Peter Fenzel hosts with Matthew Belinkie, Mark Lee, and Dave Shechner to overthink the re-release of Avatar, its implications for the future of 3D movies, and the Tila Tequila incident at the Gathering of the Juggalos. Spoiler alert for the movie Everybody Poops.
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@shechner – well, actually, you’re not the only scientist you know who knows the word “Charybdis”. It happens to be the name of a hypoxia-inducible transcription factor in Drosophila, first identified (with its partially redundant homolog scylla) in this paper: http://genesdev.cshlp.org/content/18/23/2879.abstract
By the way, I’d love to see the Olsen Twins portraying the anthropomorphized twin aquatic terrors of Scylla and Charybdis.
Ohhh, you’ll be wrapped around my finger.
Or even better, “I have only come here seeking knowledge
Things they would not teach me of in college.”
For what it’s worth (which is very little, I presume) The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is my favorite movie. You, Mr. Lee, seem to fear it might be some sort of Juno or (500 Days of) Summer type movie, which it assuredly isn’t. Now, if you don’t like Wes Anderson, as you stated, there is a real chance you won’t like it, but I for one thing it is tremendous. Really funny with a touch of pathos, shot wonderfully with excellent music. I highly recommend it.
Also, the movie Matinee is available to watch via streaming on Netflix. I have not seen it, but I may get around to it at some point, although the J.J. Abrams Star Trek comes out on streaming Sept. 1 so it’ll be behind that at the very least. Also coming out Sept. 1 is Top Secret!.
Thanks Chris. I’ll give it a shot.
Re: Wes Anderson, I did enjoy “The Royal Tenenbaums” the first time I saw it, but just could not sit through subsequent attempts to watch it again. Something about the movie’s style really turned me off. The only way I can explain it is by referencing this parody of what a Spider-Man movie directed by Anderson would be like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5KfHEoZDKI
So to connect this episode to a prior one, are the juggalos the 4chan of music fans?
@lee, The BP oil spill would actually be a great jumping-off point for the inevitable US remake of The Host. I think Universal has the rights to it, and it would not surprise me in the least if they wound up using that as the genesis of some kind of mutant fish monster.
Of course, whereas the original pinned the blame on
the US for creating the monster, we’ll probably just blame terrorists or have Kanye West blame George W. Bush or something.
Nice job host Pfenz. Great episode everyone.
Expanding on Wade’s ideas, I think the Kanye should create the monster, then have a cut away at some point where Dubya blames it all on Kanye.
Also, everything going on right now is Reagan’s fault.
That is all.
Then we can have the iconic scene in which Mike Myers looks on in quiet embarrassment as Bush nonchalantly states, “Kanye West does not care about people being eaten by giant fish monsters,” during a telethon. It practically writes itself!
A discussion on aquatic terror with no mention of Sharktopus?
I wondered about that as well, but to be fair, Matt was absent from the podcast, and he seems to be the main proponent of Sharktopus on the OTI team. I could be wrong about this, but it is my impression.
I do love me some sharktopus.
Funny story – there’s a part early on during the question where I made a joke about passover, and I talked about “Leaving a chair open for…” but then I pulled back and said I’d mention it later.
The joke I was going to make was “Leaving a chair open for Sharktopus,” but then it occured to me Sharktopus might be a panelist’s answer to the question, so I decided to wait and maybe make the joke later. I didn’t want to leave somebody with nothing to say.
But then it turned out we kind of took the question in a different direction and Sharktopus never came back around, which is unfortunate.
But you were observant that it was weird Sharktopus wasn’t in the podcast; the fact that he wasn’t was definitely a sin of omission.
Never made the “bleeding edge” connection till now. Definitely need more printer humor. We need to get it all in now while the field still exists.
On the 3-D front, I must agree with J. Hoberman, in his Village Voice article “The Problem With 3-D,” when he writes that “…3-D is an attraction that has little to do with, and may even detract from, narrative.” Suspension of disbelief is key to any story, but ‘realism’ can be a detraction. Nobody cares much about the stage settings of live theater if the acting is captivating. The drama of acting should suspend disbelief and be personally involving.
Special effects (to include 3-D) reinforce the barrier between the audience and the characters, the story. It is akin to the creepy valley of almost life-like robots. Unless a perfect verisimilitude exists, the effects draw attention to themself by their impressive artifice, which takes you out of the story.
http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-08-11/film/the-problem-with-3-d/
As for Tila Tequila, I see her as a direct parallel to 9/11. She thought she was untouchable and could win over anyone with no harm ever coming her way. She ignored warnings. Her hubris was confronted with the reality of tragedy. Fools rush in…
This is a bit late, but I was behind on my podcasts. Please forgive me, benevolent overthinking overlords…
I often here the “well, there was violence against men too so it can’t be sexism” argument when the topic of female violence comes up, but the presence of male-on-male violence doesn’t preclude the possibility of misogyny and disrespect to women as a gender. In the case of the juggalos, it’s entirely possible for them to have been motivated by misogyny in their actions towards Tila Tequila, by racism in their actions towards Methodman, other things for Andrew WK, etc. I concede that this group appears to revel in acts of aggression in general, but the motivations for each act can be separate and IMHO it’s poor logic to discount the possibility of bigotry just because they seem indiscriminate with their violence.
There are broader social implications to this idea, given that “well there’s violence against men too” is often used to decrease the importance of female violence in general. “She puts herself out there, so…” is also an argument used to justify rape. The argument was made on the show that if a woman is attention-seeking and sexual, the juggalos perceive that she’s dehumanized, therefore the violence against her is more understood. But would we say the same things about attention-seeking, sexual men? Are men as socially reinforced (and then vilified -> dehumanized) for overt sexual behaviour? Generally, the answer is no. If John Mayer had showed up and gotten rocks and feces thrown at him, I feel like the discussion would have been around his music not jiving with the juggalo persona, not because he’s seen as a bit of a “player” and has bedded (and publicly discussed) many famous women. That the focus was on sexuality, I think, is evidence that her gender was perceived as important in what happened.
I don’t think that it was your intent to contribute to sexist public concepts, but that’s exactly why it needed to be pointed out.
Keep up the good work.