The Entertainment with Tom Knoblauch

Last week, we started a two part series exploring the way horror films in 2024 seem to feature significant overlap, often manifesting through a woman losing control in a malicious world full of corrupt institutions and family structures imposing their will on her in uniquely horrific ways, from Immaculate to The First Omen to Longlegs, and more. The critic Vern calls this a strand of "post-Roe" horror. He means Roe v. Wade, but we saw another meaning in there in the fact that nearly every film exploring these ideas is doing so under the long shadow of 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby. The convergence of feminocentric body horror, folk horror, and Satan as a manifestation of the corrupt institutions preying on women, is, of course, nothing new in the genre. But our relationship with these ideas as viewers may be shifting in the Post-Roe world.To get into all of this on today’s show, we have two guests, Faith Horror: Cinematic Visions of Satanism, Paganism, and Witchcraft author LMK Sheppard describing the trends from Rosemary, The Omen, and The Wicker Man leading up to today's shifts, and, later in the show, Film Streams programmer Taylor Eagan describes what she sees as a subgenre within both pre- and -post Roe horror that she calls "postpartum horror," as seen in recent films like Baby Ruby, Birth/Rebirth, and the upcoming Nightbitch.Keep the conversation going. Follow The Entertainment on Facebook, Instagram, or Substack and let us know what you think. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and we’d love it if you gave us a review. The Entertainment is a production of KIOS 91.5 FM Omaha Public Radio. It is produced and edited by Courtney Bierman. Our artwork was created by Topher Booth. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The 1968 classic Rosemary’s Baby works as psychological thriller, satanic horror, and social satire all at once. Closely adapted from Ira Levin’s novel of the same name, Roman Polanski’s film tells the story of Rosemary (Mia Farrow), who becomes increasingly convinced that her aspiring actor husband, Guy (John Cassavetes), has made a horrible deal with maybe the literal devil to advance his career in exchange for their unborn child. Its plot, its supernatural implications, and its imagery are all horrific enough, but what has been the subject of much of the enduring decades of discourse around Rosemary’s Baby is the horror that can be found simply in motherhood, in family you can’t trust, in a community that is lying to you, and in the institutions that will do nothing to protect you.These ideas are, of course, all over the horror since Rosemary and in ways that are especially prevalent in the films 2024. It’s difficult to look at The First Omen, Apartment 7A, Immaculate, or even Longlegs without seeing the long shadow of Rosemary’s Baby, but also as manifestations of particularly palpable fears of a world where women’s bodily autonomy is under more governmental scrutiny following the reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022. In Dobbs v. Jackson, the U.S. Supreme Court ended nearly 50 years of federally protected abortion rights in the United States, establishing what critic Vern calls the post-Roe world. He meant Roe v. Wade, but we saw another meaning in there, “Roe” being what Guy often calls Rosemary in Rosemary’s Baby. And we’re in a post-Rosemary world, too. One shaped, in some sense, by it. So, we’re going to do a two part series looking at the world Roe/Roe built and the way post-Roe horror might take us into the future. In this episode, we hear from Eleanor Johnson, professor at Columbia University, author of the forthcoming book Scream With Me on 1970s horror films, and writer of the Public Books article “Guy Horror: Rosemary’s Baby and Coercive Control.” Then, later in the show, Vern describes his conception of the trends in post-Roe horror, which he noticed in writing about the sometimes-bizarre overlaps between Immaculate and The First Omen.Keep the conversation going. Follow The Entertainment on Facebook, Instagram, or Substack and let us know what you think. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and we’d love it if you gave us a review. The Entertainment is a production of KIOS 91.5 FM Omaha Public Radio. It is produced and edited by Courtney Bierman. Our artwork was created by Topher Booth. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One of the most popular genres of the past several years, one you’ve probably seen on the screen, on the page, in music, and just by living through various stages of life is the bildungsroman or the coming of age story: the journey from youth into adolescence or adolescence into adulthood–the messy formation of identity and the conflict between an innocent conception of the world and the often ugly realities that wait around the corner. In her debut feature film Good One, writer/director India Donaldson taps into both this genre as well as a universal sensation that comes along with growing up: disappointment. Today's show is a conversation about the personal influences that led to Good One, the post-COVID landscape of independent film, and the reality that, when you shoot a movie on a low budget outside, it always rains. Check your local art-house to see if Good One is playing near you. Follow The Entertainment on Facebook, Instagram, or Substack and let us know what you think. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and we’d love it if you gave us a review. The Entertainment is a production of KIOS 91.5 FM Omaha Public Radio. It is produced and edited by Courtney Bierman. Our artwork was created by Topher Booth. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For a lot of people over the past decade, the nonstop campaigning and chaos of our political system has instilled a kind of constant dread about the future, compounded by looming environmental disaster and geopolitically uncertainty. And sometimes it feels like all we can do is accept that the train is slowly crashing. But what if we could do something about it? In 2023, Kurt Andersen teamed up with Larry Doyle and Steven Soderbergh to create Command Z, a sci-fi comedy web series about a group of time-travelers from the ruined world of the future who are given the opportunity to send their minds back to 2023 to right the ship. Their perhaps impossible mission? Convince the movers and shakers currently ruining everything to become better people. The show features a cast of very funny people including Michael Cera, Roy Wood Jr, Chloe Radcliffe, JJ Maley, and Liev Schrieber and, beyond its humor, is full of insights about what exactly is going wrong with a society that seemingly can fix itself but first has to want to do so.This conversation originally aired last year on Riverside Chats. We’ve repurposed it for today’s episode because all of the show’s anxieties are just as relevant today as they were a year ago. You can find all of Command Z’s episodes here. Keep the conversation going. Follow The Entertainment on Facebook, Instagram, or Substack and let us know what you think. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and we’d love it if you gave us a review. The Entertainment is a production of KIOS 91.5 FM Omaha Public Radio. It is produced and edited by Courtney Bierman. Our artwork was created by Topher Booth. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over the past few months, we’ve done several episodes that return again and again to the word genius. What is a genius? Is it something objective we can all agree on? Is it a lofty way to say favorite? Is it a way of saying a person was a mess but they were talented? Moon Zappa has strong feelings about the concept as the daughter of a man who got a lot of leeway by being known as a genius. Frank Zappa became known for guitar solos, unconventional compositions that never quite fit into the genres of his time, and lyrics that range from poetic to profane to goofy. Blending rock, jazz, classical, and even avant-garde influences, it’s hard to classify him as anything other than himself. But who was the man behind the body of work? In her new memoir, Earth to Moon, she tries to grapple with her father’s legacy as a countercultural icon of the music industry and also a complicated human being, trying to find an answer to the question of whether genius is worth its collateral damage. Along the way, she explains, she even found herself. On today’s episode, she tells her story—her way. You can buy her memoir wherever you get books. Keep the conversation going. Follow The Entertainment on Facebook, Instagram, or Substack and let us know what you think. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and we’d love it if you gave us a review. The Entertainment is a production of KIOS 91.5 FM Omaha Public Radio. It is produced and edited by Courtney Bierman. Our artwork was created by Topher Booth. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Few people have made an impact on our screens as profound and lasting as Rod Serling, creator and host of The Twilight Zone, in which he and his team would interpret anxieties about human nature, nuclear war, the problems of power, and many more universal themes through genre exercises that exaggerate, allegorize, and depoliticized its subjects just enough to get by network censorship across the 1950s and 60s. And, since The Twilight Zone ended its original run in 1964, it has been rebooted in various forms: as an anthology film in 1983, a second TV series in 1985, a TV movie in 1994, another TV reboot in 2002, and finally a streaming series co-created by Jordan Peele in 2019. But none of these reimaginings caught on, perhaps for the simple reason that none of them had Rod Serling.So who was Rod Serling? How did he accomplish what he did, what some have described as fundamentally changing the television landscape? And what should we make of a new short story from Serling’s archive that has plenty of horror but nothing supernatural? In today’s show, we hear an excerpt from a newly published story from Serling’s archive, “First Squad, First Platoon,” read by Matthias Jeske, followed by Nicholas Parisi, author of Rod Serling: His Life Work, and Imagination, and then Jodi Serling discusses her father’s legacy beyond The Twilight Zone.Keep the conversation going. Follow The Entertainment on Facebook, Instagram, or Substack and let us know what you think. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and we’d love it if you gave us a review. The Entertainment is a production of KIOS 91.5 FM Omaha Public Radio. It is produced and edited by Courtney Bierman. Our artwork was created by Topher Booth. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Filippo Ulivieri, author of 'Cracking the Kube,' and Robert P. Kolker, co-author of 'Kubrick, an Odyssey,' dive into the enigmatic world of Stanley Kubrick. They explore the profound impact of Kubrick's films on cinema and culture, highlighting his meticulous craftsmanship and the conspiracy theories surrounding his legacy. The discussion reveals the crafted mystique of Kubrick's public persona, his unreleased projects like 'Arian Papers' and 'AI,' and how he balanced art with commercial success, leaving an indelible mark on film history.

Donald Sutherland passed away in June at the age of 88 after a long, unusual, and widely celebrated career. His performances range from M*A*S*H to Invasion of the Body Snatchers to Don’t Look Now to JFK and, more recently, The Hunger Games. This is to say that he never let himself become limited to one type of character, film, or genre. And, while he could seemingly play any range of character, he always maintained that Sutherland charm. What is the secret of his charm? We asked Daryl Sparkes, Sonny Bunch, and Bobbie O’Steen.Sparkes is a senior lecturer at the University of Southern Queensland and he wrote “Hollywood Didn’t Know Exactly What to Do with Donald Sutherland – So They Did Everything with Him” for The Conversation. Bunch is a film critic at The Bulwark and writer of “RIP, Donald Sutherland.” O’Steen is a historian and author of books like Making the Cut at Pixar and The Invisible Cut. You can find a great interview she conducted with Don’t Look Now’s editor Graeme Clifford on the film’s Criterion release.Keep the conversation going. Follow The Entertainment on Facebook, Instagram, or Substack and let us know what you think. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and we’d love it if you gave us a review. The Entertainment is a production of KIOS 91.5 FM Omaha Public Radio. It is produced and edited by Courtney Bierman. Our artwork was created by Topher Booth. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’ve talked before on this show about the concept known as the paradox of choice—that having infinite choices across infinite streamers and live channels is less of a utopia of riches than an overwhelming landscape of indecision. What’s worth your time? How do you know? Well, that’s what critics try to help with. They watch a lot more than the average person and, in particular when it’s easier than ever for movies to slip through the cracks of various streamers and digital releases, we decided that today’s show could be a chance to hear from a trio of critics about not only what you should check out from 2024 but where you can find it. We’ll hear from Marya E. Gates, Ethan Warren, and KIOS’s own Joshua LaBure across the show. Marya E. Gates has written for Roger Ebert.com, The Criterion Collection, IndieWire, and many more. She also has a Substack called Cool People Have Feelings, Too. Ethan Warren is a critic, essayist, author of The Cinema of Paul Thomas Anderson: American Apocrypha, and director of West of Her. He also has a new book coming out next year called When I Paint My Masterpiece: Bob Dylan on Film and edits the journal Broad Sound. Joshua LaBure hosts KIOS at the Movies and recently directed In a Good Way. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In part four of our four part series on Elaine May, it’s finally time to talk about her final directorial effort and what has become a cultural punching bag as the worst film of all time: Ishtar. The 1987 release saw May returning to her screwball roots with, as so much of her work centers on, a dysfunctional partnership pushed to its extremes. Unlike the darkness of Mikey and Nicky, though, Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty play lovable idiots, men who are so desperate to become the next Simon and Garfunkel that they never stop to notice that they can neither sing nor write music.But quickly the discourse around the movie had little to do with anything other than the movie’s high price tag and long production schedule, so when the movie eventually came out, audiences and critics alike seemed to be rooting against it. As for the reasons why and how the worst movie of all time can undergo a critical re-evaluation decades later, we’ll hear from Richard Brody, Elizabeth Alsop, Carrie Courogen, Matt Singer, and Lindsay Zoladz.Check out Richard Brody’s New Yorker article “Better Late Than Never” on Ishtar here; Lindsay Zoladz’s writing on Elaine May, “Heaven Can Wait: The Hidden Genius of Elaine May,” at The Ringer; Elizabeth Alsop’s forthcoming book on Elaine May releases next year as part of the University of Illinois Press’s Contemporary Directors series; Matt Singer is the author of Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel and Ebert Changed Movies Forever; and Carrie Courogen is the author of Miss May Does Not Exist: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood’s Hidden Genius, which hit bookstores this week.Keep the conversation going. Follow The Entertainment on Facebook, Instagram, or Substack and let us know what you think. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and we’d love it if you gave us a review. The Entertainment is a production of KIOS 91.5 FM Omaha Public Radio. It is produced and edited by Courtney Bierman. Our artwork was created by Topher Booth. Thank you for listening. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.