Hosted by Darryl & Phil, two big friends that are even bigger comic book nerds, Running on Rooftops specializes in discussing, analyzing and highlighting adapting comic book properties from the printed page to the silver screen (though they also cover television and Netflix adaptations too).
The most recent episode available does a deep dive on the recently released Spider-Man: Homecoming that's pretty entertaining to listen to. Whenever there's a major release on Netflix, they also invite a guest host onboard. The also have shorter episodes they call "Sprints" released on occasion.
Listen Up is an ongoing series devoted to shining a spotlight on podcasts by diverse creators. You can check out all the podcasts previously featured here. If you have a podcast you'd like to recommend, post it in the comments or email me at shawnstruck at gmail dot com.
The Black Media Minute is a podcast that dives into the ins and outs of the media business with Black creatives and industry professionals. The show features interviews and analysis of books, movies and television. It's hosted by Kimberly Foster, who was named one of Forbes' "30 Under 30" last year. Every episode is packed full of probing interviews and insightful conversations with people who shape the media landscape.
Listen Up is an ongoing series devoted to shining a spotlight on podcasts by diverse creators. You can check out all the podcasts previously featured here. If you have a podcast you'd like to recommend, post it in the comments or email me at shawnstruck at gmail dot com.
MEGASheen is hosted by Nick and Viktor, with a focus on queer people of color that identify as geeks or nerds. Nick is a passionate video game and 80s cartoon fan, while Viktor's wheelhouse is comics (he's a graphic novel creator himself as the creative mind between the amazing urban fantasy StrangeLore) politics and pop culture.
MEGASheen has a website, and you can follow the podcast via iTunes on iOS or viasoundcloud . They're on a 3 week hiatus right now, so this is the perfect time to catch up! Listen Up is an ongoing series devoted to shining a spotlight on podcasts by diverse creators. You can check out all the podcasts previously featured here. If you have a podcast you'd like to recommend, post it in the comments or email me at shawnstruck at gmail dot com.
The Black Geeks website has a companion podcast and it works in concert with the website to report on news geek culture art large from a Black perspective. The Black Geeks lend collective decades' worth of knowledge and passion for all things geeky with the mission to "uplift diverse voices and perspectives into everyday conversations".
Follow along on iOS via iTunes or onsoundcloud.
Listen Up is an ongoing series devoted to shining a spotlight on podcasts by diverse creators. You can check out all the podcasts previously featured here. If you have a podcast you'd like to recommend, post it in the comments or email me at shawnstruck at gmail dot com.
Kugali, the companion podcast to the website with the same name, is hosted by four Nigerian men that have been scattered across the globe due to circumstance but happily come together on the podcast to to showcase and discuss television shows, games, comics, animated features and movies created by both Africans and people of African descent in the diaspora as well as anime and pop culture abroad. It's been running since 2015, and the podcast have over 3 seasons so far.
Ted Chiang's short story "Story of Your Life" stuck with screenwriter Eric Heiserer long after he put it down. Heiserer had written a number of successful horror screenplays, but said the the impact the story had on him made him want to pursue it as a movie. In a behind the scenes article for The Talkhouse, Heiserer talks about how he went from turning "The Story of Your Life" into the hit film Arrival. An excerpt:
I pleaded with the author to let me write the script on spec, which meant optioning the rights for an extended period of time. I pitched him my take, which felt akin to saying, “I’m borrowing your car. It may come back with some aftermarket stuff and a new paint job. Please, trust me.” He did, and I spent the next year learning why science fiction is so difficult to get right. Here are some of the many lessons this script taught me.
1. Sometimes the plain truth is more interesting than the beautiful lie.
At some point, you embrace what kind of story your movie is, and lean into it. If it’s a martial arts action bonanza, your character and story moments happen in the framework of fight sequences. If it’s a musical, your subtext plays in song. This movie was about process — the process of cracking a new language and teaching our own.
Heiserer goes into 4 more important writing lessons his work on Arrival taught him ,as well as the elaborate technical hacks he had to pull off with his screenwriting software to make the script happen and explain the films ideas.
French photographer Mathieu Stern has a fascinated series called "The Weird Lens Challenge" on his youtube channel, and he recently shared what I think is his most fascinating experiment yet. He look a large-format stationary camera from the 1800s, carefully removed the iris lens, mounted it on his Sony A7II camera, and then posted the video results, which you can watch below:
How well did it work for him? Well, as Stern tells it,
"The lens is incredibly sharp for a 136 years old simple metallic lens, from my test it’s even sharper than most of my modern Canon lenses, the results are amazing … but it also gives some strange lens flares and light leaks that are pretty dreamy".
Description: In a still from "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" a young black man in scuffed white storm trooper armor looks off screen in disbelief.
Wendell Bernard Britt Jr. writes for medium.com just what John Boyega's casting in the much-anticipated Star Wars: The Force Awakens means not just to him personally as a fan of color, but the impact representation has on speculative fiction in particular:
I’ve been a Star Wars fan for as long as I can remember. One of my earliest memories was watching a drive-in double feature showing of Disney’s The Lion King and Star Wars: A New Hope. My ideas of right and wrong, heroism, self-sacrifice and discipline all come from these movies...
The first character in the trailer is a harried and exhausted looking John Boyega decked out in a Stormtrooper outfit, and I did all I could do to contain my glee. When I had heard that Boyega was cast to be in the movie, I had assumed it would be in a supporting role, much like Billy Dee Williams’ Lando Calrissian before him. Disney had just dropped 4.4 billion dollars on the franchise, and they only had 1:33 seconds to wow their entire fan-base. To waste those precious seconds on a bit character would be completely irresponsible. Then my brain caught up with what I was seeing. Was it possible that a black character is going to be the protagonist of Star Wars?
This leads him to wonder-- when black people make up 12 percent of the US population, and black people account for 13 percent of all ticket sales nationwide, why are are there so few characters of color? What effect does that have on who's seen as a hero? What's the response? He goes on to explain that:
Occasionally an enterprising white writer will include black people in fantastical genres. When this happened white audiences tend to have explicitly negative reactions to them. Much like the general public’s reaction to a black person being cast as a Stormtrooper, Hunger Games fans took to Twitter outcrying the casting of Amandla Stenberg (black) as Rue (a character from the predominantly black 8th district from the books).
For some Americans, understanding, empathizing with and even imagining a little black girl in a fantastical land was beyond possible. Not only did readers fail to register Rue’s blackness, they became upset when they were confronted with it on screen.
Description: From left to right are screenshot of the character of Lavender Brown from the Harry
Potter movie series In the first two pictures, she is played by a black girl. In the 3rd picture, the character
is portrayed by a white girl. A comment sarcastically asks "Did she get a haircut".
The Harry Potter film series has been a worldwide blockbuster, spanning 8 films and a cornucopia of related merchandising tie-ins. The entire series has many allegories for hatred, genocide and racism. Which, as the Every Word Spoken project points out, is really weird considering that there are so few characters of color in the movie series, and the characters of color that are in the movie barely have any speaking lines. They released a video supercut tallying up how much screen and speaking time people of color got across the entire 19 hours & 39 minutes of the films. POC speaking time, in comparison, was just a little over 5 minutes and 40 seconds. Here's the video:
The tally:
Total POC talk time: 5 minutes and 40 seconds
Total run time of all films: 1,207 minutes
That comes out to 0.47% of screen time in which POCs speak throughout the entire series. This is split among 12 characters and 13 actors (Parvati Patil was played by two actors, Sitara Shah & Shefali Chowdhury)
Of these 12 characters, 2 were CGI bodies voiced by POC actors (Firenze & Shrunken Head)
On average, each POC character speaks for 28.33 seconds.
The books aren't that much better, sadly. Looking at the 200 most mentioned characters in the series, here’s what you’ll find:
Number of POC characters: 9 (4.5%): Cho Chang, Dean Thomas, Angelina Johnson, Parvati Patil, Lee Jordan, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Blaise Zabini, Padma Patil, Hassan Mostafa
Number of POC characters in the top 50: 2 (#44 Cho Chang, #45 Dean Thomas)
Number of non-human characters in the top 200: 26 (13%)
(4 more characters are described as being part giant or part veela, but are white-appearing.)
As they point out this means that even in the books, there is better representation of centaurs, house-elves, giants, and goblins in this series than there are of human characters of color. Dobby and Kreacher in particular get way more page time and deeper character development than any of the POC characters. And unlike the series you can't fixit by waving a wand, but maybe we can address it better by pointing it out so the next fantasy series has plenty of different kids from all sorts of backgrounds, too.
An oldie but I good I found while trawling youtube the other day, Slacktory has compiled a slick, entertaining 20 minute super-cut of memroable depictions of video games in movies:
Here's a list of the movies that appear: WarGames, Nightmares ("The Bishop Of Battle"), Shaun Of The Dead, The Beach, Tron, Joysticks, Night Of The Comet, Hollywood Hot Tub, The Avengers, Rancho Deluxe, The King Of Kong, Boyz N The Hood, Grosse Pointe Blank, Parenthood, Brainscan ,Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, The Wizard, Wreck-It Ralph, The Last Starfighter, The Thing, The Hurt Locker, Adventureland, Cloak & Dagger, Airplane!, Snakes On A Plane, Toy Story, The Wrestler, Bloodsport, Jackie Chan's Street Fighter (City Hunter), Surf Ninjas, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, High School U.S.A., Midnight Madness, Back To The Future 2, Ghostbusters 2, 40 Year Old Virgin, Mallrats, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, Lost In Translation, The Karate Kid (2010), The FP, Superbad, Reign Over Me, The Wackness ,Swingers, Robocop 2, Wasabi, Juice, Inside Man, Crank 2, Dawn Of The Dead (1978), Superman III, D.A.R.Y.L., Encino Man, Jaws, Monster House, The Princess Bride, Rookie Of The Year, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Stay Alive, Soylent Green, Eddie Macon's Run, Jekyll & Hyde... Together Again, and Scanners 2.
Here are Natalie Dormer, Maisie Williams, Katey Sagal, Tatiana Maslany, Sarah Paulson and Nicole Beharie talking about the depiction of women in media, the challenges of women in pop culture and more.
