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I'm Julia Turner, and this is the Slate CultureGab Fest, Flirting with Vomit Edition.

It's Wednesday, August 28th, and on today's program, we're going to talk about World's End, Edgar Wright's conclusion to his Cornetto trilogy,

Miley Cyrus's world-endingly bad performance at the Video Music Awards,

and the beauty and terror of amusement parks.

Once again, Stephen McHaff and Dana Stevens are on vacation.

Presumably they're not on vacation together that they haven't invited me to on the tropical aisle,

or perhaps they are, in which case, more power to them. But rushing in to help us out is June Thomas, Slate Culture Critic. Hi, June. Hey, Julia. And we should also mention that June has just launched on Slate, a new blog called Outward, which will focus on LGBT issues. So she is also the editor of Outward, just launched this week, and our listeners should go check it out. They should. Onward and Outward. Also joining us is Slate editorial director, John Swansberg. Hi, John. Hey, Julia. Welcome to the show. Thanks. And before we start, I want to announce once again that we are doing a live show for the first time in a while on September 24th in Brooklyn. It will be the first ever Slate podcast in the borough of Brooklyn. It's going to be at the Bell House on Tuesday, September 24th, and there are tickets still available for that. You can find links for where to buy tickets on our show page, slate.com slash culturefest, or a direct link at slate.com slash culture, NYC. All right, let's start right in today with The World's End, which is Edgar Wright's new film that stars Simon Pegg as Gary King, who is a British hooligan who never quite grew up, and a host of delightful British actors as his pals.

The plot of the film is that when they just graduated from high school, they tried to accomplish the Golden Mile, which is a drinking stunt in their small hometown of Newton Haven that involves drinking a pint at each of the 12 pubs in town in the course of one night.

They failed to complete the Golden Mile, and so 20 years later, Gary King is corraling his pals

to go back and give it one last go. June, you're our resident British correspondent. Tell us what

you thought of this film. Resident never having lived there for more than 25 years, but I love this

film. And it was such a relief because while you were away, Julia,

we went to see various tent pole movies.

And I felt like the biggest, like, grump, because I hated them all.

And this I loved.

And it made me just appreciate what a movie that is a popular movie

that's meant as pure entertainment, how good it can be.

...