Pop Culture Diary: This Week's Reviews, Reads and Roundups

What I've been into...

"The Moment" (2026) Calling this a mockumentary diminishes the impact and intent of singer Charli XCX's semi-fictional look inside her much-hyped "Brat Summer."

This isn't just an amusing gloss on music industry hubris, it's a dark satire that takes sharp aim at our culture in all its toxicity and ridiculousness, and it's smart as hell.

The action swirls around Charli, who is surrounded by aides and sycophants, all intent on milking this partly manufactured, party organic marketing "moment" for everything its worth, while also advancing their own careers. As a film about music and the music business, this has much more in common with "A Hard Day's Night" than it does "This is Spinal Tap."

Like the Beatles in their film, Charli is the sanest, most-down-to-earth person on the screen. It's the world, and all of the people around her, who are nuts.

However, unlike the Beatles, who rise above the chaos of their film, the craziness catches up with Charli, and we feel her vulnerability as she loses control over the phenomenon she's created.

An unhinged director (hilariously played by Alexander Skarsgård) takes control over her stage show, endeavoring to make it more family- and Amazon-friendly. And a visit by an exhausted Charli to a health resort in Ibiza turns out to be anything but restorative.

Crossing paths with a poised, glossy Kylie Jenner (playing a version of herself) on her out of the spa, a stressed-out, haggard Charli suffers a crisis in confidence that sends her spiraling into self doubt. The only way out of Brat Summer, she realizes, is to kill it.

You don't need to know Charli XCX or her music, or even what Brat Summer is/was all about to get pleasure out of this film. In some ways, not understanding may be a good perspective to have. But I suspect folks who are much younger and hipper than I am will understand more of the jokes. Still, it was well worth seeing.

"Batman and Robin: Year One" by Mark Waid and Chris Samnee. Old comics fans and fans of old comics will dig this collection of Waid and Samnee's 12-issue limited series focused on the early years of the Dynamic Duo.

As with his ongoing work on DC's World's Finest title featuring Batman and Superman, Waid delivers a satisfying new take on these characters while blending in elements from the Gold, Silver and Bronze Ages and even the 1960s Batman TV show. It's not just a re-hash, but a respectful modernizing of things, and you don't need to know a zillion years of continuity to enjoy it.

Samnee, meanwhile, is one of the finest artists working in superhero comics these days. With its deep black shadows and mix of cartoony faces and figures and realistic backdrops, his art reminds me a lot of Alex Toth's masterful work, and his visual storytelling is excellent. The action flows and you're never at a loss when it comes to navigating your eyeballs over the page and understanding what's going on.

The story picks up after the murder of Dick Grayson's parents and provides a bit more detail and believability of Bruce Wayne's adoption of this orphaned youth. The plot concerns the arrival of new villain "The General" in Gotham City and his involvement with old faves Two-Face and Clayface. Highly recommended for all Batfans for anyone hankering for a new oldschool comic to read.

Sunday Reads:

Via Radio Times: "Derry Girls" creator Lisa McGee talks about her new Netflix series, "How to Get to Heaven from Belfast."

"How to Get to Heaven from Belfast" has the same DNA as "Derry Girls" but is edgier, according to McGee. And that’s not the only difference – rather than a six-part sitcom this is an eight-part thriller going out on Netflix, which means a bigger budget than "Derry Girls" had on Channel 4.

The plot revolves around three school friends now in their 30s – Saoirse, Dara and Robyn – who discover their fourth friend has died suddenly. They haven’t seen Greta since school and when they go to her wake, they realise the cause of her death may not be all it seems. Soon, they’ve stumbled into investigating what really happened while facing up to their own past lives – and lies.

The idea came to 45-year-old McGee when she visited her old school in Derry, which had been derelict for 20 years and become a favourite location for ghost hunters. “It was really weird,” she says. “There were school skirts hanging up and writing on blackboards. I was walking down a little path and I got this freaky feeling I was going to bump into myself as a teenage girl. I didn’t, but it made me ask, what would she think of me and my choices? That’s where the idea started.

“As you get older, I think you go back to the true person you were. I was a little girl that just liked writing and the older I get, the closer I get to that person, because she had it all worked out, actually. The death of their friend shakes these women and connects them to the teenagers they once were, and that spirit they thought they’d lost. It’s about friendship and self-discovery.”

Via TripWire: Comics artist P. Craig Russell talks about his recent work adapting a Neil Gaiman story, which now may never see the light of day.

TW: There is no easy way to ask this. Have the various accusations of sexual harassment against writer Neil Gaiman complicated your efforts to complete this story?

PCR: I haven’t done anything for the past 18 months. The whole brouhaha seems to have knocked me off the beam. Still have a few things on my bucket list, mostly the oversized art boards of poems and songs that I’ve worked on sporadically over the years.

TW: I suspect from your answers you are keen to avoid being involved with any of the current controversy surrounding your frequent creative partner, writer Neil Gaiman. All I have to ask is simple. Do you have any thoughts at all you wish to share on the subject? Tripwire entirely understands if you prefer to simply respond with a “No Comment” but this is an opportunity to comment if you wish to do so.

PCR: I’ve decided to simply avoid commenting on the Neil Gaiman third rail controversy.

TW: I totally respect your desire to avoid controversy. I suspect that is the wisest course of action, but would you be willing to comment in a different way? Without referencing the writer or any scandals directly, would you be willing to say if it has been upsetting to you personally or financially? Or even if you have lost any publishing opportunities? As an artist, I think it would be fair to be a little upset?

PCR: Personally, the fallout I’ve experienced is one I’m sure I share with the dozens of other artists and theatre people. A cancellation of this enormity leaves so many with their work unseen or discarded. In my case my adaptation, script and art, was complete to the point of book design right down to the end papers. It also included two unrelated short stories, poems by De La Mare and Poe, that fit into the package quite neatly. I was paid in full by that point, but It was still quite the disappointment for it not to see print. I’ve been scanning the original art and running the black and white art serially on my Facebook page so that it at least gets seen.