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PopCult Presents: Screenplay – Corp Borg Episode 1

The first of our next six-part Screenplay series is here!
And you can listen to it for FREE!

Movie Review – The Venture Brothers: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart

The Venture Brothers: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart (2023)
Written by Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer
Directed by Jackson Publick

In 2020, series creator Jackson Publick announced on Twitter that Adult Swim had canceled The Venture Brothers. He and co-creator Doc Hammer had been in the middle of writing season eight when they were informed. After eighteen years, Adult Swim decided they no longer wanted more of this show. Publick & Hammer took what they had for season eight and reworked it into a script for an eighty-four-minute feature that would serve as the series finale. This film was released in 2003, marking the 20th anniversary of The Venture Brothers.

TV Review – The Venture Brothers Season Seven

The Venture Brothers Season Seven (Adult Swim)
Written by Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer
Directed by Juno Lee

The core theme rippling throughout The Venture Brothers has been fathers & sons. This is seen in multiple relationships in the series. There is Rusty Venture and his deceased dad, Dr. Jonas Venture. There’s Hank and Dean in relation to their father. There were more on the edges of the show: Brock’s paternal relationship with Hunter Gathers, Sergeant Hatred’s desperation to be seen as a father figure, and Billy Quizboy having to accept Action Man as his potential stepfather. But that first dynamic, the one between former child adventurer Rusty and his deeply toxic father, was the fuel for this show. With Venture Brothers Season Seven, we open on a three-parter that finally brings closure to that arc.

Movie Review – Goodbye, Dragon Inn

Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003)
Written by Tsai Ming-liang & Sung Hsi
Directed by Tsai Ming-liang

Since March 2020, I have only seen a single film in a movie theater, and that was here in the Netherlands. The dangers associated with COVID-19, not just death but permanent or even temporary disabling, just made the act of going to the theater simply not worth it. I’ve felt justified in my choice the more horror stories I hear from the States about people talking at full volume or scrolling through their phones during the movie as if they were in their own house. I would consider attending an art-house theater because the crowds would be smaller and more respectful. But even then, most of my film-watching life will be at home for the rest of my life. Before COVID, I visited the theater at least once every other week. But life is change, and we have to move on with it.

TV Review – The Kingdom Season One

The Kingdom (Mubi)
Written by Lars von Trier, Niels Vørsel, and Tómas Gislason
Directed by Lars von Trier & Morten Arnfred

Twin Peaks is my favorite television show, and it was a worldwide phenomenon that we rarely see these days. As choices in media have expanded exponentially with streaming, in 1990, broadcast television was still the dominant home entertainment option. Twin Peaks was unlike anything American TV networks had ever shown, and this uniqueness allowed it to flourish outside the States in places like Japan, Denmark, and more. Filmmaker Lars von Trier was so inspired he developed his own TV series about a Copenhagen hospital filled with similarly eccentric characters with a supernatural bundle of secrets roiling beneath the building’s foundations.

Movie Review – In the Soup

In the Soup (1992)
Written by Tim Kissell and Alexandre Rockwell
Directed by Alexandre Rockwell

One of the misconceptions about being an artist is the glamor of living in squalor. I don’t recommend it as I was someone who has lived in less than stellar circumstances. You can still produce great art without living in poverty if you can avoid it. There’s not much romantic about being unable to afford groceries for a week or feeling an icy winter draft blow through poorly insulated windows. There’s also the misunderstanding that working in the arts is about refusing to compromise your personal vision. The challenge is balancing your perspective with getting work to pay your bills. Writing is a job like any other that involves taking gigs and doing what you can to get to the next one. Along the way, you keep working on the personal pieces, and one day, they come to fruition.

TV Review – Rain Dogs

Rain Dogs (BBC/HBO)
Written by Cash Carraway
Directed by Richard Laxton & Jennifer Perrott

While searching for a television series to watch recently, I looked at Metacritic’s best new shows on their 2023 list and noticed Rain Dogs at the top. It stars Daisy May Cooper, who I’ve enjoyed on Avenue 5 and Taskmaster, so I decided to try it. Sadly, I ended up not really enjoying the series. It was confusing because so many of the elements on paper are things I like, but when it all came together, it felt underwhelming. My biggest stumbling block is how life in poverty should be portrayed in the media and how it often gets portrayed in contemporary shows and television.

Movie Review – Intervista

Intervista (1987)
Written by Federico Fellini and Gianfranco Angelucci
Directed by Federico Fellini

When you think of Federico Fellini and movies about movies, you probably think of 8 ½, and rightly so. It’s one of the best movies ever made and the best movie about a movie ever made. However, I already reviewed it when I did a series on the iconic Italian director in 2022. When I discovered this late-career picture, I put it in this series instead. Intervista was Fellini’s second to last film, and like most artists in old age, as they grappled with their mortality, he returned to his memories. This wasn’t new for Fellini; nostalgia has always played a significant role in his work. 8 ½‘s beautiful dream/memory sequences of Guido’s and the reflections of childhood presented in Amarcord are some of the strongest examples of this in his films. Intervista is a movie about falling in love with making movies, and Fellini goes back into his memories of this time.

Movie Review – Day For Night

Day For Night (1973)
Written by François Truffaut, Jean-Louis Richard, and Suzanne Schiffman
Directed by François Truffaut

Like Jean-Luc Godard (Contempt), Francois Truffaut seemed like someone born in a movie theater. One of the French New Wave movement’s founders, Truffaut, felt cinema in a way few people do. They were certainly not the same and had a very contentious relationship as colleagues. Godard’s approach was to tear down norms, push back against expectations, and embrace a sometimes mechanistic view of the form. Truffaut was far more into the pathos of his work, wanting it to be relatable, often adopting a very sensual approach to his films. Day For Night was Truffaut’s self-reflexive movie, something for his longtime fans but also an exploration of why people make these pictures in the first place.

PopCult Podcast – All That Jazz/Mikey and Nicky

The new movies we want to see just aren’t available to us yet. So we dipped into the ol’ Letterboxd watchlist and pulled out two classics from the 1970s we’ve needed to watch.