The A.V. Club - AVQ&A

Tell us about your pop-culture weekend: May 17-19

The A.V. Club Staff — Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 -0500

We’ve expanded the definition of AVQ&A—our weekly thought-starter—by asking you (and us) a simple question each week: What pop culture did you consume this weekend, and what did you think of it? If you have suggestions for AVQ&A questions, big or small, you can e-mail them to us here.

What are your favorite and least favorite cultural baits and switches?

Fri, 17 May 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Welcome back to AVQ&A, where we throw out a question for discussion among the staff and readers. Consider this a prompt to compare notes on your interface with pop culture, to reveal your embarrassing tastes and experiences, and to ponder how our diverse lives all led us to convene here together. Got a question you’d like us and the readers to answer? Email us at avcqa@theonion.com.

Reader Tom Melly asks:
“A recent AVQ&A made me think of Dan Simmons’ Ilium and the sequel, Olympos. Loved the first, but the second turned into something of an anti-Muslim rant, leaving me with a nasty taste in my mouth and the feeling that I’d been conned by a sneaky bait and switch. That got me thinking about baits and switches I’d enjoyed: Pop culture with a significant change in tone and direction taking place long before ...

Tell us about your pop-culture weekend: May 10-12

The A.V. Club Staff — Mon, 13 May 2013 00:00:00 -0500

The films you’ve loved longest

Fri, 10 May 2013 00:00:00 -0500

This should wrap up our current nostalgia kick, with the obvious question to ask after the last two AVQ&As: What films did you discover earliest in life that are still on your favorites list?

Tasha Robinson
According to family legend, the first film I was exposed to in the theater was a revival of The Sound Of Music, when I was about 4. It was in one of the big old traditional revival theaters, the kind designed like (and ...

Tell us about your pop-culture weekend: May 3-5

The A.V. Club Staff — Mon, 06 May 2013 00:00:00 -0500

The books you’ve loved longest

Fri, 03 May 2013 00:00:00 -0500

What books did you discover earliest in life that are still on your favorites list?

Tasha Robinson
I’ve already talked about the big ones in previous AVQ&As on children’s entertainment we still love today, and art our parents passed down to us. So I’ll skip getting into C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books, Roald Dahl’s Danny, The Champion Of The World, Diana Wynne Jones’ Dogsbody, and Richard Adams’ Watership Down yet again. They’re all longtime ...

What are you reading this month? (May 2013)

Tasha Robinson, Nathan Rabin, Marah Eakin — Wed, 01 May 2013 11:00:00 -0500

We’ve further expanded the definition of AVQ&A—our Monday and Friday discussion prompts—by asking you (and two of our regular contributors) a simple question once per month: What have you read in the past month, or what are you currently reading? If you have suggestions for AVQ&A questions, big or small, you can e-mail them to us here.

Among the notable May new book releases: Sidney Poitier makes his fiction debut with Montaro Caine, a novel about how a baby born with a coin in her hand changes life, and the perception of life, for a loosely connected group of people. Sounds downright odd, but intriguingly ambitious for someone coming to fiction for the first time after such a long and successful career in another field entirely. Dan Savage returns to books with American Savage: Insights, Slights, And Fights On Faith, Sex, Love, And Politics, which ...

Tell us about your pop-culture weekend: April 26-28

The A.V. Club Staff — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Favorite pop-culture goodbyes

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0500

A note from AVQ&A curator Tasha Robinson: The day this publishes will be my final day as the National Associate Editor at The A.V. Club, after 15 years of writing and editing here, first as a freelancer, then since 2000 as a full-time staffer. You’ll still see my byline around here—we have several more AVQ&As banked, the big Summer Movie Preview and a last What Are You Reading? column next week, and interviews with Joe ...

Tell us about your pop-culture weekend: April 19-21

The A.V. Club Staff — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0500

The album you’ve loved longest

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0500

I’m turning 50 in April, but I’m putting aside how shocking that is. I’ve been pulling together a mix of one defining song for me for each year from 1963 to the present, in terms of the songs I most love now that was released then. I wasn’t aware of many good songs in the ’60s at that age, so including a Dylan or Velvet Underground track comes from a later appreciation. I’ve realized that ...

Tell us about your pop-culture weekend: April 12-14

The A.V. Club Staff — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Willful cultural ignorance

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0500

In a comment on last week’s Monday “tell us about your weekend” AVQ&A, commentor Skip, In Outer Space discussed a weekend of watching Akira Kurosawa films, and wrapped with this thought: “Toshirô Mifune is the coolest, and I’m worried about learning more about him and Kurosawa, because I don’t wanna find out if they had a falling out because one of them was a huge jackass.” That started the staff talking—in the Information Age, we ...

Tell us about your pop-culture weekend: April 5-7

The A.V. Club Staff — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0500

What did Roger Ebert mean to you?

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0500

The death of beloved, vastly influential Pulitzer-winning critic, author, and screenwriter Roger Ebert at 70 following a long, public battle with cancer has inspired a wave of appreciation of his life and work. So we asked our writers—some of whom had the honor of sharing the Chicago screening room with the esteemed critic—what Roger Ebert meant to them. Also check out Scott Tobias’ excellent tribute for our film editor’s take on the passing of a legend.

Nathan ...

Who should replace Jimmy Fallon?

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 12:30:00 -0500

Now that the news about Jimmy Fallon replacing Jay Leno at The Tonight Show is official, we’re left to speculate about who will take Fallon’s spot on Late Night. The leading contender appears to be Seth Meyers, but the whole thing has us wondering: Who would you choose to replace Jimmy Fallon at Late Night if you were the type of God-person who makes those decisions?

Tasha Robinson
For me, the biggest draw about Jimmy Fallon is the ...

What are you reading this month? (April 2013)

Tasha Robinson, Nathan Rabin, Erik Adams — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 12:00:00 -0500

April looks great for new book releases. Glen Weldon’s Superman: The Unauthorized Biography got the month off to a great start, and is highly recommended; even for non-comics fans, it’s a fascinating overview of a 75-year-old phenomenon that morphed dozens of times over the years to fit constantly changing commercial demands and developments. Mary Roach’s Gulp continues the run of pop-semi-science books that includes Stiff, Spook, and Bonk; this one’s a “tour” of the alimentary canal, with thoughts on food, taste, how the stomach ...

Tell us about your pop-culture weekend: March 29-31

The A.V. Club Staff — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Empathizing with art

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0500

A lot of the value of culture comes from the way a story or song can show us a new perspective, and let us know what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes. But there’s often more pleasure—and relief—in art that exactly parallels something we’ve been through ourselves. These “You aren’t alone” moments really make some pop culture work for individual fans. What moments from pop culture gave you that “Yes! I ...

Tell us about your pop-culture weekend: March 22-24

The A.V. Club Staff — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0500

“Shitty miracles”

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0500

I was re-reading Nathan Rabin’s takedowns of Ed and Bucky Larson, where he discusses “shitty miracles”: “In a shitty miracle, everything goes awry. It’s not a matter of one sorry element dragging the rest down; it’s every terrible component amplifying the awfulness of everything else. These shitty miracles represent the perfect storm of bad ideas and miscalculation. Everything must line up perfectly for a shitty miracle to occur.” In other words, works where every aspect is wrongly ...

Favorite festival experiences

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0500

In honor of SXSW (and our many staffers returning from the all-you-can-watch bacchanal of music, movies, and people-watching), here’s a bonus edition of our weekly staff-and-readers question: What was your best experience with an entertainment festival?

Tasha Robinson
Easily my best festival experience was the Tribeca Film Festival in New York in 2012. I’ve been to smaller film fests, but never anything on this scale, incorporating two weeks of premières—a huge percentage of which were foreign films and indies with no distributor, thus films that might not ever make it to the rest of America. The week I spent there was maddening, as I tried to work full-time while also seeing every film I could and doing long-form interviews with the directors of the most promising features. It’s gratifying that so many of my favorite Tribeca premières have since made it to theaters, or ...

Tell us about your pop-culture weekend: March 15-17

The A.V. Club Staff — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Surprising songs in concert

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Have you ever attended the concert of a favorite band and been surprised by a song you never thought they’d play? I have seen Wilco several times, and at one show in 2010, they played the song “More Like The Moon” from an EP released around the time of A Ghost Is Born. Wilco is usually good about playing songs other than the big hits, but this one really surprised me. This may also relate to a style or ...

Tell us about your pop-culture weekend: March 8-10, 2013

The A.V. Club Staff — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Perfect pop culture?

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0600

The AVC audience tends to be about examining pop culture closely and intimately, and picking it apart to analyze its minutest flaws. But is there any art you consider perfect as it is? Not a lyric you’d tweak, a plotline you’d shift, a character you’d alter? Alternately, is there any art you love so much, you refuse to subject it to close scrutiny, and prefer to think of it as perfect?

Tasha Robinson
Peter Beagle’s 1968 ...

What are you reading this month? (March 2013)

Tasha Robinson, Kyle Ryan, Andrea Battleground — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 12:00:00 -0600

We’ve further expanded the definition of AVQ&A—our Monday and Friday discussion prompts—by asking you (and two of our regular contributors) a simple question once per month: What have you read in the past month, or what are you currently reading? If you have suggestions for AVQ&A questions, big or small, you can email them to us here.

Book releases are picking up in March, with some interesting biographies dominating: Rita Moreno, the only Hispanic performer with an EGOT, just released a self-titled memoir coming. Punk grandfather and Voidoids frontman Richard Hell wrote one as well, titled I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp. The Ask author Sam Lipsyte returns to short stories with The Fun Parts. Pulitzer winner Elizabeth Strout follows up Olive Kitteridge with a new family-lit novel, The Burgess Boys. Rob Zombie inevitably moves into print horror with his debut novel, The ...

Tell us about your pop-culture weekend: March 1-3, 2013

The A.V. Club Staff — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0600

Favorite poems

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0600

What’s your favorite poem?

Tasha Robinson
Any number of Rudyard Kipling poems have stuck with me over the years, particularly the epic “Tomlinson,” with its general message that in the long run, it doesn’t matter what you say or think or feel or believe in life, it matters what you actually do. And better yet, one that often brings tears to my eyes: “The Palace,” which tells the story of an arrogant king who sets out to build ...

Tell us about your pop-culture weekend: February 15-17, 2013

The A.V. Club Staff — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0600