The Power of Costuming in Film: Pretty Much Pop #38 with Whitney Anne Adams (Happy Death Day, Great Gatsby)

in Fashion, Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | April 8th, 2020

How does cloth­ing mesh with set design, cin­e­matog­ra­phy, sound design, etc. to cre­ate the mood in a film? Whit­ney designed for and dressed leads and crowds on The Great Gats­by, the Hap­py Death Day films and sev­er­al indie flicks. She joins Eri­ca, Mark and Bri­an to dis­cuss how clothes on screen relate to clothes in life, design­ing vs. curat­ing, his­toric vs. mod­ern vs. genre, when cos­tumes get dis­tract­ing, her cur­rent TV and film picks for notable cos­tum­ing, and how an inter­est in (or total obliv­i­ous­ness to) clothes affects the watch­ing expe­ri­ence.

Read a few inter­views with Whit­ney about her process:

More arti­cles to make you think about cos­tumes:

Fol­low Whit­ney on Insta­gram @waacostumedesign. She’s also the styl­ist for Bri­an Tyree Hen­ry (i.e. Paper Boi on Atlanta). Some of the indie films she’s worked on that we bring up include Pierc­ing, The Eyes of My Moth­er, and Irre­place­able You.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. 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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Why Did LEGO Become a Media Empire? Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #37

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | April 2nd, 2020

Why has a chil­dren’s toy become a brand attached to vir­tu­al­ly every media type, part­ner­ing with the most ubiq­ui­tous fran­chis­es, and serv­ing as a pas­time for many adult hob­by­ists who will gut you if you call LEGO a “chil­dren’s toy.”

Bri­an Hirt (our res­i­dent AFOL, i.e. adult fan of LEGO) talks with co-hosts Eri­ca Spyres and Mark Lin­sen­may­er about cre­ative play vs. fol­low­ing the print­ed direc­tions, build­ing purists vs. anthro­po­mor­phiz­ers, LEGO qua cor­po­rate over­lord, the LEGO films and com­pet­i­tive build­ing TV show, and more.

Bri­an’s LEGO designs that we react to are the Man­del­brot frac­tal, baby Yoda, drei­del, and swim­ming pool. “AFOL” is but the first of many LEGO-spe­cif­ic ini­tialisms; see the glos­sary.

Here are some arti­cles we drummed up to pre­pare:

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. 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 Allure of Puzzlement: Pretty Much Pop #34 w/ Adal Rifai on Escape Rooms and Other Puzzling Pastimes

in Games, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | March 11th, 2020

The com­ic and the trag­ic are well-estab­lished modes with­in enter­tain­ment, but what about the puz­zling? Rid­dles may have been a chief pas­time in days of yore (well, they’re fea­tured in Oedi­pus and The Hob­bit, any­way), but does this way of being enter­tained have a place in today’s age of mass media?

Impro­vis­er and pod­cast­er Adal Rifai joins Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to dis­cuss his love of escape rooms, rid­dles, and oth­er oppor­tu­ni­ties for puz­zle­ment. We dis­cuss lat­er­al vs. algo­rith­mic think­ing, group dynam­ics, com­par­isons to impro­vi­sa­tion and triv­ia, rid­dle types, video games, and more. Some puz­zle-rel­e­vant films we touch on include Escape Room, Cube, The Game, and Mid­night Mad­ness.

Some resources we used to pre­pare include:

Adal’s two oth­er pod­casts are Hel­lo From the Mag­ic Tav­ern and Sib­lings Pec­u­lar. Fol­low him @adalrifai. He per­forms reg­u­lar­ly on Whirled News Tonight at Chicago’s IO The­ater.

Every Pret­ty Much Pop episode includes bonus, post-episode dis­cus­sion, and this time Adal stayed around for a lit­tle more on escape rooms (can they engage all five sens­es?) and quite a bit more on pod­cast­ing, includ­ing the paraso­cial rela­tion­ships that lis­ten­ers may have with pod­cast hosts. This was suf­fi­cient­ly fun that we’d like to share it with all of you, in hopes that you might then want to hear this for all our our episodes by sup­port­ing us at patreon.com/prettymuchpop.

This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast (prettymuchpop.com) is curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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Updating Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” to Cover Female Action Heroes–Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #33

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | March 5th, 2020

This week’s guest Vi Burlew has arisen, a shin­ing fig­ure clad in mail, car­ry­ing aloft a shim­mer­ing broadsword to bring your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt this top­ic about the hero’s jour­ney.

This gen­er­al plot struc­ture dat­ing back to ancient myth was detailed by Joseph Camp­bell and famous­ly and delib­er­ate­ly plun­dered to cre­ate the plot of the orig­i­nal Star Wars. So how has this evolved with the increas­ing intro­duc­tion of female heroes in recent, large­ly Dis­ney-owned block­busters? We talk Won­der Woman and Cap­tain Mar­vel, antic­i­pate Black Wid­ow and the new Mulan, but also bring in Lord of the Rings, Har­ry Pot­ter, The Wiz­ard of Oz, Lit­tle Women, Jane Eyre, Work­ing Girl, and of course Road House.

What com­pli­cates this issue is that a dis­tinct “hero­ine’s jour­ney” had already been plot­ted in response to Camp­bell by fem­i­nist thinkers at least back to Mau­reen Mur­dock in 1990. The key dif­fer­ence is that while the hero achieves the goal and comes home in tri­umph, the hero­ine then real­izes that there was some­thing self-betray­ing about the tri­umph and requires an addi­tion­al step of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with her ori­gins. This is like if Luke real­ized after destroy­ing the Death Star that he was a mois­ture farmer all along and had to come to terms with that. (Maybe he could actu­al­ly grieve for his dead aunt and uncle and his best friend Big­gs!)

It’s been argued that Har­ry Pot­ter’s jour­ney more close­ly resem­bles that hero­ine’s jour­ney, where­as, say, Eowyn from Lord of the Rings (“I am no man!”) is a more tra­di­tion­al hero. Action films of today may fea­ture female heroes, but when this is done thought­ful­ly (not just by tak­ing an action hero and swap­ping the gen­der with­out fur­ther alter­ation), then film­mak­ers may tweak the struc­ture of the myth to include some gen­der-spe­cif­ic ele­ments and per­haps blend the two types of jour­ney. These new vari­ants that may or may not res­onate in the way that caused the orig­i­nal Star Wars/Campbell for­mu­la to become so pop­u­lar.

Two arti­cles we specif­i­cal­ly cite in our dis­cus­sion are:

For some basics about the jour­neys described by Joseph Camp­bell, Mau­reen Mur­dok, and a dif­fer­ent ver­sion by Vic­to­ria Lynn Schmidt, see the Wikipedia entries on Hero’s Jour­ney and Hero­ine’s Jour­ney.

In addi­tion, The Hero­ine Jour­neys Project web­site fea­tures numer­ous arti­cles about female heroes in media. We also looked at this red­dit thread, which among oth­er things pro­vides some oppos­ing views to those of our guests about the Star Wars fran­chise char­ac­ter Rey.

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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Why Every Nominated Film Will Win the 2020 Oscar: A Pretty Much Pop Podcast Debate (ep. 30)

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | February 6th, 2020

The 2020 Acad­e­my Awards are near­ly upon us! Real­is­ti­cal­ly, most of you will find this episode well after the win­ners have already been announced, but seri­ous­ly, that should not affect your enjoy­ment of this dis­cus­sion. Your intre­pid non-film-crit­ic Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast hosts have each been ran­dom­ly assigned three of the best pic­ture nom­i­nees to argue for either for why it should with the Oscar, or if we real­ly don’t like it, why we think it will win any­way. The assign­ments were as fol­lows:

  • Mark Lin­sen­may­er: 1917, Lit­tle Women, Jok­er
  • Eri­ca Spyres: Jojo Rab­bit, Par­a­site, Once Upon a Time…in Hol­ly­wood*
  • Bri­an Hirt: Ford v Fer­rari,  Mar­riage Sto­ry, The Irish­man**

*Cov­ered in our ep. 12.
**Cov­ered in our ep. 29.

As we hash out the rel­a­tive mer­its of these films, we reflect on what it is to be an Oscar-win­ning type-of-film as opposed to one peo­ple might actu­al­ly enjoy watch­ing, pat­terns of what kinds of films win in which cat­e­gories, and the effect of view­ing con­di­tions, pri­or knowl­edge, and pre­con­cep­tions on our enjoy­ment.

In prepa­ra­tion, we all watched all nine films and looked at some of the pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive reviews about them. Here are a few more arti­cles cov­er­ing the Oscars more gen­er­al­ly that we also used to make our­selves more sus­cep­ti­ble to OSCAR FEVER.

The par­tic­u­lar neg­a­tive 1917 review Mark talks about was by Richard Brody. Here’s an arti­cle about Joaquin Phoenix impro­vis­ing his stunt work as Eri­ca men­tions. Speak­ing of Jok­er, have you heard the (sub)Text pod­cast pre­sen­ta­tion by Mark’s Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life co-host Wes Alwan on the psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic dimen­sions of that film?

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion mus­ing about past win­ners and 2020 act­ing cat­e­gories 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

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is PMP-The-Singer-Not-the-Song-with-Ken-Stringfellow-400-x-800.jpg

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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