Pop Culture Happy Hour No. 322: Arrival and Seratonin-Boosting Pop Culture

Jeremy Renner and Amy Adams, humans.

I was delighted as always to join my friends Linda Holmes, Glen Weldon, Stephen Thompson, and Jessica Reedy for this week's badly-needed Pop Culture Happy Hour, wherein no one mentions politics at all because that's not how we do on this show. Here's the episode.

The name the lazy file-clerk in my brain was trying to retrieve while Stephen was talking about how much he loves the Anthrax & Public Enemy version of Public Enemy's jam "Bring the Noise" was Clyde Stubblefield: Clyde is the link between Stephen's picks and mine, because he was James Brown's drummer at Brown's late-60s-to-mid-70s peak. That drums sample you hear at the end of "Bring the Noise" — probably the most-sampled ever — is Stubblefield's, originally recorded for Brown's "Funky Drummer" in 1970.

Pop Culture Happy Hour No. 288: Batman v Superman and Objects We Desire

Ben Affleck's Bruce Wayne remembers his fallen partner Robin in Batman v Superman (Warners).

I was happy as always to join Linda Holmes, Stephen Thompson, and my Pal-for-Life Glen Weldon on this week's Pop Culture Happy Hour, wherein we perform an autopsy on the rotten corpse of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which I was expected to defend but could not. The precedent for this was my defense of Man of Steel on this show three years ago.

Since none of us liked this film — in fact we all disliked it so much that the controversial issue of Henry Cavill's height never even came up — we decided to broaden the topic to try to pin down the elements that make a would-be action blockbuster work or not work. I forgot to say so on the show, but I wrote about this for Linda two summers ago after helping the staff of The Dissolve, may it rest in peace, to determine the 50 Greatest Summer Blockbusters.

Blockbuster Patient Zero:

I Like Pink Very Much, Lois: Top Five Superman/Batman Movie Moments, on this week's Filmspotting

Michelle Pfieffer and Michael Keaton in Tim Burton's Batman Returns, a film I like more now than I did in 1992.

It was a true pleasure to be on Filmspotting again, this time in a World's Finest-style team-up with my Pal-for-Life Glen Weldon. Glen is "unauthor" (his joke, people) of Superman: The Unauthorized Biography and author the just-published, even-better The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture. Host Adam Kempenaar invited the two of us to join him for this episode's Top Five segment, Superman/Batman Movie Moments. Adam and Chicago Tribune film critic Michael Phillips reviewed Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice in the show's first segment. They didn't like it any more than I did.

There's always at least one thing in my notes that I forget to say when I'm on a podcast/radio show, and this time it was a big one: In my No. 1 Superman/Batman scene, the Lois/Superman patio interview from Superman '78, the big guy actually volunteers to the Daily Planet reporter that he can't see through lead. Hey world! I know I seem invulnerable, but I do have a few exploitable weaknesses which I shall now reveal!

I love this, because it shows us that Supes' belief in humanity's goodness is so absolute (and unchallenged, somehow, even though we know from this very film that he attended high school) that it doesn't even occur to him that he should keep his vulnerabilities to himself. But when Lois asks his age, he will say only that he is "over 21," a line that perfectly encapsulates the discreet but palpable sexual tension of the scene. It's a huge improvement on Superman’s reply to this question in an earlier draft of the scene that was used to audition actors for the role of Lois once Christopher Reeve had been cast: “Thirty.”

Everything that's weird about this conversation — "Krypton with a 'C-R-I?'" "No, Krypton with a K-R-Y." — feels like a deliberate, and inspired, decision by screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz  (whose formal credit on the picture was "Creative Consultant") and director Richard Donner. There's plenty in their Superman that I don't love, starting with all those wacky komedy scenes of sacrificial fat guy Ned Beatty falling off of ladders while tuba music plays. But the stuff Superman gets right is as right as any superhero flick has ever gotten anything. The patio interview is one of those.