The Laser Age

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The Laser Age

Keith Phipps

5 episodes

1 month ago

The Laser Age, a podcast about science fiction films from the second half of the 20th century hasted by Keith Phipps and brought to you by The Reveal. Each episode focuses on a sci-fi movie released between 1947 and 1999—from the Roswell incident through The Matrix—and features a deep dive into the film's history followed by a conversation with a special guest.

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TV & Film

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All content for The Laser Age is the property of Keith Phipps and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

TV & Film

Episodes (5/5)

The Laser Age

'RoboCop' with Donna Bowman

RoboCop: Who is he? What is he? Scholar, pop culture writer, and longtime Paul Verhoeven fan Donna Bowman joins The Laser Age to discuss RoboCop, Verhoeven's ultraviolent 1987 sci-fi satire about a police officer's second life as a cyborg law enforcer. Did it offer a vision of things to come? Is it a vessel for Verhoeven's particular notions of what an American Jesus might look like? Why not both?

And this marks the end of the first run of Laser Age episodes. We're going to take a short break before releasing a new batch of episodes. You might even call it a new season. You might even say this season will have a theme. We'll return soon to kick off a five-episode run focusing on films about giant animals from apes to lizards to rabbits. (Yes, rabbits.) If you want to watch ahead, we'll be starting things off with Them!, the quintessential 1950s giant bug movie. Look for it soon.

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1 month ago

38 minutes 53 seconds

The Laser Age

'eXistenZ' with Scott Tobias

Throughout the 1990s, film after film explored the possibilities of the then-new concept of virtual reality. The trend reached a seeming peak in 1999, with the release of the semi-forgotten The Thirteenth Floor, the anything-but-forgotten The Matrix, and, like a shadow cousin to those big-budget studio efforts, eXistenZ. With his first film taken based on a wholly original idea since Videodrome, David Cronenberg put his own spin on the notion, one informed by Philip K. Dick, existential philosophy, and his own abiding obsessions with sex and the slippery nature of reality. Film critic Scott Tobias, a name doubtlessly familiar to readers of The Reveal, joins this episode to discuss the film.

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2 months ago

27 minutes 13 seconds

The Laser Age

'Night of the Comet' with Jen Chaney

Released in 1984, Thom Eberhardt's sci-fi comedy takes a (mostly) lighthearted look at the end of the world via the story of two teens who survive a visit from a deadly comet. Jen Chaney, critic and author As If!: An Oral History of Clueless, joins the podcast to discuss a decidedly '80s teenage wasteland.

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2 months ago

25 minutes 6 seconds

The Laser Age

'Visit to a Small Planet' with Noel Murray

There were few bigger movie stars than Jerry Lewis in 1960, the year he released three films: Cinderfella, his directorial debut The Bellboy, and this adaptation of a popular Gore Vidal play. Lewis plays Kreton, a traveler from the other end of the universe who drops down to Earth, talks to dogs and cats, jams with beatniks, and generally stirs up trouble. Longtime film and pop culture critic Noel Murray joins us to discuss a semi-forgotten entry in Lewis' filmography with a longer-lasting influence than you might expect.

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3 months ago

34 minutes 23 seconds

The Laser Age

'Silent Running' with John Hodgman

SERIES PREMIERE: In 1972, special effects genius Douglas Trumbull made his directorial debut with a story of conservation, space travel, robots... and murder. In this premiere episode of The Laser Age we're joined by author, actor, and podcaster John Hodgman to explore a vision of the near-future rooted in the early 1970s.

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3 months ago

56 minutes 58 seconds