What makes a good video game movie? Is there even such a thing? The curse of the video game movie has long been documented, and the stigma that it’s impossible to make a good one regardless of how much money you throw at it or who plays the lead has dogged the genre for years….
Month: May 2019
Björk’s Cornucopia: is this the singer’s most ambitious show yet?
Two long pipes imported from Iceland pump air out into the audience while glowing platforms designed to resemble multiple icebergs sit mounted on a stage behind two curtains made of chain. This isn’t your ordinary show, which stands to reason considering Björk isn’t your ordinary artist. In fact, nothing the Icelandic singer-songwriter has done in…
‘Lunch shaming’: school district changes policy for students who owe meal debts
A Rhode Island school district, facing mounting lunch debts, has reversed a controversial policy announced earlier this week that would limit students owing money to the school to a sunflower-seed-butter-and-jelly sandwich. The policy drew widespread criticism for “lunch shaming”, which critics say unfairly puts a child’s economic situation up for judgment in the notoriously ruthless…
World-first brain surgery performed on endangered kākāpō parrot
Vets in New Zealand have performed world-first brain surgery on a critically endangered New Zealand bird, as efforts intensify to save the vulnerable kākāpō population. There are just 147 adult kākāpō alive today and conservation efforts to boost the population are scaling up in New Zealand, which has more extinct and endangered birds than any…
Queen’s meeting with king of Bahrain prompts protests
Campaigners have condemned Buckingham Palace’s invitation to the king of Bahrain to attend the Windsor horse show this weekend, arguing that the UK should not provide a public relations opportunity to what they say is an increasingly repressive regime. King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa met the Queen at the event on Friday, demonstrating a warmth…
Rare black bear seen in no-go zone between North and South Korea
When an unmanned camera captured movement inside the demilitarised zone (DMZ) that separates North and South Korea, it wasn’t a sign of troops on the march. Instead, photographs released this week show a rare black bear clambering on rocks next to a peaceful stream. The animal has been identified as an Asiatic black bear, a…
Canadiens and Canadiennes in uproar as student paper takes stand on gender
The changes were slight, though Molière probably wouldn’t have approved. Montréal Campus – the student newspaper serving Université du Québec à Montréal – announced in February that it would cease favouring the masculine over the feminine. Wherever possible, non-gendered terms are now used, and when referring to a group of people, reporters write out both…
Trump to nominate former Boeing executive as defense secretary
Donald Trump will nominate Patrick Shanahan, the acting Pentagon chief, as his new defense secretary, the White House announced on Thursday. Shanahan, a former executive at Boeing, has been serving in the role in an acting capacity since the departure of the former defense secretary James Mattis in December. Unlike Mattis, who disagreed with Trump…
From Susan Sontag to the Met Gala: Jon Savage on the evolution of camp
First published in 1964, Susan Sontag’s essay Notes on Camp remains a groundbreaking piece of cultural activism. Sontag’s achievement was to give a name to an aesthetic that was everywhere yet until then had gone largely unremarked. It was visible in Dusty Springfield’s mascara and beehive, there in late-night TV reruns of old Humphrey Bogart…
Broken promises and lost funding: how Mississippi prison reform failed
Last November, as he rallied support for federal prison reform, Donald Trump visited Gulfport, Mississippi, touting the legislation and what Mississippi had accomplished. Trump talked about the “fantastic job” that the Mississippi corrections commissioner, Pelicia Hall, was doing of turning the state’s prisons into places that train inmates for jobs. The following month, Trump signed…