Special Topics in Media

Send us Fan Mail In a world where free will routinely faces interruption from government intervention, one agent faces the crossroads between duty to the status quo and revelatory transformation. Directed by Steven Spielberg, released in 2002, and starring global superstar Tom Cruise, Minority Report provided excitement for audiences while still adhering to the sci-fi skepticism presented by this...

Send us Fan Mail In a world where ecological effects from advanced climate change force key shifts in social conditions, humankind enters a new age forged by the advent of AI companionship. In this episode, our Future Shock season burrows deeper into the frail space between humanity and technology. Hosts Garret Castleberry and Scott McMurry examine director Steven Spielberg's 2001 science fic...

Send us Fan Mail In a world where resource scarcity leads to ravaging globals wars, societal remnants scavenge post-apocalyptic wastelands in search of fuels to sustain what little remains of civilization. Somewhere between projected future failures and unreliable mythic narrators emerges the chainmetal capper to Mel Gipson's star-making role of "Mad" Max Rockatansky in Mad Max Beyo...

Send us Fan Mail In this inaugural "Future Shock Sound Bite", host Garret Castleberry briefly overviews key academic scholarship selected to accompany the educational approach to studying future shock science fiction film. Future Shock sound bites will function as complementary additions to the episodic  Special Topics film analysis episodes. These supplemental minisodes provide "bi...

Send us Fan Mail In a world where rapid overpopulation leads to accelerated resource scarcity,  near-future police detective Thorn (an icy Charlton Heston) investigates a murder that involves an upper-class power player, an escort with limited social mobility, and an increasing sense of sociopolitical conspiracy. Featuring an unnerving supporting role (and final screen performance) by Edward G. Ro...

Send us Fan Mail In a world where film podcasts stagnate along the information super highway, two  hosts stand between humankind's filmic past and the futurist projections anticipated by the fading star of a dying mass medium.  Special Topics in Media  presents "Future Shock Science Fiction", a time loop season set in the past, produced in the present, projecting toward the not-too-...

Send us Fan Mail Labor Day Weekend marks to social and cultural end point to summertime for many people in the U.S. With this season of change upon us, the voices at Special Topics in Media bid a fond farewell in the most cinematic way we can--talking about this year's Summer Movie Season ! Kyle Hammonds joins host Garret Castleberry for an in media res discussion about the hits and misses to...

Send us Fan Mail As the Summer Season winds down, and people everywhere return from vacation to head back to work, school, and everywhere in-between, Special Topics winds back this year's clock to revisit the best (and worst?) of the 2024 Summer Movie Season . Host Garret Castleberry is joined by Kyle Hammonds for an abbreviated retrospect of the summer that was (and wasn't?) in Cinemas....

Send us Fan Mail Winding down the categorical "80s" in our "Film Listology" season of Special Topics in Media , hosts Garret Castleberry and Scott McMurry demonstrate  intellectual strengths but maybe also foreign film limitations in their evaluation of the Federico Fellini mid-life masterpiece, 8 1/2 (1963). A bold expression of cinematic self-reflection situated alongside run...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we resume our "Film Listology" countdown with #82 on the Listology Super Index, a second film to emerge on the list from director Otto Preminger, 1944's Laura . A fulfilling cross between film noir and melodrama , Laura features Gene Tierney in a role that combines presence versus absence to suggest a liminal pot-boiling who dunnit? that also benefi...

Send us Fan Mail This month  Special Topics in Media  celebrates its 100th episode with a monologue progress report that details the successful vision of the program, reviewing its epistemological tenets, while peaking ahead as the show begins continues its edutainment mission.    Hosts: Garret Castleberry Producers: Garret Castleberry, Will McMurry (Audio Engineer), Alli Garner (Cover Art), Austi...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, our Special Topics  " Film Listology " focus captures the spirit of summer movie popcorn fun with the 1985 time-travel comedy classic from director Robert Zemeckis, Back to the Future . Released from Universal Pictures and co-produced by Amblin Entertainment, Back to the Future situates a cultural moment in time torn between the "me-generation"...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, the Special Topics focus on Film Listology chugs forward with an examination of Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman's Civil War-set action-adventure-comedy, The General (1926). Considered by Keaton among his favorite features, The General hybridizes genres in a time before many film genres had yet to emerge as distinctive storytelling forms. Hosts Garret and Sco...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, hosts Garret and Scott weigh the artistic beauty of Sergio Leone's   1968 masterpiece Once Upon a Time in the West , and compare it against the film's lower profile as a pop culture artifact. Do fewer distribution opportunities help protect the film as a critical darling, or is relegating it to cult status a precursor to a short lifespan in the popular i...

Send us Fan Mail In our July RETURN to the Film Listology experiment, Scott McMurry reveals the next five films currently ranked by the analytics super index. What movies emerge as the Dialogic Duo debate the #85-81? Should each of these be canonized in the Top 100, or is the data scheme exhibiting flaws in its matrix? Screen these film classic all month long and connect with the show online to sh...

Send us Fan Mail In this BONUS episode epilogue to our Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Season 2 focus, we are thrilled to be rejoined with Batman (and now Joker!) scholar Kyle Hammonds. In this continuation of our conversation concerning Batman's arch nemesis, we count down our Top 5 incarnations of the "Clowned Prince of Crime". Spanning comics, cartoons, literary, television, and...

Send us Fan Mail Following the success of our  Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Season 2 Retro Rewind season, this week we sit down with academic scholar and author of the newly released book, Interpreting and Transmitting Kynicism in Joker: The Dark Side of Film Fandom (Lexington Books, 2024). In a twist of fate,  Joker 's author is none other than guest host and friend-of-the-pod, Dr. Kyle H...

Send us Fan Mail In this RETRO REWIND episode, host Garret Castleberry sits down with communication and comics scholar Kyle Hammonds to unmask their Bat-fandom and review Kyle's favorite Caped Crusader moments. Spinning out of the Special Topics in Media Season 2 focus on " Batman: The Dark Knight Returns ", Garret and Kyle pick the conversation back up with a 2022 recorded review o...

Send us Fan Mail 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 pers...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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 lit...

Send us Fan Mail 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 acr...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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 th...

Send us Fan Mail 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&apos...