I'm sure someone's mentioned these books before, but I wanted to bring up "Pictures at a Revolution" and "Five Came Back" by Mark Harris in relation to the wrap-up portion of the episode.  Trey was talking about motion pictures in relation to WWII and how within a year there were movie made OF the battles, and Brian brought up the idea of propaganda.  "Five Came Back" is directly related to that subject in that it follows five major directors who ended up within the propaganda machine that was the US government, and discusses how that infrastructure was put into place, as well as how it was challenged and evolved over the course of WWII.  It's pretty tightly focused on the directors' experiences (John Ford, William Wyler, George Stevens, Frank Capra, and John Houston) and illustrating it through their documentation and perspectives, but it feels really in depth and is meticulously cited.

The other book, "Pictures at a Revolution" is more tangentially related to the conversation, but it definitely explores some of the theme that was being discussed about the demarcation between 70's-style movies and the earlier studio-produced films.

Anyway, they're both solid reads (I know "Pictures at a Revolution" is available in audiobook) and I was really amused at how tightly they related to the wrap-up conversation.

I'm pretty sure that Romero and/or the writers didn't really think of this, and I know Trey is fairly right when it comes to discussing the central theme of humanity's inability to learn/accept their inevitable fate as observed by the repeated use of marking time via calendar, but.  Well.

There are very good and very practical reasons for a WOMAN to be marking time.  The first calendars (nicks in a bone) were made by women to count days because we have timers guys don't have and that need to be planned for.  Again, thematically Trey's right, but practically speaking, girl's gotta mark her days.

I agree with a lot of the earlier conversation re: how the Bechdel and Mako Mori tests are good conversation starters.  Because even with that info-graphic, if you're scoring movies on technicalities, the point OF the tests (how rare it is they get passed on anything BUT a technicality) is kind of being missed.

I recently went through a bit of a film renaissance of independents and smaller films released in the late 1990's and was struck by how many of them were written/directed by women and how a lot of them had multiple women in top billed roles and where the Bechdel and Mako Mori tests were passed in the first five minutes.  (Drop Dead Gorgeous, Sugar and Spice, Romy & Michelle's High School Reunion.)  And, as a woman, I have to say that this decrease in visibility and how it appears - and I will completely own the "appears" word because this is how I have interpreted the pushback for adding female cast members, I will completely own that I am not subject of backroom meetings and casting decisions - has really turned me off visual media.

Simple as it is, if I can't find a character that I connect with in the narrative, I check out.  And I'm really tired of being forced to connect to male characters because they are the forced POV.  And while I am fully capable of connecting to male characters, and have regularly in the past, I would like more options that include people of my own gender.

But, that's just my $.02.