Longtime listeners to the Emerald City Video Podcast will know that I’m a big proponent of physical media.
It isn’t just nostalgia. I’m particularly a fan of DVD and Blu-ray, which are formats where there’s enough storage space on the media to provide fan with a ton of bonus content. For years, consumers could not only rent or own their favorite movies on disc, but also see trailers, bloopers, deleted scenes, analysis, and listen to audio commentary tracks.
What’s a commentary track? For those who aren’t big time movie nerds, it’s very possible the concept is alien to you. The idea is, the filmmaker (or whoever) sits down to watch a movie and, while watching it, talks over the whole thing, providing stories, insights, and commentary on the project, its production, whatever. For many cinephiles, commentary tracks were the coolest bonus features available. I know when I was in college, VHS tapes were still cheaper than DVD, so it was often the commentary track that led me to decide when to splurge on a disc.
All of this is to say that, in the coming year, I plan on recording a number of commentary tracks for films and TV shows, recruiting some of my work friends to talk about their art, and maybe even making some new friends along the way. First up, because it’s the holidays, is Kevin Shinick.
Kevin is a brilliant writer, actor, and all-around nice guy. He’s written comics and worked on TV projects as diverse as MAD, Robot Chicken, and Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?. His hosting gig with Carmen serves as a jumping-off point for his upcoming project Host Mortem!, which you can and should follow on Kickstarter now.
Described as “LA Confidential meets The In-Laws,” Host Mortem! centers on fictionalized versions of two real life game show hosts from the 1990s (Shinick and his collaborator Greg Lee) travel through time and attempt to solve a series of murders in the 1940s.
Kevin is also the writer of Beebo Saves Christmas, an animated special from The CW that took the beloved “mascot” from DC’s Legends of Tomorrow and created an animated special for him. In the world of Legends, Beebo is a beloved toy with a multimedia history of appearing on TV and in video games. In real life, of course, he was just a parody of Tickle-Me Elmo, and didn’t really have any existing media to fall back on…at least until producers approached Shinick about making some!
Shinick joined me for a commentary track on Beebo Saves Christmas, which you can listen to above. Hopefully this makes for a very happy Beebo Day…err…Odin Day…I mean Christmas!
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Since I’ve been very bad about doing this before now, here’s a batch of links to my existing books, which presumably make great gifts if you are lucky enough to know somebody in one of these niche fandoms:
Best Movie Ever: An Oral History of Deborah Kaplan & Harry Elfont’s Josie and the Pussycats
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/best-movie-ever-russ-burlingame/1140177148?ean=9798988311720
https://www.booksamillion.com/p/Best-Movie-Ever/Russ-Burlingame/9798988311720?id=9340900023696
https://bookshop.org/book/9798988311720
The Gold Exchange: The Unofficial Booster Gold Companion
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-gold-exchange-russ-burlingame/1143464630?ean=9798988311737
https://bookshop.org/book/9798988311737
https://www.booksamillion.com/p/Gold-Exchange/Russ-Burlingame/9798988311737?id=9340900023696
A Legend In His Own Time: A Fast-Forward Guide to the Greatest Hero You’ve Never Heard Of (with Kevin Allen)
Getting the Fin Right: The Collected Savage Dragon Interviews vol. 1 (with Gavin Higginbotham)
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/getting-the-fin-right-russ-burlingame/1146574344?ean=9798988311744
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