PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Spirited Away

Spirited Away (2001)
Written & Directed by Hayao Miyazaki

Spirited Away became the Studio Ghibli film that opened the floodgates into the American theatrical market. It was just home video sales of movies like My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service had doing well until this picture. However, seeing a Miyazaki movie in a theater was a more challenging experience to find. If you lived in a major urban area, your art-house theater might show them, but it was difficult outside of those venues. That isn’t to say Miyazaki films became marquee pictures in the States. However, from my own experience, it was from this point forward that I knew I could go to my local Regal cineplex; when these animated films reached our shores, they would have them playing on at least one screen.

TV Review – The Best of The Simpsons Part 3

Deep Space Homer (Season five, episode fifteen)
Original airdate: February 24, 1994
Written by David Mirkin
Directed by Carlos Baeza (with David Silverman)

For some staff and crew, including creator Matt Groening, this episode felt like jumping the shark. If you aren’t familiar with that term, it is derived from a pretty ludicrous episode of Happy Days and has come to mean a moment when a television series goes off the rails, losing touch with what made it special, and instead becomes centered around an outlandish weekly gimmick. I can definitely see the argument for Deep Space Homer being that type of episode, but I still contend that the “jumping the shark” moment was later in The Simpsons’ development.

Documentary Round-Up – September 2020

Class Action Park (2020)
Directed by Seth Porges & Chris Charles Scott III

In 1978, businessman Eugene Mulvihill opened Action Park in Vernon Township, New Jersey. The park became famous throughout the 1980s and 90s for having some of the most dangerous and ill-conceived rides in the country. For example, there was a waterslide with a vertical 360-degree loop that resulted in people getting stuck or breaking bones. There was the Alpine Slide, a downhill sled ride without rails on a smooth concrete trench that caused numerous injuries and a couple of deaths. The documentary uses tons of file footage of the park, from marketing materials to guests’ personal home movies.

Movie Review – Princess Mononoke

Princess Mononoke (1997)
Written & Directed by Hayao Miyazaki

This is the moment where I met Miyazaki. I can remember going to the theater at the mall near my college. It was my freshman year, and I sort of went along to the movies without really know what was being seen. I believe it was my friend Clint that wanted to see this. I had no idea that is was animated or Japanese; it was merely a Friday hanging out with people I knew. When that Joe Hisaishi score kicked in, and the story began, I was immediately taken away to another world much in the same way Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Ring trilogy felt around the same time. Afterward, I had to know who made that movie.

Black Actor Spotlight – September 2020

James Avery

I would be surprised to find someone from around my age who watched television growing up that doesn’t immediately recognize this face. James Avery was one of the all-time great television dads playing Uncle Phil on the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air for six seasons (1990 – 1996). You might not know that he was also the original voice of Shredder on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, establishing that character’s tone for every iteration to come afterward.

Movie Review – Whisper of the Heart

Whisper of the Heart (1995)
Written by Hayao Miyazaki
Directed by Yoshifumi Kondo

Despite the marketing art, Whisper of the Heart is not a movie about a young girl and a magical talking cat. Instead, it is a very grounded coming of age movie about the transition from childhood into young adulthood. It was also one of the rare Studio Ghibli films not directed by Hayao Miyazaki. That honor went to Yoshifumi Kondo, who was seen as the natural successor to Miyazaki and was groomed to take over Ghibli when the founder eventually receded into a different role or retired. But that wasn’t to be, and in 1998, Kondo died suddenly from an aneurysm, which led to Miyazaki retiring temporarily from filmmaking. Such tragedy surrounding Whisper of the Heart makes is an even more bittersweet meditation on fragile our lives can be.

Comic Book Review – Basketful of Heads

Basketful of Heads (2020)
Written by Joe Hill
Art by Leomacs

It helps to have a famous dad, I suppose. In 2019, DC Comics announced a horror comics imprint, Hill Comics, that would be overseen by horror novelist Joe Hill, son of Stephen King. I have never read any of Hill’s prose, but I did read his previous comics series, Locke & Key, which is quite a fun & disturbing horror mystery with all sorts of twists and turns along the way. Hill Comics’s opening salvo would include Hill’s own Basketful of Heads, The Dollhouse Family by Peter Carey, The Low Low Woods by Carmen Maria Machado, and more. I plan to read through these as the trades are released, and we have some great horror comics that bridge the gap between the pulpy comic anthologies of old and more modern horror sensibilities.

TV Review – The Best of the Simpsons Part 2

Last Exit to Springfield (Season Four, Episode Seventeen)
Original airdate: March 11, 1993
Written by Jay Kogan & Wallace Wolodarsky
Directed by Mark Kirkland

It seems like a natural premise to feature on a show where the father is a blue-collar work, a company strike. There wasn’t much more to the idea when writing began other than mining the humor that would come out of Homer participating in a labor strike. The real hook came when the company dental plan was introduced as the driving reason Homer kept his fellow workers striking. What is surprising is that this episode is overflowing with cultural references and comedy that are seemingly unrelated to the core premise yet never feel disconnected from the story.

Movie Review – Kiki’s Delivery Service

Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)
Written & Directed by Hayao Miyazaki

Japan often remixes Euro-American fantasy tropes to create incredibly different contexts and characters. This is done with traditional Western witches in Kiki’s Delivery Service. The black cats and flying brooms are here, but the context is changed so that being a witch is passed down from mother to daughter. There are no wicked witches here; instead, the women serve as community healers and advice-givers. This does tie into the Japanese folklore of tsukimono-suji (hereditary witches), but the iconography is most definitely the classic Western culture witch.

Superhero Spotlight – Black Canary

Black Canary is the name used by two different women in the DC Universe, a mother & daughter, the partial inspiration for the Silk Spectre in Alan Moore’s Watchmen. She was one of DC Comics’ earliest super-heroines introduced post-World War II. In the New 52 reboot, elements of both mother & daughter were combined into a single version. Black Canary has been part of the Golden Age Justice Society, the Justice League, partnered with Green Arrow and been part of the all-female Birds of Prey. Four different actresses have portrayed her in film & television thus far with some markedly different interpretations. Let’s learn more about Black Canary.