NotAPodcast posts
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A Storm of Swords Preview Episode
Our preview episode on ASOS is available for everyone!
The Lord of the Rings, Part 12: The White Rider and The King of the Golden Hall
Our twelfth episode on The Lord of the Rings is available for all our patrons!
Guest Episode: Dr. Kavita Mudan Finn on Historical Narrators
Our guest episode on historical narrators is available for everyone!
The Lord of the Rings, Part 11: The Departure of Boromir, The Riders of Rohan, The Uruk-Hai, and Treebeard
Our eleventh episode on The Lord of the Rings is available for all our patrons!
Til Death Do Us Part IX
Series so far hereEyes Wide Shut has either two acts or five, depending on how you look at it. You can see Aristotle's complication-unraveling model at work. The orgy is the turning point, after which every subplot concludes, as if we've passed through a mirror. But you can also see Freytag's five-act pyramid in it. The exposition act is now complete, with Alice's monologue as the inciting incident that demands resolution. Now we're into the rising action, as obstacles to that resolution mount up for our protagonist. The cli...
Guest Episode: Michal on Judaism in ASOIAF
Our guest episode with Michal on Judaism in ASOIAF is available for everyone!
The Lord of the Rings, Part 10: Farewell to Lorien, The Great River, and The Breaking of the Fellowship
Our tenth episode on The Lord of the Rings is available for all our patrons on Patreon!
The Lord of the Rings, Part 9: Lothlorien and The Mirror of Galadriel
Our ninth episode on The Lord of the Rings is available for all our patrons!
Til Death Do Us Part VIII
Series so far hereBill and Alice Harford are fighting. At first, it was about the temptations they faced at last night's Christmas party. But, as is often the case when lovers fight, the inciting incident is a pretext. It cracks open an inner door that leads the Harfords into deeper waters. There wait problems they have kept submerged, now rising to the surface.Bill is drowning in words: "I don't even know what we're arguing about here!" Ironically, that's exactly why they're fighting. He hasn't been paying atten...
Guest Episode: Alex on African-American & Queer Criticism
Our guest episode on African-American and Queer criticism of ASOIAF/GoT is available for everyone!
The Lord of the Rings, Part 8: The Ring Goes South, Journey in the Dark, and the Bridge of Khazad-Dum
Our eighth episode on The Lord of the Rings is available for all our patrons!
Til Death Do Us Part VII
Series so far hereEyes Wide Shut covers a lot of ground, literally and otherwise. It's a difficult movie to summarize because so much happens, or seems to happen, or is suggested to have happened. Every scene contributes to the key motifs (duality, deception, deflated expectations, confronting the unknown), but they resist a collective interpretation. Whatever your theory about Eyes Wide Shut, there's a scene that doesn't fit. This is by design. As with Rashomon, your own position as an audience member is under interrogation. You ar...
Guest Episode: Rohanne on Melisandre
Our guest episode about Melisandre is available for everyone!
The Lord of the Rings, Part 7: Many Meetings & The Council of Elrond
Our seventh episode on The Lord of the Rings is available for all our patrons!
Til Death Do Us Part VI
Series so far hereEvery night gives way to day. We mine this image for hope: no matter how long your night of the soul, it will end. Yet we all know it also works the other way around. Night is exciting. Night is erotic. Night is mysterious, offering opportunities for transformation. You can change! The world might just let you...until the sun rises. Your carriage turns back into a pumpkin. Your eyes open, and you remember who you are. Which is to say, who you are in the eyes of others.All the world's a stage."Come night, come Romeo, co...
Guest Episode: Gretchen Felker-Martin on Horror
Our guest episode on horror in ASOIAF and GoT is available for everyone!
The Lord of the Rings, Part 6: A Knife in the Dark & Flight to the Ford
Our sixth episode on The Lord of the Rings is available for all patrons!
Til Death Do Us Part V
Series so far hereOur protagonist has just barely avoided infidelity. This is the pattern of Eyes Wide Shut: both Bill and Alice come close to "where the rainbow ends" before turning back. It's a journey with both classical and Christian roots, filtered through more modern ideas about psychology and sociology. But it's also a game Kubrick is playing with his audience. As Andre Bazin said, "the cinema substitutes for our gaze a world more in harmony with our desires." Kubrick leads us on with desire, not only for sex but ...
Guest Episode: Joggi on Dragons
Our guest episode on dragons is available for everyone!
The Lord of the Rings, Part 5: At the Sign of the Prancing Pony & Strider
Our fifth episode on The Lord of the Rings is available for all our patrons!
Til Death Do Us Part IV
Series so far hereAlice Harford is alone in a crowd. She is drunk. She is bored. She is annoyed at her husband Bill for ignoring her. Every year, he brings her to this party where she doesn't know anyone, and now he's ditched her to hang out with his old college buddy. She can't bring herself to say these things; not yet, anyway. What she wants right now is a way to act these feelings out. The movie provides her with one.As we dissolve into the shot, the camera is already moving. It circles around Alice, beginning on her left. The m...
Guest Episode: Lo on Gender & Sexuality
Our episode on gender and sexuality in ASOIAF is available for everyone!
The Lord of the Rings, Part 4: The Old Forest, In the House of Tom Bombadil, Fog on the Barrow-Downs
Our fourth episode on The Lord of the Rings is available for all patrons!
Til Death Do Us Part III
Series so far hereThe opening scene of Eyes Wide Shut functions as a prologue. It introduces the primary characters and their relationship to one another. It establishes the crucial setting of the Harford apartment, doing so in a dexterous fashion that immerses us in the film style. It deftly calls attention to our place in making meaning out of what we see and hear. We are now ready to begin the journey through the looking glass to the end of the rainbow.That journey begins with the Zieglers' Christmas Ball, a dazzling labyrinth that ranks...
Guest Episode: Travis on Jaws
Our episode on Jaws is available for everyone!
The Lord of the Rings, Part 3: Three is Company, Short Cut to Mushrooms, A Conspiracy Unmasked
Our third episode on The Lord of the Rings is available for all patrons!
Til Death Do Us Part II
Series so far hereThe second shot of Eyes Wide Shut glances up at the Harfords' apartment building, but it's more interested in the lamps and streetlights outside. A spangled spiderweb of light. A byzantine corridor of light. This is the structure of Eyes Wide Shut: an odyssey through the looking glass to the end of the rainbow.The corridor of light is the binding signature of late Kubrick. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, it embodies consciousness. Thought is born, it propels itself outward, encounters the unknown, and returns transformed. It...
The Lord of the Rings, Part 2: The Shadow of the Past
Our second episode on The Lord of the Rings is available for all patrons!
Til Death Do Us Part I
art by Jean-Sebastien RossbachWhat is Eyes Wide Shut? Ask a hundred different people, and you’ll get a hundred different answers. It’s a sex comedy; it’s an erotic thriller; it’s an expose of the rich and powerful. It’s a masterpiece; it’s a disaster. The only consensus about Stanley Kubrick’s swan song is that everyone else is looking at it all wrong.The film’s most devoted fans are the Kubrickult: my nickname for the extremely online hivemind dedicated to unearthing paranoiac patterns and puzzles in the director’s work (part...
Guest Episode: Micah on Redwall
Our guest episode on Redwall is available for everyone!
