The Culture Gabfest “I Dig Your Directionless Fury” Edition
Slate’s Culture Gabfest on Locke, Adventure Time, and Nikil Saval’s Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace.
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On this week’s episode, the critics discuss Locke, an existential road movie shot in real time, staring Tom Hardy as a construction foreman on a late night drive. The film’s minimalist conceit—and Hardy’s handsome face—make for surprisingly gripping cinema. Next, the gabbers turn to Adventure Time, an animated Cartoon Network series with cross-demographic appeal, attracting kids, stoners, and philosophers alike. And finally, inspired by Cubed, Nikil Saval’s history of the workplace, the critics discuss the perils, privileges, and power trips of office design. Are we disgruntled because of our work—or our workplaces?
Links to some of the things we discussed this week follow:
- Dana’s review of Locke on Slate
- Manohla Dargis’ New York Times review of Locke focuses on Tom Hardy’s face
- Robert Redford’s All Is Lost
- Adventure Time on Cartooon Network
- Emily Nussbaum’s rhapsodic review of Adventure Time in the New Yorker
- Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away
- Nickelodeon’s The Ren & Stimpy Show
- Shrek
- The Simpsons
- Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace by Nikil Saval
- Jill Lepore’s New Yorker review of Cubed
- Seth Stevenson discusses the philosophy of open offices on Slate
- Herman Miller’s “Action Office.”
- Billy Wilder’s The Apartment
- King Vidor’s The Crowd
- Working Girl
- 9 to 5
- NBC’s The Office
- HBO’s Silicon Valley
Endorsements:
Dana: The parody music of the Disney Channel’s Phineas and Ferb, the best of which is compiled in the show’s “Cliptastic Countdown.”
David: Ted Hawkins’ voice—both gravelly and bright—as featured in his original recording “The Good and the Bad.”
Julia: The work of the children’s book author Mo Willems, especially We Are in a Book, about the experience of reading.
Outro: “The Good and the Bad” by Ted Hawkins
You can email us at culturefest@slate.com.
This podcast was produced by Ann Heppermann. Our intern is Anna Shechtman.
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Correction, May 15, 2014: In the "things we discussed" section of this post, Adventure Time was mislabled as being on Comedy Central, it is on Cartoon Network.