Episode 05 - Ex Machina/Upgrade

In this episode, I'm joined by my friend Cat Hamilton, from LA. We talk a little bit about the current state of the US TV industry (which Cat works in), its short-term reactions to the current Covid-19 crisis, and the future directions it might evolve into, to survive. Speaking of evolution and survival, we then move onto the primary focus of the episode, in discussion of two sci-fi/AI-focused movies from the 2010s, Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2015) and Upgrade (Leigh Whannell, 2018), and our thoughts about them. We liked one of them a bit more than the other one. We also conversationally stray into Lethal Weapon, Dracula, Psycho, Red Dwarf , Arsenic and Old Lace and... Fawlty Towers, for some reason. I blame lockdown. 0.00 Intro 0.05 The state of the TV industry (in April 2020) 0.28 Ex Machina 1.20 Upgrade 2.28 Post-human chatter You can reach the podcast on Twitter at @EGoat_pod (or tweet at me on @D_Faggiani) and email us with any feedback on [email protected]. Cat works in TV editing in Los Angeles. She is the co-host of The Anime Movie Podcast. All original intro, outro and other incidental music recorded and made available by kind permission of Richard Gilbert. NOTES I thought this piece, by Jaylan Salah Salman, was a good intro to some of the more feminist themes in Ex Machina. You might also want to check out Sympathy for the Other: the Science Fiction Horror Film in the Brexit/Trump era, by Darren Mooney.