political – Page 2 – PopCult Reviews

My Favorite Books Read in 2024

Good Night, Sleep Tight: Stories by Brian Evenson

I have never been disappointed by Brian Evenson, so I was delighted to see his short story collection coming out the exact same day as Laird Barron’s new book. These two books helped improve my October, and I needed it. This story collection was a slight shift from Evenson’s normal fare. I noticed a lot of variations on the same themes (mothers, robots, the end of humanity) and a shift to more science fiction stories than just horror.

TV Review – The Prisoner

The Prisoner (1967)
Written by George Markstein, David Tomblin, Vincent Tilsley, Anthony Skene, Patrick McGoohan, Terence Feely, Lewis Greifer, Gerald Kelsey, Roger Woddis, Michael Cramoy, Roger Parkes, Kenneth Griffith, and Ian L. Rakoff
Directed by Don Chaffey, Pat Jackson, Patrick McGoohan, Peter Graham Scott, and David Tomblin

As a citizen of the Western World (born in the States, residency in the Netherlands), I have been told from birth that I am free and those outside my sphere are not. For many years, I took this to be the truth. Why? The people who told me I was taught to see as correct in all things. These are the institutions responsible for my freedom, after all. But as I got older, the more I read & observed, it became clear that I wasn’t free. Well, I was free, in about the same way as a dog chained in a backyard is free. I can move up to a point, but then the chain chokes me and reminds me of the limits of this supposed “freedom.” I am as free as the establishment that controls my world allows me to be. I don’t think that can be defined as actual freedom.

Movie Review – The Battle of Algiers

The Battle of Algiers (1966)
Written by Franco Solinas and Gillo Pontecorvo
Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo

From 1954 to 1962, the French government was at war with the Algerian people. Algeria had been a French colony since 1830 when King Charles X decided to take the land. They blamed pirates on the Barbary Coast and their ransoming of French captives. In reality, French sentiments towards their increasingly authoritarian king led Charles and his advisors to dream up a foreign conquest to calm the people. In the first thirty years of French occupation, it is estimated that up to one million Algerians were killed, nearly a ⅓ of the entire population.

PopCult Podcast – The Apprentice/Last Summer

Well, that was a…week. One of our films purports to tell the story of a contemporary despot and the mid-century ghoul that helped to shape him. The second film is a French picture about a woman who takes a risk that could destroy her life.

Movie Review – Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom

Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
Written by Sergio Citti
Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini

His body was nearly unrecognizable when it was found on a beach in Ostia, near the edges of Rome. Pier Paolo Pasolini had been savagely beaten and run over multiple times with his own car. Additionally, the director had his genitals crushed with a metal bar and had been doused in gasoline and set ablaze. He was 53 years old when his life was taken. He hadn’t started making movies until he was 35, having helped write dialogue for Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria. Fellini brought him back for the La Dolce Vita script. Before films, Pasolini was known as a poet & a painter, both finding a potent presence in his cinematic work. His murder appeared to have been part of an extortion attempt by the mafia, stealing reels of Salo and demanding large sums of money in return. There was certainly hate behind it, too.

Book Update – September/October 2024

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

I had this recommended when I asked for people’s science fiction novel recommendations on a social media platform. I can’t say I loved it as intensely as I’ve seen others, but it has some incredible ideas and moments that have stuck with me. The parts I liked appealed to some existential ideas I have been thinking about for years, particularly humans, disregarding that they are ultimately just a type of animal who benefited (or were cursed) by being taken down an intense path of evolution.

Movie Review – The Atomic Cafe

The Atomic Cafe (1982)
Written and directed by Kevin Rafferty, Jayne Loader, and Pierce Rafferty

The context of the atomic bomb at its inception is not the same as it was viewed by the public two decades later. Our relationship with this weapon of mass destruction continues to evolve. We no longer have children practice “duck and cover” drills under the fear that the Soviets or their allies might launch nukes on the United States. Those drills weren’t really about protecting anyone if a bomb was dropped. We can look at what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki to see that our buildings would be of little protection to anyone. Those drills were about instilling fear of communists in the population. This is quite ironic, as no communist nation has ever dropped an atomic weapon on a civilian population. That “honor” is held by one country on this planet, and they did it twice.

Movie Review – Ninotchka

Ninotchka (1939)
Written by Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, and Walter Reisch
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch

Ninotchka is a perfect example of Western anti-communist propaganda. The impetus of this film came from a three-sentence short story written by Jewish Hungarian author Melchior Lengyel. The story went like this: “Russian girl saturated with Bolshevist ideals goes to fearful, capitalistic, monopolistic Paris. She meets romance and has an uproarious good time. Capitalism not so bad, after all.” I can also point to evidence that the U.S. government acknowledged this was anti-Soviet propaganda because when MGM attempted to re-release it during World War II, it was suppressed. After all, the USSR was our ally. It is informative to look at archived material from that time, particularly Western publications like Time and Life magazines, as they often spoke glowingly about the Soviets and even Stalin. It seems they suddenly became “evil” when the United States decided to pivot post-war for their own gain.

Book Update – March/April 2024

A Touch of Jen by Beth Morgan

What a strange book. Remy and Alicia are an odd couple. One of their favorite pastimes is to scroll through Jen’s social media profiles and make fun of her. Jen’s a former co-worker of Remy’s from when he was a waiter. Alicia clearly has insecurities because Remy has the hots for Jen but pretends he thinks she’s a pretentious basic bitch. Things have evolved into a weird sexual roleplay where Alicia will pretend to be Jen while Remy pretends he doesn’t like it. That’s not where the strangeness ends. Alicia insists strange noises are coming from the kitchen in their apartment at night. Remy says it’s probably just their roommate.

PopCult Podcast – The Sweet East/The American Society of Magical Negroes

This was a week of films that were not great. One is a Alice in Wonderland picaresque following a hipster down the East Coast. The second is a wildly misguided attempt at racial satire that is woefully hollow.