This week, Mark Harrison from Film Stories and VODzilla returns to the podcast to talk all things Josie & The Pussycats. Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont’s Archie Comics-derived spoof was received poorly on its initial release – yikes – twenty years ago, but with Riverdale and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina […]
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Freejack (With Mick Jagger) Pop Screen Episode 9
It is the future. 2009. A CGI Anthony Hopkins wants Emilio Estevez’s body, but not in a sex way. Which badass bounty hunter does he dispatch to bring Estevez for processing in the – I swear to god, this is what it’s called – “lobotomizer”? Why, Mick Jagger, of course. […]
That’ll be the Day (W/David Essex) – Pop Screen Episode 8
The title is Buddy Holly, the star is David Essex, and the mood is pure Edward Heath. Claude Whatham’s 1973 coming-of-age film might be set in the 1950s but it’s really an artefact of Britain’s long post-60s comedown, bleak, pessimistic and extremely brown. Remarkably, this tale of a wannabe rock […]
Hustlers (Jennifer Lopez) – Pop Screen Episode 7
This week’s episode of Pop Screen is about Lorene Scafaria’s Hustlers, a film whose tonal balancing act is as precarious as Jennifer Lopez’s gravity-defying pole dance. A feminist movie set at a strip club, a warm-hearted caper comedy about sexual exploitation and the credit crunch, a serious crime drama with […]
The Great Hip Hop Hoax – Pop Screen Episode 6
This week’s Pop Screen is about Silibil & Brains – and if your reaction was “Who the hell are Silibil & Brains”?, allow Jeanie Finlay’s fascinating 2013 documentary The Great Hip Hop Hoax to explain. Finding themselves shut out of the rap industry for their Dundee origins, they decided to […]
Absolute Beginners (David Bowie) – Pop Screen Episode 5
Absolute Beginners! If you were part of the British film scene in the mid-80s, you knew it as the coolest project in development: a lavish, experimental musical from punk director Julien Temple, adapted from Colin MacInnes’s cult novel, with a cast including Patsy Kensit, Sade, Edward Tudor-Pole, Bruno from Strictly […]
Holy Motors – Pop Screen Episode 4
Strap in and get ready for a wild ride, because this week on Pop Screen Graham and Mark are explaining Holy Motors. No false advertising, no ironic trickery – we guarantee that a viable interpretation of Leos Carax’s infamous 2012 head-scrambler will be posited as we travel through each of […]
Bulbous Salutations Versus Google Translations – Literary Loitering 129
So 2020 is over, but thanks to some cunning and stealthy arrangements our cultural anarchists hid away a couple of episodes. This time around we have tales of a secret but obvious message left by a librarian, an art dealer’s racist selfies, a scholar who lied about their race, a […]
Wild Zero: Pop Screen Episode 3
Love knows no boundaries, nor does rock, and nor does Pop Screen, which journeys outside of Britain for the first time to look at Wild Zero, a delirious horror-comedy-musical road movie starring the uncompromisingly rock-oriented band Guitar Wolf. Join Graham and Rob as they try and piece together what they’ve […]
Spice World: Pop Screen Episode #2
That’s right, it’s the Spice Girls! And they’re dressed as each other! Isn’t it a howl? If you do not, in fact, think it’s a howl, their film Spice World might be a bit of a slog – yet despite near-universal disdain from critics it remains the all-time highest-grossing movie […]