Verbal Diorama

Happy 250th birthday to the United States of America! 250 years ago, you became independent from us Brits. We're the King George III in this relationship, and we know it. Alexander Hamilton . You know the name, but you probably didn't before the musical debuted in 2016. On 3rd July 2020, as America protested the murder of George Floyd, and locked itself indoors simultaneously, Disney+ dropped some...

In the spring of 1954, a Japanese fishing vessel called the Lucky Dragon No. 5 sailed into the fallout zone of an American hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll. Its crew came home irradiated, and Japan, a nation still raw from Hiroshima and Nagasaki less than a decade earlier, found itself confronting nuclear terror all over again. Within months, Toho producer Tomoyuki Tanaka, with a collapsed co-pr...

King Kong (1933) was the creation of Merian C. Cooper, one of Hollywood's most extraordinary and least remembered figures, and it arrived at a precise and loaded moment: during the Great Migration, a time of mass unemployment, and racial tensions on American streets. It was, depending on who was watching and from where, either the ultimate escapist spectacle or something far more pointed; and quit...

Two decades in the making, The Meg showcases the sheer absurdity of a 75-foot prehistoric shark lurking in the ocean, and this Kaijune we acknowledge that bigger is just always better when it comes to monster movies. Loosely adapted from the novel by Steve Alten, The Meg knows exactly what it is: a fun summer popcorn flick that doesn’t take itself too seriously, delivering PG-13 thrills as the tit...

When Three Men and a Baby opened on 25th November 1987, few could have predicted that a low-budget remake of a French comedy, shot in Toronto, starring two television actors, a comedy star and a baby girl, would become the highest-grossing film of the year in the US and a genuine turning point in Hollywood history. Yet that is precisely what it did. The film arrived at a specific cultural inflecti...

Few films have done more to reimagine a fairy tale than Ever After: A Cinderella Story , Andy Tennant's 1998 period drama that stripped the magical elements from one of the world's oldest stories and replaced it with real historical characters, and a heroine who rescues herself. Set in Renaissance-era France and shot entirely on location across the Dordogne, the film marked a quiet revolution in t...

In the summer of 1998, Hollywood delivered two versions of the apocalypse within eight weeks of each other, and the story of how that happened is almost as dramatic as either film. Deep Impact , directed by Mimi Leder and released on 8th May, had been in development since the late 1970s, tracing its origins to producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown's desire to remake the 1951 sci-fi film When Wo...

In 1997, two movies decided to erupt onto cinema screens at the same time, literally and figuratively. The chaotic rivalry between Dante's Peak and Volcano is one of the biggest examples of Hollywood's twin movies phenomenon, and while both were created organically, their rivalry would lead to condensed timelines and moved release dates, and a lasting legacy of "which 1997 volcanic eruption movie...

The final episode of AIpril, M3GAN arrived in January 2023 as a modest Blumhouse horror release, and promptly became one of the most talked-about horror comedies of the year. On a budget of $12 million, it grossed over $180 million worldwide, spawned a franchise, and put a ten-second hallway dance sequence into the permanent vocabulary of internet culture. Director Gerard Johnstone insisted from t...

This AIpril, what is love, if not AI persevering? Spike Jonze's Her asks that question with such sincerity and precision that it never feels like a provocation; it feels like it's holding up a mirror to today's society. Her has become of one of the most quietly radical and prophetic films of the 21st century: a love story with no villain, no third act betrayal, just the aching reality of two being...

In 1992, a little-known Philip K. Dick short story was optioned as a sequel to Total Recall , with Arnold Schwarzenegger set to reprise his role. After a decade of Hollywood turbulence, involving a studio bankruptcy, a directorial hand-off, and two blockbusters that kept getting in the way, Steven Spielberg was finally behind the camera on what would become one of the most visually inventive scien...

In 1986, a clunky, tank-treaded robot, hungry for input, stole the hearts of cinema audiences worldwide. Short Circuit , the sci-fi comedy that gave us one of cinema's most beloved mechanical characters, might not be your first choice when you think of AI in cinema, but it is this podcast's first choice in AIpril. Director John Badham convinced a room full of designers, including legendary visual...

It started with a late-night channel surf. Author Suzanne Collins, flipping between reality TV competitions and news footage from the Iraq War, watched the two blur into something deeply unsettling, and from that collision of entertainment and violence, The Hunger Games volunteered as tribute. Published by Scholastic in September 2008, the novel didn't just become a bestseller; it became a cultura...

In 1994, five young women answered an ad in The Stage looking for "streetwise, outgoing, ambitious" singers. What happened next became one of the most explosive cultural phenomena of the 1990s. The Spice Girls didn't just dominate the charts, they redefined what a pop group could be, wresting creative control from their management, coining "Girl Power" as a global rallying cry, and selling million...

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish released in December 2022 as an unexpected masterpiece that caught audiences and critics completely off guard. What could have been just another disposable animated sequel instead became a profound meditation on mortality, anxiety, and finding meaning in our finite lives. Legendary swashbuckler Puss in Boots confronts his own death, quite literally, in the form of a te...

Even naughty dogs can have a huge impact on animation. In 1989, animator Don Bluth dared to go it alone, without the might of George Lucas and/or Steven Spielberg, and pushed the boundaries of what animated movies could explore in All Dogs Go To Heaven ; the third and final movie to celebrate this podcast's seventh birthday. Released on the exact same day as Disney's The Little Mermaid , this dark...

Even baby dinosaurs can have a huge impact on animation. In 1988, three Hollywood titans, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Don Bluth, came together to create what would become one of the most emotionally devastating animated films ever made, and it is the second movie to celebrate this podcast's seventh birthday. The Land Before Time wasn't just another dinosaur movie: it was an ambitious attem...

Even a little Jewish mouse can have a huge impact on animation. The 1986 Don Bluth animated classic An American Tail , a film that became the highest-grossing non-Disney animated feature of its time and helped reshape the animation industry, is the first movie to celebrate this podcast's seventh birthday. The project began with a concept by David Kirschner that was first pitched to Jeffrey Katzenb...

In 2009, Disney released The Princess and the Frog , introducing Tiana as their first African-American Disney princess, paving the way for more diverse representation in animation. The CGI animation boom and the disappointing box office returns of the early 2000s had left a scar at Disney, and behind the scenes, there was huge change in the animation department. By 2004, then-CEO Michael Eisner ha...

From Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman's creation of mutated turtles wielding nunchucks, the history of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles starts with humble, and slightly dark origins, but they would evolve from comic book characters to beloved animated icons and become their own pop culture phenomenon. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie franchise in total has accumulated $1.15 billion across six m...

Animation is often dismissed as children's entertainment, but Paprika proves it's a sophisticated art form, capable of exploring complex adult themes with stunning visuals. It represents the culmination of Satoshi Kon's obsession with the boundaries between reality and illusion. Throughout his short career, Kon consistently explored how modern life makes it increasingly difficult to distinguish th...

Verbal Diorama is a podcast all about How It's Done . It being movies, and to be honest, this one is as Golden as they come. I'm Free to Takedown the history and legacy of KPop Demon Hunters , with the outcome of me becoming Your Idol . This is What It Sounds Like ... my little Soda Pop . When director Maggie Kang set out to create an animated musical combining K-pop, Korean mythology, and a demon...

They scare, because they care. But do they? Do they really? Animation Season 2026 kicks off with Pixar's fourth feature, turning 25 years old this year, the incomparable Monsters, Inc . In the world of Monsters, Inc ., fear is a power source, and children's screams fuel the world of Monstropolis, which is both clever and a bit dark. This is a bright colourful movie, that cleverly hides its darknes...

Santa Claus: The Movie was an ambitious holiday spectacular that was supposed to save the Salkinds' crumbling film empire. Fresh off the disappointing performances of Superman III and Supergirl , producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind bet $50 million on creating the definitive cinematic Santa Claus origin story, complete with backstory, a North Pole workshop brought to life, and a modern-day New Yor...

Scrooged , a modern 80s retelling of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" stars Bill Murray as a cynical, mean-spirited TV executive who finally learns the true meaning of Christmas, but its production was marred with difficulties. After a four-year hiatus following the overwhelming success of Ghostbusters , Bill Murray returned to acting for this passion project. But before signing on, Murray lit...