Arts & Culture

Filming Loneliness, Watching Alone

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I’ve always liked watching movies alone; I haven’t had trouble going to the theaters alone since before I turned 18. But for a time earlier this year, I’d never done it quite so much, or in quite such a specific way.

Arts & Culture

SOLAR FLARE | Seasonal Affective Diaries

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As it gets warmer — and it has been warm — I always find myself as excited for the impending summer as I am a bit melancholic about the end of another winter. There’s a specific vibe that’s lost, and whose wavelength I can’t help but love. I tried tracing how I’ve followed that winter this year — from the neverending nights of Northern Europe, to the warm lonely Western dreariness of Los Angeles, to the frigid longing for spring inevitable in Ithaca. The throughline makes sense mostly only in my head, but perhaps you’ll be able to follow me down the rabbit hole… 

1. Chinese Satellite by Phoebe Bridgers

I like those songs that you first and most listen to at your saddest.

Arts & Culture

‘Guts Spilled’: It’s Not For You (It’s For Me)

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Way back last October, Olivia Rodrigo’s GUTS released, captivating me to the point that it led to a brief foray into amateur music criticism and to the eventual position of Rodrigo at the top of my Spotify Wrapped. I didn’t really precisely understand what I found so undeniable about the album: It’s odd to be a person so skeptical of popular cinema only to have the milquetoast music taste of an AI-generated character from a Netflix high school sitcom. But besides the obvious earworm-y quality of the songs and palpable angst of the vocals, Rodrigo managed to so perfectly and bluntly hit a specific familiar stream of consciousness that resonated with me and society more broadly. She’s popular — I’m just describing pop music. 

Anyway, GUTS (spilled) — the album’s deluxe edition — released last Friday, featuring five new songs and a slight cover variant with very tiny text. As an avid fan nevertheless trying to avoid a Spotify Wrapped repeat, I did eagerly listen to the new tracks, but only after being reminded of the album’s existence by a friend texting me with (probably) a bit of derision.

Arts & Culture

‘Fear and Loathing’ in Ithaca: Sober and (Less) Sober Reflections on Gonzo Journalism and Turning 21

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I picked up a copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on Friday, 12 hours away from an essay deadline I desperately wanted to avoid and thinking about the book’s long-standing place on my must-read list because of the Criterion Collection’s announcement of the 4k release of the — allegedly — inferior adaptation. I convinced myself, in a further effort to stave off the inevitable essay writing and editing, that it’d help me as a journalist and an editor. I still cringe at my attribution as a journalist — put a gun to my head and maybe I’d invoke Marat as a hero — but I must admit it fits the job description. I now spend enough of my time laying out pages, emailing potential interviews or sources, and copy editing for Oxford commas to make the position undeniable. It’ll help with my journalism, I told myself; I’ve accidentally found myself as a student journalist, and I now need help with my journalism. 

On Sunday I turned 21: that last fun birthday before they begin to blur together and race unfortunately and unexpectedly to the grisly end.

Arts & Culture

‘Drive-Away D**es,’ Sibling Rivalries and Having Fun 

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“The greatest films of all time were never made… the greatest loves of all time are over now.” 

Taylor Swift’s discourse on romance tracks surprisingly well onto the recent history of the great Gen X directing duos: The last couple of years have brought about the divorces of the Safdie brothers, Wachowski sisters and — most tragically — the Coen brothers. Creative partnerships tend to be tenuous, and most historic examples (Martin and Lewis, Nichols and May, Powell and Pressburger, to name a few) end with one or both attempting to stake their own claim — or perhaps needing to after the death of one half. Still, this recent crop of breakups, and particularly the first individual projects from Joel and Ethan Coen, represent at once a great tragedy and fascinating subject for interrogation. A duo best marked for their juxtaposition of brilliant wit with bleak subject matter have split up and demonstrated that they each brought something incredibly different to their collaboration. Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth brought the filmmaker’s trademark visual excellence but stripped the exercise of any humor, and the new film from Ethan Coen, Drive-Away Dolls (or D**es, as the final title card and filmmakers call it), cares about little more than getting a laugh out of its audience.

Arts & Culture

The Oscar Nominees: The Ones I Liked Less

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Well, it can’t all be great. As good as this year’s Oscars slate is in comparison to say, 2021, it still isn’t quite able to escape the inadequacies or odd choices befitting any body of wealthy West Coast liberals and reactionary octogenarians. There isn’t a Green Book this year, or any other film whose victory might call into question the value of the exercise itself, but (unless you suffer from the same brand of brain rot as me) watching all the nominees is never a necessity to cover the best of this year in movies. Here are the ones you can skip: 

The Holdovers 

I hate to be the curmudgeon unable to find much of the joy in this film about a curmudgeonly old man finding joy, but — alas — The Holdovers was not for me. I’m incredibly sympathetic to its warm nostalgia for ’70s aesthetics, even if the specific genre its cribbing from has never particularly appealed to me.