Get obsessed with us. Four days a week, Pop Culture Happy Hour serves you recommendations and commentary on the buzziest movies, TV, music, books, videogames and more. Join arts journalists Linda Holmes, Glen Weldon, Stephen Thompson, and Aisha Harris - plus a rotating cast of guest pop culture aficionados. The Happy Hour team leaves room at the table for exploring a range of reactions and opinions on every bit of the pop universe. From lowbrow to highbrow to the stuff in between, they take ...
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Glen Weldon Podcasts
Critics Chris Klimek and Glen Weldon both loved the late-60s British sci-fi series "The Prisoner" in their formative years, but they haven't seen it in a long time and they're not at all sure how it will play in a 21st century rife with with "alternative facts" and militant individualism at the expense of social responsibility. One thing is certain: Run-DMC were clearly influenced by the vocal patterns of Patrick McGoohan, and that malicious weather balloon is still eerie as hell. Wait, that ...
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In the new movie The Lost Bus, Matthew McConaughey and America Ferrera play a bus driver and a teacher who have to transport more than 20 kids to safety when evacuation orders roll in from a wildfire. Based on the 2018 Camp Fire in California, the movie is a harrowing drama, a climate warning, and a disaster film all in one. It’s streaming on Apple…
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Taylor Swift just dropped her new album The Life Of A Showgirl. It touches on her relationship with fiancé Travis Kelce while reflecting on fame, normalcy, the Internet, and a simmering beef with a fellow pop star. We’re unpacking the songs, including “Actually Romantic,” “Eldest Daughter,” “CANCELLED!”, and “Ruin The Friendship.” To access bonus e…
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The Smashing Machine And What's Making Us Happy
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Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Emily Blunt star in the new sports biopic The Smashing Machine. Johnson plays Mark Kerr, a UFC champion who is reeling from his first major loss in the ring and confronting an addiction to painkillers. Directed by Benny Safdie (Uncut Gems), the wrestling drama pulls out all the classic moves in the awards season playbo…
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This year marks 20 years since Brokeback Mountain hit theaters. The film starred Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as two sheep herders who fall in love in a place and time that keeps them apart. Before its release, Hollywood considered it a huge risk. It went on to be a critical and box office success, but it also made a lot of folks so uncomfortab…
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The Lowdown is a great new FX series starring Ethan Hawke as a freelance investigative reporter with a knack for sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong and getting that nose punched. He gets drawn into the seedy goings-on of one of Tulsa’s most prominent families. Created by Sterlin Harjo (Reservation Dogs), the modern-day Western noir comedy ha…
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In the new Netflix series Wayward, Toni Collette plays a deeply creepy woman who runs a facility that promises to fix troubled teens. A cop (Mae Martin) moves to town with his wife, who's a graduate of the facility and an acolyte of its leader. And he starts to think something is very, very wrong. Things are not all they seem in the picturesque tow…
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One Battle After Another And What's Making Us Happy
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One Battle After Another is an action-thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Teyana Taylor and Sean Penn. DiCaprio plays a washed up ex-revolutionary searching for his missing daughter while raging against the machine. In this case, the machine is unabashedly racist, xenophobic, and corrupt. Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, the ensemble also include…
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Showgirls stars Elizabeth Berkley as a Vegas dancer trying to move up from a seedy club to a glamorous hotel show. Paul Verhoeven’s NC-17 movie was a notorious flop, but it is now considered a camp classic and a window into a moment of moral panic. Showgirls turns 30 this year, so today we’re revisiting our conversation about the film. Follow Pop C…
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The new HBO series Task stars Mark Ruffalo and Tom Pelphrey in a grim, but stealthily hopeful drama. From the creator of Mare of Easttown, the show is a cat-and-mouse crime thriller about an FBI agent reluctantly dragged back into the field to investigate a series of drug related crimes. The show offers drugs, stolen money, family drama, kidnapping…
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From one of the minds behind Rick and Morty, Netflix’s new animated comedy Haunted Hotel is the perfect mix of fun and creepy to kick off spooky season. Will Forte voices a ghost who previously ran the Undervale, a very, very haunted old hotel. The show follows his attempts to show his family the ropes, vis a vis ghosts, demons, bleeding mirrors, a…
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In the new horror film HIM, Tyriq Withers stars as a young football player who has a chance to be trained by his idol, played by Marlon Wayans. As they train at a mysterious facility in the desert, it becomes clear early on that greatness might not be worth the price. From director Justin Tipping and produced by Jordan Peele, the film takes some bi…
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The fall of 2025 is shaping up to have something for everyone with a fresh Knives Out mystery, Guillermo del Toro’s take on Frankenstein, and a new Emma Stone movie. We’ve got a guide of the TV and films we are most excited to see, including Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, Bugonia, Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice and The Lowdown. To access…
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The TV series The Summer I Turned Pretty features a messy love triangle, plenty of drama, and a LOT of Taylor Swift songs. The show has become a word-of-mouth sensation, with fans obsessing over whether they’re Team Conrad or Team Jeremiah. Now in its final season, the Prime Video series is based on a series of books by Jenny Han (To All The Boys I…
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