Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #26 Discusses Alan Moore’s Watchmen Comic and the HBO Show with Cornell Psychology Professor David Pizarro

in Comics/Cartoons, Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | January 9th, 2020

Per­haps the most laud­ed graph­ic nov­el has been sequelized for HBO, and amaz­ing­ly, it turned out pret­ty darn well (with a 96% Rot­ten Toma­toes rat­ing!).

Your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by the Cor­nel­l’s David Pizarro, host of the pop­u­lar Very Bad Wiz­ards pod­cast. We con­sid­er Alan Moore’s 1986 graph­ic nov­el, the 2009 Zack Sny­der film, and of course most­ly the recent­ly com­plet­ed (we hope) show by Damon Lin­de­lof, the cre­ator of Lost and The Left­overs.

How does Moore’s idio­syn­crat­ic writ­ing style trans­late to the screen? Did the show make best use of its nine hours? Are there oth­er sto­ries in this alter­nate his­to­ry that should still be told, per­haps to reflect on oth­er recur­rent social ills or crises of what­ev­er moment might be depict­ed? Was Lin­de­lof real­ly the guy to tell this sto­ry about race, and does mak­ing the show about racism (which is bad!) under­mine Moore’s rejec­tion of (moral­ly) black-and-white heroes and vil­lains?

Some of the arti­cles we used to warm up for this dis­cus­sion includ­ed:

You might want to also check out HBO’s Watch­men page, which includes extra essays and the offi­cial pod­cast with Damon Lin­de­lof com­ment­ing on the episodes.

Fol­low Dave @peez. Hear him on The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life, undoubt­ed­ly the apex of his pro­fes­sion­al career.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear 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 or start with the first episode.

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Sportscaster Dave Revsine (Big 10 Network) Joins Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast to Discuss the Role of Sports in Pop Culture

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Sports | January 2nd, 2020

How is spec­ta­tor sports dif­fer­ent from oth­er types of enter­tain­ment? Dave Rev­sine (lead stu­dio host for the Big Ten Net­work and for­mer ESPN anchor) joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to dis­cuss the var­i­ous sources of appeal, team iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, exist­ing in a sports-filled world as a non-fan, watch­ing vs. play­ing, human inter­est sto­ries, sports films, and more.

Some of the arti­cles we looked at to pre­pare includ­ed:

The first two links above were part of a series of 2016 edi­to­ri­als in the Wash­ing­ton Post coin­cid­ing with March Mad­ness. As the whole series is def­i­nite­ly worth a look, just fol­low the links at the bot­tom of those arti­cles.

Dave wrote a book you might want to look at called The Open­ing Kick­off: The Tumul­tuous Birth of a Foot­ball Nation. Fol­low him on Twit­ter @BTNDaveRevsine.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear 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 or start with the first episode.

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Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #24 Considers Holiday Viewing: What’s Canon?

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | December 24th, 2019

Join Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt for a spe­cial “snake draft,” where we take turns pick­ing the hol­i­day films and TV spe­cials that we think are (or should be) part of Amer­i­ca’s year­ly view­ing tra­di­tions.

Were I to list all the shows and films we men­tion, that would give away our picks now, would­n’t it? Com­pare your intu­itions about what is clas­sic or sem­i­nal or over-rat­ed with ours!

Here are some arti­cles with most of the like­ly sus­pects to get you warmed up:

We did NOT before­hand actu­al­ly look at IMD­B’s Top 25 Christ­mas Movies or their Great­est Christ­mas Spe­cials list, but YOU cer­tain­ly can. Nei­ther did we look this rank­ing of the var­i­ous ver­sions of A Christ­mas Car­ol by Dave Trum­bore. While we’re at it, here are times where TV shows ripped off It’s a Won­der­ful Life.

Oth­er ref­er­ences and infor­ma­tion: 

When does A Christ­mas Sto­ry take place? 1940; read triv­ia about that film. The Dare Daniel pod­cast has a bru­tal take-down of the lit­tle-seen 2012 sequel  that serves as a great sub­sti­tute for actu­al­ly view­ing that pile of garbage.

You can watch the quick ver­sion of the very fun­ny Riff­trax run­ning com­men­tary on the Star Wars Hol­i­day Spe­cial on YouTube or buy the whole thing. Did George Lucas real­ly want to smash all copies of it as Mark said?

Bri­an refers to this arti­cle, “Diag­nos­ing the Home Alone Bur­glars’ Injuries: A Pro­fes­sion­al Weighs In” by Lau­ren Hansen.

It’s actu­al­ly the Thanks­giv­ing Char­lie Brown spe­cial that has been blast­ed as racist, not the Xmas one. Here’s an arti­cle about the his­to­ry of Franklin being includ­ed in the strip.

When­ev­er dis­cussing or watch­ing It’s a Won­der­ful Life, I can’t help but think of the Sat­ur­day Night Live “lost end­ing” to the film.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear 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 or start with the first episode.

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The Singer or the Song? Ken Stringfellow (Posies, R.E.M., Big Star) and Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #23 Discuss

in Music, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | December 18th, 2019

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What’s your rela­tion­ship to music? Do you just embrace the pure sound, or do you care about who made that sound? One way of see­ing where you fall on this issue is whether you care more for sin­gles or to whole albums or careers by artists.

Ken Stringfel­low, who co-fronts The Posies and was a mem­ber of R.E.M. and Big Star, joins Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to talk about what actu­al­ly grabs us about music, whether being a musi­cian your­self is a key fac­tor in whether you pay atten­tion to the con­text of a song, how music gets to your ears, singers vs. song­writ­ers, what we think about the notion of “genius,” and how this artist vs. song con­flict relates to how we take in oth­er media (e.g. favorite film direc­tors).

The ideas for this dis­cus­sion most­ly came from reflect­ing on our own expe­ri­ences and habits, but we did some warm-up research into:

Lis­ten to Mark inter­view Ken on Naked­ly Exam­ined Music, pre­sent­ing specif­i­cal­ly some of his solo, Posies, and Big Star songs. After that was record­ing, Ken sang some har­monies on a tune on Mark’s last album, Mark Lin­t’s Dry Folk.

Oth­er ref­er­ences: “Mid­night Con­fes­sions” by The Grass Roots, Lil Peep, Tom Wait­s’s most pop­u­lar album, Lou Reed is not a one-hit won­der, the scene in Slack­er with a fan get­ting Madon­na’s pubic hair, Damien Rice is still work­ing, the band Live reunit­ed, REM on Sesame Street (no, Ken is not on cam­era), Ken being “world music” by play­ing solo in for­eign coun­tries.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear 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 or start with the first episode.

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Pretty Much Pop #22 Untangles Time-Travel Scenarios in the Terminator Franchise and Other Media

in Film, Pretty Much Pop, Sci Fi, Television | December 11th, 2019

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Time-trav­el rules in The Ter­mi­na­tor fran­chise are noto­ri­ous­ly incon­sis­tent. Is it pos­si­ble for some­one from the future to trav­el back­wards to change events, giv­en the para­dox that with a changed future, the trav­el­er would­n’t then have had the prob­lem to try to come back and fix? Nei­ther the closed-loop series of events in the first Ter­mi­na­tor film nor the changed (post­poned) future in the sec­ond make sense, and mat­ters just get worse through the sub­se­quent films.

Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by Bri­an’s broth­er and co-author Ken Ger­ber to talk through the var­i­ous time trav­el rule­sets and plot sce­nar­ios (a good starter list is at tvtropes.org), cov­er­ing Dr. Who, Back to the Future, Loop­er, Dark (the Ger­man TV show), time loop films a la Ground­hog Day (Edge of Tomor­row, Hap­py Death Day), time-trav­el come­dies (Future Man), his­tor­i­cal tourism (Mr. Peabody and Sher­man), Time­cop’s “The same mat­ter can­not occu­py the same space,” using time-trav­el to sen­ti­men­tal­ize (About Time) or clone your­self (see that Brak Show episode about avoid­ing home­work), and freez­ing time (like in the old Twi­light Zone).

Some arti­cles we looked at includ­ed:

You can find the Bri­an and Ken short sto­ries we talk about at gerberbrothers.net. Lis­ten to them pod­cast togeth­er and read the sci­ence fic­tion sto­ries they pub­lish at constellary.com. The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast episode Mark host­ed where the dan­gers of AI are dis­cussed is #108 with Nick Bostrom.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear 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 or start with the first episode.

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Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #21 Considers Role-Playing Video Games

in Pretty Much Pop, Video Games | December 4th, 2019

What con­sti­tutes a video RPG? Is there any actu­al role-play­ing involved?

Our audio edi­tor Tyler His­lop rejoins hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to dis­cuss those video games that are sup­posed to make you feel like you’re con­tribut­ing to the sto­ry, that your choic­es mat­ter, in which you can maybe, you know, choose to wear a fun­ny hat or just craft potions all day instead of advanc­ing the plot. We com­pare solo vs. social games, com­pare video to table-top role play­ing, think about how we relate to the char­ac­ter we’re play­ing, and more.

We touch on Ulti­ma, Final Fan­ta­sy, World of War­craft, Hori­zon Zero Dawn, Skyrim, Fall­out, Out­ward, Death Strand­ing, Eri­ca, Hell­blade: Sakura’s Sac­ri­fice, The Witch­er, and more. Also from TV: Ban­der­snatch, The Guild, and that D&D Key & Peele sketch.

Some sources we looked at includ­ed:

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear 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 or start with the first episode.

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Improv Comedy (Live and Otherwise) Examined on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #20

in Comedy, Film, Pretty Much Pop, Television, Theatre | November 20th, 2019

 

What role does improv com­e­dy play in pop­u­lar cul­ture? It shows up in the work of cer­tain film direc­tors (like Christo­pher Guest, Adam McK­ay, and Robert Alt­man) and has sur­faced in some of the TV work of Lar­ry David, Robin Williams, et al. But only in the rare case of a show like Whose Line Is It Any­way? is the pres­ence of impro­vi­sa­tion obvi­ous. So is this art form doomed to live on the fringes of enter­tain­ment? Is it maybe of more appar­ent ben­e­fit to its prac­ti­tion­ers than to audi­ences?

Mark, Eri­ca, and Bri­an are joined by Tim Snif­f­en, announc­er on the pop­u­lar Hel­lo From the Mag­ic Tav­ern pod­cast, and a mem­ber of the Impro­vised Shake­speare Com­pa­ny and Baby Wants Can­dy (impro­vised musi­cals). He’s also writ­ten for Live From Here and oth­er things. We dis­cuss dif­fer­ent types of improv, a bit of the his­to­ry and struc­ture of Sec­ond City, improv’s alleged self-help ben­e­fits, how impro­vi­sa­tion relates to reg­u­lar act­ing, writ­ing, pod­cast­ing, and oth­er arts, and more.

Here are a few improv pro­duc­tions to check out:

For fur­ther read­ing, check out:

For musi­cal improv, try Naked­ly Exam­ined Music #30 with Paul Wer­ti­co and David Cain, and also #55 with Don Pre­ston (Zappa’s key­boardist) whom Mark quot­ed in this dis­cus­sion.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear 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 or start with the first episode.

 

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Pretty Much Pop #19 Discusses Race and the Target Audience w/ Rodney Ramsey

in Film, Pretty Much Pop, Television | November 14th, 2019

We’ve all felt at var­i­ous points (maybe at most points) that some media cre­ation has reached us by mis­take, that we are not the tar­get audi­ence. 20th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can TV was aimed large­ly at a white major­i­ty, with a par­al­lel, under­fund­ed chan­nel of con­tent aimed at peo­ple of col­or.

So how have things changed? There still seem to be “black shows,” but how do they fit in to a land­scape where inclu­sive­ness is a tool by which shows attempt to appeal to every­one (i.e. get all the mon­ey)? Comedian/actor/writer/producer Rod­ney Ram­sey joins Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to dis­cuss the expe­ri­ence of watch­ing out­side your demo­graph­ic, whether iden­ti­fy­ing with char­ac­ters requires phys­i­cal com­mon­al­i­ties, “black voice,” and the evolv­ing TV land­scape.

We touch on Watch­men, Atlanta, Black Pan­ther, Inse­cure, Sor­ry to Both­er You, BlacK­kKlans­man, Tyler Per­ry, Dear White Peo­ple, Black Jesus, and the black Her­mi­none issue.

Some of the arti­cles we con­sid­ered includ­ed:

Fol­low Rod­ney @Rodney_Ramsey.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear 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 or start with the first episode.

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