Cinema Gadfly

12. S1m0ne

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My guest for this month is Serenity Caldwell, and she’s joined me to discuss the film she chose for me, the 2002 American science-fiction romantic comedy film S1m0ne. You can follow the show on Twitter @cinemagadfly.

Show notes:

  • Andrew Niccol, who directed this film, is also married to its star, Rachel Roberts
  • Al Pacino is an actor, perhaps you’ve heard of him
  • Gattaca is also a film by Andrew Niccol
  • Alphaville is the film we discussed on the previous episode of this podcast
  • The dot-com era was a period where tech companies with no future got lots of money, completely unlike today
  • Second Life is a virtual reality world that you can run around in
  • One of the more notable things about Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace is its ridiculously long title
  • The first Lord of the Rings film, The Fellowship of the Ring came out in 2001
  • 3.5" hard drives are still used as internal storage in slow computers
  • The Mac Pro and PowerMac G4 are both computers from Apple, they are both relatively recent
  • 5.25" floppies on the other hand, haven’t been used regularly in a very, very long time
  • Hackers is a phenomenal film about, well, hacking
  • An SNL parody of this film would probably just be this film
  • John Cassavetes was an actor and director, and a pioneer of American independent film
  • Michelangelo Antonioni made quite a few masterpieces with a monochromatic color palette
  • Notting Hill is a 1999 film starting Julia Roberts, written by the guy who wrote Four Weddings and a Funeral
  • Roberto Rossellini was an Italian neorealist director
  • The Auteur theory is a vision of cinema where the director is the sole voice of the film
  • The Crow is seriously every goth kids dream
  • The stars of The Force Awakens, including Daisy Ridley, are newly famous, and dealing with it in interesting ways
  • People Magazine is a celebrity “news” periodical
  • Rebecca Romijn is also in this film, in a tiny but fun role
  • Jason Schwartzman is a national treasure, and can do no wrong
  • We are in the 2016 presidential election cycle, and Donald Trump is a leading candidate. We’ve clearly gone crazy
  • I am huge Catherine Keener fan, but man is she misused here
  • This film stars a young Evan Rachel Wood, she’s great
  • Winona Ryder is probably the best thing about this entire film
  • Seriously, there are three versions of A Star is Born already, and a fourth is in the works
  • 42nd Street is another film about the process of stardom
  • The Tupac Shakur hologram at Coachella was so creepy
  • Jean-Luc Godard directed Alphaville, among many others
  • Niccol only wrote The Truman Show. It was directed by Peter Weir, who also made Picnic at Hanging Rock and Dead Poets Society, among others
  • Niccol’s did direct In Time with Justin Timberlake, as well as The Host, and Good Kill, none of which I’ve heard of
  • We should do an alternate episode where Siri is our main guest for this film
  • Go check out The Incomparable, they have some seriously great podcasts

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    Cinema GadflyBy Arik Devens
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