Don’t Beware the Pod People.
By Eric Hill • Dec 3rd, 2009 • Category: Branta Recommends
Some call it a groove. Some call it a rut. Either way I tend to get comfortable repeating behaviour and mining routines in all aspects of life. And especially in leisure. I am a watcher of whole TV seasons on DVD; reader of authors’ complete bibliographies; re-watcher of movies like some turn to comfort food.
But there are also those little synaptic breaks that happen a few times each year. Where all the strands of pastimes knot at the same interval and you find yourself with the big, “what’s next” question. November was one of those months for me. Midway through I wrapped up my re-visitation of Battlestar Galactica via my big splurge on the 25 disc full series box. I finished reading the David Foster Wallace I had been pecking away at and the poetry books I’d bought at the UNB Weekend. Other than subjecting myself to the endless barrage of C-grade horror movies in hopes of pulling a gem from the rough… I had reached a break point.
Then it occurred to me: Podcasts!!! I’d had my iTouch for over a year and other than my own Surgery Radio podcast I hadn’t explored what free entertainments in this realm iTunes had to offer. As it turns out there is quite a lot available, though it seems an overwhelming amount of the content is some adjunct to pre-existing media from another stream. Podcasts of CBC, NPR, BBC radio and TV shows condensed to highlight form. Little bytes from comedy shows or science programs. Fans gushing over Twilight, Glee or Lost. Something for a denominator of everyone.
My fickle neurons weren’t tickled until I came across these three shows… this is the recommendation part of this Branta recommends post:
A weekly, roughly half hour discussion hosted usually by Stephen Metcalf that covers three usually disparate topics from television, music, film, books and the silly viral cultural news items that media wraps around too tightly at times. For example the most recent edition discussed the flap over the Whitehouse Party Crashers, Time Magazine’s denunciation of the 00s as the worst decade ever and a look at Eva Tanguay, a vaudevillian performer (and Canadian) whose popularity and presence rivaled today’s most Diva-esque Divas. The 3 or 4 person panels are usually informed, erudite and opinionated, but the know-it-all factor is cut with good humour and crankiness.
Spawned from a website that gathers and averages the reviews from the wide world of film critics webular, cathodic and papery alike. The show, which is also broadcast on US cable network Current, holds to the familiar Ebert and whomever format of two hosts dissecting weekend openers… to a point. The twist here is that, aside from Brett Erlich and Ellen Fox, both of whom are hip and funny without overplaying it, the show solicits the audience to video tape themselves review the three weekly movies (announced for each subsequent episode) and these viewer opinions and snipped and slapped together with the hosts’ to create a refreshingly rounded summary of viewpoints. Toss in little themed features (sample: best stoners in cinema… #1 going to Brad Pitt for surviving in True Romance), trailer reviews and more and it’s a refreshing spin on the talking head wasteland of movie chat.
If you only have a minute to spare than why not spare it for John Hodgman, most widely known for his sad anthropomorphic performances as PC in the Apple commercials. A take off of the Today in History format, Hodgman fabricates a surreal fake event for each day of the year and lets you listen to the results.
Eric Hill is the editor of branta.
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