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This year's Oscar nominations were announced today and Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer leads the field with 13 nominations. Other leading nominees include Poor Things, Killers Of The Flower Moon, and Barbie. We run down the nominees in the major categories and talk about some of the surprising snubs. Subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus at plus.npr.org/happyhour Learn more about sponsor messag...

In The Zone of Interest, a German couple and their family live a bucolic life, but over the garden wall lies the Auschwitz concentration camp. The father is one of the chief architects of the Holocaust, and over the course of the film, he and his wife attempt to preserve their compartmentalized lives. But the horrors taking place outside refuse to be held at bay. Directed by Jonathan Glazer, the f...

Origin is the story of a writer who faces personal loss at the same time she works on a book based on her unified theory about systems of oppression. Written and directed by Ava DuVernay, the film is adapted from Isabel Wilkerson's best-selling book, Caste: The Origins Of Our Discontents, and dramatizes the book's ideas and the way it comes together. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor stars as Wilkerson, and a...

The new Marvel series Echo spotlights Maya Lopez (played by Alaqua Cox), whom we first met as the stoic badass enforcer for the criminal Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio). She's now on the run, fleeing to her tiny Oklahoma hometown determined to nurse her wounds and make plans to take over Fisk's criminal empire. But her friends and family – including generations of her Choctaw ancestors – may have...

The TV cartoon Bluey is a hit with young children. But it's also found a devoted following among their parents, who've embraced the show's emotional depth – as well as its messages about creativity, collaboration, and learning through play. Bluey just returned with a batch of new episodes on Disney+, so today we're revisiting our conversation about the series. Learn more about sponsor message choi...

The 75th annual Emmy Awards are over, and it was a big night for The Bear, Beef, and Succession. Plus Elton John earned his EGOT, and Jennifer Coolidge and Niecy Nash Betts gave memorable speeches. Subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus at plus.npr.org/happyhour Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy

In the new Netflix action-comedy-heist movie Lift, Kevin Hart plays an experienced thief and con man whose crew is backed into a corner and forced to work for the government. Their next theft will be their greatest, and it's all to avert an enormous disaster. They'll have to fly planes, use disguises, sneak around, beat the bad guys, and look great doing it. Learn more about sponsor message choice...

Mean Girls is a film adaptation of the Broadway adaptation of the beloved Lindsay Lohan and Tina Fey comedy. The songs are there, the dances are there, and the nasty, nasty high school drama is there. But does the retelling capture the energy, the style, and the jokes of the original? The new cast includes Reneé Rapp, Auliʻi Cravalho, and Angourie Rice. Learn more about sponsor message choices: po...

Baldur's Gate 3 was the most acclaimed video game of last year and recently won Game of the Year at The Game Awards. It maps the experience of Dungeons and Dragons onto the mechanics of videogames. You and your companions embark on an epic quest, going through dark dungeons and dangerous wilderness — all while being confronted with choices that change the game in ways big and small. But what makes...

In the new horror film Night Swim, Wyatt Russell plays a former baseball player who's been forced into retirement due to the early stages of MS. He and his wife, played by Kerry Condon, decide to buy an old house and refurbish its dilapidated swimming pool. But there is a catch: the pool is haunted. Subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus at plus.npr.org/happyhour Learn more about sponsor message...

The movie All of Us Strangers is a wistful fantasy drama that tells two intersecting stories about different kinds of love: One between a son and his long-deceased parents; the other of two lonely men and neighbors who long for connection. Directed by Andrew Haigh, the film stars Andrew Scott as Adam, a TV writer living a lonely existence in London, and Paul Mescal as his neighbor Harry. Adam's pa...

The new Netflix series The Brothers Sun is a fun genre mashup of action, comedy, and family drama. Michelle Yeoh plays Eileen Sun, who married into a powerful Taiwanese crime family, and then secretly raised her youngest son (Sam Song Li) in the U.S. to protect them both from being targeted by rival gangs, while her oldest son (Justin Chien) was left in Taiwan and is now a remorseless killer. But...

NPR's Books We Love is a roundup of favorite books of the year, sorted and tagged to help you find exactly what you're looking for. Today, we're highlighting books about show business, including a memoir, a history of the Oscars, and a biography about two iconic film critics. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy

The delightful new Disney+ series Percy Jackson and The Olympians is a new adaptation of a beloved series of books by Rick Riordan. The series tells the story of how Percy (Walker Scobell) finds out the startling truth that his father is a Greek god. Percy soon discovers what that means, with the help of some faithful friends. The series also features Jason Mantzoukas and Megan Mullally. Learn mor...

Your local library is a great source for books. But it can also be a great resource for helping you with your new year's resolution. Perhaps you want to learn a new language, take a cooking class, or research your family's genealogy. Or maybe you just want to save a ton of money. Today, we're presenting an episode of the podcast Life Kit all about the ways to get the most out of your library. Lear...

Do you make resolutions in January? We do. Today, we make pop culture resolutions for 2024, and we check in on what we resolved to do this last year, and whether we are inclined to bask in our victories or fret about our defeats. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy

What do we do at the end of every year? We hope, we fear, and we make wild guesses. Today, we're checking-in on how we did making predictions for 2023, and then we boldly make new ones for 2024. Subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus at plus.npr.org/happyhour , or donate to your local NPR station at donate.npr.org/happy Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR P...

We cover a lot of new movies around here, and some even become our new faves of the moment. Yet at the end of the year, we always have a list of gems we didn't get to talk about, and now's our chance to show them some love. Today, we're making recommendations for great movies we missed in 2023. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy

The new film Ferrari tells one chapter in the life of a man who wanted everything to go as fast as possible. Starring Adam Driver, the film is a portrayal of Enzo Ferrari's complex personal life, defined by relationships with his wife (Penelope Cruz) and his mistress (Shailene Woodley). Ferrari is the latest film from director Michael Mann, but how does it stack up to his previous work such as Hea...

The very good new film The Iron Claw tells the tragic story of the Von Erich family. They were professional wrestlers in the early 1980s, with patriarch Fritz (Holt McCallany) directing several of his sons into the sport, with disastrous consequences. Directed by Sean Durkin, and starring Zac Efron and Jeremy Allen White as two of the sons, the film considers the way their father's version of masc...

The Pop Culture Happy Hour team is off today. So we're bringing you a very special holiday extravaganza from NPR Music's All Songs Considered podcast . In this festive episode, All Songs' annual celebration of the season returns with a trip to a snowy cabin in the woods – as they attempt to throw a party for the ages. Eggnog will be had, plenty of delightful holiday music will be played – and some...

The Color Purple was a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, then it was a movie, and then, a Broadway musical. Now it's a movie adaptation of the musical. In the new film, Fantasia Barrino plays Celie, who survives the abuse by the men in her life and longs to be reunited with the sister who was taken from her. The film also stars Danielle Brooks and Taraji P. Henson. Directed by Blitz Bazawule, The Colo...

In American Fiction, Jeffrey Wright stars as an author who finds that the books he loves to write aren't selling. What is selling is books by Black authors that he finds reductive and drowning in stereotypes. So, he sets out to write the ultimate Black novel under a pseudonym, with all the tropes and simplifications he thinks publishers expect. But his life gets very complicated when it turns out...

The Netflix film Maestro is an Old-Hollywood style biopic about the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein. Bradley Cooper directed, co-wrote, and stars in the film as Bernstein. It examines Bernstein's life through the lens of his complicated marriage to his wife played by Carey Mulligan. And of course, there are many scenes in which we watch Cooper passionately conducting orchestras of both th...

Maybe you're at school and need to concentrate while hitting the books. Maybe you're trying to get work done and need some sounds to drown out distractions. When silence isn't cutting it, sometimes you need music that'll fill your head without distracting you with words. Today, we're recommending three great songs to help you study. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adch...