This December we’re rounding up all of our Popten bloggers, and inviting anyone who has an opinion, and churning out Popten’s Top Ten of the Decade. From obvious lists like Top Ten Albums, to the much less obvious, we’re quantifying everything that was worth experiencing in…
You know that sinking feeling you’d expect to get if you heard that principal photography had just begun on a feature film entitled “The Smurfs: A BLUE Generation”? That feeling is exactly what this list is about. The first decade of the 21st century has brought us a plethora of ill-conceived remakes, reboots and reimaginings of cherished icons from my childhood…
By Juan Carlos Pineiro Escoriaza
This decade allowed for us to revel in our favorite celebrities making complete fools of themselves. From saying things we were amazed by to doing things that were downright shameful, this decade allowed us the power of YouTube, and the world of repeat, remix, and defame will never quite be the same. Transparency has only really begun, and we’re going…
It’s been a rich decade for story. The movie and music business got shaky, TV enjoyed an culture-shaking renaissance, and video games grew legs and flew. In the center was El Internet, the paste that held everything together, and tied all the various media to each other. With media gone schizo, the need for powerful story to exist at the…
By Ji-Un Kwon
Here’s a little taste of what may (or may not) end up on what is fast becoming an unintentionally ambitious (and perhaps unnecessarily long) Top Ten Films of the Decade list. These lists are incredibly exhausting to think through, but I know they’re super fun to read. So rest assured… there will be genres… and an accompanying screen performance list…
By Jeremy Kotin
The Best of the Broadway Musicals OF THE DECADE
1. Sondheim Festival at the Kennedy Center (2002)
I only managed to see two of the six shows that played in repertory over a four-month spell, but it was enough to realize how Sondheim changed the landscape of musical theater with his complicated but always gorgeous lyrics and music. Sunday in the Park…
It’s already been a decade… Hard to believe. I’ve played so many games over the years, some of which I forgot, that this list was hard to come up with. (And before anyone brings them up, no I have not played Ico or Shadow of the Colossus. Yes both most likely should be in the top 5, but I’ve not played…
By Chivo
We’re at the tail end of the historic decade that once and for all democratized porn. The XXX theaters in the seventies gave way to the eighties’ VHS tapes, which in turn were made obsolete by DVDs, and then were all blown out of the water by the WWW. And while our online porn hunting began long before the millennium…
Hello friends. You may not recognize me because I’m new to the Popten scene. Hotchachaaa. However, upon being summoned by the Lord to join forces with these peeps, I decided I would pay homage to my diva roots and reminisce on what I believe were the greatest chick anthems of the decade. Keep this in mind, though: I’m not sampling…
By Dan Freeman
What If…
In the popular culture timeline, there has always been something magical about the 2000s. Those three round zeros, so daringly potent with content and meaning, have been in the storytelling sights of filmmakers for, well, forever, and have signaled a potential of three extra zeros to the box-office returns in many a producer’s wet dream. For writers, the 2000s…
Matt Ellsworth and I met while making Second Skin, a documentary I directed on virtual worlds. He’s one of the boys from Indiana who loves to game. Our conversations over the years have led to a few things, one of them was finding a common love for Johnnie Walker Black Label, and the second was a penchant for postulating about…
The geek have officially inherited the Earth, as was prophesied in Psalms 37:7 (more or less) so many bearded men ago. It’s a fairly recent thing, having happened somewhere between Google’s ascent to ubiquity, the second installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the eyebrow-raising popularity of Weird Al’s White & Nerdy. And since history is told by the…
How much does James Cameron ride George Lucas’ dick? Only enough to base an entire movie, Avatar, on the final battle sequence from the last good film in the Star Wars franchise, Return of the Jedi. Each film has its ragtag band of native creatures, each film pits basic bush weaponry against mechanized slaughter machines, each film has exploding trees.…
Come with me, friends, to another time. Let’s say 1998ish. Ross and Rachel rule the airwaves, ER is hailed as the Best Drama Evar. As the sun sets on Seinfeld, critics mourn its passing, proclaiming that we’re not likely to see a show of its brilliance ever again.
I watched an episode of Seinfeld yesterday. It’s still funny, despite the canned…
I sincerely hope I made every attempt to be fair and honest and if I left off a film you love, please know that it was not with malice and there are only ten spots. I even split them into two genres because taking any of these off the list kind of made my heart hurt. Also, feel free to…