Pop Culture Happy Hour: "Severance"

Tramell Tillman, Zach Cherry, John Turturro, Britt Lower and Adam Scott in the Apple TV+ series Severance.

I was thrilled to join my old pals Linda and Glen and my new pal Roxana Hadadi to discuss Severance, the marvelous and unsettling new Apple+ sci-fi drama.

A Degree Absolute! episode thirty-three — "THE THREE LIVES OF THOMASINA" with Josh Spiegel

Does Mister-not-Doctor Andrew MacDuhui (Paddy McG) hate pets? (He does not, no matter what his low-information neighbors in the fictional Scottish town of Inverinoch think.)

Did Walt Disney hate cats? (Our very special guest Disney expert, Josh Spiegel, makes a compelling case.)

Were animals harmed during the making of this motion picture? (Most certainly, regrettably.)

Our principled stand against pandering to the Internet's insatiable appetite for cat content crumbles as we pad, paw, 'n' claw our merryish way through...

The Three Lives of Thomasina

Written by Robert Westerby, from Paul Gallico's novel Thomasina, the Cat Who Thought She Was God

Directed by Don Chaffey

Released December 11, 1963

"BLOOD, SWEAT, AND CHROME" reviewed in the Washington Post

Zoë Kravitz and Charlize Theron in George Miller’s 2015 masterpiece Mad Max: Fury Road. (Warner Bros.)

Mad Max: Fury Road is one the wildest and most unconventional blockbusters ever made, and I’d like to think I did it justice when I reviewed it for NPR upon its release in May 2015.

I’m just as enthusiastic about New York Times reporter Kyle Buchanan’s new oral history about the movie’s genesis, production, and legacy, which I reviewed for the Washington Post. Anyone interested in filmmaking should read this book.

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode thirty-two — THE SCARECROW OF ROMNEY MARSH with Margaret H. Willison

On February 9, 1964, Ed Sullivan introduced a band from Liverpool, England formerly known as The Quarrymen to an estimated 73 million viewers of his primetime CBS variety show. And down the dial on NBC, the anthology series Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color drew an audience of something less than 73 million for the first installment of its three-part The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, an adaptation of Russell Thorndike and William Buchanan's novel Christopher Syn starring our man Patty McG as an 18th century man of the cloth* by day/masked-smuggler-by-night who helps the common people by... paying their taxes, we think? Using the funds he earns from smuggling brandy and tobacco. He also helps them elude the pressgangs who roam the marsh looking for reasonably able-bodied youngish men to abduct into King George III's Royal Navy.

*Specifically, a "fuckable vicar" in the estimation of our generously oversharing special guest Margaret H. "Hula Hoop" Willison, whose effervescent personality really ties the room together. (Dang. That's the wrong Coen Bros. reference.) 

The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh

Teleplay by Robert Westerby, from the novel Christopher Syn by Russell Thorndike and William Buchanan

Directed by James Neilson

Original airdates February 9, 16, and 23, 1964

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode thirty-one — SILVER STREAK with Ronald Young, Jr.

Pop some vitamin E before listening, because it's gonna be hug 'n' munch all the way to Chicago! Solvable host Ronald Young, Jr. joins Glen and Chris to examine Silver Streak, ostensibly a hybrid romantic thriller / buddy comedy that gave the world the long-running Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor screen partnership and was a huge hit upon its release in 1976. America's bicentennial anum was a great a year for movies, more despite Silver Streak than because of it, but hey, the movie features a loveably smarmy Columbo-era Patrick McGoohan as the despicable villain. Along with a lot of trite and, by contemporary standards, deeply offensive comedy. Choo choo!

Silver Streak

Written by Colin Higgins

Directed by Arthur Hiller

Released December 8, 1976

Cheer is the Mind-killer (Side B) Cometh

In this second half of my XVIth senses-shattering installment in the apparently unkillable Yuletunes Eclectic & Inexplicable series, I attempts penance for appropriating the podfeed of A Degree Absolute! to give listeners an album they never asked for, U2-style, by roping in my co-host Glen & our theme song singer-arranger Casey in for some festive preamble before we get to the damn tape. I beg your forbearance.

Cheer is the Mind-killer (Side A) Cometh

My 2021 holiday mixtape, Cheer Is the Mind-Killer, has arrived. It’s the sixteenth installment in what has become a venerable holiday tradition that invariably makes me feel unhinged in the final couple of months of each year. Sixteen! They grow up so fast. The Yuletunes Eclectic & Inexplicable compilation series, most installments of which remain available to stream via the Christmas Mixtapes drop-down menu at the top of the page, is now as licensed to drive as any Cory. In the chronology of the EON Productions James Bond film series, it is Licence-d (sic) to Kill.

Side B TK!

"A Strange Loop" at Woolly Mammoth, reviewed.

Jaquel Spivey (in red) is the member of the Strange Loop cast new to Woolly’s production. (Marc J. Franklin)

“A Strange Loop” would be a pretty good way to describe the sensation of rather suddenly attending and writing about theatre again. My Washington City Paper review of Woolly Mammoth’s terrific production of Michael R. Jackson’s self-aware and semiautobiographical musical A Strange Loop—which won a Pulitzer in 2019—is here.