Glen’s Popcorn

If you were watching Heritage TV in Southwest Virginia this Friday, you might have caught the premiere of the first new episode of “Popcorn” since December. The official beginning of Season Two featured a new opening sequence.

If you weren’t watching Heritage TV and/or you aren’t in Southwest Virginia, you can still catch the new season at our brand spankin’ new blip.tv feed. Over at glenspopcorn.blip.tv, you’ll be able to see each show posted segment-by-segment starting every Thursday (when the new episode is delivered to Heritage TV). You’ll also be able to subscribe using Miro, iTunes, or the other vodcast delivery program of your choice. Ha-ha, Technology!

You may also have noticed movies being referred to as different forms of “Popcorn.” It’s our new rating scale. In the early days of “Popcorn,” we categorized movies as “Buy,” “Rent,” or “Skip.” It turns out those are bad ideas for rating names, because there’s always a qualification that can be made - such as, say, “It’s a rent - unless you happen to love anime with a passion, in which case you’ll want to buy it,” or - “This is a buy - unless you hate documentaries, in which case, it’s a skip.”

So instead I started delivering long-winded summations. Yeah, that doesn’t work either.

So here’s the new system and how it’s laid out. I call it the concession-stand primer.

• Popcorn and Soda - Highest recommendation. Less rare than it probably should be in a critics’ hands, but them’s the breaks. Denotes an overall good experience.
• Popcorn - Not quite as satisfying as a Popcorn and Soda, but still pretty darn good.
• Popcorn Kernel - Ever see a movie that had so much potential, but just fell short? I think of those as the unpopped kernels in the bag. They could so easily have been just as good as the rest of the popcorn, but they just didn’t quite make it.
• Popcorn Husk - Those annoying bits that get stuck between your teeth? Like a popcorn bag full of those, these movies would be much more enjoyable if not for some severely irritating drawbacks that make the whole thing more of an ordeal than a good time.
• Shot Glass - The ultra-rare, truly horrible rating. So entitled because a movie that ranks this low will require at least one - and possibly a few - of these to get through it all.

And, as always, remember that the critic’s job isn’t to tell you what you should or shouldn’t like - it’s to tell you what they, personally, did or didn’t like. We begin the conversation. You make your own decisions.