In The Six Grandfathers, Mount Rushmore, and our national identity July 8, ECH editor Ray Miller-Still mentions the Sioux name for Mount Rushmore no less than eight times.

He goes on to list the sins of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt. What a pity. The writer correctly points out that the four images were originally conceived to represent the founding, expansion, preservation and unification of the United States. I would guess that most visitors to the site understand that. Some people apparently now believe that statues, carvings and other images of historical Americans are similar (in a way) to the saints of the Catholic Church, i.e. that they are to be personally hallowed because of their perfection, but that is not true in the case of American icons they are not saints. Their images represent an idea and an ideal most often related to an accomplishment intended to invoke inspiration, aspiration and appreciation but not veneration.

Unfortunately it seems that we have lost the ability to consider this type of nuance, subtlety and ambiguity in our national discussions. What a pity. About 10 years ago, I was inspired by an article in the Wall Street Journal by Bret Stephens entitled Our Incompetent Civilization. The principles he cited are timeless, namely that there are limits to virtue and that while we must learn from history we cannot let it cripple us. As we try to cleanse our history we go too far, we inflict a deeply debilitating wound on ourselves a self loathing that is polarizing and immobilizing. What a pity.

Orwell said, The most effective way to destroy a people is to deny and obliterate their understanding of their own history. The high priests of the new totalitarianism preach this gospel of nihilism. Theyre unaware that their scripture and orthodoxy are not new, it never works, it leads to destruction but I fear we will travel down this dangerous path anew. Again, what a pity.

Brian DiNielli

Enumclaw

Talk to us

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To share your opinion for publication, submit a letter through our website https://www.courierherald.com/submit-letter/. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. (Well only publish your name and hometown.) Please keep letters to 500 words or less.

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We've lost our ability to be nuanced about the past | Courier-Herald - Enumclaw Courier-Herald

Oozing Wound. Image: Joe Martinez Jr

Chicago band Oozing Wound are live-streaming a full show from the The Windmill, Brixton, on Saturday 18 July from 11am to 11pm British summer time (UTC+01)

The live video will be streamed in HD quality byMusic Everywhere.

They suggest that interested people shouldregister in advanceto avoid problems in catching the stream.

Oozing Wounds label Thrill Jockey say they are a mass of contradictions; weed lovers whose music hits with a breakneck head-banging force, dealing with nihilism, yet remains fun.

Oozing Wound emerged from the Chicago underground noise warehouse scene and their music is equal parts sludge and thrash, noise and riff-loaded rock.

Guitarist and vocalist Zack Weil, drummer Kyle Reynolds and bassist Kevin Cribbin blend ferocious energy, sonic experiments and blunt lyricism on their latest recording,High Anxiety.

The Windmill is currently operating as a socially distanced pub from 5 to 11pm Monday to Thursday; from 5pm to 1amon Fridays; noon to 1am on Saturdays; and noon to 11pm on Sundays.

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/savewindmillbrixton

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Windmill Brixton hosts thrash live-stream - Brixton Blog

The race debate is rapidly descending into a one-note diatribe where white accountability has become the only game in town. White liberal voices now dominate an increasingly febrile narrative but alongside mainstream flagellations about systemic racism and white supremacy, a less hysterical, more nuanced discussion is taking place.

Black centrist and conservative intellectuals have been quietly trying to unpick whats really been going on across western democracies. Their conclusions run counter to the mainstream story we are all being impelled to sign up to, namely that injustice runs deeper than mere skin color.

Conservative economist and social theorist Thomas Sowell, who recently turned 90, has been trying to open up just such a debate for over five decades but media elites have largely ignored his well-mannered persistence in favor of a noisier, more divisive grievance lobby. Sowell, currently a senior fellow at Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution, has criticized simplistic arguments around reparations and social justice, arguing that a culture of victimhood, stoked by white liberals is actually holding black men in particular back. In his books The Economics and Politics of Race,Ethnic AmericaandAffirmative Action Around the World, Sowell suggests that many problems identified with African Americans are anything but unique. He argues that for equality to exist, the most disadvantaged in our society need to be lifted out of the prison of low expectation and victimhood regardless of race. Rather than encouraging the most vulnerable to destroy the moral virtues and institutions designed to play to their better natures and thus improve life-chances, Sowell believes we should be setting in place measures that encourage full participation in the structures that have kept America functioning across the centuries and yes that includes embracing capitalism and the nuclear family. Instead of focusing entirely on the unfairness of the system, those in power should be inspiring a generation to better themselves through a radically improved education system, a return to personal responsibility and a belief in something beyond the narrow confines of the self in other words workable solutions that avoid empty nihilism and easy despair.

***Get a digital subscription toThe Spectator.Try a month free, then just $3.99 a month***

Black conservatives such as Sowell have always struggled to be heard above the din of the ideologues but now a younger, more vocal demographic has entered the fray via podcasts and long form discussion forums. This week biologist and evolutionary theorist Bret Weinstein assembled a smorgasbord of mostly young African American academics in a fascinating two-hour round table discussion that tries valiantly to unravel the root causes of the current malaise. One of the guests, Chlo Valdary who developed the Theory of Enchantment, an innovative framework for social emotional learning, believes that America is experiencing a crisis of meaning and that spiritual undernourishment has led to a retreat into polarizing groupthink where the cult of diversity and inclusion has singularly failed on its promise to unite. In this expanding spiritual void, politics has become the new religion and the popularity of books such as Robin diAngelos White Fragility reflect a culture that demands we turn on ourselves rather than seek out solutions. But Valdary remains optimistic, believing that the majority of Americans have grown tired of being whipped into a frenzy by an increasingly infantilized, Twitter-mob-obsessed media.

Elsewhere black conservative thinkers such as Larry Elder and Candace Owens are daring to push back against the current orthodoxy even if that means being demonized and hounded by an indignant, mainly white liberal stronghold who simply cannot stomach dissenting voices especially from a racial demographic they believe owes them unwavering loyalty.

Anyone who feels disheartened by the culture wars rapid descent into ad hominem attack and empty posturing should seek out these brave new voices who seem determined to unite rather than divide.

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Is this the sanest debate on race yet? - The Spectator USA

Man can live without science, he can live without bread, but without beauty, he could no longer live because there would no longer be anything to do to the world. The whole secret is here, the whole of history is here. (Dostoevsky)

Laotzes and Kants respective remarks about beauty as the usefulness of the useless, and purposiveness without purpose, are recalled in Martha Nasubaums choice of the title of her work Nor for Profit: Why Democracy Needs Humanities.

Given the modern penchant for utility and commodification that reserves only a small corner for arts in museums and seeks profit by organising art exhibitions, and impoverished modern souls not ready to live and die for beauty, the twentieth century has been the ugliest as Ananda Coomaraswamy noted. Our standard references to immortal works of art and architecture usually go to ancient or medieval times against traditional cultures that glorified God by cultivating beauty within and without,

It is imperative to take stock of arts that have been the temple of beauty and are today widely sought to partly fulfil our hunger for transcendence. We need to take note of the role of arts and humanities in the central task of fashioning humans and giving them the motivation to live soulfully or meaningfully and in the refinement of culture as against civilisation, (a distinction often ignored). Cultivating beauty, which is said to be the fulfilment of religion (Ihsan is Husn paida kerden) in a famous prophetic tradition (hadith-i-Jibriel) is what has been forgotten despite a penchant for the so-called beauty industry.

Cultivating beauty is what has been forgotten despite a penchant for the so-called beauty industry

According to all traditions, it is possible to reclaim the paradise whose image we harbour deep inside and it is education that involves humanities that has a role here. In an age when politicians and even universities might claim that the humanities dont matter and we ought to steer students into science, technology, engineering and math and we find such things as the recent report of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on the crisis in the Humanities entitled The Heart of the Matter, philosopher and novelist Rebecca Goldstein has been, thus, paraphrased by a reviewer: The humanities assert the sanctity of the individual, help us puzzle out the meaning of existence, teach us to examine our assumptions and urge us to consider others assumptions, she said. The study of the humanities might be under siege right now, but it will prevail, she said. Nietzsche, whose fascination with a sort of post-religious or supra-religious mysticism is little appreciated, didnt fail to recognise that religion was useful for providing meaning, community, and helping to deal with the problems of life. His first suggestion was to replace religion with philosophy, art, music, literature, theatre, and other parts of the humanities to provide similar benefits. Art indeed has been central to postmodern philosophers in the task of overcoming nihilism. It is central to Nietzsche and Heidegger and we can find its contemporary articulation in All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly. The role of art, of tragedy, of play, of beauty, of everything, that humanities engage with is writ large in the pages of every contemporary text that treats, in non-religious or non-theistic terms, the question of meaning. Arnold has been proved right. It is another matter how far this endeavour succeeds and whether we need to contend with it.

It is sad to note that despite realising the significance of art and beauty, they stand exiled from our midst. We have failed to take sufficient note of pleas of artists wedded to beauty. Against traditional man, we have largely forgotten beauty in our houses, in our surroundings, in cities, in villages, in souls. And that explains suffocating lives we live. It is museums that are beautiful and they are generally from ages past when mans religion was a beauty and not utility. Today, our architecture is, generally speaking, designed for utility or vanity. And that has given us a largely ugly, homogeneous, and inhospitable world where all cities look alike and you can find suffocating monotony of banks, malls, schools, hospitals that are designed without regard for vivifying symbolism and for the dead customers/clients/alienated individuals or hired workers. They are best for the dead.

To be true to human or better mans divine image is the heart of humanities as traditionally conceived. Humanities are not to be reduced to sciences but taken as guardians of culture, as creators of value that others then exchange. In a country where the role of God/Sacred or religion is considered important in the framing of the constitution, humanities and their place and funding need to be a priority even if it would be led to question current framing of humanities in the dominant secularizing episteme. Humanities are central to the task of fashioning souls so should be autonomous as madrasahs have been or funded by the community.

Or Madrasahs have to be integrated to universities or revitalized in the classical sense when they performed the role of humanities. A few suggestions from Manazar Ahsan Gilani and Newman regarding marrying the classical idea of university/madrassah with the modern institutions substituting them are worth considering in this context.

Beauty, as the splendour of the Truth and attractive power of the Good or perfection, is also a noetic (knowledge giving) beside an aesthetic notion and satisfies that longing to know the Real or what is considered absolute. Invoking the theology of the aesthetic and emphasising reading art as a ritual for purification and support to contemplation one could counter pervasive crisis of meaning or values in postmodernity that has impacted humanities construction of the human. Martin Lings study Shakespeare in the Light of Sacred Art and Harold Blooms Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human may be read to retrieve the torn and forgotten image of the human, pontifical theomorphic man in the wake of the dominance of sciences at the cost of humanities in the modern world.

The writer can be reached at marooof123@yahoo.com

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Art, beauty and the task of humanities - Daily Times

In The Six Grandfathers, Mount Rushmore, and our national identity July 8, ECH editor Ray Miller-Still mentions the Sioux name for Mount Rushmore no less than eight times.

He goes on to list the sins of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt. What a pity. The writer correctly points out that the four images were originally conceived to represent the founding, expansion, preservation and unification of the United States. I would guess that most visitors to the site understand that. Some people apparently now believe that statues, carvings and other images of historical Americans are similar (in a way) to the saints of the Catholic Church, i.e. that they are to be personally hallowed because of their perfection, but that is not true in the case of American icons they are not saints. Their images represent an idea and an ideal most often related to an accomplishment intended to invoke inspiration, aspiration and appreciation but not veneration.

Unfortunately it seems that we have lost the ability to consider this type of nuance, subtlety and ambiguity in our national discussions. What a pity. About 10 years ago, I was inspired by an article in the Wall Street Journal by Bret Stephens entitled Our Incompetent Civilization. The principles he cited are timeless, namely that there are limits to virtue and that while we must learn from history we cannot let it cripple us. As we try to cleanse our history we go too far, we inflict a deeply debilitating wound on ourselves a self loathing that is polarizing and immobilizing. What a pity.

Orwell said, The most effective way to destroy a people is to deny and obliterate their understanding of their own history. The high priests of the new totalitarianism preach this gospel of nihilism. Theyre unaware that their scripture and orthodoxy are not new, it never works, it leads to destruction but I fear we will travel down this dangerous path anew. Again, what a pity.

Brian DiNielli

Enumclaw

Talk to us

Please share your story tips by emailing editor@courierherald.com.

To share your opinion for publication, submit a letter through our website https://www.courierherald.com/submit-letter/. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. (Well only publish your name and hometown.) Please keep letters to 500 words or less.

Follow this link:

Weve lost our ability to be nuanced about the... - Enumclaw Courier-Herald

Atomic Blonde is a film about living through the end of the world.

Adapted from Antony Johnston and Sam Harts graphic novel The Coldest City, David Leitchs espionage thriller is set primarily in Berlin against the backdrop of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The individual elements of the plot are standard spy thriller stuff: There are two sides fighting over a MacGuffin that could radically alter the balance of power, several untrustworthy double agents, innocents who get caught in the crossfire.

Indeed, Atomic Blonde seems to deliberately invite comparisons to John le Carrs Cold War thrillers. Toby Jones is cast as a shady and careerist MI6 handler, evoking his role in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy six years earlier. The film refers to the real-life C as the head of British intelligence operations to add a hint of authenticity, just like le Carrs novels. Even the title of the source comic feels like an allusion to le Carrs own Berlin-set masterpiece, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold.

However, what distinguishes Atomic Blonde from the work of le Carr is the way in which the film filters le Carrs cynicism and wariness through a fin de sicle nihilism. Le Carrs plots tend to be tight and well-structured; his characters suffer at the whims of forces outside their control, but those forces at least move according to a discernible internal logic. In contrast, the plot of Atomic Blonde is a deliberate mess. Its character motivations are fuzzy, its internal logic hazy at best.

The plot of the movie focuses on MI6 agent Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron), who is dispatched to Berlin to solve the murder of James Gascoigne (Sam Hargrave) and identify the identity of the double-agent Satchel, who has been passing British secrets to the Russians. Her point of contact is local agent David Percival (James McAvoy), who has in the absence of a British embassy to control him gone somewhat native.

The plot of Atomic Blonde makes more sense in terms of spy movie clichs than it does in terms of narrative coherence. Unlike Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, the film is not a mystery. The character arcs seem determined by characters position in the plot and the expectations of the genre, rather than developing organically. Percival inevitably serves as Lorraines primary antagonist. Lorraine is inevitably revealed to be Satchel, working for the Americans while playing the British and Russians.

Atomic Blonde is aware of this. Late in the film, Lorraine is watching MTV News as host Kurt Loder broaches the big question of November 1989, Sampling: is it art, or is it just plagiarism? The ending of the movie pushes this idea to the fore, with Lorraine manipulating and splicing recordings to falsify audio evidence that Percival was Satchel all along. Words and ideas are taken out of context, jumbled up, and restructured to present a disjointed but familiar narrative.

This is because Atomic Blonde is more about mood than it is about actual plot. Indeed, the movie repeatedly underscores that the plot of the movie is entirely pointless. Lorraine is told that she has been dispatched to Berlin to recover an atomic bomb of information that could extend the Cold War another 40 years, but the audience knows this is nonsense. The film opens with a title card contextualizing events, reminding audiences that the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989.

As a result, everything in Atomic Blonde is completely pointless. Nothing that happens in the film will prolong the Cold War. All the plotting and scheming means absolutely nothing. Lorraine accuses her superiors of wanting nothing more than to clean up their own messes before the Iron Curtain comes crashing down. Atomic Blonde repeatedly juxtaposes Lorraines adventures with the civil protests taking place across the Eastern bloc, the events that will actually bring the Cold War to an end.

The end of the Cold War represented a seismic shift in the political order. Perhaps prematurely, Francis Fukuyama heralded the end of history. Phillip E. Wegner classified the long nineties the gap between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the attacks of Sept. 11 as life between two deaths. President George H.W. Bush would declare that there was a new world order following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War as an ordering principle.

Atomic Blonde embraces the idea of the collapse of the Berlin Wall as an apocalyptic event. West Berlin is portrayed as a truly hedonist space. Cars burning in the night, gunfire flares in the background, fireworks burst in the sky. Percival sees it as a playground, where he has set himself up as something approaching an outlaw king. Even Lorraine becomes embroiled in a doomed affair with French agent Delphine Lasalle (Sofia Boutella).

MI6 classifies Cold War Berlin as the Wild West. Its not an unfair description. Berlin was perhaps the last frontier. The Berlin Wall was one of the last obstructions to globalization, delineating East from West. The Iron Curtain marked the end of the West as firmly as the unyielding Pacific marked the boundaries of the American frontier. The dismantling of the Soviet Union brings all that crashing down. Without borders there can be no liminal spaces. The Berlin Wall was load bearing.

Atomic Blonde reinforces this sense of apocalypse by heightening its style. It juxtaposes horrific violence with catchy pop music (99 Luftballons) or gentle ballads (Father Figure). While the films plot is convoluted nonsense, director of photography Jonathan Sela bathes the film in neon colors to convey mood cool blues, rich reds, alien greens. The films choreography emphasizes the brutality of combat. Lorraines mission might be meaningless, but the pain she feels is real.

Atomic Blonde was released in July 2017. That summer, a lot of walls came crashing down. Two weeks earlier, War of the Planet of the Apes focused on the efforts of the deranged Colonel McCullough (Woody Harrelson) to build a wall to keep out more insanity. Less than a month later, the seventh season finale of Game of Thrones would demolish its own wall, allowing the Night Kings madness to spill forth onto Westeros. Walls and madness seemed linked in the popular imagination.

Of course, none of this was planned or intentional. These examples predate Donald Trumps campaign promise to build a border wall. Game of Thrones had been building to the collapse of that wall since G.R.R. Martin wrote the first book in 1991. Director Matt Reeves insisted that any contemporary parallels in War for the Planet of the Apes were totally unintentional. Atomic Blonde was based on a graphic novel from 2012 about events in 1989. Still, that resonance is inescapable.

This gets at the interesting aspect of the apocalypse at the heart of Atomic Blonde. The audience knows that the world will live through the collapse of the Berlin Wall. As much as Atomic Blonde captures the apocalyptic mood of Berlin on the eve of reunification everything you want is on the other side of fear, promises a neon sign in a dingy basement bar both film and audience understand that the world did not actually end when the wall came crashing down. It simply felt like it did.

This is what is most striking about revisiting Atomic Blonde three years after its release. It is apocalyptic, but it captures the sense of the end of the world as something perpetual and eternal. The world can feel like it is ending, even if it never actually does. This has a strange resonance with the times around the film: the cracks in the established political order during the second decade of the 21st century, two once-in-a-lifetime global recessions, a once-in-a-century pandemic.

Cold War thrillers often present the end of the world in stark terms, through the specter of atomic warfare and nuclear annihilation. These fears even found expression in apocalyptic science fiction of the era. Atomic Blonde takes the structure of a Cold War thriller and applies it to a more existential apocalypse. The threat in Atomic Blonde does not derive from a rigidly defined enemy, but instead from the breakdown of the ordering principles that structure the world itself.

Atomic Blonde understands what it feels like to live through the apocalypse and to discover that the world has not actually ended.

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Atomic Blonde Captures What It Feels Like to Live Through the End of the World - The Escapist

The nineties was a decade known for its cynicism, but it still produced some epic romances, like Titanic. But the genre also delivered some duds too.

After the sentimental warmth and flashy pop of 80s movies, 90s movies captured the nihilism and too-cool-for-school attitude of Generation X with much more cynical fare like Fight Club and Reality Bites. This put love stories in a tough spot, because romance requires writers to be earnest and emotional, but the social climate called for the exact opposite.

RELATED:The 5 Best (& 5 Worst) '90s Comedies

Naturally, the 90s brought some terrible movie romances, just as any decade does, but it also brought some great ones. Oddly enough, one of the greatest 90s love stories came from the mind of Quentin Tarantino. Here are the five best and five worst romance movies from the 90s.

It can be easy for a movie like Groundhog Day to use its high-concept premise as a crutch and fall into clichs, but Danny Rubins masterfully crafted screenplay remains inspired and story-minded in every single scene.

A lot of movie romances dont give their characters a reason to fall in love, which ends up ringing false, but in Groundhog Day, getting stuck reliving the same day forces Bill Murrays curmudgeonly character Phil Connors to grow as a person and learn from his mistakes as he tries to woo Andie MacDowells Rita Hanson.

Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger fell in love on the set of The Marrying Man, and according to reports from the set, it made them both a nightmare to work with. Baldwin threw temper tantrums in which he broke equipment around the set and Basinger refused to do more than one take on any scene (so its no wonder her performance was nominated for a Razzie).

This movies screenplay is credited to Neil Simon, one of the greatest comedy writers who ever lived, which is confusing because the finished movie is entirely devoid of wit and humor.

Tony Scott brought Quentin Tarantinos script for True Romance to the screen as a masterpiece. The only changes the director made to Tarantinos original script were linearizing the story and switching out the tragic ending for a happy one.

RELATED:All Of Quentin Tarantino's Screenplays (Including The Ones He Didn't Direct), Ranked

The movie combines a pulpy crime tale with a gripping love story about an escort who falls for her first client. They steal some cocaine from her pimp and head to Hollywood to sell it. Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette have fantastic chemistry in the lovable lead roles.

Mickey Rourke returned to the role of John Gray from Adrian Lynes 9 Weeks in 1997 for a sequel called Love in Paris (or Another 9 Weeks, as its called in some markets).

The first 9 Weeks movie at least got some excitement out of its erotic overtones; in the sequel, the eroticism falls flat and, against all odds, grows boring.

Cameron Crowes Jerry Maguire starts off as the story of a sports agent, played by Tom Cruise, who leaves his firm and tries to break out on his own, struggling to get anyone to go with him. But the film morphs into a love story when he falls for Rene Zellweger.

Jerry Maguire is the source of some of the most romantic quotes in movie history, including You had me at hello.

Sandra Bullock and Ben Affleck have each starred in plenty of bad romantic comedies in their time, so it came as no surprise when they paired up for a romcom and it was reallybad.

The plot of Forces of Nature stumbles from scene to scene and Bullock and Affleck dont have a dash of chemistry.

Robert Zemeckis Forrest Gump is about a lot of things. Throughout the title characters life, we get a Disney-fied take on major milestones in 20th century American history the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, the Black Panther Party, the rise of Apple, the HIV crisis etc. but at the heart of it all is Forrests love for Jenny.

RELATED:Like A Box Of Chocolates: 10 Wild Behind-The-Scenes Facts About Forrest Gump

Its not a particularly great romance, since Jenny leads on Forrest for decades and only has pity sex with him when shes got an incurable STD, but the fact that Forrests adoration gets him through incredibly tough times is heartwarming.

As the story of two teenage cousins going through puberty alone and falling in love, the first Blue Lagoon movie was pretty creepy, but it was a masterpiece compared to the sequel.

In Return to the Blue Lagoon, Milla Jovovich and Brian Krause star as two new characters who similarly get stranded on a tropical island, come of age, and fall in love. Somehow, it was even worse the second time around.

James Cameron reportedly only made Titanic so that Fox executives would pay for him to dive down and look at the remains of the shipwreck, but for a movie made to fund a hobby, its a cultural landmark.

Cameron uses foreshadowing brilliantly as Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet fall in love, headed toward an inevitable tragedy that only the audience knows is coming.

Nathaniel Hawthornes The Scarlet Letter is one of the most classic works of literature ever written. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of this 1995 adaptation, which deviated wildly from the source material, and not for the better.

The only way to enjoy this version of The Scarlet Letter is to view it as an unintentional comedy. Taken as a parody of the classic story, its hilarious.

NEXT:The 5 Best (& 5 Worst) 2000s Romance Movies

Next Harry Potter: Which Hogwarts Professor Are You Based On Your Chinese Zodiac Type?

Ben Sherlock is a writer, filmmaker, and comedian. In addition to writing for Screen Rant and CBR, covering a wide range of topics from Spider-Man to Scorsese, Ben directs independent films and takes to the stage with his standup material. He's currently in pre-production on his feature directorial debut (and has been for a while, because filmmaking is expensive). Previously, he wrote for Taste of Cinema and BabbleTop.

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The 5 Best (& 5 Worst) '90s Romance Movies | ScreenRant - Screen Rant

Its been a weird year for movies.

Ha. Of course it has. Its been a weird year for everything. The COVID-19 pandemic has closed theaters since March, more or less. Production has ground to a halt. Plans for reopening and release dates for big films like Tenet keep getting pushed back.

Its a mess, but so is everything.

And yet! There have been some really good movies so far in 2020. Granted, you have to watch from your couch or on your laptop, which means a movie like Da 5 Bloods, good as it is, cant be seen the way it was intended to be, on a giant screen with thunderous sound.

But at least you get to see it, provided you have Netflix. And you can always turn up the volume.

You should see it.

In fact, there are several you should see. Here are the 10 best movies of the year so far.

Kelly Reichardt makes exceptional movies, and this is no exception. Shes the perfect antidote to the blockbuster mentality, making small, character driven films. "First Cow"is a little different its the story of a cook and his eventual business partner who cookup a nice little business making oily cakes and selling them to settlers in the Oregon Territory in the 1820s. The problem is that they have to steal milk from the only cow in the territory to make them. In Reichardts hands this is far more tense than it sounds, and by the standards of her films, its practically an action thriller. John Magaro and Orion Lee are outstanding as the two men. The cow is pretty dang good, too (really).

How to watch: Available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime, iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.

The Beastie Boys started out as obnoxious brats, or at least pretending to be so thoroughly that the ruse overtook reality. Who could have guessed Spike Jonzes documentary about them would be the feel-good film of the year? Of course, they changed over the years, matured. Jonze filmed three appearances as part of a tour to promote Beastie Boys Book, but its very much a performance by surviving members Michael Diamond and Adam Horowitz (Adam Yauch died of cancer in 2012.) Its entertaining, funny, the music is good and its unexpectedly moving. Really good stuff.

How to watch: Streaming on Apple TV+.

Jonathan Majors as David, Isiah Whitlock Jr. as Melvin, Norm Lewis as Eddie, Clark Peters as Otis, Delroy Lindo as Paul of "Da 5 Bloods."(Photo: David Lee/Netflix)

Spike Lees had a late-career resurgence; BlacKkKlansman was a welcome return to form, and so is this. Its the story of four Black Vietnam veterans who return to the battlefield of their youth both to find the remains of their beloved leader and take care of a little business. (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is just one of the films that inspired Lee.) Its a little all over the place and theres enough plot for several movies. But Lees direction is, as always, powerful, and Delroy Lindo ought to win in Oscar (if they have them).

How to watch: Streaming on Netflix.

This may not be the best movie on this list, but its probably the coolest. Director Andrew Pattersons feature debut is made to look like an episode of a Twilight Zone-like TV show, but the framing device is just window dressing. The real story is about a small town in New Mexico in the 1950s where strange things start happening one night. We see the goings-on through the actions of a DJ (Jake Horowitz) and a high school girl (Sierra McCormick) as they sort out just who, or what, is causing the weird sounds on the radio waves. Its a little on the nose, story-wise, but the direction is terrific, and its a lot of fun.

How to watch: Streaming on Amazon Prime.

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Yes, its great. It just is. (And yes, it's a movie, sort of.) Lin-Manuel Mirandas groundbreaking musical, about Alexander Hamilton and other founding fathers, wound up on Disney+ thanks to COVID-19 (it was originally set to open in theaters in 2021). The timing, as it turns out, was perfect. Its true that the story merely touches on slavery. But thecasting actors of color as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson (Daveed Diggs is flat-out fantastic) made waves when the musical opened for good reason. Also, Miranda has turned some of the criticism into a conversation about race. Plus, its history you can dance to.

How to watch: Streaming on Disney+.

There are many variations on the Groundhog Day theme; this is one of the best. Andy Samberg has found the perfect role as a low-energy sort trapped in an endless time loop, an unhappy guest at a wedding. Hes smarmy yet likable, and eventually Cristin Milioti (as good or better than Samberg) gets sucked in, too. (A funny, angry J.K. Simmons was already there.) Director Max Barbakow doesnt skimp on the nihilism, much to his credit, and Samberg and Milioti have charmingchemistry. Also: one of Sambergs best lines feels especially relevant now: So this is today. Today is yesterday. And tomorrow is also today.

How to watch: Streaming on Hulu.

If you only know Julia Garner from Ozark, well, lucky you shes a blast as the sly, smart hillbilly Ruth Langmore (and won an Emmy). But you should definitely check out her work here, as a quiet assistant to a powerful producer in Kitty Greens film. It never mentions Harvey Weinstein, but he is a clear inspiration for the abusive boss. Garner quietly, brilliantly reveals the cost of working for someone like this. She soldiers on in the face of it, but the toll is clear and haunting.

How to watch: Available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime, iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.

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Eliza Hittmans judgement-free film, about a teenager traveling to New York with her cousin to get an abortion, is remarkably original. Sidney Flanigan, in her first role, shines as the young woman, whose life in Pennsylvania is depressing. The bulk of the film is a road trip, as the two sort out the dicey finances and the mountains of paperwork and red tape. The scene that gives the film its title is heartbreaking, and perfectly performed.

How to watch: Available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime, iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.

A different kind of role for Hugh Jackman, who plays a meticulous school superintendent who has led the school to glory while systematically ripping it off. Its based on a true story, and director Cory Finley keeps things breezy. Allison Janney is good as Jackmans assistant, whos got her own scams going on. But its really Jackmans film, and he carries it well. (Bonus points for the power-of-journalism story within.)

How to watch: HBO.

"The Lodge" isn't exactly the feel-good story of the year. Know that going in. If you saw directors Severin Fiala and Veronika Franzs Goodnight Mommy, thats no surprise. They dont skimp on the horror. But Riley Keough as a woman about to marry a man with two children makes it all worthwhile. She has an interesting history she grew up in a death cult. She and the children wind up stranded in a winter storm in the lodge of the title. Things go south from there. An exceptionally creepy film.

How to watch: Stream on Hulu; available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime, iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: @goodyk.

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From 'Beastie Boys Story' to 'Hamilton,' these are the best movies of 2020 so far - AZCentral

B.B. King performing at Sing Sing Prison, 1973.

In the summer of 1998, Alexander Cockburn and I spent a few days in North Richmond, California, a battered industrial city just outside of Berkeley. We had just published our book Whiteout on the CIA and drug trafficking and had been invited to speak at a black church about the horrific toll of the drug war on urban America. North Richmond was the Antietam of this senseless slaughter, its neighborhoods ravaged by gang shootings and police killings, most of them fueled by the crack trade abetted by US intelligence agencies to help fund their covert wars in Central America. At the time, North Richmond was staggering under the highest murder rate in California, more than 50 killings per hundred thousand residents. We spent the afternoon helping local organizers and grieving families place over 200 black crosses at sites where drug killings had occurred during the past few years.

After a somber day, Alex and I drove down to Oakland in Cockburns notoriously temperamental 1960 Valiant to see B.B. King perform. King was touring with his big band, under the immaculate direction of pianist Millard Lee, and they were smoking hot that night, opening with a driving rendition of Sweet Little Angel and closing it down 90 minutes later with a fiery version of Let the Good Times Roll. King had swelled to a Pantagruelian girth by then and he spent most of the evening performing from a chair. Even so, his voice remained robust and he picked and bent his notes as soulfully as ever. About halfway through the show, King summoned the bass player to hoist him from his seat. King strolled to the mic and told the crowd that he had spent the afternoon visiting with inmates at San Quentin. I jotted down what he said that night in my notebook. Friends, there are too many of us locked away. Locked away and forgotten. Theyre in prison, but lets not think of them as prisoners. They are people, like you and me, down on their luck. Then he launched into Ten Long Years. Afterwards, Alex told me it was the best concert hed ever heard. (Of course, Cockburn had also made the same snap declaration about a Little Richard gig, during which Alex had nodded off 30 minutes into the performance.)

Thirty years earlier, King released LiveinCook County Jail, a scorching performance recorded before a thousand inmates in one of Chicagos most notorious facilities. The platform King and his band played on during that seminal concert had served as a gallows for executions not too many years earlier. While he was at the jail, King spent the day talking to inmates, about 80 percent of whom were black. They told me how they came to be locked up, King said. They would stay for seven or eight months before the trial took place because they couldnt afford the bail. And then when they did go to trial, if they were guilty, the time was not deducted from the time they were given. And if they were innocent, they got no compensation.

Like Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard, King made a point to perform in prisons and jails for decades until the American incarceration industry became sadistic enough to prevent inmates from enjoying live music. He played a stunning set at Sing Sing with Joan Baez, performed many times at San Quentin and in 1981, invited Congressman John Conyers to attend his concert before 3,000 inmates at the infamous Jackson State Penitentiary in Michigan, then the largest walled prison in the world. When King was asked why he played in prisons so often, he said he had envisioned himself behind bars. Ive never been in trouble myself but I think about, it could have just as easily been B.B. King inside, instead of B.B. King going out there to play.

King was so serious about the state of American prisons that in 1971 he teamed up with defense attorney F. Lee Bailey to start the Foundation for the Advancement of Inmate Rehabilitation and Recreation, which advocated for humane conditions in jailhouses, the education and training of inmates, an end to solitary confinement, and the introduction of more art and music into prison life. The timing for such a campaign couldnt have been more urgent. That very year, Nixon had inaugurated his war on drugs, a cruel and relentless blitzkrieg against black Americans that would eventually ensnare Kings own daughter Patty, landing her in a grim Texas prison. In Nixons own words, scribbled down by HR Haldeman, its all about the blacks.

When King recorded Live inCook County Jail, the US prison population stood at 450,000, less than 100 inmates per 100,000 people. By the time King died in 2015, the US sported the highest incarceration rate in the world, totaling about 2.3 million prisoners, more than 712inmates per 100,000 people. The vast majority are jailed for drug crimes.

Riley B. King, great-grandson of liberated slaves, was born in 1925 on the Berclair cotton plantation outside of Ita Bena. Late in his life, King dispelled any notion that he left rural Mississippi for the neon lure of the big city. Instead, King said he fled Indianola for Memphis out of fear: I saw lynchings, seen people hanging, seen people drug through the streets. I had to get away.

For the next 70 years, the hellhound of race-hatred haunted his trail, claiming friends, family and lovers, as the terrorists in white sheets of his youth mutated into state-sanctioned violence by men in blue. Yet BB King never surrendered to despondency. The great Buddha of the Blues remained a voice of compassion, a voice charged with the faith that no human lifehowever desiccated by the cruelties of the worldis ever beyond reclaiming.

When Im down, I drop the needle on BB King. Almost any record will do, but theres nothing quite like his raucous version of Help the Poor, from Live at the Regal, for psychic uplift. In his singing and playing, I hear the sounds of fierce struggle, of shackles breaking, of unyielding aspiration toward a freer future. Kings music is, and will always remain, an antidote to despair and nihilism.

BB King Live at Sing Sing

Booked UpWhat Im reading this week

Separated: Inside an American TragedyJacob Soboroff(Custom House)

Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the Worlds Most Dangerous ManMary Trump(Simon & Schuster)

The Life and Death of Ancient CitiesGreg Woolf(Oxford)

Sound GrammarWhat Im listening to this week

Bloody NosesRichard Thompson(Bandcamp)

Pursuance: the ColtranesLakecia Benjamin(Bandcamp)

InterloperHoly Wave(Reverberation Appreciation Society)

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Roaming Charges: The Meaning of BB King in the Age of BLM - CounterPunch

After heroically defending a statue that wasnt going to be touched, our county executive hopes that some federal money will come in to plug the massive funding gap the Coronavirus has given Nassau.

Actually, the County has a perpetual funding gap, but this one is really serious this time.

But I have a plan that will not only rescue Nassau, but will enshrine the current administration in the pantheon of Long Islands greatest leaders. (Relax, its a very small Pantheon.)

The countys budget is about $3.6 billion a year. So instead of NIFA just refinancing existing debt and adding in some more to plug the hole, to hell with the Feds, let NIFA bond for $36 billion and fund the County for the next decade. This has several advantages:

1) Since well only be paying debt service, your county tax bill will drop to about $700 a year.

A lot of us will then fall under the SALT cap, and we wont have to listen to any more whining from certain elected officials who are making a career out of something they cant change. I imagine the Countys retail sector should recover handsomely.

2) Sure, the countys debt will balloon, but its not like we havent been doing this for over 30 years, so why complain now? As it is, The Great Long Island Rube is still paying off the Shoreham nuclear plant, so please, no lectures. Consider it policy consistency.

3) Ten years from now the debt will come due, but by that time you will be:A) In BocaB) In AshevilleC) In Beth David Cemetery

So, no worries. Every prior county executive has generally left the county in fiscal ruin, and I expect no different now.

Joking aside, this episode bares the farce that is Nassau County government.

People have to realize something: a construct like NIFA doesnt exist anywhere else in the United States, and no such lifeline has ever been offered to any other municipality.

What generally happens is those municipalities that find themselves in trouble have leaders who make hard decisions. They suffer through these episodes, but the problems get fixed, and they do what they were called on to do.

Ours are thrown a perpetual lifeline, and spared from making the tough calls. In effect, your county, alone, has its very own Federal Reserve window it can borrow from whenever it finds itself in a sling.

This is an escape hatch no other municipality has, and its a free pass for any dounty executive to avoid making the decisions to make the County solvent, or govern with even a hint of a fiduciary responsibility.

Why was Nassau, alone in the entire country, given such an enormous privilege? Simple. You dont have an elected government. What happens is the respective party leaders tee up a candidate for you to vote for.

The winning candidate doesnt really govern. They are simply handed the keys to a perpetual franchise maintained by the CSEA, the PBA, and the NYSUT. They take their orders from them.

That folks, is power. Its also a license to plunder, while keeping the governments hands tied. Its why NIFA was created. To protect the franchise. It has no other reason to exist.

We are now in the second fiscal holocaust in a single decade. And while businesses shutter again, food banks beg for provisions, employment withers, mortgages go unserviced and the county treasurer stands ready to lard on the late fees and penalties, there is one group among us who never pays the price for its own greed, profligacy and nihilism, no matter how hard the economy tanks.

Whos to blame? You are. You allow yourselves to get played like this.

All across this country, governors, mayors and department heads were blindsided inside the space of a month, with revenues in freefall. But theyre doing what they have to do. This is where leadership is tested. Nassau government never faces the consequences of its own actions, and simply makes bagholders out of its own citizens.

Nassaus singular tragedy is that while the post war economy grew it to an unimaginable scale, a political class with the maturity and integrity needed to meet the size of the job never materialized.

And until we get an executive and a Legislature with the courage, public spirit, an unbending commitment to good government and the breadth of imagination to tackle this decades long dysfunction, were stuck.

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Readers Write: My plan to save Nassau County - Blog - The Island Now

For millennials such as myself, Saturday Night Lives run from 2008 through 2013 largely defined our generations comedic personas. The core, absurdly talented MVPs of that era like Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Seth Myers, and Fred Armisen have left the show and springboarded to greater heights. But for as memorable as those performers are, the cast member who quickly came to represent the millennial sense of humor, and in some ways help define it, was Andy Samberg. And while the actor/comedian/producer is getting his flowers for his work in Hulu and NEONs newly released Palm Springs, diehards will tell you Samberg has always been this goodand hes still getting better.

It was Sambergs now-infamous Lazy Sunday which attuned meand many viewersto his particular brand of comedic stylings. At the core of the video was Samberg; his goofy, expressive face contrasted with his sincerity about getting hyped for Sunday movie matinee. The whole video felt like Samberg and his childhood friends turned collaborators Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Tacconecollectively known as The Lonely Islandhad mined my skull, cherrypicking all the right things I loved, and rolling them into a perfect bit of comedy. The sketch is just as funny 15 years laterand thats even before you get to a weirdly prescient Aaron Burr/Alexander Hamilton joke. Samberg and the rest of The Lonely Island gleefully expanded their ambition, scope, and talent with no premise too far afield. A riff on Bonnie and Clyde wherein Clyde has performance anxiety? Gold. Pansexual dudes who are enjoying one last frat-tastic Spring Break ahead of committing themselves to their future husbands? Amazing satire. On and on the brilliance went as Samberg helped to define both YouTube and viral videos in equal measure while establishing SNL as appointment viewing to see what the groups chaotic reign would bring next.

In spite of The Lonleys Islands anarchy, Sambergs leading presence in these sketches provided an ever-persistent goofiness balanced by an everyman affability. Its a useful skill that helped to ground the groups most absurd moments. Its also a tightrope thats taken larger audiences some time to fully suss outespecially when looking at his projects outside of Saturday Night Live. Hot Rod is a ridiculous comedy about the arrested development of a wannabe stuntman in a small town. Its also a moving story about the search for paternal acceptance. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is just as much a This is Spinal Tap (with excellent jokes and incredible musical numbers) for the Justin Bieber generation as it is an exploration of why Schaffer, Taccone, and Samberg will always work well together creatively. Even projects that are seemingly disposablelike Netflixs 2019 The Unauthorized Bash Brother Experiencemange to be deviously smart in the way it garners absolute hilarity out of being too roided out to finish having sex or the burdens of being a successful athlete.

In many ways, time has been Sambergs best friend. Hot Rod and Popstar eventually flourished after theyd been stripped of their initial expectations. Samberg seems happy to plant (cool) beans and let them sit until suddenly, without warning, they explode into fully formed comedic beanstalks. But in those films, the characters arent dissimilar from the roles that defined his SNL Digital Shorts. Samberg isnt changing for audiences but instead waiting for them to catch up. Some of that has happened already; while Brooklyn Nine-Nine will certainly change in the wake of recent events, the show functions best when Sambergs Jake Peralta (a role in which he won a Golden Globe) gets to be as weird as possible within his own surreal work family. The show creates a Cheers-esque environment by just being a deeply pleasant hangout show, complete with a tone thats equal parts warm and hilarious in its own way.

But if the initial reaction to Palm Springsis any indication, audiences have finally caught up. [Ed. note: Spoilers for Palm Springs follow.] The biggest Sundance seller of all time by a nice amount features the actor at his most Sambergian, clad in a bathing suit and a Hawaiian shirt. Sambergs Nyles has already been living in one of those infinite-time-loop situations that you might have heard about for quite some time before Cristin Miliotis Sarah inadvertently joins him. Nyles has fully accepted his fate, declaring to Sarah in between sips of beer, I decided a while ago to sort of give up and stop trying to make sense of things altogether because the only way to really live in this is to embrace the fact that nothing matters. Nyles cynical affect may appear to fly in the face of what we typically expect from a Samberg character, but hes explored nihilism before in his work with Lonely Island (Bash Brothers, in particular, has heaps of it). But its typically been deployed in service of a joke. In Palm Springs, the dourness stands in equal measure with the comedy; neither part ever threatens to overtake the other. This helps to foster a tone for the film thats serious but never depressing or joyless. Its a deeply smart execution of two opposing ideas that Samberg masterfully balances, making the whole movie feel like a watershed moment for him in terms of showing audiences the true breadth of his range.

Palm Springs is full of contradictions. Its heartwarming in the face of an oppressively dour circumstance, equal parts comedy and drama, immature yet adult, and trenchant in a way hes always been. After all, who hasnt felt like theyre living their own version of Groundhog Day as quarantine continues? Palm Springs, based on premise alone, was always going to draw comparisons to Bill Murrays breakthrough hitbut theres far more overlap than youd anticipate. Palm Springs fashions a more dramatic role for Samberg to play in the same way that Groundhog Day did for Bill Murray. Murray was 42 when Groundhog Day came out;Samberg is 41. Not quite an infinite time loop, but a loop nonetheless. Where the two films differ, however, is where the brilliance of Springs arises. Including Miliotis Sarah adds a breath of fresh air to a well-worn premise and she serves as an excellent partner for Sambergs inherent goofiness. The duo doesnt break the loop by letting the universe determine what happens, rather, the characters conclusively go their own way. The results are staggeringly refreshing.

Palm Springs doesnt seem reversed engineered to be a hit vehicle for Samberg. Its just focused on being the best film it can be by leveraging whats always made the comedian great. Thats a lesson more films could stand to take as the actor looks at whats next. The more dramatic portions of Springs prove Samberg is more than capable of handling weighty material while still managing to find moments that speak to his sense of comedic timing. Its not hard to imagine him working with a creative who could really help Samberg tap into the potential of something seriousperhaps in a similar way that Wes Anderson leveraged Bill Murray in Rushmore for example. But even if thats not the direction Samberg decides to head, hes still a creative force to be reckoned with; his track record as a producer on Hulus PEN15 and Netflixs I Think You Should Leave highlight his expertise at finding new voices in the realm of comedy to spotlight for a new generation.

Regardless of what he chooses to do next, the future seems wide open and exciting for the comedian in a way that it quite hasnt before. Palm Springs reconfirms Samberg as a major talent, sees him level up in an exciting way, and proves hes capable of so much more than raps about being on a boat. But as he famously reminded us in that song, anything is possible. It might have been a joke back thenbut its certainly a fact now.

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With 'Palm Springs', Andy Samberg Proves He's Always Been Ahead of the Curve - Complex

Russias recent national referendum approved a change to the countrys constitution that would allow Vladimir Putin, the current president of Russia, to run for another two six-year terms after his current term ends in 2024. If Putin wins, he will be able to hold the position of Russian president until 2036. To put it simply, Putin, who is 67, will presumably be inpower until his death.

Russian plebiscites, or referendums, are a mechanism of direct democracy. Citizens vote directly on policy questions and amendments, unlike in a representative democracy, where elected officials make decisions on citizens behalf. This particular plebiscite lasted from Thursday,June 25, to Wednesday, July 1. The vote was originally scheduled for Wednesday, April 22, but was delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Preliminary results counting 50% of voters showed that more than70% of Russian citizensvoted in favor of the amendments, which secure and expand Putins presence in Russian law.

The referendum also included religious amendments, like the assertion of marriage as a heterosexual union and the enshrinement of Christianity. These amendments also allow executive overreach onto the judicial and legislative bodies, permitting Putin to vicariously redirect proposed legislation to the constitutional court, which is completely under his thumb. Other amendments also confirmed that Russias parliamentary rule is above international law and that inter-state actors, presumably corporations, will not face legal consequences for actions legal inside Russia but illegal internationally. Another amendment targeted ethnic minorities in the oblasts, or provinces, of eastern Russia, by establishing that the Russian language was that of nation building and pushing an agenda of prescriptivism to eradicate local cultures.

It is clear that Putin seeks to create a more conservative Russia, based upon a facade of Christianity and his own personal taste in leadership. Ratifying anti-LGBTQ legislation because of tradition is certainly not palatable, but insulating future dictatorships is a much higher degree of totalitarian rule. With these amendments, Putin orchestrates the illusion of judicial review. Under the guise of constitutional legitimacy, Putin now has the ability to supplement the legislative process by appealing legislation to the constitutional court. If the legislation is determined to be constitutional, then Putin will sign it into law. However, if the legislation is not constitutional, it will be sent back to the Duma, the lower house of parliament.

The twist in this situation is that members of the constitutional court are confirmed by the federation council, a body appointed and controlled by you guessed it the federation president, Vladimir Putin. Byshelling outjudicial systems and simultaneously intensely surveilling any legislation put through parliament, Putin has an even moredefinite graspon what is and what is not allowed in Russia.

For Americans, this should be a warning sign.The resemblance between Putinsexecutive overreachand our ownjudiciaryis sobering:While justices on the Supreme Court are confirmed by the Senate, they act outside of democracy once in power. Legislation in Congressional gridlock is sent to the Supreme Court and interpreted by justices who are not obligated to a constituency or concerned about public approval. The cause of this is the failure of the American Congress. By failing to reach consensuses and enact legislation, Congress has allowed the U.S. Supreme Court to assume the role of a legislature, making decisions on our countrys behalf without the restrictions of public approval or any formal public election. Putins courts act as an appendage, consistently ruling in favor of his personal agenda. While one can distinguish between the ideology of Vladimir Putin and the record of the Supreme Court, judicial elitism can be utilized for an autocracy. The theater of the Russian system and the realness of our own should be fuel for change.

America may not have the theatrical propaganda machine that Putins Russia does, but it certainly is not fully committed to the democracy it claims to love.

In the modern day, people view Russia and its affiliates as a global disgrace. In the eyes of most Western liberals, Russia is an authoritarian, oligarchic nation of vodka drinkers too depressed to maintain their populations birth rate.

Of course, the veil of stereotypes never fullyobscures the truth. The Russian Federation is a nation of 146 million, with an economy and industries mostly vested in oil, gas, agriculture and technology. The explosion of Russian neoliberalism following the collapse of the Soviet Union (Russias once-powerful predecessor) gave a mirage of hope to the young, broken country. However, hyper-privatization burdened and drove the populace down into gloomy, vehement nihilism.

What I wish is for people to look not through the lens of overblown Russiagate narratives, but to instead analyze politics for themselves. Russia is a nation of educated and hopeful youths yearning for a better future, much like us. Rumors of future protests inMoscowshow resilience and hope. The Putin dictatorship may seem ridiculous and far from likely to young Americans, but ultra-corporatism, broken legislative bodies and a skyrocketing wealth gap do not seem too outlandish for both the American and Russian futures.

Daniel Cody is a sophomore journalism major from Pennsylvania who writes about politics and culture.

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Putin is in power forever - The Hofstra Chronicle

When carefree Nyles (Andy Samberg) and reluctant maid of honor Sarah (Cristin Milioti) have a chance encounter at a Palm Springs wedding, things get complicated when they find themselves unable to escape the venue, themselves or each other. Thats the thinly veiled synopsis provided by distributors Neon and Hulu after they joined forces to make Palm Springsthe biggest single-film acquisition ever out of the Sundance Film Festival at $22 million. Its pithy and explanatory, but hardly does the story justice.

The truth is that Nyles and Sarah are struggling against otherworldly forces, which are hilariously highlighting and exacerbating their existing flaws. To unmoor themselves from the hellish reality in which theyre trapped, theyll have to better themselves in ways they never thought they were capable. Its a clever conceit concocted by screenwriter Andy Siara, who plums the depths of nihilism and emotional immaturity to provide authentic hilarity and genuine emotional growth. Its Groundhog Daymixed withWhen Harry Met Sallyand its subtly one of the best new movies to arrive in an otherwise depressing cinematic year.

Observer spoke to Siara to discover the original inspiration behind the film, how it was developed and what it felt like to set the Sundance record ahead of Palm Springs debut on Hulu July 10.

SEE ALSO: Palm Springs Review: Finding Purpose in an Endless String of Todays

Observer: Can you walk me through the early development phase of Palm Springsand how it came to be?Andy Siara: [Director] Max Barbakow and I met on our first day at AFI back in 2013, and we just immediately hit it off over a shared love of indie rock bands, TV shows and movies. Were also both little brothers, so theres a little shared outlook on life. We started making shorts together at AFI, and then as we finished up our second year, we thought, Hey, lets do our first movie together. Lets do something small and contained that we know we can at least try to get made. Ill write it, you direct it. So a week after graduating, we went out to Palm Springs, which we both had a relationship to after growing up in Southern California. We had a relaxed weekend where we talked late into the evening over mai tais and trying to figure out what kind of movie we want to make. We came out of that weekend not really knowing, except we had the kernels of the character Nyles. Over the next couple of years and many drafts later, the rest was born out of conversation.

Given that the movie takes place in an infinite time loop and potentially touches on string theory, I now want to see the other drafts for the other holidays and occasions that could have been the driver for previous versions.Its funny because one of the notes in any script or movie is that I want to know more about this persons backstory. What was actually so helpful about starting different versions of the movie before we ever even added the time loop was that I wrote many versions of Nyles. Many pre-stories and background so that I knew this character like the back of my hand and that helped when we finally landed on what Palm Springswould become. When we decided to do the time loop, I felt like I already knew and had written what a day in the life was like prior to that. So we didnt need to spend any time in the movie exploring what would happen to Nyles the first time he went into the cave or before the wedding. We didnt spend a minute in that world because Id already written it.

Nyles is this cynical whatever-floats-your-boat kind of guy, and Sarah is this reluctant underachiever. How did you land on those traits as their defining character flaws?The first thing that comes to mind is at the end ofGroundhog Day, the main character figures out the meaning of life, and he gets rewarded by getting out of the loop. And so, my jumping off point there was, I want to do a little higher concept. If a person is stuck in a time loop and figures out the meaning of life, what happens if hes not given the gift of getting out of the loop? What if hes still stuck in there, then what happens? What does that do to your life? I think Nyles has to find meaning in the meaningless of it all. In the simple pleasures like floating in pools, drinking beers and eating burritos, given the scenario and being stuck in that world for however many years he is stuck, youd probably become careless. Its hard to care about anything because nothing truly matters. The laws that govern society dont matter anymore, so therefore you embrace this sense of nihilism.

The other character has to have something that challenges the status quo. They need to challenge the other main characters. Through Sarah, Nyles realizes there is purpose in caring, and through Nyles, Sarah realizes she should forgive herself a bit because theres purpose in just shrugging shit off. I think because we know Nyles so well, it was tough to challenge his outlook on life and thats where Sarahs character was crafted. Around this idea of What is the best way to challenge and force him to change? In doing that, its like their characters became even more fully realized to us.

What I like about Palm Springsis there there are a few main characters, including J.K. Simmons Roy. That helps it avoid getting repetitive or stale and directly comparable to Groundhog Day. Was that a conscious decision to expand the scope a bit?Roy was the last piece of the puzzle that we were missing and the very last thing I added in the script right before we finished it up. Roy, the character, functions almost as this shadow side to Nyles, and I think we can go that route or you can just say the movie was missing this Wile E. Coyote/Road Runner dynamic that brought a lot of comedy. That added this other absurd element to it that appeals to both of our tastes. On an emotional level, we knew there was something missing. It wasnt so much a conscious thought that we needed to separate it from other types of movies. It was more about what is the ingredient that can bump up against both these characters and push them even further? How can we hammer out the theme a little more? Roys speech in Irvine changed the least from its first iteration because dialogue speaks and themes may change, but what he says at the end is basically the movie.

What did it feel like when you found out thatPalm Springshad broken the all-time Sundance acquisition record?I thought back to that first day when Max and I met at AFI and were finally around people that wanted to do the same things we wanted to do our whole lives, which was make dumb movies all day. I spent my 20s in a band avoiding making any real, more terrifying adult decisions like going deep into debt to go to film school. Not that thats the right thing to do, but I think I was dumb enough to do that. I guess I was so happy that I could share in the meaningless of life. Its ultimately meaningless that we sold for the most amount.

But I was so happy that I got to share that moment with Max and having been on this weird journey with him for almost seven years. All that time speaking about our deepest loves, and shames, and fears, and hopes, we were just two kids playing in a sandbox. Playing with toys. We never actually thought that we could make anything that anyone would care about. So thats a long-winded way of saying we never expected anyone to see or care about this movie. I feel very, very lucky and fortunate that so many things just worked out.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Palm Springs is now available to stream on Hulu.

Link:

How Palm Springs Screenwriter Andy Siara Embraced the Nihilism - Observer

Grace Cooper's music has always sounded eerie. As the lead singer of The Sandwitches, she sang echoey rockabilly-folk songs designed for empty barrooms in long-abandoned ghost towns, reanimating dead genre conventions and parading them around for fun. And her solo work as Grace Sings Sludge has sounded even creepier, four albums of home-recorded noir ballads and far-away melodies that never quite seem to settle down.

Her fifth album as Grace Sings Sludge Christ Mocked and the End of a Relationship, premiering below ahead of a July 17 release via Empty Cellar Records is her most willfully disquieting yet. Recorded for the first time in a full studio, Cooper can't fall back on lo-fi ambience to unsettle the listener, so her melodies dive deeper into melancholy, her brief jaunts into atonality more carefully deployed. From her reckoning with God on opener "Christ Fucking Mocked" through the spoken-word horror story of "Hackers" and the desolate nihilism of "It Can Wait," this is a murky record that refuses to flinch from its own bleak outlook.

"This record covers a lot of hard ground," Cooper wrote in an email to The FADER. "I put a lot of stuff in there. Stuff from my subconscious even got in. Death and drinking. Nightmares of being relegated to near-invisibility. Feeling hopeless only able to scratch the surface of personal stories of early teenage and adolescent sexual mortification. My own fucking mortality. But I tried to do it in a colorful, storytelling, way. A way that at least I can still find humor in."

"I imagined Jesus Christ as a sort of similarly-misunderstood-feeling drinking buddy," she continued. "Harboring some regrets and a little resentment. When he's not, he's a surrogate for an aloof lover. This record is not a break-up album (which is maybe perhaps somewhat unclear from the title). The End of a Relationship just refers to change. I started writing it after the death of my friend and bandmate. You want to pray when you're mourning but get stuck in this awful place of having to consider a place like Hell and limbo. Theres been so much surreal loss since, and so much insane religious bullshit in this country that Im just glad I made music that is heavy but still warm and very heartfelt."

Listen to Christ Mocked and the End of a Relationship in full below, and pre-order the album here.

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Grace Sings Sludge goes deeper into noir on Christ Mocked and the End of a Relationship - The FADER

It swept through theatres spectacularly last fall, and now its proving just as marketable on streaming. Todd Phillips supervillain hit Joker has been the most popular movie on HBO Max since the service launched, according to a study from Reelgood. To date, Joker has made up 7.3% of all movie streams, the highest share of any film. For context, that figure is followed by sci-fi drama Ad Astra at 5.2%, and Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone at 2.4%.

This shouldnt come as a surprise, as Joker made a marked impression on viewers, one that ensured it grossed one of the most remarkable billions in box office history. More than just the R-rating that would historically preclude blockbuster returns (films like Deadpool and It have broken that orthodoxy), its Jokers disturbing psychological content that makes its success so noteworthy.

The only antecedent I can think of another of those R-rated trailblazers is Logan, whose mediation on mortality hardly seemed the stuff of mainstream gold. Its inspiriting to be proved wrong. But as far as numbers go, Joker has taken the adult-blockbuster market to another level. Expect many copycats when film production kicks into gear again.

Now, what does it say about human beings that HBOs most popular movie since we all got locked up at home has been a claustrophobic exercise in nihilism? Does it say anything at all? Probably not. Does the films nihilism and subsequent success say anything, either? There are only so many questions to fill the time with. If youve got any answers of your own, leave them in the comments section below. Jokers bleak outlook feels more in keeping with 2020 than it does with 2019, thats for sure.

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New Study Reveals The Most Popular Movies On HBO Max - We Got This Covered

There are upsides to single parenting during a pandemic, chiefly the avoidance of another adults dark moods. Even at its craziest, since New York locked down in March - when my kids are still running around at 11pm, because I am too tired or up against it to put them down; when the dishwasher, never once, manages to unstack itself; or the arrival of mice in my apartment because apparently I cant and wont pick up crumbs - it has often struck me that short of illness, the only way this scenario could be worse was if I had to manage one more persons needs. And then there is the downside: the effects of leaning on TikTok as a co-parent.

For the first two weeks of lockdown, we did what we were supposed to. I blew through a large deadline and engaged conscientiously with my kids remote schooling every morning. We did the worksheets. We made a word wall. I bought a whiteboard. In between learning activities, I scheduled centre time, which included building things, colouring and, yes, piano. It was fun, and novel, and everyone did what they were told.

The honeymoon didnt last. I assume that, left to run its course, this timetable would have fallen apart, anyway. As it was, we never got to find out. After two weeks, I received a chasing email about the deadline, made the decision that it was the girls work or mine, and in the face of every parental instinct, absented them from school and broke out the iPads. On a shorter deadline, I couldve slammed through on adrenalin and worked while the girls slept. But that model isnt sustainable for long. And so, at 9am, I parked them on screens and hoped it would hold until lunchtime.

Obviously, now, I regret downloading TikTok, which carries an age advisory of 13. My kids are five and a half. But you learn very quickly, while working full-time with no help, that content made specifically for five year olds wont sustain their attention for long. A lot of the kindergarten learning apps require parental involvement, and even those that dont come with a guarantee that, 15 minutes after loading, one or both of your kids will be shouting Im bored.

Conventional TV and movies might buy you another 45 minutes at most, while interactive games - which require constant parental intervention, to type in search terms or reboot after crashes - will maybe bank you an hour. In the midst of all this, the single, most reliable way to buy yourself half a day of almost-interruption-free work is the addictive 60-second video feed of TikTok.

Most of the content is harmless and dumb, no worse than YouTube. It is teens doing weird tricks with Oreos, or skateboard stunts, or dances, or bad skits - driven by a depressing desire to be famous, for sure, but no more so than the arch kid-shows on Disney.

And while some swearing gets through, as it does in real life in my house, this wasnt an overwhelming problem, either. My kids know bad words are wrong, albeit not the end of the world, and by and large continue to respect the taboo.

The bigger issue, as the weeks went by, was the communication of a certain vocabulary and attitude. For a while, stripped of their schoolmates and teachers, my kids accents became more decisively English. At some point, however, attendance at the school of TikTok flipped them back to American, and not just any American, but this: mom. Mom! MOM!

Oh my gosh, what?

I dont want this, its superlame.

It doesnt matter what this is: dinner, clothing, any activity that isnt screen-based. All have become subject to the dual proto-teen joys of rejection coupled with impersonation of the big girls. Vaguely sexualised language has started to creep in, so that every dance my girls do is now accompanied by the phrase, shake your booty! And, with the intuitive older-kid understanding of how nihilism works on parental nerves, everything that isnt superlame, triggers the response I dont care.

Very occasionally, there are moments of reprieve. For a second, when it appeared as if social justice warriors on TikTok had pranked Donald Trump by reserving tickets at his rally in Tulsa, I told myself it wasnt an entirely appalling platform, and used it to talk to my daughters about politics, the president and protest.

And I confess to enjoying a moment of - I know, very wrongheaded - national pride when I heard one child lustily tell the other to shit off, the result of a British video upload advertising our still world-class standards in swearing.

For the most part, however, it has been downhill all the way. Now that I am, for a second, out of the woods with work, we have entered a period of detox. Maybe its not so bad, I tell myself. Maybe this is just my kids generations version of every moral panic about children and media since the invention of radio waves. Then, one morning, I hear my daughter casually tell her sister, You have a fat ass. And thats it. Until the next time, theres no alternative: were out.Guardian

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How TikTok turned my five-year-olds into proto-teens - The Irish Times

Diagnostics and therapeutics for Alzheimers disease are on the verge of becoming mainstream medicine. Its about time, too. This neurodegenerative disease is creating a crisis in healthcare, with a bill of $300 billion in direct costs and $250 billion in unpaid care provided by families.

Biogens submission of a biologics license application (BLA) for aducanumab Wednesday is the leading edge of what could be a tsunami of business opportunities. A joint venture between the Alzheimers Drug Discovery Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is accelerating a diagnostic blood test for Alzheimers, and there are more than 120 clinical trials underway for potential therapeutics using new or repurposed medicines. If aducanumab is approved, other prospects will emerge soon in the form of memory centers and infusion and imaging centers, speakers at Demy-Coltons recent Virtual Salon Series predicted.

While these therapeutics and diagnostics move through trials, the idea that theres nothing we can do for patients unless theres a cure is daft, panelists agreed.

We can do as much for Alzheimers as for other diseasesexcept for delivering a little white pill. Thats still on the horizon, said Howard Fillit, M.D., founding executive director and CSO of the Alzheimers Drug Discovery Foundation.

The conversation and the culture surrounding the disease needs to change, because they have huge ramifications not only for patient care, but for clinical trials completion and data collection.

Nearly 50% of Alzheimers clinical trials fail because of a lack of enrollment, said Mylea Charvat, Ph.D., CEO and founder of Savonix.

Could the failures be because of the way we study them? asked panel moderator Phyllis Barkman Ferrell, global head of external engagement for Alzheimers disease and neurodegeneration at Eli Lilly & Company. We know the pathology starts 10 to 20 years before symptoms appear, so what does that mean for our approach to treating Alzheimers disease?

Alzheimers is a complicated disease and without a straightforward mechanism of action, yet researchers have identified risk-related changes in the brain in people in their 40s, said Craig Ritchie, M.D., director of Brain Health Scotland. Dementia is said to be silent in midlife, but thats only because were not listening properly. The science is unequivocal, and clinical practice must catch up.

Ritchie, a world-class expert in dementia, leads the PREVENT project to identify mid-life risks for dementia, and the European Prevention of Alzheimers Dementia (EPAD) consortium.

Catching up to the science particularly means diagnosing people earlier.

Its hard to enroll clinical trials because people are diagnosed too late, Ferrell said.

There are three main challenges to early diagnosis. One is the lack of practitioners. There are 1,050 board certified neuropsychologists in the U.S. and Canada, and most are researchers who are not treating patients, Charvat said.

The second is the lack of diagnostic tools developed for clinicians, she continued. You can use something designed for clinical care for research, but not the reverse. Theyre absolutely different. To be adopted, tools require clinical support, integration into the caregiver workflow, and reimbursement. You have to build an end-to-end pathway to support a diagnosis. Most of the tools that failed did so because they were designed for research and didnt work in clinical care.

Researchers and clinicians also need to use more effective diagnostic tools. For example, Charvat said, Two years before Alzheimers typically is diagnosed, a diagnostic memory test identifies 20% of those who later develop the disease, but an executive function test identifies 60%.

Therefore, clinicians need to consider executive function abstract reasoning, the ability to plan, emotional control, and personality changes as well as considering the patients history, other diseases, comorbidities, B12 deficiencies, lifestyle, and other factors.

The third challenges is fatalism.

Were fighting diagnostic and therapeutic nihilism, Fillit said. These tests are available, but theyre not being used. Doctors ask why they should bother diagnosing a patient if nothing can be done, but people need care, advice and counseling, referrals to social services, and physical therapy.

Providing those services is where medical professionals can make an impact today on the quality of life.

Preventing Alzheimers disease is possible, and should be addressed, Ritchie added. What people do early and in mid-life to maintain brain health helps prevent dementia in late life. Even at age 40, making lifestyle changes can reduce the risk of Alzheimers by 41%.

Theres a business opportunity associated with that approach. Its centered around using artificial intelligence (AI) to identify biomarkers that correlate to Alzheimers disease and lifestyle activities that can be shown to prevent it or delay onset.

Vast quantities of data already exist, including the 71 years of data from the Framingham Study (which traced neurocognition as well as heart disease) reported in the American Journal of Managed Care and many other journals, and the cognitive lifestyle index study and the cardiorespiratory fitness study published in the Lancet.

The goal is to develop what Charvat calls a blood pressure cuff for the brain. Shes talking about a way to get a brain health number from meaningful cognitive tests and to make that technology affordable and available throughout the world, not just in leading medical centers, but also in community care centers in rural communities and developing nations.

As precision medicine advances, There are good opportunities for developing a comprehensive approach, like there is in cancer, Fillit said. The question is how healthcare entrepreneurs will develop them.

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Alzheimer's Drugs on Verge of Becoming Mainstream Medicine, but Early Intervention Still is Needed - BioSpace

This weekend, the number one movie at the American box office was Empire Strikes Back. Yes, George Lucas 1980 sequel to Star Wars returned to drive-ins and the few open theaters in the United States to gross nearly $500K, topping well, other old movies back in circulation. Hollywood continues to kick the can of new releases as it contends with the coronavirus pandemic, leaving the future of large-scale entertainment uncertain.

Meanwhile, those of us at Polygon are turning to home entertainment to fill the expansive void of new releases. A few absorbing new films arrived to streaming this weekend, including Netflixs The Old Guard, Hulus Palm Springs, and the VOD sci-fi release Archive. But most of us found ourselves plowing through our backlogs; case in point, our editor-in-chief Chris Plante finally found time for HBOs award-winning 2019 miniseries Chernobyl, which he found had uncanny connections to the present moment. If you can stomach the unsettling, almost Lovecraftian true story, its a must-see.

Chernobyl wasnt the only thing those of us at Polygon watched this weekend. Below, weve collected our other favorites from the weekend, in hopes of offering a suggestion or two of what you should watch this week. Be sure to let us know in the comments what you enjoyed over the weekend, too.

I watched all five episodes of HBOs Chernobyl miniseries this weekend, and Im unsure if now is the worst or best time to recommend the historical recounting of systemic governmental failure in the face of catastrophe.

On one hand, I get enough nihilism when I read the Washington Post and the Austin Chronicles reporting on the failures of our government on national and local levels. I skim Twitter and see militias defending statues to racist traitors, police brutalizing protestors, and old friends partying as hospitals hit capacity. Do I really need a show that spends one episode tailing a band of men forced to execute dogs and cats that have been exposed to extreme radiation? Isnt life grim enough?

On the other hand, Ive been magnetized to media that confronts anxiety inducing dilemmas head on. Not disaster movies or post-apocalypse thrillers. No, Ive become obsessed with stories about institutional failure, about the challenge of relating to others with vastly different life experiences, about poisoned systems and structures. Ive appreciated documentaries like The Thin Blue Line and Harlan County, USA, and dramas like Kurosawas High and Low and Asghar Farhads A Separation.

Chernobyl is arguably the most extreme example of this fixation, and the most flagrantly similar to our moment. Here is a disaster unprecedented for those experiencing it, one worsened by layers of inexperienced leadership who, time and again, act out of self-interest, costing the lives of the people theyve sworn to protect. And yet, the bravery of people with far less power and far more to lose, prevents the complete and utter ruin of their nation. This isnt a happy story with a simple hero. Nobody saves the day and receives a big reward. Most characters die, and those who dont suffer lives scarred by tragedy. The pleasure of the story, if you can call it that, is not personal, but universal. Its knowing that we all of us are part of something bigger than ourselves; that doing what is right might not always be best for the individual, but serves the greater arc of civilization.

So yes, now is the best time to Chernobyl.Chris Plante

Chernobyl is streaming on HBOGo and HBOMax.

And everything else we watched...

Polygons Karen Han and I got to chatting about our favorite Korean war movies on Twitter a while ago, bonding over Taegukgi: The Brotherhood of War and The Admiral: Roaring Currents. But Id never seen The Age of Shadows. This weekend I rectified the situation.

Directed by Kim Jee-Woon and starring Song Kang-ho (Parasite), its an action-packed thriller with some brilliant gunplay and snappy cinematography. Imagine Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy set in 1920s Korea during the period of Japanese colonial government and youve just scratched the surface. At nearly two-and-a-half hours, its pretty dense. Ill be giving it a second watch soon. Charlie Hall

The Age of Shadows available on Blu-ray or a DVD.

I have my kids trained pretty well with regard to streaming services. While we have the Netflix and the Disney Plus accounts locked down, they still know they need to ask me and/or mom before they embark on a new series. Thats mostly how we ferret out the weird, knock-off Disney princess movies from Russia and what not. But, we have different concerns for The Babysitters Club, which just 20 minutes in sold us as a greenlight for the kids.

Not only do they keep the spirit of the original books, but theyre all cleverly updated for a new generation. I strolled in from the grill on Sunday to find my oldest daughter watching a bunch of powerful young women setting up a barricade with a canoe to protest classist fees at the sleepaway summer camp. Plunking down, I then marveled as the camp director defused the situation, while also empowering everyone involved.

Netflix, my oldest is wondering if you could please make three more seasons? We dont need another Bunkd situation on our hands. And dont fritter away the momentum like you did with Project Mc2. CH

The Babysitters Club is streaming on Netflix.

On the recommendation of a friend for a new half-hour Watch It While I Eat show, this weekend I tucked into the first couple of episodes of Dorohedoro, based on the manga by Q Hayashida. The anime takes place in a grim world of urban poverty and magical horror, where sorcerers from another dimension practice their abilities on the largely powerless inhabitants of a grime-covered city. The setting full of drippy tenements, inventive character designs, and buckets of blood, is a bit like Junji Ito and Clive Barker teamed up to make a Studio Ghibli film.

But in the midst of all the horror trappings the books full of teeth, the faces peeled off, the dishes made from mushrooms growing on dead bodies we have what are almost slice-of-life comedy stories about our protagonist, Caiman. Caiman cant remember anything about his life before a sorcerer practiced on him, bestowing him with a great big spiked lizard head. Now, in-between leaning on his friend Nikaido to make him tons and tons of gyoza, and working at a hospital for practice victims, he searches for the sorcerer who made him this way, so he can kill him and undo the magic.

He does this by popping the head of every sorcerer he meets inside his mouth, where they meet the man who lives inside his mouth, who can tell whether or not theyre the sorcerer who gave Caiman his lizard head. Caiman has never been able to see the man inside his mouth. He has no idea who the man inside his mouth is. The show is extremely weird, and extremely funny. Susana Polo

Dorohedoro is streaming on Netflix.

I watched the first series of Fullmetal Alchemist back when you had to buy anime on DVD and it would cost like a billion dollars because each disc had like two episodes on it and every anime series was 1,000 episodes long. It was good though.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is a redux that more closely follows the manga series, and it goes unbelievably hard while feeling entirely fresh. I burned through the five seasons in about two and a half weeks, and while sometimes convoluted, but its an always-entertaining story about two brothers on a quest to heal the physical and spiritual injuries they suffered while delving into taboo magic. From there, the plot is full of deep state conspiracies, will-they-wont-they friendships, and cool monsters.

I dont want to yell at you about how you absolutely need to watch another anime so Ill just hit ya with three selling points:

1. The fights are good. The alchemy in the shows title refers to a form of magic and/or science that allows certain people to do very cool things. If youve seen Avatar: The Last Airbender, you know the drill. Cool martial arts choreography, mixed with fantastical powers. The shows animation is consistently good, but when characters start fighting, it can get virtuosic. There were moments where I had to immediately rewind and watch bits again, because I couldnt believe what I had just seen.

2. The tone is good. FMA: Brotherhood does an outstanding job balancing incredibly dark plot points and painful moments with tons of silliness and genuine warmth. Its nice.

3. The cast is good. Just about everyone the show introduces you to is weird and lovable. The show really hits its stride in the later seasons when the cast has expanded, been broken into mismatched troupes, and scattered to the wind. Imagine a version of Game of Thrones where the author deeply, deeply loved all of their creations. I cant count how many times the show served up what I assumed would be a background character or disposable villain, only to see that character stick around and play a substantial role for the remainder of the series. Patrick Gill

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is streaming on Netflix.

This year, the annual Annecy Animation Festival was held online for the first time, due to the coronavirus outbreak. That meant it was the first time I got to participate, and I was hugely excited to see what Annecy was like. But like so many of the other film festivals that have tried to move online, Annecy ran up against limitations, presumably because of producers and studios who were concerned about their work streaming online ahead of release. A lot of the years most exciting animation offerings were only offering short excerpts instead of entire features. The upside, though, was that I got to experience the first seven minutes of The Legend of Hei, a thrilling Chinese animated feature about the secret community of shape-changing demons operating in modern society. This weekend, I sought out and watched the rest of the film, and its marvelous.

The Legend of Hei is the feature-length expansion of a web animation by a Chinese artist who goes by MTJJ. Its popular enough to have spawned a mobile game and a graphic novel, but the franchise isnt well-known in America. That should change once Legend of Hei gets discovered by one of the many streamers or companies picking up anime (like Crunchyroll and Netflix) or international animation in general (looking at you, GKIDS). Legend of Hei is packed with action, as two factions of demons (or goblins or monsters, depending on your translation) face off for the future of their kind think what Isao Takahatas Studio Ghibli curiosity Pom Poko would look like if there was a second group of tanuki with a much more aggressive stance against humanity.

But its also a film about an adorable, scrappy, egotistical little cat-demon-boy named Hei whos trying to survive on his own in the world, and navigate a war he doesnt understand yet, and come to terms with his own powers. Legend of Hei is packed with colorful and memorable characters, and big explosive action, but the most memorable scenes may just be Hei trying to face off a stronger foe with all the tiny defiance in his big-eyed little kitty body. Tasha Robinson

The Legend of Hei is not yet available in the U.S., but translated episodes of the original web animation are streaming on YouTube

Theres nothing like watching super strong, competent athletes doing stunts while you sit in your pajamas at noon drinking coffee you couldnt be bothered to reheat. That might sound sad, but it feels great knowing that rock climbers and pole dancers and parkour instructors have tackled the four levels of the Beast so I dont have to.

Like other Netflix-produced stunt shows, Ultimate Beastmaster features an inconsistent commitment to its premise; the outside of the course is shaped like a gigantic, demonic jungle cat and features a pool of blood (water, lit red) for players to safely drop into. Some obstacles sport body-adjacent names like Brain Matter and Throat Erosion while others are just nonsense power-words Mag Walls and Energy Coils. That aside, its amazing to see the ease of these athletes passing through the unbelievable challenges and just as hilarious to watch the accidental-slapstick the results from somebody failing to time a tricky jump off a treadmill.

The show features teams from multiple countries, each repped their own hosts, and part of the joy is seeing these local celebrities interact with each other, and alternate between smack-talking and supporting the competition. The editing is smart and tight, breezing through the highlights of competitors who dont make it far so you can get invested in those that do. If youd like to hear Terry Crews bemoan players slipping into the blood for a few hours and who doesnt! Ultimate Beastmaster has you covered. Jenna Stoeber

Ultimate Beastmaster is streaming on Netflix.

Ive heard nothing but good things about the FX series based on Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititis What We Do in the Shadows, but I loved the 2014 movie so much I avoided the show out of fear of disappointment. What a fool I was: The series is a gosh darn delight. Created by Clement, it follows another group of vampire roommates who are (un)living in Staten Island instead of the films New Zealand. Though the show maintains the offbeat humor and mockumentary style of the movie, and the characters embody similar archetypes, it still feels like a fresh adaptation.

One of the archetypes reinvented for the show is the human familiar who serves a vampire master in the hopes of eventually being turned into one. With all due respect to Jackie van Beek, who plays the role in the film excellently, the shows familiar Guillermo is absolutely perfect. As he tells us in the pilot, Guillermo has wanted to be a vampire ever since he saw Antonio Banderas in Interview with the Vampire. Played by Harvey Guilln, Guillermo is sweet and funny and serves as the emotional heart of the show. I would die for Guillermo.

I watched the first half of season 1 this weekend and cant wait to catch up. Emily Heller

What We Do in the Shadows is streaming on Hulu.

Before Alfred Hitchcock was renowned Hollywood director Alfred Hitchcock, he was British thriller expert Alfred Hitchcock. 1935s The 39 Steps came out of an early period in the directors career in which he was literally cranking out spy stories and tension-filled tales; he was only 36 at the time of release, but The 39 Steps was his 24th directorial effort. And while the film is regarded as a sketch for true wrongfully-accused-man-on-the-run masterpieces like North by Northwest, its not amateur hour: In adapting John Buchans novel of the same name, Hitchcocks agile, angular filmmaking is on full display.

Robert Donat stars as Richard Hannay, a regular Joe thrust into the world of espionage when a woman he brings home after a night at the theater turns out to be a spy and, eventually, a spy with a knife in her back. Accused of murder, Hannay flees London for Scotland, hoping to solve the mystery of the the 39 steps while avoiding a country-wide manhunt. Hitchcock pulls out the stops: A foot chase on a train is packed with gags (Watch out for that man carrying a giant tray of champagne glasses!) and buttoned with an iconic high-angle view of a bridges icy drop. A sequence at a farm house, in which Hannay hopes two bumpkins might stash him away from the police, overflows with character quirk and tension. When a pair of spies capture Hannay and handcuff him to a witness, a no-bullshit woman named Pamela (Madeleine Carroll), the two make a getaway that turns them into a golden-age-of-Hollywood romantic pair. Per usual, Hitchcocks misogyny and gaze gets in the way of Pamelas arc, but for a movie made in 1935, The 39 Steps introduces a set of female characters who flex agency in the face of authority. Like every turn in the film plot- of character-wise its unexpected.

Turning on a black-and-white movie can feel like a chore. So many films from the pre-1940s fail to stand the test of time, and the chasm between old-fashioned and modern performance styles reasonably turns off viewers. But Id argue The 39 Steps transcends the time period: part Bond movie, part comedic caper, and anchored by a performance that feels Ryan Goslingian, its a black-and-white movie that feels alive and contemporary. Matt Patches

The 39 Steps is streaming on HBOMax.

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Chernobyl is one of the best TV shows you can watch right now - Polygon

ComingSoon.net had the opportunity to speak with Joe and Anthony Russo about their weekly series Russo Bros. Pizza Film School, specifically about their love for the Coen Brothers after hosting No Country for Old Men star Josh Brolin for Episode 5,in addition to their views on Star Wars following Episode 4 which featured Mark Hamill and the group discussingThe Empire Strikes Back.

RELATED: Taika Waititi Joins This Weeks Russo Bros. Pizza Film School

ComingSoon.net: You guys had a great conversation with Josh about No Country, and youre clearly big fans of the Coens. I want to know, what do you think of the idea of Blood Simple, Fargo, and No Country as a kind of informal trilogy? Because you talk about the importance of tone.

Joe: Trilogy?

CS: Yeah, you talk about the importance of tone. And to me, those three films have a very specific tone and subject matter amid the Coens very eclectic filmography.

Anthony: No question. I think they are. And I think that they, like jazz artists, the Coens will do riffs on similar themes or similar tones. And you can sort of see it throughout their career. Sometimes they will do something, you know, just radically outside of their canon, like when O, Brother came out, but you could still find the roots to it in Raising Arizona. So I do think that those films are all a variation on the same tone and the same theme.

CS: Yeah. And the Coens, some of their movies really embrace nihilism, like Barton Fink or Burn After Reading or A Man Who Wasnt There or No Country. But then, they make other movies that feel more moralistic, like Serious Man or Fargo. Do you think the Coens are truly nihilistic, or is that just a tool that they use sometimes?

Anthony: I have to believe

Joe: Heres the thing, their entire canon is imbued with nihilism in some way or another. But they are inherently existential individuals, right? Thats how they perceive the world. But they have a sense of humor about it, which is amazing, right? Its Pinter-esque in that regard, right, or its Beckett. They have a sense of humor about their existentialism, so thats why we love them so much, because I think again, growing up in Cleveland, for the hardnosed town where we came from that went bankrupt and industrial machine collapse during our youth. And so, we have a very existential view on life as well. And I think its why we gravitate towards the Coens so much. I think its hard to take that existential philosophy without a sense of humor, which would make their movies very difficult to watch if they didnt have any, even though Country is devious in its execution. I mean, there are lots of witty moments in that film that are equally entertaining as they are depressing, you know?

RELATED: Russo Bros. Pizza Film School Episode 5 Details Revealed!

CS: But and then in terms of your Empire Strikes Back episode, it brought up something that has always kind of bugged me about Star Wars, which is that I feel like in the prequels, sort of the choice that Anakin has to make, where hes choosing between the Jedi and saving the woman he loves, its a compelling choice. Its a wrenching choice. But in both the original trilogy and the new trilogy that just came out, I feel like Luke and Rey, theyre basically being offered a power grab. Rule the universe with me. And its pretty anathema to both of their characters. Theres never really a feeling like these guys are actually going to go for that. And I wanted to get your take on that. Would you have done that differently?

Anthony: Well

Joe: I mean I think being such Star Wars fanatics, we wouldve probably focused on the Luke Skywalker story. And so, to me, there was the potential for three movies focusing on that arc coming to completion. But different choices you can make. I think you know, the fact that Star Warsis so important to us growing up, we got to make our Star Wars empire in Infinity War and Endgame. That was really our expression of what those commercial films meant to us as children and what we took away from them and the patterns of narrative structure that were so profound to us. We were able to replicate those patterns in those movies. So I think we speak to those films rather than the Star Wars films.

Anthony: I was going to say, you make a very good point about Luke and Rey. Thats a really good point in a sense that you dont really think they dont seem very likely to make that choice, but it just reminds me of how similar our enjoyment of these movies is to something like opera in the sense that there can be these crude sort of narrative beats that maybe dont play in a very subtle or sophisticated way, but theres something about their resonance and theres something about the way the rest of the cinema surrounds that moment and then the music and the iconography and the drama of it all that somehow creates emotion and sort of excitement and thrill and danger and peril. Its just a reminder to me when youre pointing your finger at something that seems weak or fit, at like how much the other elements, that sort of cinematic experience perceived is to what we walk away from a movie with, you know?

You can watch every episode of Russo Bros. Pizza Film School on their YouTube channel here!

(Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney)

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CS Interview: The Russo Bros. Talk Coen Bros. & Star Wars - ComingSoon.net

Barred Owl. Photo: USFWS.

The United States Fish & Wildlife Service faced a difficult problem. The Northern Spotted Owl was vanishing from the forest, in spite of being listed as threatened, in 1990, under the Endangered Species Act, assigned critical habitat on public lands, and special protections related to the activities of local timber companies. Its numbers had continued to drop at a rate of 4% a year. Now suspicion was turning to the Barred Owl, whose assertive appearance in the Pacific Northwest could be causing the decline. So eight years ago the United States Fish & Wildlife Service convened a study group, to discuss the moral and practical dimensions raised by this imminent peril.

Heretofore the Northern Spotted Owls dwindling numbers had been thought to relate to the destruction of the ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest, which was the owls habitat. The United States, the world leader in commercial logging, had produced and consumed more wood than any other country. Now less than 15% of forests remained which were more than 100 years old.

However, another possible agent might be the increased presence of Barred Owls, a larger and less specialized species, which had gradually moved in from the east. This species was soon stigmatized as invasive, and its possible role in the disappearance of the Spotted Owl began to be studied.

Verification of such a role was determined to be impossible without the drastic experiment of killing Barred Owls in specified areas, and observing the effect. This occasioned some moral uncertainty: the dark side of science.

As the late Lowell Diller, biologist for Green Diamond Timber Company, described shooting an owl: When I went out to do it the first time, I was shaking. I had to steady myself. I wasnt sure I could actually do it. It was so wrong to be shooting a beautiful raptor like this. It continues to be awkward to this day.

An avalanche of computer model studies followed. Barred Owl killing caused immediate repopulation of habitat by Spotted Owls. Effects were frequently temporary, however. Many studies contradicted each other.

The USFWS-convened study group, or Barred Owl Stakeholders Group, was composed of government officials, timber industry representatives, environmental NGOs, indigenous tribes, and wildlife rehabilitators. They were provided with reading lists, including works by Aldo Leopold and Plato.They were trained in collective decision-making by Group Dynamic specialists. An Animal Ethicist attended their field trips and retreats. This was designed to be a Mount Sinai moment.

After lengthy deliberation, the Group concluded that Barred Owls were the driving force behind poor population performance of Northern Spotted Owls. Even the fact that the two species interbred was condemned as genetic swamping.

The USFWS decreed that Barred Owls should be destroyed.

Now, eight years later, thousands of Barred Owls have been shot, and the practice is expanding. Locally, Green Diamonds new Habitat Conservation Plan has opened up its entire holdings to their extermination. In Washington and Oregon, and on public lands, Barred Owls are lured to a nearby branch and shot point blank.

Friends of Animals, a 63-year-old international nonprofit, had sued USFWS in 2014 over killing Barred Owls, in violation of the Migratory Species Act. They lost.

Now they are suing the feds for abuse of the ESA itself.

When Barred Owls are killed on private land, Northern Spotted Owls replace them. The USFWS decreed that, in exchange for shooting Barred Owls, termed mitigation, on their timberlands, the companies would be allowed to take the habitat of the returning Spotted Owls. Since such individual Spotted Owls are floaters, and therefore not shielded by regulations, they do not have the status that protects the forest they are reinhabiting.

According to USFWS, the take of Spotted Owls on the temporarily reoccupied sites is more than offset by the value of the information gained from this experiment and its potential contribution to a long-term Barred Owl management strategy.

This obsessively overzealous, deranged enforcement policy mirrors the nihilism of the current Administration, in its swift shredding of the Endangered Species Act. The very purpose of the ESA is to protect wildlife, in all its dynamic complexity. Science is being corrupted to the point of legalistic reductionism, and flies in the face of the rights of Mother Earth.

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The Dark Side of Science: Shooting Barred Owls as Scapegoats for the Ravages of Big Timber - CounterPunch