Episode 29: Kilt Weasels and Other Charismatic Macrofauna

Good tidings, dear listeners! This week, we are joined by Jennifer Menken of the Bell Museum of Natural History for an episode all about movie critters! That’s right, we’re bringing SCIENCE to creature features! SCIENCE also brought us the tasty Protocolo 2011 Tempranillo that we drank while recording this episode. Please feel free to sip along! Now, …

Continue reading

The post Episode 29: Kilt Weasels and Other Charismatic Macrofauna appeared first on Xanadu Cinema Pleasure Dome.

Windy’s chest is also a creature.

Good tidings, dear listeners! This week, we are joined by Jennifer Menken of the Bell Museum of Natural History for an episode all about movie critters! That’s right, we’re bringing SCIENCE to creature features!

SCIENCE also brought us the tasty Protocolo 2011 Tempranillo that we drank while recording this episode. Please feel free to sip along!

Now, before we go to the show notes, we have a couple of corrections for this episode:

Melissa was mistaken in how she pronounced H. R. Giger. It’s actually “GEE-ger,” as heard in videos where the man pronounces his own name. Melissa knows this, but she had some wine and old habits kicked in.
Melissa is also fully aware in her current sobriety that Peter Capaldi’s kilt was full of mongoose, not weasel. While mongeese look like weasels, they are in suborder Feliforma (like cats and hyenas), not Caniformia (like dogs and weasels). We deeply apologize to any weasels to whom we gave false hopes about inhabiting Peter Capaldi’s kilt.

Show notes and links behind the cut!

Movies mentioned:

Alien

Aliens

Alien Resurrection

Spaceballs

Alien vs. Predator

Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem

Prometheus

Predator

Lord of the Rings trilogy

The Fly

The Blob

The Thing

The Mist

Dune

Tremors

Signs

Pitch Black

Dune

Dark Crystal

Flash Gordon

Godzilla 2014

Godzilla 1998

Cloverfield

Them!

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

People mentioned:

H. R. Giger

Sigourney Weaver

Ron Perlman

John Hurt

Veronica Cartwright

Kevin Peter Hall (Guy in the Predator suit)

Doug Jones

Andy Sirkis

Joaquin Phoenix

Vin Diesel

Harper Goff

Links:

Here’s a link to the video of Sigourney Weaver actually making that basket:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjTWN7SMLkU

Zombie ants with fungus:

http://io9.com/5335833/parasitic-fungus-turns-carpenter-ants-into-its-own-personal-zombie-army

Sadly, the Dark Crystal “Director’s Cut” has been taken down, per the Jim Henson Company. However, here’s a good interview with the creator of the video, which describes what he set out to do:

http://mentalfloss.com/article/54077/watch-restored-original-cut-dark-crystal

The post Episode 29: Kilt Weasels and Other Charismatic Macrofauna appeared first on Xanadu Cinema Pleasure Dome.