Pop Culture Safari!

New poster for Hitchcock starring Anthony Hopkins, Scarlett Johansson, Helen Mirren,

Video find: Frank Sinatra and group of kids sing "High Hopes"

BBC Radio this week - Rolling Stones; James Bond; Doctor Who; Goon Show; Journey to the Center of the Earth - stream to listen!

Click the links to stream the following shows.

Rolling Stones on the BBC. Classic performances and interviews.

From Station to Stadium: The Rolling Stones. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood discuss their history on the road, from early days in the pubs and clubs of London to the stadium shows of the present day.

Bond Songs are Forever. Before Adele's latest theme to Skyfall, the 22 songs have received more than 80 million plays in the UK, so it's no wonder they become standards.

The Seven Wonders of Bond. To mark the 50th anniversary of Britain's greatest movie export, Chris Evans celebrates the seven wonders that have helped James Bond become one of the most popular movie franchises of all time.

Doctor Who: The Whispering Forest. The Time Lord, Tegan, Turlough and Nyssa run into a group of hygiene-obsessed settlers.

The Goon Show: The Sahara Desert Statue. What is Eccles doing with a cement sack and an imaginary piano?

Jules Verne: Journey to the Center of the Earth. Ancient runes spark a geologist's exploration of an impossible realm. Jules Verne's adventure stars Nathaniel Parker.

Rare James Bond: You Only Live Twice pictures

Beatles Magical Mystery tour and documentary to air on PBS

PBS will air the recent BBC making-of documentary about the Beatles' "Magical Mystery Tour" film, plus the film itself on Dec. 14 as part of its "Great Performances" series. The film was released in remastered form on DVD last month.

From the press release:

The documentary chronicles the behind-the-scenes story of the making of the film and provides context for “the summer of love” era that set the scene for its production. This greatest Beatles story never told is packed with unseen footage and features contributions from Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Martin Scorsese, Peter Fonda and Terry Gilliam, among others.

Rare James Bond: Thunderball pictures

Pop stuff: What I'm reading, watching, hearing, etc.

James Bond: Skyfall. My son and I had a chance to see this (in Big-D!) last weekend and it was a blast! Not as grim as Daniel Craig's first Bond outing, not as silly as those of Roger Moore, this serves up everything in the proper proportions: Action, humor, suspense and -- still something a bit new for Bond -- deeply felt emotion. More than any Bond film, we get under OO7's skin as he copes with problems he can't simply shoot away (although, he can still dispatch with many of his challenges that way). We also get a better sense of what makes him tick.

Along the way we get a wild opening chase sequence that I won't ruin by trying to describe, other to say it's hilarious, jaw-dropping and goes on and on (in a good way); a new Moneypenny; great performances by Dame Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes and Albert Finney; and a delightfully creepy villain played by Javier Bardem, who seems to adopt a new, weird hairdo in every film he's in these days.

Everyone likes to list his or her favorite James Bond actors. On my list, I'd put Sean Connery first, followed closely by Craig. He's great in this role and has many of the same characteristics that made Connery so attractive: He's funny, charming, tough and lethal.

"Skyfall" is also among the better Bond films I've seen. It's certainly one of the best post-Connery entries in the series.

Seeing as how this is 007's 50th year on screen, it was also nice to see a few tributes to the old films in this new one. I won't spoil those, either.

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Russ Cochran's Sunday Funnies. I'm sure you can all relate: What with being a husband and dad and having a full-time job and other projects on my plate, it sometimes takes a while to get around to reading some of the great stuff that piles up around here. But lately, I've had a chance to dive into these bundled treasures of vintage Sunday comics compiled by famed comics historian and collector Russ Cochran.

This is great stuff that really gives one a sense of what it must've been like to be a kid in the 30s and 40s, when the Sunday newspaper delivered beautifully illustrated adventures and humor in the form of Tarzan, Frank Goodwin's Connie, Buck Rogers, Alley Oop, Frank King's Gasoline Alley and more.

Drawing on the legendary Bill Blackbeard archives and other sources of vintage comics, Cochran has printed well-chosen selections from these strips and more in a huge broadsheet format. If you sit in a chair and open up these pages, you'll disappear behind them. And that's what's so cool, you really get enveloped in the strips and can appreciate, say Hal Foster's Tarzan art, up close as never before.

Each "issue" of the Sunday Funnies includes three broadsheet sections bundled in plastic. The paper is durable and the art and colors are nice and clear, yet shot from original newspapers. I have two issues, not sure if the third is out, yet, and I've purchased them online via my comics retailer. But you can order directly from Russ here.

Coming up: Steve Canyon Volume 3: 1951-1952

Out March 12, 2013

336 pages.

Coming up: Fall Guy For Murder And Other Stories by Johnny Craig

Out April 20, 2013: The first collection to ever showcase the chronological run of Johnny Craig’s crisp, elegantly drawn Crime SuspenStories adds noir to the EC Comics library.

Surrounded by the ornate, retro, proto-splatter horror graphics of Jack Davis and Graham Ingels and the slick, futuristic sci-fi stylings of Wally Wood and Al Williamson, EC Comics superstar Johnny Craig stood out with his elegant, crisp, contemporary graphic style. And nowhere did this style work more beautifully than in the dozens of superb crime comics he wrote and drew for EC, mostly in Crime SuspenStories (for which he handled the cover and lead-story duties for most of its run).

Featuring escaped convicts, murderous husbands and wives, blackmailing maids, scheming nurses, executioners, time bombs, private dicks, and the occasional hatchet killer, the 22 stories in this book—all written and drawn by Craig—comprise a perfect encapsulation of the very best kind of noir writing, stunningly executed (in more than one sense of the word!) by one of the great cartoonists of his (or any) era. And all in eight pages per story! Fall Guy For Murder and other Stories is the first collection to showcase the chronological run of Craig’s Crime SuspenStories tales in one criminally convenient package, supplemented with several fascinating essays and informative historical notes on the stories.

BBC specials highlight Kinks and Stones radio appearances

The BBC is presenting some of its vintage recordings of pop groups performing, and being interviewed, live in the studio. Click the links to listen. The Kinks show is available now, but will vanish in a couple of days. The Stones show isn't up yet, last I checked.

Kinks on the BBC.

Rolling Stones on the BBC.