Marvelous! or The Death of Cinema

A snippet from Stu and Nicole's wide-ranging conversation about Bram Stoker's Dracula, the horny, weird, baroque and lavishly over the top 1992 Francis Ford Coppola film with Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves. 

In 2014 a weird Christian guy made a videogame about spending the night with scary haunted animatronics. What followed was a cultural sensation, with a boatload of sequels and an increasingly weird and esoteric lore. Did you know that the animatronics are concealing the corpses of murdered children? Do you know about Golden Freddy? Did they somehow succeed at fitting this all into a Blumhouse movie? Follow along as Cole, with the help of our Discord community, leads us on a journey into lore, madness, and child murder. Also we talk about the movie.

An extra special thanks to our $10-tier Executive Producers: Terri Edwards-Nixon, Luke P, JetChiclete, GalaxyPeaBrain, squishward, JayJeffrey, Walt Lewellyn of The Black Casebook, Tropical Doves, jprestonpoole, Lohik, bernventers, Ronny Gardocki and Owen2.

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A sample from our discussion of Gore Verbinski's The Ring, the American remake of the 1998 Japanese film 'Ring', the first of a wave of such remakes and the only one that's any good. 

Atomic Horror month concludes on Marvelous! with the most recent and so-far most lucrative Godzilla movie of all time: Godzilla Minus One. Champion fourth mic Seqarts joins us to discuss the reasons for the films massive success, its flaws and virtues, where it fits into the wider canon, discuss its political themes and to explore the the prismatic ways in which it reflects the various concerns, anxieties and narratives of Japanese culture past and present. 

An extra special thanks to our $10 Executive Producers: Luke P, JetChiclete, GalaxyPeaBrain, squishward, JayJeffrey, Walt Lewellyn of The Black Casebook, Tropical Doves, jprestonpoole, Lohik, bernventers, and Owen2.

Please support Nikkei Progressives as well as consider donating to these organizations:

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PCRF (Palestinian Children's Relief Fund)

MAP (Medical Aid for Palestinians)

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If you enjoy the show please consider:

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A sample from our newly released Patreon episode on Ishiro Honda's original 1954 film "Godzilla".

For our movie and MCU news catch-up bonus episode, Cole reads out the leaked Avengers: Doomsday plot synopsis to Nicole and Stu. Nicole reacts very, very badly.

Support us on Patreon to hear the full freak out and more.

This week on Marvelous!, the second and inarguably superior half of the monocultural fugue state that was Barbenheimer summer: a three hour biopic-cum-courtroom drama that's partly in black and white about the world's most consequential product launch. And it had (almost) as much pull as girl toy IP. In the long awaited return of Christopher Nolan to the podcast, Nicole, Stu, and Cole dissect the figurative box office bomb that is Oppenheimer. Topics include Oppie's autistic rizz, the synthesis between Nolan and American Prometheus, the memetic appeal of Barbenheimer, the woman question, and how we begrudgingly have to thank James Woods for making this happen.

And tune in Sunday to the Patreon for a brand new special Marvelous! report on the state of cinema, MCU news, and the angriest Nicole has ever gotten at anything in the history of the podcast.

An extra special thanks to our $10 Executive Producers: Luke P, JetChiclete, GalaxyPeaBrain, squishward, JayJeffrey, Walt Lewellyn of The Black Casebook, Tropical Doves, jprestonpoole, Lohik, bernventers, and Owen2.

If you can, please lend some support to these organizations:

Gaza Funds

PCRF (Palestinian Children's Relief Fund)

MAP (Medical Aid for Palestinians)

National Networks of Abortion Funds

Fun fact: not only was the 1987 He-Man movie Masters of the Universe largely responsible for bankrupting the already flailing Israeli cultural institution that was Cannon Films, but it was also directed by an (alleged) serial gay pedophile.

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"It’s about a fucking doll!" - Amy Taubin

This week, the Marvelous! crew sets their sights on the hot pink pop cultural phenomenon that is Barbie, a billion-plus dollar (post-)feminist object/Mattel rebrand strategy grappling with the fraught, symbolic legacy of the world's most famous doll by giving her a kitschy existentialist crisis. We talk about how the film's priorities as an officially licensed commercial product limit its purportedly feminist politics, its 2016-internet conception of masculinity, how camp aesthetics and self-effacing humor disavow the specter of capitalism, and think a little too deeply about the metaphysical relationship between Barbie Land and the real world. Plus, Nicole gives a lesson on post-feminism, commodified Girl Power, and how Barbie signaled a consumerist end to Fourth Wave feminism as a meaningful political project.

(This episode is dedicated to the life, memory, and herstory of famed Barbie-critic and CIA asset Gloria Steinem.)

"After 'Barbie,' Mattel is Raiding its Entire Toybox" by Alex Barasch

"This Barbie Has Melancholy Feminism: Framing Empowerment and Grievable Lives" by Scarlette Nhi Do

"#Feminism: The Internet’s Facilitation of the Fourth Wave” by Nicole Veneto

Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves by Sophie Gilbert

Feeling Cynical About Barbie by Broey Deschanel

An extra special thanks to our $10 Executive Producers: JetChiclete, GalaxyPeaBrain, squishward, JayJeffrey, Walt Lewellyn of The Black Casebook, Tropical Doves, jprestonpoole, Lohik, bernventers, and Owen2.

If you can, please lend some support to these organizations:

Gaza Funds

PCRF (Palestinian Children's Relief Fund)

MAP (Medical Aid for Palestinians)

National Networks of Abortion Funds

If you enjoy the show please consider:

Subscribing to our Patreon, where you can enjoy exclusive episodes, commentary tracks, and more.

Like, comment, rate, and review as the algorithm demands.

The flailing DCEU runs at light-speed into a brick wall with this misbegotten penultimate pre-reboot entry. Ugly and unfunny, even the film's sole interesting element - Ezra Miller's weird and hysterical performance - is ultimately abandoned for Batman nostalgia and a failed, flat attempt to launch an (immediately recast) Supergirl. It's a bad, bad movie, but at least we had a lot of fun talking about it. Plus: Cole's pot-history of the character and defense of the CW tv show!