Real Movie Magic: The Oscars Find “Moonlight” In The End

If the Academy Awards were trying to conceive of a way to stay interesting, to keep atop the social media conversation, there were worse ways to do it. Believe me, they’ve tried — even elsewhere on last night’s broadcast. Thanks to a stunning last second reversal in the Best Picture category, everyone is talking about the Oscars this morning. There’s a lot to unpack here. (Not least of which: How did Warren Beatty end up with an Oscar in his hand as he retook the mic in the show’s final moments?) And look at that, we’ve largely set aside the award show’s more, uh, problematic elements.

Read Article →

Crushing Regret 2017: A Review of our Pre-Season NBA Picks Back East

I’d like to remind everyone that these were meant to be our under the radar predictions — that’s why we got through the West yesterday without really mentioning the Warriors and why you’ll see a noticeable absence of Cavaliers talk today. You can find that stuff anywhere; you come here because you probably clicked on the wrong link, and we intend to reward that careless behaviour with some real out-of-the-box NBA predictions!

Read Article →

Crushing Regret 2017: A Review of Our Pre-season NBA Picks Out West

This really needs no further introduction. You can read our Western Conference Preview here and our Eastern Conference preview here, just for your own schadenfreude-al enjoyment. Hush, it can be a verb. Last time we started with the East, so this time we’ll make like Fieval, and go West. Before the bloodletting starts, let’s see if we managed to get anything right.

Read Article →

Which Villains Might We See In “The Defenders?”

Just as the MCU continues to rolls on the big screen, the studio’s Netflix series are also marching on. Iron Fist, the latest show, will debut in March, to be followed by The Defenders, a sort of mini-Avengers project that will unite Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, and Iron Fist as a crime-fighting team. We don’t know too much about which Marvel comics bad guys the Defenders will be taking on, but these are a few candidates.

Read Article →

How to Survive One “Bad Day at Black Rock”

John Struges’ Bad Day at Black Rock is a lean 81 minutes, largely set in one sparse locale, and driven by perhaps the most basic of narrative conceits: a stranger comes to town. While the film is not a golden age Hollywood “message” movie per se, it does indeed have something to say. After viewing it in 2017 and reflecting on its origins as a short story first published 70 years ago, what’s most remarkable is how malleable that message turns out to be.

Read Article →

SP Mix: The xx and Julie Byrne Embrace Wide-Eyed Joy

George Harrison created joyous music under the right circumstances. Nothing else in his solo career quite stood up to that impassioned post-Beatles period, where years of ideas culminated into one album. For many artists, it’s the same deal: you need the right inspiration to make music that sounds good, but feels good too. For The xx and Julie Byrne, that inspiration has arrived; both artists created beautiful, jubilant albums this month, and both did it in very different ways.

Read Article →