Arts & Culture
Travis Scott’s ‘Utopia’ Unlocks a Whole World
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It’s a testament to the album’s production and songwriting versatility that Utopia shines through its poor lyricism and still delivers a claim to be one of the year’s best.
Arts & Culture
Travelog: Lunches, Finks and Recalls
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I’ve found myself in a bit of a tourist funk… or maybe I’ve found myself thinking that it’s near impossible to escape a tourist funk. After all, vacation takes on an impossible role in contemporary life. Vacation is (at least functionally) a coping device for the relatively privileged that takes on all the weight and challenge of one’s perpetual monotonous labor: A faint light at the end of a tunnel that one can point to during any workplace hardship or grueling week. As a reward for that labor, privileged in its compensation but nonetheless inevitably miserably capitalistic, one may get a chance to briefly experience a wonderful sedentary artwork, striking natural feature, oasis of relaxation or distinctly bustling metropolis. The lifetime of same-old same-old interrupted by the once-in-a-lifetime brush with eternity.
Arts & Culture
Feelings and Americana in Zach Bryan’s Zach Bryan
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I’m a recent convert to country music. At one point, I might have given the usual line that I listen to “anything but country” — now, if you see me driving around campus with my windows down, you’ll probably hear me blasting my hours-long “country era” playlist. This week, the country album of choice has been Zach Bryan’s new self-titled album, a raw 54 minutes of poetry, folk and Americana.
On August 25, Bryan released his fourth full-length album since his debut DeAnn (2019). In the last four years, Bryan has amassed over 16 million monthly listeners on Spotify and sold out shows nationwide. Yet, despite his quickly-earned success, Zach Bryan does not pose as anything other than Zach Bryan.
Arts & Culture
British “Paw Patrol” Review
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On the first or second night of staying with some family in England, a young second cousin twice removed (or something of that sort) asked me to name a movie… one she’d know of. I responded: “Barbie.” After asking me if I’d seen or liked the film (I’d apparently picked one that had been on her mind), she got to her question: “so, when they show… Barbie in your country do they have to have the actors re-record some of the lines?”, alluding to the fact that some of the actors don’t naturally speak English with an American accent. I chuckled a bit and responded, “No. Actually, I think part of the movie takes place where I’m from,” pointing out that some of the non-Barbieland scenes in the film were shot blocks away from my childhood home. It remained funny to me, though, that my accent (or something about me) had been silly enough that my cousin believed I couldn’t possibly be engaged in the same cultural ecosystem as her (even in the case of a movie where numerous British and Australian actors were putting on American accents).
A week or so later, I relayed the story to my partner.
Arts & Culture
Notes on a Summer Movie Season
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After a long and cold two semesters in Ithaca, where the closest non-arthouse theater is a semi-abandoned mall Regal that always felt just a couple bus stops too far away, I arrived home ready, more than anything else, for the summer movie season. And from the vantage point of a return to campus life (albeit a non-Ithaca campus due to study abroad), the season and its hits didn’t disappoint. Granted, I skipped the digitally de-aged grotesqueries of the new Indiana Jones and the child-purchasing sting operation grotesqueries of Sound of Freedom, but I still managed to keep a weekly AMC Lincoln Square appointment and enjoy more than my fair share of blockbusters. And so, here goes my flash thoughts on a whole host of summer releases:
Asteroid City
For many film fans, myself included, Wes Anderson is how we learned about auterism: The man whose visual, narrative and comedic stamp is so distinctive that it’s impossible not to feel his hands on every single frame. Thus, it becomes a bit funny when, as has been happening recently, Anderson turns his eyes to the artifice and the authorship within his films. The Grand Budapest Hotel contained within its nesting doll structure a story of an author with writer’s block hearing a true story, and The French Dispatch framed its sequences around long-form magazine pieces, each written by characters whose relationships to the story became clear as the sequence went on.
Arts & Culture
XU | Long Way Without Friends: A Moment in 90s Rock
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As someone born after the year 2000, could I genuinely be nostalgic for the 90s? Or anything that came before? I think about that every time I listen to my dad’s music, downloaded into his thick iPod classic. I can almost recite the lineup: Alan Tam, Jacky Cheung, Dave Wong, Chyi Chin. A rock band named Black Panthers (unrelated to the party, sadly) spearheaded by Faye Wong’s ex-husband, Dou Wei.
Arts & Culture
‘Oppenheimer’
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This is the incoherency of a noncommittal Nolan who juggles ideas with little concern for where they land. He abuses Göransson’s score to foster some mirage of thematic cohesion.
Arts & Culture
Netflix’s New Crown Jewel: ‘Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story’
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Through expanding the “Bridgerton” universe with the addition of serious topics such as race, grief and mental illness, “Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story” proves to be an impressive prequel that adeptly employs its predecessor’s characteristic visual milieu of opulent scenery and lush costumes and builds on its foundation of witty banter and steamy romance.
Arts & Culture
On Spiderverses and Neoliberal Folly
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It’s pretty difficult for a film to live up to the reputation of being the number one rated film ever on Letterboxd, a title which, however fleeting and however idiotic, indicates at least some profound level of widespread resonance. It happened last year to eventual best picture winner Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, a pretty good film that probably didn’t deserve either its instant canonization or its inevitable toxic backlash. Now it has happened to Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse, the sequel to 2018’s Into the Spiderverse and (importantly) prequel to the impending Beyond the Spiderverse due next year. The already slightly tired avenue of multiverse storytelling seems a key way to inspire extreme reactions, allowing for “justified” maximalism while simultaneously awakening that same pseudoscientific fervor that tends to unite brands of filmbro as disparate as Rick and Morty stan and Christopher Nolanite. Being a multiverse skeptic myself, Across the Spiderverse appeared primed to ignite at least one man’s backlash: my own.
Arts & Culture
Dead and Company’s Epic Farewell to Cornell
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When Dead and Company confirmed a few days after their mysterious post that they would, in fact, be playing a concert at Cornell this spring, the question hung in the air for students, alumni and deadheads alike: Will the 2023 concert be able to compare to the 1977 performance at Barton Hall, widely agreed to be one of the Grateful Dead’s best performances? I answer with reverence for the Grateful Dead’s musical legacy, yes.