Podside Picnic

This time we return to the oeuvre of U.S. mythologist and professional dinner guest, Washington Irving to talk about his most Goof-coded character: Rip Van Winkle

A bit more chatting about this and that. We even try to keep it vaguely SFF-related!

Ready to . . . fall into what appears to have been Tarsem Singh's passion project? That's right, we discuss The Fall (2006) and how beautiful a man Lee Pace is

Join us for Robot and Frank (2012), a charming little film about loneliness, aging, and getting the robot gang together for one last job

We talk about The Truman Show (1998) this time, and Peter Weir's amazing filmography and how Thomas Kincaid wished he'd grown up in Seahaven

This time, we discuss the Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz collaboration, Elektra: Assassin. It really does end up feeling like Fear and Loathing in the MCU.

We got together to talk about Ryan Coogler's blockbuster hit, Sinners (2025) before it got a billion nominations at the Oscars

We return to the works of John Carpenter with Starman (1984), where an alien visitor incarnates as a pre-Dude Jeff Bridges for recently widowed Karen Allen and they go on a road trip

Enjoy your Sunday as we talk about The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton

You will be visited by three versions of the Dickens classic. Spoiler: A Muppet Christmas Carol is not one of them, but it haunts the ones we talk about like a lonely old miser on Xmas Eve

This time we talk about Sneakers (1992), an odd bookend to our previous episode, Hackers. Our world-weary team of cybersneaks and ne'er do wells don't want to hack the planet at all

We go all the way back to 1995 to talk about the stylish Hackers. Hack the planet, man!

Well. . . have you? We get together to talk about and - of course - riff on what's made us happy this Thankful Season Note: sadly, after quoting from it, I completely forgot to mention the title of the essay (link to follow): The Claims of Close Reading by Johanna Winant https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-claims-of-close-reading/

We discuss Zach Creggers' Weapons (2025). Part parental nightmare, part (sub)urban legend, and very unnerving.

What if was Conan the Barbarian. . .s? And both of him were lunkheads? We discuss this fascinating approach in this one

Pete returns to chat about this and that during that finest time of year

We cover both the Washington Irving story and Tim Burton's 1999 adaptation of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - a story about the ghost of a Highlander terrorizing a small community

Imagine if you will, Meet Dave (2008) but if "Dave" was actually called Barry, lived in South Africa, and did a lot of drugs

Who knows what evil lurks under Alec Baldwin's prosthetic nose? Beats me, but we certainly talk a lot about The Shadow on this final (for now) Pulpside episode

This time around, we dig into the pulpy origins of one paranormal investigator by the name of Hellboy NOTE: We had some issues with the audio on this one, so please bear with us (and with many thanks to our sound wizard, Adam)