One of the most tried and true genres of fiction is the Whodunnit mystery. The premise is simple, a crime is committed and the reader or audience watches the a detective solve the mystery. They are our eyes and ears. We know only what they know, and we must solve the crime along with the…
Category: Movies and Film
e381. It’s Clobberin’ Time! Fantastic Four’s Impact on the Summer of Superheroes
For the past couple of years, the general sentiment seems to have been that superhero movies are becoming… well… kinda bad. But, as we spoke a couple weeks ago with the new Superman movie, things have been looking up a bit this summer. But something odd has been happening. For some reason, the general vibe…
e380. Monica in Paris: The Tropes of Study Abroad
Eagle eyed (eared?) listeners might have noticed that it’s actually been a little tricky to get Monica booked on the show for the last couple of weeks because of a time zone issue. She’s currently living in Paris on a research fellowship for her dissertation. This means that she’s basically doing the bulk of her…
e379. and now… Superman
Let’s face it, if you listen to our show there’ basically no way that you didn’t know that there was a Superman movie that came out this weekend. In fact, we’d argue that if you listen to ANY pop culture podcast, you know that there’s a Superman movie that came out this weekend. And quite…
e378. For Mature Audiences Only: When Nostalgia Grows Up
In a media landscape driven by monetizing nostalgia, reboots and remakes are inevitable. Often this involves taking a new cast to offer a modern take on the property. However, there’s something a little different that has become common place in the last few years. The “aged up reboot”. This is a curious phenomenon where a…
Call For Comments: Grown-up Reboots
From Mav: The other day, Hannah and I were talking about X-men ’97, a show that we both enjoyed. In her case, she was a big fan of the original show when she was a kid. I’m a little older and so wasn’t as much of a fan (though I did like the reboot). One…
e377. The Art of the Sequel: Continuity vs. Creativity vs. Capitalism
A couple weeks ago, Mav learned that they were making a sequel to a movie that he loves, Spring Breakers. The thing is, that’s an indy film that basically no normal people have ever seen and probably no one is looking for a sequel to. Even more curiously, none of the original cast, writer, or…
e376. Deconstructing RomComs: Genre, Trope and Capitalism
Last week, A24 released a new movie called Materialists starring Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, and Pedro Pascal and directed by Celine Song. Critical praise was high, but audience reaction was… it’s probably fair to say mixed. Common wisdom here is that this is largely because the film was marketed as a modern romcom and when…
e375. Floppy Disks and Fast Cars: Technological Nostalgia in Media
Last week Monica saw the most recent Mission Impossible movie and was fascinated by a plot detail wherein the characters need to use ancient technology from the — shudder — 1990s! Just after that, John Oliver did an expose on air traffic control towers where he noted that they often still run on software from…
e372. MCU 2025: Exploring the Current Marvel Cinematic Landscape
When we started this podcast we were very cautious that we didn’t want it to be too much about the MCU, even though we loved it and it was, at that time, obviously the biggest thing in pop culture.. There are plenty of other shows that do that and we wanted VoxPopcast to be something…