e327. Decoding Literary Criticism: From BookTok to Shakespeare

Recently an 18year old college student who calls herself alisha not alihsha posted a vlog where she argues in favor of what she calls “being a hater” in her video essay “Booktok, brainrot, and why it’s okay to be a hater” Somehow she went viral and became the topic of conversation for a bit on…

e323. The Complex Legacy of Barbie: Gender, Fashion & Identity

So how about that Barbie? No, not THAT Barbie… we did a show on the movie last year. No, what we want to talk about is enduring legacy of the concept of Barbie. Starting with the doll and going through to the movie, Barbie is just… always there. Or at least she has been for…

e322. 4 Killer Out-of-the-Box X-men Movie Pitches for the MCU

It’s somehow been five years since Disney’s acquisition of Fox and the impending promise therein of having the X-men added into the MCU. While we have … let’s just say feelings… about the idea of a single global megacorportation essentially owning the movie landscape in the US, that is perhaps a show for another day.…

e320. Adrenaline and Affection: Exploring the Action Romance Genre

What do you do if you’re in couple that was designed on an 80s sitcom so you have extremely traditional gender roles of a feminine partner who loves lovey dovey chick flicks and a masculine partner violent ‘splosiony dude movies. You go to an action romance of course! So it turns out that we don’t…

e317: From Field to Frame: Life Lessons from Sports Movies

Sometimes when the world is on fire, you just want to watch a dumb feel good sports movie. Right now the world is on fire, so we thought maybe we’d talk about dumb feel good sports movies. BUT, are they really as dumb as we make them out to be? On this week’s episode Mav…

e316. 2024 Summer Movie Season

It’s been four years since movies shut down for the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. It’s probably been too long to say we’re still “rebuilding” the box office. We also don’t have last year’s abbreviated season due to the dual Hollywood Writing and Acting strikes. So, for the first time in quite some time…

e315. Revisiting Classics: The Delicate Art of Remakes and Adaptations

So did you know there was a new remake of The Crow coming out? If you did then chances are, at least according to the internet, that you’re probably outraged by it for… some reason. The new Crow doesn’t look like the one from 30 years ago. Shocker?!? Also, did you know there was a…

CFC: Is Rebooting a Film Worse Than Covering a Song?

From Mav: So a few weeks ago I made a random observation on Facebook about the upcoming Crow movie. Basically, I argued that if you were really and truly upset with the redesign of Eric Draven then you were being old and out of touch. Because the weird androgynous goth mime that barely made sense…

e312. PCA2024: The AfterParty

Six years ago, this show was birthed out of the aftermath of PCA2018, the annual conference for the Popular Culture Association. As is tradition, we’ve once again returned there. PCA2024 was last week in Chicago, IL and Mav attended. On this episode, he is joined by fellow conference attendees and friends of the show Nicole…

e310. The Biggest Oscar Upsets and Travesties

We did a couple of shows in the lead up to the Academy Awards last week. You’ve heard us talk about why the Oscars still exist and what function they serve as well as given our picks and reviews for this years nominees. But there’s one aspect of the Oscars that we haven’t really discussed,…