How well do you really know old Arty? It all began with the Welsh: The The Annales Cabriae (inside) and parts of the Welsh oral tradition (later collected into the Mabinogion) give a very different picture of the popular King Arthur than contemporary readers are familiar with: no Lancelot, three or four different Guens, no love triangles or Holy Grails. A look at the vast scope of the Arthurian legend. [more inside]
posted by kittenmarlowe on Dec 19, 2011 - 30 comments

Drew McWeeny muses at length on Muppets, Avengers, and Life In The Age Of Fanfiction.
posted by gilrain on Nov 29, 2011 - 33 comments

At no point in Bela Lugosi's iconic role in the 1931 film Dracula does he make the sound "Bleh!" So why is "Bleh!" so deeply associated with Dracula in popular culture? Followup with more examples.
posted by Horace Rumpole on Oct 31, 2011 - 50 comments

Wired takes a look at some pop culture legends that elude fans and collectors.
posted by reenum on Sep 23, 2011 - 67 comments

Pop Pilgrims : "When the AV Club Travels, we always make time to visit pop culture landmarks. If something memorable happened in the world of film, tv, books, or music, we want to go there. We're not just tourists, we're POP PILGRIMS." [more inside]
posted by crunchland on Jul 20, 2011 - 13 comments

The AV Club feature Gateways to Geekery is all about the best places to start on some of pop culture's most complex and nuanced artists and genres, including Randy Newman, The Who, Monty Python, steampunk, Sherlock Holmes and 90 others. [more inside]
posted by Apropos of Something on May 25, 2011 - 41 comments

It was not easy to get Terence Malick to direct again, as this article about the making of "The Thin Red Line" from Vanity Fair shows.
posted by reenum on Jan 24, 2011 - 27 comments

Badass Digest is a new blog from Austin's decidedly badass Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas and Devin Faraci, formerly of CHUD.com. [more inside]
posted by Horace Rumpole on Oct 21, 2010 - 12 comments

How Science Fiction Found Religion
posted by shoesfullofdust on Mar 13, 2009 - 72 comments

The Science Of Back to The Future [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue on Feb 27, 2009 - 35 comments

Branded in the 80's: Peel Here From the obvious to the obscure to the downright frightening, Peel Here documents the collectible stickers of the 80's and related ephemera.
posted by 1f2frfbf on Jun 26, 2008 - 42 comments

Stephen King has described The Dark Tower as his "Jupiter." The epic series, inspired in part by Robert Browning's poem, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came", has spanned 22 years, 7 books and nearly 4000 pages. The first book in the series, The Gunslinger, begins with a simple, memorable declaration, "The Man in Black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." [more inside]
posted by kbanas on Apr 18, 2008 - 160 comments

Lobby Card Invasion. A searchable collection of a wide variety of lobby cards for all kinds of interesting films. [via PCL LinkDump]
posted by mediareport on Jan 27, 2007 - 10 comments

Darwin Awards - The Movie! If it bombs, the reviews should be comedy gold.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson on Aug 7, 2006 - 45 comments

Squeal Like a Pig dot com - Online home of actor Bill McKinney, best known as the villain from Deliverance. There's not much on the site but there is Real versions of three tracks from Bill's album, Love Songs From Antri.
posted by dobbs on Dec 1, 2004 - 9 comments

Cultural popcorn

Everybody's got their indulgences-- maybe it's an impressively bad tv show, a blatently comercial film you've watched dozens of times or the upteeth sequel of a good book by a lazy author. What's your cultural big mac? What can't you admit you love?
posted by christina on Jul 1, 2001 - 102 comments