Reserved Recommendations

In the UK in the 60s and 70s there was an explosion of musical creativity that started with roots in folk, and expanded to encompass rock, pop, folk, jazz, psychedelia, and World Music. At the core of this explosion was the production team of engineer John Wood and producer Joe Boyd. On this episode I talk to Nancy Howie (Fathom, Tweed ) about the extended Joe Boyd/John Wood-iverse. You can find a...

In the 30ish years since they hit New Zealand, anime and manga have become a big part of many people's pop culture diets. (It's me, I'm many people). This episode I talk to Kyle from 1/200 Media (www.1of200.nz) about what draws us to Japanese entertainment, and the challenges that come with cross-cultural translation, interacting with this peculiarly problematic chunk of the global entertainment i...

In the first episode of Season 3, I talk to Sammy G (Pipebombs and Headlocks) about the weird, bad, and sometimes wonderful video game movie adaptations of the 1990s. Produced by Manawatū People's Radio with the support of NZ On Air.

The Goon Show was a long-running, deeply weird, and highly influential British radio comedy series written primarily by Spike Milligan and performed by him and his friends Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe. It laid the groundwork for later weird anarchic British comedy (the Monty Python crew in particular cite it as an inspiration) as well as permanently altering the English language by giving us te...

Jacques Tati was a French filmmaker and actor whose career (as a director at least) ran from 1935-1978. He's most famous for the comic character character Monsieur Hulot (a primary inspiration for Mr. Bean) who he played across four films between 1953 and 1971. Tati's comedy is completely unique - highly choreographed, very visual, and often entirely unconcerned with modern considerations like cha...

Dune (1984) was a notoriously tortured production, eventually helmed by David Lynch (who was so disgusted with the final product that he insisted on being credited as "Alan Smithee"). The film is gorgeous, weird, and kind of impenetrable if you're not already familiar with the books, but it's developed a cult following, and was hugely influential for many overserious nerds in the 80s and 90s. The...

Escape Rooms are a kind of real world puzzle game based around (oddly enough) escaping a locked room. They have a lineage that goes back to computer adventure games, and are a fascinating case study in puzzle design and the joys and perils of group work. Matthew Jenkin (whose day job involves teaching computer science students problem solving through puzzles) joins the pod to talk about his experi...

"The 100" is a show that ran on the CW from 2014 to 2020. It featured a near future (about 90 years away) in which Earth has been ravaged by nuclear war, and the survivors live in orbit on a space station. With resources running out, they send 100 conventionally-attractive teenagers to the surface to find out if it's habitable. The result is 7 seasons of variably good, but always compulsively cons...

This week I talk to Ben Caldwell (DIY Comedy) about the colourful, ludicrous, dangerous, and weirdly compelling world of pro wrestling. We end up spending a surprising amount of time talking about labour relations. DIY Comedy is at: www.facebook.com/diycomedynz or www.diycomedynz.com/ Produced by Manawatū People's Radio with the support of NZ On Air.

The Neon Demon is a beautiful, strange, slow-burning horror movie from Nicolas Winding Refn. On this episode, I talk to Derrick Sims about The Neon Demon, the rest of Refn's similarly gorgeous, slow-moving, and kind of opaque filmography in a discussion that also expands to include Dylan, Tom Waits, Jodorowsky, and Thomas Ligotti. Find Derrick's filmography at http://fabledmotionpictures.com/ Find...

"Jupiter Ascending" is a 2015 movie from the Wachowski Sisters. It's a maniacally over the top space opera with a stellar cast and a fascinatingly weird setting. It's also widely regarded as one of if not the worst of the Wachowskis' films, and was the last one they made together. Jay Dragon (@jdragsky) joins me to talk about the movie, and why it's so much fun while never quite getting it togethe...

If you were to pick a property to turn into a hard-R (much violent, very swears, wow) anime-adjacent TV series, a Nintendo game from a series which started in 1986 (i.e. the peak bleep blopp video games era) might not be your first port of call. And yet, Netflix's adaptation of Castlevania is one of its best-regarded original creations, especially with horror and adult animation fans. It's surpris...

One Punch Man, by the pseudonymous mangaka "ONE" is many things. It's a pisstake of shonen and seinen manga/anime tropes, which gleefully embraces an aesthetic best described as "anime bullshit". It's also a surprisingly deep look at disillusionment with modern Japanese cultural ideals, despite taking on the challenge of parodying over the top power fantasy action by doing it harder than anyone el...

Alejandro Jodorowsky is a Chilean film maker who aims to speak in symbolic language, and make films that replicate the full force of the psychedelic experience. In 1973, bolstered by the success of his "acid Western" El Topo, Jodorowsky made The Holy Mountain - his first project with major financial backing and near-total creative freedom. The result is a deeply strange and allegorical movie that...

Being a dude (particularly a white dude) puts one in an odd position. You simultaneously enjoy as much systemic privilege as is possible (disregarding financial class, at least), and find that that comes at the cost of any sort of cultural marker that you could feasibly use to identify yourself. You also find much of the world fairly (justifiably) unsympathetic to any problems you might be having...

The Magnetic Fields are an odd band. Formed around singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Stephin Merrit, they exist as a showcase for his songs, without necessarily being a showcase for his performance. The songs themselves are wildly diverse in genre, production, and instrumentation, while sharing a sardonic sense of humour wed to a deep emotional sincerity. Additionally, Magnetic Fields...

For all the franchises one could possibly be a fan of, Sonic The Hedgehog has to be one of the most difficult and heartbreaking. Historically, Sega has had very little idea what to do with the character, leading to wildly divergent characterisations between different projects (which have spanned video games, comics, movies, and animated TV). On top of that, he's a video game character whose flagsh...

If you're a nerd-adjacent person of about my vintage, then the World Of Darkness is something that you probably have some complicated thoughts about. It was a collection of dark urban fantasy roleplaying games that shared an implied universe during a time when the prevailing fashion in that scene was still for heroic fantasy or sci-fi, it came at a fascinating transition point for RPGs as a hobby,...

If you're a conspiracy buff, then Q is the new biggest thing. It's a massive, all-encompassing, crowd-sourced conspiracy theory whose tenets are diverse but center around the idea of Donald Trump waging a secret war against a global cabal of elite paedophiles (who may also be evil wizards). It's also rapidly beginning to spill over into the real world, with local adherents cropping up in New Zeala...

Censorship is a tricky issue! It's not exactly controversial to say that some art is not appropriate for some people, but how do we decide precisely where those lines sit, and what actual practical steps do we take to attempt to enforce them? Serena Deane (@shit-imma-artist basically everywhere) is a local Palmerston North artist whose work features a fair degree of "unsheathed titties". We attemp...

Back at the dawn of tabletop roleplaying, there were three big games on the scene - the cod-fantasy pastiche Dungeons and Dragons, the hard sci-fi Traveller, and the strange, mythic Runequest. Runequest (and its setting Glorantha) are unique and idiosyncratic creations unlike anything else in western fantasy. Eddie McEwan (host of The Audio Archive - www.mpr.nz/show/aurdioarchive) joins the podcas...

As part of my job here at Manawatū People's Radio, I end up adding a lot of local Palmerston North music to the station. In the course of doing this I've noticed that there's a massive musical subculture that came and went without much in the way of record. Matt Sanko was a big part of that scene, playing drums in a dizzying array of local bands. I chat to him about the Palmy scene of the 90's, th...

John Congleton is a producer who's worked with acts ranging from St Vincent and Laurie Anderson to Bono and the Baja Men. He also makes music, in the bands "The Paper Chase" and "Nighty Nite" that sounds the way horror movies feel. Jojo from the band Departure Party joins me to talk about him, and his weird scary music. Produced by Manawatū People's Radio with the support of NZ On Air.

Movies have the ability to transport us to another place, and teach us to see differently. When it comes to movies from another time, this presents a fascinating opportunity to look at the attitudes and priorities of the past. Dylan Horrocks (hicksvillecomics.com) joins the podcast to talk about this through the lens of 4 specific movies - "The Adventures of Robin Hood", "Tarzan and his Mate", "So...

Gossip Girl is an American TV drama that ran from 2007-2012. Kristen Paterson (Wellington Access Radio, Tidal Rave) joins the podcast to talk about this campy, trashy, gloriously pretty show, and we immediately get deep into the weeds. It's fun though. Produced by Manawatū People's Radio with the support of NZ On Air.