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PODCAST

The Kulturecast

Weirding Way Media

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts, and a founding member of Weirding Way Media. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other.Three series live inside the feed:Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study, with media scholar Dr. David D. PerlmutterKulture Meltdown, with Bryan Renfro of Movie MeltdownChangeover, with Mike White of The Projection BoothNew episodes

tv & film film history

All Episodes

70:55

Required Viewing 05: Contagion

The Kulturecast ·

2026/10/09

It opens on Day 2, with a cough in the dark. This week on Required Viewing, we put Steven Soderbergh's Contagion (2011) under the microscope — the cold, procedural pandemic thriller that spent a decade as a well-made what-if, then climbed back up the rental charts in the spring of 2020 as the whole world's homework.We get into Soderbergh's refusal to dramatize (he dispatches one of his Oscar winners inside the first ten minutes), Scott Z. Burns' script that treats a virus as a logistics problem, and

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127:58

Kulture Meltdown: Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die...

The Kulturecast ·

2026/10/08

We'll be honest; neither of us expected the AI apocalypse to be fought from a diner booth. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die, Gore Verbinski's first film in nearly a decade, sends Sam Rockwell's ragged Man From the Future into a Los Angeles diner for his 117th attempt to recruit the world's least likely resistance. Bryan had a blast; Chris found it more uneven, a film with more ideas than it knows what to do with. However, we agree on the man at its center: Rockwell is unhinged, hilarious and the best

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130:30

KC × TPB: Digger (2026) — "When all else fails, you...

The Kulturecast ·

2026/10/06

A billionaire breaks the world and then demands a medal for trying to fix it — welcome to 2026. This week The Kulturecast teams up with Mike White of The Projection Booth to dig into Alejandro G. Iñárritu's Digger (2026), the "comedy of catastrophic proportions" that hands Tom Cruise his strangest role yet: oil baron Digger Rockwell, the most powerful man alive, racing to prove he's humanity's savior before the catastrophe he caused swallows everyone.We get into Cruise cast gloriously against type,

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137:28

Kulture Meltdown: Primetime (2026) — "You see how...

The Kulturecast ·

2026/09/30

We'll be honest; we both spent a good chunk of the 2000s watching grown men sit down at a kitchen table they'd regret, and neither of us thought much about the man holding the clipboard. Primetime, the narrative debut from Ren Faire documentarian Lance Oppenheim, does — casting Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen, the Dateline correspondent who turned sting operations into appointment television. Bryan found it a mess; Chris found it a compelling one. However, we both left asking the same question:

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84:30

Required Viewing 04: Jaws

The Kulturecast ·

2026/09/26

You're gonna need a bigger boat. This week on Required Viewing, we wade into Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) — the film that invented the summer blockbuster, emptied the beaches of an entire generation, and pulled it off precisely because the shark wouldn't work. We get into the happy accident at the center of it: a malfunctioning mechanical fish that forced a 27-year-old Spielberg to hide his monster, turning technical catastrophe into pure Hitchcockian dread — that, and two notes from John

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176:24

"You're hiring a glorified Postmates driver to hand...

The Kulturecast ·

2026/09/25

I'll be honest; I've never expected much from a video game movie, and the Resident Evil franchise alone has given me seven reasons not to. However, Zach Cregger, the director behind Barbarian and Weapons, has done the unthinkable — he's thrown out Leon, Claire and the games' plots entirely, and sent Austin Abrams' medical courier Bryan into Raccoon City for one very long night. The result is a lean, nasty, genuinely scary horror film, and for the first time in the franchise's history, the game isn't

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64:27

Required Viewing 03: Barry Lyndon

The Kulturecast ·

2026/09/19

Is it even a movie? That's the question Barry Lyndon has provoked since 1975 — three hours of scenes so composed they look less like cinema than oil paintings that happen to breathe. This week on Required Viewing, Dr. David D. Perlmutter — "the Prof" — drags Stanley Kubrick's most beautiful, most divisive film to the table: the one even Kubrick devotees can't agree is a film at all.We get into the candlelight Kubrick captured with lenses built for NASA, a production that practically rebuilt a

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145:53

"Man was meant to eat meat. We, all of us, have a...

The Kulturecast ·

2026/09/16

If you missed last week's Rob Zombie goes Haddonfield edition of the show, this week should make as little sense to you as someone watching this movie without having seent the first one. On this episode of the Kulturecast, Movie Meltdown's Bryan Renfro joins the show to continue talking about Rob Zombie's foray into mainstream horror along with discussions about so much more.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.———The Kulturecast is a

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84:33

Required Viewing 02: Waterworld

The Kulturecast ·

2026/09/10

It was the most expensive movie ever made, the punchline of a thousand headlines, and a flop so infamous it got its own nickname. This week on Required Viewing, we bail out Kevin Reynolds and Kevin Costner's Waterworld (1995) and study it from every angle — separating the film that's actually on screen from the runaway-budget legend that swallowed it whole.We get into Mad Max on the open ocean, the world-building that still holds up, Dennis Hopper chewing more scenery than the Smokers could ever

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152:16

"Behind these eyes one finds only blackness, the...

The Kulturecast ·

2026/09/09

The last thing the world needs in 2026 is yet another Halloween film but, to be fair, the last thing the world needed in 2007 was yet another Halloween film, especially one directed by Rob Zombie. Given that the film does in fact exist, Movie Meltdown's Bryan Renfro joins the Kulturecast for the first time to talk all about the finer points of reboots, Rob Zombie, and a whole lot more in this oversized part one of a two part series covering the Zombie reboot series.Become a supporter of this

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79:36

"God's not gonna let us die here."

The Kulturecast ·

2026/08/29

From suburban horror to the back end of the Cretaceous, the American genre picture keeps finding new ways to burn down the cul-de-sac. The End of Oak Street, the latest from It Follows director David Robert Mitchell, is a studio tentpole carrying an arthouse thesis, offering Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor as a marriage coming apart at the seams while something much older comes down the street. Along with a fleet of dinosaurs shot without an ounce of reverence, it takes to task suburban rot, willful

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76:16

Required Viewing 01: Sideways

The Kulturecast ·

2026/08/29

Two guys, a week in wine country, and a whole lot of avoidance. This week on Required Viewing, we uncork Alexander Payne's Sideways (2004) and study it from every angle — why a shaggy road-trip comedy about a failed novelist and a fading actor became the defining midlife-male-sadness movie of its era, and what it's really pouring underneath the pinot.We get into Payne's gift for making you laugh at people you'd never want to be, Miles as a portrait of self-sabotage dressed up as good taste, wine as

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56:31

Required Viewing 0: Syllabus

The Kulturecast ·

2026/08/14

Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study is a brand new sub-feed within The Kulturecast main feed where Dr. David D. Perlmutter and The Kulturecast's Doctor of Podcasting Chris Stachiw talk all about filmic topics through the lenses of a different film, tv series, or pop culture topic each Thursday.On this Episode Zero: Syllabus, the good doctors sit down to discuss the thesis behind the show, what might cause something to meet the criteria of "required viewing", and what you might expect to hear in the

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79:50

"One time in the fourth grade, I messed around with a...

The Kulturecast ·

2026/08/14

From Train to Busan to the far-flung future with cloning and fascism, Korean cinema spans the genre gamut. Mickey 17, the latest film from Parasite’s Bong Joon Ho, is the latter, offering a look into the future with Robert Pattinson playing two roles as Mickey 17 and Mickey 18. Along with a cavalcade of character actors, it attempts to take to task fascism, biotech abuse, and more, to unsuccessful effect.Texas Tech’s Dr. David D. Perlmutter and K-drama anthropologist Miranda join the show to talk

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92:05

“Are you Peter Parker, or are you Spider-Man?”

The Kulturecast ·

2026/08/05

As the MCU barrels towards the inevitable ultimate crossover event that is Avengers: Doomsday, we must first check in on everyone's friendly neighborhood webhead. Once again starring Tom Holland, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is fourth film featuring the MCU's take on Spidey, with 100% less multiversal madness, thankfully. Along for the ride are Punisher, Black Widow, and maybe even an X-Man or two; The Projection Booth's Mike White crosses over to talk about them and more.Become a supporter of this

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62:14

"That was some new John Wayne shit, Staff Sgt."

The Kulturecast ·

2026/07/29

Battle Los Angeles is one of those forgotten sci-fi films that toed the line between war and alien invasion, doing something that few films since have: create a novel and compelling world for an alien invasion to occur. Dr. David D. Perlmutter joins Chris to talk war, aliens, and what happens when the two are combined.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

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68:17

"You wanna be great, you need to sacrifice. And the...

The Kulturecast ·

2026/07/22

While it may be simplistic to say that the Blackberry died at the hands of the iPhone, it wouldn't be entirely inaccurate. That death, however, was a very beautiful corpse as one might imagine due to Blackberry device becoming so ubiqutous as to have a nickname: "Crackberry". Join Chris, Dr. David Perlmutter, and Mark Stachiw as they talk all about the film as well as the history surrounding it and much more.Become a supporter of this podcast:

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69:51

“Clark sees the good, I see the truth."

The Kulturecast ·

2026/07/02

Last year's Superman was a genuine suprise, especially for those amongst us who had soured heavily on the previous attempt at a unified DC Universe with Snyder's Darkseriousverse. The hope was real that James Gunn at would be enough to point the ship in a new, more interesting direction. Unfortunately, Supergirl is not that and barely lives up to even the smaller successes of Superman while attempting to broaden the universe in mostly unsuccessful ways. The Projection Booth's Mike White crosses over

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44:25

"Welcome to the first day on our last film."

The Kulturecast ·

2026/07/01

Jackass has been a part of pop culture since the show first aired on MTV back in the pastoral years of the year 2000; 26 years later, the Jackass boys are a bit older but still up to, for the most part, their old tricks. While the group has shrunk (and grown) over the last two decades, the rambunctious stunts and pranks still remain, even if Jackass: Best and Last is effectively a glorified clipshow at worst and a pseudo-docu-goodbye at best. The Projection Booth's Mike White crosses over to talk

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66:50

"We're all part monsters in our subconscious, so we...

The Kulturecast ·

2026/06/25

Sci-fi has taken many forms as a genre, and since it happens to be a genre that both Dr. Perlmutter and Chris have an affinity for, why not cover one of the true classics. While those who saw Forbidden Planet in theaters may not have realized that it was merely an amuse bouche for the more pop culture pliable Star Trek, the film is definitely one worth talking about and reappraising from a modern-day perspective.Become a supporter of this podcast:

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