Unsurprisingly, the 78th Golden Globe Awards looked a bit different this year striped of the usual extravagance and free-wheeling party surrounding the ceremony. On Feb. 28, the Globes tried to weather both recent accusations of the Hollywood Foreign Press' lack of inclusivity and diversity following an investigation by the Los Angeles Times, and technological glitches.…
FILM + TV
In light of the New York Times’ latest documentary, Framing Britney, released on Feb. 5, 2021, a deepening conversation regarding conservatorship abuse has been reintroduced to the public eye, bringing awareness to pop star Britney Spears’ 13 yearlong conservatorship and a call to end it. Britney Spears rose to fame at a young age, almost…
https://youtu.be/BEo0Slg5R-Y “As I get better talking to the camera, I become a worse person,” says John Lurie in one of his frequent comments of reluctant self-awareness and low key self-deprecation. “I crashed seven drones,” he tells us at another point. “Any idiot can fly a drone.” Indeed, doomed drone footage opens each offbeat episode of…
With the announcement of the 2021 Golden Globes nominations, the largely predictable round of backlash surrounding the Academy’s choices has officially begun. Awards season is all well and good for us pop culture junkies, but over the last couple of years it has become increasingly apparent just how behind the times the committees that select…
The COVID-19 pandemic may not be over yet, but with the vaccine rollout officially underway, we can at least be permitted to feel a quiet creeping hope for the year to come. With the novel coronavirus changing the movie industry as we know it in 2020, the biggest blockbuster films on everyone’s radar have been…
For stage actor Martins Imhangbe, the realm of television is a whole new world. Branching out from his past roles on the stage like in Death of a Salesman and The Tragedy of King Richard II, Imhangbe is making his small screen debut this year in the highly anticipated Shonda Rhimes creation Bridgerton. The show,…
Netflix has a bit of a problem. When the streaming service first entered the world of original content in the early 2010’s with shows like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black, they quickly established themselves as synonymous with the notion of “quality television” (we don’t need to talk about Hemlock Grove). Like…
https://youtu.be/aSfX-nrg-lI Mank is a phenomenal piece of cinema, but it is not a very entertaining movie. What David Fincher has achieved is a sweeping parlor trick that satirizes the majesty of Hollywood’s Golden Age, captured at a moment when the industry was clawing its way out of the Great Depression. The film’s production and its…
Up and coming actress, yoga teacher and avid mental health advocate Michelle Nunez is keeping busier than ever as as ‘Zane’ in BET’s “Ruthless”. Directed by Tyler Perry, the series is a spinoff of the hit series “The Oval”, where she plays "the most intricate character" she's co-created. When she's not gracing the camera, Nunez…
Artist Sarah Maple is not prosaic. As a multi-disciplinary artist, her sarcastic hyperbolized works are multifaceted, versatile, and controversial. From stand-up comedies, paintings, sculptures, mixed media and more, her works intertwine and connect within their comedic niche, being unequivocally and distinguishably Maple's. Her newest venture, Sarah Maple’s Nazi Sexy Shark Show, is in front of a…
At the age of 90, actor Sir Sean Connery passed away in his sleep at his home in Nassau in the Bahamas. According to his son, Jason Connery, he had been “unwell for some time,” while his now-widow Micheline Roquebrune revealed on Sunday his late-in-life battle against dementia. According to her in a statement to the…
Despite the pandemic, actor Paapa Essiedu has had quite a prolific year. Right off the heels of the critically acclaimed I May Destroy You, on which he played the understated yet complex Kwame, Essiedu is on our screens again, this time in a completely different role. Diving into the seedy underbelly of London, Essiedu's newest…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JaGmaiKRLA During a 2017 interview with Berlinale Talents, 40-year-old writer/director Ana Lily Amirpour (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, The Bad Batch) described the year after she had graduated from UCLA as disempowering. Amirpour was married at the time (i.e., 2009). She had written a script. She had landed an agent and a manager, both…
“You are mine.” These are the opening words of Sofia Coppola’s On The Rocks, delivered as a voiceover from a doting father who is speaking to his daughter (presumably in a flashback). Cut to that same daughter’s wedding reception, the bride and the groom disappearing for a midnight swim in a moonlit pool. The metaphor…
Christopher Nolan’s Tenet was simply put, not the grand American “Return to the Movies” Hollywood was hoping for. With a staggering $200 million production budget, Nolan’s most expensive to date, the film has only made back a paltry $3.4 million in the states. Despite perfectly satisfactory reviews, Americans were just not motivated enough (or perhaps…
In spite of the tumultuous last half year, the current pandemic has done very little to derail the typical media storm leading up to the Primetime Emmy broadcast. Perhaps it’s the escapism we have been so desperate to cling onto in short bursts over the last six months, or maybe there really is nothing that…
Disney’s Mulan has had something of a tumultuous lead-up to release: multiple delays, a controversial lead actress, and most recently some questionable end credits. Of all the bumps in the road, the one with perhaps the most potential for lasting effects is its premium pricing mode. Before Mulan faced public scrutiny, it was in much…
It would be churlish to say that Hollywood’s diversity problem has made no progress since the golden age of Hollywood. TV shows like Pose sport the biggest transgender cast of any scripted show in history (with most actors being of color), box office smashes like Crazy Rich Asians highlight the lives of East Asians and…
A cursory Google search yields few resources attempting to accurately define what makes a queer icon, well, iconic. And there’s a good reason for that. Whats makes a queer icon is at the same time simple and incredibly difficult to define. One one hand, its is easy to use blanket terms like “glamorous” or “camp”…
Podcasts are great tools for pacifying a laundry list of ails these days. You can listen for the feeling of company when there is none, for background noise to cheer up mundane household tasks, or just to break up the day and have a laugh. They’re also a great way to be entertained and informed…