Sunday, September 25, 2016

podcast recommendation: Imaginary Worlds

After you finish listening to podcasts featuring members of our book club, you should check out Imaginary Worlds. Thoughtful, entertaining, and concise, and they cover a ton of the things we often find ourselves talking about. Here are some of my favorites:

#15 – Politics of Thrones has poli sci profs Seth probably knows, applying their skills to Westeros.

#22 – Fixing the Hobo Suit covers the design and philosophy of superhero costumes.

#30 – Han Shot Solo is about what you think it is, AND is part 4 of a 5-part series on the cultural legacy of Star Wars

#35 – Imagining Wonder Woman tells the most interesting parts of the story in the Jill Lepore book, in much less time and more clearly.

#36 – Why They Fight talks about the surprisingly broad relevance of D&D character alignments.

Listen. You owe it to yourself.




Thursday, September 15, 2016

Suggested holiday gift


Non-expert on non-topic

My brother Harris, who's a physician in California, has started a podcast in which he interviews people he knows about random things having to do with medicine. In this episode, he interviews me about medical procedures used in movies that don't actually work in real life. For example, using heat or fire to cauterize an open wound (see "Rambo III," "Star Trek: Beyond," "The Revenant," any light saber film, etc.), which is usually presented as stopping bleeding and infection, but would most likely just lead to more pain and death.

As I'm neither a doctor nor a filmmaker, I have no expertise here at all, but we had a good time with it, and I do reference Station Eleven.

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Why You May Love Marvel Movies, but Not Remember the Music




A really interesting article and video here, which details why Marvel movies have almost no distinctive music, and gets into some fascinating stuff about the use of "Temp Tracks."  That said, I like the theme to the Avengers.

Wednesday, September 7, 2016