e143. Thirty Great Things You Missed In 2020

The year 2020 is over. You’re probably as relieved as we are. Of course the problems with 2020 are largely still with us, but at least getting here feels like SOMETHING has happened. Last year on VoxPopcast, we decided that rather than doing a “best of the year” episode with the greatest movies or books…

Call For Comments: 2021 Box Office Game

From Mav: Well, this ought to be weird. It’s the end of the year, so it’s once again time for us to do our movie picks for the annual fantasy box office episode. If you’re new to our show, every year we play a game where we earn points by how well movies do at…

e142. Deconstructing the Queen’s Gambit

If anything has characterized pop culture in the year 2020, it’s streaming media. From Hamilton to Tiger King, during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the essential elimination of out-of-the-home entertainment, we as a people have been absorbing a great deal of content from our couches through the magic of streaming. This is a world made for…

e141. Ghosts, Spirits, Scrooge and a Merry Marxist Christmas

Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is likely the most famous Christmas story ever written. First published 177 years ago, it has been produced as stage plays, adapted into dozens of films and spoofed and parodied countless times on television shows, in comics, and other media. Whether from Disney, The Muppets, Scrooged, the original or somewhere…

e139. The 22 Reviews of Christmas (Cheesey Christmas 2)

Christmas movies have been a seasonal spectacle almost as long as there have been movies. A couple years ago, we did an episode speaking to the recent trend of Lifetime, Hallmark and now even Netflix creating a a veritable factory of streaming Christmas content. Those films were aimed at viewers who simply love delightful feel…

Call For Comments: Why Do We Suddenly Love Musicals?

From Wayne: I used to think I didn’t like Musicals. There were a few, I guess. I saw Cabaret on TV when I was young (a heavily edited version of it, I’m sure), and had fond memories of some of the songs and imagery. There were others I saw in this context. I remember the…

Call for Comments: Cheesy Christmas Movies: Part II

From Hannah: Two years ago, I somehow convinced everyone to let me do a show on cheesy Christmas movies. And by wanting to talk about “cheesy” holiday films, what I really meant was “let’s talk about all these really ‘bad’ (but also sometimes kind of really fun and good in their own way) romantic comedies…

e136. Describing 14 Films We Haven’t Seen

In a world where four podcasters are exhausted from the never ended horrific news cycle of politics, racial tensions, pestilence and death that has been the year 2020, these weary souls decide to take one week away from serious pseudo academic pop culture analysis with drinking and swearing and do… goofy pseudo academic pop culture…

e134. Reality of Horrors!

On last week’s show, we investigated the comedic world of horror movies. This week, we wanted to go a different way… the reality of horror. Yes, of course there are horror movies that feature monsters and demons and other supernatural horrors. But what do we make of films like Deliverance, Jaws, Psycho and Cujo? What…

e133. Comedy of Horrors!

Halloween Season is upon us! As scary as 2020 has been in general, we are finally at the part of the year where we are supposed to be scared… or at least watch a lot of scary movies. But 2020 has been scary enough… and so this year we want to focus on the funny…