Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 327 with Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner with the audio player below.

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This week, Slate Plus listeners will hear the critics perform a thorough postmortem of an obscure little podcast named Serial.

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This week on the Slate Culture Gabfest, the critics will discuss James Franco’s belated leap into international affairs, as the Sony hacking curtails The Interview’s release. How can news outlets report responsibly on such a strange mixture of topics? Do movies and patriotism ever mix coherently, anyway? Next, Mark Harris’ piece on Grantland assesses the total dependence of Hollywood’s finances on franchises. There may have been some great sequels in movie history, but Harris presents a grim outlook for originality in cinema over the next few decades. Finally, a Yuletide battle royale. Each critic will argue for his or her own favorite festive movie’s place in the pantheon of holiday greats. Happy holidays, listeners.

Links to some of the things we discussed this week follow:

• Aaron Sorkin’s Times op-ed argued the press should not abet the hackers’ actions
• Gawker’s pop-up blog on the Sony hack
• Jacob Weisberg sort of agreed with Sorkin on Slate
• But Justin Peters, also on Slate, disagreed
• Mark Harris on Hollywood’s abject reliance on movie franchises for its finances, for Grantland

Endorsements:

Dana: Channing Tatum’s email about 22 Jump Street winning the weekend

Julia: Darlene Love singing “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” on Letterman

Steve: The Clark museum in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and Mass MoCA

Outro: Darlene Love, “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”

You can email us at culturefest@slate.com.

This podcast was produced by Joel Meyer. Our intern is Josephine Livingstone.

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