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Now displaying: 2019


Hosted by Charlie Bennett and Christian Sager.

GLOW, Season One 0
Jul 5, 2019

This 2017 Netflix television show is a critically acclaimed fictional depiction of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling that were popular in the 1980s. We discuss how the show's creators handle representation of stereotypes while also criticizing the worst of America's fears.

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Ladyhawke 0
Jun 21, 2019

This 1985 fantasy film is remembered fondly by our generation, but may not hold up under re-examination. We look at the studio process it was made under, while thinking about how it tries to subvert our expectations of fairy tales.

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Uzumaki by Junji Ito 0
Jun 14, 2019

This 1998 horror manga depicts a Japanese town that plunges into chaos in the face of the symbolic spiral. We look at how Ito conceived Uzumaki, while struggling with big philosophical ideas like nihilism, rationalism and routine, meticulous dread in the face of our cosmic insignificance.

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Nick Cave Double Feature 0
May 31, 2019

This repost of our two Nick Cave episodes is a mess of grief, awe, love, and aspiration.

Part 1: Nick Cave's Lament

In anticipation of the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album “Skeleton Tree” and its accompanying documentary “One More Time With Feeling,” we discuss the tragedy of losing a child and its effect on art, performance and persona.

Part 2: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Skeleton Tree

By becoming a more vulnerable frontman, Nick Cave has transformed after a major tragedy. To understand this better, we cover his latest album Skeleton Tree, the companion film One More Time With Feeling and the Bad Seeds' latest North American tour.

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Repost of Game of Thrones, Season 6 0
May 24, 2019

THIS IS A REPOST OF A 2016 EPISODE.

In an unusually giddy, slaphappy episode, Charlie & Christian try to understand how Game of Thrones' sixth season was made. When does an adaptation stop being an adaptation? What happens when it passes -- and surpasses -- its source material?

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Regurgitator, Unit 0
May 17, 2019

Thank you to our Co-Producer patron Chris Marlton for selecting this week's topic!

This 1997 Australian alternative rock record was a massive success in its home country, but is something we (the hosts) were totally unfamiliar with. We look at how music subjectively builds identity for some "young people" to understand why Unit is so important to adults looking back on their outsider adolescence.

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Supercontext: The Sheriff of Babylon 0
May 10, 2019

This 2015 Vertigo comic by Tom King and Mitch Gerads sets a murder mystery in the Iraq War in 2004. We discuss how the creators strived for accuracy and reverence with this complex story while struggling with our own distaste for violence, glorification, and authority.

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HULK 0
May 3, 2019

Thank you to our Co-producer patron Kevin Wetter for selecting this week's topic!

This 2003 superhero film adaption went through ten screenwriters during its production and suffered poor critical reception. We look back before the Marvel Cinematic Universe as we now know it and ask why the formula of Greek tragedy mixed with Cold War paranoia failed to work.

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Goodnight PunPun, Volume 1 0
Apr 5, 2019

This 2007 manga serial by Inio Asano seems like a simple story about a middle-school boy growing up in Japan. But we find that using symbolic simplicity together with the detailed, weird world of adults, Asano has been described as the voice of his generation.

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Angel Dust, by Faith No More 0
Mar 29, 2019

This 1992 album is celebrated as one of the best of the era but we look at the dysfunctional, toxic relationships between the five band members, and we find that the pressures of the music business, touring, and getting older, led to internal conflicts that made it harder for Faith No More to just be a group of goofy weirdos.

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The Prisoner 0
Mar 22, 2019

This 1967 British TV show is revered as a cult classic that was radical and countercultural, while symbolizing philosophical arguments about individualism vs. collectivism. We take a deeper look at star Patrick McGoohan and the commercial interests behind the show to ask if it's ultimately more conservative than pop culture likes to remember.

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The White Album, by Joan Didion 0
Mar 15, 2019

This 1979 collection of essays attempts to reveal the 1960s and California as stories without narratives. We discuss how Didion's work was branded because of her gender, class, and lack of politics, despite her insistence that writing was only an attempt to make sense out of chaos.

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The Money Store by Death Grips 0
Mar 1, 2019

This 2012 experimental noise record was heralded as an important moment in musical evolution. We look at how the band approaches their process while unpacking their relationship with major label Epic Records. And we ask, how do noise, magick, and defecation contribute to the future of music?

 

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The Tale of One Bad Rat, by Bryan Talbot 0
Feb 22, 2019
This collected comic is about a victim of child abuse, while also serving as an homage to the work of storyteller Beatrix Potter. We discuss Talbot's approach to representing such difficult subject matter, while also crafting a book that was more user friendly to non-comics readers.

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Crashing, Season One 0
Feb 15, 2019

This HBO television show about a standup comedian going through divorce attempts to tackle three big themes: sex, religion and the importance of comedy. We look into Pete Holmes and Judd Apatow's motivations behind-the-scenes, while also asking, "What is its point of view beyond self absorption?"

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Distant Star by Roberto Bolaño 0
Feb 8, 2019
This 1996 novella is about the dark history of Chilé, merged with a detective story about poets. We look at Bolaño's career, while taking into account criticisms of his authenticity and his representation of Chileans from the vantage of his security in Europe.
 
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Throne of Blood 0
Feb 1, 2019

This 1957 Japanese samurai film is a postwar adaptation of Shakespeare's MacBeth, but we learned that it's also tapping into historical theatrical techniques and criticisms of nationalistic self-destruction. We turn to other writers and scholars for help unpacking these symbols we don't know much about, while learning just how universal this critically acclaimed movie actually is.

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Pride of Baghdad 0
Jan 25, 2019

This 2006 comic by Brian K. Vaughn and Niko Henrichon is about lions escaping the Baghdad Zoo during the Iraq War. We look at how the creators approached this subject matter, why it's been challenged in libraries and how it represents people in the Middle East.

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Television, Marquee Moon 0
Jan 18, 2019

This 1977 record seems to mythologize a certain version of New York, so we look at how it was made to get to the core beneath its poetry, guitar solos and critical success.

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