Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast

Mark, Lawrence, and Sean Michael Cooney discuss the gothic romance vampire soap opera from 1966-1971 plus the spin-off movies and reboots. We interview one of the stars of the original show, the author Kathryn Leigh Scott , to talk about the appeal and enduring legacy of this show that was once massively popular but is now a quintessential cult property that will likely be rebooted for the fourth...

It's our most successful sports film franchise ever, starting with the Best Picture winning, highest grossing film from 1976, through eight sequels to land us with Creed III . Mark, Al, Sarahlyn, and Lawrence talk about the ups and downs of this journey. How can such an apparently simple formula stay fresh? Is there any rationale for a larger Rocky-verse? For more, visit prettymuchpop.com . Hear b...

Mark, Al, our editor Tyler Hislop, and Dr. Jamie Madigan of the Psychology of Video Games podcast talk about a wide range crafting and building games from Minecraft to Starcraft to Sim City to Civilization to Rimworld to Subnautica. Given what a time commitment these typically require, what makes some of them worthwhile? For more, visit prettymuchpop.com . Hear bonus content at patreon.com/prettym...

Mark, Lawrence, Sarahlyn, and Al talk about Rian Johnson's new show Poker Face as basically a Columbo reboot (a "howcatchem" instead of a "whodunnit"), plus his recent films Knives Out and Glass Onion that modernize and subvert Agatha Christie. For more, visit prettymuchpop.com . Hear bonus content at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by subscribing via Apple Podcasts to the Mark Lintertainment Channel...

Perhaps alone in the Marvel Universe, Black Panther is taken seriously as a political statement, both in the content of its stories and in how the films are produced. Wakanda purports to present an alternate historical condition of Africa had it not been colonized. Mark, Lawrence Ware , Anthony LeBlanc , and Viola Burlew discuss the comics and films, getting into the political ideas, the social fu...

Mark, Sarahlyn, Lawrence, and guest Landen Celano from the Grunt Work podcast talk about talk about our ambivalence toward the three-camera, laugh-tracked half-hour comedies that filled our childhoods. Why did some of these stand the test of time? Are some shows well suited for hate-watching or background watching? Why the Night Court reboot doing so well? We touch on some new shows like Kevin Can...

Do movie robots want to love us, be us, or kill us? Mark, Lawrence, Sarahlyn, and Al talk through various ethical and narrative problems having to do with the creation of artificial life. We all watched M3GAN and Steve Spielberg's A.I., and also touch on After Yang, Ex Machina, Bicentennial Man, the BBC show Humans, and of course this is an element in classic sci-fi properties like Alien, Blade Ru...

Mark, Lawrence, Sarahlyn, and Al discuss the original 1883 freaky children's story and consider the recent rush of film versions , from a new Disney/Robert Zemikis CGI take to Guillermo del Toro's stop-motion passion project to a heavily costumed Italian version by Matteo Garrone . Why do people keep remaking this story , and how has the original moral of "be a good boy and obey" changed over the...

Since 2008, Dave has written cheeky (but actually heavily researched) letters to rock stars that point out logical flaws in and/or deliberately misunderstand their lyrics. Many of these have been answered by the artists and housed in three books: Dear Mr. Kershaw , Dear Mr. Popstar , and Grammar Free In The U.K .  Mark and Al Baker talk to Dave about the "green ink" stereotype in British comedy, m...

The PMP A-Team (Mark, Lawrence, Sarahlyn, and Al) talk about the canon of Christmas songs, from centuries-old carols to current attempts by pop stars to get added to this cycle of cash-flow. Happy holidays, everybody! We also do a bit of year-end reflection, getting into various things we've watched with some recommendations and ambivalent reflections. For more, visit prettymuchpop.com . Hear bonu...

Mark and Lawrence talk to "Iroqois propagandist" and philosophy nerd John about how Native cultures currently relate to American and Canadian mainstream cultures with regard to the study of philosophy, TV (e.g. Reservation Dogs ), cultural appropriation, identity politics, and more. For more, visit prettymuchpop.com . Hear bonus content at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by subscribing via Apple Podc...

We cover the first chunk of Neil Gaiman's 1989 comic and its new Netflix adaptation. Mark is joined by Anthony LeBlanc , Sarahlyn Bruck , and Al Baker. What are the narrative challenges of depicting a god? What is the show's metaphysics the role of storytelling in it? Were the updates and story choices for the TV show helpful, or was the comic truly "unfilmable," as was long thought? For more, vis...

Is there really a division in today's culture between those who create and the merely receptive masses? Mark gathers three artists in different media about the place of the artist in society: sci-fi author Brian Hirt , art photographer and academic Amir Zaki , and musician/novelist/ex-English prof John Andrew Fredrick (of The Black Watch ). We touch on art education, the self-understanding of arti...

What's the appeal of this 13-film franchise that started with John Carpenter's 1978 film Halloween and has purportedly wrapped up with David Gordon Green's Halloween Ends ? Mark Linsenmayer, Al Baker, Lawrence Ware, and Nathan Shelton debate the ideology and effectiveness of the various films. For more, visit prettymuchpop.com . Hear bonus content at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by subscribing via...

Mark, Lawrence, Sarahlyn, and Al convene an emergency podcast recording to react to this brilliant, mind-blowing, possibly immoral HBO comedy docuseries, wherein Fielder supposedly helps ordinary people rehearse difficult personal confrontations. For more, visit prettymuchpop.com . Hear bonus content at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by subscribing via Apple Podcasts to the Mark Lintertainment Chann...

Given the end of Better Call Saul , Mark, Lawrence Ware , Sarahlyn Bruck , and Al Baker discuss this strange TV "franchise" that amazingly produced a prequel that was arguably better than the original. We cover the characterization and pacing, novelistic TV vs. not having a plot roadmap in advance, and whether we want to see another installment in this world. For more, visit prettymuchpop.com . He...

With the dissolution of popular music culture by the Internet, what is it now to be into music genres that aren't currently popular? Is it still an act of rebellion, or is even that passé?  Mark is joined by composer/multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Segel from Camper van Beethoven, philosopher Matt Teichman of the Elucidations podcast , and musician and Internet DJ Steve Petrinko to talk about our r...

Thanks to the new film Prey , we now have six films (starting with 1987's Predator ) featuring the dreadlocked, camouflaged, infrared-seeing race of alien hunters who have apparently been flying around collecting our skulls for 300 years. Mark is joined by Lawrence Ware, Sarahlyn Bruck, and Al Baker to talk about the appeal of this franchise and what makes a good Predator film. For more, visit pre...

To honor the death of Gilbert Gottfried, we discuss jokes like the 9-11 one he was pilloried for . Can comedy really be "too soon" in relation to its tragic subject matter? Is comedy really tragedy plus time, or are jokes in fact most needed immediately when pain and discomfort are most acute? Mark is joined by three comedians: Adam Sank (of the LGBTQ-themed Adam Sank Show ), Twitch-streaming song...

Jordan Peele's launch from a solid comedy base with Key & Peele to the unexpected Get Out was so impressive that he's generated a huge amount of good will that allows him to play the full-on auteur with huge budgets. Did that pay off with his third film, the monster movie Nope ? Mark is joined by Lawrence Ware, Sarahlyn Bruck, and Nicole Pometti. For more, visit prettymuchpop.com . Hear bonus cont...

The 2022 Oscar winner for Best Picture was CODA , a story about a musically inclined girl with a deaf family. Kambri Crews , herself a CODA, joins your host Mark, Sarahlyn Bruck , and Al Baker to talk about how deaf culture interacts with film. Films tend to show deafness as tragic, which is not necessarily how the deaf community views themselves. We talk about balancing the demands of a story, ho...

Is re-playing or re-recording a song written and performed by someone else an act of love or predation? Mark is joined by Too Much Joy's Tim Quirk , the Gig Gab Podcast's Dave Hamilton, and the author of A Philosophy of Cover Songs Prof. P.D. Magnus to talk about different types of and purposes for covers, look a little at the history, share favorites, and more. For more, visit prettymuchpop.com ....

Mark is joined by NY Time entertainment writer/philosophy prof Lawrence Ware , novelist/ex-actor Sarahlyn Bruck , and filmmaker/ Remakes, Reboots, and Revivals host Rolando Nieves to discuss the Jurassic Park franchise in light of the new film, Jurassic World: Dominion . Is the mere presence of cool dinosaurs enough to justify a film, or are these actually good films by any standard? What childhoo...

We discuss the appeal of this Julian-Fellowes-penned British historical drama in light of the new film. Is this really "a new era" or just more of the same, and is that bad? Mark is joined by returning guest Jon Lamoreaux (host of The Hustle music podcast), plus a couple: former newscaster Corrinne MacLeod and her husband, the photographer Michael MacLeod. For more, visit prettymuchpop.com . Hear...

On the novel series and TV show written by James S.A. Corey (aka Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck). Mark is joined by fact-checker Al Baker, educator Sabrina Weiss, and voting rights guy /former reality TV editor Colin Cole. For more, visit prettymuchpop.com . Hear bonus content for this episode at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by subscribing via Apple Podcasts to the Mark Lintertainment Channel . Spon...