Pop Style Opinionfest: Going Low on High Culture

Pin

This week’s podcast is a veritable SMORGASPOD of topics, darlings. What can we say? We’re not just fabulous and opinionated, we’re also chatty as hell.

Our main topic (if there is one) has to do with the way a whole bunch of cultural critics reacted to two recent stories. The first was a report that most people haven’t seen this year’s slate of Oscar films even though most of them are freely available on streaming services and people are stuck at home. The second was the news that Promising Young Woman writer-director Emerald Fennell has been snatched up by Warner’s for it’s next DC comicbook film, Zatanna. In both cases, the critical response was annoyingly snobbish and while we don’t feel the need to get into a defense of low or popular culture, we do think there’s a longstanding problem with how and why we tend to separate so-called “high” culture and devise arbitrary and unhelpful delineations. Lorenzo the classically trained violinist and Tom the film degree nerd call on both their backgrounds to challenge the notion of separating culture into high and low categories at all.

But before we get all up in THAT mess, Lorenzo’s got a few things to say about Netflix’s The Serpent, which drops today.

And Tom goes into a slight rant about why The Falcon and the Winter Soldier has turned out to be something of a disappointment after the genre-busting pleasant surprise of WandaVision.

And we both have much (non-spoiler) things to say about Michelle Pfeiffer’s amazing performance in French Exit; why only she could have played this part and why she’s literally the only reason to watch it.

All this, PLUS: An update on the ill-fated upcoming Oscars ceremony and yet another confirmation that all the power-brokers, movers and shakers in entertainment hang on our every word and live to please us.

What did we tell you? A SMORGASPOD! A PODPOURRI of opinions!

And thank you once again for listening to it.

[Photo Credit: Netflix, Disney+, Marvel Studios, Sony Pictures – Video Credit: Netflix via YouTube, Sony Pictures Classics via YouTube ]

• French Exit
• Movie Previews
• Pop Style Opinionfest
• Previews
• The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
• The Serpent
• TV Reviews