Everybody has their pop culture blindspots—those particular TV shows or movies that you just never got around to watching despite their massive cultural imprint. Usually, in those situations, you just hope that your pop culture ignorance doesn’t come out in some embarrassing, highly public fashion. Like, for instance,…
It’s 3 p.m.! Let The A.V. Club briefly make use of the waning hours of your productivity with some pop culture ephemera pulled from the depths of YouTube.
The most widely admired science-fiction film to come out of the 1980s, Blade Runner reimagined the nocturnal, seductive, and pessimistic qualities of film noir and its ’70s derivative, neo-noir, for the paranoid cityscape of the future: a dark, rainy, multi-lingual Los Angeles where a detective in a trench coat trails…
In the actual TV show, Rick And Morty treats Back To The Future as if “crazy old scientist and his teenager sidekick” were a time-honored trope to be pulled out and riffed on, but the show’s proverbial origin story is that it was intended as a more direct spoof called “Doc and Mharti.” Series creator Justin Roiland…
Foley artists are doing god’s work. Essentially, their job is to reproduce the most minute and ambient of sounds in film, such as the click of a lock or the rustle of clothing. If they’re doing it right, you’ll barely notice. If they’re doing it wrong, it’s all you’ll be able to focus on.
People stopped caring about deleted scenes pretty soon after DVDs became a thing (unless they’re Star Wars-related). Truly, there’s a reason most of these things were deleted. Now, it’s not the content of a deleted scene that captures the attention so much as the waste of time, effort, and money it took to film what…
There are few signposts of one’s own mortality/maturity more potent than the slow acceptance that you’ll never own a real hoverboard. (With apologies to the engineers of the various projects expensively pursuing that dream, and the next of kins of their amateur, YouTube-bred cousins.) But while we’ll never float down…
The Cubs’ 108-year-drought-erasing World Series win not only made history, it’s also had deep ramifications on the future—specifically, Back To The Future Part II, whose prediction of a Cubs championship was once every bit as outlandish as the idea of a bloated, bullying casino magnate achieving autocratic rule. Last…
This week’s question comes from reader Karen G.:
People who still remember the Video Home System (VHS) tend to think of the analog format as being of distinctly crappy quality, lacking fine details and plagued by glitches, noise, and distortion. But do vintage videotapes really deserve that crummy reputation? Actually, they do. At least that’s the conclusion reached…
Hillary Clinton’s marketing team seems to be trying to paint its opponent—a man who invented the nickname “Little Marco” and chose “You’re fired!” as his catchphrase—as an unlikable bully. In doing so, they got their crack team of video editors to splice together some of Donald Trump’s greatest hits from the campaign…
Many things divide the city of Chicago, including the perennial schism between its two baseball teams. The White Sox overcame a prospective franchise-ending scandal (the Black Sox) and various embarrassments (Michael Jordan at the bat) to become a fairly successful ball club, winning the World Series as recently as…
In an effort to both serve our readers and help support The A.V. Club, we are going to post daily links to deals and interesting items that we find over on Amazon. If you use these links to click through and buy something—not just the thing you clicked—on Amazon, we will see a portion of that income. You don’t have to…
Whether one is playing a little basketball (against humans or cartoons), traveling through time, or exacting sweet revenge against one’s enemies, there is no shoe quite as versatile as the sneaker. Now, Parisian filmmaker Candice Drouet, who operates under the rather misleading banner Really Dim, has assembled an…
It’s now officially fall, and we could think of no better time to share the fruits of Netflix’s latest harvest. The streaming giant will boast the arrival and/or return of films like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Three Kings, Unforgiven, and, despite what it augurs, the ice-filled romp of Snow Day. More importantly, next…
Philadephia-born actor Tom Wilson grew up surrounded by pop art, a movement spearheaded by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein that drew on images from mass media and advertising and used bold, bright colors to catch people’s attention. After attending the American Academy Of Dramatic Arts in New York City, Wilson found…
In an effort to both serve our readers and help support The A.V. Club, we are going to post daily links to deals and interesting items that we find over on Amazon. If you use these links to click through and buy something—not just the thing you clicked—on Amazon, we will see a portion of that income. You don’t have to…
Tomorrow, August 5, is a special day that may be missing from calendars in a gross oversight: It’s the 30th anniversary of Lionel Richie’s hit song “Dancing On The Ceiling.” Such a momentous occasion as that shouldn’t go unnoticed and must be celebrated in some fashion. Luckily YouTuber Robert Jones has rushed to the…
In many ways, the movie characters of the 1980s had it very lucky. Not only did they get to experience firsthand what was, at least according to the RNC, the single greatest era in American history, but they didn’t have to deal with all the depressing problems and complications of the new millennium. Okay, sure, Marty…
Coldplay’s currently on tour in support of its A Head Full Of Dreams record, which included a stop at New York’s MetLife Stadium on Sunday night. Chris Martin couldn’t arrange for a surprise Beyoncé appearance, despite her contribution to the album, but he did get some help playing The Penguins’ “Earth Angel” and…
