This week Special Topics in Media hosts a "Bat-Mania Roundtable" as part of our Season 2 RETRO REWIND focus on Frank Miller's Batman:The Dark Knight Returns (1986). In this episode, the dialogic duo is joined by another pair of super scholars Karen Anderson-Lain and Kyle Hammonds, as well as comic shop proprietor Brian "Buck" Berlin. The panel discuss personal encounters with Batman literature and expand our understanding of its varied commercial and educational utilities. Finally, the group con...
May 28, 2024•1 hr 54 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Special Topics in Media continues its RETRO REWIND Season 2 focus on writer/artist Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns . In this episode, Garret Castleberry and Scott McMurry analyze the various mass media adaptions and textual legacy of Miller's DKR . While some may contend Miller's muddied pages belong to a bygone era, it's continuous impact on the caped crusader show no signs of slowing down in the forty years after its release. Hosts: Garret Castleberry, Scott McMurry Producers: G...
May 21, 2024•1 hr 15 min•Season 2Ep. 6
In this episode, the Special Topics in Media RETRO REWIND Season 2 focus on Batman: The Dark Knight Returns winds down. We close our our literary focus and cultural analysis of Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns with careful consideration of its text, context, author, and audience. Specifically, the dialogic duo explore facets of Miller's narrative form and how these literary decisions speak to fictional themes and real-world critiques. Is DKR capable of delivering a satisfying conclusion, or li...
May 14, 2024•1 hr 29 min•Season 2Ep. 5
In this RETRO look back at Season 2 of Special Topics in Media , hosts Garret Castleberry and Scott McMurry explore the narrative discourse emanating out of the pages of Frank Miller's seminal superhero spectacle, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns . The dialogic duo discuss "Book 3" in which an aged Bruce Wayne comes to terms with the limits of his mythic presence across the dystopian Gotham City landscape. With its stylistic prose and uber-punk aesthetics, Dark Knight Returns, Book 3 will pay off...
May 07, 2024•1 hr 31 min•Season 2Ep. 4
In this continuation of our Season 2 RETRO REWIND, Garret Castleberry and Scott McMurry deepen their analytic criticism of Frank Miller's iconoclast graphic novel released as a comic book mini-series, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns . In this episode, the dialogic duo further denote the cultural context in which Miller's Batman tale draws upon certain social anxieties of the time while also reinterpreting the psychological complexities that motivate Bruce Wayne and his rogues gallery. Hosts: Gar...
Apr 30, 2024•1 hr 17 min•Season 2Ep. 3
In this RETRO SEASON of Special Topics in Media , host Garret Castleberry winds back the podcasting clock to the quarantine months of the 2020 global pandemic. The Comics Studies mini-series focuses on what many consider the great stand-alone superhero story ever told, Frank Miller's future shock crime thriller, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns . Released in four parts near the end of the real-world Cold War in 1986, Miller posits an iconoclast depiction of a city in turmoil, a country at the cro...
Apr 23, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Season 2Ep. 2
In this "Prologue" preview to our RETRO SEASON of Special Topics in Media , host Garret Castleberry sits down with Scott McMurry to discuss one of our earliest seasons for Special Topics in Media . The dialogic duo offer a brief framework for the next mini-season on deck, a conversation series covering one of the most influential comic books in history, Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1986). Each episode will focus on a single entry in the four-part series, followed by a discussi...
Apr 22, 2024•22 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Our Film Listology exploration of variability in the cultural significance of film history continues with consideration of director George Roy Hill's ragtime-sounding, depression era "big con" feature The Sting (1973). A winner of seven Academy Awards and a top commercial earner in the year of its release, The Sting provided audiences of 70s cinema a populist escapism that feels like an echo of Hollywood's Studio System heyday. Hill re-teams with his Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid compadres ...
Apr 16, 2024•52 min•Season 8Ep. 27
On this episode, the Film Listology voyage sails onward with the commercial zenith of Disney's 2D Animation Studios era, The Lion King . Released in 1994, The Lion King handed the Mouse House one of its biggest hits of the decade, and more importantly, provided the kind of four quadrant entertainment capable of sustaining an intellectual property engine that continues to influence audiences thirty years after its release. The dialogic duo reminisce on their memories of The Lion King and assign i...
Apr 09, 2024•36 min•Season 8Ep. 26
This week Special Topics continues its Film Listology focus on the '80s. No, not that '80s but 'an' '80s nonetheless. Hosts Garret and Scott discuss Otto Preminger's 1959 courtroom crime drama Anatomy of a Murder . In some ways, the film functions as a precursor to the #TrueCrime movement that will dominate popular interest in the late twentieth and twenty-first century. Does Anatomy lay the groundwork for the crime courtroom yarns to come, or has this artifact's time run out due to the dated co...
Apr 02, 2024•46 min•Season 8Ep. 25
This week the Special Topics in Media Film Listology season returns to a silent era heavyweight in Hollywood history, Charlie Chaplin. Cohosts Garret Castleberry and Scott McMurry examine 1921's The Kid , a film written, produced, and directed by Chapline, who also wrote and conducted the film's score. The Kid ebbs and flows through film history, which resulted in numerous versions of the movie circulating in private release and public domain. Indeed, access and quality may impede a cultural art...
Mar 26, 2024•33 min•Season 8Ep. 24
This year marks the critical peak in Christopher Nolan's quarter century of commercial filmmaking. In this episode, cohosts Garret Castleberry and Scott McMurry wind up the countdown clock to consider the wide-reaching cultural significance of Nolan's 2010 blockbuster Inception . Written and directed by Nolan, co-produced by Nolan and career-life partner Emma Thomas, and distributed by Warner Bros., Inception "wowed" audiences as a syncretic late-summer smash at the box office. It's labyrinthine...
Mar 19, 2024•33 min•Season 8Ep. 23
In this Special Topics in Media Film Listology reveal episode, hosts Garret Castleberry and Scott McMurry unveil the films results quantified by the McMurry SuperIndex (MSI) at ranking #90-86. Accompanying each entry, Scott provides data points for contextualizing each film's placement in the running, just as Garret reacts to the film's poll position as a cultural artifacts worthy of topical assessment. Which films land in the MSI rankings? Screen the films and let us know what you consider the ...
Mar 14, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Season 8Ep. 22
Continuing our Graphic Design and Portfolio Management mini-series, host Garret Castleberry introduces listeners to graphic designer Caleb Cole . An alumni of Oklahoma Baptist University, Caleb unpacks his formal educational journey and professional training in visual design, and thoughtfully individualizes his experience in ways that will allow listeners to learn about the interests and motivations that drive his early career success. Recommended readings : Lidwell, W., Holden, K., & Butler...
Mar 05, 2024•33 min•Season 9Ep. 8
In this extension to our Graphic Design and Portfolio Management mini-series, host Garret Castleberry connects with fellow academic and chair for the division of art and design at Oklahoma Baptist University, Corey Lee Fuller . Corey discusses the intricacies of a life (and lifestyle) devoted to art and graphic design. He helps unpack the evolution of art into contemporary professions like painting, illustrating, and integrated design. Garret presses Corey to describe the professional values of ...
Feb 27, 2024•38 min•Season 9Ep. 7
In this episode, Special Topics in Media bridges two themes tied to our Season 9 emphasis. Seasons 9 emphasizes two distinct professional arenas of digital communication, podcasting and graphic design. This week we blend and blur those words. We sit down with emerging graphic design artist Allison Garner. Alli shares parts of her creative journey, a somewhat untraditional path of artistic discovery that continues to gain momentum. Pieces of her personal (and professional) voyage also intersect w...
Feb 20, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Season 9Ep. 6
In this episode, the Media Methods and Content Creation mini-series welcomes Dr. Christine Becker, co-host and co-producer of the Aca-Media Podcast . As she explains, Aca-Media provides a cross-disciplinary series that serves as an mediated brand extension for the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS). Dr. Becker then walks us through Aca-Media 's collaborative production process, providing key insights into the attentive details that help promote the podcast's longevity as a publicly dist...
Feb 15, 2024•53 min•Season 9Ep. 5
This week we return to our Media Methods and Content Creation mini-series. Host Garret Castleberry interviews Scott Hardy and Cam Smith, cohosts of SpyHards -- A Spy Movie Podcast . Scott and Cam reveal the origins of their multimedia partnership and explain how their participatory roles within fan culture helped birth their current mission to engage audiences with the history of spy cinema. Hosts: Garret Castleberry, Scott Hardy (guest) and Cam Smith (guest) Producers: Garret Castleberry, Will ...
Feb 13, 2024•1 hr 19 min•Season 9Ep. 4
"What is real? How do you define, real ?" In this episode, cohosts Garret Castleberry and Scott McMurry unpack the wide-reaching cultural significance of 1999's The Matrix . Written and directed by Lana and Lilly Wachowski, produced and distributed by Warner Bros., The Matrix redirected popular cinema for the 21st Century through its ingenious remixing of philosophy, theology, and mythology baked into a dystopian action film that also functions as a techno-remix of classical tales like Alice in ...
Feb 06, 2024•1 hr 40 min•Season 8Ep. 21
This week the Film Listology season of Special Topics in Media continues with an all-timer that has evolved from lowbrow crowd-pleasing mainstream B-movie from 20th Century Fox and relatively unknown director upon release, Sir Ridley Scott, to a "Top-Shelf Classic" that finds increasing cultural cache for its simplicity, elegance, ingenious conception, and nightmarish aesthetics. A.....L......I......E.....N..... Host Garret Castleberry is joined by Scott McMurry to rank Alien 's cultural signifi...
Jan 30, 2024•1 hr 22 min•Season 8Ep. 20
The Film Listology season continues with a welcome break from recent genre form. Garret Castleberry and Scott McMurry revisit Woody Allen's Academy Award Winner for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Original Screenplay from 1977, Annie Hall . The film captured the hearts of film critics and belongs in the pantheon of great "New York movies". Indeed, much of writer-directer Allen's oeuvre became synonymous with a handful of directors forever linked to New York City and their fil...
Jan 23, 2024•1 hr 17 min•Season 8Ep. 19
In this episode, hosts Garret Castleberry and Scott McMurry introduce uninitiated listeners to the unique career highlights of artist-director David Lynch. For the uninitiated, the dialogic duo walk through a chronological explanation of the director's nontraditional route to fame, contextualizing his journey as a lead-in to this week's feature film focus, Mulholland Drive . Released in 2001 but primarily produced in the late 1990s, Mulholland Drive experienced transformative change from illicit...
Jan 16, 2024•1 hr 37 min•Season 8Ep. 18
This week Special Topics in Media resumes its focus on "Film Listology" with a discussion of director Lewis Milestone's 1930 war film All Quiet on the Western Front . Winning the Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Director, All Quiet might better be understood as an anti-war film for its grueling depictions of the human cost of war. Based on the novel of the same name by Erich Maria Remarque, the source material was revisited as a TV movie in 1979 and again as a critically acclaimed streami...
Jan 09, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Season 8Ep. 17
The Special Topics in Media Film Listology season reveals a number of contemporary classics just in time for the holiday season. No, these films don't necessarily rock around the Christmas tree. But they do rock, and in some cases, heads will roll. Hosts Garret and Scott announce and respond to the latest output from the McMurry SuperIndex, the #95-91 entrants to the amalgamated film ranking system. This batch once again provides genre diversification in need of culturally significant rating. Wh...
Dec 19, 2023•54 min•Season 8Ep. 16
The Film Listology season of SpecialTopics in Media continues with an abbreviated assessment of the critically adorned foreign langugage film from renown French director Jean Renoir, 1939's The Rules of the Game . Highly valued for its groundbreaking use of deep focus and dolly camera movement, Renoir's coveted love lorn prewar social satire employs artistic expression as a means to encode class criticism. Garret and Scott debate whether the film maintains topical functionality while also asking...
Dec 12, 2023•24 min•Season 8Ep. 15
This week Special Topics in Media resumes production on our Film Listology journey with the bad boy grandchild born out of wedlock between Film Noir and Golden Age Hollywood, writer/director Curtis Hanson and co-screenwriter Brian Helgeland's detective potboiler L.A. Confidential . Adapted from the same name novel by James Ellroy, L.A. Confidential reaped considerable word-of-mouth praise from critics and audiences upon release in 1997 but has since fallen under the social radar among contempora...
Dec 07, 2023•42 min•Season 8Ep. 14
With the holiday season in full swing, hosts Garret Castleberry and Scott McMurry step away from the dinner table long enough to partake in an alternative pastime, cultivating our Film Listology season on Special Topics in Media . In this episode, the dialogic duo revisit the recently invoked "Dad Movie Hall of Fame" to inaugurate what many consider the apex entrant to the spaghetti western subgenre, director Sergio Leone's 1966 Spanish production The Good, the Bad and the Ugly . While universal...
Nov 29, 2023•1 hr 20 min•Season 8Ep. 13
As our Film Listology season drops into the nineties, Scott and Garret examine The Great Dictator from 1940. Falling in familiarity to many, The Great Dictator wisely uses comedy (and tragedy) to spotlight and critique rising fascism in early twentieth century Europe. Charlie Chaplin writes, produces, and directs this satirical story of mistaken identity, brandishing his patented broom mustache and embodying a parodic variation of Adolph Hitler. The film exhibits iconoclast status in film histor...
Nov 14, 2023•32 min•Season 8Ep. 12
... Hosts: Garret Castleberry, Scott McMurry Producers: Garret Castleberry, Will McMurry (Audio Engineer), Alli Garner (Cover Art), Austin Foster (Music) Recommended readings paired with our Film Listology season: Rick Altman. Film/Genre . British Film Institute, 1999. Jim Collins, Ada Preacher Collins, Hilary Radner (Eds.). Film Theory Goes to the Movies, 1st Edition . New York: Routledge, 1992. Ways to Connect with us online: Follow and engage with Special Topics in Media on Twitter at @podcas...
Nov 06, 2023•51 min•Season 8Ep. 11
The Special Topics in Media Film Listology season is BACK! After our Communicating Fears in Film Octoberfest, hosts Garret Castleberry and Scott McMurry return to the realm of classic cinema to count down the algorithmic rankings computated by the "McMurry Super Index" (MSI) to determine an alpha populous movie rating system to end all movie rating systems. Having previously completed the "Honorable Mentions" films in contention for elite status, the dialogic duo present the first of many "revea...
Nov 02, 2023•49 min•Season 8Ep. 10
