‘Sinners,’ the Blues and Fighting for Artistic Control-OxBig News Network

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For the second weekend in a row, the box office was dominated by “Sinners,” Ryan Coogler’s horror-drama musical about the tension between the ground-level cultural revolution of the blues and the parasitic music industry, depicted here as literal vampires.

For Coogler, it’s a return to original content following a long detour making extremely lucrative intellectual property films. “Sinners” reunites him with Michael B. Jordan, who plays a pair of twins, known as Smoke and Stack, whose creative, emotional and instinctual tugs lead them down deeply fraught and unclear pathways.

On this week’s Popcast, hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, a conversation about the box office success of “Sinners,” and the ways in which its treatment of the music of a century ago is firmly connected to the present.

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