This is the first of two parts that look at Superman in the movies. Troy and David look at the movies, from the George Reeves Mole Men to Zach Snyder’s Justice League.
Whether it is True Blood‘s Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer, or Game of Thrones‘ Kit Harrington and Rose Leslie, there have been a number of genre productions, whether it is a TV series or a TV episode, or a movie, where love blossomed between actors on the set. There are also genre productions, like A Quiet Place, where married couples (in this case, Emily Blunt and John Krasinski) worked together. John Carpenter and Adrienne Barbeau worked together, as well.
Here are a few (some already mentioned).
Green Lantern (Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively)
I Know What You Did Last Summer (Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr.)
Once Upon a Time (Ginnifer Goodwin and Josh Dallas)
Fantastic Four (Jessica Alba and Cash Warren)
The series Game of Thrones had a number of LGBTQ+ characters, and was not shy in portraying these relationships. Love knows no bounds. Troy and David do not cover these aspects as much in this episode, but will in a future episode.
Troy and David will look at love on the set, for their St. Valentine’s Day special. This is just a brief overview, and they will hopefully return to the subject down the road.
Highlights of the episode include:
a) The moment that Captain Kirk professed his one true love, the starship Enterprise.
b) Troy asks David which actress was his favourite Cat Woman of the 7 actresses that have been in the role in feature length films.
c) Was there a dalliance between Adam West and Julie Newmar back in the 1960s?
d) If time travel were a thing, would you go back in time to find the first appearance of Superman, in Action Comics, and collect 100 pristine copies?
e) Troy reminiscing about being in a music video, Dream Girl, by the group FM, back in 1987, when he was 22, where he played a roadie, wearing a hat and tripping over ladders. Look for a link to the video on the web site (2of.ca).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSNsLkbYI9k
f) The advantages of working on set with someone you are in love with.
g) Majel Barrett and Gene Roddenberry.
h) Did something go on between Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, while shooting Star Wars? And what of that love triangle, which had two of the three points in the triangle a brother and a sister?
i) The love triangle between the characters in Buck Rogers (Buck Rogers, Wilma Deering and Princess Ardala).
j) Unrequited love, like in Lady Hawk, Beauty and the Beast, Firefly, Star Trek TNG; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Vision and Wanda; Iron Man and Pepper Potts; Spiderman; The Hulk.
k) The loves of Superman and Clark Kent, in the series Superman & Lois; Smallville; and, Lois & Clark.
l) The ten most romantic science fiction movies, according to Ranker, is discussed by Troy and David.
m) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Outlander are briefly discussed.
n) the dynamics of relationships in the reboot to Battlestar Galactica (Adama and President Roslin, Starbuck and Apollo, Baltar and no. 6, among others).
o) Troy and David look at the ten most epic love stories in all science fiction (a list from the Internet that they relate and comment on).
p) from the comic books, Troy mentions The Swamp Thing (Alec Holland and Abigail Arcane) a great but tragic love story.
In 2019 a film was released called “MidSommar” and it caused quite a sensation. Ari Aster drew inspiration from the 1973 film, The Wicker Man. This film is part of the folk horror tradition.
Here is a bit that Troy put together about MidSommar (with key spoilers and plot points removed):
MIDSOMMAR (history)
Midsommar was written and directed by Ari Aster. It was released in 2019, and was the follow up to his highly-acclaimed debut feature film, Hereditary. Aster, who was hugely influenced by Swedish film legend Ingmar Bergman, was approached by Swedish producers to create a slasher film involving Swedish folk traditions. The director had recently dealt with the trauma of a breakup and found he could work through his pain by dealing with it in his screenplay for Midsommar.
Shot in Hungary outside of Budapest, not Sweden. The Horgan village was constructed from scratch for the film.
The Film stars Florence Pugh as Dani Ardor, Jack Reynor as her boyfriend Christian.
Dani finds that Christian and his three friends Jack (played by Will Poulter), Josh, and Pelle (all of them anthropology students) are planning on visiting the Swedish community, the Horga, that Pelle belongs to.
The five Americans make the trip to the rustic village and are welcomed into the community by the Horgans.
They soon discover that the community is not as idyllic as it seems.
Time Out‘s Joshua Rothkopf wrote, “A savage yet evolved slice of Swedish folk-horror, Ari Aster’s hallucinatory follow-up to Hereditary proves him a horror director with no peer.”
“Ambitious, impressively crafted, and above all unsettling, Midsommar further proves writer-director Ari Aster is a horror auteur to be reckoned with.” – Rotten Tomatoes
Troy Harkin and David Clink will look at the film, with special guest Sandra Kasturi. She was also the guest for folk horror part 1, our season 3 episode 2 installment, which looked at The Wicker Man (1973).
Sandra Kasturi is an award-winning poet, writer, and editor, with work appearing in many places including ON SPEC, several Tesseracts anthologies, and 80! Memories & Reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin.
Her two poetry collections are: The Animal Bridegroom (with an introduction by Neil Gaiman) and Come Late to the Love of Birds (both from Tightrope Books).
Sandra recently won second prize in The New Quarterly’s Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse Contest. She is also the winner of the Sunburst Award for her story “The Beautiful Gears of Dying” and ARC Magazine‘s Poem of the Year Award for “Old Men, Smoking.”
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Nearly one hundred years ago Universal Pictures got into the monster business, and created a legacy that has not been matched. The Mummy; Dracula; Frankenstein; and The Wolf Man were four characters that cemented Universal as the studio where monster movies were made, and audiences thrilled.
Dracula
Frankenstein
The Mummy
The Wolf Man
Universal also added The Invisible Man; and The Creature from The Black Lagoon.
Troy Harkin and David Clink will talk about these early horror films, and more recent ones.
We will also do our recent either/or segment.
Our special guest is Michael Rowe. See author photo and bio below.
Michael Rowe is the Shirley Jackson Award-finalist author of three novels, Enter, Night, Wild Fell, and October, all available from Open Road Media, as well as an essayist and former journalist.
A 17-year veteran of Fangoria magazine, he is also a National Magazine Award finalist, a GLAAD Media Award co-finalist, and the winner of the Randy Shilts Award for Nonfiction from the New York Publishing Triangle.
His essays and reviews have appeared in numerous venues in Canada and the United States including the Globe and Mail, the National Post, Canadian Notes and Queries, and the Boston Globe. Born in Ottawa, he has lived in Beirut, Havana, Geneva, and Paris. He currently resides in Toronto.
Season 1
Episode 3
“Recent, Current, and Upcoming Sci-Fi”
Troy Harkin and David Clink discuss recent and current speculative (Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Horror, …) movies and TV. They will also provide info on what is upcoming. There is no special guest for this episode.
Spoiler alert: specific plot points may be discussed.