The Pavement Pounders discuss adapted science fiction, generally well-known films derived from written works. They read the book, watch the movie, watch remakes, reboots, re-adaptations, and give it all a good mulling over.
Reading the feed…
Continuing with the summer of graphic novels and comics, we cover Judge Dredd, the 1995 movie, and Dredd, the 2012 movie, both adapted from the character and world of 2000AD comics. Rankings: Colin: movies/book James: 2012 movie/1995 movie/book Seth: 2012 movie/1995 movie/book Anthrax “I Am The Law!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_Pga70f_YQ
Starting our series of comic/graphic novel adaptations with a whimper from a Kryptonian (entirely computer graphics) dog, we dive into the new movie Supergirl, at least somewhat based on Tom King’s Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, after talking generally about comics for really quite some time. Rankings!: Unanimous: Book/movie
This time we discuss 12 Monkeys, the Terry Gilliam film adapted from La Jetée, an experimental short film. Rankings! Colin/James/Seth: Feature Film / Short Film
The time has come again for us to talk about a weird, slow science fiction movie, so I reached out to my favorite guest for such films, Ben DeBono from The Sci-Fi Christian. Thanks to Joe Smith for suggesting it, and to the Oregon Museum of Science & Industry for screening it during this year’s … Continue reading Solaris, by Stanislaw Lem (feat. Ben DeBono) →
Peter Kuskie, who joined me for the Hugos There episode on Project Hail Mary, joins us for a discussion of the new movie, with some brief discussion of the book as well. For more book discussion, refer back to the Hugos episode. The movie is a terrific adaptation and a great experience in the theater. … Continue reading Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir (with guest Peter Kuskie) →
Following up on our previous episode, we cover the latest season of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Sea of Monsters, which is by almost any measurement a better adaptation than the movie. I’d been sick a looong time and wasn’t quite out of the woods at the time of recording, so make some … Continue reading The Sea of Monsters, by Rick Riordan, Part Two (Disney+ series, season two) →
We return to Percy Jackson and the Mystifying Adaptations with Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, the 2013 movie based on The Sea of Monsters, by Rick Riordan. Will this movie right the ship and kick of the remaining three movies into a successful and beloved quintilogy? (It will not.) We’ll reconvene next month for the … Continue reading The Sea of Monsters, by Rick Riordan, Part One (2006 book/2013 movie) →
We all attended a screening of the Star Wars Holiday Special in Vancouver, Washington a couple of weekends ago, and I reached out to one of the co-producers on the documentary film A Disturbance of the Force: How the Star Wars Holiday Special Happened, who happens to live in our town, and he agreed to … Continue reading Star-Wikileaks! (The Star Wars Holiday Special, with guest Scott Kirkwood from starwarsholidayspecial.com) →
This time we cover the remake/re-adaptation of Stephen King’s The Running Man. Rankings!: Colin: Book/2025 movie/1987 movie James: Book/2025 movie/1987 movie Seth: Book/1987 movie/2025 movie
It’s been 10 years since we covered this topic last, and we finally have a great adaptation! We got to see the new Frankenstein adaptation in theaters and recommend you do the same.
Double-dipping this month, covering a couple of previously covered books that got new adaptations. First up, the absolutely delightful nonsense that is The War of the Worlds, starring Ice Cube.
Seth was under the weather after returning from doing the Cotswold Way hike in England, so to protect the other guys from germs, this was recorded on his backyard patio, so please forgive the neighbor dog’s squeaky toy accompaniment. Rankings! Colin: movie/book James: book/movie Seth: movie/book Post-credits scenes for this episode include some discussion of … Continue reading Assistant *to* the Regional Major (The Long Walk, by Stephen King) →
Wrapping up (for now) the informal Robot series we’ve been doing, we discuss Brian Aldiss’s short story “Supertoys Last All Summer Long,” adapted (loosely) to A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Rankings! Colin/James/Seth: Film Short Story Notes: https://brianaldiss.co.uk/writing/story-collections/collections-r-z/supertoys-last-all-summer-long/
We discuss the final four episodes of Season One of Murderbot, then discuss the season as a whole, and then have a long post-script about what project to undertake after we cover one more robot story. (Hint: both possibilities begin with the letter S.)
Our continuing coverage of Murderbot, er, continues. We spend a bit of time discussing the pacing of the series. What do you think?
We’re doing a Murderbot series! We reacted to the trailer, and now we’re covering the first two episodes. We’ll do at least two more of these to cover the full season. If you’re listening on the website because your podcast player feed has gone dead, please update it to the RSS feed below: https://pavementpodcast.com/feed/podcast/tmtyr/
We recorded some quick thoughts that ironically take a while to get to about the Murderbot trailer and what we hope to see in the series. Happy May the Fourth! Murderbot is a droid, so it’s clearly canon.
We got to go see The Wild Robot at our local SF Film Festival, so we figured it was high time we covered this terrific movie, and we were joined by Colin’s elder son, Peter. Rankings: Peter/Colin/James/Seth: Movie/Book
We had a great conversation with Ed Ashton about his background in engineering and medical research, how he finds the time to write a novel every year, and how Mickey7 and Mickey-17 came to be. Edward’s website: https://www.edwardashton.com/
This time the guys look at Mickey7, by Edward Ashton, and its new adaptation, Mickey-17. We pretty much go full spoilers for everything, so be warned. The book takes a couple of days to read, and the movie will be on streaming soon. Rankings!: Colin: book/movie James: book/movie Seth: book/movie
This time the guys take up “The Bicentennial Man,” by Isaac Asimov, the 1976 novelette, and its 1999 movie adaptation Bicentennial Man. Rankings!: Colin: movie/story Seth: story/movie James: story/movie Notes & Links: That Joel Kinnaman/Eric Roberts looking The Positronic Man cover: Elizabeth Freeman, who successfully sued for her freedom from slavery https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/elizabeth-freeman-sued-for-freedom Bicentennial Man as … Continue reading “Bicentennial Man,” by Isaac Asimov (1999 movie) →
We take a quick look at the new Nosferatu movie as part of our ongoing Draculadaptations series. We had some trouble with our digital recorder and lost parts of the conversation. I’ve tried to salvage what I could and I hope you enjoy it. Good news is that we all enjoyed the movie.
This time, the guys are joined by both of Colin’s adult sons as well as a mystery guest, at a secret location known only to everyone who listens to this episode. It’s a Christmas miracle! We’re covering The Hunt for Red October, by Tom Clancy, and its 1990 film adaptation. It’s fringy science fiction, but … Continue reading LMNOP-plots (The Hunt for Red October, by Tom Clancy, recorded at ) →
Yes, we were going to be doing The Hunt For Red October. But we decided to kick that one down the road a month and replace it with a much less worthy movie, and an even less worthierer book. It’s the 1987 novel Penal Colony, by Richard Herley, and it’s a bit of a stinker. … Continue reading Mad Max in the Jungle! (Penal Colony, by Richard Herley, and 1994’s No Escape) →
This time we discuss the 1981 Caldecott-winning children’s book Jumanji, by Chris Van Allsburg, adapted into the 1995 Robin Williams movie of the same name, and expanded into the new Jumanji franchise started by Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. Rankings!: Colin: 1995 movie, 2017 movie, book James: 2017 movie, 1995 movie, book Seth: 2017 movie, 1995 movie, book
