The Monte Hall Effect
Science - Fiction - Film
About the show
Tim Lloyd and Tola Marts are two leaders in the Seattle aerospace community with over forty years of experience between them dealing with aerospace and high tech issues. They're also avid film buffs, and in each podcast they'll take a different science fiction film and discuss three key facets:
*Science: How well do the scientific ideas in the film reflect real science.
*Fiction: Do the film's plot and characterization take the viewer on a fun or intriguing journey? And…
*Film: Does the movie make the most of cinematography, so that it works better in conveying its ideas than it would in a book, or graphic novel, or play?
At the end of each podcast they’ll give the film a percentage ratings for each of those facets.
NOTE: there will be spoilers for the film being discussed, but they will try to keep spoilers for other films to a minimum.
The podcast theme music- intro and outro- is written and performed by Guy Ellis, and more of his music can be found at https://soundcloud.com/gu42 and https://www.facebook.com/cloudcoverband/.
Episodes
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13: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
May 23rd, 2024 | 1 hr 29 mins
Tola and Tim are joined by our wonderful editor, Paul, to discuss the 1984 cult classic, "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension." Featuring an all-star cast including Jeff Goldblum as one of the least-weird characters, Robocop's Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Christopher Lloyd as John Bigbooté, Yakov Smirnoff, and many more, this film was either a labor of love or made of cocaine...or all of the above! Tola and Tim address important questions like, can you drive a jet-powered car at 400 mph through a mountain, while Paul brings his musical expertise to questions like, what does a piccolo trombone sound like, and can you really play two saxophones at the same time? Final Score: Science 28%, Fiction 63%, Film 63%. Next up: Dune, Part 2!
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12: Aniara
March 7th, 2024 | 1 hr 31 mins
In this episode, the boys discuss the existentially bleak but beautiful and moving Swedish-Danish film Aniara (2018), based on the 1956 epic poem by Nobel prize winner, Harry Martinson.
Content warning: the film and this episode contain depictions of and discussion of suicide and self-harm.
Final score: Science (78%), Fiction (93%), Film (90%).
Next up: "Buckaroo Banzai" as a palate cleanser!
(re-posted 3/12/24) -
11: Snowpiercer
February 10th, 2024 | 1 hr 24 mins
In this episode the guys join the future Captain America, the former archangel Gabriel, the future Kim Ki-taek, the former Caligula, and the former Gene Kranz as they circumnavigate a frozen Earth in Bong Joon-Ho's 2013 Snowpiercer.
Special thanks to Paul Zastrow for sound editing this episode.
Final score: Science 78%, Fiction 83%, Film 95%
Next up: the boys get arty and existential with 2018's Aniara. -
10: Life
April 15th, 2023 | 2 hrs 3 mins
In this episode the guys welcome a very special guest: their long time friend, Naval Aviator and retired NASA astronaut Jeff Ashby and talk about 2017’s “Alien, but on the International Space Station, with Rebecca Ferguson and Jake Gyllenhall” film, Life.
Final score: Science 68%, Fiction 63%, and Film 70% -
9: Moonfall
January 18th, 2023 | 2 hrs 31 mins
In a very special The Monte Hall Effect, Tim and Tola's friend and colleague Shane Malone joins them as guest judge/panelist to help them unravel the vast mysteries of Roland Emmerich's 2022 box office bomb "Moonfall". ffice. Final score: Science 19%, Fiction 36%, and Film 45%.
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8: Solaris (2002)
November 28th, 2022 | 1 hr 37 mins
Tola and Tim take on Tola's favorite film of all time- not just his favorite SF film, but literally the film he says "changed his life"- Steven Soderbergh's 2002 adaptation of Stanislaw Lem's classic science fiction novel "Solaris."
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7: Forbidden Planet
August 29th, 2022 | 1 hr 27 mins
Tola and Tim watched Forbidden Planet (in person, even) and marvel at the talent of Leslie Nielsen - not to be confused with George Pappard.
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6: Dune (2021)
May 17th, 2022 | 2 hrs 12 mins
Tim and Tola return to the Denis Villeneuve ouevre to discuss his 2021 film "Dune" as well as the days when you could make a TV miniseries for $28, getting past the things that the 12 year old you thought were perfect, concubines vs spouses, swordfighting, spaceships rolling coal, reactionless propulsion, how Stellan Skarsgaard will make your movie better...
Final score: Science (75%), Fiction (85%), Film (94%). -
5: Interstellar
May 10th, 2022 | 2 hrs 18 mins
interstellar, nolan, scifi
After a long sabbatical, Tim and Tola discuss the 2014 Christopher Nolan film "Interstellar" as well as historical dramas, cocaine and hookers, the dreaded 2021 heat wave (we actually recorded this conversation quite some time ago), the awesomeness of LEGO Batman, building your movie around your cinematography, Dylan Thomas, watching dystopia movies in 2021, small-c conservatism, retconning your own characters, fleeing your problems instead of solving them, giant awesome bookshelves, Dr. Mann The Best Of Us, Christopher Nolan not understanding how science works, speculative vs observed science, how to leave a planet, looking over the wing of the spacecraft again and again and again... Final score: Science (60%), Fiction (73%), Film (83%).
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4: Arrival
October 24th, 2021 | 1 hr 49 mins
Tim and Tola discuss the 2016 Denis Villeneuve film "Arrival", as well as SETI, car insurance, THE IMPORTANCE OF WATCHING THIS PARTICULAR FILM BEFORE LISTENING TO THIS PARTICULAR PODCAST, J.R.R. Tolkien, Icelandic composers, Broadchurch, remembering 9/11, professorial salaries, security clearances, Speak'n'Spells, training and executive decision making, Close Encounter's Dark Side of the Moon, dumb politicians, scissor lifts, basing things on 12 because the bible, great Hong Kong actor Tzi Ma, conspiracy theories, UFO reports and your government, linguistic relativity a.k.a. the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, Pioneer/Voyager golden records, alien abduction pulsar map tattoos, infinite depth of field imaging, rotoscoping and Ralph Bakshi, Primer's mad crescendo, how predeterminism might work, kids in peril in film, a Childhood's End type scenario, non-zero sum games, Leto's golden path, and parenthood and risk.
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Episode 3: Annihilation
May 31st, 2021 | 1 hr 42 mins
Tim and Tola discuss the 2018 Alex Garland film “Annihilation,” as well as how midwesterners argue, how things fall to Earth, how high Jennifer Jason Leigh appears in this film, locating your scientific headquarters, the fact that lighthouses are invariably sited on the coast, getting tickled by giant crocodile sharks, how chemo is like being stabbed by a morgul blade, biocontainment 101, NASA Planetary Protection Officers, the does and don'ts of dealing with a malevolent entity, the power of refraction, Hox genes, explaining stuff to your teammates in a timely manner, watching movies on ’shrooms, ambiguity as a science fiction scriptwriting crutch, Hiroshima shadows, H.R. Giger, giant space vaginas and their associated glam-wombs, Chekhov's phosphorus grenade, and the fundamental unknowability of alien intelligence. As always, there are spoilers for the film reviewed, and in this case we have to say there are a fair number of spoilers for Steven Soderbergh's 2002 film "Solaris" as well, since many comparisons are made between the two films. We agreed to disagree on our overall assessment of "Annihilation".
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2: Ad Astra
May 1st, 2021 | 1 hr 38 mins
Tim and Tola discuss the 2019 film "Ad Astra." Director James Gray said that this was going to be the most accurate portrayal of spaceflight ever put in a movie. Did he succeed? No. No he did not. Yet we found this film's scientific failures were actually overshadowed by its artistic failures. But along the way we had a lot of fun discussing the fetishization of human spaceflight, historical spacesuits and visual motifs, HALO jumps, what would really happen if we were ever hit by a gamma ray burst, the durability of modern aircraft, how gravity and acceleration work, why there are basically two kinds of rockets, and how we're hoping "exploding the monkey" becomes the new "nuking the fridge." Along the way we share a number of hard-learned aerospace truths, such as: a flame trench turns out to be a trench for flame, hot stuff comes out of the end of a rocket, and you try to keep the poison on the outside of the crew capsule. As usual, there are lots of spoilers for the film being discussed, but we try to stay away from spoilers for other films.
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1: Sunshine
April 16th, 2021 | 1 hr 26 mins
Tim and Tola talk about the 2007 Danny Boyle film "Sunshine." A bunch of people travel to the Sun with a nuclear bomb the size of Manhattan. What could possibly go wrong? Some of the things we talk about: engineers vs scientists, risk analysis, what happens if you suddenly find yourself in outer space (tl;dr: you don't explode), why you shouldn't cut holes in your heat shield, purposely dabbling with opium when you're part of an Arctic expedition (tl;dr: bad idea), the limits of realism, and the tradeoffs you have to make as a filmmaker between scientific accuracy and dramatic necessity. Tola tells a Polish space joke (it's OK, he's Polish.)