Sometimes when the world is on fire, you just want to watch a dumb feel good sports movie. Right now the world is on fire, so we thought maybe we'd talk about dumb feel good sports movies. BUT, are they really as dumb as we make them out to be? On this week's episode Mav and Monica are joined by returning guest Les Kay, to delve into how sports movies reflect and influence societal values, challenges, and dreams. The discussion covers classics like Rocky and Bad News Bears, alongside newer films such as Challengers and Creed, analyzing themes of teamwork, individualism, adversity, and the darker sides of sports culture, including racial dynamics, gender roles, and the impact of commercialization. Listen and let us know your thoughts in the comments. Citations...
Read More
e317: From Field to Frame: Life Lessons from Sports Movies
Sometimes when the world is on fire, you just want to watch a dumb feel good sports movie. Right now the world is on fire, so we thought maybe we’d talk about dumb feel good sports movies. BUT, are they really as dumb as we make them out to be? On this week’s episode Mav…
Call For Comments: AI and Academics or GPT and Grading
From Mav: So, this has come up from a couple people. Long-listeners know that we’ve done several shows on AI before. We’ve talked about its use art and its use in comedy and we’ve touched on its use in things like Hollywood script writing. As the Spring college semester is finishing up, I’ve seen any…
e316. 2024 Summer Movie Season
It’s been four years since movies shut down for the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. It’s probably been too long to say we’re still “rebuilding” the box office. We also don’t have last year’s abbreviated season due to the dual Hollywood Writing and Acting strikes. So, for the first time in quite some time…
e315. Revisiting Classics: The Delicate Art of Remakes and Adaptations
So did you know there was a new remake of The Crow coming out? If you did then chances are, at least according to the internet, that you’re probably outraged by it for… some reason. The new Crow doesn’t look like the one from 30 years ago. Shocker?!? Also, did you know there was a…
CFC: Is Rebooting a Film Worse Than Covering a Song?
From Mav: So a few weeks ago I made a random observation on Facebook about the upcoming Crow movie. Basically, I argued that if you were really and truly upset with the redesign of Eric Draven then you were being old and out of touch. Because the weird androgynous goth mime that barely made sense…
e314. Fashion, Furniture, and Furballs — Six Years of VoxPopcast
On this week’s show, all five co-hosts are online to celebrate six years of producing a weekly pseudo academic roundtable of pop culture analysis with drinking and swearing. It isn’t too often that we can get the entire gang together these days, so this week we thought we’d do so with no strict agenda other…
e313. PCA2024: Adapting X-Men
On this week’s special epsiode we take one last look at this year’s Popular Culture Association conference in Chicago with a look at papers from one of the panels in the Comics Studies group. Mav is joined by Joseph and John Darowski who will be appearing with him in the upcoming book Adapting X-men from…
e312. PCA2024: The AfterParty
Six years ago, this show was birthed out of the aftermath of PCA2018, the annual conference for the Popular Culture Association. As is tradition, we’ve once again returned there. PCA2024 was last week in Chicago, IL and Mav attended. On this episode, he is joined by fellow conference attendees and friends of the show Nicole…
e311. From Original to Ovation: Tracing the Threads of Musical Covers
Have you ever done that thing where you hear a song that’s a cover of another song you like, only to find out later that you have it backwards and the song you thought was the cover was the original and vice versa? That was actually one of the first arguments that Mav and his…
e310. The Biggest Oscar Upsets and Travesties
We did a couple of shows in the lead up to the Academy Awards last week. You’ve heard us talk about why the Oscars still exist and what function they serve as well as given our picks and reviews for this years nominees. But there’s one aspect of the Oscars that we haven’t really discussed,…