Pop Culture Happy Hour: "Spider-Man: Far From Home" and What's Making Us Happy

Tom Holland gets some enhanced security screening. (Sony)

Host Linda Holmes is off promoting her already New York Times-bestselling debut novel Evvie Drake Starts Over this month, so Glen and Stephen handled the hosting chores on PCHH this episode, with Mallory Yu and me in chairs three and four to talk about Spider-Man: Far From Home, the eighth movie with the proper noun “Spider-Man” in the title since 2002. (For more important data analysis, see my NPR review of the movie.)

We recorded this episode first thing in the morning on one of the most heavily-scheduled days of my adult life. Fortunately, my energy peaked early that day, which is rare. I'm sure the wise and kind Jess Reedy was doing me a favor and protecting NPR when she sensibly excised my rant about how much money I lost on my first car, a Ford Taurus, when its engine exploded in the middle of the night and the beginning of a snowstorm as my brother and I were on our way to catch a plane to my grandpa's funeral. Attentive listeners will easily pick out where in the episode that would have gone were Jess not so good at her job.

I also shamelessly plugged my Washington Post piece from Tuesday about 1970’s Honor America Day and its soundtrack album, Proudly They Came… to Honor America.

Trump's "A Salute to America" is just a lame reboot of 1970's "Honor America Day."

A dollar well spent.

I’ve bought an embarrassing number of weird old records over the last several years, some of them priced considerably higher than the $1 I dropped on Proudly They Came… to Honor America. The double LP was a memento from "Honor America Day," a 1970 Independence Day observance organized by President Nixon's inaugural committee chair.

I'd never heard of that event until I found this record, but when I read up on it, mostly in Kevin J. Kruse's 2015 book One Nation Under God, it struck me as similar in intention to the self-aggrandizing “Salute to America” that President Trump has announced for this Thursday, but far less dire and militaristic. I wrote about all this for the Washington Post. .

Does Whatever a Spider Can, Again, Some More: "Spider-Man: Far From Home," reviewed.

Secret identity, shmecret identity: Jake Gyllenhaal and Tom Holland in Far From Home (Sony/Columbia)

Here's my NPR review of Spider-Man: Far From Home, a lovably shaggy vestigial tale on the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Y'all are great at this. Now just stop it for a while already.

I'll be on Pop Culture Happy Hour next week to talk about the movie with the great Mallory Yu, Pal-for-Life Glen Weldon, and guest host Stephen Thompson.

Summer 1989: Todd McFarlane was a good Spider-Man artist whose fast-growing popularity convinced him he could write, but he was wrong.

Despite Its Pedigree, "A Doll's House, Part 2" Is a Fixer-Upper

Holly Twyford and Craig Wallace as the long-separated Nora and Torvald. (Kaley Etzkorn)

I’ve been looking forward to seeing Lucas Hnath’s A Doll’s House, Part 2 for a couple of years. The announcement that the Broadway hit’s DC premiere from Round House Theatre would star the great Holly Twyford as Nora? Music to my ears.

In this week’s Washington City Paper, I try to diagnose why Nicole A. Watson’s production is so bloodless.

The Third Time's the Charmless: "Shaft," reviewed.

Alexandra Shipp, Jessie T. Usher, Samuel L. Jackson, and Richard Roundtree in the third series entry to be called Shaft. (Kyle Kaplan)

Some stuff I didn't have space to say in my NPR review of Tim Story's not-very-good new Shaft: The distinctive feature of the Shafts is a shared contempt for crosswalks and a love for walking into traffic. And it's a shame that after Gordon Parks' Shaft hit big in 1971, newspaperman-turned-novelist-turned screenwriter Ernest Tidyman got right to work adapting his third novel about the Black Private Dick Who's a Sex Machine to All the Chicks, Shaft's Big Score!, skipping right over Shaft Among the Jews.

Royal Flush: "Godzilla: King of the Monsters," reviewed.

I really liked Gareth Edwards’ 2014 Godzilla, and I want to like any movie with the audacity to call itself Godzilla: King of the Monsters, but Michael Dougherty’s sequel is dreary drag, man. Good enough to catch on a double or triple-bill at Bengies on a gorgeous summer night, but no better than that. I reviewed G: KofM for NPR.

Two Dope Queens: "Mary Stuart," reviewed.

Megan Anderson and Eleasha Gamble in Jason Loewith’s update of Mary Stuart for Olney Theatre Center.

There's been no shortage of opportunities to see Mary Stuart, Friedrich Schiller's early 19th century play about mid-16th century skullduggery among queens, in the DMV over the last decade. But Olney Theatre Center honcho Jason Loewith's stripped-down update is good. I reviewed it in last week's Washington City Paper, and discussed it briefly on Around Town, which you can see below.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: "John Wick Chapter 3 — Parabellum" and What's Making Us Happy"

John Wick 3 boasts the best equine motocross sequence since True Lies.

What a treat to dissect the third and gnarliest John Wick with Linda and Glen and Aisha Harris.

While recommending Brian Raftery’s Best. Movie. Year. Ever: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen, I happened to name one of my most be-loathed movies from that year, the Best Picture-winning American Beauty, while omitting the names of my most beloved: Rushmore, Three Kings, Eyes Wide Shut, and so on. Raftery did not include John McTiernan’s remake of The Thomas Crown Affair in his book about 1999’s most notable and groundbreaking movies, probably because a remake of a 30-year-old thriller isn’t groundbreaking, and the movie did not have a substantial cultural impact.

But it was was the last good movie McTiernan made, I’m sorry to say, and I saw it in the theater that summer along with Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Notting Hill, American Pie, The Sixth Sense, Mystery Men, and all the rest, and I have revisited it on several occasions since.