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.

Halo, Goodbye: Bleed for This, reviewed.

Here's my NPR review of Bleed for This, writer-director Ben Younger's new biopic about super middleweight champion Vinny Paz's unlikely-but-true comeback from a massive injury. Not essential, but not bad. 

Desert Heat: Lazy Eye, reviewed.

Lucas Near-Verbrugghe and Aaron Costa Ganis in Tim Kirkman's Lazy Eye.

I wrote this review of writer-director Tim Kirkman's romantic drama Lazy Eye the day after the election. It's not a pan, but I think I owe Kirkman that disclaimer anyway. It was difficult to focus on a movie that day, especially one about gay people made by a gay person. The world just got a lot more frightening—a little more for LGBT folk than for straight folk like me, but only a little.

Doctor Strange, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Review Movies on the Radio

Tilda Swinton and Benedict Cumberbatch in Dr. Strange (Marvel).

Something new for me: Reviewing movies on the radio. Here's my Weekend Edition Sunday assessment of Doctor Strange, wherein Marvel hands the role of brilliant, arrogant, goateed rich-guy Avenger from Robert Downey, Jr., the most recent movie Sherlock Holmes, to Benedict Cumberbatch to the most recent TV Sherlock Holmes.

Fight Call: On the Welders' new MMA play The Girl in the Red Corner

Audrey Bertaux and Jennifer J. Hopkins grapple in rehearsal for The Girl in the Red Corner. (Photo: Darrow Montgomery)

Today's Washington City Paper has a feature from me about a new play from the DC theatre collective The Welders set in the milieu of mixed martial arts. It's by Stephen Spotswood, a prolific dramatist whose work I have followed with interest for the last five years or so, and it's the first play about a bloodsport here in DC since Studio Theatre did Sucker Punch in early 2012. (I did a feature on that one, too.) You can use the link above, or pick up a dead-tree copy wherever finer alt-weeklies are given away for free.

Epic-in-the-Brechtian-Sense Failure: Kiss, reviewed.

Lelia TahaBurt, Shannon Dorsey, Gabriela Fernandez-Coffey, Tim Getman, and Ahmad Kamal in Kiss. 

Feeling compelled to write a play about war or genocide? You've got your work cut out for you, but God bless. Feel compelled to turn your frustration over how hard it is to write a good play about war or genocide into a play? Please stop. A lot of things are about you, but not everything.

Woolly Mammoth's American premiere of Chilean playwright Guillermo Calderón's Kiss is not as bad as Jackie Sibblies Drury’s We Are Proud to Present, because nothing I've ever seen on a stage is as myopic and offensive as Jackie Sibblies Drury’s We Are Proud to Present. But it ain't good. I break it down in today's Washington City Paper, available wherever finer alt-weeklies are given away gratis.