#6: What's the Deal with Sequels?

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Feeling that their conversation re: Roland Emmerich's great sequel Independence Day: Resurgence ended insufficiently, Matt and Sean migrated from the basement to sit at table beneath the seven stars of the St. Louis night. Situated amidst the crickets and cicadas, beneath the jet airplanes, within the cool and gentle breeze, they set out to discuss the question: What's the deal with all the sequels these days? What topics, ideas, and questions then arose? Well, dear listener, to offer a brief teaser trailer: Indiana Jones/Indian Death Cults, Pulp Fiction, change in character as "deserved" and "necessary," Breaking Bad, emotion, The Truman Show, recycling of formulaic material, P.T. Anderson and Richard Linklater’s superiority, the relation between pop novels, pop songs, and big-budget films, art's facilitation of a "confrontation with reality", and, finally, the ensuing moral responsibility of the artist. How, the hosts ask, can a film become truly enduring? Tune in, dear listener, and join us in our philosophical considerations of these many topics and questions, and together let us snob our way into a discussion that unveils the calm, serious tonalities of the ancient art of snobbery. 

#4: The Martian Part Two: Beyond the Damon

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As Stanley Kubrick's science fiction classic 2001: A Space Odyssey ends with a segment entitled "Beyond the Infinite," so General Snobbery, in its conversation about The Martian (2015), travels "Beyond the Damon." After another fifteen minutes of Martian-related conversation--conversation spanning from David Bowie's horribly-placed "Starman", the film's use of Abba, Wall-E and Iron Man's strange influence on the climax, and the characters' roles not as characters but as deliverers-of-exposition--the conversation meanders into realms neither your hosts nor Matt Damon could have foreseen. What woe hath becommeth this flatlining Hollywood system? How does an illusory notion of "quality" continue to veil the populace's perception? Does commenting on a genre necessarily yield transcendence of that genre, a la Deadpool? How shall we respond in a filmic system that recycles material to repackage as propaganda-infused advertisements for a failing federal agency called NASA? Woe may be the way for many, but for others, the only logical response to the madness may be found through the lost art of snobbery. 

Our deepest gratitude to McMannus Pottery Co. for sponsoring today's episode. May our snobs be with you, always, eternally, dear listener.