Dune, 1984, USA/Mexico, Dir. David Lynch (Sting) Once a reviled commercial disaster, today David Lynch’s Dune is… a tolerated commercial disaster? It has its fans, it has its naysayers, so before Denis Villeneuve launches his much-anticipated adaptation of (the first half of) Frank Herbert’s novel Graham and Archaeon are convening […]
Podcasts
Damon Albarn & Face (1997) – Pop Screen 33
Face, 1997, United Kingdom, Dir. Antonia Bird (Damon Albarn) Best remembered for containing Damon Albarn’s one film acting performance, as wet-behind-the-ears aspiring gangster Jason, this week’s Pop Screen argues that Antonia Bird’s 1997 movie Face deserves more credit. A British gangster movie made in that brief moment before Lock, Stock & […]
Suzi Quatro & Suzi Q – Pop Screen 32
Suzi Q, 2018, Australia, Dir. Liam Firmager (Suzi Quatro) There’s always been a steady stream of British acts trying to make it in America, but the American acts trying to make it over here are a more rarefied bunch. Along with Sparks, one of the few US artists to try […]
Madonna & Desperately Seeking Susan – Pop Screen 31
We’re doing a Madonna movie! No, come back! This week, Graham and Sarah go back to the Material Girl’s breakthrough moment, when her Nile Rogers-produced sophomore album Like a Virgin proved she wasn’t a fluke, and Desperately Seeking Susan became one of the top five highest-grossing films of 1985. But […]
The Beach Boys and Love & Mercy – Pop Screen 30
A biopic of Brian Wilson had been mooted ever since the late 1980s, but it wasn’t until 2014 that Bill Pohlad’s Love & Mercy was released, with its bold time-hopping structure that allowed both Paul Dano and John Cusack to play the Beach Boys’ chief songwriter. The former played Wilson […]
Moonwalker & Michael Jackson – Pop Screen 29
Could the King of Pop have become the King of Cinema? Not, perhaps, on the evidence of 1988’s Moonwalker, a curious, personal but deeply overbudgeted melange of music videos, live performance, claymation and a bewildering plot-line where Jackson fights back against Joe Pesci’s not exactly Scorsese-worthy drug dealer by turning […]
David Clark Five & Catch Us If You Can – Pop Screen 28
The director of Deliverance made a film starring the Dave Clark Five? It happened! This week, We Are Cult’s Mark Cunliffe rejoins the podcast to talk about John Boorman’s very uncharacteristic debut Catch Us If You Can, starring Clark as a stuntman who goes on the run with Barbara Ferris’s frustrated advertising […]
Amy Winehouse & Amy (2015) – Pop Screen 27
There aren’t many pop movies of the 2010s that won an Oscar, but then there aren’t many pop movies as well-crafted and emotionally devastating as Asif Kapadia’s 2015 documentary Amy. A bruising look at the rise and fall of Amy Winehouse told with intimate archive footage, it’s both a celebration […]
Elton John & Rocketman – Pop Screen 26
The long-awaited biopic of Sir Elton Hercules John – wait, Hercules? Yes, Hercules – was always going to be a flamboyant affair, but no one suspected it would be a full-scale, dancing-in-the-streets musical. Yet that is exactly what director Dexter Fletcher and screenwriter Lee Hall delivered in 2019’s Rocketman. This […]
Abba, Cher & Mamma Mia Here We Go Again! – Pop Screen 25
Phyllida Lloyd’s 2008 film Mamma Mia! was a box-office sensation – so why are we vaulting straight over it to review its 2018 sequel? A lot of reasons, as Mark and Graham discover on this week’s episode of Pop Screen. Beginning with an absolutely gonzo rendition of When I Kissed […]