Pop Culturista

The Rise and Fall of the Manic Pixie Dream GirlThe first time I heard the term "manic pixie dream girl," I immediately knew what they were talking about, and I thought of Goldie Hawn. She was that character in most of her movies, but I particularly thought of Butterflies are Free. The cinematic stereotype, however, became very common in films in the 21st century. I believe the character came to be used to represent young women who are each convinced she's "not like other girls." The main plot revolves around how such a quirky, free-spirited character changes a young man's conservative, restricted viewpoint and makes him more accepting and appreciative of a woman who is somehow different. Still, when the same character shows up so many times in so many movies, she stops being "different" and comes across as just plain ditzy. The character is not exactly going away, but evolving into less of a stereotype and into a more complex personality, which is only appropriate. Nerdstalgic look at how we got this character, and how it got way overused for a few years.

An Honest Trailer for OppenheimerThis Honest Trailer is NSFW, as we find out why Oppenheimer has an R rating. Not that any children are willing to sit through more than three hours of serious world-destroying for the sex scenes. Screen Junkies focuses on how very serious this movie is, how depressing the subject matter is, and how every minute is focused on one man who is presented as way less complex than he obviously was. The impression of J. Robert Oppenheimer himself on the audience is that he was very skinny, and for all his intelligence had to be bamboozled into building the atomic bomb. That said, they really liked Oppenheimer and consider it the best movie Christopher Nolan ever made. The video is only six minutes long; the rest is an ad.

Stephen Colbert Off This Week Due to Medical EmergencyThe Late Show With Stephen Colbert will be off this week due to Colbert's hospitalization. The late night host underwent surgery to remove a ruptured appendix. An infected appendix that bursts is a serious condition, and requires surgery to remove the organ and all infected material. We don't know when it happened, but today Colbert had recovered enough to make the announcement on various social media accounts.Sorry to say that I have to cancel our shows this week. I’m sure you’re thinking, “Turkey overdose, Steve? Gravy boat capsize?” Actually, I’m recovering from surgery for a ruptured appendix. I’m grateful to my doctors for their care and to Evie and the kids for putting up with me. Going forward, all emails to my appendix will be handled by my pancreas.This is the second time that The Late Show with Stephen Colbert has canceled a week of shows since returning from the five-month writer's strike in early October. Colbert suffered a round of Covid-19 in the latter part of October, requiring a week off. We don't yet know if one week off will allow him to recover from surgery enough to return to the show, but we wish him a speedy and easy recovery.

A 20-Sided Die Made of Cranberry SauceOlivia Youngers, a Star Trek: Picard actress and serious Trekkie, shares this product from her replicator on Thanksgiving. It's a 20-sided die made of cranberry sauce. She doesn't provide details about how she made it, but there are d20 food molds available for purchase.I'm going to guess that the sauce is frozen. That could be helpful for Dungeons & Dragons players who take too long to decide what they're going to do when it's their turn during combat.

Stitches in Time: All of Doctor Who, As It HappenedBecca McGlynn has been working for ten years to make a fan edit of Doctor Who that arranges the show into chronological order. But that doesn't mean the order of when the episodes appeared, it means the chronological order of what happens to the time-traveling Doctor and his cohorts in history. Really. The project is called Stitches in Time. The finished timeline is more than 20 days of Doctor Who. McGlynn explains how the edit was built at her extensive methodology page. You can imagine how strange that will be, with different iterations of the Doctor appearing in different years, but all in the order of how real time works. Stitches in Time will go live on Saturday, November 25, at 6PM EST/11PM GMT, kicking off with a marathon streaming event in which McGlynn and Laser Webber of the Doubleclicks, along with special guests, watch the first 24 hours of the project as a fundraiser for the Los Angeles LGBT Center. You can watch the live streaming marathon here. You can also watch the project at your leisure at this page. The first nine parts are available already, with the rest to follow soon. -via Metafilter(Image credit: various) 

Thanksgiving TV Episodes to Watch for the Holiday WeekendThanksgiving is a holiday centered around family togetherness. You have plans for the big feast together, and then maybe you plan to watch some football together, and then there's Black Friday shopping. Those plans will not cover the whole weekend, and there's only so much "catching up" you can do before small talk turns to politics, and we would prefer that not to happen. One way to fill those off-hours with your relatives is to watch a some "comfort TV" together. How about some classic Thanksgiving-themed episodes of your favorite shows? There are a surprising number of these shows available. Cracked has a list of 15 recommended Thanksgiving TV show episodes, and Mental Floss has a list of twelve. Most entries have video clips. What's really amazing is that only one classic Thanksgiving episode appears on both lists! That effectively gives you a list of 26 different episodes you can look up and play for your family downtime this weekend. It should fill about 30 hours or so. Oh, you've already guessed that the one thing these lists have in common is "Turkeys Away" from WKRP. Any such list that didn't include that show would be illegitimate.