The seventh episode of my podcast is up now! Myself and Alastair JR Ball this week discuss Orphan Black season 4, upcoming indie scifi film Tourbillon, the ending of Daredevil season 4 and we take a look back at Sports Night. So go ye to the website here and get more info about that.
Or you can just download the episode directly from this link or listen to the embedded player below. Both would also work.
Tomorrow, hopefully, a link to some actual new blog content by me. You have been warned.
It's been just over two weeks and that must mean it's podcast time! And also time to mark my failure to do a real blog! Sorry - although Hobson & Choi v4 is now off with the external editor, so some form of contentful blogging on here will probably have to happen.
In the meantime, full details about MFV #6 over at the dedicated podcast website, but we're talking in full about Civil War, the return of Game of Thrones, Better Call Saul season 2 and Blue Velvet, plus a brief exchange about the new Doctor Who companion. Wow.
There should also be a short bonus episode going up (in two chunks) during the coming week talking about the Civil War ending and implications of same, with full spoilers. If that floats your boat.
You can download the episode here, or you can go here to get it for your iTunes. Last but not least, here is some kind of in-line audio player...
Latest episode of my new pop culture podcast is up, and the title absolutely refers to me! (Yes, I pick the titles, so really it's surprising that this has taken a full five epiodes.)
Not done any blogs since the last one, surprisingly, but you can listen to some bonus MFV clips here if you like.
So, here's the podcast blurb:
Five episodes in and Nick and Alastair are spanning mediums like a common HTML tag refusing to accept the results of his psychic reading.
So we’re taking in recent hit horror movie The Witch (plus Alastair’s problems with recent horror and Nick’s amusement at livestock), the second season of mega-podcast Serial (plus the natural excitement of murder and the dangers of doorstepping) and the BAFTA-winning video game Her Story (plus the fun of fragmented narratives and the truth about human nature).
BEWARE: plot spoilers in both The Witch and Her Story sections, though we flag the major ones shortly beforehand.
Lastly, Nick recommended Alastair two Punisher books by Garth Ennis last episode –Punisher: Born and Punisher: From First To Last. This fortnight, we find out whether roaming the streets gunning down criminals is his sort of thing. Oh, and stick around after that for some hot info about MFV #6.
In short, another great episode. As ever, you can download the show directly, you can subscribe on iTunes or you can listen in the embedded player below.
Unusually, I kept to my goal of writing a whole blog post between this podcast episode and the last one! It was a thirty-second birthday post and you can go read it if you haven't already!
Fortunate really, as I don't have time to write much now. The fourth episode of MFV is up, you can see more details on the all-new official podcast website! Or I'll paste the blurb and an embed player below too.
After last week's superhero-free effort, it's time for the opposite! Nick and Alastair have seen Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, and one of them disliked it more than the other! Find out which is which (plus the repeated futility of Doomsday and what Nick has in common with Wonder Woman), then witness our discussion of Daredevil season 2 (plus the weakness of the Kingpin and exactly when it's time for the plebs).
We finally move away from capes in our climactic recommendation section, with Nick watching Ari Folman's sad animated documentary Waltz With Bashir at Alastair's behest. But don't worry, superpeople might make a last-minute comeback.
Hello!
Since I keep saying I should do a blog here without a podcast attached, I thought I'd slide a quick one out today - because it is my thirty-second birthday! And I always seem to blog on this day, for whatever reason. I've got to go out for my celebratory activity quite soon - more on that later - but here is some stuff. It's been a while since the last substantial Hobson & Choi update, so let's start there...
Yes, I have a complete not-shit draft of Hobson & Choi Case Four! Almost time to send it to the external editor, get some informed feedback and then take a big swing to try and make it publication-ready.
First, however, I have to read the whole text out loud to myself. I inflict this upon all my fiction-prose work before releasing it to an external audience, because I find it really helps with the flow of the writing. However, it is boring as shit, and no amount of knowledge that it's useful seems to change that.
I did a whole blog post on this task a while back if you're interested in more, but the current-upshot is: H&C4 is coming along, it should be with you... if I had to guess, I'd say around the third quarter of 2016. I am hopeful that it won't slip into the fourth, but no promises.
Weirdly, looking back on my thirty-first birthday post, this is almost exactly where I was with H&C3 at the same time last year. However, I'm hoping it won't take until October to get this one out, as I don't have the distraction of moving across London this time.
So anyway, it's coming soon. If you want to check out any of the first three, you should absolutely do that. The first case remains free on digital. All links and info on the main H&C page.
My pop-culture-chat podcast Moderate Fantasy Violence, the focus of every other post on this blog so far in 2016, continues apace. For my birthday activity, we're going to see the widely-criticised film Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. Then we'll record our fourth episode tomorrow and see if we can add anything to the critical conversation.
Yes, the film's reviews are bad, but it sounds like it might be an Interesting Failure, and those are absolute catnip to story-talky-people like myself, so I'm still excited.
In other MFV news, we now have a proper separate website at ModerateFantasyViolence.com where you can see and listen to all the podcast stuff so far. Kudos to my co-host Alastair JR Ball for doing most of the hard work setting that up, it looks great. I'll continue posting here when a new ep comes out, but the new site is now the main hub. As well as the main episodes that I've been posting here, you can hear some deleted tangent-conversations that were cut to get the shows under an hour. Check that out, and if you fancy subscribing to or reviewing us on iTunes, even better.
Alright?
Kinda struggling to get another writing project going thanks to ideas not quite coming together or seeming as beautiful on the page as they do in my head. Once H&C4 is off to an editor, I'm going to take another swing at that. I think I've probably become a bit complacent thanks to spending so long working almost exclusively on Hobson & Choi, which is a world I love, know and can write easily. Maybe a short story or something to make it less intimidating?
And outside that, the new flat in Lewisham seems to be working out, realising my long-held dream of doing a podcast is a lot of fun and I don't even mind turning 32 because it seems a lot like 31. So cool. Good work. See you back here next year, I suppose?
(I will attempt to blog at some stage before my thirty-third birthday.)
So, that blog post to break up the podcast episodes still hasn't happened, but at least I'm getting work done on Hobson & Choi Case Four.
For now, though, here's the third pod, as myself and Alastair try to do one without superheroes. If you miss them, don't worry, the next episode will likely cover Batman V Superman and Daredevil.
As ever, subscribe on iTunes here, download the file here or listen on the Soudcloud player just below this official blurb...
It's time for a no-superheroes episode! Eschewing all cultural trends, Nick and Alastair take a look at social satire movie High Rise (plus the difficulty of adapting books and vertical living returning to London), new podcast Alice Isn't Dead (plus methods of audio advertising and whether this very show has a secret purpose) and the latest Coen brothers comedy Hail, Ceasar! (plus the life and death of old movie genres).
Lastly, in our stubbornly unnamed recommendations feature, Alastair reads his first comic in years: The Manhattan Projects by Jonathan Hickman & Nick Pitarra. Is this the beginning of a deep love for graphic storytelling as a medium? Or is it... The End?
Hello!
The second episode of Moderate Fantasy Violence, my new geek-stuff podcast with Alastair JR Ball, is upon you. I did kinda mean to do an actual blog post in the intervening fortnight so this blog doesn't just end up being a long string of podcasts, but there you go. You can hear the podcast in the embedded player below, or subscribe on iTunes or just right click here and download the MP3 file.
And what's in it? Well:
In a not-that-difficult second episode, Nick and Alastair look at the return of Better Call Saul (plus Gotham's prequel problems and the terrible omen of Bryan Cranston), the upcoming DC Comics Rebirth (plus how superhero comics are morphing into Doctor Who and the recent Iron Fist casting controversy) and the possibility of more adult-rated superhero movies after the success of Deadpool (plus eternal hope for sexy Gambit and Wolverine's stabby vendetta against walls and robots).
And then it's our still-nameless recommendations feature! Nick reports back on quietly squelchy crime series Messiah II, then recommends Alastair his first comic book in years. What will it be?
Oh, and if you enjoy it, I'm posting a few of the tangential discussions cut for time to the show's Soundcloud page under the name Excessive Fantasy Violence. The ones from #2 will start going up next week.
