Pop Screen roars back, like an army of mods on scooters, with Quadrophenia. One of the definitive British cult movies, a peerless translation of an ambitious concept album and a loving tribute to a scene that, in its era, was so dangerous that the term “moral panic” was coined to […]
Podcasts
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping Pop Screen Podcast 13
What better time for a mockumentary than April Fools Day? The history of music industry mockery is long and storied, but Graham, Sarah and Mark went for a recent example – Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, a note-perfect spoof of the early 2010s style of pop-promo documentary. A flop on […]
It Couldn’t Happen Here (Pet Shop Boys) – Pop Screen Episode 12
Pop Screen continues its dive into the strangest products of the 1980s trend towards long-form music videos with a lost gem of British pop-surrealism – Jack Bond’s It Couldn’t Happen Here, starring the Pet Shop Boys. Arguably the first stumble in the relentless upwards trajectory PSB were enjoying, it’s been […]
Billie Eilish – The World’s a Little Blurry (Pop Screen 11)
We have taken out our Invisalign, and this is the podcast: Mick Snowden of Behold! rejoins Pop Screen to review Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry. It’s basically a piece of embedded journalism from the household of a very 21st-century pop star, from the day she first uploaded ‘Ocean […]
Josie & The Pussycats – Pop Screen Episode 10
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 […]
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 […]