Popdose

August 31, 2026 2 Min Read Artificial intelligence is moving so quickly it’s hard for the theater to keep up. Take Andrew Stein’s Disruption, which debuted in London in 2023. Three years ago we might have needed a primer on “algorithms,” which we get early on as this way-we-live-now relationship melodrama, with a high-tech gloss, takes shape. Today our online lives are run by algorithms, no matter how much we try to opt out.

August 27, 2026 6 Min Read A good “Easter egg”, like pornography, is hard to define, but we know it when we see it. Some of these extras for fans are basically trivia, some are namechecks from another work, and others are more complex callbacks. The best ones have a “Whoa” or “Holy Shit” component to them. The good ones are private jokes between the creator and their core fans. The great ones tell you something more about the work, no matter the medium. We are in a golden age of Easter eggs.

August 25, 2026 3 Min Read Long before this spring’s Backrooms and Obsession captured the horror movie zeitgeist there was the Paranormal Activity series, seven Blair Witch Project-inspired “found footage” shockers with another on the way next year. Admittedly after almost two decades of frights the activity is idling, with declining boxoffice and a switch to streaming, but IP is as never-say-die as Freddy or Jason–it always claws its way back to life.

August 3, 2026 3 Min Read The Saviors is a step back in time, to when the Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater housed a church. And it returned me to my early teen years. I wasn’t a Catholic school student or an altar boy like its two protagonists but I was steeped in church lore, at least until after my confirmation, when I got restless with its teachings and dictates and began to slip away.

July 24, 2026 3 Min Read Israel is a third-rail topic of conversation these days, capable of leveling a room in minutes. Fortunately MCC Theater Off Broadway has survived Jonathan Spector’s Birthright; indeed, it’s thriving, as the best new play of the nascent 2026-2027 season may have already arrived. Perhaps that’s no surprise, as his Tony-winning Eureka Day took on another squeamish topic, vaccination, with gusto.

July 21, 2026 2 Min Read This had to happen and I’m glad it did. From a personal standpoint, this completes my collection of The Bongos and Bongos-related items on CD. It’s an album that I’ve enjoyed immensely over the years, since I first bought it at Pier Platters in Hoboken in the ’80’s. My copy is well-worn, having been played frequently (especially by my then-girlfriend, rest her soul) and it’s been a long time waiting for a clean, digital-age edition to finally be available.

July 11, 2026 13 Min Read I’ve been writing a lot here about non-superhero movies about adults. Let me now go a little further and declare my love for talking movies. Not “talkies.” I mean movies where people are basically just talking. Sometimes I love falling asleep to one of these if I’ve seen it a bunch of times; I find the talking soothing and the lack of explosions easy to sleep with.

July 21, 2026 2 Min Read This had to happen and I’m glad it did. From a personal standpoint, this completes my collection of The Bongos and Bongos-related items on CD. It’s an album that I’ve enjoyed immensely over the years, since I first bought it at Pier Platters in Hoboken in the ’80’s. My copy is well-worn, having been played frequently (especially by my then-girlfriend, rest her soul) and it’s been a long time waiting for a clean, digital-age edition to finally be available.

July 20, 2026 5 Min Read It’s kind of a big move to walk out of a movie in the theater. You’ve already made the commitment to go, drive there, park. It’s likely you dropped more $ on a snack, before turning off your cellphone and diving into the movie. So, if you at some point decide you just can’t take it anymore, that movie is really offending you in some very specific way.

July 11, 2026 13 Min Read I’ve been writing a lot here about non-superhero movies about adults. Let me now go a little further and declare my love for talking movies. Not “talkies.” I mean movies where people are basically just talking. Sometimes I love falling asleep to one of these if I’ve seen it a bunch of times; I find the talking soothing and the lack of explosions easy to sleep with.