FanFare

A pandemic ravages future Earth.
posted by onya on Sep 6, 2023 - 9 comments

Greg Garcia (My Name Is Earl, Raising Hope) returns with another show about dirtbags with (somewhat) hearts of gold. This time, it's some ex-felons who get released in the early days of the pandemic and get to stealing from bad people. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan on May 5, 2023 - 8 comments

A young couple in Taipei is pushed to the limits of sanity as they attempt to be reunited amid the chaos of a pandemic outbreak. The streets erupt into violence and depravity, as those infected are driven to enact the most cruel and ghastly things imaginable. [more inside]
posted by DirtyOldTown on May 12, 2022 - 14 comments

Based on the bestselling novel, this post-apocalyptic saga follows the survivors of a devastating flu as they attempt to rebuild and reimagine the world anew – while holding on to the best of what’s been lost. [more inside]
posted by Stanczyk on Jan 13, 2022 - 58 comments

In the near future, a pandemic kills everyone at/above the age of puberty. 13 year-old Anna has kept her half-brother Astor alive and hidden in their country home. Eventually, their bubble of isolation is ruptured, and soon Anna will have to pursue Astor into the darkest corners of the changed world, where a lack of structure and nurturing has left the remaining kids miserably lonely or utterly feral, some of them in thrall to older, more manipulative kids. [more inside]
posted by DirtyOldTown on Dec 31, 2021 - 5 comments

This week: another show from the void, but maybe not for much longer! The Tokyo Olympics proceed despite a spike in COVID cases, and the UK prepares to lift nearly all restrictions despite an uptick in cases over there. And Now: People On TV Mean "Fucking" (Olympics Edition). Main story (32 minutes): Housing Discrimination, its legacy in the US, how its effects are felt today, and what can be done to rectify it. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Jul 26, 2021 - 6 comments

Stuck in COVID-19 lockdown, US comedian and musician Bo Burnham attempts to stay happy by writing, shooting and performing a one-man comedy special whilst going through struggles within his personal life. [more inside]
posted by iamkimiam on May 31, 2021 - 41 comments

Randy comes to terms with his role in the COVID-19 outbreak as the on-going pandemic presents continued challenges to the citizens of South Park. [more inside]
posted by Cogito on Dec 16, 2020 - 3 comments

A team directed by activist and artist Ai Weiwei films inside the hospitals, homes, and quarantine sites of Wuhan, the first city hit in the global COVID-19 pandemic. (Trailer; viewable via Alamo or Vimeo.) [more inside]
posted by progosk on Aug 27, 2020 - 3 comments

Shudder's 56-minute new horror movie, "filmed and set entirely on video chat platform Zoom, Host recounts the tale of a seance gone wrong and the immediate fallout as something unintended is invited into the chat. In the wake of its release on Shudder, it raced to 100% on RottenTomatoes and tides of effusive reactions across social media". [more inside]
posted by growabrain on Aug 20, 2020 - 6 comments

Strasbourg 1518. Inspired by a powerful involuntary mania which took hold of citizens in the city of Strasbourg just over 500 years ago, this film is a collaboration in isolation with some of the greatest dancers working today. Isolation. Today. I think you get the inspiration. New Jonathan Glazer. [more inside]
posted by Harry Caul on Jul 27, 2020 - 2 comments

Scarlett's 15th birthday started so normally, a Dodgers game with her dad. 48 hours later she was one of the last people left alive on earth. Reading about a pandemic during a pandemic sure is fun! It's a light, quick read with an ending that I found kind of hopeful and uplifting.
posted by COD on Apr 10, 2020 - 0 comments

This week... main story: The Coronavirus pandemic, how some on the right seem willing to reopen the country to help the economy despite it meaning the deaths of hundreds of thousands more, and the many ways Trump has flubbed the nation's response, including getting visibly angry at reporters doing their jobs questioning him about his statement that he wants to reopen the country by Easter RGRGHA%$%&$@ sorry I can't even. It's on YouTube. And Now: Yes, We Are Still Doing These. And Now: Hey, Look! We're Social Distancing. And finally, South-Central Pennsylvania's Gallery Thirty-Three video art auction from 1992, and the work of a certain Brian Swords of York, aka Biohazard. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Mar 30, 2020 - 20 comments

This week: coming to you from the EMPTY WHITE VOID, Last Week Tonight, like many shows, is doing without a live audience for the length of the epidemic, not just to help slow transmission of Coronavirus but because their usual studios, CBS Broadcasting Center in New York, had confirmed cases. The whole show is about the pandemic, the media and Trump administration's handling of it, and what you personally can do to slow the spread of the disease, which includes not spreading stupid misinformation of the type being broadcast on Fox News. The show was unclear when the next episode would air. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Mar 16, 2020 - 11 comments

A medical historian narrates the last century of scientific struggle against an enduring enemy: deadly contagious disease. Ever since the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, scientists have dreamed of preventing catastrophic outbreaks of infectious disease. Yet despite a century of medical progress, viral and bacterial disasters continue to take us by surprise, inciting panic and dominating news cycles. From the Spanish flu to the 1924 outbreak of pneumonic plague in Los Angeles to the 1930 “parrot fever” pandemic, through the more recent SARS, Ebola, and Zika epidemics, the last one hundred years have been marked by a succession of unanticipated pandemic alarms. In The Pandemic Century, a lively account of scares both infamous and less known, Mark Honigsbaum combines reportage with the history of science and medical sociology to artfully reconstruct epidemiological mysteries and the ecology of infectious diseases. We meet dedicated disease detectives, obstructive or incompetent public health officials, and brilliant scientists often blinded by their own knowledge of bacteria and viruses. We also see how fear of disease often exacerbates racial, religious, and ethnic tensions―even though, as the epidemiologists Malik Peiris and Yi Guan write, “‘nature’ remains the greatest bioterrorist threat of all.” Like man-eating sharks, predatory pathogens are always present in nature, waiting to strike; when one is seemingly vanquished, others appear in its place. These pandemics remind us of the limits of scientific knowledge, as well as the role that human behavior and technologies play in the emergence and spread of microbial diseases.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis on Feb 1, 2020 - 1 comment

Following an urgent trip to the Arctic, a scientist and his friend are quarantined with an illness that soon escalates to something sinister. (Netflix Original) [more inside]
posted by oh yeah! on Dec 5, 2019 - 5 comments

During a mission in 1918 to attend the birth of Carmen Amaya, Irene falls ill with the Spanish flu. New undersecretary Susana orders (against regulations)) that Irene be retrieved and returned to the Ministry, risking widespread exposure to a highly contagious disease that once killed millions and for which there is no vaccine. Soon, more personnel begin to show flu symptoms and the Ministry is forced to close its doors to prevent the disease from being spread through time. [more inside]
posted by zarq on May 30, 2018 - 6 comments

There's a pandemic on an island with virtually no communications. Let's go there right now! And wander around! Oh, there's a cult there, that's going to go well.
posted by Brandon Blatcher on Jan 18, 2015 - 6 comments

An eco-terror cult tries to exterminate the human race by setting off a pneumonic plague pandemic using the strain responsible for the Black Death. Red continues to search for his daughter. Lizzie meets with some mysterious colleagues. No Paul Reubens this week.
posted by Small Dollar on Oct 21, 2014 - 13 comments