Reel Deep Dive

While it feels impossible to imagine this in a world where Disney is currently a cultural monopoly, the House of Mouse was once in such dire straits that it was seriously considering the prospect of permanently shutting down production of its animated films. Instead, the studio put out The Little Mermaid (1989), a lower-budgeted and story-focused effort whose success put Disney back on the map. This led to a streak of lucrative, fondly-remembered movies during a period that is now referred to as "The Disney Renaissance".

Star Trek is one of Rachel's core fandoms, so it was really only a matter of time before Reel Deep Dive handled a film in this long-running franchise. Rachel chose Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, a film often seen as one of the weaker entries in the saga. Both Rachel and Ryan think that it's actually a pretty solid movie, so one of the discussion points is why Search For Spock is dismissed as frequently as it is.

At some point, American media decided that there was only two idioms for the field of animation...

It's Rachel's turn to pick the subject and she went with Baz Luhrmann's gaudy take on the big-budget musical. Moulin Rouge was a big favorite of Rachel's during her adolescence and it remains a solid "comfort movie" that she puts on whenever she's bored or tired or just wants to have something familiar playing in the background.

Hollywood has been consistently producing James Bond movies for almost sixty years at this point. And, while the early installments were a bold new voice in the filmmaking landscape, the franchise stopped innovating after 1964 and has been appropriating whatever happened to be popular in contemporary action cinema since 1973. While every movie is a reflection of the world that created it, the 007 films are a particularly interesting time capsule of what was going on in pop culture throughout its existence.

Ronald Reagan's ascension to the American presidency led to a wave of deregulatory practices that remains lauded (and imitated) by conservatives to the present day. Among these practices was the repeal of FCC protocols that prevented children's programming from engaging in direct marketing. This led to a slew of cartoons that were thinly-veiled toy commercials for the impressionable youth of the 80's.

So far, Ryan's been running things on Reel Deep Dive. He picks the subject, writes up the talking points for the episode, guides the structure of the discussion, and even writes the descriptive captions for this page (he feels weird while writing about himself in the third person). This episode, centered upon Satoshi Kon's psychological horror anime Perfect Blue, changes that dynamic. Rachel picked the subject, drafted the discussion template, and directs the trajectory of the conversation.

On occasion, it's impossible to definitively state why a certain film has clung to our collective memory. This is not the case with The X From Outer Space; people remember this movie because its titular kaiju is a cosmic chicken monster. That being conceded, The X From Outer Space still has a curious legacy that's worth exploring.

Our last episode focused on The Broadway Melody, the film that established MGM as the foremost producer of movie musicals. This episode centers upon Easter Parade, a film created in the midst of numerous box-office juggernauts from MGM's song-and-dance crew. At this point, the shaky, uncertain structure of The Broadway Melody had long since been polished into a slick, consistent, and crowd-pleasing formula.

The Broadway Melody is arguably the first movie musical; its success kicked off decades of ever-more-elaborate musicals from MGM. The Broadway Melody was also the first sound movie to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. It spawned four (sorta) sequels and a remake. One of its songs ("You Were Meant For Me") has been performed by everyone from Bing Crosby to Gene Kelly to Sting.