Breaking Bad is a series unafraid to mine its past, delving into earlier seasons for images and icons and details. Small moments pulsate with added emotion, layers of meaning conveyed through a tarantula creeping its way across the desert floor, or a pack of cigarettes distorting within a clenched fist. Even a half-glimpsed Hello Kitty…
The World’s End is a success on a whole bunch of metrics. As a conclusion to the loose “Cornetto trilogy” alongside Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, it’s as well-written, acted and directed as you’d expect; Edgar Wright’s kinetic, eclectic style ensures the film is a treat for the eyes. Each of the earlier…
There’s an ever-present sense of tension in the final season of a good drama, and it’s not necessarily related to fear over the plight of the show’s protagonists. The tension is born of fear that an otherwise great show might not stick the landing; that it might fumble important storylines, or simply run out of…
It’s hard to deny its cultural import of Deep Throat, a porno that managed to achieve the kind of cultural saturation normally reserved for towering icons like The Godfather or Citizen Kane – by which I mean it’s been referenced and parodied so many times, you don’t need to have seen it to be familiar…
Breaking Bad’s final season looms on the horizon; eight episodes before another television series gets to take the crown of “best show airing on TV.” Which show takes that title is very much up for debate, but the debate I’m more interested in looks at Breaking Bad itself: which season of the show is its…
Before Midnight is arguably the best third instalment of a film series of all time, and a damn good contender for best film of 2013 so far while we’re at it. Its predecessors, Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, set a perilously high standard and it’s cleared comfortably. It’s of a piece with those two films…
(Extended Cut posts are articles where I’ll exceed my usual 200-word limit to allow for more detailed discussion) Daft Punk’s hotly anticipated new album, Random Access Memories, doesn’t sound much like their previous albums, but this is hardly a surprise – none of Daft Punk’s albums sound that much alike. The vibe here is very…
(Extended Cut posts are articles where I’ll exceed my usual 200-word limit to allow for more detailed discussion) Game of Thrones tells the story of a world with a rich and detailed history, and this history – both recent and ancient – weighs heavily on this week’s episode, “Kissed by Fire.” Much of the episode…
When I started ccpopculture roughly six months ago, I set myself the goal of ensuring every post was exactly 200 words. This was for a few reasons: It would hopefully avoid my tendency to be overly verbose; too often I’ve had a good idea for an article and abandoned many thousand words in, it would…
