Arts and Culture

The first time I ever saw Howl’s Moving Castle, I was entranced. I must have been around 10 or 11, on a manic Studio Ghibli marathon in the middle of the night. I fell in love with the vivid colours and warm characters. I fell in love with this entire fantasy world filled with witches and portals and eclectic characters.  Growing up, […]

Reflections on Madonna’s Like a Prayer 30 years later

The theme of broken family runs deep through Asghar Farhadi’s movies, and Everybody Knows, his latest, carries on this motif  in a grand, if not always plausible, way. This is a movie that begins with much happiness and celebration and ends in speculation and disbelief. That could make for a delicious little thriller, but somewhere

What a Twitch stream can teach us about activism

Content warning: HIV/AIDS, pornography, sex, unprotected sex James Allen Rideout Jr. died on October 10, 1988 from kidney failure due to substance abuse and AIDS. He was 22. Before he died, he starred in four very successful gay porn films under the name Kurt Marshall.   ***  My relationship with Marshall’s filmography begins down a Wikipedia hole. I am scrolling

Sharon Van Etten’s latest album begins with the retelling of a story. Accompanied by a simple keyboard, the first track sets up the theme for the rest of the tracks on the album, with Van Etten emotionally opening up to the audience. The result is a compilation of ten tracks of various sonic sounds, from dreamy synths to fuzzy guitars, all bound by the thread of Van Etten’s evocative lyricism. This is an album

On the women in Frances Ha, Girlfriends, and Broadcast News