Pop Culture Happy Hour - 2025 Pop Culture Resolutions And What's Making Us Happy

Episode Date: December 31, 2024

As a new year arrives, it's only natural to have some goals in mind: What you want to achieve, what heights you want to hit. Today, we make pop culture resolutions for 2025, and look back on last year's goals and assess our progress with brutal honesty.Subscribe to NPR Plus at plus.npr.org or make a gift at donate.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

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Thank you again for being a critical part of the public media community. Join NPRPlus at plus.npr.org. As a new year arrives, it's only natural to have some goals in mind. What you want to achieve, what heights you want to hit. Call it what you want. still a New Year's resolution. And it's also the perfect moment to look back on last year's goals and assess our progress with brutal honesty.

I'm Stephen Thompson. And I'm Linda Holmes. It's Resolutions Time once again on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining us today are our fellow pop culture Happy Hour hosts, Aisha Harris. Hello, Aisha. Hello, hello. And always in high resolution, Glenn Weldon. Hello, Glenn.

Hey, Linda. Why do we need brutal honesty? Can we just be a little easier at ourselves this time? Gentle honesty. Gentle honesty. I think we can agree on kind-hearted honesty. I think that's typically what we apply. Can we just lie?

Maybe just lie. It's true. We can go back and we can resolve to do the things we actually did. Well, no, but I think we can all agree, as we all always do, that we root for each other and try to find the ways in which we succeeded, even if we did not entirely succeed, you know? Yes. We're supportive here most of the time.

Partial credit. We are very, very big on partial credit. We are big on partial credit. All right. Glenn, we are going to start with you, and we are going to start by looking back at your resolution from last year. I know. I will write the novel that I've had outlined for years. I will get back into a workout routine. I will reach out more to friends and family. I'll feel better in my skin because I've spent decades doing intellectualization and compartmentalization and rationalization. Now it is time finally for us. sublimation for channeling all these feelings into creative action. Because I know what the deal is here. I know exactly what's required. I've written three books. It's not a question of not knowing exactly what's required.

So I'm going to shut up and do it. I'm also going to do with something else. I'm going to watch pretty much every folk horror film that I can find. I will become a folk horror completest. Hmm. Let's go part by part. Part A. Nope.

Didn't do it. Didn't carve out the time. Didn't finish the book. Made some progress, but didn't finish it. Worked out here or there. Didn't get back into a routine. Reached out to some friends. Didn't reach out to others.

The goal was to channel bad feelings into good, solid, creative work. And that happened only haltingly. But you know what did work was the folk art thing all over that. Asked me about that. This is partly why part A did not happen because I spent so much time watching a lot of folk horror. And here's the first thing you learn if you set out on that particular endeavor is you're going to get very, very familiar with Tooby. Who knows why all these old films and even some old specials are just languishing on Tooby.

So get set for the three commercials in Toobie's inventory because you're going to see them a lot. But I watched like 50 films to qualify. I came away with a couple very different recommendations if you want to hear them. Yeah. Absolutely. First one is a 1967 Soviet horror film called V-V-I-Y. This I just love. It has all the earmarks of an old-school folk tale because this priest who has to spend three nights.

No, not two, not four, about three nights locked in a church with a dead body that keeps coming to life. So that's on Tooby. The other one, also on Tooby. Robin Redbreast, it's a 1970 episode of a BBC anthology series that was called Play for Today. And it's about this

kind of hip woman who goes to a remote cottage and meets, wait for it, quirky townsfolk. And there's this one hot young dude who practices martial arts naked in the woods. And this is my favorite sub-sub-genre of folk This is 70s British folk horror.

I call it the talismans and turtlenecks era of folk horror, and I'm all over it. Because everything I want, it's creepy and silly and sexy. It's very, very British. So that's also one to be. That's Robin Redbreast. I'm going to put a list of the films I watched and make some recommendations on our letterboxed account. You can find that at letterboxed.com slash NPR pop culture. We'll have a link in the episode description.

But yeah, that's my accomplishment. I watched a lot of movies. I love that. Yeah. Just keep. going. What you're describing is what we all try to do. And I think you absolutely have to credit yourself for keeping it in mind and making progress, even if it is not everything that you hope. The other thing is these are pop culture resolutions, right? And part A of what you were talking about was sort of like,

I'm going to get in shape. It's all the kind of standard things that people talk about when they're talking about New Year's resolutions. But then when you knuckled down and made a pop culture specific resolution, you kept it. Yeah. Yeah. And. And, and, And isn't that what's really important? Isn't that more important than keeping in touch with our friends? Isn't mental and physical health secondary to watching lots of films? Yes, I agree with you. Look, one can feed into the other, and you were nourishing your mind, which is your mental health.

All right, I'll take that. All right. What is your resolution for this year? I had a lot of fun exploring that genre of folk horror that I was curious about last year. So I want to do the same this year. I was thinking, what should I do? Should I do? Screwball comedy or noir or, you know, 90s new queer cinema.

But the problem with all those is that I've seen a lot of those. films already, not like folk horror, which was a niche that I hadn't really explored. So what I'm going to do is not even a genre. It's a feature of movies. I'm going to watch long movies, movies that you have to sit with, movies that eat up half the day, movies you have to crawl inside and live in, because Lord knows we complain a lot about movies going on too long. But what about most movies that reportedly at least earn their duration? I'm talking about four hour plus movies. I mean, the brutalists kind of loosen the jar, but now I'm going to dig in. I'm going to seek out films that I've avoided because of their length.

Nymphomaniac, Carlos, Little Dorrit, Happy Hour. I'm going to find these movies. I'm going to clear my damn schedule, and I'm going to let 2025 be the year I let movies take me for an extended ride. Are you sure you don't want to do 90s, 80s, and 90s, Rom Kong? I'm pretty sure. Also, Anish I haven't explored, but I'm going to leave that unexplored. That's what I'm saying, though.

I feel it would broaden your horizons and it wouldn't take so freaking long. Horizons are pretty wide. I've toyed with this idea in the past of doing it. So hats off to you for committing to this. Maybe one day I will have the same will to do it. But I think this is a good one. I like it. I like this.

I like this. I'm over here thinking like, well, I need to catch up on the overseas versions of the traitors. And you're like, I think I need to watch a four and a half hour. Like I should have my hats off to you, buddy. We'll see. We'll see if it resolves. I love it. Thank you very much, Glenn Weldon. All right, Aisha Harris, we are going to go to your resolution for this past year. I want to see more old movies in theaters. And I miss that. I've realized that I've kind of gotten into a habit since moving out to the bay and also just being so used to watching things on screeners and not leaving my house as much as I used to.

Not really seeking out the chance to see certain movies, whether I've seen them before or want to watch them for the. the first time seeing them on a big screen. So I'm looking ahead to 2024. I see some local theaters that I either haven't visited yet that are in my area or that I have and just haven't seen old movies there. And, you know, I just want to be able to do that, see them in scare quotes here, like as they were originally seen in the theater. I just want to enjoy the theatrical experience yet again and not just for new movies, but also for old movies and revivals and that sort of thing. So that is my 2024 resolution. See more

movies in theaters, specifically the old ones. Got to go. You guys, I did this. I did. I did see around 10 movies, old movies in theaters. I got to visit for the first time the Stanford Theater in Palo Alto.

If it was closer to me, I would absolutely go there because it is a gorgeous theater that includes depending on when you go, they have an organist who plays ahead of So I saw the bandwagon there. They had a front of stair series there. I also saw Vertigo there.

They had a Hitchcock series later in the year. I saw some movies that I'd seen. I'd seen those movies. I also saw some movies that I'd never seen before. I think my favorite that I saw in a theater this year. And it's probably the most underseen. I'd never heard of it until the Alamo was showing it for the 40th anniversary. It's the L.A. Neo-Noir movie Mike's Murder.

So it's a neo-noir set in L.A. It stars Deborah Winger as a woman who's one-time fling, who's also like a tennis instructor, is murdered. Vagely remember this existing. Yeah. And it leads her down this rabbit hole to try to like find out who he was and what happened to him. Like they hooked up like once or twice. But all of a sudden he's dead and she's like, oh my God. It's weird.

It's quirky and Debringer is great. It was just really nice to get to see a bunch of movies on big screens in theaters. I'm glad I did it. It's something I want to keep doing. And if you want to see all the movies that I wound up seeing, the old movies that I wound up seeing in theaters, we actually have a list up there on Letterbox as well. Yeah, I did it, y'all. I did it. Amazing.

Congratulations. Absolutely wonderful. I'm in awe. All right, Ayesha, what is your resolution for 2025? Well, I want to write fiction. There we go. Yeah, which is something I've not done since I was in high school, maybe. I just like, at a certain point, I just stopped and it was like, okay, no, I'm going to be a critic and that's what I'm going to do it. I'm going to write nonfiction. And I've realized now that I'm missing that creative outlet, that creative side of me. I've expressed it in other ways through dance and whatever, but I'm missing when I used to write just like lots of babysitters club fan fiction and long stories that I would print out and then bind and had like a nice little cover and I had illustrations. I'm not going to be doing all that, but like I do. Hold on.

you could just pick up where you left off. Well, yeah, I'm not going to be writing Baby Scarsescope fan fiction. But I do have a bunch of ideas that have been swirling in my head. I think from watching so many movies and TV shows where I'm like, this is cool, but I wish it was like from this perspective. I feel like there's something missing here. And, you know, as they say, if you don't see it, create it. Preferably, I want to try and write a screenplay. We'll see how that goes.

Mazel. That's great. Love it. Okay, we're going to start with my resolution from this past year. Remember how Aisha gave her resolution and then I had the same one. I wrote in my notes, get back to a repertory showing at the AFI. There you go. So Aisha needs to come here and come to a movie at the AFI. The AIFI Silver in Silver Spring, Maryland is a wonderful place to watch, you know, not just new movies, but also repertory showings.

And I do really enjoy going there. And when I kind of stopped going to theaters in 2020, I never really got back into that particular habit. So I want to pick that habit up again. The other thing I want to do that I kind of stopped doing in 2020 is I want to go back and see some live theater, which I used to really love doing and which I haven't done really at all since then, I don't think. And I was sometimes going up to New York to see stuff on Broadway or off Broadway, but I also was enjoying like some stuff in D.C. And I want to do that again. So I don't ever want to be too much like I. Aisha. And so I did not do it in terms of seeing a repertory showing at the AFI.

Congratulations, buddy. That's a great job. I don't want to be a complete copycat, so I did not do it. Completely forgot I had made this resolution. Did not think about it once during the year. This is why I got to write these things down. Just didn't do it. However, thanks to an invitation from friend of the show and former co-host Trey Graham, I did. go and see live theater this year. Trey took me with him to studio theater in D.C. to see a play called Problems Between Sisters, which is a gender-swapped take on True West, basically.

The Sam Shepard play that you may or may not know that I have seen, that I saw on Broadway with Paul Dano and Ethan Hawk. I very much enjoyed seeing that play. I very much enjoyed being in a live audience for theater again. Absolutely would recommend that experience. hope to do it some more this coming up year. I did not do a great job on these resolutions this year, but I give myself a little bit of partial credit.

And more importantly, this is something that I can still do because the AFI Silver still exists. So basically a fail, but with hope for the future. I've still never been to the AFI Silver. It's fantastic. Maybe that's what went wrong. I know. Next time. There's a guest room where you could sleep like a mile from the AFI.

Next time I'm in D.C. You didn't come down. And that's why I didn't go. That's what it is. Figured it out. So my resolution, I swear I'm not doing this on purpose, I never know what Aisha's picks are. We don't share them in advance. We are one, as we know, as people like to tell us.

In this case, it's more like flippy flip. Because Aisha said that she wanted to write fiction. And I decided that I want to read more nonfiction, specifically essays this year. I want to make that what I'm reading this year because I have a novel coming out in February. It's called Back After This. It takes place in audio world. So if you're interested in podcasts, you can find that. But I am thinking about whether I would like to write some nonfiction, perhaps, some essay type things, some criticism type things. Therefore, I want to throw myself into reading a lot of such things. So Aisha wants to write fiction because she has been writing nonfiction.

I want to write nonfiction because I have been writing fiction. Aisha and I continue to just be absolute soulmates of predictions and resolutions. Binary stars. Circling each other. Absolutely. So I'm starting with Best American Essays of 2024, which was edited by Wesley Morris this year, which I'm very excited about. And I'm going to start there and then jump off from there and see where else I can end And so that's what I'm doing.

That's my resolution for 2025. That's a great project. Love it. Yeah. Yes. That's exciting. If you want any recommendations, I'm happy to give them to you. But if you don't, I'm also happy to not.

100%. And if you need anybody to tell you that you really can write novels or screenplays or fiction in whatever form, I'm always happy to provide that. Oh, thank you. As well. Anyway. All right. So saving the best for last, Stephen Thompson.

We're going to hear your resolution from this past year. So in 2024, I have been batting around an idea for the last couple of years for a children's book that I have been wanting to write with my daughter, Grace, who is an art student in college. She's wrapping up her third semester of art school. And I have wanted to work with her on a children's book for the longest time. And I think her artistic skills have only grown. And my idea for this story has kind of taken some shape in the last year. And so I want 2024 to be the year that I actually move forward on writing this book. I'm not saying sign a book deal.

I'm not saying get this published. I'm not saying finish it. I'm saying I want to make some serious movement on this collaboration with Grace that I've been wanting to do for the longest time. And I think the second part of this resolution is I want to take an international vacation in which I actually turn off the work part of my brain enough to open the creative part of my brain and really get the ball rolling on sitting down and working on something that is completely unrelated to what I do in my day-to-day work life, which has a creative component to it, but nothing that is quite as imagination-driven as what I would love to be doing on the side. Okay.

So I did travel internationally. I went to Mexico City for a wedding, loved it, turned off the work part of my brain, and played Pokemon Go. Though I did travel internationally in 2024, and though I have booked an international trip, I'm going to Iceland in 2025, what I pictured a little more was like, I will rent a villa where I'll crack my art. And that, of course, did not happen. I did, however, make some progress on the children's book with Grace. I started. You asked her, she said no. I asked her, she said no.

And now I have closure. No. I set up a shared Google Doc where I put all my notes. I've written a whole bunch of lines and jokes. I've written an introduction. What I need to do is start storyboarding so she can start actually drawing and painting. So the progress that I had envisioned making, I think it was probably more steps on the path. You'll note.

I'd said, I'm not going to finish it. I'm not going to sign a book deal. So I did make steps toward making it happen. She and I have talked about it extensively. We are absolutely planning to do it. We have a short-term plan to actually start producing pages instead of talking about it. So I'm giving myself a decent amount of credit here. It's not.

I'm going to get full credit. You know why? Because if you've made serious movement, boom. I think you get 100%. 100%. I think you've got full credit. If you've got Google Docs, if you've got, that's way more than I have. Those are notoriously difficult to create.

I mean, is it a notorious for credit? Destinator, myself. Yeah, they are difficult. If you have Ryan from your own child on a project to work on together, you've made serious. Take the win. Take the win, Thompson. Yes. All right, I'm going to take the win. All right. Awesome job. What is your resolution for 2025? Well, I wanted to talk about two things and they kind of fit together. One is in 2024 for reasons that many of you can probably imagine. I mostly took 2024 off from participating in social media. What I'd like to be. to do in 2025 is reembrace social media that bring me some measure of community and joy. I promise I will finally start posting to the letterbox account that we've been promoting at the end of our shows. I have been on blue sky for the last couple months. I want to lean further into that because I'm really enjoying the parts of that that are still enjoyable. Basically, I want to recommit to social media in ways that expand my horizons,

increase the number of perspectives I'm receiving the number of things that are being recommended to me by people I trust, keeping me better informed, making my world feel bigger, less insular, while still finding ways to maintain the healthier internet hygiene that wasn't always there

the last time I was on social media as much as I'd kind of like to be it. What I want to do is find ways to use it to manage my anxiety without exacerbating it, which is a really tricky thing to do with social media. And so Blue Sky and Letterboxed, I'm committing completely. And the other part of this is, instead of just talking about it, I do intend to actually finish the children's book in 2024,

not committing to signing a book deal, not committing to publishing it in 2025, but I do want to actually spend 2025 making art with my daughter, which I cannot think of a more fun, thing to promise to do than that. And then I get to eventually annoy all my social media followers by promoting it. There you go. I love it.

I love it. Yeah. You know what? I know no matter what it is, it is going to be better than Trap. We will make a work that is superior to the movie Trap in every way. Cannot finish 2024 without getting in one more dig at Trap, our favorite ridiculous movie of the year. Love it. That just brings my heart such joy. Okay. Well, thank you very much, Stephen Thompson. I love that for you. I look forward to seeing the result. We would love to know what

your resolutions are for the new year. You can find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash PCH. Next up, what's making us happy this week? Now it is time for our favorite segment of this week and every week. What's making us happy this week? Aisha Harris, what is making you happy this week? What's making me happy this week is something that I think a lot of people have very different feelings about, very specific feelings about. I think I'm neutral about it. And that is Yacht Rock. So there is now a Yacht Rock documentary streaming on Max. Doc, as in sitting on the Dock of the Bay, because, you know, Yacht Rock, that's how they spell it. So Yacht Rock a documentary, it's exactly what you think it is. It gets into the coining of the genre, you know, which famously, infamously, came from a comedy web series from the mid-aughts, describing a certain type of music and an era of music in the 70s and 80s, mostly. Then it goes back and interviews a lot of the guys who become synonymous with this genre. So Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, Christopher Cross. Though notably not Steely Dan member, Donald Fagan, he has a hilarious audio cameo, but he's not actually participating as a talking head in this.

But it also features interviews with people like Questlove and Thundercat and really, connecting how this is a very specific genre. It's mostly white guys, but it comes from black art. And a lot of current day, black artists really love it and have embraced it. So it was informative. It was fun. I enjoyed spending an hour and a half with this movie. And that is Yacht Rock, a doc, um, um, entry streaming on Max. All right. Thank you very much, Aisha Harris. Stephen Thompson. What is making you happy this week? Well, I'm about to listen to a whole bunch of new 2025 music, but I didn't want to let 2024 pass completely without talking about a record from

early in 2024 that I only found within the last few weeks. It's by a guy named Jack Kenworthy who records under the name coloring. He's from England, so that is spelled Kuluring. The album is called Love to You, Mate, and it's inspired by his brother-in-law's battle with cancer and kind of how his family rallied around that. And that That title, Love to You Mate, sums up so much of what I really love about this record. It's full of deep love and warmth and gratitude. The sound and the style conjures up everything from bands like the Blue Nile to artists like James Blake,

bands like Rye or Cigarettes After Sex. There's a smoothness to this music. It's deeply catchy, but it's also just so sweet. Just to give you a sense of the vibe, let's hear a little bit of one of the same. singles. This is called Loon. If I were in a store and I heard that song. You'd buy so many candles. I would think Stephen already knows and loves this music.

It's very pretty. It feels very like 2005-ish, and I mean that in like a good way. Yeah. Yeah, it has that vibe to it. I like it. You get a sense, even just in that little clip, of the number of interlocking hooks within that song. And so there's this beautiful piano line, but then there are lines. that. I just love it. So that is loon by coloring from a gorgeous record called Love to You You, Mate. All right. Thank you very much, Stephen Thompson. Glenn Weldon, what is making you happy this week? Well, it's year end time, and I played a lot of games this year, video games, and you'd be thinking I would be going some kind of Game of the Year declaration. But what is making me happy this weekend? In fact, my favorite game of the year is two years old, and it somehow missed me.

It's called Pentiment. This game is made for Glens. It's a game of about illuminated manuscripts. You are an illustrator at a monastery in the 16th century. Someone gets murdered. The story is great, but what I love about this game is the look and feel of it, because it's basically point and click. You are this two-dimensional dude in this two-dimensional world because the look of the game is very similar to illuminated manuscripts, right? So it's giving King's Quest vibes, if that means anything to anybody, but it also, the story is giving Name of the Rose. And if you could have told me, a teenage me, that two of my favorite things would come together in a game, I wouldn't believe you, you just walk over.

around investigating the Abbey and you talk to these incredibly gossipy monks and you learn a hell of a lot about ancient manuscripts and the people who do not like this game and there are many people who don't don't like it because you just, it's nothing but reading. You do nothing but reading. It's like, don't threaten me with a good time. I have no idea why I've never heard about this game because it made a lot of 2022 best game list. It wanted Peabody this game. But on the off chance that somebody out there has not yet played this fantastic game, go and do it, pentament. And it's available on a bunch of different platforms. You'll love it. I know several people who had this game. I'm going to have to go and try it.

All right. So what is making me happy this week? You know that I like a Netflix action movie sometimes more than other people do. Your red notices and your lifts and the like. The latest one is called Carry On. It is an airport-based diehard-ish action movie. And it stars Taryn Edgerton as a guy who gets a mysterious contact. It's a long story how it happens. But he gets a mysterious contact from a bad guy who wants him

while running his TSA line to let through a bag, a carry-on bag, that has dangerous cargo in it, blah, blah, blah. He has to figure out what to do. It's obviously, if you don't do what we say, we're going to kill someone that you love, blah, blah, blah, all that good stuff that you would normally find. Is this an absolutely necessary movie? No, it is not. Listen, when you see a movie that wants to be die hard, you're reminded of the many wonderful things that make die hard, die hard that are very, very hard to imitate. This movie is not as witty as Die Hard by a mile. Jason Bateman, I do not think I am breaking ground to say,

Jason Bateman is not Alan Rickman. He's not Hans Grubber. Taryn Edgerton is not Bruce Willis, right? However, however, is this a fun action movie? It is a fun action movie. I thought they did a pretty good job, and Danielle Deadweiler shows up playing the good cop trying to set everything right. So it is a lot of fun.

I think worth your time. That is carry on, like a carry on bag, on Netflix now. And that's what's making me happy this week. If you want links for what we recommended, plus some additional recommendations, sign up for our newsletter at npr.org slash pop culture newsletter. That brings us to the end of our show. Aisha Harris, Stephen Thompson, Glenn Weldon. I am resolved to continue spending good time with you in the new year.

Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you, buddy. Oh, thank you. This episode is produced by Mike Kemp. Katsif, Lenin Sherburn, and Liz Metzger, and edited by Jessica Reedy. Hello, come in, provides our theme music. Year end is always a good time to remind you how much we rely on and appreciate our producers and editors.

Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Linda Holmes, and we'll see you all tomorrow.