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Music

How Projecting a Shade of Mystery Leads to Becoming an Object of Obsession

There’s a plethora of artists forging a following through social media, but only a few have become ­­­true subjects of fascination by just staying silent.

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TV

So, What Exactly IS Quibi?

During this month’s Super Bowl and Oscar ceremony, Quibi finally unveiled their first advertisements ushering us into a new world of mobile content. The commercials didn’t show too much, only a teaser of what was to come. But even based off the advertisements, I still don’t think the public is aware of what Quibi actually is.

Categories
Film

Here’s Who Will Win at the 92nd Academy Awards

Another year, another post trying to make sense of this bull shit ceremony that more often than not disappoints instead of transcends. There were some surprises upon announcement day (Florence Pugh, The Lighthouse’s cinematography nomination, Rian Johnson’s writing nomination), but at the end of the day, you and I both know none of these has a shot in hell in winning.

Categories
Music

WTF is 100 Gecs?

 

Last month, a topic began trending on Twitter that seemed just a little out of the ordinary. It wasn’t a celebrity’s name, or the name of a place, or a natural disaster, or “Happy National Whatever-the-fuck” day. No one was sure exactly what it was, the specifics being so vague and the tweets just as confusing. It wasn’t until Phoebe Bridgers tweeted “five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred gecs” when I discovered the phrase for the first time.

Categories
Film

What is ‘Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood’ REALLY About?

The film starts with an interview of Rick Dalton (DiCaprio) and Cliff Booth (Pitt) on the set of the NBC show Bounty Law. The image of the two actors in the same frame alone is already worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The exuberance jumps off the screen, which is precisely what separates Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood from today’s blockbusters – its extravagant vision is one that is not necessarily done anymore (save maybe for franchises), but one that truly feels out of its time, and also feels like it’s of the time the film depicts. That’s what, essentially, is at the soul of this film: a time that has long died off where personality and name were enough for movies to make a buck.

Categories
Music

What Happened Last Weekend with Boards of Canada’s ‘Societas X Tape’?

Upon the announcement of their NTS Radio take over this past weekend, Warp Records scheduled certain hours of exclusive remixes, live performances, and unreleased material from just about every artist on their roster. Some artists curated mixes, others played exclusively new material. However, one name on that schedule did catch the attention of every Warp Records enthusiast.

Categories
TV

The Inoculating Effects of HBO’s ‘Chernobyl’

There’s a line somewhere early on in HBO’s Chernobyl, in which Valery Legasov (Jared Harris) explains to Boris Shcherbina (Stellan Skarsgård) about how to put out the fire from the exploded nuclear reactor, in which Legasov states “You’re dealing with something that has never been seen before on this planet.” This line, essentially, is what encapsulates what’s so special about the HBO mini-series – the capability of human self-destruction, and the many layers of how the show can be analyzed.

Categories
Music

Inside The Flying Lotus “Flamagra” Listening Party

The term listening party has always thrown me off. It’s almost a tease in the name itself – sometimes they’re cool experiences, other times they’re not as cool as they’re made out to be, maybe due to the host wanting a large turnout just so they can guarantee they’ll have a line that stretches around the block.

Categories
Film TV

How the WGA-ATA Conflict is Reshaping How Hollywood Works

For the non-writers outside of the Hollywood sphere, there’s been a change happening lately that’ll likely impact how your favorite shows are made. Last month, the ATA (Association of Talent Agents) failed to update its policies in accordance with their contract with the WGA (Writer’s Guild of America), which expired on April 7th. As a result, the WGA asked its members to fire their agents if they did not comply with the WGA’s demands of a change of contract, which has to deal with how agents are paid via staffing and payments of their clients.

Categories
Music

Does “Old Town Road” Signify a New Phase in Musical Evolution?

An anomaly occurred just a little less than a month ago, when Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” charted on the Country Billboard chart. It was, at that time, maybe taken as a joke. But then you started listening to it… and you couldn’t really tell what the song was. Was it a country song, but made with hip-hop instruments? Or vice-versa? Regardless if it feels like a glazed-donut dipped into an orange 7/11 Big-Gulp, the song itself represents perhaps a new age in contemporary music.