Episode twenty! Another numerical milestone, and one recorded before the recent American electoral news, so no mention of that here. However, we do have intro talk of Flash, Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow and The Walking Dead from Nick, until Alastair raises the tone with indie film London Overground.
Our centrepiece this fortnight, though, is an in-depth chat about Black Mirror season 3 (6:35), covering all six of Charlie Brooker’s latest techno-horror tales. Are they as miserable as people like to say? Or is there… a twist?
Meanwhile, in cinemas, we’ve got a review of Arrival (40:05), the new scifi/semantics movie starring Jeremy Renner and Amy Adams trying to speak to aliens, and then Lo And Behold: Reveries of the Connected World (53:26), a new documentary from Werner Herzog offering a slightly more uplifting view of technology than Black Mirror.
Finally, we find out what Nick thinks of Alastair’s latest recommendation: surreal tower block sitcom 15 Storeys High (66:17) with Sean Lock and Benedict Wong.
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Episode 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 
Moving 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,
And then straight back into the nerdosphere, Nick’s recommended Alastair the first few episodes of anarchic sci-fi cartoon Rick & Morty! (68:14)
This 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.
This 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.
This 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.
There 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.
Episode 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.
And if you want the syllabus of post-Luke-Cage reading material Alastair mentions during the episode,
Alastair 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.
There 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.
The seventeenth division has landed! It’s a Brit-heavy episode, with opening talk about the current London production of Pinter’s No Man’s Land with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, plus the revival of 90s middle class soap Cold Feet.
Finally, Britain goes to enhanced war in Nick’s latest recommendation: grim WW2 superpeople comic Uber (50:07) by Kieron Gillen and Caanan White.
Our sweet sixteen! Other important milestones in this episode – Nick finishes watching Chuck after about a year and Alastair books his London Film Festival movies!
Lastly, Nick somehow hasn’t seen The Fifth Element (44:18), but Alastair’s latest recommendation will sort that out.
Fifteen down! Back on regular format after two reality-bending outings, starting with opening chat about Between Two Thorns by Emma Newman and the end of Outcast season 1.
Last of all, it’s time to get lo-fi with BBC Three’s romantic-yet-squalid one-room sitcom Him & Her (57:24).
One last hoorah for our Nine Worlds coverage – this is Nick talking in his hotel room moments before leaving the convention for the year. (With some heckling from his girlfriend.) Cut from our main episode for reasons of length and slight redundancy, but if you want one more chance to experience the con vibe, this is your moment!
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