Culture Gabfest - The Oscars Are Back, Baby!
Slate Culture Feed
Slate Podcasts
4.2 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 13 March 2024
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week’s show, the panel is first joined by Mark Harris, cultural historian and the author of Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, to discuss the 96th Academy Awards: a fun, glitzy return to form filled with surprisingly political moments. Then, the three review FX’s Shōgun, a massive epic set in 17th century Japan that many are calling “the new Game of Thrones.” But does it live up to the hype? Finally, the trio examines “Behind F1’s Velvet Curtain,” Kate Wagner’s spellbinding 5,000-word piece about the world of Formula 1 racing that Road & Track published then promptly yanked from the internet without explanation. Although Wagner’s piece is no longer live on Road & Track, you can still read it on Wayback Machine’s internet archive.
In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, Mark Harris returns to talk about his New York Times essay, “How Bad Can It Get for Hollywood?” which details what we can expect from movies in 2024 (spoiler alert: it’s not looking good).
Email us at culturefest@slate.com.
Outro music: “8-Bit Hop” by Ash Sculptures
Endorsements:
Dana: HINT.FM’s Wind Map, which illustrates “the delicate tracery of wind flowing over the US.”
Julia: Tejal Rao’s recipe for Kale Sauce Pasta, adapted from Joshua McFadden.
Steve: “What Physicists Have Been Missing” by theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder.
Podcast production by Jared Downing. Production assistance by Kat Hong.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Stephen McHaff, and this is the Slate Culture Gapest. |
| 0:13.2 | The Oscars are back, baby edition. |
| 0:16.1 | It's Wednesday, March 13th, 2020. |
| 0:19.5 | On today's show, the 96th Academy Awards go to Oppenheimer. It's true. All of |
| 0:24.9 | them, they went to Oppenheimer. Not quite. But still, we discuss a almost clean sweep by Christopher |
| 0:30.2 | Nolan's movie, plus many other fun sundries. These we will discuss with Mark Harris, very good friend |
| 0:36.5 | of the program and a wonderful film historian and author. |
| 0:40.1 | And then Shogun has been rebooted and thoroughly done over. |
| 0:43.4 | This version is striving to be less quote-unquote whitewashed. |
| 0:46.9 | It's a version of the James Clavel pot boiler is now on Hulu. |
| 0:51.0 | And finally, what happens when a socialist journalist gets sent to cover what has become |
| 0:56.1 | the very poshist upper 1% of sports? That's Formula 1 Auto Racing. We discuss a journalistic |
| 1:03.3 | debacle in the making. Joining me is Julia Turner of the Annenberg School of Journalism at USC. Hey, |
| 1:10.2 | Julia. Hello, hello. And of course, |
| 1:12.4 | Dana Stevens, the film critic for Slate. Hey. Hey, Steve. All right, well, Hollywood is in crisis |
| 1:17.3 | mode these days. Arguably, it's perpetually in that state. But, you know, is it even properly |
| 1:22.0 | called Hollywood anymore with production dispersed everywhere. What's the fate of theatrical |
| 1:26.1 | release? Well, the streaming bubble burst on and on and on. |
| 1:29.2 | Add it to which, of course, there is the Oscars, |
| 1:31.6 | a ritual of self-congratulation that has slid in the ratings recently |
| 1:35.1 | and is caught between rewarding meritorious work nobody saw or blockbusters. |
| 1:40.4 | Everyone saw, but generally lack merit, arguably. |
... |
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