Eric Moore has debuted another NEOZAZ-based program, this time having a look — with co-host Ian Marchant — at the characters of the Alien movie series. It is called, sensibly enough Alien In Character. And the first episode focuses on Kane, Nostromo’s Executive Officer.
The show follows in the pod-steps of Eric’s Mad Max In Character.
He brings the same attention to detail and entertaining conversation heard in his Effectively Speaking podcasts, and to this show. I’ve never met Mr. Marchant, but he holds up his end of the program “stick,” (so to speak), quite well.
I suppose podcast-listening is down to personal preference. When
podcasts became exercises in stream-of-consciousness navel-gazing rife
with generalizations, I tuned out. To each his own. I prefer something
prepared — even edited —- anything to save us from the endless free-form
rabbit-chasing.
Happily, Eric and Ian avoid the lure of boring sidebars racing down the
rabbit hole of personal opinion. They are focused but relaxed, sharing
movie lore, facts and figures, and information about the actor.
If you’re new to the Alien films, you will learn quite a bit from these gentlemen. Resources mentioned in the podcast are: the Alan Dean Foster novelization, Dan O’Bannon’s ‘Star Beast’ script, Alien The Movie Novel, and Alien The Illustrated Story. Excellent touch-points.
This first episode, Alien In Character – Kane, clocks in at a whopping 2 hours and 15 minutes. That’s a long time in today’s TL;DR mentality, right?
Maybe I’m biased towards Eric’s podcasts, but by the time we’re walked through Kane’s scenes and treated to behind-the-scenes info and the famous Effectively Speaking tallies, the time flies right by: a very relaxing time, carried along by Eric and Ian’s fun with the content and hearing about one of my favorite movie characters. The audio quality is crystal clear and they both speak very clearly.
A friend remarked to me once, when discussing an Effectively Speaking episode on the Nostromo’s undocking, his amazement that Eric can pull off an audio podcast that features a video segment of a movie. How does Eric do it? That’s part of the magic...
And that may well be what it is that appeals to me about these podcasts
of his: he and Ian appear to be part of my own generation, and have a
way of channelling their love for the material — and their friendship
for one another — into a program well worth the time spent with them.
