It’s time for Pop Screen’s Halloween month, and as luck would have it one of the biggest new horror films of the year has plenty of pop connections. The final instalment in a trilogy which started with X, MaXXXine takes the story of Maxine Minx through to the ’80s, and […]
Pop Screen
Tupac in Gridlock’d – Pop Screen 127
On 13th September 1996, Tupac Shakur died in a still-unexplained killing (well, unless Eminem just blew the case wide open). It left a lot of things in limbo, including Vondie Curtis-Hall’s spiky, charming directorial debut. Nobody wanted to see a crime comedy starring someone who’d just been the victim of […]
The Ramones in Rock N Roll High School – Pop Screen 126
Outside of documentaries and one unforgettable appearance on The Simpsons, The Ramones only made one film appearance – but what an appearance! Allan Arkush’s chaotic, Joe Dante-scripted Rock ‘n’ Roll High School wasn’t even meant to star da brudders, with Todd Rundgren and Cheap Trick considered for the film’s musical […]
Mae West in Sextette – Pop Screen 125
When David and Graham are on the show together, you should be on high alert for a camp catastrophe, and lord do we get it in the form of Ken Hughes’s Sextette. An innuendo-stuffed sex farce starring Mae West, it could have been a smash hit if it was made […]
Adam Faith in What a Whopper! Pop Screen 124
What was the British pop movie like before The Beatles? They were quite a lot like What a Whopper, as Graham and Mark discover this week. A featherweight farce in which a struggling writer and his bohemian friends try to fake a Loch Ness Monster sighting – just go with […]
Dolly Parton in Nine to Five – Episode 122
What do you get if you combine the most divisive woman in 1970s America, the least divisive woman in modern America, and a comedy legend? You get an absolute treat, at least if it goes as well as Nine to Five did. Colin Higgins’s film brings together Jane Fonda, Dolly […]
Nancy Sinatra in The Wild Angels – Pop Screen 122
Get your motor running, head out on the highway… wait, it’s not that Peter Fonda-starring 1960s biker movie. No, The Wild Angels came a few years before Easy Rider, and it centres around a noticeably less idealistic group of bikers. Director Roger Corman hired several real Hell’s Angels to serve […]
The Weeknd in The Idol – Pop Screen 121
Ladies and gentlemen, The Weeknd. To celebrate – ‘celebrate’ – the first anniversary of one of the defining pop star ego trips of our age, Graham and Robyn have reconvened to look at all six – no, wait, all five – episodes of Sam Levinson’s disasterpiece. If you’re wondering why […]
Tina Turner in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome – Episode 120
Back with a vengeance! Yes, ahead of the release of Furiosa, we’re looking at the Mad Max movie that features the most legendary pop star in the whole series (well, apart from the Doof Warrior): Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Initially reviled for its lighter tone and child sidekicks, the film […]
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story – Episode 119
We’ve covered plenty of biopics of musical legends on this podcast, and one word has hovered unspoken in the background: Cox. Dewey Cox, that is, the legendary rocker played by John C Reilly in Jake Kasdan’s Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. A musical innovator, a tortured genius, a tireless […]