#12: Phil Tippett’s Mad God

In this holiest of seasons it is only right to give thanks for those most devout adherents to the creation of totally sick visual spectacles that will shadow our subconscious for the long nights to come. Monster-making-maestro Phil Tippett spills forth with a passion project three decades in the making that pushed him past the brink of sanity, though is the world ready to accept his divine message? The Bible is recited; dreams are interpreted; a video game is shamelessly referenced and swiftly apologised for; and even through all the layers of muck we have the stomach for a Podcast Repaste. We’re not mad, we’re emotionally interesting!

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#8: We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story and The Fading Dinosaur Renaissance

The cultural phenomenon they called the Dinosaur Renaissance found many modes of expression for making ancient giant lizards cool again. The trouble lay in precisely -who- was deciding what made them cool to begin with; Steven Spielberg certainly contributed his fair share to the craze with Jurassic Park and The Land Before Time preceding it, though tapping the screenwriter of Moonstruck to adapt a twenty page picture storybook for a cinema feature was perhaps a touch hubristic. Four directors; an expensive voice cast; the baffling resurgence of Bing Crosby impressions in the early 90s; they were so caught up in thinking whether they COULD they didn’t stop to think about whether they SHOULD!

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#5: Cadillacs & Dinosaurs (& Environmentalism & The Narrow Purview of Dinosaur Fiction)

An ancient beast from podcasts past reawakens to a savage new age, but has this world evolved to match? Cadillacs & Dinosaurs is just as much pulpy fun as when we last looked at it a decade ago; less fun is the real ecological catastrophe that has only intensified since then (STILL without giant lizards) and the ever-tightening chokehold the Jurassic Park franchise seems to have on what can be done with dinosaurs in popular media. How can we learn from these past mistakes and avoid our cruel fate? Would the message of environmentalism be better received in the form of two-fisted pulp adventure? And what is a “quahoon” anyway? This show ain’t prehistoric! It’s classic~.

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