Pop Culture Happy Hour: Blade Runner 2049, Pop Culture Happy Hour: Blade Runner 2049, Voigt-Kampff'd.

Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford have a lot to talk about. (Stephen Vaughn / Alcon)

Any debate over whether Blade Runner 2049, a 35-years-later sequel to the cultiest cult film in the history of movies, has general-interest appeal should be put to rest by virtue of the fact that Stephen Thompson—the host of the three-way discussion of the film the comprises today's Pop Culture Happy Hour—liked it, too! Pal-for-Life Glen Weldon and I are this movie's core constituency. But when the Kung Fu Panda-loving Mr. Thompson gives his approval to an intense, nearly-three-hour dystopian future flick, you know it's got some moves.

You can listen in here, where the episode is posted along with my review from last week. I had to write it just a couple of hours after I saw Blade Runner 2049, but I think the piece stands up. I'm seeing the movie again tomorrow night at the National Air and Space Museum. I'm looking forward to spending another 163 minutes with a new stone classic.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: Logan Lucky, discussed.

Workaholic artist Steven Soderbergh on the set of Logan Lucky. (Bleecker St.)

I dropped by NPR HQ to talk about Steven Soderbergh's return to features, Logan Lucky, with screenwriter and author Danielle Henderson and regular Pop Culture Happy Hour panelists Linda Holmes and Glen Weldon.  When we recorded this discussion, I'd taken the opportunity to see the movie a second time after filing my review, and my opinion on it had evolved a little. Anyway, you can find the episode here.

I wish I could put my finger on why it read to me as condescending in a Coenesque way the first time but not the second. I love the films of Joel and Ethan Coen. But the ones Logan Lucky most recalled for me, Raising Arizona and Fargo, are not among my favorites.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: Atomic Blonde

The Mondo two-LP blue-and-yellow-vinyl edition of the soundtrack to David Leitch's stylish Charlize Theron-headlined, set-in-1989 espionage thriller Atomic Blonde that I ordered won't arrive for several weeks, I'm told. Until then you and I will just have to make do with our extant libraries of New Order, The Clash, A Flock of Seagulls, etc. And with this thrilling recorded-in-one take episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour, wherein host Linda Holmes and regular panelists Stephen Thompson and Glen Weldon brought me in to talk about how much we all like watching Ms. Theron kick ass. It's a lot more satisfying that watching her play second-fiddle to some grunting no-talent clown in a tank top.

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.