CFC: She’d Be HOT Without the Glasses and Ponytail!

Anne Hathaway as Mia Thermopolis (center) in The Princess Diaries From Mav: A few weeks ago, we did an episode about the Princess Diaries 1&2 films. Ever since then, something has been getting at me. In the first film, there’s the requisite teen movie makeover scene…. Mia Thermopolis is an “ugly duckling”, but it turns…

Call for Comments: Disappearing Media

From Hannah: This summer, the cancelled Batgirl movie caused a lot of people on Twitter (and other places) to not only criticize the decision but talk about why it’s so depressing when films go unreleased. (Particularly, if you believe one of the dominant narratives, that it was solely thrown in the trash for accounting magic…

Call For Comments: The Ages of Comics and Superheroes

From Mav: Several years ago when I was doing my oral comps (PhD exams) I was asked a question about the evolution of comics. I don’t remember the exact question anymore. What I do remember is that one of my committee members stopped me and said “you always say that… the ages of comics. What…

Call For Comments: Pouring some “edgy” on it

From Mav: Last year, we did an episode that I called “pour some gritty on it” which was all about the recent trend of doing gritty reboots of classic media IP. The obvious example there was shows on the CW like Riverdale and Nancy Drew. Shows where the idea is that it takes place in…

Call for Comments: Eating the Rich… Cinematically!

From Hannah: In 2019 — when I still went to the theater every week — I noticed a pattern with a release every few months. Starting with Us, then the horror-comedy film Ready or Not, and then with Knives Out I was struck by how class conscious these films were. How unrelentingly they worked to…

e248. 2023 Box Office Draft

It’s that time again! if you’ve been listening for a while you know that every year the hosts of Voxpopcast play a fantasy box office game! The BEST fantasy game. Each host will draft 15 movies in a 15 round snake draft and compete to see who can have the highest combination of box office…

Call For Comments: So what did we miss in 2022?

From Mav: It’s the end of yet another year in pop culture and we want to close out 2022 in the same way we do every year on VoxPopcast. Every year, rather than closing out with a best of the year episode we record one talking about our favorite things in pop culture that we…

Call For Comments: Is AI art or ‘theft’? Yes and No… probably…

From Mav: So, like a lot of other people I used the Lensa app to make myself a collection of random avatars last weekend. Why? Because all of my friends were doing it and if they were all going to jump off a cliff I would too. And yeah, that sounds silly, but honestly, that’s…

Call For Comments: Dual Identities as Single Identities

From Mav: So, while taping my other show, Gosh Golly Wow, we had a brief discussion about how while some of the X-men characters have two names, a public and a privater personal (e.g. Kurt Wagner is Nightcrawler, Scott Summers is Cyclops, and Ororo Monroe is Storm) there are others that have only one single…

Call For Comments: Wakanda Forever and Replacing Deceased Actors

From Mav: So, I saw Black Panther: Wakanda Forever last week and without spoilers, it was basically everything I thought it would be. I enjoyed it a lot. Pretty much from the moment they announced they were still going to make the film, without recasting Chadwick Boseman, it was pretty clear that they were going…