How to Get Away with Murder just finished its second season, and so far it is not at all impressive. What started as a ground-breaking and provocative television series is rapidly becoming mundane and vapid. This was expected, however, seeing as Shonda Rhimes is the executive producer of the show.[Read More…]
Film and TV
Flashback: Ikiru (1952)
“A man dying of cancer searches for life meaning.” When condensed into this single phrase, the plot of Ikiru seems trite and simple. Yet renowned director Akira Kurosawa is an original storyteller who uses this familiar narrative to create an existential masterpiece. The opening shot of the film is an[Read More…]
Video Games in Education: Turning GPA into EXP
In an era where social media sites are dominated by the likes of Farmville, bars and pubs increasingly entice patrons with the prospect of some drunken Dance Dance Revolution, and even the elderly have been swept by the rush of Candy Crush, video games have successfully expanded beyond their niche[Read More…]
Spotted: McGill in the movies
When you’re trying to make it to your 8:30 a.m. lectures on a freezing cold February morning, it’s hard to imagine that McGill resembles the bowels of the Pentagon or a military base during the zombie apocalypse. Yet in the past, Hollywood has managed to transform locations around campus into[Read More…]
Fokus Film Festival showcases student creativity
Time and time again McGill students prove that the lack of a formal visual arts department is in no way an obstacle to fantastic productions. Fokus Film Festival is just one example of the wealth of creativity at this school, and as the only festival of its kind the submissions[Read More…]
Pop Rhetoric: A love letter to Broad City
A new saying has been circulating among my friends after a failed night out or an especially quirky encounter with a stranger: Having a ‘Broad City moment.' This connotes a mantra, a lifestyle—a way to bask in the sheer ridiculousness that is everyday life as a young ‘adult.’ The description[Read More…]
Movie Review: Embrace of the Serpent
After an Oscar season that was packed to the brim with survivalist epics, viewers could be forgiven for not wanting to see yet another “man vs. nature,” movie. However, if there’s one film that weary audiences should make room for, it is Embrace of the Serpent. Sure, it doesn’t boast[Read More…]
Pop rhetoric: Deadpool and the R-rated bandwagon a downhill ride
This is an age where an R-rated movie can make north of $150 million in a weekend in the United States alone. Deadpool not only smashed countless records, but also had the highest-grossing opening weekend of any R-rated film in the United States. This massive success has fans and studios[Read More…]
Deadpool is a triumph for fans, a challenge for general audiences
In 2014, a short clip of Deadpool test footage was leaked on YouTube, after the character was considered too crass for movie screens. The video—which has since been deleted by 20th Century Fox—sparked a movement among fans who had been altogether disappointed by the character’s 2009 appearance in X-Men Origins:[Read More…]
Flashback: Pretty Baby (1978)
“Storyville, New Orleans, 1917.” This is the title card that opens Louis Malle’s Pretty Baby. The film tackles the scandalous topic of child prostitution in a strikingly elegant and elegiac fashion through chronicling an upscale brothel in one of New Orlean’s most notorious red-light districts. Madame Nell (Frances Faye) is[Read More…]
