Podcasts of the Week Ending August 28

This Day in Esoteric Political History – The Battle of Blair Mountain (1921)

A century ago in West Virginia, the largest labor uprising in American history began.  The US government responded with aerial bombing.

What Next – What Does Haiti Actually Need?

Haiti doesn’t have bad luck but suffers from over a century of imperialism and international aid programs that rarely get money and resources to Haitians.

 

Running Tally of Podcast of the Week Awards for 2021

• Afropop Worldwide – 2
• AirSpace – 1
• Best of the Left – 2
• The Brattle Film Podcast – 1
• Code Switch – 2
• Consider This – 2
• Decoder Ring – 3
• Fresh Air – 2
• Futility Closet – 1
• Have You Heard? – 2
• Hit Parade  – 2
• Hub History – 2
• Judas and the Black Messiah – Entire series
• The Last Archive – 3
• LeVar Burton Reads – 1
• Lost Massachusetts – 3
• The Moth – 1
• The Memory Palace – 1
• 99% Invisible – 4
• One Year – 2
• Politically Re-Active – 2
• Planet Money – 2
• Radio Boston – 6
• Radiolab – 8
• Reparations: The Big Payback – 1
• Scientific American – 2
• Seizing Freedom – 2
• Sidedoor – 1
• Slow Burn – 1
• The Story Collider – 1
• Strong Songs – 1
• Stuff the British Stole – entire series
• The Thirty20Eight – 1
• This American Life  – 2
• This Day in Esoteric Political History – 9
• Throughline – 7
• The Tomorrow Society – 1
• The Truth – 1
• Twenty Thousand Hertz – 5
• Unf*cking the Republic – 2
• Unspooled – 1
• Up First – 1
• The War on Cars – 1
• What Next – 4

Movie Review: Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)

Title: Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Release Date: June 22, 1988
Director: Robert Zemeckis, Richard Williams (animation director)
Production Company: Touchstone Pictures | Amblin Entertainment | Silver Screen Partners
Summary/Review:

I was 14 when Who Framed Roger Rabbit was released and greatly anticipated seeing the movie having always loved animation and in the midst of a phase where I was obsessively watching old Warner Bros. shorts.  When I finally did see the movie, I was disappointed.  I found Roger Rabbit (voiced by Charles Fleischer) to be annoying, Judge Doom (Christopher Lloyd) to be overly creepy (especially in his ultimate demise), and everyone using the term “toons” to be overly affected. I feel like the movie was poorly received at the time, but it has been reconsidered as a classic so I had to watch it again.

Revisiting the movie as an adult I find that I have a better frame of reference for the film noir pastiche which is well done.  I also appreciate incorporating the real-life story of powers-that-be wanting to dismantle the Los Angeles streetcar system and build freeways.  The anti-car ethos resonates with me. Bob Hoskins does an excellent job as the gruff straight man portraying detective Eddie Valiant investigating the murder of Marvin Acme (Stubby Kaye) and why Roger Rabbit was framed for the killing.

This movie, of course, wows with the technical brilliance of incorporating animated characters into live action with a level of reality never before achieved (and never since as computer animation soon became the dominant form of the art).  There’s a scene where Eddie enters Toon Town for the first time and drives through the psychedelic world of toon’s singing “Smile, Darn Ya, Smile!” that is absolutely brilliant, and that was my favorite part when I was younger. I kind of wish more of the movie was like that, because for all its technical brilliance, I still don’t find Who Framed Roger Rabbit to be funny for the most part.  And for a family film, it also has a lot of elements that are over kids’ heads.

I definitely like this movie a lot more than I did when I was younger.  Roger Rabbit is still annoying and Judge Doom is still creepy, but there’s a lot of style and mood as well as nods to film history that I can appreciate.  I just feel that this movie had the opportunity to be a whole lot more.

Rating: ***1/2