We’re both under the weather, so we’re taking a brief hiatus to regenerate. We’ll return shortly with your regularly scheduled thought-provoking pop culture analysis and recommended dose of fatty bring-down.
In the meantime, I submit to you that Christina Hendricks in spectacles is nothing short of spectacular:
A bespectacled Hendricks presents at the Creative Arts Emmys on Aug 21st with Mad Men creator Matt Weiner
TOP: Angelina Jolie in Salt BOTTOM: Screenshot from "Hey Baby"
Discussed:
-Cynara reviews Angelina Jolie’s new movie, Salt
-How this movie was originally meant for Tom Cruise
-How this movie is super violent!
-Street harassment, and some technological interventions thereof
-Hollaback — a soon-to-be iPhone app that gives women and LGBT folks power in the face of street harassment
-A videogame by Suyin Looui that’s provoking a lot of discussion on the subject of street harassment
Links:
Salt: Anything You Can Do I Can Do Equal [Women & Hollywood]
Hollaback NYC [Blogspot]
“Schrödinger’s Rapist: or a guy’s guide to approaching strange women without being maced” [Shapely Prose]
Hey Baby Game – It’s Payback Time, Boys… [Heybabygame.com]
End Music:
“Brand New Colony” by the Postal Service.
Discussed:
-Free-Range Kids: the origin and the controversy
-English kids’ “roaming” distance through the decades
-Personal anecdotes
-Jenny defends attachment parenting. And maybe family beds, too.
-Away We Go, wherein Maggie Gyllenhaal is too darn likeable
-Cynara HATES hugs; Jenny explains object permanence, for those of you who haven’t taken an intro psych course at some time in your life.
-What got us started on the topic of “Free-Range Kids”: Mila’s Daydreams and the obligatory accompanying backlash
-Lower infant mortality = higher rates of helicopter parenting? An hypothesis
-Obligatory Mad Men reference (NB: non-spoiler)
-Cynara’s teenage adventures at the infamous Portage Place
-Jenny discovers Wholphin
-Jenny enjoys “The Room Before and After” and explains it to you and Cynara. This is the James Franco part. (Correction: the issue discussed is actually Wholphin 8, not 6.)
-What is the deal with James Franco?
NOTE: A connection I didn’t notice at the time — Away We Go was written by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida of McSweeney’s.
Links:
Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone [NY Sun]
Lenore Skenazy’s Blog [Free-Range Kids]
How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Four Generations [Daily Mail]
Mila’s Daydreams [Blogspot.com]
Wholphin 8 [WholphinDVD.com]
End clip:
James Franco and Ronnie Marmo in the December 18, 2009 episode of General Hospital.
Just a note to let you know that episode 10 won’t happen until next weekend as we will be celebrating what is known colloquially as the “August Long Weekend,” a civic holiday for much of Canada that has no other purpose but to put a stat holiday in between Victoria Day and Labour Day. We don’t need a better reason. It’s summer in Canada, and it’s only two months long!
Stay tuned, because we’ll be back. In the meantime, we’ll be here:
And I’ll be wearing a two-piece bathing suit. Probably. \o/
It’s a very special day here at FOI because we have a guest contributor for the first time ever! Her name is Margarita and she is a huge Mad Men fan, so we invited her to chat with us on our special Mad Men episode on the occasion of the show returning for its fourth season with the the episode called “Public Relations.”
Margarita lives in San Francisco. You may know her from places such as the Fatshionista Livejournal community (where she is a founding moderator) or the premier Mad Men fansite Basket of Kisses, where she is a new contributor. She blogs about fatshion on Tumblr, as well.
Discussed:
-All the ways in which Peggy dominates in the episode
-All the ways in which Don is recumbent in this episode
-Disability gets a feature role, and we get to see the way our characters react in the context of the 1960s kyriarchy
-Call back to Jon Hamm’s second Saturday Night Live appearance and that hilarious “Hamm and Bublé” sketch, at which point Margarita informs us that Michael Bublé once appeared in yellowface in a movie. o_O
-Betty: everyone loves to hate her and some people just want her off the show. We consider that an unacceptable reaction
-Joan as Femme role model; our hopes for our Joanie, which include us wishing for her rapist husband to die a horrible death in Vietnam
-The race issue. Seriously, this show is all about white people, and we can’t rationalize that anymore
-Some tangents on the subect of True Blood (can that show pleeeease stop brutalizing Tara now? Like, right now?) and also Joss Whedon’s apparent reluctance to accept criticism from his fans
Links:
“Dear Drapers: A letter to ‘Mad Men’s’ first family from the Black maid” [TheLoop21.com]
The Michael Bublé movie in question, Totally Blonde (2001) [IMdb.com]
You can make Mad Men avatars just like ours! [MadMenYourself.com]
End music:
“Something’s Gotta Give” from Ella Fitzgerald’s 1964 release The Johnny Mercer Songbook.
It’s Mad Men day! That special day each year (well, at least each year since 2007) when the new season of the hit AMC period drama returns with a new season.
This is changing up our podcast schedule for this week, as we will be convening tomorrow night for a special all-Mad Men discussion with – WAIT FOR IT! – a special guest!
So keep an eye out in your feed reader for our post late Monday or early Tuesday.
It’s our very special bonus episode full of our SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER review of Inception.
-Does Inception pass the Bechdel test?
-Could Tom Hardy have been a woman?
-Are the highly structured dreams in the film realistic?
-Is Inception the new Matrix?
-Was Clementine Kruczynski an MPDG?
-A little excessive fangirling of Ellen Page and Joseph Gordon-Levitt
-JGL’s HitRECord.org
-And a bit on the topic of digital copyright (for some reason)
Music: “This is the Dream of Win and Regine” by Final Fantasy (or, as he’s now known, Owen Pallett)
Discussed:
-Double Rainbow: the video, the guy, the phenomenon. What does it mean? [Cynara's disclaimer: when she says "expressionism" she means "romanticism.]
-Work of Art: Cynara is caught up on the series, so we talk about it again. What kind of art does this show privelege? And also, have you noticed the show is obsessed with the attractiveness of the women participating in it?
-Inception: Part one of our review/discussion. What we talk about in this episode is relatively spoiler-free and focuses on general ideas and also the hotness of the cast (especially the obvious — Michael Caine). So unless you are a huge spoiler-phobe, you can listen to this episode without seeing the movie (provided you are planning on seeing the film at a later date).
Stay tuned for episode 8.5 where we will go all-out spoiler and geek on Inception. It’ll be posted tomorrow.
Links:
Yosemitebear Mountain Giant Double Rainbow 1-8-10 [YouTube]
Double Rainbow Store [CafePress]
End music: “DOUBLE RAINBOW SONG!!” by the Gregory Brothers.
Discussed:
In our first recorded-ahead-of-time ‘cast, we have two main topics of discussion: the new Bravo reality competition series Work of Art: The Next Great Artist and bratwurst.
***JENNY’S DISCLAIMER***: let me just say that our discussion of Work of Art is based SOLELY on the first two episodes and not any of the ridiculous crap that goes on in episodes three and four. Expect a follow-up on those goings-on in an upcoming episode, possibly with commentary from our friend Cam, whom we mention in this podcast.
Links:
Work of Art: The Next Great Artist [BravoTV]
“Sydney Claxton and the Invention of Curvy Brat Buns” [The Heavy Table]
End clip explained:
Canadians will need absolutely no explanation of this, but for the rest of you: “Don’t You Put It In Your Mouth” is a classic PSA that aired on Canadian TV (produced by the Concerned Childrens’ Advertisers). You can watch the entire video here. Yes, it’s real.
Today we’re talking movies — one good, one terrible. One we’ve seen, one we’re refusing to see.
Jenny and Cynara as toys
Discussed:
1. TOY STORY 3
With its spectacular 99% “fresh” Rotten Tomatoes rating, we join the lovefest for this rather nostalgic outing. We talk about why this franchise is so successful, commercially and critically, as well as Pixar’s virtuoso marketing. We also investigate whether Ken (as in “Barbie and…”) is one big gay joke (Cynara’s conclusion: he’s not), discussing a some of the history of Ken including the controversial 1993 offering “Earring Magic Ken,” also known as “The Gay Ken.”
We also talk a bit about the way we played with toys as kids and how Toy Story captures that accurately.
Tangentially discussed: Ed the Sock and the decline of MuchMusic.
Also, the fate of the film’s villain, Lotso — should he have been redeemed? Could he have been? Can you believe that we’re having an in-depth discussion about the metaphysical fate of a fictional Care Bear analogue?
2. THE LAST AIRBENDER
We’ve talked about this movie before and outlined the reasons we are Against It, but now it turns out that it’s not just the Racebending.com crew who hate the thing. In fact, it is the near-unanimity of the critical aggregate who hates it. Also, how has M. Night Shyamalan managed to fall so far? “From Unbreakable to this — what happened?”
Links:
“The Last Airbender” [RogerEbert.com]
“M. Night vs. The Internet: The Airbender Mashup” [Racialicious]
“Animal Lovin’ Barbie” commercial [YouTube.com]
