Be afraid. Be very afraid.
CINEMA: The Action-Minded Professor
PROF. MARSTON & THE WONDER WOMEN (Dir, by Angela Robinson, 108 min.) BY CHRISTOPHER MALENEY FILM CRITIC Superhero origin stories are incredibly tangled, and the excessive repetition of endless reboots often only complicates that fact. Almost every re-telling of Batman or Spiderman, to name but two, has taken the liberty of tweaking their origin to fit a particular narrative. Professor Marston and the Wonder Women tells a different sort of superhero origin story. The film answers the question of how a badass, BDSM goddess like the Golden Age Wonder Woman come about? Was it from the sick mind of a sex fiend […]
OPEN LETTER TO JEFF LURIE: Don’t Make Me Choose Between The NFL And The Constitution
“I Sit With Kaepernick” by JEFF ROTHERBERG Dear Mr. Lurie: I’m a typical NFL fan: I know that football is a barbaric, brain-battering sport, and I still love it. But as you and your fellow owners prepare to consider forcing players to stand for the national anthem, I’m called on to consider a question of my own: which do I love more, the NFL, or the Constitution? I’m begging you: don’t make me choose. There’s only one answer. I know people who have boycotted the NFL over its treatment of Colin Kaepernick. I respect that stance, but I haven’t joined […]
Which Blade Runner Is The Right Blade Runner?
There are seven. Yes, seven. PREVIOUSLY: Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, is without a doubt, one of the most visionary and influential science-fiction films ever created. Set in 2019 and released in 1982, Scott’s film uncannily predicted our current age some 35 years ago. While some aspects of the film’s vision of the future — flying cars, police ziggurats and android slaves known as replicants hunted down by bounty hunters known as Blade Runners once they reach their expiration date — still seem a ways off, others — the domination of humanity by a corporate technocracy, the privatization of executive and […]
Q&A: Cellist Janet Schiff Of NINETEEN THIRTEEN
Illustration by JANET SCHIFF BY EVAN HUNDELT NINETEEN THIRTEEN, a Milwaukee-based chamber rock ensemble lead by percussionist Victor DeLorenzo—founding drummer of Violent Femmes—and experimental cellist Janet Schiff, alongside a crew of stellar studio musicians, defy the norm with their genre-bending melodies: ghostly drags of a century-old cello dance with a slew of jazzy undertones and techno riffs to create a moody, neo-noir bricolage of tracks that envelope listeners in the dark, filmy smoke plumes of Sin City. Their EP, The Dream, and subsequent debut album, Music for Time Travel, thrusted NINETEEN THIRTEEN into the spotlight, earning them numerous awards and […]
WORTH REPEATING: Tillerson Agonistes
Illustration by MICHAEL CHO via THE NEW YORKER THE NEW YORKER: When the United States emerged from the ruins of the Second World War as the world’s richest and most powerful country, its diplomats were determined to avoid another global catastrophe. Dean Acheson, the Secretary of State under President Truman and one of the principal architects of the postwar international order, wrote later, “The enormity of the task . . . was to create a world out of chaos.” Their idea was to devise political and economic arrangements that would bind the world together through free trade and encourage the […]
EMINEM: Donald The Bitch
AV CLUB: Stopping and starting a bit at times, it’s a scorched-earth approach, attacking Trump on just about every possible angle: his belligerent foreign policy, his attacks on the NFL, his frequent vacations, his tacit support for the racists who marched in Charlottesville, his disrespect toward war veterans, his xenophobia, his plans to build a wall, and his weird orange skin. (It’s actually a pretty apt sum-up of the last 9 months, once you listen through all the bleeps.) In case his feelings on the matter were unclear, Mathers then ends the rap with a note to his own fans, […]
BOOKS: Q&A With E.J. Dionne & Norm Ornstein
BY JONATHAN VALANIA These are dark days for American democracy. The combination of gerrymandering, dark money, fake news, voter suppression, foreign interference and a deeply divided electorate have had a profoundly corrosive effect on the credibility of America’s claim to be governed by majority rule — that the outcomes of our elections accurately reflect the will of the people. The result is a president with a 67% disapproval rating after just 10 months in office, according to a recent Associated Press poll, and a Congress that has repeatedly tried to ram through a repeal of the Affordable Care Act […]
KING KRULE: Dum Surfer
NEW YORK TIMES: Archy Marshall, the enigmatic South London singer best known as King Krule, is a creature of the night. Known since the age of 15 as a preternaturally wise and unpredictable songwriter, Mr. Marshall, now 23, has assumed the mantle of a bard for the shrouded underclass, churning his anxiety, depression and insomnia into swampy, after-dark tales for the mischievous and disaffected. On songs that mix jazz, punk, dub, hip-hop and the affectations of a zonked-out lounge crooner, he has cut what he calls “gritty stories about the streets” with a “sensitive and romantic side,” aiming to take […]
CINEMA: The Clone Ranger
BLADE RUNNER (directed by Denis Villeneuve, 163 minutes, 2017, USA) BY CHRISTOPHER MALENEY FILM CRITIC Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, is without a doubt, one of the most visionary and influential science-fiction films ever created. Set in 2019 and released in 1982, Scott’s film uncannily predicted our current age some 35 years ago. While some aspects of the film’s vision of the future — flying cars, police ziggurats and android slaves known as replicants hunted down by bounty hunters known as Blade Runners once they reach their expiration date — still seem a ways off, others — the domination of humanity […]
INCOMING: Amazon Dreams Of Electric Sheep
VARIETY: Even the future needs to be re-imagined for modern times and Philip K. Dick’s alternate realities and visions of years hence have been re-engineered by Bryan Cranston (“Breaking Bad”) and the team behind “Electric Dreams” for today’s audience, the star and producer says. The writers of the anthology series “Electric Dreams” had free rein to completely re-imagine the sci-fi master’s work for the Channel 4 and Amazon project, said Cranston, who stars in one installment and was a producer on the series. “It was actually a mandate,” he said. “What we didn’t want to do, and we had the […]
CINEMA: Rise Of The Machines
BLADE RUNNER 2049 (Dir. by Denis Villeneuve, 163 minutes, U.S., 2017) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Right off the bat, let’s say I’m relieved this didn’t turn out to be the wrong-headed, half-assed mess that was so easy to imagine. There’s a lot to digest but Blade Runner 2049 feels like a real film, not some sputtering, franchise-launching, million cook stew. Thirty-five years is an awful long time to wait before returning to a story, but director Denis Villeneuve has crafted a sequel that organically conjures the universe created by Ridley Scott although its ultimate destination takes us a little […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Anti-Social Network
WIRED: As the summer wore on, it became unmistakable that Facebook’s problems ran deeper than fake news. In June, Facebook officials reportedly met with the Senate Intelligence Committee as part of that body’s investigation into Russia’s election interference. In August the BBC released an interview with a member of the Trump campaign saying, “Without Facebook we wouldn’t have won.” At last, in September, Facebook broke its silence. The company admitted it had received payments for ads placed by organizations “likely operated out of Russia.” These were troll operations with a wide range of phony ads designed to fan the […]