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- February 14, 2024: In Defense of One-Dimensional Villains
February 14, 2024: In Defense of One-Dimensional Villains
This week on The Deep Dive: The accidental scene in The Graduate that kickstarted a creative career, Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd (and also lots of other streets in Los Angeles), a powerful story about learning to love yourself in all forms, the history of sex scenes and why they feel absent from TV and movies these days, and how prequels are contributing to the era of ineffective Disney villains.
FILM
The Shot That Changed How I See Movies | The Graduate by Grant Dougharty (13:29)
I hate to break it to you, but growing up means realizing that your English teacher was right â the curtains werenât just fucking blue. But what if the significance of the blue curtains happened by accident? Do they then lose all their meaning? Between scuba divers representing post-graduation pressure, animal print clothing representing a cougar on the prowl, and other key details, this video makes one thing clear: movies like The Graduate are made on purpose. But in this video, Grant Dougharty realizes that the movie scene that inspired his passion for filmmaking was nothing more than a sheer coincidence, down to a backdrop that he had injected meaning into. But how could that be possible in a movie as meticulously made as The Graduate?
URBANISM
LAâs Forbidden Pedestrian Tunnels by ITâS HISTORY (16:22)
Recently, I was driving around my neighborhood with my partner, Ben, when I spotted a staircase that seemed to lead underground below one of the busiest major streets in Los Angeles. âWhat is that?â I asked while pointing to it. Ben responded with an answer he, an LA native, thought was obvious, âItâs a tunnel people can walk through so they donât have to cross the street here.â As someone who didnât grow up in LA and had never seen one of these in my life before this very moment, I couldnât move on. I began barraging him with questions: âHow long has that been there? Why canât people just cross at the crosswalk? Are there a lot of these? If so, where? Do they still build these? If not, why did they stop?â In this video, IT'S HISTORY answers all of my questions, with a side of car-related historical context.
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