At the end of last week, I reviewed Marvel’s latest movie Black Panther. The film has, quite rightly, received a lot of attention for its focus on black African characters. Speaking as a white guy, it is all too easy ...
Read More »Netflix: Just another network
It was an exciting time when Netflix began commissioning original television and films. They didn’t need to please advertisers, just their subscribers. They could take more risks (we assumed), show us something the networks would never dare to. And at ...
Read More »The evolution of point of view cinematography
I’ve recently been re-watching M*A*S*H, as I have a tendency to do every few years. I was struck by how innovative it can be, particularly when watching the episode ‘Point of View’ – which is shot entirely from the point of ...
Read More »The fictional science of science fiction
Last year, I was honoured to interview the Queen of Cyberpunk herself, Pat Cadigan, at FantasyCon. During the course of the interview, she recounted an anecdote about a reader who told her she wanted to read Synners. While the book ...
Read More »Genre Fiction and the Middlebrow
Literary fiction awards rarely go to works of science fiction and fantasy. We review a lot of genre fiction on Pop-Verse. Mainly science fiction and fantasy. These books might be lauded in their own fields but are, with some exception, ...
Read More »Appreciating art without contextual bias
When I was ten or so, my mother bought me the classic children’s book A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. It sat on my shelf for twenty years. But with the film coming out in a few months, I decided it ...
Read More »Psycho-biddies and hag horror
What did you do this Christmas? I binge-watched Ryan Murphy’s (of American Horror Story and Scream Queens fame) latest anthology series, Feud. The first series features the infamous Hollywood feud between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, picking up on the narrative for the development of ...
Read More »On criticism: Misconceptions of the opinionated
I’m a critic. It’s become something of a bad word. I’m a critic of stories: spanning many types of storytelling mediums – film, TV, books, comics… I love stories. I know stories – I’ve studied them extensively. I know what ...
Read More »A Cult of Deception: Romance in Hollywood
You know how the story goes. Girl meets boy. Girl (or boy) lies about who they are and/or what their intentions are. Over the course of their subterfuge, they fall madly in love. The truth is uncovered and the object ...
Read More »Are we living in the Golden Age of TV?
We are told this is the golden age of television. That we live in a bold new world where high-powered dramas pursue long-form stories with feature film-like production qualities. It is a rather tiresome platitude. Aside from an obvious vanity ...
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