Pop Culture Happy Hour: "The Odyssey"

Matt Damon is Odysseus and Zendaya is Athena. (Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal)

I fully expected my PCHH brethren Glen Weldon and (especially) Stephen Thompson to complain that Christopher Nolan’s all-star, shot-on-location-in-IMAX, no-expense-spared adaptation of a 2,800ish-year-old epic poem was too long with too few jokes. To my surprise and delight, they did not. Wailin Wong, who I had the pleasure of being on a panel with to dissect the probably-final Mission: Impossible last summer, shares my love of Tenet. It’s a fun episode.

My Washington City Paper review, meanwhile, is here.

Scientification! "Amazing Stories" at 100 on All Things Condered

The prose version is here.

Blue Man Regroup: "Avatar: Fire and Ash," reviewed.

He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake…(20th Century Studios)

I wish I could give a more full-throated endorsement to the third, not-as-long-awaited Avatar, but I’m starting to have some real reservations about my first favorite filmmaker’s life’s work. My Washington City Paper review is here. You can also hear me discuss the movie with Stephen Thompson and Reanna Cruz on Pop Culture Happy Hour below.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: "Alien: Earth"

Babou Ceesay as Morrow, the cybernetic Inspector Javert figure of Alien: Earth. (F/X)

On today’s Pop Culture Happy Hour I had a gay old time (double) jawin’ with Glen Weldon and Joelle Monique about Alien: Earth, an attempt by Legion and Fargo showrunner Noah Hawley to implant a feature-film embryo into a prestige-TV host body.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: "The Phoenician Scheme"

A new Wes Anderson joint is a cause for celebration if you’re me. I join pal-for-life Glen Weldon and Code Switch host B.A. Parker to scheme, Phoenician-style. My jokes about how Anderson never phoens it in have all been cut.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: "MIssion: Impossible — The Final Reckoning"

When you stare into The Abyss, etc., etc. (Paramount)

When you watch 2018’s Mission: Impossible — Fallout, you can see the shot wherein Tom Cruise breaks his ankle leaping across London rooftops.

When you listen to our new Pop Culture Happy Hour on Mission: Impossible — The Final Recknoning, you can hear the moment when I suffer an aneurysm. It’s when my friends Aisha Harris and Linda Holmes once again compare these films to the Fast & Furious movies. And they are like those, in the sense that the 1969 Rolling Stones and circa 2012 Aerosmith are both rock bands.

Talkin' Long Movies on "Weekend Edition Sunday"

Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone in Martin Scorsese’s 3.5-hour historical epic Killers of the Flower Moon. (Apple)

There’re few things I love more than to immerse myself in he richly-imagined world of a movie, but even I can see that popcorn flicks, in particular, have hulked out to dangerous dimensions. I noted this alarming trend on the occasion of Avengers: Endgame in 2019 and again back in May when Martin Scorsese’s 3.5-hour adaptation of David Grann’s nonfiction true-crime epic Killers of the Flower Moon debuted at the Cannes Film Festival. Weekend Edition Sunday host Ayesha Roscoe had me and my pal Bob Mondello on to refute, which great respect, her assertion that movies are too long. According to Bob, what was originally slated for a four-minute time slot was allowed to strech out to a luxurious 7:15, which seems fitting.

Radio, Radio: Multiversal Exports

The contemporaneous cape-flicks Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and The Flash are both riffing on a lot of the same ideas. I put together a fun radio piece asking if the concept of fictional multiverses has gone fully mainstream. it aired today on Here & Now, but you can listen right here.