Explore every episode of the podcast The Kulturecast

Two years after Godzilla Minus One, Japan's war still isn't over. Takashi Yamazaki's sequel returns to 1949, where Ryunosuke Kamiki's Koichi Shikishima and Minami Hamabe's Noriko are raising a daughter in a country still clearing its rubble, until King Ghidorah tears through Matsumoto City. With the Cold War powers circling the Pacific and an American military pursuing its own ends, the only answer to a three-headed dragon may be the monster that nearly destroyed Tokyo. Yamazaki again writes, directs and supervises the effects, and the result is the biggest, bloodiest swing of his Godzilla run.

Movie Meltdown's Bryan Renfro and The Projection Booth's Mike White join Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Takashi Yamazaki, King Ghidorah, the MonsterVerse, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Two brides in matching red veils board the same crowded train in 2001, and only one of them gets off at the right stop. Kiran Rao's Laapataa Ladies (2024), produced by Aamir Khan and India's official Oscar submission, turns a village mix-up into a comedy of mistaken identity: Sparsh Shrivastava's Deepak goes looking for the wife he lost, Nitanshi Goel's Phool waits on a railway platform for someone to come and find her, and Pratibha Ranta's Jaya quietly makes the most of becoming someone else, with Ravi Kishan's police inspector never far behind.

Dr. David D. Perlmutter joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk watching a film from another culture to learn from it, mistaken identity as a core comedy principle, why Indian cinema has no small parts, Hindi remakes of Hollywood films, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Ridley Scott has spent nearly fifty years imagining how the world ends, and The Dog Stars is his look at what comes after. Adapted from Peter Heller's novel, it follows Jacob Elordi's Hig, a pilot who, after a flu pandemic has wiped out most of humanity, holds the line at a small, isolated community alongside Josh Brolin's hard-edged Bangley. When a stray radio signal pulls Hig past the edge of his map, he finds Margaret Qualley's Cima and her father, played by Guy Pearce, and has to decide whether surviving is the same thing as living.

Dr. David D. Perlmutter joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Ridley Scott, Peter Heller, post-apocalyptic cinema, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Before Crystal Lake, there was Bellflower. The final two episodes of A24 and Peacock's Friday the 13th prequel flash back to 1959, where Linda Cardellini's Pamela marries into a corporate clinical trial and gives birth to a son on Friday the 13th, then bring her husband, Hamish Linklater's Elias Wittering, to Crystal Lake to take Jason back. The season answers how Jason survived the lake and puts mother and son on screen together before it ends.

Movie Meltdown's Bryan Renfro joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Bellflower and its Operation Paperclip echoes, Jason's origin and the bag over his head, Mike Flanagan comparisons, remakes that actually reinvent, whether the series should become the new canon, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Camp Crystal Lake reopens for the summer while bodies keep turning up in the woods. Episodes 5 and 6 of Crystal Lake, A24 and Peacock's Friday the 13th prequel, push Linda Cardellini's Pamela Voorhees past killing in self-defense toward something closer to relish, as Sheriff Levon Brooks and his sister Briana close in on a conspiracy, the camp's hippies mourn one of their own, and Hamish Linklater arrives as the man who knows exactly who Pam used to be.

Movie Meltdown's Bryan Renfro joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Pam as an antihero in the line of Dexter and Tony Soprano, Grace's place in the story, David Gordon Green's Halloween trilogy, why the show works without knowing the films, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Michael Crichton spent his career turning big science ideas into page-turners, and Timeline was supposed to be the next Jurassic Park. Richard Donner's 2003 adaptation sends a group of archaeology students, led by Paul Walker and Gerard Butler, back to 14th-century France through a quantum device built by a tech company, to rescue their professor, played by Billy Connolly, from the middle of the Hundred Years' War. The film had a troubled production and a rough reception, but it's an interesting case of a Crichton story that didn't make the jump to the screen.

Dr. David D. Perlmutter and Mark Stachiw join Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Michael Crichton, Richard Donner, time travel, medieval warfare, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Some satires age because the world moves on. Wag the Dog aged because the world caught up with it. Barry Levinson's 1997 comedy, written by Hilary Henkin and David Mamet, sends Robert De Niro's spin doctor and Dustin Hoffman's Hollywood producer to stage a fake war with Albania and bury a presidential scandal days before an election. It opened weeks before the Lewinsky story broke. Nearly thirty years on, is it still satire when real life has gone further than the movie ever dared?

The Projection Booth's Mike White joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Barry Levinson, Bob Roberts, Man of the Year, the art of spin, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Fasten your seatbelts. Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve (1950) is the backstage drama that earned 14 Oscar nominations, won six including Best Picture, and gave Bette Davis the role of a lifetime as Margo Channing, a Broadway star watching a devoted young fan, Anne Baxter's Eve Harrington, take a little too much interest in her life. With Mankiewicz's razor dialogue, George Sanders' Addison DeWitt as the critic who sees everything and an early Marilyn Monroe appearance, it is a look at ambition and aging for women in show business, and a movie about the theater that still feels like the sharpest movie ever made about fame.

Dr. David D. Perlmutter and Susan Lambert of 80's TV Ladies join Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Bette Davis, the price of the spotlight, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

DC goes full body horror, and the question is whether a superhero movie can ever go far enough. Clayface (2026), directed by James Watkins from a Mike Flanagan story, follows Tom Rhys Harries' Matt Hagen, a rising Gotham actor whose ruined face is rebuilt by an experimental treatment that won't hold. Next to The Fly, Videodrome and The Substance, is it baby's first body horror? What was lost when Flanagan's script went to another writer and another director, and did this story need a whole movie, or fifteen minutes at the top of a Batman film?

Movie Meltdown's Bryan Renfro joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk James Watkins, Mike Flanagan, James Gunn's DCU, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

It was pitched as a haunted house in space, rushed into theaters with only weeks to edit, and cut down from around two hours to 96 minutes before audiences could see it. Paul W.S. Anderson's Event Horizon sends Laurence Fishburne's rescue crew and Sam Neill's Dr. William Weir to recover an experimental starship that vanished seven years earlier and has returned from somewhere it was never meant to go. It flopped in the summer of 1997 and has spent the decades since becoming one of the great cult horror films, with a reportedly lost longer cut that fans still hunt for.

Flick Attack's Rod Lott joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Paul W.S. Anderson, space horror, lost footage, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

It's the stuff that dreams are made of. John Huston's The Maltese Falcon (1941), the third screen version of Dashiell Hammett's novel and the one that stuck, turned Humphrey Bogart into a star and handed a first-time director the keys to what many call the first great film noir. Bogart's Sam Spade is a detective whose code is hard to tell apart from self-interest, up against a gallery of grifters played by Mary Astor, Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet, all chasing a black bird that turns out to be worthless and became one of cinema's great MacGuffins. Greed, loyalty and the birth of noir, from every angle.

Dr. David D. Perlmutter and The Projection Booth's Mike White join Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk John Huston, Dashiell Hammett, the Production Code, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Godzilla has been a nuclear metaphor, a wrestling heel, a children's hero and a Hollywood franchise player, but it took 70 years for him to win an Oscar. Takashi Yamazaki's Godzilla Minus One returns the monster to postwar Japan, where Ryunosuke Kamiki's Koichi Shikishima, a kamikaze pilot who didn't fly his final mission, comes home to a ruined Tokyo, an improvised family with Minami Hamabe's Noriko, and the creature he failed to stop once before. Made on a reported budget of under $15 million, it won Best Visual Effects and became the highest-grossing Japanese live-action film ever released in the United States.

Movie Meltdown's Bryan Renfro and The Projection Booth's Mike White join Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Takashi Yamazaki, Toho, survivor's guilt, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Camp Crystal Lake is open for business again. Episodes 3 and 4 of Crystal Lake bring a bear hunt gone wrong, Pam settling a score on Grace's behalf, a crew of hippies reopening the camp, and flashbacks that make Jason, the franchise's monster, a kid worth mourning. Is Argonaut a government experiment, a super soldier, or something older in the woods? And once the show asks its audience to cheer for Pam as an avenging angel, is it still Friday the 13th?

Movie Meltdown's Bryan Renfro joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Grace's rise, the Jaws DNA, Stranger Things comparisons, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Before Jason, there was Mom. Crystal Lake, A24 and Peacock's Friday the 13th prequel series, picks up with Linda Cardellini's Pamela Voorhees a year after her son goes under the water, and its first two episodes bring two fake state troopers at the door, a bear that takes the blame, and a secret called Argonaut. Is this the Pam of 1980 with a backstory bolted on, or a show free to build its own mythology the way Hannibal and Bates Motel did? Two episodes in, it plays more like Dexter than a slasher, and that might be the point.

Movie Meltdown's Bryan Renfro joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk grief as a motive, Cardellini's Pam, binge drops versus weekly TV, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

At 75, Rajinikanth is still the biggest draw in Indian cinema, and Jailer 2 is a reminder of why. Nelson Dilipkumar's sequel to his 2023 hit picks up with "Tiger" Muthuvel Pandian laying low after the events of the first film, until a new family of villains, Vidya Balan among them, comes calling. It's loud, long and gleefully over the top, with tonal swings from dark comedy to slow-motion carnage and a parade of cameos including Hrithik Roshan and Jackie Shroff. Even so, it can't quite recapture the father-son story at the heart of the original.

The Projection Booth's Mike White joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Rajinikanth, Nelson Dilipkumar, seeing Indian cinema in American theaters, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

A spy spoof written by a film professor, played dead straight by Clint Eastwood, with a mountaineering film inside it that cost a man his life. The Eiger Sanction (1975), Eastwood's fourth film as director, casts him as Jonathan Hemlock, an art-history professor and retired government assassin blackmailed into one last "sanction" on the deadliest face in the Alps — where one of the climbers on his team is the target. Adapted from Trevanian, the pen name of a University of Texas film professor who wrote a parody and watched Hollywood miss the joke, it is three movies in one, and the climb may be the only part that holds up.

Dr. David D. Perlmutter joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Clint Eastwood, Trevanian, John Williams' score, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

A CIA "reader" steps out for lunch and comes back to find his whole office murdered. In Sydney Pollack's Three Days of the Condor, Robert Redford's Joe Turner spends three days running from his own agency, with Faye Dunaway as his unwilling ally and Max von Sydow's Joubert as the assassin who may be the most honest man in the film. Pollack's paranoid New York runs on post-Watergate distrust and a Dave Grusin score, all the way to that ending outside the New York Times, where "They'll print it" may land differently fifty years on.

Karl Mamer and Dr. David D. Perlmutter join Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Sydney Pollack, Robert Redford, post-Watergate distrust, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

It opens on Day 2, with a cough in the dark. Steven Soderbergh's Contagion (2011) is the cold, procedural pandemic thriller that spent a decade as a well-made what-if, then climbed back up the rental charts in the spring of 2020 as the whole world's homework. Soderbergh refuses to dramatize, dispatching one of his Oscar winners inside the first ten minutes, while Scott Z. Burns' script treats a virus as a logistics problem. The film called the spillover, the contact tracing and the race for a vaccine, and badly underestimated people: Jude Law's blogger selling a fake cure looked like a subplot in 2011 and reads like the main event now.

Dr. David D. Perlmutter joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Steven Soderbergh, Scott Z. Burns, science versus rumor, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Neither Chris nor Bryan expected the AI apocalypse to be fought from a diner booth. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die, Gore Verbinski's first film in nearly a decade, sends Sam Rockwell's ragged Man From the Future into a Los Angeles diner for his 117th attempt to recruit the world's least likely resistance. Bryan had a blast; Chris found it more uneven, a film with more ideas than it knows what to do with. Both agree on the man at its center: Rockwell is unhinged, hilarious and the best reason to buy a ticket for this particular end of the world.

Movie Meltdown's Bryan Renfro joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Gore Verbinski, Sam Rockwell, the robot apocalypse, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

It's fashionable to hate Tom Cruise, and neither Chris nor Mike ever has. Digger, the latest from Birdman director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, follows Tom Cruise's Digger Rockwell, an oil baron racing to prove he's the only man who can fix the catastrophe he set in motion. Chris loved it; Mike walked in ready to damn it with faint praise and talked himself around by the end. Both agree on what it is: heavy-handed, badly sold, and somehow both the least Tom Cruise movie in years and the most Tom Cruise movie either of them can think of.

The Projection Booth's Mike White joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Tom Cruise, the billionaire class, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Plenty of viewers spent a good chunk of the 2000s watching grown men sit down at a kitchen table they'd regret without thinking much about the man holding the clipboard. Primetime, the narrative debut from Ren Faire documentarian Lance Oppenheim, does — casting Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen, the Dateline correspondent who turned sting operations into appointment television. The result is a mess, if a compelling one, and it leaves a pointed question: what does it reveal about predators, or the man with the clipboard, that To Catch a Predator didn't reveal first?

Movie Meltdown's Bryan Renfro joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Lance Oppenheim, Robert Pattinson, To Catch a Predator, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

You're gonna need a bigger boat. Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) invented the summer blockbuster, emptied the beaches of an entire generation, and pulled it off precisely because the shark wouldn't work: a malfunctioning mechanical fish forced a 27-year-old Spielberg to hide his monster, turning technical catastrophe into pure Hitchcockian dread, with two notes from John Williams. Beneath the horror sits a town that keeps the beaches open for the money, the perfect Brody–Quint–Hooper triangle and Robert Shaw's Indianapolis speech, all from a problem-plagued shoot that rewired Hollywood's entire business model in a single summer.

Dr. David D. Perlmutter joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Steven Spielberg, John Williams, the blockbuster's original sin, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Video game movies rarely earn high expectations, and the Resident Evil franchise alone had offered seven reasons to keep them low. However, Zach Cregger, the director behind Barbarian and Weapons, has done the unthinkable: he throws out Leon, Claire and the games' plots entirely and sends Austin Abrams' medical courier Bryan (no relation) into Raccoon City for one very long night, with Paul Walter Hauser and Zach Cherry among the Umbrella scientists caught in the outbreak. The result is a lean, nasty, genuinely scary horror film, and for the first time in the franchise's history, the game isn't the better version.

Movie Meltdown's Bryan Renfro joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Zach Cregger, Capcom, survival horror, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Is it even a movie? That's the question Barry Lyndon has provoked since 1975 — three hours of scenes so composed they look less like cinema than oil paintings that happen to breathe. Stanley Kubrick's most beautiful, most divisive film, the one even Kubrick devotees can't agree is a film at all, was lit by candlelight through lenses built for NASA, in a static, painterly style that would ripple forward into The Favourite. Ryan O'Neal's passive, buffeted Barry is condemned by the narrator before he can charm anyone, in a film so often called "beautiful but empty" that the real question is whether the emptiness is the whole point.

Dr. David D. Perlmutter joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Stanley Kubrick, Ryan O'Neal, class as a cage, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Rob Zombie's Halloween II makes little sense without his first film. Part two of a look at the Zombie reboot series, the 2009 sequel picks up with Scout Taylor-Compton's traumatized Laurie Strode, Malcolm McDowell's Dr. Loomis cashing in on the massacre with a book tour, and a Michael Myers haunted by visions of his mother, played by Sheri Moon Zombie, in the next chapter of Rob Zombie's foray into mainstream horror.

Movie Meltdown's Bryan Renfro joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Rob Zombie, Michael Myers, mainstream horror, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

It was the most expensive movie ever made, the punchline of a thousand headlines, and a flop so infamous it got its own nickname. Kevin Reynolds and Kevin Costner's Waterworld (1995) is Mad Max on the open ocean, with world-building that still holds up, Dennis Hopper chewing more scenery than the Smokers could ever burn, and environmental anxieties it was early to. Set apart from the runaway-budget legend that swallowed it whole, the film on screen raises the question of why a movie everyone "knows" was a disaster has quietly floated toward cult reappraisal. Was it the trainwreck history says, or did everyone just enjoy watching it sink?

Dr. David D. Perlmutter joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Kevin Reynolds, Kevin Costner, cult reappraisal, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

The last thing the world needs in 2026 is another Halloween film, but to be fair, the last thing the world needed in 2007 was another Halloween film, especially one directed by Rob Zombie. Given that it does in fact exist, an oversized two-part look at the Zombie reboot series kicks off with his remake of John Carpenter's classic, which spends its first act on young Michael Myers' troubled childhood before Malcolm McDowell's Dr. Loomis, Scout Taylor-Compton's Laurie Strode and Tyler Mane's towering Michael take over Haddonfield. It's Movie Meltdown's Bryan Renfro's first time on the Kulturecast.

Movie Meltdown's Bryan Renfro joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Rob Zombie, John Carpenter, reboots, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

From suburban horror to the back end of the Cretaceous, the American genre picture keeps finding new ways to burn down the cul-de-sac. The End of Oak Street, the latest from It Follows director David Robert Mitchell, is a studio tentpole carrying an arthouse thesis, offering Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor as a marriage coming apart at the seams while something much older comes down the street. Along with a fleet of dinosaurs shot without an ounce of reverence, it takes to task suburban rot, willful ignorance, and the family unit under pressure, to largely successful effect.

Mike White of The Projection Booth joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk David Robert Mitchell, dinosaur cinema, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Two guys, a week in wine country, and a whole lot of avoidance. Alexander Payne's Sideways (2004) is a shaggy road-trip comedy about a failed novelist and a fading actor that became the defining midlife-male-sadness movie of its era. Payne has a gift for making audiences laugh at people they'd never want to be, Miles is a portrait of self-sabotage dressed up as good taste, and wine is the film's central metaphor, merlot line and all. It is a small character comedy that quietly reshaped an entire industry: great movie, terrible role models.

Dr. David D. Perlmutter joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Alexander Payne, self-sabotage, wine as metaphor, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Every film says more than whether it was good. Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study is a sub-feed within The Kulturecast that takes one film, TV series or pop culture topic each Thursday and looks at it from every angle: theme, craft and cultural fallout, with the star ratings thrown out entirely. In Episode Zero: Syllabus, the good doctors lay out the thesis behind the show, what it takes for something to earn the label "required viewing", and what the episodes to come will cover.

Dr. David D. Perlmutter joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk the Required Viewing thesis, what earns the label, life without star ratings, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

From Train to Busan to the far-flung future of cloning and fascism, Korean cinema spans the genre gamut. Mickey 17, the latest from Parasite director Bong Joon Ho, adapts Edward Ashton's novel Mickey7 and casts Robert Pattinson in two roles, as Mickey 17 and Mickey 18, a pair of disposable clones on an icy colony world. Backed by a cavalcade of character actors including Mark Ruffalo, Toni Collette, Naomi Ackie and Steven Yeun, it takes aim at fascism, biotech abuse and more, though by this episode's verdict, to unsuccessful effect.

Dr. David D. Perlmutter and K-drama anthropologist Miranda join Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Korean cinema, Bong Joon Ho, clones, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

As the MCU barrels toward its next ultimate crossover event, Avengers: Doomsday, it first checks in on everyone's friendly neighborhood webhead. Spider-Man: Brand New Day, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, brings back Tom Holland for the fourth MCU take on Spidey, this time with 100% less multiversal madness, thankfully. Along for the ride are Jon Bernthal's Punisher, Florence Pugh's Black Widow and maybe even an X-Man or two, and the real question is how this Peter Parker stands on his own.

Mike White of The Projection Booth joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Tom Holland, the Punisher, the road to Doomsday, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Some sci-fi films vanish from the conversation almost as soon as they leave theaters, and Battle: Los Angeles is one of them. Jonathan Liebesman's 2011 film drops Aaron Eckhart's Staff Sergeant Michael Nantz and a Marine platoon, including Michelle Rodriguez's Technical Sergeant Elena Santos, into an alien invasion of Los Angeles, toeing the line between war movie and creature feature. In doing so, it does something few films since have managed: build a novel and compelling world for an alien invasion to unfold in, and show what happens when war and aliens are combined.

Dr. David D. Perlmutter joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk war films, alien invasions, Aaron Eckhart, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

It may be simplistic to say the BlackBerry died at the hands of the iPhone, but it wouldn't be entirely inaccurate. What a beautiful corpse it made, though: the device became so ubiquitous it earned its own nickname, the "CrackBerry". Matt Johnson's BlackBerry stars Jay Baruchel as Mike Lazaridis and Glenn Howerton as Jim Balsillie, tracing the Canadian company's rise and spectacular fall, and the film is only half the story; the real history surrounding it is the other.

Dr. David D. Perlmutter and Mark Stachiw join Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk BlackBerry, Research in Motion, the smartphone wars, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Superman was a genuine surprise for anyone who had soured on Zack Snyder's Darkseriousverse, the previous attempt at a unified DC Universe, and the hope was real that James Gunn would point the ship in a new, more interesting direction. Unfortunately, Supergirl is not that. Directed by Craig Gillespie and starring Milly Alcock as Kara Zor-El, with Matthias Schoenaerts, Eve Ridley and Jason Momoa's Lobo, it barely lives up to even the smaller successes of Superman while trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to broaden the universe.

Mike White of The Projection Booth joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Milly Alcock, DC comics, why Superman just isn't for either host, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Jackass has been a part of pop culture since the show first aired on MTV back in the pastoral days of 2000. Twenty-six years later, the boys are a bit older but still up to, for the most part, their old tricks. The crew has shrunk (and grown) over two decades, but the rambunctious stunts and pranks remain, even if Jeff Tremaine's Jackass: Best and Last, the fifth and final main film, is effectively a glorified clip show at worst and a documentary-style goodbye at best.

Mike White of The Projection Booth joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Johnny Knoxville, gross-out stunts, the end of an era, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Sci-fi has taken many forms as a genre, and few films have shaped it like this one. Fred M. Wilcox's Forbidden Planet sends Leslie Nielsen's Commander Adams to a distant world where Walter Pidgeon's Dr. Morbius, his daughter Altaira and Robby the Robot are hiding a terrible secret, in a loose riff on Shakespeare's The Tempest. Those who saw it in theaters may not have realized it was merely an amuse-bouche for the more pop-culture-pliable Star Trek, but it is a true classic well worth reappraising from a modern-day perspective.

Dr. David D. Perlmutter joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Forbidden Planet, Robby the Robot, monsters from the id, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Zombie films are a dime a dozen these days, for good and for bad; for every Shaun of the Dead there are a hundred Walking Deads, everyone's favorite show to hate-watch. There's no hate-watching with Train to Busan, however. Yeon Sang-ho's film traps Gong Yoo's workaholic fund manager, his young daughter and a carriage full of strangers, including Ma Dong-seok's unforgettable Sang-hwa, on a bullet train as a zombie outbreak tears through South Korea, and it's one of the finest examples of how to innovate the genre even after all of its ground has been trodden.

Dr. David D. Perlmutter and K-drama anthropologist Miranda join Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Korean cinema, Yeon Sang-ho, zombies, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

At this point in his career, a Steven Spielberg film should be an event worth heading to the local multiplex for; should being the key phrase. Couple that with a return to aliens, and it seems like an equation for cinematic success... right? Disclosure Day, written by David Koepp from Spielberg's story, stars Emily Blunt as a Kansas City meteorologist and Josh O'Connor as a cybersecurity specialist who uncover decades of covered-up extraterrestrial contact, alongside Colin Firth and Colman Domingo. Spielberg's latest extraterrestrial entry has a lot to live up to, and the question is whether it holds up against his other alien films.

Mike White of The Projection Booth joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Spielberg, Emily Blunt, UFO disclosure, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Chris may not be a Gen-Zer, but he can most definitely get down with their brand of horror, if Backrooms is any indication of the quality and concept of their take on the genre. Kane Parsons' feature debut for A24, adapted from his own viral YouTube series, follows Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve into an endless maze of yellow rooms beneath a furniture showroom. Contrast that with Scary Movie, the Wayans brothers' horror-comedy franchise returning from a long, justified and much-needed absence, and the result is a hell of a double feature. Chris bemoans one far more than the other and, shockingly, it was the more expensive of the two.

Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, talks Backrooms, Scary Movie, Gen Z horror, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Some films only get better on a second visit, and Robert Eggers' The VVitch has become a modern-day classic. Anya Taylor-Joy stars as Thomasin, who lives with her exiled Puritan family on the edge of the woods in 1630s New England, and that family may or may not be under the sway of a witch in the woods. Thomasin and her kin are doomed to find out whether the witch is real, and whether Black Phillip is just a goat.

Dr. David D. Perlmutter and Julie Brannan join Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Robert Eggers, Anya Taylor-Joy, folk horror, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Mike White May has been all Sean Connery all month long, and now it must come to an end, which it does with a monk murder mystery in The Name of the Rose. Jean-Jacques Annaud's adaptation of Umberto Eco's novel stars Connery as William of Baskerville, a thin facsimile of Sherlock Holmes, and Christian Slater as Adso, his young stand-in for Watson, as they investigate a series of strange murders at an abbey in northern Italy. Plus, star Elya Baskin, who plays Severinus, is interviewed about his time on the film.

Richard Hatem of Richard Hatem's Paranormal Bookshelf joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Sean Connery, Umberto Eco, medieval mysteries, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Star Wars has become a forever franchise, and its latest entry, The Mandalorian and Grogu, earns a break from Mike White May. Directed by Jon Favreau, it features Pedro Pascal, at least some of the time, under the helmet as Din Djarin, alongside Grogu, as the space western follows the pair's further exploits. Working for the New Republic, they take on a job to free Rotta the Hutt, the son of Jabba, voiced by Jeremy Allen White, with Sigourney Weaver along for the ride.

Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, talks The Mandalorian and Grogu, Jon Favreau, the state of Star Wars, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Mike White May continues with more Sean Connery, except this time it's fake news, and he's the one selling it. In Richard Brooks' Wrong Is Right, adapted from Charles McCarry's novel The Better Angels, Connery plays Patrick Hale, a globetrotting TV newsman who gets tangled up with every U.S. letter agency in a satirical game of intrigue and murder, opposite Robert Conrad, Katharine Ross and Leslie Nielsen. It's less fun than it sounds, which is a real shame given the Connery of it all.

Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, talks Wrong Is Right, Sean Connery, Richard Brooks, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Before Yellowstone made him a household name, Taylor Sheridan wrote Sicario. Denis Villeneuve directs Emily Blunt as an FBI agent pulled into a cartel task force whose rules nobody will explain to her, while Benicio del Toro's Alejandro quietly walks away with the entire film. It's a thriller about borders, the ones on the map and the moral ones, shot through Roger Deakins' camera, and about learning, too late, who is really making the decisions in the land of wolves.

Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, talks Taylor Sheridan, Denis Villeneuve, Roger Deakins, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Mike White May takes another break for a trip back to Netherrealm, Outworld and everywhere in between (Orderrealm very much included) with Mortal Kombat II, the sequel to 2021's COVID classic Mortal Kombat. With the first tournament in the books, Simon McQuoid's follow-up shifts focus to Karl Urban's Johnny Cage, thrown right into the latest struggle of wills between Raiden, Shang Tsung and the ultimate baddie, Shao Kahn.

Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, talks Mortal Kombat II, Karl Urban's Johnny Cage, video game adaptations, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Mike White May takes a break to go to college, specifically Harvard Law in the early 1970s, with James Bridges' The Paper Chase. Timothy Bottoms, a future presidential look-alike, stars as James Hart, a first-year law student who runs into one of the true titans of cinematic academia: John Houseman's Oscar-winning Professor Kingsfield. Law school horror stories, how real the film is, and whether the ends justify the academic means are all on the docket.

Dr. David D. Perlmutter and Mark Stachiw, Esq. join Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk The Paper Chase, Professor Kingsfield, law school, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Mike White May continues with more Sean Connery, this time with an edgier, more facial-hair-forward demeanor, in yet another Sidney Lumet joint, The Offence. Adapted by John Hopkins from his own stage play, it stars Connery as Detective Sergeant Johnson, a British cop who's had one bad day too many and takes it out on Ian Bannen's suspected child molester, with catastrophic results. Its shadow stretches all the way to '90s crime cinema.

Professor Spencer Parsons joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Sean Connery, Sidney Lumet, noir, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Mike White May continues with yet another Connery and Lumet joint, this time an adaptation of Lawrence Sanders' novel of the same name. Connery plays John "Duke" Anderson, a burglar fresh out of prison who decides to rob the luxury apartment building where his latest squeeze, Dyan Cannon's Ingrid, lives, all while being inadvertently surveilled by a whole host of letter agencies. Martin Balsam, Alan King and a young Christopher Walken round out the crew.

Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, talks The Anderson Tapes, Sean Connery, surveillance-era heists, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Mike White May on The Kulturecast means Sean Connery all month long, and it kicks off with one of the many pairings of Sidney Lumet and Connery, 1965's The Hill. With an ensemble cast including Harry Andrews, Ian Bannen, Ian Hendry and Ossie Davis, it follows a group of military prisoners held in a British Army "glasshouse" in the North African desert during World War II, where men are broken just for fun.

Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, talks The Hill, Sean Connery, Sidney Lumet, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast