Rachel

Link to Job Posting Application Deadline: July 23rd, 2018 Christie’s, the world’s largest Art Business, is an incredibly exciting & enriching place to start or continue your career. Whether you work within one of our Specialist Art Departments or in … Continue reading →

Link to Job Postion Application Deadline: ongoing The University Libraries are currently accelerating and reconfiguring our discovery environment and underlying infrastructures. Building on Digital Collections (https://library.osu.edu/dc) and other digital initiatives, the Metadata Initiatives Librarian will help the University Libraries enhance … Continue reading →

The contents of the suitcase in Pulp Fiction remain one of the great un-answered ambiguities in pop culture. As always, Tarantino knew exactly what he was doing, engineering the mystery to inspire endless debate via the various dazzled responses of the people who see what’s inside. It can feel like a tired argument…

Read more...

Scooby-Doo has been the most beloved Great Dane in popular culture since 1969, and now Scooby, Shaggy, Velma, and the rest of the Mystery, Inc. gang have a new mission…and whole set of cool new merchandise from the folks at BoxLunch. In addition, an all-new Funko Pop! vinyl figure is coming out, and every fan of those meddling kids is going to want one on their shelf. Warner Brothers Consumer Products is partnering with the cause-driven pop-culture retailer BoxLunch and their philanthropic partner Feeding America to “Doo Good” and raise awareness in the fight against hunger as part of the social responsibility initiative, Scooby-Doo DOO GOOD.

Starting on July 14, Scooby and BoxLunch will be launching an exclusive Scooby-Doo merchandise collection to help donate a meal to those in need. As part of this initiative, Funko has a very special Scooby-Doo puppy Pop! figure; each figure (pictured above) sold means Funko will donate ten additional meals to Feeding America.

Other pieces in the collection, which you can check out in our gallery below, include limited edition apparel, accessories, collectibles and more, featuring Scooby, Shaggy, and the Mystery Inc. gang.

But that’s not the only the Scooby Dooby style goodness coming your way. Also arriving on July 14 to help raise awareness for the fight against hunger and to highlight the Scooby-Doo DOO GOOD national initiative, is the US Postal Service’s first-ever Scooby-Doo! Forever Stamp. You can check out the groovy new stamp, done in the classic Hanna-Barbera cartoon style, above. With Scoob making it on an official United States postal stamp, can he finally get that Scooby snack now?

Are you as excited as we are to get back on board the Mystery Machine? Be sure to let us know in the comments.

Images: BoxLunch / Warner Brothers

Loosely based on Boots Riley’s actual experiences working as a telemarketer, Sorry To Bother You follows the unemployed Cash (Lakeith Stanfield), who, after getting a job as a telemarketer, quickly climbs the corporate ladder upon learning the secret to success on the phone: using a “white voice.” Riley, who makes his…

Read more...

Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Last week, Starz shared a behind the scenes photo of Outlander season four.  The photo has Richard Rankin and Matthew B. Roberts all smiles while looking at a phone.  You can see some of the set in the background.

Source: Starz

This summer we think you should give banana ice cream, also known as nice cream, a try. Why? Well, for one it's the easiest freezer treat that you can make without an ice cream maker. Nice cream is also full of fruit, easily customizable, and so dang delicious you'll be eating it for breakfast too.

Banana ice cream is pretty easy — freeze some sliced bananas, whirl them in a food processor, and enjoy right away or freeze for later — but there are just a few key steps that make the difference between very good banana ice cream and sad banana ice cream. Never do these five things and you'll have a summer full of delectable nice cream from your freezer.

READ MORE »

METADATA LIBRARIAN (Two positions available) RESPONSIBILITIES: The University of Alabama Libraries is seeking two dynamic, highly motivated individuals for the position of Metadata Librarian. Reporting to the Coordinator of Metadata in the Resource Acquisition & Discovery department and working collaboratively … Continue reading →

Reporting to the Librarian for Digital Collections and Scholarship, the Sinai Library Digitization Project Data and Metadata Coordinator (SLDP-DMC) assists with the design and implementation of workflows for arrangement and description of Syriac and Arabic manuscripts digitized as part of … Continue reading →

Variety reports that Comedy Central has canceled The Opposition, comedian Jordan Klepper’s attempt to emulate fellow Daily Show alum Stephen Colbert by pretending to be an unhinged conspiracy theorist on TV four nights a week, after just one season. It seems the public appetite for that particular flavor of late-night…

Read more...

Ewan McGregor will be putting on his trauma-survivor hat for the upcoming Shining sequel, Doctor Sleep. Variety broke the news that McGregor has been cast as adult Danny Torrance in the Mike Flanagan–directed adaptation for Warner Bros. The studio had apparently been working on developing the project for a long time, but was never able to lock down a budget. (Variety reports that WB also owns the rights to Overlook Hotel, the Shining prequel, which has hit the same budget wall.) With the global super-success of It, however, the money faucets are open for more King properties. In Doctor Sleep, McGregor’s Danny has grown into an angry drunk trying to self-medicate the pain away and repress his shining abilities. But he cleans up and starts using his power to help people dying in a hospice center, and along the way meets a young girl with his same abilities who is being hunted down by a group of people who are also able to shine. Poor Danny. He jumped out of the frying pan only to land right in the fire.

Full-Time Deadline is June 18, 2018 Full job description and application instructions here

When the original Jurassic Park was released 25 years ago, it was a hit of unparalleled size. Its two subsequent follow up films, The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III, never really lived up to the original film’s greatness or its box office success. When Jurassic World hit theaters in 2015, it rode a wave of nostalgia for Spielberg’s first film that led it to earning all the money. But much like the original film, can Jurassic World’s second chapter, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, live up to the perfect storm that greeted the first movie?

The review embargo has lifted, and it seems history is repeating itself, as the early word on director J.A. Bayona‘s film is mixed at best. Based on many reactions, the movie takes a turn into an almost haunted house style film; some critics loved that, but just as many seemed annoyed by the switch in tones.

Chris Nashawaty at Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B+, which isn’t too shabby, but said “The less you try to dissect it, the more you’ll enjoy it.”

“Bryce Dallas Howard, thankfully, gets more to do than the last go round (and in combat boots, no less!), Pratt busts out his signature Indiana Jones cocktail of can-do heroism and deadpan sarcasm, and Bayona and his screenwriters (Trevorrow and Derek Connolly) test the laws of incredulity with varying degrees of success. At least, until the final half hour when forehead-slapping hooey finally win out. Up until then, Fallen Kingdom is exactly the kind of escapist summer behemoth you want it to be.”

John DeFore at The Hollywood Reporter also to enjoyed the film for what it was, saying “Fallen Kingdom ends with an act that is just about impossible to believe outside the context of a fiction that, like DNA, is driven solely by the need to replicate itself.”

“This is said to be the second film in a trilogy. But Fallen Kingdom’s closing scenes seem intent on something far bigger, like a Planet of the Apes-style saga that has barely begun. You don’t remake reality in a film’s final frames without intending to milk things for as long as the public will keep buying tickets. If future installments are this rich and exciting, that’s probably going to be a while.”

The Village Voice’s Bilge Ebiri is less effusive, saying Fallen Kingdom is still better than the first Jurassic World, and yet still somehow not very good. 

“Don’t get too excited, though. Even that idea — dinosaurs in a mansion! — doesn’t get explored in any truly involving way. There are missed opportunities all over Fallen Kingdom. “

Matt Singer at ScreenCrush suggests all logic in this franchise has gone out the window, saying “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a character in any movie do something as dumb as several of the things the characters in this movie do — and I wrote a whole piece ranking the dumb characters in the first Jurassic World”

“Connolly and Trevorrow’s script can’t decide whether dinosaurs are beautiful creatures worth saving, or monsters who must be destroyed at all costs, and the result is a deeply confused movie about the wonder of nature — and also about what it looks like when an indoraptor bites the hand clean off a man’s arm.”

Digital Spy’s reviewer Matt Chapman seemed to dig the film’s turn from a typical mega summer blockbuster into something more akin to a slasher film. He also makes a comparison to another beloved sci-fi franchise, saying “At this point the Jurassic franchise also fully mimics the tropes of the Alien movies: genetics gone mad; corporate dark dealings; near unstoppable (but extremely photogenic) killer creatures. All that’s missing is an android with questionable ethics.”

“Over familiarity also means the expected horror uptick doesn’t pay off – particularly given the high number of last-minute reprieves. The initial joy of Fallen Kingdom’s action extravaganza is tempered by the smaller-scale feel of its second half, even as a strong ending suggests another evolution in this storyline. All of which balances out into a perfectly enjoyable franchise entry – just one that lacks the bite of previous outings.”

Over at Den of Geek, writer David Crow asks “How do you continue a profitable franchise when, for the story to progress, characters need to make stupid decisions?”

“The fifth Jurassic Park movie, a film that is aware that the nostalgia keg that gave plentifully to the last several entries in the franchise runs the risk of tapping out—so it preemptively scrapes the bottom of the barrel for narrative ideas that include exploding volcanoes and velociraptors rummaging around a haunted house like they’re Christopher Lee.”

Emma Stefansky of Uproxx is more positive, saying “there is a little bit of the wonder and joy that made the original so special embedded deep within Fallen Kingdom, which I credit to Bayona, whose primary drive, even in genre fare like this, has always been to sprinkle just enough emotion into the stories he tells.”  

“The dinosaurs in Fallen Kingdom do look much better than the ones in Jurassic World, though it still kills me that these movies have utterly sacrificed the slow menace of practical-effects creatures for ones that move fast but are completely made up of pixels. One thing I will say: Fallen Kingdom, unlike Jurassic World, really gets how much we love the dinosaurs that have become familiar to us over the years.”

And Owen Gleiberman of Variety “didn’t find any of this stuff especially fun.”

“At certain points you may find yourself ticking off the themes. Greed gone rampant among the globalized gilded class? Check. The sinister potential of genetic engineering? Check. The need to protect endangered species? Check. The privatizing of military action? Check. The eerie implications of cloning? Check. The danger of weaponized dinosaurs? Check.”

Sounds like a lot of the reaction to the first Jurassic sequel twenty years ago, although I would say somewhat better than that. Are you still interested in making a return trip to Isla Nublar? Let us know in the comments.

Images: Universal Pictures

More of the latest movie news!

• Jared Leto might be getting his own Joker movie.
• Meet The Addams Family animated movie voice cast.
• Rifftrax names the top movies of 1988.

Supernatural season 13 concluded in May, and is available to binge-watch on Netflix now. It’s also the show’s best season, ever.

Look, I always knew that Supernatural under showrunner Andrew Dabb was going to be good. But I never dreamed it could be this good. I know that claim sounds impossible to believe. Any television show running for 13 years, odds are it’d be far more likely to feel stale, recycled, unnecessary. What more could there possibly be to say?

But Supernatural is legitimately, genuinely better than it’s ever been before. If you ever cared about these characters and suffered from some sort of burn-out: catch up now. Seriously. If you’ve been watching along faithfully, I’m sure you’ll agree: this is Supernatural’s golden age. Here’s why.

It’s unprecedentedly emotionally consistent

After suffering immeasurable losses in the season 12 finale, viewers found the brothers slapped right back down to step one of their emotional journey: stuck in an impossible situation with no one to lean on but each other. While the audience knew that Cas and Mary were set to return eventually, what we didn’t know was how the show would handle their absence.

Supernatural has a history of leaving problems behind pretty quickly, in order to get back to its status quo: Sam and Dean Winchester saving people and hunting things without too many distractions to muddy the waters. Repeatedly, we’ve seen huge tragedies followed by no real exploration of the lingering trauma – not every single time, but fairly often, including after many important character deaths. A week or so later, that loss is no longer obligated to affect the plot or tone, and while the Winchesters are repression experts, sometimes it can be jarring to look at in perspective – say, when a genuinely comedic episode pops up two episodes after a massive loss.

That’s the first element that makes season 13 stand out as having seriously raised the bar – or rather, the avoidance of that. It seems like the showrunners had some firm ideas about how a loss of this magnitude should actually be handled, so during the first five episodes of the season, that grief, and the downward spiral it causes, is actually the show’s A-plot, amidst the regular case-solving (which here serves as window-dressing, juxtaposing the attempts at normalcy with the ultimate impossibility of it) and the introduction of new mythology and characters. There is no “back to normal” this time – instead, it is one long aftermath, with the focus entirely hinging on those absences, and how each brother is handling them differently.

That’s why they were necessary, after all. Mary and Castiel were both unconditionally loved, both unacceptable losses, so their respective perils were included to prove a point about the way Sam and Dean have changed. Back in the day, when they lost someone close to them, they did not react like this. They repressed and moved on, repressed and moved on, conveniently removing the mourning period from show’s tone sooner rather than later. This season, we see a story where the entire point, the build and climax of each episode, is about how the boys are unable to do that this time, and through this, it proves that they’re no longer willing to accept those kind of casualties as their lot in life – they’ll repress and move on no longer.

This is huge progress, and I’ve written a lot of words about why it’s a game-changer, but that initial grief-stricken arc is just one of several threads throughout season 13 that’s allowed to breathe and grow and take up space, instead of being conveniently tucked away when a certain episode doesn’t have room to cater to it. Sam’s trauma bubbling to the surface upon the discovery of Lucifer’s return is one, as is Castiel’s sense of purpose and belonging upon his return from the dead, Jack’s story, Gabriel’s, Rowena’s, even Lucifer’s. Nearly every ‘monster of the week’ is a situation that the boys step into in pursuit of that goal of saving Mary (and later Jack) from the Apocalypse World, rather than your traditional “so, get this” case discovery spotted in a local newspaper.

But those first five episodes – especially juxtaposed against the ridiculously indulgent joy of the sixth, in which Castiel returns to them – left many viewers utterly overwhelmed. Supernatural pushed that arc harder than most fan, given past precedence, ever dared to expect. The show has always been a mixed bag, with strong multi-season storytelling interspersed with standalone formulaic episodes, attracting both a dedicated and a casual audience – it’s got so much variety that it can be all manner of things to all manner of people. But season 13 was uncompromising, utterly unwilling to cede emotional ground for the sake of entertainment. It was rich, deep, driven, truthful, exhausting, and ultimately, unequivocal proof that these days, Supernatural isn’t here to play.

They actually pulled off ‘Scoobynatural’

Even if you don’t religiously follow the show, you’ll probably have noticed that the biggest, most publicized promotional hype of the season surrounded the (ironically standalone, given the point I’ve just waxed lyrical about) Scooby-Doo crossover that aired in the second half of season 13. It was a huge talking point – the cast appeared at PaleyFest to screen it; a marketing goldmine – it even got its own line of merchandise; and ultimately a massive success, including a notable ratings bump. People definitely tuned in for this one, even if it was just to see what the hell was going on.

The fully animated cartoon episode was conceptualized and recorded way before season 13 went into production – animation takes time, yo – so it isn’t related to the ongoing plot at all, but it’s flexibly written, and book-ended by some later-filmed live action scenes that do neatly anchor it in the narrative. It’s goofy, and ridiculous, and it steals time from the main story when things are really reaching a crisis point. But despite all this, it bloody well works. Supernatural really swung for the fences, on this one, and they did not strike out.

Literally no other show in history could have achieved what Supernatural did this season, when they used their Warner Brothers connection to send Team Free Will into the world of Mystery Inc. Sure, plenty of shows could have created an animated crossover for kicks, but nothing else could have done it with this amount of plausibility and actually given it integrity. Supernatural is no stranger to meta, but what sets the show apart when they attempt it is how solidly it actually lands.

No matter how weird a concept you can think of, Supernatural can pull it off with both serious tongue-in-cheek self-awareness and deadly seriousness. For some reason, their meta episodes never feel stupid, even when they’re silly. It never feels like a gimmick. And “Scoobynatural” is next level, in that arena. With its gleeful enthusiasm, its fourth-wall-breaking old-school animation jokes, its startlingly poignant reflection on childhood innocence and childhood trauma, “Scoobynatural” rips out the heart of a beloved nostalgia series, examines it, and replaces it intact. It’s a labor of love, and a true testimony to the legacy of both shows.

The action kicked it in the ass

Supernatural has never been lacking in combat – obviously, it’s a violent paranormal drama. It’s kind of a crucial part of the DNA of the show. But this season, there was a noticeable shift in the fight scenes – in scope, yes, and in technicality (The battle scene on the abandoned ship! The vampire tunnel in total darkness! Gabriel vs Loki!) – but also in characterization. Week after week, they felt richer, cleverer, and above all, more true to the individual character, in a way that the audience maybe didn’t realize was missing until it was gifted to us here.

Thoughtful elements, including a lot of character-specific details, were incorporated into the fight choreography as a matter of course – the way someone in particular handles a gun, what this person’s life experience would mean about their approach to a fight. Sam using his height and range to his advantage more, less hand-to-hand combat. Dean getting really up-close and scrappy, grabbing random objects in his environment and using them as weapons.

Not to discredit the past hard work of all involved, I should acknowledge that deeply perceptive fight moments like this do exist peppered throughout the series, but during season 13, it was every single episode. Every single week. Gabriel. Loki. Ketch. Donna. Jody. Jack. Castiel. Everybody. This was picked up on by many dedicated viewers, who quickly learned to direct their questions and compliments to stunt coordinator Rob Hayter – a new hire for season 13, with an extremely impressive pedigree – and his fight choreographer Kirk Jacques.

Hayter’s influence has breathed new life into the action of Supernatural, giving us countless scenes that include highly character-specific weapon use, movement, thought-processing, and body language, all just as greedily analyzed as the dialogue is. There’s story, backstory, subtext – it’s all extremely carefully crafted to express not just how someone would fight in any given moment, but how that character would fight, and why. It’s not something I ever pegged as lacking, before, but now that it’s there, I’m not going to settle for less. And we won’t have to – Hayter, Jacques and their team are set to return for season 14!

Danneel Ackles is an angel among us

Fulfilling a tongue-in-cheek promise made long ago, Danneel Ackles (wife of Jensen and star of One Tree Hill under her unmarried professional credit Danneel Harris) finally joined the Supernatural family as an actor for two episodes during season 13, after many years of being heavily involved in the off-screen community that has grown around her husband’s show – attending conventions, sitting on the board of Misha Collins’ Random Acts and welcoming fans at the Ackles’ Family Business Beer Company, just to name a few.

It was about time the couple shared the Supernatural screen – especially given the fact that Jared Padalecki actually met his wife, Genevieve Cortese, working on the show, when Sam had a steamy but dangerous relationship with Genevieve’s character, the demon Ruby. However, anyone who was hoping to see an Ackles hook-up here quickly re-prioritized – that was not a role Danneel ever wanted to perform, and instead we were introduced to the wiley faith healer Sister Jo – who turned out to be an angel in disguise. This is no cameo – it’s a clever, nuanced performance in a necessary role.

Anael, as she’s really called, formed an alliance with Lucifer in an attempt to back the winning horse, and together they returned to Heaven to try and take control there. However power-hungry her intentions were, they were never evil, and when she discovered that Lucifer could not actually do what he claimed – make more angels to stabilize the Heavenly Host – she challenged him and severed their partnership. She came out of their confrontation alive, but right now we don’t know where she is, leaving the door open for Anael to potentially appear as a recurring character during season 14.

Depending on Danneel’s availability, it makes sense that she will – Lucifer is dead and he better stay that way, but the fragility of Heaven is an unsolved problem, an arc that’s only just beginning. As Castiel discovered towards the end of the season, Heaven is failing – the severe depletion of the Host means that the cosmic structure of Heaven is powering down, and if it is extinguished, all the human souls it holds will flood the earth as unhappy ghosts. Some sort of solution is going to have to be found before Supernatural draws to a close, and as Anael is one of the very few angels left, she could be a big part of that story.

In the meantime, get stoked for some couples’ commentary when the season 13 DVD is released!

Old friends – and old enemies – return

Season 13 saw a cast of recurring characters so plentiful that rarely an episode went by without a visit from someone in the Bunker family’s wider circle, either original flavor or AU edition. Old friends and old enemies re-entered the scene, helping to keep season 13 a really close-knit affair. As I mentioned, there are very few old-school case-of-the-week episodes this year – in fact, “Scoobynatural” is the only true standalone of the season, a possibly unprecedented circumstance. The rest are either tightly tied to the ongoing mission, or they feature an existing character who is eventually recruited into said ongoing mission.

In the regular world, we caught up with the prophet Donatello Redfield and the psychic Missouri Moseley, both of whom had crucial parts to play, but unfortunately, both met sticky ends. We learned of the resurrections of Rowena and Ketch, each of whom died in season 12. These former enemies were both given a serious swerve towards redemption, and it seems like it’s going to stick: they’re currently valuable allies, both having pledged allegiance to the Winchesters as members of the season’s final climactic rescue squad.

On a cosmic level, we got three huge shockers – Billie, the tired-of-Winchester-bullshit reaper who Cas killed in season 12, was revealed to have become Death. The lessons Sam and Dean learned from her raised a few huge new questions about the role of fate in the Winchsters’ journey – questions worth pondering quite seriously as we theorize about the set-up of Supernatural’s inevitable ending.

Another huge unsolved mystery is that of Heaven – it’s about to burn out, and Castiel gets that news from none other than Naomi, the stern, bureaucratic angel that tortured Cas in season 8, believed killed by Metatron. Naomi is another of the less-than-dozen angels left alive, so when that Heaven plot does comes to a head, she’s sure to be involved. And of course, Richard Speight, Jr. returned as Gabriel: we saw a seriously vindicating deep-dive for the long-term fan favorite character before his untimely end.

Then there’s the AU. In the season 12 finale we met Bobby, as a new version of Jim Beaver’s character appeared to the brothers in the desolate wasteland. Throughout the season, a few more duplicates are encountered, and we discover more about the divergence of the worlds – the AU seems very similar to ours until about eight years ago where, without Sam and Dean as the chosen (and ultimately incorruptible) vessels, the Apocalypse did take place. The alternate versions experienced life much the same until that point, and so they are, intrinsically, the same people – but since that point they’ve gone down different paths.

Osric Chau appeared as the prophet Kevin Tran – a Kevin commandeered by angelic forces to serve God – and we see the naturally anxious Kevin as he would be, after eight years of trauma and substance abuse. His ultimate end is maybe even sadder that the original Kevin’s, but it feels necessary – a harsh and horrifying human consequence of this awful alternate world. I don’t know if the fact that he never encountered the brothers makes things better or worse, because Kevin is, of course, one of those seriously close adopted family members that the boys lost, and whom they blame themselves for. Without them in his life, he survived much longer – but at what cost?

And of course, there’s one more character who, without getting dragged into Sam and Dean’s mess, survived this universe much more successfully, and that circumstance deserves its own point…

The Unfridging of Charlie Bradbury

The biggest head-turner – the one guest star casting that may have made news all the way outside of the fandom bubble – was the return of Felicia Day as Charlie Bradbury. Of all the friends the Winchesters have lost over the year, Charlie’s by far the most controversial. Her death served a purpose, sure – it pushed Dean to fully embrace the influence of the Mark of Cain – but it was only that: a woman butchered, left like trash, merely to further a man’s pain.

A gay woman, too, in a time not so long ago when their presence on TV was much less prevalent than it is today. And it was a gratuitous, unhonorable killing, a whimpering, defenseless off-screen murder to a previously powerful role-model character. Everything about it left a bad taste in the mouth, it was panned across the board, and the cast themselves joined the audience in shaming then-showrunner Jeremy Carver at San Diego Comic-Con, giving him just enough rope to hang himself with. There was a seemingly willful naivety about the real-world hurt caused – more than just investment in a fictional character – by this kind of death.

With the introduction of the Apocalypse World, the Supernatural writers were free to resurrect as many killed characters as they saw fit – and they didn’t go overboard, but instead chose very wisely to reinstate the characters that should be included in the Winchesters’ family, now that they’re allowed to have one. Of course, Charlie isn’t really their Charlie, (and Bobby isn’t really their Bobby) but they’re the same people, with the same hearts and the same internal wiring – they just lack the same memories and experience. But they have exactly the same capacity to eventually love the boys, and be loved in return, despite the tinge of sadness.

Charlie’s re-introduction was possibly more than just “we miss this character,” though. It felt, to a lot of fans, like a pretty explicit apology, an acknowledgement that what happened in the past was wrong and should have gone differently, and a declaration of “this is not who we are anymore.” It was heavy-handed, sure, but it was blatant – Dean’s unloading of the baggage he carries about his Charlie (baggage tonally hand-waved for convenience after her death, despite season 10 running straight into season 11 with no time jump… see my first point), the guilt he holds over her brutal murder, and his declaration that he failed her… it all practically breaks the fourth wall in telling the audience that Supernatural is doing its best to right an unforgivable wrong.

Charlie herself is super weirded out by Dean’s interest in her, and – on the surface at least – she’s tougher cookie than her Earthly counterpart, a rebel leader who’s survived years and years of angelic terrorism in a war zone. But ultimately, without the Winchesters around, she survived, and so now we have a Charlie again – not quite the same as having never killed her, but most fans seem thrilled to take what they can get, and grateful to boot. Day’s tweet to showrunner Andrew Dabb on the night of her return says it all.

Charlie survived the season (of course!) and made it through to our world with the other rebels. She’s currently off road-tripping with Rowena, of all people (now that’s an episode I want to see!) but presumably she’ll appear as regularly as any other Winchester ally, especially as a plan is formulated to eventually save that other world from whence she came. Balancing the feelings Dean pins upon her with her own actual experience should be an interesting thing to explore. If her death was the reason you dropped the show, now’s the time to pick it back up again.

It was totally Wayward AF

While we’re talking about the wonderful women of the Supernatural world, I cannot say enough about Wayward Sisters. Obviously a bit of a sore spot – the CW’s confusing choice to pass on the series is still making waves – but it’d be remiss not to talk about this incredible achievement when reviewing what made Supernatural season 13 so special. Much of the first half of the season was shaped around the setup for this backdoor pilot, as the threads of Wayward were carefully woven into the overarching plot, as the boys and Jack are trying to access another world.

Episode 3, “Patience,” saw the introduction of one of the new Wayward girls, setting up her relationship with Jody Mills. Dean, also present on the case while lost in grief and nihilism, warns young Patience Turner away from the life, serving as a sharp juxtaposition against Jody and the worldview of Wayward – and indeed, that was always one of the spin-off’s aims, to show how some young people might cope with the perils of a hunter’s life when given an opportunity to have a normal home, a family, a support network, as opposed to Sam and Dean’s miserable, transient isolation.

Such faith was there in Wayward Sisters that the Supernatural team got the green light to shape their mid-season finale and premiere around the spin-off, and regardless of that final shocking decision to not move forward, what Robert Berens, Phil Sgriccia and the cast presented was a true labor of love: 80 minutes of rich, expansive set-up to a story we’re already so deeply invested in. The fact that Wayward got on the air at all is still too amazing to truly comprehend – the development of this fan-conceptualized idea, the shift from community movement to televisual reality, is entirely unprecedented.

There’s no question that Wayward Sisters deserved a pick-up and that having Supernatural running concurrently with a closely linked spin-off would have been a complete success, a practically guaranteed win both commercially and thematically, promising a survival of Sam and Dean’s legacy beyond the eventual end of Supernatural itself. For whatever reason, the CW did not want to take advantage of this opportunity and maintain the viewership of this particular audience, and chose to pursue other pilots for their fall season.

But that decision does not make the passion and the recognition and the representation that Wayward Sisters reflected any less important. This world of women who prove more than capable of rearranging the universe to save the famous Winchesters, who show us so many different ways to be strong – and that it’s okay to be not strong sometimes, too, when someone else has your back. This scarred, broken, beautiful, cheerful, nerdy, naive, bitchy, reluctant, reckless, honorable, scared, badass group of girls show us that there’s no wrong way to do the right thing. And we got to see it because we believed in it. And their story is far from over.

The deftly wielded, scalpel-sharp humor

Despite the season’s grim tone, it was also really freakin’ funny – some of the best comedy moments that Supernatural has ever done, made all the more brilliant because of the clever juxtaposition against the misery. Too much drama sucks all the life out of the audience, so even a really tragic story needs comedic beats as a release of tension-build up, and the way those beats placed throughout season 13 is masterful.

While Supernatural has always been a very funny show (obviously the Winchesters are never having a whole lot of fun, but Ackles and Padalecki both have serious comedy chops, and the humor surrounding their pathos is often genius), it has, as mentioned, suffered from lapses in emotional consistency. All too often, an inappropriate shift from dark to light can make two episodes that would both be totally acceptable in isolation feel really inconsistent. But the use of humor in season 13 was perfect – they knew how and when to use it to give the audience a break without ruining the overall mood or throwing us out of our suspension of disbelief.

One factor that was particularly noticeable was the incredible use of sharply written bit-part characters as comedic relief – via the Pirate Pete’s employee arguing with the drunk fries-loving party girl, to the middle-aged store cashier Brenda checking out Dean’s ass, Joanne the waitress savagely teasing Sam about his drink order, Drexel the unwilling hell-minion and Indra the alcoholic nihilist angel, the audience was allowed to laugh in circumstances that did not require a hand-waving of the boys’ state of mind.

This careful crafting on every level followed through, of course, to the comedy involving the lead cast itself – Jack and his friend Clark raiding the vending machine, Cas taunting Lucifer when they’re imprisoned together, Dean and Sam attempting to eat lizard while stuck in The Bad Place. The two most humorous episodes, aside from “Scoobynatural,” which sits apart, are arguably “Tombstone” and “The Scorpion and The Frog,” and both grant full narrative permission for their lightness by their position in the chain of events.

In the ridiculously indulgent “Tombstone,” we see a hyperactive Dean getting fully and delightfully nerdy, making the newly-resurrected Cas dress up and roleplay cowboys with him just for the pure joy of it. “Scorpion” is a lighter heist caper, and that tonal breathing room is allowed because it’s at a period where the guys think everything is as fine as it possibly can be – they’re on their way to finding Jack, and they’re unaware that Cas has been imprisoned.

We see an utter farce when Dean is put under a love spell in “Various and Sundry Villains” – he’s not in control of his feelings and actions, so the cheer isn’t jarring, and Jensen Ackles shines – and when Dean and Cas face off against Gog and Magog, in “Good Intentions,” the ridiculous turn of events has a lovely, natural tone of uncontrollable hysteria: Dean in a state of “everything’s too much, and I’ve finally cracked, and this, right now, is the funniest thing in the world to me.”

Visual comedy, like the incredible elevator fight scene between Dean and Rowena’s butler Bernard, or the drooping portal powered by the grace of an archangel with performance issues, contribute to the mix, and of course the inclusion of both Gabriel and Rowena – two intrinsically cheeky scamps who are more than double the trouble when they meet one another for the first time – adds extra-special spice.

A lot of the most humorous scenes rely heavily on irony or deeply mundane absurdism – many of the best gags are closer to the style of British comedy, rather than what you might expect on American network television. The fact that this season is so funny in such clever and subversive ways without sacrificing characterization or compromising an inch of its gravity is the delicious icing on what was already a very, very satisfying cake.

We got to fall in love with Jack Kline

The Supernatural audience is infamously resistant to change, so when the news broke that Alexander Calvert – the young man cast as Lucifer’s instantly-grown nephilim son Jack – would be made a series regular for season 13, there were definitely a few raised eyebrows. But a combination of very careful writing and very skilled acting resulted in a new favorite who most of the fandom would now lay down their lives for.

When Jack was born in the previous year’s finale, he appeared, to the Winchesters, as an unknown threat, but season 12’s specific themes about the monster vs. the monstrous, nature vs. nurture, Sam and Dean’s shades of grey vs. Men of Letters’ black and white, as well as the show’s wider theme of free will, all but dictated – to the audience, if not to the brothers – that Jack was destined to be be a complete innocent, unaware of his powers and ready to be molded by whoever chose to guide him.

That’s exactly what we got, but the thing about this type of naive, born-yesterday archetype is that all too often, they’re freaking annoying. Introducing a kid for an established group of adult characters to look after is hard enough to pull off, and the naive, just-got-to-this-world element is an extra-tough quality to get the audience invested in – especially an audience that’s followed a series for an unprecedentedly long time, and who doesn’t often respond well to a mix-up of the status quo.

Although (at least to me) his morality was never in question – any possible stakes of “is he gonna go evil” were non-existent after the season 13 premiere “Lost and Found.” Jack could have so easily been cheesy. He could have been bratty. He could have, horror of horrors, been Connor from Angel. But instead, he was – almost immediately, almost universally – adored. Just like that! This fandom doesn’t agree on anything! But apparently they agree that Jack is the best thing to happen to this show in a long time.

The character serves as a wonderful mirror for all three of Team Free Will to project their own self-actualization arcs onto – Jack provides specific, and separate, potential for growth in the individual journeys of Sam, Dean and Cas – but he’s not just a tool to show us things about the others. Jack’s path throughout the season, as he becomes adopted into the family and eventually confronts his powers and his birth father, turns him into his own man, all while retaining the perfect purity and openness that made him instantly lovable.

Calvert’s performance is masterful – his control is impeccable, never pushing too far. His Jack is infectious, full of sweet humor and innocence, childish bravado, and desperate pain – he holds his own against the veteran stars, and it looks like he’s here to stay. In fact, he’s probably the key, once and for all, to saving the entire universe.

Castiel gets his groove back

Castiel’s season 12 death was always going to be about validating the character’s value further than ever before. The suffocatingly deep arc after Cas died, with a huge focus on Dean specifically, and his inability to shake the loss, contrasted with the sharp, bright, immediate recovery upon his return, spoke volumes about Castiel’s place in the Winchester family. That was well-proven, in his absence from Earth – but enough about Castiel’s death being used as a vehicle to show us things about others. What about the growth of Cas himself?

Castiel has made many mistakes, in the past – “stupid for the right reasons,” as this show likes to say – and as a result, has ended up with a terrible sense of self-worth. He has long believed himself expendable, a burden, no matter how hard he has tried to help. This hit rock bottom when he gave himself over to Lucifer, and during season 12, he continues to try and show care for the brothers by keeping himself and the messes he blames himself for out of their hair.

But in season 13, everything changes for Cas. Right from the start, we see him fighting for his right to exist – going toe to toe with a cosmic entity that steals his face and taunts him about how unloved and unwanted he his, tries to convince him that he wants to stay asleep in the void forever. It’s readable as a metaphor for depression, for suicidal ideation, for the voice in your head telling you you have nothing to live for, and Castiel stands his ground, and he wins. He’s kicked back to life, and he returns to the Winchesters a new man.

We see a Castiel more confident, more comfortable with duty and responsibility. He stands taller, dresses better, and even his hair is styled more attractively – he’s the closest in years to that driven, powerful Castiel we first met in that barn, miles away from the limp, hunched, sad and broken-down figure that he has become. He’s grounded, though – he’s not steely or evangelical, he just knows what he’s doing. He isn’t second-guessing and while he still adores humanity, he’s thinking and planning on a cosmic scale when he attacks a problem.

Cas takes his responsibility to care for Jack very seriously, so when Lucifer re-enters the picture, looking for his son, it’s a delight to see Cas confidently (and sassily!) keep an upper hand, even when the pair are captured and imprisoned together. And it’s fist-pumpingly good when Cas savvily spots Lucifer’s betrayal and one-ups him once again upon their escape. Lucifer isn’t the only abuser Cas gets to stand up to – he also reads Naomi the riot act about her past treatment of him, and he’s pretty much done taking shit from anyone who gets between him and the safety of his boys, but in a hot, righteous, empowering way, not in a sad, self-sacrificing, misguided way.

Cas’s screen time is treated very carefully and considerately, in a way that emphasizes his value as an equal part of the team, despite Misha Collins not appearing in every episode. Unlike seasons past, context is given for every absence, and none of these absences rely on forced conflict with the brothers. Exposition, including one-sided phone calls, keeps Cas in the picture, and his well-being is checked in on constantly – onscreen and off. Episodes that do put him on a separate path to the brothers often start out with all three of them at home, in a way that proves that this is, in fact, his home – that the normal state of affairs is for the gang to be together.

Most fascinatingly, we get to see Castiel face his own darkness a second time – when we meet the Apocalypse World version of himself, who tortures people on Michael’s command. The Castiel that our Cas could have become, before Dean Winchester opened the gates of Heaven for his fall. It’s going to be interesting to see how Cas handles Dean’s current predicament as Michael’s vessel, given what he originally rebelled for, but when Cas kills his alter-ego, it’s a stark metaphor for slaying one’s own demons, and the perfect conclusion to the self-worth arc that began with his own death.

Sam Winchester speaks to his trauma

Sam Winchester is a very special kind of hero. Every main character on this show has been kicked around to high heaven, but Sam has arguably suffered more trauma than anyone else. From day one, he was marked for a terrible fate, fed demon blood to prime him as a weapon of hell, in a story that eventually grew into the apocalyptic climax of the show’s original era – the reveal that he was pretty much bred into existence to become the perfect vessel for Lucifer himself, as Dean is for Michael. After being possessed by Lucifer, violated and tortured by him in the Cage for an unearthly length of time, and then stalked by hallucinations of him until he became insane, the fact that Sam Winchester is still kind, hopeful and standing tall today is nothing short of a miracle.

Over the years we have seen much unspoken subtext regarding this trauma in Jared Padalecki’s exemplary performances. Whenever Lucifer and Sam are in the same room, the man practically trembles, no matter how determined he is to get whatever the job at hand is done. Lucifer doesn’t make Sam weak, exactly – no one could ever call Sam Winchester weak – but he is constantly and realistically triggered by his PTSD. You can feel it, in every line of his body, in every word that he stutters, in every moment. But it’s rarely been actually addressed onscreen, even – somewhat egregiously – when Lucifer was living in their home, inside Castiel.

This season, that all changed. In “Various and Sundry Villains,” Sam finds an unlikely connection in Rowena – her outpouring about Lucifer leads to Sam sharing his own innermost truths, for the first time. All those years of watching Sam push his trauma down – it all bubbles out, as he admits how present that damage still is, how deeply he represses it and how he doesn’t know how to talk about it.

It’s a credit to Padalecki that we knew all this already, just from his acting, and there have been other moments that have proven that Sam’s ability to compartmentalize, about pretty much everything, is often what keeps him functioning. But hearing it spoken so honestly was one of the most validating moments in the show’s history, raising the bar on Sam’s entire series arc.

But even before that incredible development, season 13 was already giving Sam a refreshingly insightful voice, in some really special ways. Sam has always had some issues with accepting any sort of power for himself – Padalecki once explained them to Hypable as those of an addict, so given his history, they’re fears, perhaps, of what he has the potential to become – but in season 12, we saw Sam take on more of a leadership role, on the first steps to potentially overcoming those fears. That sense of self-empowerment continued in season 13, and Jack was a wonderful vehicle to explore that for Sam.

Through parenting Jack, we see Sam both as a role model, and taking a second chance for self-care, in a way. Here is a child, a child with powers that he doesn’t understand, a child labelled by the wider world as inevitably evil, and Sam is almost immediately able to recognize a kindred spirit, one who needs the help of someone who has been there before.

Sam’s compassion for Jack is 100% genuine, but we see his compartmentalization in play a little, because he also 100% wants Jack to be able to help rescue Mary, so his determination does bubble to the surface in frustration as he works with Jack on honing his power, but he quickly course-corrects and is more open with Jack his circumstances, and from then on out the pair are pretty much bonded for life, which leads to the season’s incredible climax of Lucifer attempting to pit the pair against one another before the Archangel Dean swoops in to save the day.

As the season progresses, Sam is forced to confront the reality of Lucifer more and more, and he eventually falls prey to the hopeless nihilism that Dean suffered from earlier. Sam, always a big picture thinker, starts to fall to pieces and become very lost, but his determination is reset as the gang begins to amass unexpected allies and a plan takes shape.

The end of the season is a rollercoaster for him, as we get to see him oh-so-satisfactorily watch Lucifer get used and abused for his grace, and then suffer the horror of not only being killed by monsters but resurrected by Lucifer himself, as a bargaining chip to get close to Jack. Sam is clearly very troubled by being in Lucifer’s debt in any way, but not much time is left to ponder on the consequences of that before he gets to help his big brother slay his greatest oppressor. His joy is, of course, short-lived, but that’s a problem for season 14…

Dean Winchester tells the goddamn truth

It sounds simple, but for a character whose entire arc is wrapped heavily in both repression and in performativity, who took eleven years to openly admit that he likes chick flicks, and who openly admits that sublimation is “kind of his thing,” seeing Dean Winchester actually being honest about his emotions not once, not twice, but as a matter of course, is kind of a new horizon.

For starters, there’s the whole emotionally-consistent grieving period thing, which has already been discussed at length. But it’s worth reiterating that this is just completely and startlingly progressive, especially when looking at Dean specifically, and his battle with depression. His brutally honest conversations with Billie, and later with Sam, about how very not okay he is, represents a huge development for the character.

It also represents a huge development for Supernatural itself, as we see unequivocal proof that the show wants to truly and permanently widen the Winchester family circle beyond the heart of Sam and Dean. Once upon a time, a brother losing anyone other than a fellow brother was kind of like cutting off a finger – horrible, but survivable. Now, as Dean shows us, it’s like cutting out a lung. Without an urgent fix, his life is not sustainable. And Cas turns out to be the life support that gets him breathing normally again.

But it isn’t just that. It’s the aftermath of that. Instead of spilling his true feelings like a gut wound and bleeding them out as he has done so many times before, Dean is… reasonable? Open? Rational? Emotionally responsive? Calmly honest? This is all boggling, but absolutely, utterly delightful. When Castiel returns safe and sound, for example, there’s a noticeable shift in Dean’s treatment towards him – in the past, he’d often end up snapping in anger about Cas’s comings and goings, and later having to explain that outburst was actually just worry. Now, we see him change his approach, carefully checking in on Cas’s wellbeing, asking if he needs help, respecting his missions, and accepting his judgement.

He’s also miles more patient with Sam. Although Dean doesn’t believe – or perhaps doesn’t want to believe – in Jack’s innocence at first, his communication with Sam on the matter is also absolutely first class. Sam and Dean are very much not on the same page, they remain entirely on the same side, largely because Dean accepts Sam’s choices regarding Jack even if unwilling to accept it himself, instead of blowing up at him.

Same goes for Sam’s enabling of Rowena. Anyone with a working knowledge of the show will remember that the boys have seriously feuded over issues less divisive than this one, so the way that season 13 consistently handles Dean’s responsiveness to his loved ones in the wake of his shattering grief is deeply significant – it seems like he knows, once and for all, that he must cherish what he has while he has it, and do his best to show what’s important to him, in ways those people will understand better.

As Jack earns his place in Dean’s heart, this extends to him as well, and we see Dean drawing him into that unconditional circle of family – another organ Dean would rather die than live without. I’ve already mentioned his outpouring about Charlie, whom of course he entirely adored, but the fact that it’s Ketch he opens up to is surprising – but yet more proof of his growing confidence in speaking his truth in all matter of circumstances. But it’s also the little things.

It’s Dean unashamedly quoting Frozen, and being indulgent in his enjoyment of things, like his rampant cowboy fetish and his lovingly assembled mancave and what Scooby-Doo meant to him as a child. Little by little, Dean is shedding his old skin, and becoming more comfortable in showing himself. He’s believing that he’s allowed to want things. He’s believing that he’s allowed to have things. He’s learning how to ask for them, and he has faith in his own happy ending. Ultimately, he’s so close to his final, self-actualized form that I can almost taste it.

Which makes where we leave him in season 13 so interesting. Michael is Dean’s Great Perhaps, the fate and destiny that he swerved all those years ago. It makes a sort of sense that Dean must go through this and overcome it to finally be free to live his life almost entirely unburdened, the way Sam is (hopefully) now free of Lucifer. But of course, there’s still the question of that work Billie claims that the universe still needs them to do…

Team Free Will: bigger and better than ever

While “Team Free Will” will always truly mean that core trio of Sam, Dean and Cas, this year it’s gotten a bit of a redux. Dean himself was the first to brand the awesome foursome, Jack included, as “Team Free Will 2.0,” and it seems as though beta updates might need to be run in future as the players just keep lining up at the Winchesters’ door.

Though some of them didn’t survive the season – RIP again, Gabriel – many of them did, so Team Free Will have amassed a powerful and close network of allies that are all ready to help out with whatever comes next – as well as a potential second chance with some old friends they once lost. But closer to home, right at the heart, from two to three, from three to five, we now have an unshakable, unconditional core family unit, all of whom would do anything for one another, and I hope, and pray, and truly believe, that that’s not going to change. Supernatural is no longer in the business of permanent and tragic isolation.

Two years ago, when speculation arose that episode 300 may be the show’s final curtain, I wrote about how, if that was true, then what we needed, after all this time, was a happy ending. Well, they ain’t ending on 300, but I still believe that – the show may have started life as a gothic paranormal horror show, but when it became clear that Supernatural’s shelf life was going to outlive its first tragic ending, the show began to re-imagine itself as more of an adventure drama, and – although it’s still brutal, bloody and often miserable – each year, more light shines in. These days, Supernatural is about hope, and we are getting all the pieces lined up for a happily ever after.

In the finale, Dean dreams of a beach – a retirement, a break from carrying the weight of the world, with his brother and his best friend behind him. Even Sam is surprised to hear him talk so optimistically, but it’s a beautiful thing to see – the belief that this is possible, that this is earned. We see Sam’s dreams, too quite literally. An idyllic, domestic fantasy of his whole family – your average American family: three dads, one super-powered child, one extremely youthful grandma – happily sharing a meal around the Bunker’s table, is interrupted by Sam’s alarm clock, right before the season’s final mission into the Apocalypse World.

The brothers, they both want this so much. It’s what they have been fighting so hard for, and what they never thought they’d be allowed to have. It is so close to achievable, now, and nothing about the narrative being built suggests that it’ll be ripped away. Every lesson learnt, every proclamation made, every idea validated in season 13 suggests that – though the road is bumpy, and far from over – that what we’ll see at the very end is some version of that dinner table, some version of that beach. Otherwise, at the end of the day, what was the point of all of this? What was the message, after all this time, after all this slow, painstaking growth?

All season, we have explored that concept of hope and hopelessness, and we’ve seen what the Winchester brothers want, what is in their hearts. What they’re fighting for. Most of the season, there was no real focus on saving the world. It was about saving the individual. About Jack bringing Cas back from the dead, about accessing the other world to save their mother. Future world-saving is probably going to be necessary, especially with Heaven in tatters and Michael on the loose – but right up until the brothers get to Mary, their motivations are nearly entirely personal, no matter the cost. They’re fighting for themselves, for their family, for their own chance at happiness. She’s the one who’s been fighting, this season, for the greater good, and who initially rejects their rescue.

Eventually, the Winchesters are going to have to save the world . It’s what they do. But season 13 proved, again and again, that they deserve more than that. They deserve a chance to not be the guys that have to save the world. They deserve a chance to be selfish. They deserve that family dinner. They deserve that beach. And they know that they deserve it. They know that they should have it. Supernatural wants us to know that. It wants us to want that for them. There’s a light at the end of this tunnel, and it’s glowing brighter every moment.

‘Supernatural’ season 13 is now available on Netflix

The post Lucky for some: 13 reasons ‘Supernatural’ season 13 was the show’s best ever appeared first on Hypable.

Get ready to reapply your forehead tattoos, DC fans, because it looks like Warner Bros. is officially moving forward with a solo Joker movie starring Suicide Squad’s Jared Leto. That comes from Variety, which says Leto will star in and produce the untitled movie, which will apparently act as a branch between Suicide…

Read more...

Today the world was shocked by the sudden passing of fashion designer Kate Spade. The beloved style icon apparently died of suicide in her Manhattan apartment, and she was found by her housekeeper on Tuesday morning. The family released their own statement earlier today, but this evening, Spade’s brother-in-law David paid tribute to her on Twitter along with a photo of the late designer attending one of his book signings. The SNL alum wrote on Twitter, “Katy at my book signing. I love this pic of her. So pretty. I dont think everyone knew how fucking funny she was… Its a rough world out there people. Try to hang on.”

Katy at my book signing. I love this pic of her. So pretty. I dont think everyone knew how fucking funny she was... Its a rough world out there people. Try to hang on

David Spade (@DavidSpade) June 6, 2018

As destined, Twilight heartthrob vampire Robert Pattinson will share the screen with Call Me By Your Name star Timothée Chalamet, the perfect celebrity crush mashup for people between the ages of 17 and 65.

Read more...

FX has ordered a third season of its psychedelic brain-tickler of a superhero drama Legion, the network announced in a press release this afternoon. The renewal comes with praise for series creator Noah Hawley, with FX programming co-president Eric Schrier saying in a statement, “we are incredibly proud of Noah…

Read more...

How much money are teachers in the US paid? The correct answer, of course, is "not enough." As nationwide teacher strikes continue, HowMuch created infographics showing the average annual teacher salary by state. Above is the elementary school infographic.

The coasts offer the highest salaries, led by liberal states like New York and California, where teachers can make tens of thousands of dollars more than the national average wage of about $49k. There are also a couple of states in the Upper Midwest where teachers can make between $60-70,000, including Illinois, Minnesota and Michigan. The combination of above-average incomes with great benefits like a pension make these places ideal for teachers.

See the middle school and high school data here: "The Best (and Worst) States for Teacher Compensation"

The Assistant/Associate Museum Librarian, Reader Services takes the lead in managing public service functions that include circulation, stacks management, and collection storage. The Reader Services Librarian facilitates access to the collections by coordinating circulation and access policies for Met staff … Continue reading →

Reporting to the Director of Digital Management Services (DMS), the Digital Archivist works cross-departmentally with Academy curators, preservationists and archivists to manage efforts to preserve, describe and make accessible digitized and born-digital archival materials. Link to posting.

Doing a mask makes me feel like I'm accomplished something, when really all I'm doing is hanging out on my couch for a few minutes with goo on my face. Do any of the hundreds of masks on the market actually do anything? Does it matter?

Whether or not we're all getting hosed, masks are a great way to relax on our own or take embarrassing photos with our friends — so we definitely need something to drink while we wait.

Here are my favorite mask-and-wine pairings.

READ MORE »

I've always been a purist when it comes to making mac and cheese, sticking to a fairly classic recipe that starts with a roux and white sauce. But then this recipe came along and trumped the classic with its ease and amazing flavor.

Imagine a creamy, three-cheese pasta that comes together with absolutely no milk and butter. Now imagine that it's cooked all in one pot (you don't even need to strain the pasta!).

I call that magic — you'll call it the weeknight dinner of your dreams.

READ MORE »

I have loved horror as long as I have loved my blackness. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting in my mother’s lap while she braided my hair, the glow of all sorts of monsters and ghouls from her small black-and-white television washing over us. Horror may seem like an unlikely obsession for a young black girl growing up on the shores of Miami. But so much of blackness in America carries an undercurrent of dread, in which the prosaic points of everyday life — wearing a hoodie to run an errand, attending church, passing a huddle of cops while walking through your own neighborhood — are fraught with meaning and reminders of the potential for violence. As a child, I learned that the world would be hostile toward me by virtue of my blackness at the same time I came to understand horror. It’s an exceedingly elastic genre, one that’s able to seduce, revile, inform, and move you, often within the same moment. In its second, discursive season which ended last week, Atlanta is at its most elegant and impactful when using horror in this manner.

Creator and star Donald Glover, director Hiro Murai, and the show’s all-black writers room have repeatedly used the genre to consider the horror embedded within black American identity and experience. In particular, the price of aiming for fortune as artists, internalized racism that leaves physical wounds, and our relationship to whiteness — which is less a specific monster the show deals with head-on than a pathological stain infecting people even when it remains unseen — are crucial thematic underpinnings to how the characters on Atlanta wrestle with their own identities. Glover and his collaborators don’t unpack blackness for an audience, white or otherwise, that’s unfamiliar with its vernacular. Instead, they mine the fraught internal dynamics of how these individual characters live with their blackness in an environment that can often be hostile toward it.

In its second-season premiere, Darius (a laconic, delightfully philosophical Lakeith Stanfield) recounts what amounts to a demented fable about “the Florida Man,” an elusive and unidentified white man responsible for the harrowing unsolved crimes the Sunshine State has earned a reputation for. The violence in this sequence — the Florida man sits crouched on asphalt eating a crumpled human being with blood streaking down his jaw, then walks up to the car of an unsuspecting black teen to shoot him in the head — sets the tone for what comes later in the season. The violence is jarring, gruesome, and touched with broader racial relevance. The sequence takes the tenor of a dream. Florida Man comes to feel less like a recounted news story and more like the kind of warning kids pass around the campfire. He’s a boogeyman by way of a sun-kissed Freddy Krueger. Later episodes lean even further into horror. “Helen,” the season’s fourth episode directed by Amy Seimetz, feels like a riff on Jordan Peele’s Get Out for how it deals with a black man coming into a white setting in order to discover a new side of his partner. But it proves more prickly and complex than the work that inspired it, as the partner in question is a black woman herself, touching the nerve of what it means to be biracial.

Taking place at the German Fasnacht celebration, the episode first seems to be concerned with unpacking the violence that white people pointedly enact upon black people by exploring Earn’s (Glover) discomfort at the event. Early in the episode, a white woman bounces up to Earn exclaiming, “No way! You look so good!” her hand lightly touching his face, checking for makeup. She’s mistaken him for the white man dressed as a Moor, only to realize with abject embarrassment that he’s an actual black person. But Atlanta typically doesn’t use the ignorance and racism of white people to inject horror in its stories, at least not directly. The writers seem more interested in the horror that blooms inside and among black people.

The episode goes on to upend expectations, focusing on Van’s (Zazie Beetz) relationship with being biracial, and her anger at being seen as an appendage in Earn’s life. Van’s security in how she defines herself as a black woman is chipped away continuously throughout “Helen.” When she tries to find some communion with the only other Afro-German in attendance, Christina, who is also a childhood friend, a frustrating conversation ensues. Christina notes that Van always “chose black” as if she “needed” that identity as a compass, not as if it was natural for her to do so. The episode tips from an undercurrent of dread to outright horror in a scene centering on Van, with a setup many horror films have used to great effect: a beautiful woman walking down a desolate alley in the dead of night as a menacing laugh and masked figure emerges from the shadows. By the time Van bashes the costumed figure behind her in a fit of fear and anger — a traditional mark of this celebration — it feels like a manifestation of how in flux her relationship with her identity currently is.

“Woods,” directed by Murai, is perhaps my favorite episode for how it considers the season’s clearest arc: Alfred’s (Bryan Tyree Henry) struggle with his growing fame as the rapper Paper Boi. After a failed excursion with his not-quite girlfriend, Alfred gets jumped by a trio of fans before escaping into the woods. The familiarity of Atlanta’s concrete landscape gives way to the strange and the harrowing. His mouth dripping with blood and skin slick with sweat, Alfred wanders around the woods looking for an exit. The episode is the most conventional in its horror setup: a man lost in terrain that was once familiar but now feels alien, the dead deer rotting as a warning of potential violence, a strange figure speaking ominously, who could be friend or foe, depending on his mood. What makes the episode powerful rather than conventional is how Murai frames the rumbling cacophony and shadowed grooves of these woods as Alfred’s subconscious turned flesh. Soon, everything he experiences comes across as emblematic of his own struggle to remain authentic to the life he’s lived, perhaps afraid that embracing fame to such a degree may upend who he really is. The finale, while lacking any of the horror cues that define so much of the season, details how he keeps Earn around because he provides a grounded sense that his growing profile makes difficult to maintain.

The way Glover and his collaborators use horror this season makes it clear that the show isn’t primarily interested in detailing the strictures white racism has inflicted on these characters, but in charting their internal lives and how they relate to being black in America. Nowhere is this more explicit than in the critically lauded, brilliant, and horrifying episode “Teddy Perkins.” It’s interesting to compare the episode to Glover’s other notable accomplishment this year, “This Is America,” the Childish Gambino music video he released ahead of the Atlanta finale last week that got a rapturous public reception. When you place “Teddy Perkins” and “This Is America,” which Murai also directed, side by side, they become curious case studies of how Glover uses horror to explore these ideas, to very different effects and levels of success.

In a Hollywood Reporter profile preceding Atlanta’s sophomore season, Glover says that success in this industry takes time: “You have to make them understand you speak their language — that you speak old white man.” Both “Teddy Perkins” and “This Is America” use horror to consider what exactly this means. They act as parables about inherited trauma, the violence it breeds, and the price of achieving fame as a black man in white America. Both incorporate commentary on the evolution of black music, and hip-hop in particular. Both are brimming with references. As Darius grows more entrenched with the ghoulish Teddy Perkins (played disturbingly by Glover himself), who à la Michael Jackson has seemingly undergone plastic surgery in an effort to be rendered white, I felt the influence of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, the delirium of Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard, Claude Rains’s robed figure from The Invisible Man, and numerous black musicians including Stevie Wonder, who is mentioned by name. Meanwhile, watching Glover dance with wild energy as Childish Gambino in “This Is America,” against a tableau of violence that feels queasily like real-world horrors, numerous references can be found, from minstrelsy performances to the Charleston shooting. But only one of these works feels like it synthesizes its touchstones into a cohesive work and understands the effect of witnessing this violence.

“Teddy Perkins” is a masterwork of horror that uses its disparate inspirations and profound sense of dread to create a villain that is at once poignant and chilling. It operates on multiple levels. It can be read as a psychologically pointed spin on a haunted house. In Glover’s aching, unnerving performance, we witness an immediately iconic horror monster take shape. As Teddy and Darius speak about familial tragedies, rap music, Stevie Wonder, and abusive fathers, the titular character synthesizes into something more than his various influences and monstrous visage. He becomes a horrifying emblem of what happens when black people resent their blackness and seek to obliterate it. “Teddy Perkins” immediately felt bracing and potent in its message. But it took watching the video for “This Is America” to understand how easily the use of horror as an interrogation of modern blackness can go awry.

In the video, Glover and Murai make blatant and blunt many of the subtextual concerns of Atlanta. Under his Childish Gambino moniker, Glover contorts his face and body in a way that reads as pure minstrelsy. He runs through a gamut of viral and African dance moves. The music video shares Atlanta’s relationship with violence. It’s sudden, abrupt, cataclysmic, only to fade away as easily as it comes into view. Glover has a pointed message in the video, speaking to the same concerns Atlanta raises, about fame as a black artist and the price of playing by a rule book written by white forces (it provides such a variety of references and emotional turning points, it also leaves itself open to multiple readings). But the way he enacts violence against other black folks, only to dip into a recapitulation of minstrelsy, doesn’t ring as a powerful comment on the ways black artists must play by a certain script — it feels hollow and nihilistic. Watching it, I couldn’t help but wonder, who is this video trying to instill fear in?

In her moving autobiographical and critical work about horror, House of Psychotic Women, Kier-La Janisse writes, “As with most female horror fans, people love to ask what it is I get out of horror. I give them stock answers: catharsis, empowerment, escapism, and so on. Less easy to explain is the fact that I gravitate toward films that devastate and unravel me completely — a good horror film will often make me cry than make me shudder.” I thought of this when watching “Teddy Perkins” and “This Is America” back to back. “Teddy Perkins” left me feeling shaken and deeply sad. The way it considers Teddy and his brother’s identity, in light of their abusive father and relationship to fame, feels as if it is specifically speaking to a black audience, not translating black pain for a white audience, as “This Is America” does. As my colleague Craig Jenkins wrote about the music video, “Glover is smarter than this. Atlanta is smarter than this. Most arch black art flourishing now under the ever-present white American gaze is more careful than this.”

Each of Atlanta’s episodes that delve into horror end with a flash of violence — Van’s panicked attack of the demon thief; Alfred escaping the homeless man’s clutches; the murder/suicide that ends Teddy’s life — and a revelation. Characters learn more about themselves or question what they thought they understood. Violence acts as an emblem of inherited traumas or subconscious fugues. What unites each act of violence is that they speak to how whiteness has warped characters. For Van, it’s her German side that makes blackface seem like a cultural quirk rather than a nightmare. For Teddy and Alfred, it’s the rigors of fame and fortune. The images that have burned in my mind — Teddy Perkins’s introduction, the fear washing across Alfred’s face in the woods when he faces death at the hands of the strange homeless man — feel urgent because they are weighted with the existential concerns of its black audience, who are trying to define themselves in a world in which reality is shifting into further surreality. What it means to be black in America is given an answer: It’s to be in constant flux, to bend toward joy, or at least the peace of making decisions to redefine oneself or one’s sense of authenticity, even as suffering and violence have the potential to bloom on every corner.

If you’re wondering where the “queer” is in cinema these days, you’re better off looking to the past. Writing in The Village Voice in 1992, the film critic B. Ruby Rich named the wild, provocative, sexy slate of films by queer filmmakers New Queer Cinema. The label stuck, and would eventually get expanded by film historians and queer theorists to describe a movement that was stylistically experimental, rich, and above all, defiant. Historically, New Queer Cinema was inextricably tied to the AIDS crisis and the activism and community that formed out of it; it’s filmmaking made by and for people who were on the margins. But to say that these films are serious and somber would be a complete misunderstanding: They’re often funny, sharp, and incredibly alive.

It’s difficult to access some of these films now. Many of them are available on Kanopy, which you can stream for free (!) with a library card, or other subscription-based niche streaming sites like Fandor and FilmStruck. Some you can buy via iTunes, Amazon, and Google Play. (You can also do the tried-and-true method of “Googling it” and find some other streams.) This following list of NQC films is by no means comprehensive, but think of it as a starter guide into a wider world of queer cinema.

Born in Flames (1983), Lizzie Borden
Stream on Kanopy, Fandor

Before the queer cinema boom, there was Born in Flames by Lizzie Borden, a radical, independent film that imagined a revolution within a revolution when there’s a feminist uprising a decade after the Social Democratic War of Liberation. The catalyst for the plot begins when a black feminist leader dies in police custody, galvanizing various feminist factions. Made on a budget of $70,000, the movie is a bit like bricolage, with a number of contemporary resonances, from radio agitprop to shades of Afrofuturism. (Fun fact: Kathryn Bigelow is in it!)

Mala Noche (1986), Gus Van Sant
Stream on Kanopy, FilmStruck

Gus Van Sant would later make big feature films like Milk, about the life and assassination of Harvey Milk, but his first feature, Mala Noche, was an exploration of desire through the eyes of a young white store clerk named Walt and his obsession with a young undocumented immigrant named Johnny. The film, shot in black and white on 16mm film, contains many of the early Van Sant fixations that viewers would later see get refined in My Own Private Idaho, including male hustlers, illegality, and class.

Chinese Characters (1986), Richard Fung
Richard Fung would go on to make a number of videos about gay desire and AIDS, including the lovely Sea in the Blood (2000) and a fascinating PSA for safe sex through the Gay Men’s Health Crisis called Steam Clean (1990), but this early film asks still-pressing questions about the nature of gay desire when it’s mediated via pornographic images of white men. The video defies genre, mixing documentary with performance art and archival footage to explore the tensions of being a gay Asian man looking at porn.

Looking for Langston (1989), Isaac Julien
Isaac Julien would make a more commercial film during the peak of NQC called Young Soul Rebels (1991), but this short film, a tribute to the life and work of Langston Hughes, is a beautiful and vibrant elegy. Julien creates a lineage of queer black ancestors for himself, starting with Hughes in the Harlem Renaissance through to James Baldwin and Essex Hemphill, Hilton Als, and his contemporaries. The film moves like the poetry it recites, playing with the gaze and how various eyes look upon the black male body.

Tongues Untied (1989), Marlon Riggs
Stream on Kanopy

The heart of Marlon Riggs’s essayistic film is the question of whether desire is a political act. Guided by the writer Joseph Beam’s statement, “Black men loving black men is the revolutionary act,” Riggs goes through his own complicated journey of homophobia from other black people, and then racism in the gay community, to find a community of queer black people. There are playful interludes interspersed throughout the film, including a dating hotline where he searches for a BGA (Black Gay Activist).

Poison (1991), Todd Haynes
Stream on Fandor

Poison, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 1991, is one of the marquee films that Rich pinpointed as a watershed of New Queer Cinema. Each of the film’s three parts tell a story about ostracism, violence, and marginality: the bullied child who allegedly flies away after shooting his father in order to save his mother (“Hero”), a brilliant scientist who accidentally ingests his own serum to become the “leper sex killer” (“Horror”), and a sexual relationship between two men in a prison (“Homo”). While Haynes would go on to make prestige pictures like Far From Heaven and Carol, this is his work at its most explicitly political and experimental.

Paris Is Burning (1991), Jennie Livingston
Stream on Netflix

While Paris Is Burning has raised questions around narrative ownership (whether Jennie Livingston, a former Yale student, should be making a documentary about a group she isn’t a part of), it’s undoubtedly one of the most important (by virtue of being one of the few) historical documents of the New York City ball scene, and it’s impossible not to become transfixed by the strength, elegance, and tragedy of the world where queer communities build kinship around art and identity. Dorian Corey, Venus Xtravaganza, Willi Ninja, and everyone else will always be remembered as legendary children.

The Living End (1992), Gregg Araki
Stream on Kanopy, Sundance Now

What a romp! Araki made this nihilistic road-trip movie on a shoestring budget of $20,000. The Living End follows Luke, a sexy homicidal drifter who (like Araki) has a distaste for T-shirts, and Jon, an uptight film critic in Los Angeles. Both are HIV-positive, and as their relationship unfolds, they tussle over Jon’s instinct to be a respectable gay, and Luke’s admittedly more alluring impulse to fuck the police and ride off to nowhere.

Swoon (1992), Tom Kalin
Shot beautifully like a black-and-white Calvin Klein ad, Tom Kalin fictionalizes the Leopold and Loeb murder case: The wealthy Chicago lovers kill a 14-year-old boy named Bobby Franks because they want to see if they are smart enough to do it. Unlike Alfred Hitchcock’s retelling of the murder in Rope, Kalin’s version is more interested in their relationship as lovers — he even has the two wed each other in an abandoned house before committing the crime. The murder is more a play of power between them, with Loeb weaponizing sex as a way to control Leopold.

Edward II (1992), Derek Jarman
There’s a scene in Edward II where the king and his doomed lover, Piers Gaveston, dance together in pajamas as Annie Lennox sings “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye.” That pretty much encapsulates the deliberately anachronistic sensibility of this Christopher Marlowe adaptation filmed in dark, lush colors. It builds a bridge of historical queerness to the then-present-day fight against the AIDS epidemic and an indifferent government. Oh, and there’s Tilda Swinton in pearls.

Rock Hudson’s Home Movies (1992), Mark Rappaport
Stream on YouTube (free), Amazon Prime

If Laura Mulvey taught us what the male gaze was, New Queer Cinema was about showing viewers what the queer gaze was. Rock Hudson’s Home Movies is a documentary made up of glances and innuendos from Rock Hudson’s oeuvre, showing us how this dashing, leading man of the Hollywood Golden Age was a closeted gay man.

Fast Trip, Long Drop (1993), Gregg Bordowitz
Gregg Bordowitz, a member of ACT UP, the radical AIDS advocacy organization, made this film, which, like many of the other NQC films, mixes genres: there are satirical news elements (Andrea Fraser plays a character named Charity Hope-Tolerance) with archival footage from protests, appropriated footage of Evel Knievel stunts, video diaries, and a fascinating conversation with his parents about why he decided to come out as gay, even though he has been in relationships with both men and women.

Zero Patience (1993), John Greyson
Stream on YouTube

This musical by John Greyson tells a reimagined history of Gaëtan Dugas, the real-life Canadian flight attendant who had been dubbed “patient zero” of the AIDS epidemic by the media and scientists. Zero Patience allows Dugas to clear his name while also resurrecting the ghost of Sir Richard Burton, who is on a quest to demonize him. And the movie has an excellent John Waters tribute, with singing anuses.

The Watermelon Woman (1996), Cheryl Dunye
Stream on Kanopy

The Watermelon Woman coalesced much of the video work Cheryl Dunye had been making earlier in the decade in the form of what she would call “Dunyementary,” a self-reflexive style of documentary. The Watermelon Woman would continue to play with reality and fiction, with the protagonist, Cheryl (played by Dunye), tracking down the history of an early film star known as the Watermelon Woman, who she later learns is a lesbian actor by the name of Fae Richards.

MURDER and murder (1996), Yvonne Rainer
Known for her experimental filmmaking and choreography, Yvonne Rainer made a narrative film — one that’s still formally challenging compared to commercial films of its time — of a late-in-life lesbian named Doris who suffers from neuroses and breast cancer. Her partner, Mildred, a queer academic, tells the story of their romance as older women. Rainer also makes appearances throughout the film in a tux, going on rants about smug homophobic parents while showing her bare chest with a mastectomy scar.

When Todd Haynes was working on Safe, the 1995 film starring Julianne Moore as a housewife who becomes increasingly allergic to the world around her, he expressed frustration over the classification of “gay cinema.” It wasn’t that he felt the category was pigeonholing, like some might today, but rather that it should be more exacting. “People define gay cinema solely by content: if there are gay characters in it, it’s a gay film,” he said in an interview in the spring 1993 issue of Film Quarterly. “Heterosexuality to me is a structure as much as it is a content. It is an imposed structure that goes along with the patriarchal, dominant structure that constrains and defines society. If homosexuality is the opposite or the counter-sexual activity to that,” he asked, “then what kind of a structure would it be?”

The critique would apply to any number of films from the past decade that are nominally LGBT in content, but not queer in structure. We’ve entered a boom time for LGBT film, and the movies released in the past decade boast a mainstream appeal, with straight actors now more than ever willing to play an LGBT character. There have been Oscar-validated prestige pictures (Milk, The Kids Are All Right, The Dallas Buyers Club, Call Me by Your Name), and corresponding flops (Stonewall, Freeheld), indie films (Princess Cyd, Tangerine), and commercial middlebrow ones (Love, Simon). While these films vary in intent, provenance, and quality, they encapsulate a similar catholic spirit: rather than assert difference, they point out similarities. They apply salve instead of salt. They’re safe, often boring, and sentimental, following familiar emotional arcs to tell a “universal story.” In short, we’re in a movie moment defined by the political sensibility of the gay-marriage movement.

Depending on your viewpoint, the legalization of gay marriage is either the greatest recent civil-rights victory or a myopic apportionment of rights. It was a beloved cause for progressives, but a philosophically conservative one. The rhetoric — love is love (is love is love) — was generic and effective, suggesting that the only thing that separates gay people from straight ones was semantics. “More and more Americans [have] come to understand what this is all about is a simple proposition: Who do you love?” then–Vice-President Joe Biden said a few years before the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationwide in 2013, ten years after it become the prevailing LGBT issue. “I think Will and Grace did more to educate the American public more than almost anything anybody has done so far. People fear that which is different. Now they’re beginning to understand.”

The political language around sameness — that “they” are just like “us” — moved out of the ballot box and into film. Part of this is a rhetorical strategy to sell movies to a heterosexual public. Luca Guadagnino has called Call Me by Your Name a “family film”; Rachel Weisz called Disobedience, her recent passion project about a lesbian relationship in an Orthodox Jewish community in London, a “universal story.” Alia Shawkat, the star and writer of Duck Butter, a movie about a 24-hour relationship between two women, emphasized the importance of normalization. “Eventually I want to get to the point where we’re watching movies and the story’s not about the fact that they’re gay, or about the fact that they’re black, or about the fact that they’re trans — they just are. And we’re just watching that person’s life,” she told Vulture. “That’s how it becomes more normalized.”

Beyond discourse, the question of what makes a film queer has become subsumed by aesthetics and narratives that display a straight gaze. The most egregious example is one of the most recent: Love, Simon, a gay bildungsroman whose political and moral center is that its protagonist Simon is Not That Kind of Gay. Simon is a blandly handsome high-school teenager (Nick Robinson) who spends much of the film assuring the (hetero) audience that he’s just like them. “For the most part, my life is totally normal,” he says in the expository voice-over. He lives in a big two-story house; his parents are played by L.L.Bean catalogue models Jennifer Garner and Josh Duhamel; he gets a car with a big red ribbon on it for his birthday like a holiday car commercial. “I’m just like you except I have one huge-ass secret,” he says. “Nobody knows I’m gay.”

So what kind of gay is he not? Well, he’s certainly not like the only out gay student at his school named Ethan, a black femme student (Clark Moore) who delivers many of the movie’s only jokes. In a scene where a couple of jocks are bullying Ethan, Simon remarks, “I wish Ethan wouldn’t make it so easy for them.” When Ethan and Simon finally talk in the end, rather than have Ethan push back against just how good Simon has it, the film whiffs and has Ethan act as a sympathetic shoulder to lean on. Ethan remains a patsy, offering reassurance rather than resistance to the implicit assumption that Simon is “relatable” precisely because he’s white, masculine, and upper-middle class. The gravest injustice in Love, Simon is that a gay white boy couldn’t have grown up like a straight white boy.

It’s easy to castigate Love, Simon, but it’s the middlebrow iteration of a widespread sensibility that trades in sentimentality as a way to render LGBT people sympathetic. Prestige pictures go a step further, populating their stories with dying, saintlike queers who cut themselves open and offer up their tragedy for our moral edification, whether it’s Julianne Moore as the terminally ill Laurel Hester in Freeheld or David France’s uncomfortable fixation on Marsha P. Johnson’s death in the documentary The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson. (It’s no accident that “death” comes before “life” in the title.) The Oscar-winning Dallas Buyers Club chose to tell the story of the AIDS crisis through a homophobic straight white man Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey), who realizes the error of his ways after he becomes HIV-positive. It isn’t until the end, after Rayon (Jared Leto), a drug-addicted trans woman, bequeaths him with largesse before she dies, that he too understands “community.” Her death sanctifies him and, in turn, the viewer who might harbor similar biases.

These are meek films that ask for both forgiveness and permission to exist. Think of the softness of Call Me by Your Name — a beautiful but anemic film that lacks the straight-into-your-veins immediacy of the original novel by André Aciman. When it comes to sex between the two protagonists, the teenage Elio (Timothée Chalamet) and grad student Oliver (Armie Hammer), Call Me by Your Name is practically demure. In the moment when Oliver and Elio have sex for the first time, the camera pans to look outside the window. When the pair arrive in Rome on a couple’s getaway, they get to the hotel room and start roughhousing as though they haven’t been having sex in secret for the past three weeks. The film stopped short, as though fearful of what might be considered prurient or in bad taste.

It’s no surprise, then, that we’ve seen a slew of biopics in recent years: movies that eschew the darkly sexual, depraved, or fraught aspects of biography in favor of empowerment. Gay films have become more concerned with the process of canonization, and the biopic is a favorite vehicle through which to legitimize historical figures, as Gus Van Sant’s Milk did with San Francisco politician Harvey Milk or The Imitation Game did with British WWII code-cracker Alan Turing. The 2017 Billie Jean King biopic Battle of the Sexes sanitized the complicated and disturbing aspects of King’s relationship with Marilyn Barnett to turn her into an equal-rights hero. Then there’s Roland Emmerich’s 2015 film Stonewall, which went so far as to whitewash history by creating a fictional protagonist — a young, white male character named Danny (Jeremy Irvine) — who moves to New York from the Midwest to throw the first brick during the Stonewall riots of 1969. He’s the surrogate through which we meet the real-life, historical figures of color, including Marsha P. Johnson (Otoja Abit) and Sylvia Rivera, who becomes a “composite” character named Ray (Jonny Beauchamp).

If LGBT films today are framed by gay marriage, then the queer films of Haynes’s day, in the late ’80s and early ’90s, were defined by the AIDS crisis. The worlds of activism, art, experimental film, and cheap New York City rent collided to create a fertile time the film critic B. Ruby Rich named New Queer Cinema. New Queer Cinema had punch and swagger; it was acerbic, witty, subversive, and campy, spanning a vast range of aesthetics, genres, and histories, led by a group of filmmakers and artists that eventually included Haynes, Van Sant, Jennie Livingston, Isaac Julien, Sadie Benning, Marlon Riggs, Cheryl Dunye, and many others. Most importantly, they didn’t care about approval or acceptance. Film scholar Michele Aaron wrote that the defining feature of New Queer Cinema was an attitude of “defiance” — whether it was the HIV-positive cop-killers on the run in Gregg Araki’s The Living End or the homicidal couple that consecrates their self-sanctioned marriage by murdering a child in Tom Kalin’s Swoon, these were filmmakers who found liberation by embracing the margins. They were bold, sexy, dangerous, and depraved — radical in both content and form. Instead of running away from the accusation that queers were deviants, degenerates, and criminals, NQC films embraced it. When the Gay Liberation Front called out “Perverts of the world unite!” it was NQC that heard that call.

In fact, much of what made New Queer Cinema so transgressive is how it reimagined history in joyous, sometimes twisted ways. There are singing anuses in John Greyson’s musical Zero Patience, a historical corrective about Gaëtan Dugas, the Canadian flight attendant who had been vilified by the media and scientific community as “patient zero” of the AIDS crisis. Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman created a fictional queer black actress named Fae Richards as a way to reimagine classic Hollywood. Derek Jarman’s exquisite Edward II, an adaptation of the Christopher Marlowe history play, makes King Edward II and Piers Gaveston’s relationship the central narrative. And Isaac Julien’s Looking for Langston (1989), a nonnarrative film about Langston Hughes, mixes archival footage with fiction to build a genealogy of queer black men beginning with the Harlem Renaissance, moving to James Baldwin and then the present. All of these films search in-between the lines of the historical record, for the people that history forgot. Even today, they ask: Who keeps the historical record?

It’s dismaying, then, to see that subversion erode over time. Perhaps portending its ultimate demise, Haynes’s Poison won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 1991, while Jennie Livingston’s documentary about the Harlem ball scene, Paris Is Burning, won the documentary prize. Hollywood seized upon the burgeoning market for LGBT cinema (think Philadelphia and In & Out), and by 1999, New York Times described the films at the New York Lesbian and Gay Film Festival as “giddy gay lite.” What was once queer and fringe had been gentrified into something more easily categorizable, consumable, and thus marketable.

This isn’t to say that a queer sensibility — something subversive, punk, and anti-authoritarian — has vanished. Queerness, by nature, is hard to define, and equally hard to stamp out. There have certainly been queer films in the intervening years, including But I’m a Cheerleader and Hedwig and the Angry Inch. More recently, you can see it in BPM, Robin Campillo’s expansive film about ACT UP in the early ’90s in Paris, where love for community, and a symphony of voices arguing, protesting, and fucking fill the film; it’s in the liminality of Moonlight, where what often resonates are the things left unsaid; it’s in the wildness of The Ornithologist, the brashness of Xavier Dolan films, the claustrophobia of the aforementioned Duck Butter, and the films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Cui Zi’en. You may notice that many of these weren’t made within the Hollywood machinery. And if this year’s Cannes Film Festival lineup is any indication, queer foreign films will continue to lead the charge, with the Kenyan coming-of-age story Rafiki, the Argentinian murder-twink film The Angel, and a slew of French films including Gaspar Noé’s dance-horror movie Climax, Sauvage, Knife + Heart, and Sorry Angel. Meanwhile, in America, coming up we have The Miseducation of Cameron Post (think a humorless But I’m a Cheerleader); Ideal Home, a comedy where Paul Rudd and Steve Coogan play a wealthy couple suddenly raising a kid; the Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody starring Rami Malek that has already been accused of “hetwashing”; and a Love, Simon look-alike, Alex Strangelove.

Hollywood liberalism and the marketplace have converged to create an environment where being “the first” is confused with innovation, when actually, it’s just evidence that gay people can be commercially viable, too. While the AIDS crisis produced a rupture that galvanized art and activism, today we’re in a paradigm where a cadre of gay men and women are a part of the Establishment, and there is a greater compulsion to work within channels of power rather than outside of them. The era of gay marriage has created a profound complacency and misunderstanding that the biggest fight has been won; in fact, it’s only further obscured real and present dangers. In the U.S., there is still no robust, federal anti-discrimination law; there’s an alarming HIV epidemic among queer black people, homelessness, and ongoing violence against trans people. There is a pervasive sense that if you are not white and powerful, you will be left to die. We need to recover a cinematic language that captures the exigencies of queer American life, its skin and smoke, thickness and fragility. We need a queer cinema that thinks beyond the limits of commercial tribalism, beauty, and wealth, and toward new, imagined futures. We need a queer cinema that fights back.

We’ve been so excited for the Queen biopic to hit theaters, and after significant cast changes and a few teaser images, we finally get our first look at the film with the new trailer.

Queen and the band’s frontman Freddie Mercury are unquestionable rock legends. Their music is instantly recognizable, and they defied stereotype and convention at every turn. The band is legendary, and a biopic on Mercury and Queen has been long overdue.

Happily, the first trailer for that biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody, is here and backed by some of Queen’s most iconic songs as it highlights what trailblazers Freddie Mercury and the rest of Queen were. The trailer highlights how unique their music was, specifically the song “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and shows us what Mercury went through to get his musical vision out to the world just as he envisioned it. Basically, this is a must-watch for any fans of Mercury, Queen, or even just good music.

If you’ve been following the creation of this movie, it’s been quite a long road to get this movie made. Originally, the role of Freddie Mercury was to be played by Sacha Baron Cohen, a casting announcement that came way back in 2010. While Baron Cohen ultimately dropped out in 20133 due to creative differences with Mercury’s bandmates, Mr. Robot star Rami Malek ultimately stepped in to play the legendary rock star.

And from the looks of the trailer, Malek seems to do a great job embodying Mercury. Not only does the film do a great job making Malek look like Mercury, but he also seems to embody that effortless coolness that made Mercury so iconic.

The film will tell the story of Queen’s meteoric rise into rock legend, the ways Mercury’s personal problems nearly destroyed the band, and their triumphant return and now-legendary performance on the eve of Live Aid.

This film has been in the works for a long time, and luckily, you don’t have to wait much longer to see it for yourself. Bohemian Rhapsody opens in theaters on November 2, and we just can’t wait.

The post The first trailer for Queen biopic ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ will rock you appeared first on Hypable.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine—the Andy Samberg television show about cops that you thought everyone was watching because it was, in fact, funny but somehow you’d only seen, like, two episodes—has been cancelled. Happy, you monster?

Read more...