Pop Ramblings » books

your summer "reading" list.

Seth Finck — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:40:00 +0000

Take a journey with me, back to your glory days or your not glory days, HIGH SCHOOL. There was that summer rite of passage into english class, your summer reading list. You hated it then, you’ll love it now. What you say? Summer reading. The collective PR groan can be heard for miles. That’s right kiddies, it’s time to head back to school and catch up on some stuff you need to be aware of as we head into the dog days of summer. Hopefully this will be more fun than your read through Once and Future King. But hopefully there will be just as many swords.

TV
Veronica Mars- I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it’s the best show you’re not watching. I can’t overstate this point. Not only does it star the impeccable Enrico Colantoni as the man you’ll want as your super cool male mentor but also my #1 all-time character crush (the titular character). Watch this show, I mean I’m not even doing this selfishly anymore because the show’s off and has no chance to come back. This is for you people, I do it for you!

Supernatural- Sweet Jesus, two CW shows in one post. Call the bigwigs the end is nigh. Show is good, makes a great use of horror/comedy and plays really well on family ties. Jesus, two CW shows, maybe it’s time to turn in my blog.

Eastbound and Down- DVD dropped this week. Catch Danny McBride as a washed up flamethrowing pitcher. Watch him as he takes on life on the comeback trail and off it. But also on his jet ski, a lot. It will have you laughing harder than you could imagine. And then feeling a little bad about it, but McBride’s magic is in his ability to make the character simultaneously infuriating and endearing. It’s incredible. Also, ridiculous jet ski action.

Friday Night Lights- It’s for guys, it’s for girls. It’s for everyone. It has drama, football, and a bunch of beautiful people. It’s strange how many very attractive people live in a small Texas town. But I’m good with it. It’s as addictive as they come and it’s got some great mojo on its side as it has another season in the pipeline. Go get it.

What I’m working on: Breaking Bad- I tried to get into Mad Men, but couldn’t get hooked. I’m willing to try again, but I think first I’m going to give Breaking Bad a shot. It’s got one of my favorite tv dads, Bryan Cranston from Malcom in the Middle. I’ve yet to even watch an episode, but I’m excited for something new.

Books
Yes, actual things to read:
Life of Pi- A great adventure story with possibly the best ending to anything I’ve ever read. Almost nothing happens for a good half of the book and you still can’t put it down. Great read.

Everything Bad For You Is Good For You- A look at all that brain-rotting pop culture and what it’s doing to make you smarter. That’s right. Smarter. Take that naysayers, it’s in a book so it has to be true.

What I’m reading: Rock On- A brother-recommended tome described as The Office in the music industry. Yes please.
Me Talk Pretty One Day- David Sedaris has become a minor obsession of mine due to my major obsession with This American Life to which he contributes fairly regularly. A funny funny man I’m excited to actually read him.

There are lots of others to catch up on.

I know some of my friends have summer pop culture schedules, what’s on yours?

I promise to you all and to Kristen Bell that I will not rest until people watch Veronica Mars and see how very amazing it is and admit it to me by submitting haikus about either its greatness or its awesomeness. I’ll leave that decision to you.

tally ho!: pop culture’s greatest adventures

Seth Finck — Fri, 29 May 2009 23:10:00 +0000

Today, Pixar’s newest superfilm, Up, hits screens across the USA. Up is being described as “deeply emotional and affecting,” “exhilarating,” and a “high-flying adventure.” Of course it’s also rating extremely high with reviewers, because let’s be serious Pixar is the most consistently fantastic movie house in the world. Sure they only churn out one per year. But if other movie theaters did such a great job with their one movie, we might only need 20 movies a year. (OK, overstatement there) But really, Pixar is the best. And with this they’ve given us their best adventure yet. Which got me thinking about adventures in general in the world of pop culture, shocking I know. There are lots of great adventures in pop culture, so narrowing it down to just a few is extremely difficult. I’ll give you a couple of my faves in a few different areas:

Movies
Raiders of the Lost Ark- Indiana Jones is just about everything an adventurer should be. He’s smart, he’s tough, and he’s brave. And he can wear a fedora like no one else AND he always gets the girl. He’s a perfect archetype of the hero. His globe-trotting, artifact-hunting, and whip-wielding jaunts are the stuff adventures are made of. What’s not to love?

Goonies- HAD to do it. What’s more exciting than setting off in search of buried pirate treasure? And this rag-tag group of misfits makes it all the more exciting. Booty traps. Boobie traps. That’s what I said Booty Traps. So great.

Back to the Future- It’s funny. It’s got time travel. It’s got an everyman hero saving the day against your high school bully. And all in the name of love, his parent’s love. And they drive back in time in a Delorean. Amazing.

TV
LOST- This is currently the best adventure on TV. And it will go down as one of the best ever regardless of how it ends. It’s a complex, mystery-wielding show which plays out like a big screen adventure nearly every week.

Chuck- My new favorite adventure show. It’s spy action at it’s funniest and you should definitely watch when it comes back for a new season (THERE IS A GOD!).

Buffy the Vampire Slayer- This show should’ve been more than the cult hit it was. I never saw it while it was on, but caught up thanks to the FX channel’s reruns and summers off from college. It certainly didn’t hurt that all of the ladies on the show were beautiful. But the stories were fun and exciting, the characters entertaining, and it had this excellent wit about it. You should catch up because it was one of the best and most original shows during its time.

Books
Lord of the Flies- This book is about a lot of things, but it’s truly an adventure for the boys who are shipwrecked. It’s savage and instinctual and it tells you all about what you’d do if the proverbial poo did in fact hit the fan.

Touching the Void- A non-fiction account of one of the most daring and ill-fated climbs in the Andes. A partner is forced to cut the rope, unhitching himself from his partner. The partner then does the unbelievable. I won’t ruin it for you. It’s just INCREDIBLE.

Harry Potter series- I am a HUGE fan of HP and for anyone who has somehow (I’d be interested to hear how) avoided HP (why?!!?), you should stop doing so. It’s a great story and it’s super easy to read and it’s fun. Great adventures in every page.

Those are my faves, whatcha got?

You got fangs in my pop culture

Seth Finck — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 01:01:00 +0000

A trend I’ve noticed especially over the last year is the growing popularity of vampires in various mediums of popular culture. It’s been in the movies, television, and books notably in that span of time. And they’ve become a very popular tool for storytellers to convey various feelings or stereotyping and the like. The most obvious example of vampires is the Twilight saga. If you don’t know what Twilight is, my sister-in-law will kill you, no really, what have you been doing for the last 4 months/ how big was the rock you were under. So the books and recent movie of this saga have been a huge boon to the vampire population.

At the same time, True Blood won a fairly large viewership on HBO over the summer and was renewed for a second season. True Blood is a show based on a series of books where vampires are an allegory for persecuted populations in modern America. Blogger: pop ramblings – Create PostI personally didn’t latch on, but I did hear it got better as the series picked up. A show called Vampire Diaries was recently picked up for a pilot for the fall season as well.

Movies include Let The Right One In, the Underworld trilogy, and tons of them beforehand and quite a few more to follow.

I’m not saying they weren’t around before. Vampire stories are old as dirt. But recently they’ve really stepped into the limelight and become a viable mainstream entity. It’s part of the overall geekification of popular culture which allows sci-fi shows like LOST, Battlestar Galactica; movies like The Dark Knight and Iron Man, and graphic novels become top earners and best sellers (Watchmen). Certainly part of this process has been the excellent talent which is associated with it and thank goodness for them! But another part is that the stuff is just plain interesting and people see the value beyond the supernatural or sci-fi element of these stories to see the story as a whole.

Whatever the reason, I’m excited because I’m really thinking with the uptake in vampires, unicorns are probably pretty close in line for a prime spotlight. Wait for it.

locations as characters

Seth Finck — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 23:40:00 +0000

I’ve had this one sitting on my brain for awhile. It might be hard to explain, but as we all know I’m going to try. Have you ever watched a movie or tv show and just felt like the setting was a vital, unforgettable part of that movie?

Well I have. So, who cares if you have or not? The one that really started my thinking about this was Batman Begins. After seeing The Dark Knight, I was talking a LOT about Batman in general and of course comparisons to BB showed up. One thing I noticed after watching both again was that Gotham City played an enormous part in the first film. We saw great shots of Gotham, you could feel the grit, grime, and pain that the city felt and head dealt upon its citizens. Part of that was really necessary because of the setting for the film and for the origin of this new Batman. We had to know he had an ideal of this metropolis that had fallen hard. Remember at the end of the film, you saw the Narrows and it was just a perfect example of how the city had fallen and what Batman was fighting to change. The transformation of Gotham contributed heavily to the transformation of Bruce in to Bats. Good job Chris Nolan!

The most clear instance of having a character feel like such an integral part of the movie or medium is Hogwarts. For all you HP fans, I think you know what I mean. Hogwarts literally has a voice (ghosts, paintings) and contributes heavily to the feel created in Potterverse. When you see or even read about Hogwarts you get that magical feeling and the location can literally morph in tons of ways. I mean they can make the roof of the dining hall see-through to the sky. Awesome! But really Hogwarts can afford emotion, it can look either like a shiny castle or a haunted house. I don’t know about you, but that’s pretty cool. Go Hogwarts. I’m thinking about maybe enrolling in a Ph.D. program there in Defense Against the Dark Arts personally when I see that top pic. And for the bottom one I’m thinking I’m gonna need some backup from my boys Winston, Egon, Ray, and Peter. I like that. It’s a good thing. It makes it so much more ALIVE and real. Good job JK.

That’s what I think anyways, am I crazy? Have you seen this in any movie, tv show, book?

get fired up for november!

Seth Finck — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:39:00 +0000

ok so it’s a little late, BUT better late than never. Here is what I’m excited for this month:

Music:

The Killers
Day & Age
November 25

I have to admit that I haven’t read a whole lot about this album, but I’ve been a fan of the killers since Hot Fuss. So I’m looking forward to, what little I’ve read says, is a return to that album’s sound. You all know the songs, maybe a bit too well. But you know you loved them once.

Other notables: Guns n Roses- Chinese Democracy after a billion years in development and David Byrne and Brian Eno- Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. Love Byrne.

Movies:
There are a ton of movies I’m excited for this month. But I’m gonna go with an outside shot film.

Slumdog Millionaire, directed by Danny Boyle
Out November 12 in Limited Release

While there are a ton of exciting and interesting flicks coming out this month. I am really most excited for the latest offering from Boyle a director that I’ve come to really love. He has been a jack of all trades in a short career. 28 Days Later, Millions, and Sunshine are some of the most underrated, underseen movies of the last few years and the genre shifting he has done shows his immense talent. Slumdog is the story of an Indian street kid on the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? When he is suspected of cheating he tells the story of his life which proves the legitimacy of his answers. It is a story of life, love, loss. The movie is crafted around the answers of the show as the acts of the movie. I am doing a terrible job of explaining this. Look here. Trust me you’ll want to catch this one.

Other flicks of note: Quantum of Solace (Nov. 14) BOND IS BACK!, Role Models (Nov. 7) Paul Rudd is a genius and the young African-American kid looks primed for a breakout!, Australia (Nov. 26) The Moulin Rouge guy returns- he’s got an interesting eye and the movie LOOKS beautiful.

TV:
Top Chef New York, returns Nov. 12 @ 10pm on Bravo

The best reality show on tv is back and heading for the Big Apple! I never miss an episode of this show for several reasons. First, I love food tv, I can’t explain it, it’s totally irrational. Second it’s the best judge’s panel on any reality show. Third, the people on it are supremely talented and creative. Fourth, everything they do looks delicious. Fifth, it once caused a former boss of mine who will remain nameless to eat 2 Hot Pockets and about 6 string cheeses.

Guilty Pleasure:
The Bro Code, by Barney Stinson

It’s a book. I know that may shock any and all of you, but I do in fact know how to read, sort of. The Bro Code is however the spawn of a television show, How I Met Your Mother. A hilarious read especially for fans of the show and guys, but there is definitely something there for everyone. Witness the wit: “Article 49: When asked, ‘Do you need some help?’ a Bro shall automatically respond, ‘I got it,’ whether or not he’s actually got it. *Exception: Carrying an expensive TV, parallel parking an expensive car, loading an expensive TV into an expensive car.” It’s definitely worth the short amount of time it takes to read it.

What are you all excited for this month?