Wanna Watch: Dog Soldiers

I have been watching the new She-Ra series, it’s written with a younger crowd in mind but its good fun.

I met Tristan in a Dave Razowsky workshop. Dave is a great improviser, actor and teacher, here he is talking about the process of your life.

I was re-introduced to Dog Soldiers by the Youtube channel GoodBadFlicks, a great channel for learning more about strange B-Movies and cult classic.

Hamza mentioned Every Frame a Painting talking about Wolf Children, the channel and the movie are both great.

Mercenaries is basically Grand Theft Auto in a warzone, sandbox action with tanks and rocket launchers. I had fun playing it back in the day.

Wanna Watch: Carrie 1976

We are joined by DJ and music producer E.M.M.A.

Emma’s album Indigo Dreams can be found here.

If you are interested in music production workshops for girls, and all the other good things that Producer Girls does then click the link.

It’s a good film. I have not read the book, and though I am not a super fan of Stephen King I might check out the novel as I really liked the main character.

The Fortean Times is a magazine all about the supernatural and unexplained mysteries. That was super-popular along with things like X-Files when I was at school.

The Cottingley Fairies was a hoax where two young girls used illustrations of fairies to fake visitations by real fairies.

Disclaimer: Links to Amazon are links that will give some of your purchase to the podcast, at no extra cost to you.

Wanna Watch: The Wicker Man (1973)

We had lots to talk about here! I enjoyed the film a lot.

On closer inspection the face at the beginning is probable more a Sun god like Belenus than the Green Man. I am definitely going to re-watch this film soon to see more of the imagery in it.

Our guest Dan Willis has a plethora of comedy writing to check out.

• Twitter: @djameswillis
• website: danielwillis.co.uk
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYnU2m2Fw4fmrUjJqwn1sIQ
• Free Mondays Twitter: @mondayscomedy
• Release The Clowns Sketch Comedy Podcast Twitter: @clownshq

Links to things we talked about

The Scarfolk website is a comedy riff in the vein of classic British horror. For more information, please reread.

I enjoyed the Discovering Scarfolk book too, it’s kind of similar to The Wicker Man’s plot of an outsider investigating a unique town.

I remember seeing this public information advert a lot as a kid. They don’t make them as terrifying as they used to.

Hamza mentioned Mindhorn, Julian Barratt’s tale of a washed up actor playing detective.

Here is an article about how our brains sync up when listening to stories, and how that can change if we have different information about the story, based on Uri Hasson’s research.

This is the book by Yoshi Oida that Hamza lent me: The Invisible Actor, it was a very interesting read, all about ritual and performance.

Check out Edward Woodward as the Equalizer.

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Wanna Watch: Dealt

We talked about magic a lot in this episode.

The legendary Dai Vernon was mentioned in the documentary and our chat, he is one of the greatest magicans to perform at the Magic Castle, which is a clubhouse for magicians in the US.

I recommend Confessions of a Conjuror, by Derren Brown. I love his magic and his insights into psychology and magic are fascinating. He seems like a fairly solid bloke from his writing as well.

Andy mentioned the book Sleights of Mind: what the neuroscience of magic reveals about our brains. This is definitely on my to-read list now. The idea of neuroscientists turned magicians sparks my interest.

If you want to see the performance of Dr Who actor Sylvester McCoy hammering a nail into his nose, here it is, sensation seekers. Featuring the inimitable Ken Campbell on top form as ringmaster of chaos.

Disclaimer: links to Amazon are affiliate links that don’t cost you anything extra if you buy, but give a little cut to Wanna Watch. Thanks for listening and reading.

Wanna Watch: I Am Mother

We talked about a lot of technical stuff related to AI and machine learning in this episode.

In brief machine learning is the field of making learning robots. Human beings are still infinitely more adaptable than computers. The dream of AI creators is to make a machine that can truly learn on its own. We are nowhere near that and there are many different methods being tried.

Gareth mentioned reward functions, which is essentially a number in the computers program that tells it what to chase. For example, if you want a robot to complete an obstacle course then you set crossing the finish line as 100 points, and the score slowly increases as it gets closer to the goal.

The short story I mention is by Theodore Sturgeon, he is a really good classic sci-fi novel and short story writer. The story is called ‘When you care, when you love‘. I recommend his short stories, there is a lot of humanity in his writing. He wrote a bit for the original Star Trek as well.

The robot fails I mentioned were from the DARPA robotics competition. From 2012 to 2015 they ran a competition to test robots on a course that simulated a city or battlefield, with the idea to encourage the creation fo robots that can work in dangerous situations like emergency rescue. Opening doors is harder than you think.

The program developed to attack Iran’s nuclear program is Stuxnet. Nobody is 100% sure who made it, apart from the creators obviously.

Cut-up technique is a way of making poetry or lyrics but cutting up text and rearranging it. William S. Burroughs and David Bowie have used it, amongst others.

The viral video about loneliness that went viral.

Forgotify, the site that plays you tracks nobody else has listened to on Spotify.

The Turing Test is a theoretical test to see if an AI can pass as a human. The Voight-Kampff machine is from Blade Runner, where humans have to identify replicants that look just like humans, but don’t have the same emotional reactions.

Hopefully we passed both these tests and will continue to do so.

Wanna Watch: The Muppet Movie (1979)

The Muppet Movie was a pretty fun watch and I enjoyed the chat about it. I think that for puppeteers it must be a pretty interesting film to see.

Not much to add to out chat other than a recommendation to watch if you want some light-hearted fun.

More about the The Merry Pranksters and their bus.

Frank Oz’s eulogy for Jim Henson worth a watch for sure.

Wanna Watch: Godfather Part 2

If you haven’t listened, Wanna Watch is a podcast about movies that I make with Hamza. Watching movies for the first time and talking about movies. Each week we have a different guest on to talk about a movie that I or Hamza has just watched for the first time.

After our chats I always have more thoughts about the movie, which is part of why I love doing them. I’m gonna write out my thoughts after each show now, and add in any notes I think are interesting.

We had a long chat about lucid dreaming at the beginning of the episode, after thinking about it, I misremembered how many of my dreams are lucid. It’s a lot, maybe 1 every week or so, sometimes more. But I do have lots of dreams that aren’t lucid. I think the lucid ones stick out more because they are easier to remember. But I’m still surprised that apparently other people don’t lucid dream that much?

After we recorded this chat I did have a lucid dream. I was in my kitchen, washing my hands (probably from Covid habits). I remembered Hamza talking about doing an action and checking if you are asleep, and I realised I was dreaming. The water on my hands glittered like SFX.

I decided to take advantage of the lucid dream and walk outside looking for some anwers, because Dan had talked about that. Outside my house was a huge temple garden, with lion-dog statues and red lanterns. I felt like this was the right place to get some wisdom, but there were lots of crowds in the garden. They jostled me and I woke up.

My reading of that dream is that you can’t rush those kinds of insights. If I wanted to get real insights I would need to relax and prepare for it.

As far as the movie goes, I think after talking to Dan and Hamza I have more appreciation for the stories of the movies. I can see that Michael’s journey and the Vito’s backstory make for an epic tale. I’m still not into these kinds of gangster films, but I may rewatch 1 and 2 sometime to experience the true epic nature of it.

I also learn more about Hamza’s mysterious back story every time we talk about a movie he loves.

“17/52 – A Midsummer Night’s Dream” by ξωαŋ ThΦt (slowly back…) is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0