Pop Screen is 50 episodes old! To celebrate, we’ve got Gav Smith from the My Favourite Film podcast back in to cover one of the big names (in terms of profile, if not in height) that we haven’t covered so far – Prince, and his blockbuster first movie Purple Rain. Gav is […]
Pop Screen
The Monkees & Head – Pop Screen 48
A pop movie is normally a chance to consolidate, rather than destroy, an image, which is why the Monkees’ sole trip in front of the camera is such a strange affair. Produced by BBS Productions at the same time as they were making Easy Rider – and with the Dennis […]
Joe Strummer, The Pogues: Straight to Hell – Pop Screen Episode 47
After making one of the definitive rock biopics with Sid & Nancy, Alex Cox was hired to document The Pogues, Joe Strummer and Elvis Costello as they toured Nicaragua. When it was decided that sending a bunch of rock stars to tour a country which had recently been at war […]
Slade in Flame (1975) – Pop Screen Episode 46
Cum on Feel the Podcazt! This week Pop Screen celebrates the festive period with a band who, without a sleigh bell in earshot, conjure up the spirit of Christmas. It can only be Slade, who got debutant director Richard Loncraine to make their one and only feature film, the oft-mistitled […]
Sparks & Annette – Pop Screen Episode 45
Pop Screen is going all topical this week, eschewing our usual cult classics and reviewing a film released this year – so be warned, there are spoilers! It’s Annette, an extraordinary, divisive musical by extraordinary, divisive director Leos Carax, with a full original score by extraord… you get the picture, […]
Jefferson Airplane & The Star Wars Holiday Special – Pop Screen Episode 44
We hope all our American listeners had a happy Life Day recently – if not, let this week’s Pop Screen put you in the party mood. In 1978, just one year after A New Hope was released, the stars of George Lucas’s original blockbuster reconvened for a bizarrely misconceived variety […]
Beats, Rhymes & Life: A Tribe Called Quest – Pop Screen 43
Shahid Mohammed, cut it with precision: this week Pop Screen is going back to the Daisy Age of hip-hop with Michael Rapaport’s documentary Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest. Somewhat incredibly the first ever documentary about a hip-hop band, this warts-and-all look at Tribe’s history […]
Bob Geldof & I’m Not There – Pop Screen Episode 42
Pop Screen is back, back, back with Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan (x2) as Cult Following‘s Ewan Gleadow rejoins Graham to talk about I’m Not There, Todd Haynes’s surreal anti-biopic with six different stars embodying different aspects of Dylan’s persona. There’s Cate Blanchett as the controversially-electrified superstar Dylan, Christian Bale […]
Pink Floyd The Wall – Pop Screen 41
Hey you! It’s time for Pop Screen to tackle one of the earliest, most expensive and most flamboyant product of the 1980s crossover between music video and cinema: Pink Floyd – The Wall. Based closely on Roger Waters’s semi-autobiographical songs, director Alan Parker and animator Gerald Scarfe produced an epic […]
Debbie Harry & Videodrome – Pop Screen 40
It’s the most wonderful time of the year – Halloween, obviously – and Pop Screen is convening Graham, Rob and Mick to discuss one of the all-time great horror movies featuring a pop star – David Cronenberg’s Videodrome, featuring Blondie’s Debbie Harry as a media psychotherapist who discovers a conspiracy […]