Should You Race Back to Theaters When It’s Safe? Pretty Much Pop: Culture Podcast (#77) on the Big Screen Experience

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | January 14th, 2021

The pan­dem­ic has kept us out of the movie the­aters, forc­ing new stream­ing prac­tices so that films can be released at all, but as these restric­tions end in 2021, do we want things to go back just to the way they were?

Your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt reviewed many arti­cles where film­mak­ers fret­ted about the future of cin­e­ma. Even before the pan­dem­ic, con­cerns about falling movie house atten­dance and the increased use of stream­ing have had the indus­try wor­ried about films being viewed in the man­ner their cre­ators intend­ed, or even made at all.

For at least the first half our of this dis­cus­sion, we large­ly ignored all that in favor of mus­ing on our own past the­ater-going habits and expe­ri­ences. What has worked and has­n’t in the shift toward more spec­ta­cle and ameni­ties? What do we like and loathe about being in an audi­ence with oth­ers? Is the the­ater expe­ri­ence essen­tial just for big spe­cial effects films, or does it make any film more effec­tive? How would we improve moviego­ing and home view­ing? We con­sid­er the list of films that were sup­posed to come out this year and were either delayed or moved to stream­ing, like Tenet, Soul, In the Heights, etc.

Here are those arti­cles, in case you’re curi­ous:

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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Wonder Woman 1984 in Context — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #76

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | January 7th, 2021

The hol­i­day film release sea­son has now passed, hav­ing issued only one real block­buster, which is the return of Won­der Woman. This week’s Pret­ty Much Pop like­wise offers a return­ing hero:  Our col­lege-going guest from ep. 33 on hero­ine jour­neys has now grown into a grad stu­dent in comics his­to­ry, and she brings her deep WW knowl­edge to con­sid­er with your hosts Eri­ca Spyres, Mark Lin­sen­may­er, and Bri­an Hirt.

Part of the rel­e­vant con­text is the 2017 biopic Pro­fes­sor Marston and the Won­der Women, which revealed the unortho­dox views of WW’s cre­ator, and so of course this shows up in how WW judges us: She’s not just a Cap­tain Amer­i­ca-style patri­ot, but a for­eign­er who in the new film com­pas­sion­ate­ly con­demns our 80s greed and dis­hon­esty. But do the themes actu­al­ly make sense? And what’s with hav­ing her love inter­est return from the dead, hijack­ing anoth­er man’s body with no acknowl­edg­ment that that’s very skeevy?

Also, how does the depic­tion of WW’s home­land com­pare to oth­er fem­i­nist utopias like Her­land and “Sul­tana’s Dream”? Does it mat­ter that WW was cre­at­ed by and ini­tial­ly aimed pri­mar­i­ly at males? We learn a lit­tle about the post-Marston WW (who could­n’t join the Jus­tice League, which was for boys only!) and talk about the ’70s TV show, the out­fits, the vil­lains, and WW in love.

Here are a few sup­ple­men­tary arti­cles:

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

 

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Why Has The Great British Baking Show Conquered America? Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #75 w/ Stephen Carlile (from Broadway’s The Lion King)

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | December 30th, 2020

What explains the immense quar­an­tine-time pop­u­lar­i­ty in Amer­i­ca of this quaint British real­i­ty cook­ing show? What do we get out of watch­ing tal­ent­ed ama­teurs bake things? Stephen Carlile, who is famous for play­ing Scar in The Lion King on Broad­way (and is VERY British him­self), joins your hosts Eri­ca Spyres, Bri­an Hirt, and Mark Lin­sen­may­er to con­sid­er the for­mat, con­text, and appeal of the show.

A few arti­cles we reviewed to pre­pare includ­ed:

Fol­low Stephen on Insta­gram @carlile1. Vis­it with him online.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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What Has the Internet Done to Comedy? A Pretty Much Pop Culture Podcast Discussion (#74)

in Comedy, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | December 23rd, 2020

Does remov­ing gate­keep­ers mean a more dis­trib­uted com­ic land­scape, or does it inevitably end with a small num­ber of comics dom­i­nat­ing the world? The Inter­net means that peo­ple can and do judge comics based on very short clips, but also makes it easy to fol­low the activ­i­ties of some­one you dis­cov­er that you like.

Tiffany comes not from stand-up but from music the­ater, and is active in cre­at­ing char­ac­ter-based com­e­dy and nov­el­ty songs for Insta­gram, YouTube, etc. She joins your hosts Eri­ca Spyres, Mark Lin­sen­may­er, and Bri­an Hirt to explore the types of short-form humor and view­ing habits that grow out of video cre­at­ed for Tik­Tok, Snapchat, and oth­er plat­forms. What’s the cre­ator’s rela­tion to the audi­ence? Social media blurs the line between con­struct­ed bits and extem­po­rized com­men­tary. It’s often react­ing to cur­rent events, yet stays post­ed long after. “Going viral” is not typ­i­cal­ly the result of mere organ­ic shar­ing or chance, and some comics (and their con­sul­tants) have real­ly stud­ied the medi­um to find out what appeals and how to get the word out.

We touch on Car­men Lynch, Sarah Coop­er, Eva Vic­tor, Bowen Yang, Coin­ci­d­ance, Miran­da Sings, Lock­Pick­ingLawyer, Jim­my Sloni­na, AskChick­ie, and more.

Watch Tiffany’s Frag­ile White Sad­ness. And her ode to Dis­ney Plus. Our Long Novem­ber has passed, thank good­ness.

Tiffany also rec­om­mends Jen Tul­lock, Josh Ruben, Jor­dan First­man, Megan Stal­ter, Cole Esco­la, Craw­ford Mill­ham Hor­ton, Ben­i­to Skin­ner, Inap­pro­pri­ate Pat­ti, Advent Car­olen­dar, and Marc Rebil­let.

Read: “These Come­di­ans Are Using Tik­Tok to Cre­ate Some of the Inter­net’s Fun­ni­est (And Wok­est) Con­tent)” by Kat Cur­tis.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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Brian Cullman, Veteran NY Music Scenester/Journalist/Producer, Shares His Tunes and Musings About Death: Nakedly Examined Music Podcast #137

in Music, Podcasts | December 21st, 2020

Bri­an start­ed as a teen music enthu­si­ast and jour­nal­ist as ear­ly as 1970, run­ning into folks like Jim Mor­ri­son and Nico and mak­ing con­nec­tions with every musi­cian he could lay eyes on. He lever­aged this effort into find­ing vehi­cles for his songs, first with OK Savant (ca. 1990), a band that fre­quent­ed CBG­Bs and then broke up right as it was signed to a major label. After some false starts and life changes, he like­wise used his net­work to sup­port his cre­ation of three and half solo albums start­ing in 2008. He has also been an active pro­duc­er and col­lab­o­ra­tor for artists like Olla­belle, Lucin­da Williams & Taj Mahal, and sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al musi­cians.

Each episode of the Naked­ly Exam­ined Music pod­cast involves pick­ing three record­ings from an artist’s cat­a­log to play in full and dis­cuss in detail. Your host Mark Lin­sen­may­er here engages Bri­an about “Killing The Dead” (and we lis­ten to “Wrong Birth­day” at the end; see the video below) from Win­ter Clothes (2020, writ­ten with now-deceased Olla­belle gui­tarist Jimi Zhiva­go), “And She Said” from The Oppo­site of Time (2016), and “The Promise” from All Fires The Fire (2008). Intro: “The Book of Sleep” by OK Savant, record­ed live at CBG­Bs in 1990. For more, see briancullman.com.

Watch Bri­an live (with Jimi Zhiva­go and oth­ers) in 2016. Anoth­er new, col­or­ful­ly ani­mat­ed video is for the bluesy “Walk the Dog Before I Sleep.” One from his pre­vi­ous album is “Every­thing That Ris­es.” Hear the full, remas­tered record­ing of “The Book of Sleep.” Hear the song he wrong for Nick Drake (whom he opened for in 1970). Hear one of the tunes he did for Rua Das Pre­tas.

The bass play­er on Bri­an’s albums is Byron Isaacs (also of Olla­belle), whom Naked­ly Exam­ined Music inter­viewed for episode #82.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion and anoth­er song, avail­able to Naked­ly Exam­ined Music Patre­on sup­port­ers.

Pho­to by Bill Flick­er.

Naked­ly Exam­ined Music is a pod­cast host­ed by Mark Lin­sen­may­er, who also hosts The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast and Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast. He releas­es music under the name Mark Lint.

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What Makes for a Beloved Bad Film? Jackey Neyman Jones (Manos: The Hands of Fate) Talks to Pretty Much Pop (ep. 73)

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | December 17th, 2020

While there have of course been numer­ous attempts at movie mag­ic that have result­ed in some­thing less than audi­ence pleas­ing, only a few demon­strate such bold inep­ti­tude as to become “so bad that they’re good.” Such a film requires a strong sense of vision cou­pled with a com­plete inabil­i­ty to real­ize that vision in a coher­ent way, and it must dis­play real charm, as we see through the pre­sen­ta­tion to behold real human beings cap­tured in the poignan­cy of their doomed filmic endeav­or.

Some often cit­ed can­di­dates for this new kind of film canon include the clas­sic Plan 9 from Out­er Space, whose cre­ation was dra­ma­tized in Tim Bur­ton’s film Ed Wood; Tom­my Wiseau’s The Room, chron­i­cled by the book and film The Dis­as­ter Artist; Troll 2, a film that has no busi­ness or cre­ative rela­tion to the already dubi­ous film Troll that was doc­u­ment­ed in Best Worst Movie; and the an up-and-com­er Bir­d­em­ic: Shock and Ter­ror, self-financed by James Nguyen, whose pop­u­lar­i­ty great­ly increased through the treat­ment of his films by Riff­trax, one of the TV show Mys­tery Sci­ence The­ater 3000’s Inter­net suc­ces­sors.

And then there’s Manos: The Hands of Fate, laud­ed as one of the most trip­py finds of the orig­i­nal 1993 MST3K. It’s a film writ­ten, direct­ed by, and star­ring (lit­er­al) fer­til­iz­er sales­man Harold P. War­ren about a fam­i­ly (on their “first vaca­tion”) get­ting lost in West­ern Texas and end­ing up stay­ing the night at a house with a reli­gious cult. Jack­ey Ney­man Jones played the six-year-old girl in the film who even­tu­al­ly (spoil­er!) ends up tied to a stake as the cult lead­er’s sev­enth wife. Her father played the cult leader and cre­at­ed much of the art for the show, her moth­er sewed the cos­tumes, and her voice was dubbed over by a ful­ly grown woman who was not at all warned that she’d be hav­ing to imi­tate a child’s voice.

Jack­ey wrote a mem­oir about the expe­ri­ence, and here joins your Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca, Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to talk about the ongo­ing inter­est in the film despite its ini­tial, com­plete dis­missal as well as the dynam­ics and per­ils of work­ing with a supreme­ly con­fi­dent “auteur.”

The dis­cus­sion also touch­es on oth­er bad films like Cat­woman, The Hap­pen­ing, and Bat­tle­ship. Are these con­tem­po­rary, big-bud­get flops wor­thy of such can­on­iza­tion? What about films made inten­tion­al­ly to be cheesy, whether by auteurs like Veloci­pas­tor or pumped out by a com­pa­ny like Syfy’s Shark­na­do series?

You can watch Jack­ey read her entire book online. See her art. Read her inter­viewed in Cracked, Enter­tain­ment Week­ly, and the AV Club. Check out her IMDB page and her short-lived Hand of Hor­ror pod­cast. Manos: The Hands of Fate is in the pub­lic domain, so watch it unriffed if you dare, or check out the clas­sic MST3K episode or the more recent Riff­trax treat­ment. See also the warped stage ver­sion with pup­pets: Manos: The Hands of Felt.

To think more gen­er­al­ly about this top­ic, we con­sult­ed some lists of bad (or “so-bad-they’re-good”) films by The Ringer,  Thril­list, Screen­rant, Yard­bark­er, and Wikipedia.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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Comic Book Writer Fred Van Lente Touts “Comic Supremacy” on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #72

in Comics/Cartoons, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | December 10th, 2020

Fred Van Lente has writ­ten for more than 15 years for his own Evil Twin Comics, Mar­vel and oth­er out­lets. In this episode of Pret­ty Much Pop, he joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to dis­cuss comics as an idio­syn­crat­ic form of lit­er­a­ture.

In the realm of non-fic­tion, Ryan start­ed with the beloved Action Philoso­phers! series in 2004 with illus­tra­tor Ryan Dunlavey, and this team has gone on to cre­ate the very suc­cess­ful Com­ic Book His­to­ry of Comics, plus more recent­ly Action Pres­i­dents, Action Activists (avail­able free in asso­ci­a­tion with the NYC Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion’s Civics for All pro­gram), and have just begun releas­ing The Com­ic Book His­to­ry of Ani­ma­tion. While the non-fic­tion comics for­mat is com­mon in places like Japan, and has a sto­ried his­to­ry in Amer­i­ca, hav­ing been used to train sol­diers in World War II, this is still some­thing of a nov­el­ty in Amer­i­ca as comics still strug­gle to over­come their rep­u­ta­tion in (as Ryan puts it) “trash for morons.” Giv­en that visu­al con­tent is well known to help peo­ple learn as com­pared to text alone, the use of tools like Action Pres­i­dents in class­rooms should­n’t be sur­pris­ing.

The inter­view also gets into Ryan’s fic­tion work, from Cow­boys & Aliens, which was turned into a 2011 Jon Favreau/Steven Spiel­berg film entire­ly with­out Ryan’s involve­ment, to titles like Mar­vel Zom­bies and X‑Men Noir which use alter­nate dimen­sion ver­sions of pop­u­lar char­ac­ters to tell sto­ries too dark and/or whim­si­cal to have much pos­si­bil­i­ty of ever being trans­ferred to the screen. Despite comics’ rep­u­ta­tion as being basi­cal­ly like elab­o­rate film sto­ry-boards, their low over­head is exact­ly what dis­tin­guish­es them so strong­ly from film: Their cre­ativ­i­ty is unlim­it­ed by bud­get, and cre­ators can take tremen­dous risks. What­ev­er the main­stream palata­bil­i­ty of (alter­nate dimen­sion) Peter Park­er eat­ing Aunt May’s brain, this has been one of the most pop­u­lar things that Ryan’s been involved with among com­ic book read­ers.

Learn more about Fred’s work at fredvanlente.com. You can read there about how Fred con­structs scripts; the one Mark refers to with the mys­te­ri­ous­ly changed coat is right there high­light­ed at the top of this page, and there are also sev­er­al sam­ple scripts includ­ing the one for Action Philoso­phers: Immanuel Kant that demon­strates Fred’s meth­ods for vivid­ly explain­ing a com­plex idea.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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An Introduction to Rap Battles: Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #71

in Comedy, Music, Podcasts, Poetry, Pretty Much Pop | December 3rd, 2020

Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are rejoined by our audio edi­tor and res­i­dent rap­per Tyler His­lop (rap name: “Sac­ri­fice”) to dis­cuss a form of enter­tain­ment close to his heart: Two peo­ple star­ing each oth­er in the face in front of a crowd and tak­ing lengthy turns insult­ing each oth­er in a loud voice using intri­cate rhymes, ref­er­ences, jokes and even some cul­tur­al com­men­tary and philo­soph­i­cal spit-balling.

So what are the rules? How does mod­ern bat­tle rap com­pare to free-styling, the beefs aired on rap albums, and clas­sic insult com­e­dy? What’s the appeal of this art form? Is it because of or despite the aggres­sion involved? Bat­tle rap is regard­ed as a free speech zone, where any­thing’s fair game, but does that real­ly make sense?

A few rel­e­vant films came up in the dis­cus­sion:

  • Bod­ied (2017), a film writ­ten by Alex Larsen (aka Kid Twist) and pro­duced by Eminem, fea­tur­ing sev­er­al cur­rent bat­tle rap­pers doing their thing along with dis­cus­sion by the char­ac­ters of the eth­i­cal issues involved
  • 8 Mile (2002), a semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal film star­ring Eminem, which dis­plays the old­er, free-styling over a beat type of bat­tle rap­ping
  • Rox­anne Rox­anne (2017) a biopic about Rox­anne Shante depict­ing hip-hop rival­ries of the 1980s.

Here are some match­es Tyler rec­om­mend­ed that also get men­tioned:

More resources:

Hear Tyler talk about his many rap albums on Naked­ly Exam­ined Music #24.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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