November 22, 2020
We Have Glimpsed Our Streaming Future, and It Sucks
With Wonder Woman 1984, Hamilton, and Soul all launching away from movie theatres this year, Sam Adams worries that smaller movies will be drowned out by online blockbusters and the algorithmically-recommended firehose of mediocre content from streaming giants.
What the White Witch from Narnia’s apartment would smell like
How do you make the forthcoming stuck-at-home holidays feel a little more special and less... well, exactly like the preceding eight stuck-at-home months? The answer, my friends, is scented candles. Here are some that smell like a tree, a party, the White Witch’s condo, bedtime, children’s makeup, real and fake babies, cocktails, and Denise Huxtable’s best outfits. [more inside]
How Steve McQueen Pulled Off the Year's Best Movie Scene
Lovers Rock, the second installment in Steve McQueen's Small Axe film anthology, is about one such night in 1980, when a few dozen Black Londoners congregate at a house party to hold each other close and sway and thrash and grind. On paper, the film is a dreamy series of party scenes; onscreen, it's a passionate, restless achievement. Love, frustration, togetherness are communicated in small gestures and details - a gently horny ass-grab, a yearning gaze from across the room, a delightfully chaotic line for the bathroom. The rest of the Small Axe films feature racist cops, racist bosses, racist courts. Lovers Rock shows what happens when white people aren't looking - the rapture in Black joy, experienced privately. [more inside]
Dune as a measure of our discontent
Daniel Immerwahr at the Los Angeles Review of Books writes about the renewed popularity of Dune, the influence of Native American cultures on Frank Herbert’s novels, his libertarianism and how his politics fit in the 21st century. [more inside]
« Previous day | Next day »