doctor-strange-trailer-poster-comic-conEpisode nineteen, and it’s almost feature length this time! But in our defense, there’s a lot to get through. Before any of that, though, we’ve been attending live recordings of other podcasts, specifically Welcome to Night Vale at the London Palladium and the very special 200th episode of SILENCE!

That done, we launch into new Marvel Cinematic Universe movie Doctor Strange (5:38) and ask: is there room for yet another superhero origin? Also: is there such a thing as too many glowing magic bolts?

We’ve also got Class, the new Doctor Who spin-off (25:05), and since this is our first ever Who item, we talk for a fair while and bring in guest book blogger Julianne Benford to talk about the YA aspects of it all. If you enjoy Julianne’s appearance here, she’s @ladyjulianne on Twitter, and she also writes about books on This Fleeting Dream, about general lifestyle stuff on This Second’s Obsession, and YouTubes about books both solo on Better Than Dreams and collectively on Bookish Brits. Oh, and she’s also active on Instagram. Phew. Think that’s it.

i-daniel-blake-3Moving out of mainstream geek culture, we’ve also seen I, Daniel Blake (52:59), the new movie from Ken Loach about Britain’s none-too-fair welfare system. If you want to read Alastair’s take on the politics of this film, it’s right here at his Red Train Blog.

rick-and-mortyAnd then straight back into the nerdosphere, Nick’s recommended Alastair the first few episodes of anarchic sci-fi cartoon Rick & Morty! (68:14)

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The Man From Mo WaxThis is Alastair’s final update from the 60th BFI London Film Festival. For the end of the festival I saw The Man From Mo-Wax, Snowden and The Gual. Above you can listen to what I thought of each of them. The Man From Mo-Wax is a music documentary about James Lavelle, Snowden is Oliver Stone’s biopic of Edward Snowden and The Gual is a low budget British psychological thriller.

snowdenThis is my final update from this year’s London Film Festival. It was a great festival. At the end of the recording I choose my favourite films from the entire festival.

A Monster CallsThis is Alastair’s second update from the 60th BFI London Film Festival. I have scene four more films: A Monster Calls, Planetarium, Arrival and The Stopover. The recording in this post contains my initial thoughts on all of them. A Monster Calls is a YA drama based on the novel by Patrick Ness, Planetarium is a drama about French filmmakers in the 1930s, Arrival is a high concept sci-fi film and The Stopover is a French film about three female soldiers returning from Afghanistan.

The StopoverThere will be more discussion of these films in future MFV episodes and in future posts on this website. Keep alter for those and let us know what you thought of these films or any others films you saw at the festival on social media.

lukecageEpisode eighteen, so the podcast has finally come of age! Nick also completes a major rite of passage as he finally finishes Twin Peaks, while Alastair is out partying at the London Film Festival.

After that, it’s a game of two halves as we check out two new American TV shows: the opening seven episodes of Luke Cage, the new Marvel Netflix series (5:36 WITH SPOILERS), and the pilot of Westworld, a new sci-fi series from HBO (24:32).

westworldAnd if you want the syllabus of post-Luke-Cage reading material Alastair mentions during the episode, here it is.

In the latter stage, it’s all about British cinema with Spaceship (38:53), a spacey teenage drama we saw at London Film Festival, and Alastair’s recommendation from last week, the East Midlands revenge thriller Dead Man’s Shoes (49:41).

Download the podcast directly in mp3 here!

Subscribe on iTunes! Reviews welcome!

Listen on Stitcher! Reviews also welcome!

Subscribe in multiple Android podcast apps here!

TowerAlastair has spent the last few days at the 60th BFI London Film Festival. He has seen four films so far: The 13th, Tower, Spaceship and The Worthy. The attached recoding has some off the cuff thoughts about each of them. The 13th is a documentary about the rising rates of incrassation of African Americans; it is hard-hitting, very detailed and really interesting. Tower is a rotoscoped documentary about a mass shooting in Texas in the 1960s. Spaceship is a British indie film and the Worthy is a tense thriller set in a post- apocalyptic Saudi Arabia.

The WorthyThere will be more discussion of the films on at the festival in future MFVs and in another Excessive Fantasy Violence festival summary. Watch out for those on the website and do let us know in the comment or on social media if you have seen any films at the festival that you would recommend.