Ryan McNeil
Runtime
74 minutes
Show Contents:
Show Contents
0:00 Introduction
3:46 Know Your Enemy: Adrian Wilfred
22:01 The New Slang: ANNIHILATION
52:45 The Other Side: Adrian and Ryan talk further reading after ANNIHILATION
Thoughts from your host…
We’re back outside for the first time in six months or so. There were people around, there were distractions, there was traffic…and through it all, a nifty little show emerged! Maybe I should go Full-MaMo! and record these things outside more often.
Today’s guest was a great sport. First he came out and met the locals at pub night, listening to us argue like idiots and threaten to cut a bitch over the most inane questions (“BRITNEY!!! How the fuck can you even consider Christina as an answer??…”)…he then sat down for a coffee to talk about his budding film love on-mic. He sat in the hot seat and gave as good as he got.
Our selection today risks slipping off the radar in-between BLACK PANTHER and A WRINKLE IN TIME, but both my guest and I hope you fine folks get a chance to track it down since it’s the sort of cerebral sci-fi that doesn’t nearly get enough love at the box office nowadays.
Oh, and if you see my guest around, congratulate him on perhaps the very best unintentional bit of Other Side trolling in Matineecast history.
Thanks for tuning into episode one-hundred-ninety-four.
Adrian’s Twitter feed can be found here. Comments and feedback are welcome, and thank-you very much for listening.
Enjoy!
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SPOILERIFFICS.
Had a long talk post-Annihilation with Nikki, who was downright shell-shocked watching this. She considered it (as many if not most have) to be about cancer. There’s the obvious stuff there regarding tumors etc, but more than anything it’s showing the experience of how it takes over everything and gradually changes a person and all of their relationships. At the very end of the film they are literally asking each other if they are still the same person, and they either aren’t or aren’t sure. Meanwhile it could be said each one of those women to some degree represent some stage of grief in dealing with the illness. Could easily sort into Denial, Anger, Acceptance, etc through various scenes or in characters themselves. There’s those lines about finding it or fighting it. The fact the shimmer doesn’t really want anything – it just is – and it’s both taking over you, is foreign/alien, but also made of you. One character goes down screaming and in pain, and other just disappears into it.
The whole metaphor, like ones in Colossal, A Monster Calls, or Mother, might be very obvious and boring to some people, but in each of these cases the specific imagery, one-off lines and details feel so personal and rich. I really loved it.