Pop Culture Happy Hour: "The Northman"

Alexander Skarsgård wears all-natural fibers in Robert Eggers divisive new VIking epic.

I was glad to join my old pal Glen Weldon and my new pal Kristen Meinzer for a lively debate vis-a-vis the mertis and demerits of Robert Eggers’s new VIking movie The Northman, but my key takeaway listening back to this is that 30 years ago Conan O’Brien was trying to get us to say Cone-ehhn, not Cone-anne. Today the ghost of Robert E. Howard would like for us all to remember that his barbarian is called Cone-anne.

None of us remembered this.

When the Legend Becomes Fact: Tarzan, reviewed.

Samuel L. Jackson as real-life Renaissance man George Washington Williams, with Alexander Skarsgård as fictional he-man Tarzan. (Jonathan Olley)

For NPR, I wrestled with the 201st (give or take) iteration of The Legend of Tarzan, a movie wherein in the Uncanny Valley is often represented by a valley.