Category: Podcast

Juzo Itami’s brilliant 1986 film combines elements of Greek theater, the American Western, vaudeville, silent movies, French Noir, and other eclectic elements as it explores the myriad relationships with food humankind can experience. The central stem tells the story of a widow’s attempt to serve sublime ramen at a small roadside stop, aided by two truckers, and a ragtag posse of helpers. The film plays with and subverts expectations in a way the UMBs find wildly charming. Also, it will make you hungry.

Peter Greenaway’s film feels like an opera. It even features some operatic singing, but more to the point, its pleasures are more sensual than story driven. It’s not an easy film to watch, and may not inspire you to cook, but it is beautifully disturbing and meticulously crafted. Starring Helen Mirren and Michael Gambon in their primes, ˆThe Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover,” will haunt you for a long time.

Axel Gabriel’s 1986 Danish film deservingly makes many people’s Foodie Top 10s, and we can see why. We LOVE this film, which not only shows some high level delicious cooking, but tells a parable of destiny, thwarted desire, and the balance of simplicity and hedonism with a gentle and incisive eye. The UMBs discuss whether it’s a comedy, tragedy, or something else.

The UMBs have ANOTHER thorough conversation about the novel’s sexual politics, and Mandella’s low key homophobia, asking whether the protagonist’s biases serve some narrative purposes, or simply reveal the author’s own biases. We marvel at the sparse internality, and Haldeman’s ability to poetically reveal just enough about Mandella’s emotional state. And, we decide that Larry Niven is good.

The Forever War is widely regarded as an analogy for America’s involvement in Vietnam, and an anti-war novel, but we’re not so sure it’s firmly anti-war. Perhaps more anti-military. But that said, Haldeman’s protagonist doesn’t consider the apparently antagonistic aliens, the Taurans, to be the real Enemy. The UMBs are blown away by the ideation and certain moments of prose, but raise doubts about the one-way nature of the structure

Rick Deckard spends much of the second half pondering Rachael Rosen’s girlish legs, and his growing feelings of empathy to the Androids, before deciding to go after the remaining three. Does his empathy make it harder for him to do his appointed grisly task? Maybe? Both UMBs wonder if Dick’s ideas were too big for the scope of this book, even though it has its virtues.

Fill out our LISTENER SURVEY!! Dick’s famous novel begins… weird. And the weirdness continues. Dick orients his readers to a world in which fallout is everywhere, most animals have died, many humans have left Earth for colony planets,  and androids (or andys) do much of the manual labor. The UMBs are both blown away by… Continue reading Episode 32: “Keeping up with the Jetsons,” or Phillip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Part I

Chris and Jesse are in the same meatspace in Maine, but still talking about cyberspace in…space. As the two microphone jockeys wrap up William Gibson’s Neuromancer, we do TWO close readings (one for and one against Gibson’s chops), talk about how this book created something completely new, and discuss if that fact is why Neuromancer had shown longevity and resilience, despite some issues of craft.

Our friend Lindsay Lajoie saw that we were considering William Gibson’s Neuromancer on the podcast, and admitted on her Instagram that it’s one of the very few books she attempted and could get through. Lindsay joins us for a mini-sode, and we pick apart her reaction, and try to convince her it’s worth another go.

Dukes and Bagg return to William Gibson’s groundbreaking 1984 novel, that popularized the cyberpunk genre. The reviews are mixed. There are moments of brilliance, but does the young Gibson’s drive to “put a hook on every page” lead to more confusion than clarity?

Whitehead’s neo-noir crashes to a climax, but does it stick the landing? In the end, the Dukes and Bagg wonder if the weight of the the author’s allegory overloads the elevator car laden with plot and character. The lads continue to marvel at Whitehead’s sentences, and sheer originality and ambition of this remarkable novel.

The lads are quite impressed with Colson Whitehead’s debut novel, which packs an allegory about race, class, and futurism into a unique take on hard-boiled noir. Bagg challenges Dukes to unpack exactly how the tone of irony is detected in the novel, and they both marvel over Whitehead’s delicious sentences.  Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”… Continue reading Episode 26: “Uplift!” or Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist

Jemisin weaves three major threads into one in the second half of The Fifth Season, but the lads take issue with some of the convenient plot wrapping. Dukes + Bagg remained blown away by the power of imagination on display, but Dukes raises the question of whether the book deals honestly with the moral dilemma at its heart.