Podcasts about Xenogenesis

On the sixth episode of The Avatar Podcast, Albert dives into the earliest possible origins of all of Avatar's concepts, from his and his mother's glowing alien dreams in the 1970s, to his post-@starwars film ‘Xenogenesis' (which was funded by Mormon dentists, and hides a ‘Fire and Ash' teaser!), to his Hollywood film career with The Terminator, Aliens and Titanic leading to becoming the engineer/activist/worldbuilder we know and love today working with National Geographic and NASA, and so much more! We end the episode as we do each week with the weekly Mailbag and Showcase.Enjoy (Txasunu)! Chapters  00:00:00 Start 00:48:55 TBC 00:49:53 Weekly Showcase! 01:17:00 Wrap-up - Like, Share, Subscribe, Join, Ring the Bell, Leave Reviews, and be well! Kiyevame! Links https://open.spotify.com/show/7K5MUtSw66D6by2sncCGrR?si=hJ1cEFOuQXGIYlzjkE0xMw https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-avatar-podcast/id1520505741 https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDbvv13jn1lhBdE5pFLe8rZ5Did5YNdii&si=HVLiifQOG683j42w https://www.instagram.com/avatarpodcast https://www.bsky.app/profile/AvatarPodcast.bsky.social https://www.threads.net/@avatarpodcast https://www.x.com/AvatarShow https://www.facebook.com/AvatarPodcastOfficial https://www.tiktok.com/@AvatarPodcast https://www.avatarpodcast.tumblr.com https://www.reddit.com/u/TheAvatarPodcast https://ko-fi.com/avatarpodcast https://patreon.com/avatarpodcast https://imgur.com/user/AvatarPodcast/ https://discord.gg/xdBcWVhP Official https://avatar.com https://instagram.com/avatar https://tiktok.com/@avatar https://www.facebook.com/avatar Community Friends https://kelutral.org (Register: https://discord.com/invite/g3sWSU5Nk7) Credits and Links (Please reach out if there's any credit you'd like to know or have added to this description)

Majorly excited to have Patricia Reed on the pod. This is a beefy episode! If I was looking for a major reset in my relationship to the world around me, I'd start here.Here's a list of the references we make throughout the interview:Here's that e-flux diagram I talk about in the intro, and here's a lecture in which she discusses this diagram. Here's the Diagramming the Common piece, which is older but I really like it. Here's a must-read interview with Denise Ferreira da Silva where the concept of "the end of the world as we know it" is postulated.When Patricia Reed refers to the "logics of worlds" in a Badiousian sense, she's referring to Alain Badiou's work on truth and world. Unless you're down for a real rabbithole, you're likely good with Reed's description here.Reed references Margaret Morrison and the Black-Scholes model in the context of finance.Reed references Sylvia Wynter's work consistently, specifically her discussion of humanism and of Frantz Fanon.Check out Beth Coleman's work on Octavia Butler AI, as well as da Silva's "Unpayable Debt" (inspired by Butler's Kindred) -- and if you somehow haven't read the Lilith's Brood Trilogy after we discussed it with Luciana Parisi, go read it (aka Xenogenesis). It's like idk the most important work of fiction in the last 50 years idk!!!Ofc big shoutouts as always Anil Bawa-Cavia -- this is the book we discuss toward the end of the episode.If you aren't aware of Laboria Cuboniks and the XFM, stop listening and read it!!!

Í dag verður flutt dálítið óvenjulegt erindi í Fræðakaffi á Borgarbókasafninu í Spönginni en yfirskrift þess er Ímynd tengdamæðra og það er þjóðfræðingurinn og skagfirðingurinn Eiríkur Valdimarsson sem mun flytja það. Í fréttatilkynningu segir: Af einhverjum ástæðum eru til ógrynni af bröndurum og skopmyndum þar sem tengdamæður eru gjarnan hafðar að háði og spotti. Þetta skemmtiefni byggir á ímynd sem margir hafa heyrt og séð, að tengdamæður séu uppáþrengjandi, yfirgangs- og afskiptasamar – sumsé býsna erfiðar manneskjur. Eiríkur Valdimarsson keyrði frá Hólmavík til Reykjavíkur og kom í þáttinn til að segja okkur frá tengdamæðrum. Við fengum vinkil í dag frá Guðjóni Helga Ólafssyni. Í þetta sinn lagði hann vinkilinn við hinar ýmsu ástæður þess að maður gengur til liðs við allskonar félagasamtök. Hann segir frá samkomu í einum af þeim fjölmörgu félögum sem hann er í, Hið Íslenzka Fyrritíðarfjelag, en samkvæmt Guðjóni er samkoman gríðarlegt tilhlökkunarefni á hverju ári. Svo var það lesandi vikunnar, í þetta sinn var það Nanna Hlín Halldórsdóttir heimspekingur. Við fengum að vita hvaða bækur hún hefur verið að lesa undanfarið og svo hvaða bækur og höfundar hafa haft mest áhrif á hana í gegnum tíðina. Nanna talaði um eftirfarandi bækur: The Expanse, bókasería eftir James S.A. Corey (Daniel Abraham og Ty Franck) The Book of Goose eftir Yiyun Li Sick and Tired: An Intimate History of Fatigue eftir Emily K. Abel Lilith's Brood eða Xenogenesis, þríleikur (Dawn, Adulthood Rides og Imago) eftir Octaviu Butler Að lokum talaði Nanna um bókina Fátækt fólk eftir Tryggva Emilsson Tónlist í þættinum: Átján rauðar rósir / Lúdó og Stefán og Berti Möller (Bobby Darin og Iðunn Steinsdóttir) Kúst og fæjó / Heimilstónar (Elva Ósk Ólafsdóttir, Katla Margrét Þorgeirsdóttir, Vigdís Gunnarsdóttir og Ólafía Hrönn Jónsdóttir) Aska og Gull / Sváfnir Sigurðarson (Sváfnir Sigurðarson) UMSJÓN: GUNNAR HANSSON OG GUÐRÚN GUNNARSDÓTTIR

Luciana Parisi has produced some of the 21st century's most daring and bold work in the theories of cybernetics, information, and computation. Her work has had a major impact on both Marek and Roberto's artistic practices, specifically her early work in the inorganic components of human reproduction. Just a brief content note — we mention some complex topics including consent and suicide at the top of the pod, specifically in the context of David Marriott's concept of “Revolutionary Suicide”. These concepts are not extensively discussed throughout, but are nonetheless heavy topics. We strongly recommend three texts in parallel with this conversation:Probably Marek's favorite piece of theory: Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Biotechnology and the Mutations of DesireA book more specifically scoped to the subject of this conversation, which attacks the biophysicalist metaphors at the ground of how AI research markets itself: Contagious Architecture: Computation, Aesthetics, and SpaceThe essay: The Alien Subject of AI.Some references from the conversation that are likely interesting to any listener:If you haven't read Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis (renamed Lilith's Brood), we strongly recommend these amazing pieces of science fiction.If you're unfamiliar with the CCRU, play around on the CCRU website and buy this unhinged compendium from our friends at Urbanomic (they have a super sexy new edition just out now). If you haven't read Sadie Plant's Zeroes + Ones: Digital Women and the New Technoculture, it's seriously an essential read if you're interested in computation.We briefly make fun of the feature film “The Creator”, which it looks like you can stream on major platforms. We mention this in the context of Delueze and Guattari's “War Machine” — we recommend their “Nomadology: The War Machine” (if you follow Marek on Instagram, you'll note that he's obsessed with the exteriority of war machines from the state).When we start to talk about information theory, Luciana mentions Claude Shannon (one of the fathers of modern information theory), Cecile Malaspina (“An Epistemology of Noise”), and Karen Barad (“What is the Measure of Nothingness?”).Francois Laruelle is a major influence to Luciana here, in her chapter in Choreomata, and elsewhere. His corpus of work is famously intractable, but her chapter in Choreomata is a good way in.Luciana mentions Holly Herndon's work (we strongly recommend Holly+ and https://haveibeentrained.com/, alongside her and Mat Dryhurst's podcast, which was a huge inspiration to us when starting Disintegrator).Everyone should read Hito Steyerl's work “Mean Images” on NLR as they should Sylvia Wynter's “Towards the Autopoetic Turn/Overturn, its Autonomy of Human Agency and Extraterritoriality of (Self-)Cognition”.

We travel back to 1978 to discuss James Cameron's first foray into film making! Deep sci-fi lore, miniatures, and living room sets: everything you need to be successful!

We're back with three short sci-fi films and a very special guest. First, Martians and puppets tangle in Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons Next, James Cameron begins his career in the FX spectacle Xenogensis. Finally, Fry learns the truth about his family in "Futurama: Luck of the Fryrish." All this plus UFO Chat, ReKrab, indica, sativa, KEvin is threatened, Tom from Adelaide, junk mails, DVDs, Dick Tracy and so much more. Direct Donloyd

In episode 68, Richard and Michael reach the finale of the Xenogenesis trilogy.

In episode 68, Richard and Michael, after long New Year break, go off tangent about adaptations of various series.

On this, our 100th episode, we eschew any silly self-congratulatory show to get right into one of James Cameron's most under appreciated films, his 1989 anti-nuke allegory The Abyss. ----more---- TRANSCRIPT   From Los Angeles, California, the Entertainment Capital of the World, it's The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today.   We're finally here.    Episode 100.   In the word of the immortal Owen Wilson, wow.   But rather than throw myself a celebratory show basking in my own modesty, we're just going to get right into another episode. And this week's featured film is one of my favorites of the decade. A film that should have been a hit, that still informs the work of its director more than thirty years later.   But, as always, a little backstory.   As I quite regularly say on this show, I often do not know what I'm going to be talking about on the next episode as I put the finishing touches on the last one. And once again, this was the case when I completed the show last week, on Escape to Victory, although for a change, I finished the episode a day earlier than I usually do, so that would give me more time to think about what would be next.   Thursday, Friday, Saturday. All gone. Still have no clue what I'm going to write about.   Sunday arrives, and my wife and I decide to go see Avatar: The Way of Water in 3D at our local IMAX theatre. I was hesitant to see the film, because the first one literally broke my brain in 2009, and I'm still not 100% sure I fully recovered. It didn't break my brain because it was some kind of staggering work of heartbreaking genius, but because the friend who thought he was being kind by buying me a ticket to see it at a different local IMAX theatre misread the seating chart for the theatre and got me a ticket in the very front row of the theatre. Now, I don't know if you've ever seen a movie in IMAX 3D, but that first row is not the most advantageous place to watch an IMAX movie in 3D. But because the theatre was otherwise sold out, I sat there, watching Avatar in 3D from the worst possible seat in the house, and I could not think straight for a week. I actually called off work for a few days, which was easy to do considering I was the boss at my theatre, but I have definitely seen a cognitive decline since I saw Avatar in IMAX 3D in the worst possible conditions. I've never felt the need to see it again, and I was fine not seeing the new one. But my wife wanted to see it, and we had discount tickets to the theatre, so off we went.   Thankfully, this time, I chose the seats for myself, and got us some very good seats in a not very crowded theatre, nearly in the spot that would be the ideal viewing position for that specific theatre. And I actually enjoyed the movie.    There are very few filmmakers who can tell a story like James Cameron, and there are even fewer who could get away with pushing a pro-conservation, pro-liberal, pro-environment agenda on an unsuspecting populace who would otherwise never go for such a thing.   But as I was watching it, two things hit me.   One, I hate high frame rate movies. Especially when the overall look of the movie was changing between obviously shot on video and mimicking the feel of film so much, it felt like a three year old got ahold of the TV remote and was constantly pushing the button that turned motion smoothing off and on and off and on and off and on, over and over and over again, for three and a half hours.   Two, I couldn't also help but notice how many moments and motifs Cameron was seemingly borrowing from his under-appreciated 1989 movie The Abyss.   And there it was.   The topic for our 100th episode.   The Abyss.   And, as always, before we get to the movie itself, some more background.   James Francis Cameron was born in 1954 in small town in the middle eastern part of the Ontario province of Canada, about a nine hour drive north of Toronto, a town so small that it wouldn't even get its first television station until 1971, the year his family would to Brea, California. After he graduated from high school in 1973, Cameron would attend Fullerton College in Orange County, where would initially study physics before switching to English a year later. He'd leave school in 1974 and work various jobs including as a truck driver and a janitor, while writing screenplays in his spare time, when he wasn't in a library learning about movie special effects.   Like many, many people in 1977, including myself, Star Wars would change his life. After seeing the movie, Cameron quit his job as a truck driver and decided he was going to break into the film industry by any means necessary.   If you've ever followed James Cameron's career, you've no doubt heard him say on more than one occasion that if you want to be a filmmaker, to just do it. Pick up a camera and start shooting something. And that's exactly what he did, not a year later.   In 1978, he would co-write, co-produce, co-direct and do the production design for a 12 minute sci-fi short called Xenogenesis. Produced at a cost of $20,000 raised from a dentist and starring his future T2 co-writer William Wisher, Xenogenesis would show just how creative Cameron could be when it came to making something with a low budget look like it cost far more to produce. There's a not very good transfer of the short available on YouTube, which I will link to in the transcript for this episode on our website, at The80sMoviePodcast.com (). But it's interesting to watch because you can already see themes that Cameron will revisit time and time again are already fully formed in the storyteller's mind.   Once the short was completed, Cameron screened it for the dentist, who hated it and demanded his money back. But the short would come to the attention of Roger Corman, The Pope of Pop Cinema, who would hire Cameron to work on several of his company's upcoming feature films. After working as a production assistant on Rock 'n' Roll High School, Cameron would move up becoming the art director on Battle Beyond the Stars, which at the time, at a cost of $2m, would be the most expensive movie Corman would have produced in his then-26 year career, as the production designer on Galaxy of Terror, and help to design the title character for Aaron Lipstadt's Android.    Cameron would branch out from Corman to work on the special effects for John Carpenter's Escape from New York, but Corman would bring Cameron back into the fold with the promise of running the special effects department for the sequel to Joe Dante's surprise 1978 hit Piranha. But the film's original director, Miller Drake, would leave the production due to continued differences with the Italian producer, and Cameron would be moved into the director's chair. But like Drake, Cameron would struggle with the producer to get the film completed, and would eventually disavow the film as something he doesn't consider to be his actual work as a director. And while the film would not be any kind of success by any conceivable measure, as a work of storytelling or as a critical or financial success, it would give him two things that would help him in his near future.   The first thing was an association with character actor Lance Henriksen, who would go on to be a featured actor in Cameron's next two films.   The second thing would be a dream he would have while finishing the film in Rome. Tired of being in Italy to finish the film, and sick with a high grade fever, Cameron would have a nightmare about an invincible cyborg hit-man from the future who had been sent to assassinate him.   Sound familiar?   We've already discussed how The Terminator came to be in our April 2020 episode on Hemdale Films, so we'll skip over that here. Suffice it to say that the film was a global success, turning Arnold Schwarzenegger into a beloved action star, and giving Cameron the clout to move on to ever bigger films.   That even bigger film was, of course, the 1986 blockbuster Aliens, which would not only become Cameron's second big global box office success, but would be nominated for seven Academy Awards, including a well deserved acting nomination for Sigourney Weaver, which came as a surprise to many at the time because actors in what are perceived to be horror, action and/or sci-fi movies usually don't get such an accolade.   After the success of Aliens, Twentieth Century-Fox would engage Cameron and his producing partner, Gale Anne Hurd, who during the making of Aliens would become his second wife, on a risky project.   The Abyss.   Cameron had first come up with the idea for The Abyss while he was still a student in high school, inspired by a science lecture he attended that featured Francis J. Falejczyk, the first human to breathe fluid through his lungs in experiments held at Duke University. Cameron's story would involve a group of underwater scientists who accidentally discover aliens living at the bottom of the ocean floor near their lab.    Shortly after he wrote his initial draft of the story, it would be filed away and forgotten about for more than a decade.   While in England shooting Aliens, Cameron and Hurd would watch a National Geographic documentary about remote operated vehicles operating deep in the North Atlantic Ocean, and Cameron would be reminded of his old story. When the returned to the United States once the film was complete, Cameron would turn his short story into a screenplay, changing the main characters from scientists to oil-rig workers, feeling audiences would be able to better connect to blue collar workers than white collar eggheads, and once Cameron's first draft of the screenplay was complete, the couple agreed it would be their next film.   Cameron and Hurd would start the complex process of pre-production in the early days of 1988. Not only would they need to need to find a place large enough where they could film the underwater sequences in a controlled environment with life-size sets under real water, they would need to spend time designing and building a number of state of the art camera rigs and costumes that would work for the project and be able to capture the actors doing their craft in the water and keep them alive during filming, as well as a communications system that would not only allow Cameron to talk to his actors, but also allow the dialogue to be recorded live underwater for the first time in cinema history.   After considering filming in the Bahamas and in Malta, the later near the sets constructed for Robert Altman's Popeye movie nearly a decade before, Cameron and Hurd would find their perfect shooting location outside Gaffney, South Carolina: an uncompleted and abandoned $700m nuclear power plant that had been purchased by local independent filmmaker Earl Owensby, who we profiled to a certain degree in our May 2022 episode about the 3D Movie craze of the early 1980s.   In what was supposed to be the power plant's primary reactor containment vessel, 55 feet deep and with a 209 foot circumference, the main set of the Deepcore rig would be built. That tank would hold seven and a half million gallons of water, and after the set was built, would take five days to completely fill. Next to the main tank was a secondary tank, an unused turbine pit that could hold two and a half million gallons of water, where most of the quote unquote exteriors not involving the Deepcore rig would be shot.   I'm going to sidetrack for a moment to demonstrate just how powerful a force James Cameron already was in Hollywood by the end of 1987. When word about The Abyss was announced in the Hollywood trade papers, both MGM and Tri-Star Pictures started developing their own underwater action/sci-fi films, in the hopes that they could beat The Abyss to theatres, even if there was scant information about The Abyss announced at the time.   Friday the 13th director Sean S. Cunningham's DeepStar Six would arrive in theatres first, in January 1989, while Rambo: First Blood Part Two director George P. Cosmastos' Leviathan would arrive in March 1989. Like The Abyss, both films would feature deep-sea colonies, but unlike The Abyss, both featured those underwater workers being terrorized by an evil creature. Because if you're trying to copy the secret underwater action/sci-fi movie from the director of The Terminator and Aliens, he's most definitely going to do evil underwater creatures and not peace-loving aliens who don't want to hurt humanity.   Right?   Suffice it to say, neither DeepStar Six or Leviathan made any kind of impact at the box office or with critics. DeepStar Six couldn't even muster up its modest $8.5m budget in ticket sales, while Leviathan would miss making up its $25m budget by more than $10m. Although, ironically, Leviathan would shoot in the Malta water tanks Cameron would reject for The Abyss.   Okay. Back to The Abyss.   Rather than cast movie stars, Cameron would bring in two well-respected actors who were known to audiences but not really that famous.   For the leading role of Bud Brigman, the foreman for the underwater Deepcore rig, Cameron would cast Ed Harris, best known at the time for playing John Glenn in The Right Stuff, while Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio would be recognizable to some for playing Tom Cruise's girlfriend in The Color of Money, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Other actors would include Michael Biehn, Cameron's co-star from The Terminator and Aliens, Leo Burmester, who had been featured in Broadcast News and The Last Temptation of Christ, Todd Graff, who had starred in Tony Bill's Five Corners alongside Jodie Foster and John Turturro, character actor John Bedford Lloyd, Late Night with David Letterman featured actor Chris Elliott in a rare non-comedy role, and Ken Jenkins, who would become best known as Doctor Kelso on Scrubs years down the road who had only made two movies before this point of his career.   More than two millions dollars would be spent creating the underwater sets for the film while Cameron, his actors and several major members of the crew including cinematographer Mikael Salomon, spent a week in the Cayman Islands, training for underwater diving, as nearly half of the movie would be shot underwater. It was also a good distraction for Cameron himself, as he and Hurd had split up as a couple during the earliest days of pre-production.    While they would go through their divorce during the filming of the movie, they would remain professional partners on the film, and do their best to not allow their private lives to seep into the production any more than it already had in the script.   Production on The Abyss would begin on August 15th, 1988, and would be amongst the toughest shoots for pretty much everyone involved. The film would endure a number of technical mishaps, some due to poorly built supports, some due to force majeure, literal Acts of God, that would push the film's production schedule to nearly six months in length and its budget from $36m to $42m, and would cause emotional breakdowns from its director on down. Mastrantonio would, during the shooting of the Lindsey resuscitation scene, stormed off the set when the camera ran out of film during the fifteenth take, when she was laying on the floor of the rig, wet, partially naked and somewhat bruised from being slapped around by Harris during the scene. “We are not animals!” she would scream at Cameron as she left. Harris would have to continue shooting the scene, yelling at nothing on the ground while trying to save the life of his character's estranged wife. On his way back to his hotel room after finishing that scene, Harris would have to pull over to the side of the road because he couldn't stop crying.   Biehn, who had already made a couple movies with the meticulous director, noted that he spent five months in Gaffney, but maybe only worked three or four weeks during that entire time. He would note that, during the filming of one of his scenes underwater, the lights went out. He was thirty feet underwater. It was so dark he couldn't see his own hand in front of him, and he genuinely wondered right then and there if this was how he was going to die. Harris was so frustrated with Cameron by the end of the shoot that he threatened to not do any promotion for the film when it was released into theatres, although by the time that happened, he would be making the rounds with the press.   After 140 days of principal photography, and a lawsuit Owensby filed against the production that tried to kick them out of his studio for damaging one of the water tanks, the film would finally finish shooting on December 8th, by which time, Fox had already produced and released a teaser trailer for the movie which featured absolutely no footage from the film. Why? Because they had gotten word that Warners was about to release their first teaser trailer for their big movie for 1989, Tim Burton's Batman, and Fox didn't want their big movie for 1989 to be left in the dust.   Thirty-four years later, I still remember the day we got both trailers in, because they both arrived at my then theatre, the 41st Avenue Playhouse in Capitola, Calfornia, within five minutes of each other. For the record, The Abyss did arrive first. It was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, the day before we opened the Bill Murray comedy Scrooged, and both Fox and Warners wanted theatres to play their movie's trailer, but not the other movie's trailer, in front of the film. I programmed both of them anyway, with Batman playing before The Abyss, which would be the last trailer before the film, because I was a bigger Cameron fan than Burton. And as cool as the trailer for Batman was, the trailer for The Abyss was mind-blowing, even if it had no footage from the film. I'll provide a link to that first Abyss teaser trailer on the website as well.   But I digress.   While Cameron worked on editing the film in Los Angeles, two major teams were working on the film's effects. The artists from Dreamquest Images would complete eighty effects shots for the film, including filming a seventy-five foot long miniature submarine being tossed around through a storm, while Industrial Lights and Magic pushed the envelope for computer graphics, digitally creating a water tentacle manipulated by the aliens that would mimic both Bud and Lindsey in an attempt to communicate with the humans. It would take ILM six months to create the minute and fifteen second long sequence.   Originally slated to be released in time for the Fourth of July holiday weekend, one of the busiest and most important weekends of the year for theatres, The Abyss would be held back until August 9th, 1989, due to some effects work not being completed in time, and for Cameron to rework the ending, which test audiences were not too fond of.   We'll get back to that in a moment.   When The Abyss opened in 1533 theatres, it would open to second place that weekend with $9.3m, only $350k behind the Ron Howard family dramedy Parenthood. The reviews from critics was uniformly outstanding, with many praising the acting and the groundbreaking special effects, while some would lament on the rather abrupt ending of the storyline.   We'll get back to that in a moment.   In its second week, The Abyss would fall to third place, its $7.2m haul behind Parenthood again, at $7.6m, as well as Uncle Buck, which would gross $8.8m. The film would continue to play in theatres for several weeks, never losing more than 34% of its audience in any given week, until Fox abruptly stopped tracking the film after nine weeks and $54.2m in ticket sales.   By the time the film came out, I was managing a dollar house in San Jose, a point I know I have mentioned a number of times and even did an episode about in September 2021, but I can tell you that we did pretty good business for The Abyss when we got the film in October 1989, and I would hang on to the film until just before Christmas, not because the film was no longer doing any business but because, as I mentioned on that episode, I wanted to play more family friendly films for the holidays, since part of my pay was tied to my concessions sales, and I wanted to make a lot of money then, so I could buy my girlfriend of nearly a year, Tracy, a nice gift for Christmas. Impress her dad, who really didn't like me too much.   The film would go on to be nominated for four Academy Awards, including for Mikael Salomon's superb cinematography, winning for its special effects, and would enjoy a small cult following on home video… until shortly after the release of Cameron's next film, Terminator 2.   Rumors would start to circulate that Cameron's original cut of The Abyss was nearly a half-hour longer than the one released into theatres, and that he was supposedly working on a director's cut of some kind. The rumor was finally proven true when a provision in James Cameron's $500m, five year financing deal between Fox and the director's new production company, Lightstorm Entertainment, included a $500k allotment for Cameron to complete his director's cut.   Thanks to the advancements in computer graphics between 1989 and 1991, Industrial Lights and Magic was able to apply what they created for T2 into the never fully completed tidal wave sequence that was supposed to end the movie. Overall, what was now being called The Abyss: Special Edition would see its run time expanded by 28 minutes, and Cameron's anti-nuke allegory would finally be fully fleshed out.   The Special Edition would open at the Loews Village VII in New York City and the Century Plaza Cinemas in Century City, literally down the street from the Fox lot, on land that used to be part of the Fox lot, on February 26th, 1993. Unsurprisingly, the critical consensus for the expanded film was even better, with critics noting the film's story scope had been considerably broadened. The film would do fairly well for a four year old film only opening on two screens, earning $21k, good enough for Fox to expand the footprint of the film into more major markets. After eight weeks in only a total of twelve theatres, the updated film would finish its second run in theatres with more than $238k in ticket sales.   I love both versions of The Abyss, although, like with Aliens and Cameron Crowe's untitled version of Almost Famous, I prefer the longer, Special Edition cut. Harris and Mastrantonio gave two of the best performances of 1989 in the film. For me, it solidified what I already knew about Harris, that he was one of the best actors of his generation.   I had seen Mastrantonio as Tony Montana's sister in Scarface and in The Color of Money, but what she did on screen in The Abyss, it still puzzles me to this day how she didn't have a much stronger career. Did you know her last feature film was The Perfect Storm, with George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg, 23 years ago? Not that she stopped working. She's had main or recurring roles on a number of television shows since then, including Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Blindspot and The Punisher, but it feels like she should have had a bigger and better career in movies.   Cameron, of course, would become The King of the World. Terminator 2, True Lies, Titanic, and his two Avatar movies to date were all global box office hits. His eight feature films have grossed over $8b worldwide to date, and have been nominated for 45 Academy Awards, winning 21.   There's a saying amongst Hollywood watchers. Never bet against James Cameron. Personally, I wish I could have not bet against James Cameron more often. Since the release of The Abyss in 1989, Cameron has only made five dramatic narratives, taking twelve years off between Titanic and Avatar, and another thirteen years off between Avatar and Avatar 2. And while he was partially busy with two documentaries about life under water, Ghosts of the Abyss and Aliens of the Deep, it seems that there were other stories he could have told while he was waiting for technology to catch up to his vision of how he wanted to make the Avatar movies.   Another action film with Arnold Schwarzenegger. An unexpected foray into romantic comedy. The adaptation of Taylor Stevens' The Informationalist that Cameron has been threatening to make for more than a decade. The adaptation of Charles Pelligrino's The Last Train from Hiroshima he was going to make after the first Avatar. Anything. Filmmakers only have so many films in them, and Cameron has only made eight films in nearly forty years. I'm greedy. I want more from him, and not just more Avatar movies.   In the years after its initial release, both Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio have refused to talk about the film with interviewers and at audience Q&As for other movies. The last time Harris has ever mentioned The Abyss was more than twenty years ago, when he said he was never going to talk about the film again after stating "Asking me how I was treated on The Abyss is like asking a soldier how he was treated in Vietnam.” For her part, Mastrantonio would only say "The Abyss was a lot of things. Fun to make was not one of them.”   It bothers me that so many people involved in the making of a film I love so dearly were emotionally scarred by the making of it. It's hard not to notice that none of the actors in The Abyss, including the star of his first three films, Michael Biehn, never worked with Cameron again. That he couldn't work with Gale Anne Hurd again outside of a contractual obligation on T2.     My final thought for today is that I hope that we'll someday finally get The Abyss, be it the theatrical version or the Special Edition but preferably both, in 4K Ultra HD. It's been promised for years. It's apparently been completed for years. Cameron says it was up to Fox, now Disney, to get it out. Fox, now Disney, says they've been waiting for Cameron to sign off on it. During a recent press tour for Avatar: The Way of Water, Cameron said everything is done and that a 4K UHD Blu-ray should be released no later than March of this year, but we'll see. That's just a little more than a month from the time I publish this episode, and there have been no official announcements from Disney Home Video about a new release of the film, which has never been available on Blu-ray after 15 years of the format's existence, and has been out of print on DVD for almost as long.   So there it is. Our 100th episode. I thank you for finding the show, listening to the show, and sticking with the show.   We'll talk again soon.   Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about James Cameron, The Abyss, and the other movies we covered this episode.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.

On this, our 100th episode, we eschew any silly self-congratulatory show to get right into one of James Cameron's most under appreciated films, his 1989 anti-nuke allegory The Abyss. ----more---- TRANSCRIPT   From Los Angeles, California, the Entertainment Capital of the World, it's The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today.   We're finally here.    Episode 100.   In the word of the immortal Owen Wilson, wow.   But rather than throw myself a celebratory show basking in my own modesty, we're just going to get right into another episode. And this week's featured film is one of my favorites of the decade. A film that should have been a hit, that still informs the work of its director more than thirty years later.   But, as always, a little backstory.   As I quite regularly say on this show, I often do not know what I'm going to be talking about on the next episode as I put the finishing touches on the last one. And once again, this was the case when I completed the show last week, on Escape to Victory, although for a change, I finished the episode a day earlier than I usually do, so that would give me more time to think about what would be next.   Thursday, Friday, Saturday. All gone. Still have no clue what I'm going to write about.   Sunday arrives, and my wife and I decide to go see Avatar: The Way of Water in 3D at our local IMAX theatre. I was hesitant to see the film, because the first one literally broke my brain in 2009, and I'm still not 100% sure I fully recovered. It didn't break my brain because it was some kind of staggering work of heartbreaking genius, but because the friend who thought he was being kind by buying me a ticket to see it at a different local IMAX theatre misread the seating chart for the theatre and got me a ticket in the very front row of the theatre. Now, I don't know if you've ever seen a movie in IMAX 3D, but that first row is not the most advantageous place to watch an IMAX movie in 3D. But because the theatre was otherwise sold out, I sat there, watching Avatar in 3D from the worst possible seat in the house, and I could not think straight for a week. I actually called off work for a few days, which was easy to do considering I was the boss at my theatre, but I have definitely seen a cognitive decline since I saw Avatar in IMAX 3D in the worst possible conditions. I've never felt the need to see it again, and I was fine not seeing the new one. But my wife wanted to see it, and we had discount tickets to the theatre, so off we went.   Thankfully, this time, I chose the seats for myself, and got us some very good seats in a not very crowded theatre, nearly in the spot that would be the ideal viewing position for that specific theatre. And I actually enjoyed the movie.    There are very few filmmakers who can tell a story like James Cameron, and there are even fewer who could get away with pushing a pro-conservation, pro-liberal, pro-environment agenda on an unsuspecting populace who would otherwise never go for such a thing.   But as I was watching it, two things hit me.   One, I hate high frame rate movies. Especially when the overall look of the movie was changing between obviously shot on video and mimicking the feel of film so much, it felt like a three year old got ahold of the TV remote and was constantly pushing the button that turned motion smoothing off and on and off and on and off and on, over and over and over again, for three and a half hours.   Two, I couldn't also help but notice how many moments and motifs Cameron was seemingly borrowing from his under-appreciated 1989 movie The Abyss.   And there it was.   The topic for our 100th episode.   The Abyss.   And, as always, before we get to the movie itself, some more background.   James Francis Cameron was born in 1954 in small town in the middle eastern part of the Ontario province of Canada, about a nine hour drive north of Toronto, a town so small that it wouldn't even get its first television station until 1971, the year his family would to Brea, California. After he graduated from high school in 1973, Cameron would attend Fullerton College in Orange County, where would initially study physics before switching to English a year later. He'd leave school in 1974 and work various jobs including as a truck driver and a janitor, while writing screenplays in his spare time, when he wasn't in a library learning about movie special effects.   Like many, many people in 1977, including myself, Star Wars would change his life. After seeing the movie, Cameron quit his job as a truck driver and decided he was going to break into the film industry by any means necessary.   If you've ever followed James Cameron's career, you've no doubt heard him say on more than one occasion that if you want to be a filmmaker, to just do it. Pick up a camera and start shooting something. And that's exactly what he did, not a year later.   In 1978, he would co-write, co-produce, co-direct and do the production design for a 12 minute sci-fi short called Xenogenesis. Produced at a cost of $20,000 raised from a dentist and starring his future T2 co-writer William Wisher, Xenogenesis would show just how creative Cameron could be when it came to making something with a low budget look like it cost far more to produce. There's a not very good transfer of the short available on YouTube, which I will link to in the transcript for this episode on our website, at The80sMoviePodcast.com (). But it's interesting to watch because you can already see themes that Cameron will revisit time and time again are already fully formed in the storyteller's mind.   Once the short was completed, Cameron screened it for the dentist, who hated it and demanded his money back. But the short would come to the attention of Roger Corman, The Pope of Pop Cinema, who would hire Cameron to work on several of his company's upcoming feature films. After working as a production assistant on Rock 'n' Roll High School, Cameron would move up becoming the art director on Battle Beyond the Stars, which at the time, at a cost of $2m, would be the most expensive movie Corman would have produced in his then-26 year career, as the production designer on Galaxy of Terror, and help to design the title character for Aaron Lipstadt's Android.    Cameron would branch out from Corman to work on the special effects for John Carpenter's Escape from New York, but Corman would bring Cameron back into the fold with the promise of running the special effects department for the sequel to Joe Dante's surprise 1978 hit Piranha. But the film's original director, Miller Drake, would leave the production due to continued differences with the Italian producer, and Cameron would be moved into the director's chair. But like Drake, Cameron would struggle with the producer to get the film completed, and would eventually disavow the film as something he doesn't consider to be his actual work as a director. And while the film would not be any kind of success by any conceivable measure, as a work of storytelling or as a critical or financial success, it would give him two things that would help him in his near future.   The first thing was an association with character actor Lance Henriksen, who would go on to be a featured actor in Cameron's next two films.   The second thing would be a dream he would have while finishing the film in Rome. Tired of being in Italy to finish the film, and sick with a high grade fever, Cameron would have a nightmare about an invincible cyborg hit-man from the future who had been sent to assassinate him.   Sound familiar?   We've already discussed how The Terminator came to be in our April 2020 episode on Hemdale Films, so we'll skip over that here. Suffice it to say that the film was a global success, turning Arnold Schwarzenegger into a beloved action star, and giving Cameron the clout to move on to ever bigger films.   That even bigger film was, of course, the 1986 blockbuster Aliens, which would not only become Cameron's second big global box office success, but would be nominated for seven Academy Awards, including a well deserved acting nomination for Sigourney Weaver, which came as a surprise to many at the time because actors in what are perceived to be horror, action and/or sci-fi movies usually don't get such an accolade.   After the success of Aliens, Twentieth Century-Fox would engage Cameron and his producing partner, Gale Anne Hurd, who during the making of Aliens would become his second wife, on a risky project.   The Abyss.   Cameron had first come up with the idea for The Abyss while he was still a student in high school, inspired by a science lecture he attended that featured Francis J. Falejczyk, the first human to breathe fluid through his lungs in experiments held at Duke University. Cameron's story would involve a group of underwater scientists who accidentally discover aliens living at the bottom of the ocean floor near their lab.    Shortly after he wrote his initial draft of the story, it would be filed away and forgotten about for more than a decade.   While in England shooting Aliens, Cameron and Hurd would watch a National Geographic documentary about remote operated vehicles operating deep in the North Atlantic Ocean, and Cameron would be reminded of his old story. When the returned to the United States once the film was complete, Cameron would turn his short story into a screenplay, changing the main characters from scientists to oil-rig workers, feeling audiences would be able to better connect to blue collar workers than white collar eggheads, and once Cameron's first draft of the screenplay was complete, the couple agreed it would be their next film.   Cameron and Hurd would start the complex process of pre-production in the early days of 1988. Not only would they need to need to find a place large enough where they could film the underwater sequences in a controlled environment with life-size sets under real water, they would need to spend time designing and building a number of state of the art camera rigs and costumes that would work for the project and be able to capture the actors doing their craft in the water and keep them alive during filming, as well as a communications system that would not only allow Cameron to talk to his actors, but also allow the dialogue to be recorded live underwater for the first time in cinema history.   After considering filming in the Bahamas and in Malta, the later near the sets constructed for Robert Altman's Popeye movie nearly a decade before, Cameron and Hurd would find their perfect shooting location outside Gaffney, South Carolina: an uncompleted and abandoned $700m nuclear power plant that had been purchased by local independent filmmaker Earl Owensby, who we profiled to a certain degree in our May 2022 episode about the 3D Movie craze of the early 1980s.   In what was supposed to be the power plant's primary reactor containment vessel, 55 feet deep and with a 209 foot circumference, the main set of the Deepcore rig would be built. That tank would hold seven and a half million gallons of water, and after the set was built, would take five days to completely fill. Next to the main tank was a secondary tank, an unused turbine pit that could hold two and a half million gallons of water, where most of the quote unquote exteriors not involving the Deepcore rig would be shot.   I'm going to sidetrack for a moment to demonstrate just how powerful a force James Cameron already was in Hollywood by the end of 1987. When word about The Abyss was announced in the Hollywood trade papers, both MGM and Tri-Star Pictures started developing their own underwater action/sci-fi films, in the hopes that they could beat The Abyss to theatres, even if there was scant information about The Abyss announced at the time.   Friday the 13th director Sean S. Cunningham's DeepStar Six would arrive in theatres first, in January 1989, while Rambo: First Blood Part Two director George P. Cosmastos' Leviathan would arrive in March 1989. Like The Abyss, both films would feature deep-sea colonies, but unlike The Abyss, both featured those underwater workers being terrorized by an evil creature. Because if you're trying to copy the secret underwater action/sci-fi movie from the director of The Terminator and Aliens, he's most definitely going to do evil underwater creatures and not peace-loving aliens who don't want to hurt humanity.   Right?   Suffice it to say, neither DeepStar Six or Leviathan made any kind of impact at the box office or with critics. DeepStar Six couldn't even muster up its modest $8.5m budget in ticket sales, while Leviathan would miss making up its $25m budget by more than $10m. Although, ironically, Leviathan would shoot in the Malta water tanks Cameron would reject for The Abyss.   Okay. Back to The Abyss.   Rather than cast movie stars, Cameron would bring in two well-respected actors who were known to audiences but not really that famous.   For the leading role of Bud Brigman, the foreman for the underwater Deepcore rig, Cameron would cast Ed Harris, best known at the time for playing John Glenn in The Right Stuff, while Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio would be recognizable to some for playing Tom Cruise's girlfriend in The Color of Money, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Other actors would include Michael Biehn, Cameron's co-star from The Terminator and Aliens, Leo Burmester, who had been featured in Broadcast News and The Last Temptation of Christ, Todd Graff, who had starred in Tony Bill's Five Corners alongside Jodie Foster and John Turturro, character actor John Bedford Lloyd, Late Night with David Letterman featured actor Chris Elliott in a rare non-comedy role, and Ken Jenkins, who would become best known as Doctor Kelso on Scrubs years down the road who had only made two movies before this point of his career.   More than two millions dollars would be spent creating the underwater sets for the film while Cameron, his actors and several major members of the crew including cinematographer Mikael Salomon, spent a week in the Cayman Islands, training for underwater diving, as nearly half of the movie would be shot underwater. It was also a good distraction for Cameron himself, as he and Hurd had split up as a couple during the earliest days of pre-production.    While they would go through their divorce during the filming of the movie, they would remain professional partners on the film, and do their best to not allow their private lives to seep into the production any more than it already had in the script.   Production on The Abyss would begin on August 15th, 1988, and would be amongst the toughest shoots for pretty much everyone involved. The film would endure a number of technical mishaps, some due to poorly built supports, some due to force majeure, literal Acts of God, that would push the film's production schedule to nearly six months in length and its budget from $36m to $42m, and would cause emotional breakdowns from its director on down. Mastrantonio would, during the shooting of the Lindsey resuscitation scene, stormed off the set when the camera ran out of film during the fifteenth take, when she was laying on the floor of the rig, wet, partially naked and somewhat bruised from being slapped around by Harris during the scene. “We are not animals!” she would scream at Cameron as she left. Harris would have to continue shooting the scene, yelling at nothing on the ground while trying to save the life of his character's estranged wife. On his way back to his hotel room after finishing that scene, Harris would have to pull over to the side of the road because he couldn't stop crying.   Biehn, who had already made a couple movies with the meticulous director, noted that he spent five months in Gaffney, but maybe only worked three or four weeks during that entire time. He would note that, during the filming of one of his scenes underwater, the lights went out. He was thirty feet underwater. It was so dark he couldn't see his own hand in front of him, and he genuinely wondered right then and there if this was how he was going to die. Harris was so frustrated with Cameron by the end of the shoot that he threatened to not do any promotion for the film when it was released into theatres, although by the time that happened, he would be making the rounds with the press.   After 140 days of principal photography, and a lawsuit Owensby filed against the production that tried to kick them out of his studio for damaging one of the water tanks, the film would finally finish shooting on December 8th, by which time, Fox had already produced and released a teaser trailer for the movie which featured absolutely no footage from the film. Why? Because they had gotten word that Warners was about to release their first teaser trailer for their big movie for 1989, Tim Burton's Batman, and Fox didn't want their big movie for 1989 to be left in the dust.   Thirty-four years later, I still remember the day we got both trailers in, because they both arrived at my then theatre, the 41st Avenue Playhouse in Capitola, Calfornia, within five minutes of each other. For the record, The Abyss did arrive first. It was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, the day before we opened the Bill Murray comedy Scrooged, and both Fox and Warners wanted theatres to play their movie's trailer, but not the other movie's trailer, in front of the film. I programmed both of them anyway, with Batman playing before The Abyss, which would be the last trailer before the film, because I was a bigger Cameron fan than Burton. And as cool as the trailer for Batman was, the trailer for The Abyss was mind-blowing, even if it had no footage from the film. I'll provide a link to that first Abyss teaser trailer on the website as well.   But I digress.   While Cameron worked on editing the film in Los Angeles, two major teams were working on the film's effects. The artists from Dreamquest Images would complete eighty effects shots for the film, including filming a seventy-five foot long miniature submarine being tossed around through a storm, while Industrial Lights and Magic pushed the envelope for computer graphics, digitally creating a water tentacle manipulated by the aliens that would mimic both Bud and Lindsey in an attempt to communicate with the humans. It would take ILM six months to create the minute and fifteen second long sequence.   Originally slated to be released in time for the Fourth of July holiday weekend, one of the busiest and most important weekends of the year for theatres, The Abyss would be held back until August 9th, 1989, due to some effects work not being completed in time, and for Cameron to rework the ending, which test audiences were not too fond of.   We'll get back to that in a moment.   When The Abyss opened in 1533 theatres, it would open to second place that weekend with $9.3m, only $350k behind the Ron Howard family dramedy Parenthood. The reviews from critics was uniformly outstanding, with many praising the acting and the groundbreaking special effects, while some would lament on the rather abrupt ending of the storyline.   We'll get back to that in a moment.   In its second week, The Abyss would fall to third place, its $7.2m haul behind Parenthood again, at $7.6m, as well as Uncle Buck, which would gross $8.8m. The film would continue to play in theatres for several weeks, never losing more than 34% of its audience in any given week, until Fox abruptly stopped tracking the film after nine weeks and $54.2m in ticket sales.   By the time the film came out, I was managing a dollar house in San Jose, a point I know I have mentioned a number of times and even did an episode about in September 2021, but I can tell you that we did pretty good business for The Abyss when we got the film in October 1989, and I would hang on to the film until just before Christmas, not because the film was no longer doing any business but because, as I mentioned on that episode, I wanted to play more family friendly films for the holidays, since part of my pay was tied to my concessions sales, and I wanted to make a lot of money then, so I could buy my girlfriend of nearly a year, Tracy, a nice gift for Christmas. Impress her dad, who really didn't like me too much.   The film would go on to be nominated for four Academy Awards, including for Mikael Salomon's superb cinematography, winning for its special effects, and would enjoy a small cult following on home video… until shortly after the release of Cameron's next film, Terminator 2.   Rumors would start to circulate that Cameron's original cut of The Abyss was nearly a half-hour longer than the one released into theatres, and that he was supposedly working on a director's cut of some kind. The rumor was finally proven true when a provision in James Cameron's $500m, five year financing deal between Fox and the director's new production company, Lightstorm Entertainment, included a $500k allotment for Cameron to complete his director's cut.   Thanks to the advancements in computer graphics between 1989 and 1991, Industrial Lights and Magic was able to apply what they created for T2 into the never fully completed tidal wave sequence that was supposed to end the movie. Overall, what was now being called The Abyss: Special Edition would see its run time expanded by 28 minutes, and Cameron's anti-nuke allegory would finally be fully fleshed out.   The Special Edition would open at the Loews Village VII in New York City and the Century Plaza Cinemas in Century City, literally down the street from the Fox lot, on land that used to be part of the Fox lot, on February 26th, 1993. Unsurprisingly, the critical consensus for the expanded film was even better, with critics noting the film's story scope had been considerably broadened. The film would do fairly well for a four year old film only opening on two screens, earning $21k, good enough for Fox to expand the footprint of the film into more major markets. After eight weeks in only a total of twelve theatres, the updated film would finish its second run in theatres with more than $238k in ticket sales.   I love both versions of The Abyss, although, like with Aliens and Cameron Crowe's untitled version of Almost Famous, I prefer the longer, Special Edition cut. Harris and Mastrantonio gave two of the best performances of 1989 in the film. For me, it solidified what I already knew about Harris, that he was one of the best actors of his generation.   I had seen Mastrantonio as Tony Montana's sister in Scarface and in The Color of Money, but what she did on screen in The Abyss, it still puzzles me to this day how she didn't have a much stronger career. Did you know her last feature film was The Perfect Storm, with George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg, 23 years ago? Not that she stopped working. She's had main or recurring roles on a number of television shows since then, including Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Blindspot and The Punisher, but it feels like she should have had a bigger and better career in movies.   Cameron, of course, would become The King of the World. Terminator 2, True Lies, Titanic, and his two Avatar movies to date were all global box office hits. His eight feature films have grossed over $8b worldwide to date, and have been nominated for 45 Academy Awards, winning 21.   There's a saying amongst Hollywood watchers. Never bet against James Cameron. Personally, I wish I could have not bet against James Cameron more often. Since the release of The Abyss in 1989, Cameron has only made five dramatic narratives, taking twelve years off between Titanic and Avatar, and another thirteen years off between Avatar and Avatar 2. And while he was partially busy with two documentaries about life under water, Ghosts of the Abyss and Aliens of the Deep, it seems that there were other stories he could have told while he was waiting for technology to catch up to his vision of how he wanted to make the Avatar movies.   Another action film with Arnold Schwarzenegger. An unexpected foray into romantic comedy. The adaptation of Taylor Stevens' The Informationalist that Cameron has been threatening to make for more than a decade. The adaptation of Charles Pelligrino's The Last Train from Hiroshima he was going to make after the first Avatar. Anything. Filmmakers only have so many films in them, and Cameron has only made eight films in nearly forty years. I'm greedy. I want more from him, and not just more Avatar movies.   In the years after its initial release, both Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio have refused to talk about the film with interviewers and at audience Q&As for other movies. The last time Harris has ever mentioned The Abyss was more than twenty years ago, when he said he was never going to talk about the film again after stating "Asking me how I was treated on The Abyss is like asking a soldier how he was treated in Vietnam.” For her part, Mastrantonio would only say "The Abyss was a lot of things. Fun to make was not one of them.”   It bothers me that so many people involved in the making of a film I love so dearly were emotionally scarred by the making of it. It's hard not to notice that none of the actors in The Abyss, including the star of his first three films, Michael Biehn, never worked with Cameron again. That he couldn't work with Gale Anne Hurd again outside of a contractual obligation on T2.     My final thought for today is that I hope that we'll someday finally get The Abyss, be it the theatrical version or the Special Edition but preferably both, in 4K Ultra HD. It's been promised for years. It's apparently been completed for years. Cameron says it was up to Fox, now Disney, to get it out. Fox, now Disney, says they've been waiting for Cameron to sign off on it. During a recent press tour for Avatar: The Way of Water, Cameron said everything is done and that a 4K UHD Blu-ray should be released no later than March of this year, but we'll see. That's just a little more than a month from the time I publish this episode, and there have been no official announcements from Disney Home Video about a new release of the film, which has never been available on Blu-ray after 15 years of the format's existence, and has been out of print on DVD for almost as long.   So there it is. Our 100th episode. I thank you for finding the show, listening to the show, and sticking with the show.   We'll talk again soon.   Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about James Cameron, The Abyss, and the other movies we covered this episode.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.

In episode 69, (Nice ;) ) Richard and Michael discuss the gritty real feel of Octavia's fantastical world and how this is achieved, The Ooloi take the gloves off in influencing the humans, and the humans seem to have made some rare sensible decisions.

In episode 68, Richard and Michael discuss how our eyes adjust to darkness and how much more powerful the construct Oankali are in creating an aphrodisiac.

Hannah and Laura are getting ready to dive into season 3: The Murderbot Diaries, Diaries, but they don't know what they will be covering after that! GASP!  Hannah and Laura each pitch 4 book series that they think would be "good fits" for On Wednesdays We Read Podcast, but need your help to decide which of them they should read for season 4!Media Mentions:The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan and Brandon SandersonThe Poppy War trilogy by R.F. KuangThe Murderbot Diaries by Martha WellsThe Mistborn Saga by Brandon SandersonThe Wayfarers series by Becky ChambersThe Green Bone Saga by Fonda LeeLilith's Brood aka The Xenogenesis series by Octavia ButlerThe Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. JemisinThe Dune Saga by Frank HerbertThe Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn MuirThe Dresden Files by Jim ButcherFiction Fans podcastThe Amboy series by Steven HealtFriends Talking Fantasy podcastInk to Film podcastKindred by Octavia ButlerThe Parable of the Sower by Octavia ButlerEncanto---Disney+The Office---PeacockBuffy---HuluAngel---HuluPitch Perfect---Peacock

In episode 67, Richard and Michael discuss another rare human genetic disorder, the tactlessness of the Ooloi and the confusion of the humans about the mysterious evaporation of their reservations about the Oankali now that they've experienced them.

In episode 66, Richard and Michael discuss the nature and complexity of human infidelity.

In episode 65, Richard and Michael discuss the Ooloi genetic memory being a form of external storage as well as Tomas and Jesusa's discovery that the can't be away from Jodahs.

In episode 64, Richard and Michael discuss the ooloi perspective and Nikanj's sinister advices.

In episode 63, Richard and Michael discuss Lilith's disapprobation of Jodahs' approach to the acquisition of Human mates, Spina bifida, Neurofibromatosis, the resilience of the Oankali organelle and trendiness in scientific publishing.

In episode 62, Richard and Michael discuss if Pangolins sweat and realize that Michael's view of Oankali is still too normal.

In episode 61, Richard and Michael consider the parallels between the Oankali and vampires.

In episode 60, Richard and Michael discuss Jodhas' new form as a giant stalkery pangolin with a human face and hands. We also meet fertile new pair of humans with a genetic condition, Jesusa & Tomas.

In episode 59, Richard and Michael discuss the open sex culture of the Oankali families and El Chupacabra that Jodahs became.

In episode 58, Richard and Michael discuss the abilities of ooloi constructs and how the resisters should mess with Nikanj's family.

In episode 57, Richard and Michael discuss the drama ensuing from Jodahs and its family's departure and encounter with some unpleasant resisters.

A special edition on The Otolith Group as their show, Xenogenesis opens at IMMA. Featuring the show's curator and IMMA director, Annie Fletcher, and one half of the Otoliths, Kodwo Eshun. Also, a visit to Camilla Hanney's show Lament exploring keening the modern context.

UK artist duo, The Otolith Group's not-actually-a-retrospective, Xenogenesis, finishes its world tour at IMMA in Dublin. (1 of 2)

In episode 56, Richard and Michael discuss the pressure on Jodahs and his family as well as Lilith's guilt.

In episode 55, Richard and Michael discuss the biology of the ooloi and their Yashi organ.

In episode 51, Richard and Michael discuss th exciting first two chapters of the last book of the Xenogenesis trilogy and their new protagonist.

In episode 53 (Special Episode 3), Richard and Michael discuss Ageing and Immortality, from a biological and Ethical prespectives.

In episode 52, Richard and Michael discuss the Final 2 Chapters of Adulthood-Rites and reflect on the book as a whole. Tangents include smoke inhalation and gait recognition technology.

Science fiction's most frequent alternative to human is 'alien', another rich imaginative resource with which to think about what makes us human. This lecture will include reflections on various aliens, from H.G. Wells Selenites, to Octavia Butler's Oankali, the genetic traders who link the novels of her Xenogenesis trilogy who are imagined as both saving and enslaving humanity. Whether aliens are imagined as conquerors or saviours, their superiority has often been used to explore human limitations.A lecture by Jim EndersbyThe transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/scifi-aliensGresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.Website: http://www.gresham.ac.ukTwitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollegeFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollegeInstagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

In episode 51, Richard and Michael discuss the possibility of uranium enrichment in a biological system.

In episode 50, Richard and Michael discuss the effects of hypothermia on the human body, dislike towards Gabe and the fact that Akin has Stockholm syndrome.

In episode 48, Richard and Michael discuss teraforming, revisit the biology of Huntington's disease and talk about the difference between the ideals and the institutions of science.

In episode 48, Richard and Michael discuss Akin's task to prepare the way for a Human Akjai, Tiikuchahk's choice of a sex/gender, and get a bit sidetracked relating the workings of the Oanlaki consensus to human political considerations. We also reflect on the ark and review some of the subjects we discussed while reading it.

Xenogenesis reaches its conclusion as we discuss the Defenders #60, an issue that's chock full of action. Plus, Spider-Man shows up as the team tries to lure Lunatic out of hiding. Join Adam Philips (president of Untold Stories Marketing) and Carr D'Angelo (owner of Earth-2 Comics in Sherman Oaks and Northridge, CA) for a look at these unforgettable tales!

In episode 47, Richard and Michael discuss Oankali ooloi pheromones and sexual interactions that the author is trying to ask about, without settling with an answer herself.

In episode 46, Richard and Michael discuss the joys of Oankali construct puberty, touch on teraforming, and the seeds of Akin's campaign for a human Akjai.

In episode 45, Richard and Michael discuss if conscious animals that are happy to do what we want is really a good idea... (it really is not).

In episode 44, Richard and Michael discuss the shuttle's structure, propulsion and the feelings it experiences in space, as well as the mothership's power source.

In episode 43, We learn some interesting new things about Oankali biology and Akin acts adolescent.

In episode 42, Richard and Michael finish and summarise their experience from part 2 Phoenix of the book Adulthood Rites.

We're almost at season 2! One of the last stops on the way is the short film 'Xenogenesis' by James Cameron. A testament to what can be accomplished with a living room, $20,000 of your dentist's money and a casio keyboard.This episode contains profanity, sexual content, violence, robot violence, drug use.Come join the conversation over at our discordhttps://discord.gg/X4mw7MahNmSign up for a one month free trial at Skillshare!https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/2859087/1085653/4650Like us on Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/drbadfilm

Long time Front Porch-goer Jenna Kintner tells us what she knows about dystopia, particularly concerning the present state of the US. We do some post-utopian dreaming in an attempt to escape the non-place of "utopia" and consider the alternative good-place of "eutopia." References: Hannah Arendt: a video on "The Banality of Evil" Ta-Nehisi Coates: "The Banality of Racism" article rubreddit: r/aboringdystopia "eutopia" versus "utopia" Octavia Butler, XENOGENESIS trilogy and Parable of the Sower, buy on bookshop.org Mike Davis's Los Angeles: City of Quartz, buy on bookshop.org music is by Lifegrid, find his music support Front Porch here

Host Editors Claire and Annar discuss current events, including the Black Lives Matter marches that have taken place across the nation against the backdrop of a global pandemic. They take a look at our current moment through the lens of science fiction, focusing on two sci-fi writers who are women of color. The books discussed in this episode are The Memory Police by Yoko Ozawa, Bloodchild by Octavia Butler, and her Xenogenesis trilogy.

http://sharpeningreport.com PLEASE SUBSCRIBE, SHARE, and LIKE! What was Project Paperclip really all about? Was Germany involved with Roswell? Did alien entities guide the course of World War II? How does Antarctica fit into this? All this and more is answered by Steve Quayle's own words in this exciting new video by Josh Peck. This is one you certainly will not want to miss! What do you think? Leave a comment below! Order "Empire Beneath the Ice" by Steve Quayle at http://amzn.to/2hZVZtm  Check out Steve Quayle at http://stevequayle.com Join Josh Peck in Dallas, TX at the Hear the Watchmen Prophecy conference, March 31st- April 2nd 2017! Get your tickets today, they are selling out fast! Use promo code "Peck" for a special discount! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hear-the-watchmen-dallas-2017-tickets-28431318840?aff=JoshPeck&afu=195022840190  Empire Beneath the Ice, Xenogenesis, and Path of the Immortals Special Offer - http://www.skywatchtvstore.com/EmpireSpecial-p/sq-ebiso.htm Steve Quayle Books and DVDs - Recommended by Josh Peck: Genesis 6 Giants Volume 2 Master Builders of Prehistoric and Ancient Civilizations - http://amzn.to/2hZLJ4m Angel Wars - http://amzn.to/2iTUNHZ Little Creatures: The Gates of Hell Are Opening - http://amzn.to/2hHDX2H True Legends (paperback) - http://amzn.to/2hHyxVy Xenogenesis: Changing Men Into Monsters - http://amzn.to/2hHwfpx Genetic Armageddon - http://amzn.to/2iTPmJd True Legends DVD: Technology of the Fallen, The Documentary Film Series, Episode 1 - http://amzn.to/2imWX62 Josh Peck's "Empire Beneath the Ice by Stephen Quayle" Videobook: Part 4 Josh Peck: http://www.SharpeningReport.com   http://www.youtube.com/joshpeckdisclosure  http://www.joshpeckdisclosure.blogspot.com   jpeck@skywatchtv.com

http://sharpeningreport.com PLEASE SUBSCRIBE, SHARE, and LIKE! Was Roswell the result of a German UFO? Did the Germans unlock the mysteries of time travel in WWII? Did alien entities guide the Vril society in a way to perpetuate war? How does the occult fit into all of this? All this and more is answered by Steve Quayle's own words in this exciting new video by Josh Peck. This is one you certainly will not want to miss! What do you think? Leave a comment below! Order "Empire Beneath the Ice" by Steve Quayle at http://amzn.to/2hZVZtm  Check out Steve Quayle at http://stevequayle.com Join Josh Peck in Dallas, TX at the Hear the Watchmen Prophecy conference, March 31st- April 2nd 2017! Get your tickets today, they are selling out fast! Use promo code "Peck" for a special discount! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hear-the-watchmen-dallas-2017-tickets-28431318840?aff=JoshPeck&afu=195022840190  Empire Beneath the Ice, Xenogenesis, and Path of the Immortals Special Offer - http://www.skywatchtvstore.com/EmpireSpecial-p/sq-ebiso.htm Steve Quayle Books and DVDs - Recommended by Josh Peck: Genesis 6 Giants Volume 2 Master Builders of Prehistoric and Ancient Civilizations - http://amzn.to/2hZLJ4m Angel Wars - http://amzn.to/2iTUNHZ Little Creatures: The Gates of Hell Are Opening - http://amzn.to/2hHDX2H True Legends (paperback) - http://amzn.to/2hHyxVy Xenogenesis: Changing Men Into Monsters - http://amzn.to/2hHwfpx Genetic Armageddon - http://amzn.to/2iTPmJd True Legends DVD: Technology of the Fallen, The Documentary Film Series, Episode 1 - http://amzn.to/2imWX62 Josh Peck's "Empire Beneath the Ice by Stephen Quayle" Videobook: Part 3 Josh Peck: http://www.SharpeningReport.com  http://www.youtube.com/joshpeckdisclosure  http://www.joshpeckdisclosure.blogspot.com   jpeck@skywatchtv.com

http://sharpeningreport.com PLEASE SUBSCRIBE, SHARE, and LIKE! Can secret bases in Antarctica and around the world help explain the UFO phenomena? What are the origins and current trend of the mysterious Ahnenerbe society? What is Neuschwabenland and how is it affecting the world today? All this and more is answered by Steve Quayle's own words in this exciting new video by Josh Peck. This is one you certainly will not want to miss! What do you think? Leave a comment below! Order "Empire Beneath the Ice" by Steve Quayle at http://amzn.to/2hZVZtm  Check out Steve Quayle at http://stevequayle.com Join Josh Peck in Dallas, TX at the Hear the Watchmen Prophecy conference, March 31st- April 2nd 2017! Get your tickets today, they are selling out fast! Use promo code "Peck" for a special discount! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hear-the-watchmen-dallas-2017-tickets-28431318840?aff=JoshPeck&afu=195022840190  Empire Beneath the Ice, Xenogenesis, and Path of the Immortals Special Offer - http://www.skywatchtvstore.com/EmpireSpecial-p/sq-ebiso.htm Steve Quayle Books and DVDs - Recommended by Josh Peck: Genesis 6 Giants Volume 2 Master Builders of Prehistoric and Ancient Civilizations - http://amzn.to/2hZLJ4m Angel Wars - http://amzn.to/2iTUNHZ Little Creatures: The Gates of Hell Are Opening - http://amzn.to/2hHDX2H True Legends (paperback) - http://amzn.to/2hHyxVy Xenogenesis: Changing Men Into Monsters - http://amzn.to/2hHwfpx Genetic Armageddon - http://amzn.to/2iTPmJd True Legends DVD: Technology of the Fallen, The Documentary Film Series, Episode 1 - http://amzn.to/2imWX62  Josh Peck: http://www.SharpeningReport.com   http://www.youtube.com/joshpeckdisclosure  http://www.joshpeckdisclosure.blogspot.com   jpeck@skywatchtv.com

http://SharpeningReport.com PLEASE SUBSCRIBE, LIKE, AND SHARE! What is the truth of World War II and the mysterious Operation Highjump? Why is Antarctica so important to America and the world? What were the Nazis really up to and what are they doing now? All these questions and more are answered, in author and researcher Steve Quayle's own words, in this very special video. Join author and researcher Josh Peck as he takes his YouTube audience on an exclusive journey through the amazing research of Steve Quayle. This is one you certainly will not want to miss! What do you think? Leave a comment below! Order "Empire Beneath the Ice" by Steve Quayle at http://amzn.to/2hZVZtm  Check out Steve Quayle at http://stevequayle.com Join Josh Peck in Dallas, TX at the Hear the Watchmen Prophecy conference, March 31st- April 2nd 2017! Get your tickets today, they are selling out fast! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hear-the-watchmen-dallas-2017-tickets-28431318840?aff=JoshPeck&afu=195022840190  Empire Beneath the Ice, Xenogenesis, and Path of the Immortals Special Offer - http://www.skywatchtvstore.com/EmpireSpecial-p/sq-ebiso.htm Steve Quayle Books and DVDs - Recommended by Josh Peck: Genesis 6 Giants Volume 2 Master Builders of Prehistoric and Ancient Civilizations - http://amzn.to/2hZLJ4m Angel Wars - http://amzn.to/2iTUNHZ Little Creatures: The Gates of Hell Are Opening - http://amzn.to/2hHDX2H True Legends (paperback) - http://amzn.to/2hHyxVy Xenogenesis: Changing Men Into Monsters - http://amzn.to/2hHwfpx Genetic Armageddon - http://amzn.to/2iTPmJd True Legends DVD: Technology of the Fallen, The Documentary Film Series, Episode 1 - http://amzn.to/2imWX62 Josh Peck's "Empire Beneath the Ice by Stephen Quayle" Videobook: Part 1 Josh Peck:  http://www.youtube.com/joshpeckdisclosure jpeck@skywatchtv.com