Weekend Reads (Oct 21): “The Real Ghostbusters,” Michael Caine, Bandcamp Woes, Pepper X
Recommended weekend reading for October 21, 2023.
Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable weekend reading material.
Den of Geek presents an oral history of The Real Ghostbusters — “the coolest cartoon of the 1980s” — a Saturday morning cartoon series that was based on the hit movie.
Cosmetic changes aside, however, this DIC Entertainment and Columbia Pictures television production retained much of what made the original movie so special, with episodes blending slapstick comedy with effective supernatural scares and strikingly surreal imagery. A lot of that had to do with executive producers Joe Medjuck and Michael C. Gross. Both had served as executive producers on the original film (Gross is even credited with creating the iconic Ghostbusters logo), and both appeared eager to carry the ethos of the movie through to the cartoon.
“The most brilliant thing they did was to not change a thing from the movie,” The Real Ghostbusters writer Dennys McCoy tells Den of Geek. “When you mess with that formula, you inevitably fail. Ghostbusters has a very tight structure of four friends, or five if you count Janine. You have to base everything out of their relationship, no matter what you do. To me, that’s what happened when they did Extreme Ghostbusters [the short-lived late ’90s reboot of the series.] The Real Ghostbusters stuck to the tenets of the movie, and continued to tell that story.”
I loved The Real Ghostbusters as a kid (despite not having seen the original movie). I spent an inordinate amount of time drawing proton packs and ghost traps in my sketchbooks and imagining my own ghostbusting adventures. I suspect part of that was due to being raised in a conservative evangelical household; strange as it seems, The Real Ghostbusters was my first exposure to horror. The series got surprisingly creepy — I still remember the episode mentioned in the article where the gang has to match wits with Satan himself — but in a relatively safe way, being a cartoon.
Netflix is currently developing a new Ghostbusters animated series. In the meantime, watch the pilot episode, “Ghosts R Us,” below. In the meantime, you can watch a bunch of classic Real Ghostbusters episodes on YouTube, including the series pilot, “Ghosts R Us.”
Legendary actor Michael Caine has announced his retirement at the age of 90.
Caine’s career has spanned several decades and genres. He became a household name in the 1960s starring in classic films like Zulu and The Italian Job. He has collaborated several times with Christopher Nolan, playing Alfred Pennyworth in the director’s Batman films and also appearing in Inception and Interstellar, among other Nolan titles. He’s been featured in comedies like Alfie and Austin Powers in Goldmember.
Caine has received several accolades throughout his career, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performances in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and Cider House Rules (2002). Caine was also knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2000.
Of course, no discussion of Michael Caine’s career is complete without this delightful homage from The Trip, starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon.
It’s spooky season, and nothing’s spookier than a good horror movie soundtrack.
What makes the best horror movie soundtrack? Well, there is always tension — usually between innocent melodies and the menacing sounds that slowly envelop them. There are esoteric instruments galore — never has the theremin gotten so much love. You’ll find microtonal pitch changes on almost every horror soundtrack on this list. Dissonant chords, of course, are front and center on many tracks. Working these chords into ungrounded atonal compositions is not easy — which is perhaps why there are so many cheesy-sounding horror soundtracks. You won’t find any of those listed here. Perhaps most important of all is the concept of ambiguous ethereality: you know, that feeling that something just isn’t right. The best horror soundtracks do this in subtle ways, slowly chipping away at that smug sense of safety and security you have.
Back in September, I pleaded with Songtradr to not ruin Bandcamp following their acquisition of the beloved music marketplace. Apparently — but not surprisingly — they didn’t heed my request.
News of the layoffs initially filtered through on X (formerly Twitter) with a number of members of staff revealing they had been let go. In a subsequent statement confirming the job cuts, Songtradr said: “Over the past few years the operating costs of Bandcamp have significantly increased. It required some adjustments to ensure a sustainable and healthy company that can serve its community of artists and fans.
“After a comprehensive evaluation, including the importance of roles for smooth business operations and pre-existing functions at Songtradr, 50 percent of Bandcamp employees have accepted offers to join Songtradr.”
This really sucks. Even if there were some redundancies, Twitter/X is proof that you can’t fire that many employees and still expect everything to continue running smoothly. This news has me worried about what other changes may lie in store for Bandcamp. No doubt Songtradr will spin them with a bunch of corporate mumbo-jumbo, but I can’t help feeling that the Bandcamp we’ve all come to know and love and depend upon, it’s days are numbered.
Apple has canceled The Problem with Jon Stewart due to “creative differences.”
The show originally debuted in 2021 as part of a multi-year first-look deal Stewart signed with the streaming arm of the tech giant. Season 1 of the show aired episodes every two weeks, while the second season switched to a weekly format. The one-hour series explored a single topic with each episode, with each topic being part of current national events as well as Stewart’s advocacy work.
According to an individual with knowledge of the situation, the parting of ways between Stewart and Apple was an amicable one. The New York Times reported, however, that Stewart and Apple had disagreements over topics that were to be covered in the third season, including A.I. and China.
Apple had to know what they were getting when they acquired Stewart’s show, so to apparently get cold feet now just looks, well, kind of lame. You’d think that if any company would be able to take some risks and weather some controversy, it’d be a company that’s worth over… checks notes… $3 trillion.
Also from The Quietus, goth music legend Lol Tolhurst — who helped found The Cure in 1978 — shares his favorite albums, which includes releases by David Bowie, Can, John Coltrane, and Low’s Double Negative.
Are Low descendants of The Cure? Yeah. I’d sort of followed their trajectory for a while and I liked some of the ideas and stuff, but this album I really liked because there’s so many things on it. Growing up working in studios, I could see so many engineers going “No, no, no, that’s wrong! That sounds wrong. That’s distorted and overloading and it’s wrong.” And they put all that so-called “wrong stuff” on it. And it’s beautiful when it comes out of nowhere, and then you have those juxtapositions with the beautiful vocals. It’s kind of amazing to me that somebody would be brave enough to make an album like this. So that's why it’s here on the list. I like it because there are some amazing textures in there that you wouldn’t think of.
I’ve always thought that Low was deeply influenced by The Cure. Their debut album, 1994’s I Could Live in Hope, is filled with basslines and atmospherics that always remind me of Faith. And I absolutely agree with Tolhurst that 2018’s Double Negative is a masterpiece of sonic experimentation. As I wrote in my review, “it’s quite thrilling to hear a band so willing to blow up the tried and true, to challenge themselves and find new ways to explore their well-defined aesthetic.”
In yet another blow to physical media, Best Buy has announced that they’ll stop selling DVDs and Blu-rays some time next year, both in-store and online.
Best Buy’s media department used to have the largest footprint in every store, but the economics have changed. Now, you see larger computer and smartphone departments, which are now the primary ways people consume media. There are still physical video games, but that might not even last as companies like Sony and Microsoft evolve systems to focus on digital distribution. Best Buy stopped selling music CDs in 2018.
Like walking into a library to skim through and smell some books, Best Buy was a place you could pick up, hold, and read movie cases — a feeling that cannot be satiated by pressing the arrow keys on your remote as you navigate the state of captivity that is a streaming service menu. The stores were one of the only comfortable places left to go to explore physical movies after Blockbuster movie rental stores started closing for good in the past decade.
Given current industry and consumer trends, this was inevitable, but it’s still unfortunate. I was just in Best Buy the other day, and their DVD/Blu-ray section was a shadow of its former self. Back in the day, however — when I had disposable income, natch — I spent many afternoons perusing Best Buy’s DVD section, which contained a surprisingly diverse range of titles, from Hollywood blockbusters to anime and Asian cinema to B-movie collections.
Finally, if your salsa needs a little more zip, try Pepper X, which has officially supplanted the Carolina Reaper as the world’s hottest chili pepper with an average Scoville rating of 2.69 million. (The Carolina Reaper has an average Scoville rating of 1.64 million whereas the humble jalapeño’s Scoville rating is 2,000-8,000.)
Currie described the feeling of eating a whole Pepper X: “There’s an intense burn that happens immediately. Then your head kind of feels like, ‘Oh no! What’s going on?’ And then your body just starts reacting. You get it in your arms, you get it in your chest,” he said.
“It has no real throat burn like the Reaper, but that comes on later when you’re in pain.”
No doubt when you’re doubled over on the toilet.
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