It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.

Do you believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being?

We may be true with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Welcome to The Next Picture Show, a movie of the week podcast devoted to a classic film and how it shaped our thoughts on a recent release.

I'm Tasha Robinson, here with...

Keith Phipps, Scott Tobias.

And Genevieve Kosky.

This week, we're discussing two movies about near-future men who set out on space missions with a crew of human compatriots and wind up drifting through the void alone, apart from their trusty non-human companions, who, to get a bit ahead of ourselves here, learn to do all kinds of interesting human things, including win at poker, tap their feet impatiently, and give a somewhat alien version of a thumbs up. So indulge me on this one, y'all. You're stuck alone in space with your choice

of non-human companion whose personality you can remold from scratch. What is the urgent,

silly, non-useful thing you have to teach it to do in order to convince yourself you aren't really lonely?

Oh, it has to be a dance, specifically the robot, right? If you have a robot and you can teach the robot how to do the robot, I think that would be an ideal situation. I mean, it was so you can convince yourself you're not lonely. That part of just made me really sad. And I tried to think about what would actually cheer me up. How much sadder would you be if it was doing the robot, though, Keith? That would be cool.

I mean, that would be cool. If you could, like maybe it could do kind of also getting a little ahead of myself, ourselves, but if we could do impressions, celebrity impressions, we get a little bit of that in one of our movies. That would be kind of cool. What's your go-to celebrity impression that would cheer you up coming from some sort of, like, robot alien or robot alien.

Like I see. impression that would cheer you up coming from some sort of like robot alien or robot alien

it's like i assume you don't want your robot alien uh just doing a whole lot of like

roddy danger fields routines i'm not but grotto mark i get no respect i take a gracho uh a gracho robot

that'd be fine okay that does sound like fun especially if it does just cycle through the Marks Brothers in general.

I mean, we've already brought up winning at poker as an example, but I feel like being able to play some sort of game with my non-human companion would be really critical. I'm not a poker player. I wish I was better at chess because I feel like,

you know, if I could play chess against a non-human companion, that could keep me going for a long

time. Well, I guess it would be a good way to get good at chess too. But, you know, some sort of

good two-player game, or if I have multiple companions, it could be more than two players but definitely need

some sort of game playing I think to get me through where are we leaning here jennivir are we talking

like shadows over camelot like like four-hour strategy board games are we talking like hungry hungry

...