C’mon, Barbie, we’re seeing Barbie again. Just when you thought the pinkpocalypse had reached its zenith, Barbie said, “But wait, there’s more.” The highest-grossing movie of the year will take over Imaxes across the country for a global, limited, one-week engagement starting on September 22, giving fans the opportunity to dust off their Barbie-core fits for an encore in the biggest movie screens theaters have to offer, per Variety.
When Vulture asked me if I, who earned my Ph.D. studying the physics of DNA, would be willing to watch World War Z from a scientific perspective, I figured they just wanted someone to play the part of a cold-hearted Professor Frink–esque math guy who only finds joy in deconstructing the science in films. But just because I now use lasers at work to study how cells generate force to divide doesn’t mean I can’t accept and enjoy zombie-apocalypse cinema on its own terms.
This was not a well-received film when it came out 30 years ago, but the passage of time and a recut by Francis Ford Coppola have allowed for a critical reassessment. So let’s talk about pasta. Blame it on Andy Garcia’s smirk. Middle-school-aged me was minding my own business one Saturday afternoon, flipping through TV channels to distract myself from homework, when that man’s smile in The Godfather Part III made me reconsider my devotion to Leonardo DiCaprio and Rider Strong.
Welcome to the Age of Pop ‘Plagiarism’ In 2019, the question of if and how a song has been copied is an incredibly complicated one. Welcome to the Age of Pop ‘Plagiarism’ In 2019, the question of if and how a song has been copied is an incredibly complicated one. “A good composer does not imitate; he steals,” Igor Stravinsky once said. So it goes for music, with performers and songwriters pilfering, directly or indirectly, melodies, chord progressions, lyrics, and more, well before songs were written down.
Swift in the “Style” music video. Taylor Swift is not an artist made for sex playlists. That’s fine! Not everybody needs to be. Heartbroken? “Teardrops on My Guitar” is your girl. Feeling a little flirty? You can’t do better than “I Think He Knows.” And if you’re angry over a breakup, please listen to “Dear John.” But horny? That’s not really her bag. That’s partly because her songwriting, at its best, tends toward an emotional acuity that isn’t quite right for sexiness.
Deanna Thompson in Don’t F**k With Cats. This story contains descriptions of animal abuse and murder in Don’t F**k With Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer.
The Netflix docuseries Don’t F**k With Cats sounds like it’s about the love-hate relationship cats have with humans. But no: It’s about an animal abuser and convicted killer named Luka Rocco Magnotta. Starting in 2010, Magnotta posted three videos online of himself killing kittens, much to the intrigue and disgust of a few keyboard detectives.
Known for his work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, and Marvel’s The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron, Joss Whedon was once celebrated for creating the feminist, Sarah Michelle Gellar–led hit series as well as his refreshing approach to male-dominated action and sci-fi entertainment. However, over the years, this mass appreciation has imploded with an increasing number of claims from actors and former co-workers detailing Whedon’s alleged on-set abuse dating back over 20 years, most recently with Buffy’s Charisma Carpenter speaking about the alleged bullying she endured on set while pregnant.
Bang bang. Note: Spoilers about the first episode of Squid Game are ahead.
If you’ve spent any time on Twitter, you’ve heard about Squid Game, the new and deeply deranged Korean Netflix series that’s on track to becoming the streamingest show ever for the platform. The nine-episode series follows 456 “contestants” — all mired with life-ruining debt — who compete in a mysterious competition at an island bunker where they participate in violent versions of children’s games.
The bride wore toilet paper. Here’s a sentence that has probably never been written before and, if it had, would not have made any sense out of the context of the past three weeks: Saturday Night Live’s Chloe Fineman didn’t know she had coronavirus when she set out to fake-marry her best friend, actor Casey Thomas Brown, over Instagram Live late last week. Fineman “felt really tired” in the days leading up to the elaborate nuptials, but went forward with the occasion as planned, telling her more than 170,000 followers, “Tomorrow I gonna marry my best friend and the love of my life @shartyparty69 on Instagram live ❤️.
It’s a bright, sunny day and Kril the hermit crab is chilling in a tide pool when a literal loan shark pops out of the water. He informs Kril that this beach has just been taken over by a duchess who is now imposing a tax on residents. Kril is unable to pay up, so the loan shark takes the crab’s shell as collateral, sending this otherwise conflict-averse crustacean into the open ocean to retrieve it.