In episode 41 of The Electric Shadows Podcast Robs Daniel & myself journey deep into pop culture and sci-fi when delivering our verdicts on Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One and Alex Garland’s Annihilation.
In a typically all-encompassing discussion, Rob D explains why he dug the pop-culture geek-gasm of RP1, while I reveal his reservations about Spielberg’s latest.…
For those of you who only know of Tomb Raider through the early-2000s films – in which a pneumatic Angelina Jolie dispatched baddies with a glare, a pout, and a pair of Heckler & Koch – you’re about to meet a very different Lara Croft.
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In recent years, Steven Spielberg has had his gaze focused firmly on the past.
From Abraham Lincoln and the fight for emancipation to The Washington Post battling for freedom of the press, Spielberg is working him way, statesmanlike, through American history, celebrating the better angels of our nature; like Frank Capra with a library card.…
Between his role as cosplay Joker and the kimono he wears in Blade Runner 2049, Jared Leto may be a secret Japanophile.
It’s the only way I can rationalise his involvement in The Outsider, a Netflix Original that falls firmly into the category of “they/we probably should have known better”.…
CONTAINS SPOILERS
Alex Garland is one of the relatively few directors working today who truly deserves to be called a visionary.
His latest film, Annihilation, a dreamlike adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer’s novel of the same name, is, to say the least, a smart, ambitious, multi-ethnic, female-led sci-fi.…
Lynne Ramsay’s latest is Taken for the arthouse crowd.
Based on Jonathan Ames’ novel of the same name, You Were Never Really Here stars Joaquin Phoenix as Joe, a burly, beardy hitman with a man-bun and a barely subsumed death wish.…
The Electric Shadows Podcast reaches its 40th episode.
What better way to mark this landmark episode than by discussing the biggest night in the movie calendar: the Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars. Best known as the awards where they announced the wrong movie last year for the biggest win of the night.…
By Max Eshraghi
It has taken some time but the horror genre has achieved legitimacy. It is finally, in a word, prestigious.
What was once one of the most commonly derided and dismissed of genres has evolved. The ugly, putrid, caterpillar of horrors past has emerged from a chrysalis after 90-or-so years of metamorphosis and transformed into a multi-faceted butterfly: namely, a genre that can do it all.…
The original Cloverfield is about everyday life jolted by a seismic event. Fitting then that home entertainment giant Netflix chose to surprise release this third instalment in producer J.J. Abrams’ anthology franchise.
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Episode 39 of The Electric Shadows Podcast is the agony and the ecstasy.
The agony comes from Rob Daniel, who talks (at length) about his ongoing recuperation following surgery after a particularly non-heroic “sports injury”.
The ecstasy comes from myself who, being of sound body (and mind, so to speak) was able to see Black Panther – aka Contender for the Biggest Film of 2018, aka Contender for the Most Culturally Significant Film of 2018, aka The Film You Really Should Have Seen By Now.…