Glen Weldon
Glen Weldon is a host of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast. He reviews books, movies, comics and more for the NPR Arts Desk.
Over the course of his career, he has spent time as a theater critic, a science writer, an oral historian, a writing teacher, a bookstore clerk, a PR flack, a completely inept marine biologist and a slightly better-ept competitive swimmer.
Weldon is the author of two cultural histories: Superman: The Unauthorized Biography and The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, The Atlantic, Slate, McSweeney's and more; his fiction has appeared in several anthologies and other publications. He is the recipient of an NEA Arts Journalism Fellowship, an Amtrak Writers' Residency, a Ragdale Writing Fellowship and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts for Fiction.
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It's got a new title and a new lead actor, but everything else about writer/director Paolo Sorrentino's series — a soapy, deeply weird peek under the papal robes — remains intact. -
Parasite, Knives Out, Avengers: Endgame, Little Womenand Marriage Storyare among the year-end list of 20 films that NPR critics loved the most. -
The final chapter in "The Skywalker Saga" returns J.J. Abrams to the director's chair, and the result, while overstuffed with characters and plot, delivers on space-operatic action. -
Series such as Fleabag, Watchmenand Successionhighlight our pop culture critics' list of the 19 best television and serial streaming programs of 2019. -
Fans of Superman know he's really the bookish Clark Kent, but on Wednesday he revealed his identity to the world within the comics.
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Yes, there's another earworm-ballad, but the sequel at least attemptsto course-correct for the pernicious princess obsession that Disney unleashed on the world in the first place. -
The cast has changed, but the formula — i.e., heavy hangs the (figure)head that wears the crown — remains comfortingly intact. -
An old salt (Willem Dafoe) and his young assistant (Robert Pattinson) descend into a surreal maelstrom of myth and madness as they maintain a lonely lighthouse. -
The comedian, who died Sunday, knew how to make an entrance — tossing confetti, laughing boisterously and insisting the audience join him. -
Todd Phillips' film features a bravura central performance and a style that, while dutifully imitative, engenders a claustrophobic sense of dread. But it's all in service of precisely nothing.
