Review of my Podcast Experiences

 Mike Vago: Why is This Not a Movie

My friend Mike Vago, children's book author, and A.V. Club columnist has the highly entertaining podcast "Why is This Not a Movie" where people pitch real stories that should be turned into films:
Why Is This Not a Movie?: Who Killed Dorothy Kilgallen w/Orrin Konheim on Apple Podcasts

This is the description of the Podcast I was in:
"Dorothy Kilgallen was a beloved entertainment reporter, a regular on What's My Line, when she took a hard left turn into crime reporting. She covered murders and organized crime. She was the only person to interview Jack Ruby after he killed Oswald, and got to see the Warren Commission report even before LBJ. But when she started to challenge the official story on JFK's assassination, she soon died under mysterious circumstances. Was she murdered? Print journalist Orrin Konheim joins us to talk about Kilgallen succeeding in a male-domainted field, getting close to the Kennedys, and then dying in a manner suspiciously similar to Marilyn Monroe."


As an armchair caster, this is a great podcast to be a part of.

I've been in talks to do two more:

1) Since I was 10 and my dad got me the Book of Marvels for my birthday, I have long considered explorer Richard Haliburton as a role model. Few other people would do the same because he was so much more well-known from the 20s to the 50s then he has been to the last two generations.

I would have pitched this film as a child-friendly story about a Princeton-educated old money guy who was guided by Oscar Wilde's motto of Not Living an Ordinary Life. The film would be told through a few different vignettes including his swimming the Panama Canal for 25 cents, his tracing of the Seven Wonders of the World or his trip aboard the Flying Carpet.

2) My second podcast proposal comes from a book I picked up at the Amtrak train station this past September en route to New Orleans: King Leopold's Ghost.

As this 8-minute video will show you (King Leopold II & the Congo Free State), Belgian King Leopold II instituted a secret slave kingdom in the Congo from 1885-1908 against prevailing European views on slavery. Rather than tell a dismal story about all the pain and suffering inflicted on the natives of the Congo, I would want to tell a story in the mold of "Hotel Rwanda", "The Kite Runner", "Beirut", or "BlacKKKlansman" where people acted against oppression in notable ways. In this case, the biggest decision is where to focus this epic and I'd want to juxtapose the gluttony and excess of King Leopold II (a sovereign who poured money into elaborate castles while never once travelling to the African continent) against the two working class men who bought down his kingdom--Roger Casement and E.D. Morel -- through careful fact finding and a brilliantly plotted campaign.

Shmuel Levy is a friend of mine from when I lived on the Orthodox Jewish community of Richmond, Virginia.

He recently started wanting to get into pod casting as an extension of his abilities to set up audio equipment. 

His recent podcasting series is on films and I discussed the film "Last Night in Soho" with him. We also branched off to the modern blockbuster.

Last Night in Soho with guest Orrin K.mp3 - Google Drive

Elizabeth "Liz" Katheryn Gray is a friend from my research gig at the National Archives and the Head Hauntress at the Sexy Witches podcast. I have been a guest on it a few times. This past April, Liz invited me to Winchester for a weekend trip to a horror film festival. I didn't understand the genre so it was an exercise in giving something new a try. Liz had me on to discuss what it was like being exposed to the genre for the first time and we also were on to review the Oscars that weekend.

7.5: BEST OF 2020 REDUX, THE OSCARS ReCap and The GRINDSPLOITATION FILM FESTIVAL 04/28 by The Sexy Witches | Film (blogtalkradio.com)

And lastly, there's my own channel, which hasn't produced anything lately, but I did produce some stuff. I have continued podcasting with Adam Spector of the DC Film  Society but haven't put up any new stuff in a year.

It's a bit labor intensive to try this new experiment I was envisioning to enhance the visuals with just putting more than our faces.  

On the channel, I talk about movies and talk to people (sometimes at random) about movies:

What I'm Watching: June Edition

 

Cruel Summer (Freeform)-Teen melodramas are a dime a dozen and a few of them like The Society (Netflix) and 13 Reasons Why (Netflix) have chosen to incorporate life-and-death stakes into their premise rather than something like "The O.C." which went from glittery and fun to heavy only in later seasons.

This series is generally in the former camp but it toggles between three successive years in the lives of two teenage girls as if the editor was fidgeting with a remote control. The two teenagers—privileged, popular Kate (Olivia Holt), and reserved Jeannette (Chiara Aurelia)—have their lives transformed by trauma. Kate is kidnapped and held hostage in a basement for several months while Jeannette is (from our initial point of view) unfairly blamed for the crime.

Over the course of three years, we see the two transform from relatively innocent to jaded individuals and the series does a pretty impressive job of developing these characters if you can get over the mood whiplash. Kate and Jeannette and the support systems around them don’t feel overly archetypal though there is one exception in Kate’s haughty socialite mother (played by the ordinarily awesome sitcom actress Andrea Anders).

There is plenty of mood whiplash as there seems little rhyme or reason to the editing but the season mostly works. Additionally, it takes about seven out of ten episodes for this show to get into the “I’m hooked” territory which is way too long for a serialized show. On the whole, it’s watchable at every stage, so that’s enough to keep one going.

Mosquito Coast (Apple TV)-I previously reviewed this show about two episodes in when I felt it had potential through the mysteries of what’s not revealed about the characters.

After making it to the end of the seven-episode first season, I’m having much more trouble recommending this. In the mold of "Prison Break", "Breaking Bad", and more recently "The Americans" or "Ozark", this is one of those shows where characters are pushed on all ends to impossible situations. It’s as if there is a linear relationship between how much tension you infuse a show and how well it’s received.

Well, not according to me. I never bought the “I’m doing it for my family” excuse of Walter White and I buy it even less here with the character of Allie Fox (Justin Thoreaux). Very often these shows make for characters far less likeable or sensible than they’re meant to come across. In this case, Allie Fox has so many deadly bands of baddies after him, it’s generally a miracle if he can survive longer than five minutes. For him to carry his kids into such danger is either underestimating how much of a liability he is (doubtful) or supremely selfish.

The original book and film adaptation are about attempting to create a paradise abroad but this is mostly like watching “The Bourne Ultimatum”: Any philosophical points the work is trying to make plays second fiddle to the extremely engrossing action. Credit goes where it’s due: The action scenes are extremely good, but without more, it’s just a narratively inconsistent action flick.

 

Home Economics (ABC)-Mostly an effort to fill the safe family programming hole left by “Modern Family” except this is a bit more generationally horizontal than vertical. The series centers on the lives of three adult siblings whose kids are roughly the same age. Their parents (Nora Dunn and Richard Kind) make occasional appearances but are safely in recurring guest star territory while the kids are about as important to the formula as “Everybody Loves Raymond”: Screen time is doled out to them if it helps develop one of their parents’ arcs. Frankly, they could have recast the kids in between episodes and I wouldn’t have noticed.

On to the roll call! Jimmy Tatro plays a well-off financial trader who’s a bit difficult to buy considering this actor has appeared quite convincingly in a number of dim guys (from my small sampling). Topher Grace plays a novelist with a bit of neuroticism. Their sister, played by Caitlin McGee, is a lesbian who casually spouts off terms like male privilege and microaggressions. All three are married and all three have kids. The spouses are pretty disposable except Saturday Night Live alum Sasheer Zamata pops up as Caitlin McGee’s other half. Way to bounce back, Sasheer!

As a 30-something with no kids and wife (and highly self-conscious about it), I started the show thinking “what’s in it for me?” until I started to see how well the show poked at the thin veneer of marital bliss.

Within a couple episodes, Tatro’s character gets divorced. In one episode, it’s revealed that neither Topher Grace nor his wife have any ability to attract the opposite sex anymore. As for McGee’s holier-than-thou wokeness, the show does an excellent line of lampooning her occasional moments of self-righteousness without ever showing her beliefs to be unworthy.

The show might not be ambitious, but it’s disarming and has the potential to be consistent entertainment.

We Are Lady Parts (Peacock)-Growing up Jewish, I was never exposed to much about Islam culture and I’m going to take a wild stab here and guess that many of you weren’t either. Perhaps, that’s why I’ve responded like a delighted visitor to shows like “Little Mosque on the Prairie” and “Ramy” which have taken me to a world I might have never seen before.

Part of my fascination is because the way that Islam has been subtly villainized in my upbringing has given me a curiosity of exoticism about the culture. However, there’s a lot of inherent conflict in any practicing Muslim dealing with modernity that makes it ripe for drama. In “We Are Lady Parts”, all the contradictions of modernity and Islam are milked for great character drama among an ensemble that spans the biggest contrasts of the Muslim community in London.

The dominant storyline in fiction of religious Islam, Judaism, and Orthodox strands of Christianity (such as Mormonism) is young people defining themselves against their parents’ expectations of restraint and tradition. This is why it’s such an effective 180 that the protagonist, Amina (Anjana Vasan), is a prim and proper by choice (and more so than her parents, even) because she’s all about husband chasing. Through convoluted circumstances, she meets a quartet of young women who want her to join their rock band. The first season can be seen as a battle for Amira’s soul with the punk rockers on one side and her prom and proper friends which are more “Sex and the City” annoying then what passes for Muslim stereotypes these day. There’s also a nicely meandering love story underneath the story.

One beautiful thing about the show is that while this quartet of punk rockers doesn’t lack for the requisite anti-authoritarian streaks, they still exist within the confines of Islam. The band manager, Momtaz (Lucie Shorthouse), for instance, smokes and works in a lingerie shop, but we never see her without her niqab.

House Broken (Fox)-On what could be the next big thing in Fox’s animation block, Lisa Kudrow plays a poodle, Honey, who leads a therapy group for all the neighborhood pets. There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit here for the jokes—simply imagine what your pet would say if they could talk to a therapist and viola! – but the jokes really hit, so I’ve been gobbling it up so far. There’s also the typical anthropomorphic tics that you see Seth MacFarlane occasionally do with Brian on “Family Guy” (why I predict this will catch on). These anthropomorphic jokes are about 15 times more frequent but I’ll let it slide because, hey, funny is funny.

It also helps that Lisa Kudrow injects Honey with a mix of spunk and relatable aimlessness that makes her character wonderful.  Beyond her, the ensemble is a little bloated but there are some highlights in there. In particular, Will Forte voices a turtle who’s in love with a croc shoe and Jason Matzoukas is a neglected cat with one eye.

To Tell the Truth (ABC)-This game show format has been done before since the 1950s with What's My Line. A group of celebrity panelists try to guess about people with unusual hobbies or claims to fame. With a good host, good guests, and the right finesse, it’s a timeless formula. In the three episodes, I saw the guest panelists and contestants kept things moving along at a jaunty pace so I’m satisfied. The cherry on top is that host Anthony Anderson has his mom on as a fourth panelist of sorts and that’s the sort of randomness that shakes things up.

My Annual Top 12 Shows of the Year:

1. Orange is the New Black (Netflix)-The seventh and final season of “Orange is the New Black” dealt with immigration courts and the continued indignities of the for-profit prison system with harrowing tragedy. At the same time, “Orange is the New Black” didn’t sacrifice realism to throw us a bone with a few well-earned happy endings, and half a dozen other resolutions that at least ended on a poetic note. Through thick and thin, the series has never failed to entertain or stay fresh which is an accomplishment few shows can claim over such a span.

Source: DenofGeek

 2. The Good Place (NBC)- By now, it seems pretty conclusive that we'll never actually see Eleanor and the gang suffering any actual torture (if for nothing else, because no comedy could possibly be mined out of it) but that doesn't mean that this isn't the most high stakes comedy on television. While it is also a TV show that thrives on burning through plot at nearly unsustainable speeds, "The Good Place" found a nice resting perch from which to ease off the gas pedal with a reboot that saw Team Cockroach running their own simulation. The show continued to build the outer fringes of its word giving more fodder for break out characters (Gen, Vicky, Sean, Derek) to fill out the landscape.

3. BoJack Horseman (Netflix)-The tonal marriage of heart-slowing depression and hilarity was on full display in a season opener that saw BoJack going through the motions of rehab over and over while his peers were able to make sudden improvements. BoJack’s universe is when where achievements aren’t easily earned but slowly accrue over time. Despite the show’s rigid progressivism (which the show runners have shouted out quite a bit off-camera), there’s never a lack of empathy for characters like BoJack who have hurt others in their wake. The half-season concluded with one of their great experimental riffs with a “His Girl Friday” send-up that completely omitted the series’ five main characters. The cliffhanger ending properly raised the stakes over how much of his dark past BoJack is going to relive.

Source: Slashfilm

4. Miracle Workers (TBS)-A whimsical take on the classic world-wide doomsday scenario based on the supremely clever book by ex-SNL scribe Simon Rich. Steve Buscemi plays a God who's an idiot among idiots and his angels live in a bureaucratic jungle reminiscent of Terry Gilliam's Brazil. That the stakes are high yet mundane-seeming from above is a great comedic template but the show builds on a winning premise with smart dialogue and a great confluence of idiosyncratic personalities. Additionally, this is one of the few times where I can say I’ve read the book and this is indeed a smart adaptation.

Source: Variety

5. Lodge 49 (AMC)- Although this show won't be winning praise from the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce, there's a great portrait of a city in economic depression and how it limits the imaginations of everyone it affects. Almost everyone, that is. Enter Sean Dudley (Wyatt Russell): An ex-surfer with an inspiringly open heart who recently lost his dad to a shark accident and has nothing to his name except a membership to a lodge whose members are just as aimless as he is. To say the show meanders would be an understatement: The narrative never really has a definite ending point. Characters simply just try to get through their lives without going under. Some chase lofty dreams (David Pasquesi), some are consigned to know their days are behind them (Linda Edmond) , and others (Wyatt's sister played by Sonya Cassidy) are still trying to figure out what the future holds while fending off a string of hellish bosses. The second season asserts itself a little more with converging thread lines and introductions of Paul Giamatti as a blowhard author and Olivia Sandoval as a cooky CEO who desperately needs to adult.

6. A.P. Bio (NBC)-“AP Bio” started out as a fun outliar of a show that pushed the scenario of a reluctant  teacher who inadvertently bonds with his students to extremes. Jack (Glenn Howerton channels about 80% of Dennis from “Always Sunny” here) actively avoids wanting to even teach his students anything and involves them in incriminating activity. But rather than double down on the “Bad Teacher” scenario, this show has created a genuine sense of pathos in the development of Jack and his relationship with his students while still maintaining the veneer his vindictive persona. This show also has a cast of supporting characters that gets better with every moment of the spotlight they’re given from the multi-racial Greek chorus of teachers (Mary Sohn, Lyric Lewis, Jean Villepique) to the class of misfit students. Thank god for Season 3.

Source: WhatCulture.com

7. Arrested Development (Netflix)-Although the show's final half-season slipped under the radar (except for bad press by Jeffrey Tambour), it doesn't diminish the accomplishment of a series finale that tied up so many disparate threads with the idiosyncratic brick jokes and panache that only "Arrested Development" can. The introduction of Kyle Mooney as a dim-witted bastard child of Tobias seemed like an addition that could shake up a very delicate comic infrastructure but towards the end of the season, the makeshift family of Tobias, DeBrie (whose return along with Isla Fisher’s Rebel Alley are often the seson’s two best things), and Murphy Brown felt like a perfect next step in the show’s evolution.

8. The Boys (Amazon Prime)-With the saturation of the superhero genre there’s already an abundance of TV shows, movies and comic strips that claim enough self-awareness of the genre coupled with the ability to skewer its main traits (see “Guardians of the Galaxy”) but a lot of those efforts try to have their cake and eat it too with humorous tones. “The Boys” manages to divorce itself from what it’s parodying will still maintaining the fun and energy of a proper action film. More than that, “The Boys” has a lot more to say about our society than the genre itself: Whether hero (and, by proxy, celebrity) worship has a function in our society (and its need for role models) or if it makes it easier for our values to be subject to abuse.

9. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (FX)-The show’s seasons range in quality from only a standard level of awesome to off the charts awe-inspiring. The last couple seasons were a little bit of a dip. The characters grew up in terms of facing their demons (for Charlie, the waitress; for Mac, his sexual confusion, for Dennis, giving fatherhood a brief try) so yay! But the new versions of the gang members didn’t necessarily translate into laughs. Season 14 ranged from experimental (the sublime noir send-up “The Janitor Mops Twice”), casually meta (“The Gang Gets Romantic”), skewed takes on social issues (“Thunder Gun 4” and “A Woman’s Right to Chop”), and gleeful callbacks (“Dee Day”) while continuing to rarely drag and have its leads stay hilariously in character.

Source: Cinemablend

10. Dead To Me (Netflix)-A serialized mystery focusing on the connection between a widow (Christina Applegate) trying to make sense of her late husband's death and a awkwardly cheery stranger (Linda Cardellini) who enters her orbit under pretty shady circumstances. Cardinelli's character is so desperate to connect, she's possibly the clingiest character on TV and it's hard to take your eyes off her. But there’s a secret. And another one and a couple more after that. To call this a sunny noir is to short change a story told with a style that defies convention. A second season is on the way and there are few shows where I’m excited to see just how far bad the characters will break.

Source: Reality Blurted

11. Holey Moley (ABC)- 99 times out of 100 I consider the artistry superior in scripted programming than any sort of staged reality, but "Holey Moley" proves the exception to the rule. The mini-golf game show (yes you read that correctly) applies just the right tweaks to every one's favorite backyard game and turns it into an extravaganza akin to ABC's Wild World of Sports. With its three-point twelve-player format, talking head intros, and solid editing, the show introduces us to rootable characters and ups the stakes nicely over the course of an hour. The star of the show though is comedy vet Rob Riggle as a host who adds a surreal level of meta-humor as a play-by-play commentator taking in and spitting out all the absurdity with a straight face.

12. Ramy (Hulu)-Whereas most shows about introspective single men in comedy are about getting laid and occasionally more, Ramy is about an devout Muslim in New Jersey trying to veer away from the secular temptations of sex for a greater religious high. That’s definitely in the category of “something different” worth seeking out when we talk about diversity. Although comedian Ramy Yousef shouldn’t be expected to shoulder the entirety of modern Islam on his shoulders, his show gives us an interesting glimpse.

My list of Honorable Mentions was covered last week: American Horror Story 1984 (FX), Bless the Harts (Fox), Black Mirror (Netflix), Derry Girls (BBC Channel 4/Netflix), Disenchantment (Netflix), Good Omens (Amazon Prime), The Orville (Fox), The Other Two (Comedy Central), Russian Doll (Netflix), What We Do in the Shadows (FX)


Everything I watched last year:
Abby’s (NBC), Adam Ruins Everything (TruTV), Almost Family (ABC), Archer (FX), Baroness von Sketch Show (IFC), Big Mouth (Netflix), Card Sharks (ABC), Castle Rock (Hulu), Carmen Sandiego (Netflix), Carnival Row (Amazon)* Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (CBSAA), Corporate (Comedy Central), Crashing (HBO)*, Chernobyl (AMC)*, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (CW), Dollface (Hulu), Documentary Now (IFC), Final Space (TBS/Netflix)*, Fresh off the Boat (ABC), Futureman (Hulu), God Friended Me (CBS), Good Girls (NBC), Grand Hotel (ABC), Hot Date (Pop TV), I-Land (Netflix), I Think You Should Leave (Netflix), 9-1-1 (NBC), Perfect Harmony (NBC), Politician (Netflix), Sex Education (Netflix), Schitt’s Creek (PopTV), Shrill (Hulu), Society (Netflix), Superstore (NBC), Sunnyside (NBC), Those Who Can’t (TruTV), Thirteen Reasons Why (Netflix), Undone (Amazon Prime), Umbrella Academy (Netflix), Will and Grace (NBC), Yellowstone (Paramount Network)

* = one episode

Japanese Game Show imports

I remember when I first saw a link to "Japanese Tetris" where various contestants try to fit through various shapes or risk landing in a pool of urine (according to this source, it is urine they land into http://www.cracked.com/article_15804_p2.html), I thought it was a pretty cool idea for a show and judging by how popular these clips were.

So when they decided to build an American game show out of this Japanese game show, in Fox's new game show "Hole in the Wall," why is it all of a sudden pegged as one of this Fall TV season's most likely failures?

Well, in truth, even though the American version is mostly the same as the Japanese version, there is a slight difference: The Japanese videos are exotic. They're doing something completely out of the ordinary and they're also acting in ways that seem unusual to us. The Japanese participants are being slapped around and falling into vats of urine and are still laughing and having a good time which is somewhat odd. Wierd music is playing in the background and of course, everyone is speaking in a language you don't understand. This enables you to use your imagination a little bit to figure out what everyone is talking about.

When you Americanize it, you take away the mysteriousness of this outside culture. You also feel the fakeness of the whole thing. Sportscasters are giving commentary on what's taking place as if this is a sport that's been around as long as baseball, when in fact, only 24 Americans have played this game in history (4 episodes of 6 contestants each). The contestants on the Japanese shows play the game as if they're taking it seriously and because the average American doesn't know much about Japanese culture, for all we know, this is as much a part of the Japanese way of life as Samurais, origami, and bullet trains are. Therefore we think we're peering into Japanese culture. In America, there's now cultural foundation for this game, the contestants' enthusiasm is not an enthusiam for this game....they just want to make money and the only reason they want to make money through squeezing themselves through enroaching shapes is because that's the avenue laid out for them by American TV executives hoping to artificially create a cultural phenomeon by cashing in on a Japanese trend. It's all too transparent.

So in this case, the exoticness makes all the difference