030: Prelude to a Cannibal Opera (Cannibopera?)

(Alternative title for this episode was "ONCE MORE INTO THE BREACH MY FILTHIES!" Seriously, for like 33 whole seconds that was totes gonna be the title)

SPOILERS FOR... TRUE DETECTIVE, SLEEPY HOLLOW, NBC'S DRACULA, and NBC'S HANNIBAL (SEASON 1 AND PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS FOR SEASON 2)

In this episode:

• Cleo's back with us! Hannibal's happening again soon! Things! Things, you guys! Things!
• Before we get started, we should apologize. Profusely. It seems like our recording equipment (strong word, there) malfunctioned during the first hour of the podcast. Did my best with the editing, but there are some awkward cuts, and little bits get left out in places. In my head, I refer to the time of the podcast when malfunctions were things that happened and the time when they were not as "Before Avocado" and "Avocado Domini" respectively.
• Alright *deep breath* here we go...
• We start off doing a quick roundup of the horror shows and horror-ish shows that we've been checking out this season:
• True Detective, the influence of The King in Yellow, people telling Matthew McConaughey to shut up for thirty minutes, Fio gets confused about what a spiral looks like, why the show is worth watching.
• Sleepy Hollow and the utter wackiness that has been the entire season, the (unnecessary) justifications for tree demons out of nowhere, why the characters are what really carries us through this show, and how we're holding out hope for the irreverent madcap delight to carry us onto the next season.
• Dracula and Cleo's crushing disappointment, the difference between sex and violence being used with nuance and being used in an exploitative manner, how everyone on this show is a total prick, and how the whiplash of switching between the show's love of barely-network-safe sexytimes and barely-network-safe headsplodies will afflict you with an acute crotch confusion (Crotchfusion? Never mind, that's like the opposite of what I meant).
• If you're just looking for Hannibal, that discussion starts in earnest around 58:30 (listen for a familiar sound) with a few bits and pieces hanging about on the end of Dracula. Tee hee, gross. Anyway, as far as Hannibal is concerned:
• We say "what the fuck?" a lot. Add exclamation points to that as necessary.
• There's a lot of speculation about what we might see in the upcoming season, who's going to die, how awful is it going to get, and who is not for eating. Not for eating. #notforeating
• We get into how wonderful the 13-Hour Devour was (even though Ian and Fio were total losers and couldn't take part), and how it's super cool that Fannibals have the ability to trend a hashtag of someone who gets around 2 minutes of screentime world-wide, which is just great.
• "Entree," "Sorbet," and "Fromage" form a sort of mini-arc that we get into some depth discussing on the podcast, since we're pretty sure it's the favorite arc of the show for all three of us (am I overstepping in saying that? Correct me if that's not the case).
• The casting of the Verger kids and how fancasting Lee Pace in the role of Mason probably would have made a lot of people very upset.
• There's a Mads Mikkelsen Q&A coming up soon. We broach that topic and start talking about the nature of fandom and the interesting age demographics the Fannibals seem to be spread across.

THERE'S ALWAYS AN ADDENDUM:

• For the True Detective fans in our audience, here are links to check out regarding The Yellow Sign and SCP-701, The Hanged King
• Here's a link to a round-up of Cleolinda's Storify recaps thus far
• Ohhhhhhhh, Franklin....
• Ian thinks we should post links to Cleo's custom "My Little Ravenstag" when she receives it. Fio concurs.
• This is the article that discusses the inspiration of the Hannibal character that we mention.
• Aside from the previous round-up, here's Cleo's Storify of the 13-Hour Devour
• CAPS LOCK IS HOW I FEEL ALL THE TIME RICK
• Highlights from Ian's timemarks:
• 39:40 - More Skype recorder demons. I think there’s enough of it there to figure out what I’m saying, but we’ll just have to throw up a disclaimer on the blogpost. Fuck me, this is annoying. AND IT’S ONLY WHEN I’M TALKING. *shakes fist at podcast gods*
• 41:18 - Pause as Cleo and I try to be polite as fuck and let the other speak.
• 1:00:00 - Re: the puns: I REGRET NOTHING.
• 1:20:11 - #DidYouStealMySperm. It actually flows into discussion about Hannibal and Twitter, so we might not need to cut it for an outtake.
• Before we go, I want to point out that, thanks to Ian's timestamps, our blog now contains the phrase "...Sperm. It flows..." So if that's something you came here for, umm... We have that now.
• ETA: THE THING. #thing

Music/Sounds:

• Intro Music: "Feel Good Inc." - Gorillaz | YouTube | iTunes |
• Outro Music: "la Folia" - performed by Emilie Autumn | YouTube | iTunes |

Image:

• A necessary sacrifice courtesy of Stefofthehill

http://archive.org/download/AMOT030/amot30.mp3

029: Horror Canon - Vol. 1

SPOILERS FOR... HANNIBAL S1, GASLIGHT, AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, JAWS, HELLRAISER, ALIEN, ALIENS, & THE EXORCIST

In this episode:

• We're talking about canon. What is it? Where can I buy one? Why is canon actually a useful tool when it comes to academic discussion?
• Is your interest piqued? Good, because we're going to spend a crapload of your time attempting to convince you of the films we believe to be worthy of inclusion in Horror Movie Canon (see the capitalization there? That's how you know it's important.)
• Some of the heavier discussion herein:
• Movies by decade, in which we touch on movies that may or may not have been informed by the limitations of film making at the time they were produced or movies that represented a certain zeitgeist or anxiety of an era.
• Movies by genre, which horror movies deserve inclusion in the canon by virtue of being the forerunners of some of the most popular genres that have emerged over the years in horror storytelling, or which films seem to present the purest or most intriguing take on the tropes of that genre.
• Death of the Author and why neither of us identify as New Critics. Namely whether these separate readings of a film are mutually exclusive, how they can inform one another, and whether or not any one reading can really be called a true reading.
• Ian gets really pumped over a discussion of how the nature of the horror genre affects the agency of its protagonists. He made special mention of it in the timestamps (d'awwww).
• It's not all dry academics though, we also broach
• The possibility of liveblogging a horror movie marathon with our followers. Anyone interested?
• They made an opera out of The Fly, you guise. There are no words for how amazing that is.
• We briefly fanboy over Alien: Isolation, which just looks... just... so wonderful.
• Exorcism/possession movies? Are they exploitative?
• The Blair Witch Project and the Found Footage genre and... man, I can't even get myself excited about this writing a blog post. You've all seen V/H/S by now, right?
• Our dear friend Cleolinda made some awesome Storify gathering-ing-things of various season finales and Lifetime movies (we're just going with it). We already linked to it on our Tumblr, but if you're one of the 2.25 listeners who don't follow through our Tumblr, we've got a lovely little link for you right here.
• Speaking of Cleo, she should be joining us for the episode just before Hannibal returns to us from a long and frightening hiatus... of... the night. So, that should be fun.

THERE'S ALWAYS AN ADDENDUM:

• Ian has some afterthoughts on An American Werewolf in London:
• "I think what makes American Werewolf in London work is that it does take the werewolf elements seriously and goes all-out with them, while addressing the absurdity of the werewolf as a concept. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the only way the "criticism," if we want to call it that, works is because it takes the werewolf mythology so seriously."
• Here's a link to that scene in Cursed where a werewolf flips off a bunch of teens/twentysomethings. I'm sorry about the quality, it was the best I could find, everything else was off screen. Here's a link to a video I found while searching for that clip titled "Sexy Big Bad Wolf" which I think we can all agree is the better video. 
• Ian wanted to include a link to the egregiously misinformed Halloween bracket put together by the website Fio used to write for, however it seems to have fallen away somewhere amongst a number of website redesigns. And nothing important was lost that day.
• When discussing the movie Poltergeist, we talk about it originating the trope of a place being built on a native american burial ground. This is because we are fools. In the timestamps, Ian pointed out that the Overlook from The Shining was built on such a burial ground, and that predates the release of Poltergeist by two years. There's certain to be other stories that used this trope before either, we just weren't thinking when we were speaking, clearly.
• Highlights from Ian's timemarks:
• 8:30 - STOP SAYING LIKE DAMMIT
• 53:15 - Brochure of the Dead. It'll make millions.
• 1:01:43 - "When people think of our podcast, they think nuance and authority." I think we have a new quote for the intro music.
• 1:58:46 - We should hold a contest to see who can transcribe the noise you make here.

Music/Sounds:

• Intro Music: "Tubular Bells" - Mike Oldfield | YouTube | iTunes |
• Outro Music: "Halloween Theme Main Title" - John Carpenter | YouTube | iTunes |

Image:

• One of the most iconic images in Nosferatu, pulled directly from its wikipedia page here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NosferatuShadow.jpg

http://archive.org/download/amot29/amot29.mp3