Zack Snyder probably didn’t consciously rip off David Fincher’s Fight Club palette for his grim and gritty idio-epic Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice but there is some potency in that superhero work having the same asylum aesthetic as one of film’s most durable dissociative personality tales. What is Batman if not Bruce Wayne’s own personal Tyler […]
Get That Money: The Get Down, Atlanta and the Deconstruction of Music Biz Glamor
Basically since its inception, pop music has put as much effort into glamorizing what happens behind the scenes as what happens in front of it. The pop stars of the modern era replaced folk heroes not just in popular opinion but also in terms of mythbuilding, with their origin stories as important to their success […]
The Best K-Pop of 2015
Another year, another thousand K-Pop videos for Western viewers to sift through and oggle at. I’d like to apologize in advance if your fav isn’t on this (totally subjective and probably arbitrary) list, but check out this playlist with other songs and videos I liked this year including some excellent album tracks (I restricted this […]
Cannibals, Midwesterners, and Talking Horses: The Best TV of 2015
TV in 2015 was wonderfully weird and eclectic, with basic cable taking up more of the critical conversation and Netflix continuing its ascent as a major player. Our favorite shows this year ran the gamut, from pop superheroics on the CW to the finales of long running faves like Mad Men to new entries from emerging […]
A True Freak Must Be Born: Will Freakshow Be American Horror Story’s Best Season Yet?
Few works are as difficult to critically evaluate as each new season of American Horror Story. From its shifting “anthology” format to its gleeful abandonment of the massive number of plotlines each season cranks out to its total adherence to a philosophy of style over substance, AHS isn’t a television series anyone would truly call “great,” yet every […]
Aw Geez: Is the New Fargo Series a Worthy Inheritor to the Coens’ Original?
Like a lot of people, I was perplexed when I first heard Fargo was being remade as a tv miniseries (technically re-remade, since it already spawned one unaired pilot). One of the Coen Brothers’ best workers, the film doesn’t exactly lend itself to further exploration with its relatively high body count and stark ending. Beyond […]
American Horror Story: Coven “Bitchcraft” Review
Nick Hanover: I blame you for my entrance into the world of American Horror Story, Dylan. If it hadn’t been for your review of the first season and that laundry list of absurdities that made up the major plot points of the first season, I never would have wound up going down this rabbit hole […]
