Lists, Damn Lists, and Critical Correctness
Love them or hate them, lists are now firmly established—along with cats and porn—among the apex predators of the modern internet.
Dave Thompson
· 12 min read
Art & Culture
A collection of 849 posts
Never Neverland
The new Michael Jackson biopic and the campaign to whitewash the King of Pop’s reputation.
Andrew Hammel
· 32 min read
Homeric Heresies
Outrage over a black Helen of Troy misunderstands the long Western tradition of radically reinventing classical myths.
Cathy Young
· 11 min read
A Man for All Seasons
Susan Owens’s handsome new monograph reconsiders the life and career of the English landscape painter John Constable.
Graham Daseler
· 9 min read
A Deceitful Propaganda Campaign Marketed as a ‘Prank’
CBC-funded TV producers using fake names are ambushing Canadians who take a positive view of their country—including an 82-year-old Ontario grandfather who invited the film crew into his home.
Jonathan Kay
· 10 min read
Frampton Comes Alive! at Fifty
The improbable story of rock’s greatest live album.
Jacob Bielecki
· 13 min read
Staring at the Sea
It would be very difficult to make a great film from a source as flawed as Camus’s novel, but Ozon has managed to make a very good one.
Jaspreet Singh Boparai
· 19 min read
In the Air Tonight
How Phil Collins created the pop sound that defined the 1980s.
Jacob Bielecki
· 12 min read
Infinite Ingenuity: Andy Weir’s Optimistic Vision in ‘Project Hail Mary’
The new film 'Project Hail Mary' based on Andy Weir's bestselling novel, celebrates scientific problem-solving on a cosmic scale. There are striking parallels with David Deutsch's radical optimism.
Iona Italia
· 14 min read
Rohmer at Camelot
Éric Rohmer’s Perceval le Gallois (1978) vividly recreates the imaginative world in which the people of the Middle Ages lived inside their heads.
Charlotte Allen
· 22 min read
Doomscrolling into Adulthood
Reflections on the crisis of meaning afflicting not only Gen Z but all of us who are too online.
Iona Italia
· 7 min read
Love and Theft
Luc Besson’s romantic adaptation of the Dracula story owes an unacknowledged debt to Eiko Ishioka, the visionary designer of Francis Cord Coppola’s 1992 classic.
Yuki Zeman
· 11 min read
The Edifice Complex
Monuments don’t create legacy; they merely memorialise it.
Timothy Devinney
· 6 min read
Parallel Kingdom
Nick Cave’s beautiful and tragic music brings redemptive catharsis to a grief-stricken city.
Mark Mordue
· 10 min read
James Cameron Goes Native
‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ is a Rousseau-esque oikophobic fantasy of evil humans and noble savage aliens.
William Barker
· 7 min read