Or, the Roger’s experience of America’s making Train Dreams a film directed by Clint Bentley and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, September 4–14, 2025 Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams—an adaptation of Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella of the same title—has the same sentimentality and prodigious lens flare as an Ozempic advertisement. It’s important to establish […]
Frankenstein a film directed by Guillermo del Toro and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, September 4–14, 2025 In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, Victor’s ambitions lead him astray. How ironic, then, that Guillermo del Toro’s lofty aspirations to vivify this classic novel end in disaster. With any literary adaptation, fans will naively point to
Vaulting ambition o’erleaps itself in del Toro’s Frankenstein Read More »
Egghead Republic is a multifaceted film about many things. Possibly, a bit too much. Egghead Republic a film written and directed by Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja, and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, September 4–14, 2025. Speculative art often has a way of being quite . . . lacklustre. The ground mandatory to
Sometimes spectacle isn’t quite spectacular Read More »
Lessons in Guilt from MacKinnon and Foucault Content Warnings: Mentions of Sexual Assault. Before I begin, I must confess to a handful of biases because to do otherwise would be irresponsible. I am a survivor of a sexual assault perpetrated by a young hockey-playing man from southwestern Ontario and am therefore anything but an unbiased
Is consent possible? Read More »
Reclaiming the culture of cowboyism and revolutionising buckaroos, cowpokes, and Canucks Everybody wants to be a cowboy. The culture of cowboys has become an overwhelmingly prominent trend in popular media over the past decade, with stereotypical western faux prints and cowboy boots dominating the masses. This upper-class phenomenon of ‘playing pretend’ tends to glamorise the
Me more cowboy than you! Read More »
The power of language on the internet Scrolling on social media lately, it seems an entirely new set of vocabulary has arisen. Of course, it has long been acknowledged that internet use can impact the words we use, especially in recent years, where slang, memes, and inside jokes rapidly go in and out of trend.
Woke jargon and censorship Read More »
The dangers of relying on ‘AI Therapists’ “Imagine a world in which the answer to ‘Am I the asshole?’ is always a firm, reassuring no.” In a The New Yorker article published last month, Paul Bloom, a moral psychology researcher at UofT, explores the risks of AI’s sycophantic behavior—the models’ tendency to prioritize flattery over
Don’t fear the mess Read More »
How clothes reflect an era’s zeitgeist
Jeans and meanings passed down Read More »
Examining the intertwined history of art and technology Recently, humanity has witnessed a rapid evolution in the quality of artificially-generated images. From humble six-fingered and disproportionate beginnings, AI images have become nearly indistinguishable from the hand-drawn. As AI grows more sophisticated, it continues to creep into our everyday lives. Businesses are adopting AI logos and
Is AI the future of the art world? Read More »
Flaws and definitions Chat, what is AI? ‘Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the field of computer science focused on creating systems or machines that can perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. These tasks include learning from experience, understanding language, recognizing patterns, solving problems, and making decisions’ (“Define artificial intelligence”). Similarly, in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, AI
