movies – Kevin Smokler

Me on the Ferris Bueller Soundtrack that Never Was

Smokler on June 11, 2016

John Hughes didn’t think we’d want a “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” soundtrack, so we don’t have one. We can recreate, playlist or bootleg it, but we can’t possess something that never existed. Here’s the open secret of this movie and its soundtrack-that-never-was, three decades later: Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t waste time on something you never had, you won’t miss it.

Read the rest of my essay on Ferris Bueller's 30th birthday and the movie's missing soundtrack in Salon.

New Episodes of My Podcast on Race, Genre and the Movies

Smokler on March 23, 2016

Over at Talking Pictures, the movie podcast I do with David Dylan Thomas, we've embarked on a 5-part series about race and movie genres. Between each episode, we issue a challenge to both ourselves, and you, our movie-loving listeners.

Episodes so far…

Race and Action Movies.

The Challenge: Name 5 action movies where neither the hero nor the villain are white.

2. Race and Romantic Comedies.

The Challenge: Name 3 romantic comedies where neither member of the couple are white but their friends aren't all the same race either.

If this sounds like your kinda podcast, you can drop this link in your podcast tool of choice or subscribe in iTunes.

On How to Use “Best of 2015 Lists”

Smokler on January 4, 2016

Cribbed from my monthly newsletter The Smoke Signal, your guide to consuming pop culture smarter.

December is the month of Best of 2015 lists, all 7 million of them. It can be crazy intimating which ones to pay attention to, how much and what to do with the three dozen, "ohh I missed that's" these lists are meant to stir up. So this issue's Pop! Hacks! will be all about how to make Best of Lists work for you.

Music:

NPR Music's Best of The Year coverage is both thorough, varied and beautifully organized, by genre, curator, by song or album. Their website also has an app which will play their favorite songs of the year in random order. Let it run for a half hour while returning emails and see what new music you discover. Rule of thumb (ear?): Look to discover 2-4 new artists, half in your favorite genres, half in genres you know less well. If you're music skews toward one genre, focus there. I usually take 30 seconds and crosscheck the artists I discover with the Village Voice's legendary Pazz & Jop poll, just to see if I'm being an over-40 white guy cliche' and swallowing whatever NPR hands me.

Once you've found 2-4 new artists you like, stop looking. Explore the other work of those artists on the streaming music service of your choice. Make new friends not new music you say hello to in the hallway.

Sit-down meals not snacking.

Books:

If reading 2015's "big books everyone talked about" is your priority, the New York Times Notable Books of the Year coverage will more than suffice. Again, 3-5 titles that stir your interest. More than that and by the time you finish them, it'll be March and 2016 bookish temptations will already be clawing at the front door.

For a more personal take, Maris Kreizman, who runs publishing projects over at Kickstarter does a magnificent Best Books list that I return to year after year.

Drilling into genres, the NPR Book Concierge does a great job overall. Paste Magazine usually picks a few categories to dig into each year with great flair. The AV Club's best of coverage of comics and graphic novels is as dependable as an old friend. The folks at Book Riot do both great 30,000- foot Best-of-Every- Book-You-Can-Imagine reporting and strong by-genre lists as well. I also dig these Best Books by Women lists over at LitHub.

Movies:

Tempting here to just wait and see what gets nominated for your Oscars or Golden Globes's and catch up on films you missed. Don't. Award nominations too often focus on movies released after Thanksgiving and whose studios spend a king's ransom on publicity campaigns. Instead of catching up on great movies, you'll be wasting time catching up on 2015's Best Movies at Stuffing the Ballet Box.

Instead, make a quick trip through Rotten Tomatoes Top 100 movies of 2015 or Roger Ebert.com's annual Four Star Reviews feature. Focus on movies you've heard of but didn't get a chance to see. Then for films you haven't heard of but would like to try, watch their trailer on Apple Trailers.

If you like something, add it to your queue of record (Netflix, Hulu, Google Play, a legal pad) immediately to remember it.

Introducing The Pick 3 Podcast…

Smokler on July 1, 2010

I'm proud to announce that I'm one of the three contributors to a brand new audio series called "The Pick 3 Podcast." a joint project of myself, my wife and my best friend.

Each episode of Pick 3 will offer highlight one movie, one book and one piece of music that may be used to celebrate a special time of year. Our first episode (listen, subscribe) is about the 4th of July.

The idea for Pick 3 came about during a panel at South by Southwest Interactive this past spring. The three of us were sitting together and Cariwyl (my wife) noted that the three of us each ran startup businesses devoted to our passions for books (Me with BookTour.com), music (her with Salon97) and film (Dave with Straight to DVD Movies). Could we do anything with that?

One long walk to lunch later and we'd sketched out the basic idea for the podcast. The specifics came together over email and Google Docs, in the squibs and squabs of free time, that define the existence of anyone with creative projects in the fire.

We think the concept is a gusher of rich possibilities and are excited to see where it takes us. We also want to know what you think. Would you be so kind then as to listen to our first episode? It's only 12 minutes and moves right along.

Of course, if you don't want to miss next shows, subscribe by taking this URL and dropping into the "subcribe to podcast" window in iTunes (it's under the menu marked "advanced").

And thank you for your support.