Episode 83: Summer Preview! What We're Pumped to Watch and Read This Season
Let’s face it: this summer belongs to Loki.
Summer is here—and that means a glorious new flood of movies, TV shows and books. We may actually get to go inside a movie theater again! Here's everything we're looking forward to this season, plus some thoughts about how entertainment has changed after a year in lockdown.
Notes, citations, & etc.
Some movies we talked about in this episode:
Army of the Dead — Zack Snyder’s new zombie movie featuring Tig Notaro
Luca — Pixar film about a boy who befriends a sea monster
F9 — the new Fast and the Furious movie, focusing on Dom and his family.
The Forever Purge — this time, a Mexican family is being hunted in Texas
The Green Knight — Dev Patel stars in an adaptation of the medieval poem
Cinderella — Billy Porter is a fairy godmother. ‘Nuff said.
Space Jam: A New Legacy — this time LeBron James teams up with Warner Bros. cartoons!
The Suicide Squad — this time James Gunn is directing, and Peter Capaldi is the Thinker!
Free Guy — Ryan Reynolds is a video game NPC who gains sentience
Candyman — director Nia DaCosta brings back this classic horror franchise
Other summer movies we didn’t get a chance to talk about: Black Widow, The Conjuring 3, The Tomorrow War, Venom 2, BIOS, Reminiscence, Jungle Cruise and A Quiet Place 2.
Some movies we talked about in this episode:
Legends of Tomorrow — aliens have abducted Sara Lance and the Waverider crew has to find her!
The Underground Railroad — Barry Jenkins adapts the award-winning Colson Whitehead novel
Pose — this groundbreaking series about QTPOC in the 1980s and 1990s is back at last
Loki — Marvel’s best villain/antihero finally gets his own story, and we are HERE FOR IT.
Shmigadoon! — Keegan-Michael Key gets trapped in a weird 1940s town where everybody sings, and you can't leave until you find true love
Wellington Paranormal — this acclaimed What We Do in the Shadows spinoff is finally coming to The CW.
Tuca & Bertie — the best animated show ever is finally back, this time on Adult Swim!
Motherland: Fort Salem — we’re obsessed with this show about witches who fight for an alternate America
Shows we didn’t get a chance to mention include Stargirl, Star Wars: The Bad Batch, Jupiter's Legacy, Monsters at Work, Mysterious Benedict Society, MODOK and Rick & Morty. Sorry. Please pretend we talked about these!
Some books we talked about in this episode:
We Are Satellites by Sarah Pinsker — when your kid wants to get a brain implant, how does it change your family?
Firebreak by Nicole Kornher-Stace — this buzzy debut features a post-climate change corporate dystopia, with extreme video games
Black Water Sister by Zen Cho — a girl gets haunted by her dead "spirit medium" grandmother, who wants to take down an evil businessman
A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark — in an alternate 1912 Cairo, a woman investigates a murderer who may be a famous spiritualist back from the dead.
The Ones We're Meant to Find by Joan He — in a post-climate change future, a girl with amnesia gets trapped on an island with just an android for company. And then she meets a girl from an eco-utopia.
The All-Consuming World by Cassandra Khaw — a brand new novel about cyborg badasses fighting against an evil A.I.
Son of the Storm by Suyi Davies Okungbowa — this novel about a scholar living inside a walled city who meets a skin-changing warrior woman is getting a ton of buzz.
In the Ravenous Dark by A.M. Strickland — the queerest, most exciting story about blood magic you’ll ever read, featuring a love triangle between a pansexual bloodmage, a princess, and an undead spirit.
One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston — the author of Red, White and Royal Blue writes a lesbian romance with time travel!
Future Feeling by Joss Lake — a group of trans guys put a curse on the wrong trans guy in this dark fantasy.
A Chorus Rises: A Song Below Water Novel by Bethany C. Morrow — the sequel to Morrow’s wonderful A Song Below Water deals with Naima, the eloko from the first book.
The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri — inspired by Indian epics and history, this book deals with an imprisoned princess who has to team up with a maidservant who wields forbidden magic
The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo — a retelling of The Great Gatsby, except that instead of Prohibition banning alcohol, it bans drinking demon blood.
The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison — the long-awaited followup to her Hugo-nominated novel, The Goblin Emperor
She Who Became The Sun by Shelly P. Chan — this historical fantasy takes place in Mongol-occupied China and features a young woman who takes her dead brother’s place.
Other books we’re pumped for but didn’t have time to mention: Illusionary by Zoraida Córdova, The Scratch Daughters by Hannah Abigail Clarke, Gearbreakers by Zoe Hana Mikuta, Hard Reboot by Django Wexler and Star Eater by Kerstin Hall.