie Jane: [00:16:21] Yes! Oh my God. I love that show so much. Oh my god, it is amazing.
Annalee: [00:16:26] It's an alternate history of the United States in which female witches kind of control the nation. And our main characters are in female witch military school. So it's like a military school story with witches. And there's just nothing we've talked about this show before on here. And it's like this hyper patriotic show about pagans. And so there's lots of images of the American flag next to like, a pentagram, which creates such cognitive dissonance, just seeing it that it's almost worth it just just to see that but in fact, it's also a really delightful soapy, soapy show about the angst and tribulations of these young witch cadets.
Charlie Jane: [00:17:16] It's got a really beautiful, troublesome, queer relationship at the center of it, which I love. There's like actually an episode where they're like, it is your patriotic duty to have a pagan sex ritual now for your country. America needs you to have a pagan sex ritual now.
Annalee: [00:17:31] I mean, that's what America needed all along.
Charlie Jane: [00:17:33] That is what America has needed.
Annalee: [00:17:34] So, that's why we're waiting for this show to come back.
Charlie Jane: [00:17:36] Oh my god, I’m so excited.
[00:17:38] So we're gonna take a quick break, and we come back we're going to talk about summer books.
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Charlie Jane: [00:17:46] Hello, amazing listeners, we want to tell you about another podcast that we think you'll like.
Annalee: [00:17:51] Origin Stories explores human evolution one story at a time.
Charlie Jane: [00:17:56] It's a monthly podcast that looks at why humans are the way we are.
Annalee: [00:18:01] They feature fascinating scientists and stories about everything from what it's like to discover ancient fossils or study an endangered species.
Charlie Jane: [00:18:09] To a detective story about the first murder and an award winning documentary about prehistoric cave art.
Annalee: [00:18:16] I was really excited about a recent episode they did about Neanderthals, my favorite hominin. And they had special guests, Rebecca Wragg Sykes, who's a great writer and has a whole book called Kindred about Neanderthals that you should check out.
Charlie Jane: [00:18:30] Find Origin Stories on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else, you get your podcasts.
[00:18:42] Oh, my God, there are so many books coming out this summer. It is, I mean, as usual. There's just so many books that are coming out that we're just excited about.
[00:18:51] So, Annalee, what’s a book that you’re excited about?
Annalee: [00:18:52] I am super excited about Sarah Pinsker’s latest novel called We Are Satellites. Sarah has won like every award in the universe, because she's just a beautiful and humane writer. Her characters are always very believable. And they're people that you want to get to know. And this is a near future story. I've already read it, I read an advanced copy, about a family where one of the kids really wants to get this new technology that's a brain implant that basically lets you multitask at a much, in a much more robust way than we can with our unaltered brains. And it's basically the story of what happens to this family over time as more and more kids start getting these brain implants, more adults start getting them, what can go wrong. And it ends up being a story about family connection. It's a family with two mothers, which is not particularly important other than the fact that it's a happy queer family. It's also about corporate malfeasance, and it winds up exploring all kinds of weird byways in this sort of technological scenario. Again, this is very much Sarah Pinker's territory, to sort of think about the small domestic outcome of a huge revolutionary technology, so I can't recommend it enough. It's very heartwarming and very smart and interesting.
[00:20:20] Okay, what are you excited about?
Charlie Jane: [00:20:22] There's so many books coming out that I'm excited about. I'm excited about Firebreak by Nicole Kornher-Stace, which is, I think it's her debut novel after doing some novellas. And it's, like a lot of books coming out soon, it's about evil corporations. It's a corporate dystopia after climate change and there's basically, people playing competitive video games.
[00:20:43] I'm also super excited about Black Water Sister by Zen Cho. It's her long-awaited next novel. And it's about a girl who is haunted by her grandmother who was a famous spirit medium when she was alive. And at first the girl thinks she just is hearing a weird voice in her head. And it's she thinks it's herself trying to tell herself something and then she realizes, nope, it's my grandma. And my Grandma wants revenge on this evil businessman and wants me to kind of help her take this businessman down.
[00:21:14] So Annalee, tell us about another book that you're excited about.
Annalee: [00:21:15] Well, I'm super excited about P. Djèlí Clark’s first novel in his 1912 Cairo series, which is called A Master of Djinn. He's written novellas and I think some short stories set in this world. It's a murder mystery and you we've had him on the show. I'm just a huge fan of his work. And so I'm really looking forward to that one. What's another one from you?
Charlie Jane: [00:21:39] Yeah, I've been hearing amazing stuff about The Ones We’re Meant to Find by Joan He, which is a post climate change future. It's about a girl who's got amnesia and she's trapped on an island somewhere. And her only companion is this android who’s stuck there with her but that she teamed up with a girl who's come there from like this eco utopia. It just sounds really… I mean, I think that's really interesting that we're getting some new kind of post climate change worlds that are finding new ways to tell new stories set in that kind of setting.
[00:22:08] What's a book that you're excited about, Annalee?
Annalee: [00:22:10] I'm really excited about Cassandra Khaw’s coming novel, The All-Consuming World. I've been a fan of Cass Khaw for a long time. She's written, previously, these kind of foodie supernatural books that if you thought you couldn't cross the kind of restaurant genre with the supernatural, well, Cass Khaw’s here to change all that for you. And this is a brand-new story set in a new world. And she… yeah, it just sounds fantastic. It's cyborg badasses facing off against an evil AI. But it's a lot more than that. And you really just need to check it out.
Charlie Jane: [00:22:52] So excited. I can't wait to read that.
Annalee: [00:22:55] Tell me some more stuff that you're excited about.
Charlie Jane: [00:22:57] I'm just gonna go through a few of them really fast.
Annalee: [00:22:58] Yeah, give us a… we have a big—
Charlie Jane: [00:23:00] I’ll give you the lightning round. We have a long list. I'm just gonna do a lightning round of a few of these.
Annalee: [00:23:03] Do a really good lightning round, yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:23:04] Okay, I'll give you the bullet points. So I've been hearing a lot of good things about Son of the Storm by Suyi Davies Okungbowa. A scholar living inside a walled city and he's always wondered about what lies beyond those walls, and everybody’s like there's nothing beyond those walls. But then he meets a warrior woman who's got skin-changing powers, and she has a type of magic that's not supposed to exist. And he realizes that everything he's been told about his world is a lie.
[00:23:27] Also excited about In the Ravenous Dark by A.M. Strickland about a pansexual blood mage, who has been hiding her magic because anybody with magic is forced to be chained to an undead spirit that will keep them under control. And she's found out and so she gets tied to this undead spirit. But she ends up in a love triangle between the undead spirit that she's chained to and a princess and it's apparently like the queerest most like pansexual most kind of inclusive story about blood magic you've ever read.
Annalee: [00:23:57] I'm all in.
Charlie Jane: [00:23:58] You know.
Annalee: [00:24:00] Give me give me some more title.
Charlie Jane: [00:24:01] Okay, One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston. The guy who wrote Red, White, and Royal Blue, which became a huge sensation now has a story about a woman who falls in love with another woman. But it turns out that the woman she's in love with actually has travelled forward in time from the 1970s and is like out of time, and is in the wrong time.
Annalee: [00:24:21] Oh, interesting. I'm super there. Give me another thing that I'm going to want to read.
Charlie Jane: [00:24:24] Future Feeling by Joss Lake. It's a very sort of trans kind of like, fantasy, dark fantasy novel. Basically, these trans guys get together to put a curse on this one famous trans guy who's a social media influencer, but they accidentally curse the wrong trans guy and he gets sent to the Shadow Lands, which is the place that all trans people have to pass through in order to kind of figure out our identities and it's like this kind of nightmarish realm. And so they have to go rescue this trans guy that they accidentally cursed and they have to confront their own stuff to do that. That sounds kind of insane.
[00:24:57] Also, also, also, A Chorus Rises, which is the sequel or kind of the follow up to A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow, which was this amazing novel about Black sirens that I really loved. And the sequel is all about this girl Naima, who's kind of a spoiled brat in the first book. She's kind of not an entirely sympathetic character in the first book, and now we're getting her viewpoint about her level of privilege. And she's this type of supernatural creature called eloko that people think is awesome. And so she has this insane privilege and it's going to be kind of unpacking that.
[00:25:32] Also super excited about The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri who's an author who’s been doing amazing work. And The Jasmine Throne is kind of inspired by Indian history and Indian epic storytelling. It's about a maidservant who has forbidden magic and she has to team up with an imprisoned princess. And they have to challenge an empire. I'm just here for that kind of story.
[00:25:52] The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo is about a queer Vietnamese American girl in the magical 1920s. And it's kind of a retelling of The Great Gatsby, where instead of prohibition being prohibiting alcohol, it's prohibiting drinking demon blood.
Annalee: [00:26:09] Okay, give me a couple more titles to tide me over.
Charlie Jane: [00:26:12] Okay, two more titles and then we're done. First of all, The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison, which is the long, long awaited follow up to The Goblin Emperor. We've been waiting, I think, like seven or eight years for another book in that world.
[00:26:27] And then also, She Who Became the Sun by Shelly P. Chan, which I've already pre-ordered. It's gonna be there for me on release day. It's basically about a peasant girl in Mongol occupied China who steals her dead brother's identity and becomes the leader of a rebel group. And I'm just so here for this. I've been hearing amazing things about that book from everybody.
Annalee: [00:26:48] Is that? Is it a historical book? Or is it an alternate? Is it an alternate history?
Charlie Jane: [00:26:53] I’m not actually sure. I know it takes place in history. I think it is an alternate history, but I'm not entirely sure.
Annalee: [00:26:59] Cool. I'm down for it, too. Yeah, the Mongols did a great job running the Silk Road. So I just I want them to like be in charge of everything.
Charlie Jane: [00:27:07] I think the Mongols might not be sympathetic in this particular book, but I'm not sure, but I guess we’ll see.
Annalee: [00:27:11] Anyway, they did a really good job with the Silk Road so thanks for that.
Charlie Jane: [00:27:14] I'm dying to read it.
[00:27:16] So we're gonna take another quick break and then when we come back, we're gonna talk about why this summer is a little bit unusual.
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Annalee: [00:27:35] So Charlie Jane why is this summer different from all other summers?
Charlie Jane: [00:27:40] This summer is different, because it's coming at the end of a really lengthy, horrible pandemic. And it's coming, I think, in the middle of a huge realignment in our tastes and our practices and entertainment consumption. I think that the year and change of people being cooped up in their homes, really changed the way we think about entertainment in ways that we're just beginning to kind of grapple with. For example, the lines between television shows and movies are being very quickly erased. I think that distinction is ceasing to be meaningful.
Annalee: [00:28:14] I think that's really true. And I mean, I know a lot of people have been talking about how all they want to do is get back into a movie theater and be able to sit there with a bunch of people and enjoy the experience of like popcorn and socializing. At the same time. I do think that this hybrid release system of putting a movie out on streaming at the same time as debuting it in theaters is here to stay. Not for very every title for sure. But I think a lot more movies are going to be doing that and I think it's going to be good for audiences. Because I know for sure that over this past year, there's a lot of stuff that I watched that I probably would never have gone to see in theaters, but I did watch it streaming when it came out. Because I was like, yeah, I actually do want to see this movie, but maybe I don't care to see it with a giant audience.
Charlie Jane: [00:29:10] You want to pee break.
Annalee: [00:29:11] I want a pee break or I just like, it's not a movie where I'm like, I want the full theater experience. Because I think now, too, that movies in theaters are more expensive and going to the theater is more of a, it's almost like going out to dinner. I mean, in fact, the theaters that I love to go to, the Alamo Drafthouse, which is right down the street from my house in San Francisco, you actually can have dinner there. They have actually really good bar food, you can get a beer. And so it's like an event, you know, and so—
Charlie Jane: [00:29:39] Totally.
Annalee: [00:29:39] I don’t necessarily want to see every movie that way. I do once in a while want to, for sure.
Charlie Jane: [00:29:47] Yeah. And this thing of you have a choice between either seeing the movie when it comes out and having to deal with the theater and parking and everything else. Or you're seeing it like months later after everybody's already spoiled it for you and you've already kind of missed out on the whole discussion around it, you know, that's a tough choice that people have been forced to make.
[00:30:04] I think also, there's the thing where Marvel is now making TV shows that are basically long movies. Falcon and the Winter Soldier feels like a movie. It's just six hours long. And it's self-contained. There may not be another season of Falcon and the Winter Soldier. So it's kind of like, is that still a TV show? Or is it just a really long movie? And if we're consuming movies and TV more or less the same way, and they have similar production values, and the same kind of level of acting, and the same level of special effects, there's no longer quite a meaningful distinction. The days of TV shows all having to have 22 episodes a season and10 seasons are rapidly coming to an end, it seems like.
Annalee: [00:30:46] Yeah, those are just long gone. I can't even think of a show that I watched that has 22 episodes in a season. I’m struggling to think of one. And I think that's a good model, actually. I like the idea of having more different shows that are shorter, rather than a whole bunch of 22 episode seasons, where you get 10 episodes that are filler. Or bottle episodes or something or holoeck episodes. That's the worst of everything. The dream episode or the holodeck episode is always—
Charlie Jane: [00:31:20] Oh my God, yeah.
Annalee: [00:31:22] It’s like, okay, it’s a bottle episode, but you're in someone's mind.
Charlie Jane: [00:31:25] I mean, there's always the clip episode that's also a dream episode, where it's like we're their dreamscape, but we're also seeing clips from other episodes, because we just—
Annalee: [00:31:33] I fucking hate clip episodes. I know that—I feel like there's someone who likes clip episodes. Who is that person?
Charlie Jane: [00:31:40] I feel like there have been a couple of really funny clip episodes but generally it's been… it's not a good thing.
Annalee: [00:31:46] Yeah. What was that show the did a clip episode where it was all fake clips. I feel like I watched it with you.
Charlie Jane: [00:31:53] Community might have done that? I don’t know.
Annalee: [00:31:54] Yeah. Where it was like you thought it was a clip episode. But actually it was all stuff that had never really happened. And it was delightful.
Charlie Jane: [00:32:00] I think that was community. Pretty sure.
Annalee: [00:32:01] Yeah. I think that was community. Yeah.
[00:32:05] So for you, just to finish up, when you're thinking about planning your summer of entertainment what's the kind of movie that you want to go out to see in theaters? Is it a special effects blockbuster or something else?
Charlie Jane: [00:32:16] I think increasingly, we are going to reserve the theatrical experience for the big kind of special effects-y spectaculars where it’s IMAX. You want to see it on the biggest possible screen. But I think that, part of what I'm excited about this summer is that we are getting a lot of really weird offbeat movies that might have originally been planned to come out in January, but because nothing has been able to, very few things have been able to hit theaters this past year and change, we're getting a bunch of these movies this summer that are just kind of like weird oddball little projects. And I think that we're also coming off of a really intense period of political upheaval. And I'm excited to see some movies that are going to actually grapple with that rather than just be like, our job is to preserve the status quo at all costs. Preserve the [unclear] Today, we are preserving the status quo! You know?
Annalee: [00:33:09] I’m Status Quo Man.
Charlie Jane: [00:33:11] Pretty much. I mean, that is… Your typical Hollywood movie is about like how we must preserve the status quo at all costs. And I think we're starting, I think we're gonna see some films that are more thoughtful about that, and maybe question this whole quo pro status thing.
Annalee: [00:33:26] Pro quo? Yeah, I actually, I mean, of course, it's always fun to see special effects in the theater. Although I am increasingly less interested in that and more interested in making the movie going experience more like theater or live music. Like I want to see some small movies where I actually get to see a discussion afterwards. That's something that happens in a lot of movie theaters now, where either someone who's involved in the production of the movie is there and is like, hey, let's have a Q&A. Or just two people who have interesting ideas about the film or who've studied the genre, and are just like, hey, let's have a conversation about the film and make it more interactive and make it, again, feel more like an evening out instead of just, we came here to consume entertainment. Which I love, don't get me wrong, but I also like chatting with people in real life.
Charlie Jane: [00:34:20] For sure.
Annalee: [00:34:20] So I'm looking forward to that, too. And I like I said, I think as going to the movie theater becomes more and more of an event we're going to see more experimentation with stuff like that. Like, combining live events with a movie.
Charlie Jane: [00:34:35] Yeah.
Annalee: [00:34:36] All right. I can't wait.
Charlie Jane: [00:34:37] That's a good place to wrap up. So thank you so much for listening. This has been Our Opinions Are Correct. And you already know this, but you can find us in all of the good places where podcasts are available. And if you like us, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts and other places that you can leave a review. Please tell your friends. Please just run down the street shouting about us. Possibly put a little rolled up thing inside a barrel and give it to a dog and just have the dog run around with the barrel with the thing about our podcast in it. I don't know, just whatever you have to do.
Annalee: [00:35:09] Yeah, yeah, or like stuff it in a bottle and throw it out to sea so that a pirate will find it and come and—
Charlie Jane: [00:35:15] Pirates need better podcast listening.
Annalee: [00:35:19] I always hope that Pippi Longstocking will find it because that's like how her dad communicates with her and then she’ll come visit us on a bed that's carried by a balloon. Because that's my favorite way of getting around.
Charlie Jane: [00:35:33] That was pretty much our goal when we launched this podcast. It was like maybe if we launch a podcast, Pippi Longstocking will eventually show up on a balloon bed. You know?
Annalee: [00:35:41] Yes.
Charlie Jane: [00:35:41] For sure.
Annalee: [00:35:42] It’s almost about to come true.
Charlie Jane: [00:35:45] So you may not know this, but we actually have a Patreon where you can give us monetary and moral support. The moral support is not to be discounted. And we will interact with you and ask questions and share audio extras. And thanks so much to our heroic, dashing producer Veronica Simonetti. Thanks to the brilliant Chris Palmer for the music. And thanks again to you for listening. We'll be back in two weeks with another episode.
[00:36:10] Bye!
Annalee: [00:36:12] Bye!
[00:36:13] Outro music plays. Drums with a bass line including bass drops.