Category Archives: Zeitgeist Movement

Wandering with my young son last summer through our favourite Ithacan village, we were delighted to come across a large sailing boat docked in the port with a crew of latter-day Merry Pranksters. Listening to the Clean Beach Pirates (a group of environmentally minded volunteers collecting plastic waste from beaches around the Greek islands) talking enthusiastically to my eight-year-old about the evils of pollution in the Ionian Sea, Imarvelled at this Ship of Fools that seemed to have sailed in from another era. By which Idont mean the Renaissance but rather the 1970s, an era whose radical spirit Lucas Richert attempts to capture through the story of antipsychiatry.

There is a history to strange medicines, and Richerts conscientious account of mental health and the American counterculture effectively links the likes of the Beach Pirates to an earlier generation of intrepid travellers. The roll call of key players is familiar enough: Eric Berne, Claude Steiner, Carl Rogers, Fritz Perls, Werner Erhard, Paul Lowinger and so on, most of whom are summarily glossed in passing. Stringing the narrative together around the usual suspects, Richert sets to with a degree of diligence. But although his writing style is congenial enough, he seems not to know quite where to place the book, leaving it more or less adrift between two options: a journalistic essay on the vicissitudes of the American mind reflected through the prism of the antipsychiatry movement and a more serious-minded Foucauldian analysis of psychiatric knowledge in 1970s America.

The chapters tend to fall between these two stools, starting in essayistic mode with a blizzard of insubstantial references to Vietnam and war-induced mental disturbances, developments in industrial and organisational psychology, mechanisation, environmentalism, the womens movement, patient activism, pornography and punk rock. The current academic fad for interdisciplinary research clearly has a lot to answer for, and one wonders how firm a grasp the author has on his cultural references when citing country singer Merle Haggard and the Sex Pistols in the same sentence, placing both under the improbable heading of angst-ridden working-class sentiment.

The allusions to Michel Foucault suggest a more ambitious genealogy of mental medicine. Instead, we are presented with a fast-paced montage of radicalism in psychiatry that fails to cohere. A chapter on the use of intoxicants, with an inexplicable amount of detail about cannabis, seems to have wandered in from another research project. Meanwhile, the perceived challenge to Freudianism and psychodynamic psychiatry is mapped along various axes: the third version of the American Psychiatric Associations Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (1980) and the biomedical turn; alternative therapies and cults of unreason (ranging from Esalen, Scientology and the human potential movement to clairvoyance and telepathy); the moral panic about psychoactive substances during the Nixon administration; and LSD-fuelled spiritual transcendence associated with the likes of Timothy Leary and R.D. Laing. There may well be a place for a cultural history of the internecine squabbles, sectarianism and fragmentation within radical psychiatry and the patients rights movement. But a series of descriptive snapshots organised around reform and revolt misses the intricacy that Richert means to convey. The Ship of Fools, finally, slips through the authors hands and glides beyond the zeitgeist of the 1970s, a symbol of great disquiet in another age of anxiety.

Steven Groarke is professor of social thought at the University of Roehampton and a psychoanalyst.

Break on Through: Radical Psychiatry and the American Counterculture By Lucas RichertMIT Press, 224pp, 22.00ISBN 9780262042826Published 8 October 2019

Read the original here:

Break on Through: Radical Psychiatry and the American Counterculture, by Lucas Richert - Times Higher Education (THE)

Paganism and especially witchcraft are seeing a popularity explosion. But many of those coming into our movement arent following the same paths we did, and thats raising some concerns about both the Pagan newcomers and the Pagan movement as a whole.

In 2018 I wrote two posts on this topic: So You Want To Be A Pagan A Guide For Pagan Newcomers and 7 Things We Owe Pagan Newcomers. Those cover much of what I want to say on this topic. But the most recent Conversations Under the Oaks generated some questions that go beyond these posts, and I want to address them here.

Ive reworked questions from three different people to make this post flow a little better.

In the 1960s and 70s, becoming a Pagan, witch, or anything along those lines took dedication. Books were few and hard to find, while covens and other groups were mostly closed affairs. There were only a few traditions and it took dedication to find one and convince those in it that you could be trusted with their secrets.

That all changed with the widespread availability of Pagan books in the 80s and 90s, and the explosion of solitary practitioners and backyard covens has never slowed down. With more people coming into the Pagan movement with no structures or elders to guide them, beliefs and practices have gotten more and more diverse. Today you dont have to be super-dedicated to get started, meaning some people arent taking things as seriously as we did.

Rather than calling this watered down I prefer to say were in a speciation phase. More and more versions and varieties of Paganism are being formed. Most of them will only last a few years. Over time, those that are robust and resilient enough to last will grow and thrive.

The downside is that Paganism and witchcraft are getting so diverse that the terms dont mean all that much anymore. Were going to need more specific terms for the traditions we follow so we dont get tied up in useless arguments about who is or isnt a real Pagan.

Yes. Theyre looking for compelling entertainment. Which is pretty much what storytellers have done since the first stories were told around a campfire. We have a lot of drama in the Pagan community, but its not the kind of drama people want to watch.

We all understand that Hollywood magic isnt real. What Im looking for is the truth behind the fantasy the messages and the themes. Thats why I enjoy The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina even though I wish the witches were Pagans instead of Satanists (which they may be, after the end of Season 3).

Seo Helrune has a very good blog post on Sabrina, Hellier, and the current zeitgeist the themes and mood of the times. The current mood lends itself to stories of darker magic. But Seo Helrune also suggests that perhaps there are non-human hands in human stories and hints of narratives yet to be shaped.

I think thats worth contemplating in much more depth which I hope to do after I finish this round of Conversations Under the Oaks.

Possibly. But if it does its our own fault.

Has Harry Potter led to an increased interest in real magic? Certainly. But Ive never had anybody come to me expecting to learn wingardium leviosa (sadly, I have had people expect me to teach them the Charm of Making from Excalibur). The vast majority of people recognize that fiction is fiction they want to learn whats real.

The mysteries real magic and real Gods are far better than fictional magic, because theyre real. Our challenge is to not get so caught up with the ten people who are satisfied with fantasy that we arent there when the one person who wants the truth comes looking for us.

If its grounded in authentic history, if it promotes strong connections with the Gods, spirits, and the natural world, and if its application generates good results, then its a good thing.

On the other hand, I dont care how many initiations and lineages someone has or how long theyve been a Pagan. If what they teach is based on pseudo-history, consists primarily of New Age psychobabble, and makes people feel good without accomplishing anything, its a bad thing.

I havent been young in a long time, but I have vivid memories of being told wait your turn pay your dues and youre a kid what do you know? This annoyed me, not just because people werent listening to me, but because they werent listening for the wrong reasons. As I argued at the time, either what I say is right or it isnt how old I am is irrelevant.

I could not have written The Path of Paganism at 25, or even at 45. I needed more experience with Paganism, and more experience with life. But if someone else can, great for them and great for us, who get to read it that much sooner.

The phrase age is just a number is as true on the low end as it is on the high end.1

This is another matter entirely. Star Bustamonte had a feature on this for The Wild Hunt back in December and I encourage you to read it. I touched on this in Paganism in the 2020s What to Expect in the Next Decade. The next wave of Pagan influencers will not come from within.

At the core, the criteria from the previous section applies here: does it work or not? The problem is that much of this doesnt work. Its written by ghost writers with questionable experience with Paganism and witchcraft, for editors who know even less, and marketed to mainstream readers who know nothing beyond what they see on TV.

For the most part its not harmful its just very, very weak. It tells people that witchcraft is an aesthetic and not the recourse of the dispossessed (to quote Peter Grey). Its devoid of reverence for the Gods, or pretty much any theological content. It may provide some help to some people, but its nothing to build a practice around.

And its offensive to those of us for whom these things are sacred, to see a facsimile of them sold to people who have no idea of the power and meaning behind the real things.

All we can do is be ready and available when a few of the readers of these books realize theres more out there and decide they want it.

We can start by not quoting the Wiccan Rede and the Threefold Law like theyre holy scripture. If youre a Wiccan theyre an important part of your tradition. But for everyone else, theyre moral propositions that may be more or less true, and more or less meaningful. From my perspective, there is no such thing as harm none and I see no evidence the Threefold Law works as described.

Instead, we can talk about the Strawberry Jam Effect: you cant work with it without getting it all over yourself. Then discuss cleansing, shielding, and other elements of magical hygiene. We can talk about defensive magic, proportional responses, and the deeper meanings of the old saying before you embark on a journey of revenge, first dig two graves.

But some lessons have to be learned the hard way.

We talk about baby witches and baby Pagans but no one capable of hexing and cursing is a baby. Even those who are very young and/or very inexperienced know that striking others is a dangerous thing, even if your cause is just.

But sometimes what we know never sinks in until it becomes tangibly real to us. You have to burn your hand a couple of times before it sinks in that pan + stove = hot.

And sometimes you have to punch a bully in the face, even if you get dragged to the principals office afterwards.

As teachers and elders it is our responsibility to warn inexperienced people about the dangers and pitfalls inherent in this path. But thats all we can do. Learning will happen or not when and how it happens.

1 Do I have to point out that age is just a number doesnt apply to sexual relationships between adults and minors? I think I do .

Go here to see the original:

Teaching Without Credentials, the Dangers of Cursing, and Watered Down Paganism - Patheos

We head south of the border in Steve McQueens Baja Boot to see if its modern incarnation lives up to the legend

Its not a delicate flower. If you flip it on its roof, dontworry. Well just roll it over andkeepgoing.

As pep talks go, this one is being filed under encouraging. Im in the middle of the Mexican desert, sweating heavily into the underside of a five-point harness, having ratcheted myself down into one of the most bizarre-looking and perplexingly engineered road cars on the planet. With exposed bodywork, the headlight structure of a jumping spider, huge off-road tyres, supersized suspension and Tonka-toy dimensions, its all rather imposing. Especially as it wears a supercharged V8 engine like a teenagers rucksack, has a roof-mounted snorkel and two Gatling gun exhausts straddling a full-size spare. Its a visual assault. One that could easily be mistaken for some sort of childish marketing joke a 1:1 scale cereal box toy or something. But it isnt. Its a very serious, very real, very four-eyed, 650bhp middle finger to the Lamborghini Urus, Rolls-Royce Cullinan and Aston MartinDBX.

Its called the SCG Boot, the latest project from film director, car collector, race team owner and car manufacturer Jim Glickenhaus. If you dont know the name, in recent years Jim and his iconoclastic Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus (SCG) outfit have made a name for themselves by ditching rose-tinted spectacles for reality by putting deepfakes on hardcore motoring nostalgia. Take the P4/5, his $3m coachbuilt Enzo throwback that initially went down at Ferrari like a mouthful of sick. Modulo, the extra-terrestrial concept wedge from Pininfarina that Jim got running and approved for road use. Or SCG003, the class-winning VLN car that any Billy can go and buy. Now, his crusade continues this time going for the jugular of the zeitgeist: performanceSUVs.

Words and Photographs: RowanHorncastle

Steve McQueen images: Photographed by Milton H. Greene 2019 Joshua Greenewww.archiveimages.com

Im fed up of seeing all these super-SUVs, Jim says. The Urus isnt an SUV! Look at it! Its just a 4dr Lambo. Real SUVs should be able to drive to the Baja 1000 [the worlds longest and most gruelling non-stop off-road race], compete, then drive homeagain.

So thats exactly what hes doing. Being a slightly frustrated, high-functioning and financially fruitful individual, unlike misanthropes of the internet, Jim hasnt turned his contempt for the new breed of marketing-led SUVs into bilious internet comments and spittle on his computer screen. Rather, hes simply built his own 200k performance SUV. In just 17 months. From scratch. Well, sort of scratch, as he did have something in his garage to act as a muse: Steve McQueens 1967 BajaBoot.

The original Baja Boot was the product of one of Americas greatest technical minds, Vic Hickey. Born in 1919, Hickey served in WWII before returning to California to work on hot rods, dragsters and the famous Novi Indianapolis racecars. In 1959, he was picked up by GM as a research and development engineer. There, he conceptualised vehicles like the Trailblazer, Lunar Rover and, later, the Humvee. He was somewhat of an off-road savant, and the original Baja Boot was one of his skunkworksspecials.

Back then, many off-road racers were based on the ubiquitous VW Beetle. But Vic wanted to make a bespoke engineering masterpiece for a new race down the Baja peninsula. He had just 26 days, so constructed a steel tubular frame, dropped a Chevy Camaro V8 directly behind the driver (like a Grand Prix car) and hooked it up to an automatic gearbox (to make driving off-road more manageable). He then added Corvette differentials, four-wheel drive, a trick transfer case, close-ratio power steering, torsion-bar suspension, chunky tyres and disc brakes. He christened it the Baja Boot, as it raced down the length of Mexico, grabbing the attention of Hollywoods Steve McQueen, who competed in it the followingyear.

For the time, Vics design was wild. So wild that people didnt cotton on to it. But solid logic never ages you just have to wait for technology to catch up and do it justice. And, spurred on by the rise of the super-SUV, Jim believes that time is now. And having bought the original Boot (only two were ever made) at auction a few years ago, Jim had its technical drawings, so assembled a team of off-roads brainiest brains to give these blueprints a 21st-century twist. Two-time Dakar and six class-title Baja 1000 champ Darren Skilton would lead the project, while Elliot Pollock and Armada Engineering (known for pushing boundaries with King of the Hammers builds) were drafted to make designer Michael Youngs 2019, erm, reboot a reality. And, less than two years later, it is very much a reality. HowJim.

Twenty-four hours ago, we were in Los Angeles, California. Thats where Jim agreed to meet. I rocked up on an unassuming residential street to the sight of Steve McQueens Boot casually sat on the back of a trailer, interrupted by the noise of a thunderous V8 and fresh, squeaky brake pads coming the other way. It was Darren, commuting back from the Boot manufacturing facility in Chatsworth in the new generation. F*ck!, was the most articulate phrase I could muster at the time. These things look incredible together. Especially on a street, juxtaposed with bland crossovers and pickups. But Jim being Jim, wanted to prove a point. So instead of trailering the new Boot to Mexico for me to have a go, he threw me the keys and told me to drive down while hed bring Steve McQueens car along for a desert thrashing too. Win,win.

Theres so much to drink in with the new Boot, its hard to find somewhere to begin. Fundamentally, it follows exactly the same principles and layout as the original just modified for better performance. Theres still a tube-frame chassis and independent suspension, but real strides have been made in the tech especially the suspension over the last 50 years. In the Sixties, the original Boot was deemed cutting-edge for having 9in of travel and Bilstein dampers. Thats childs play compared to the new Boots monster 19in of travel and internal bypass coil-over dampers from Fox the same shocks that are on Dakar Minis, no less. Wheels and tyres have grown too, now 17in Method Race beadlock wheels wearing massive 39in BF Goodrich tyres. Remarkably, the engine follows the same philosophy as Vic had intended: a small-block Chevy V8, turned 180 degrees and mounted out back. But now its a supercharged 650bhp, 6.2-litre LT4 from a Camaro, and pushed even further back to help balance. Its hooked up to a GM 4spd 4L80-E automatic transmission thats pretty much nuke-proof and comes with a switchable 4WD system. And a winch. Because every car needs a winch. And a light bar. Its componentry to make hardcore Defender boys and their muddy fingernailsdizzy.

We headed down to San Diego, where people swarmed to it, utterly baffled by the preposterous proportions and hilarious scale. Its over seven feet wide, yet shorter than most American pickups and taller than pretty much anything on the road. Children stare at it through camera phones. People want to have their picture taken next to it. But piloting it takes some getting used to, as youre aware that giant wheels are sprouting out of each corner, but you dont know exactly where. Given you clog up most of a lane, youre fearful you may accidentally trample over a Prius especially with the steering set-up. Its an ultra-quick rack, meaning economy of movement is key. This combined with soft, lollopy suspension (plus acres of roll you need to fight through) means you have to be patient, allowing for the truck to settle on its springs. When it does, you can lean on it and trust it. But youve got to be careful, as the weight can see-saw the other way, making it easy to get in a pickle and an almightytank-slapper.

Surprisingly, we crossed the border in Tijuana without a hint of a rubber-glove treatment and entered the estranged sliver of land known as Baja California. Home to powerful criminal groups smuggling cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines north to the United States, its a part of the world that gets plenty of newspaper column inches. Mexicos brutal drug war claims thousands of lives every year, and Baja has one of the highest homicide rates. A fact that sharpens the mind when driving a far-from-inconspicuous mode of transport through it. But, like drugs, the annual 1,000-mile race is big business. Its the biggest sporting event in the country, with an estimated 1.5 million spectators lining the course each year. So when something as wild as the Boot wanders in, people tend to roll out the dusty red carpet foryou.

Luckily, the Boot has handy distractions to keep your mind off getting your cabeza lopped off. Notably, noise. Lots of noise. Being a development car, no sound-deadening or glass has been fitted, so Perspex sheets thwack against the cabin, while yelping straight-cut gears fight against supercharger whine and a throaty V8. Its like driving through a dubstep playlist. Its comfortable, though. Not plush (You can throw up on the floor and hose it out, Jim says), but the interior is spacious, a trait accentuated by the full-width panoramic Moon Roof. You snuggle into remarkably comfortable and supportive carbon-backed seats from Sparco (the same as a Lotus Evora), theres Apple CarPlay, USB ports and cupholders. Its genuinely usable. And, when the production car goes on sale next year, Jim plans to make a Gotham Pack: a sealed and soundproof cabin that might be the ultimate go-anywhere GT cruiser, especially when the four-seat, four-door version comes along later nextyear.

We rested up in Ensenada, waking up early to offload Steves Boot and head off-road, simply making the endless horizon our destination. To understand the performance of the new Boot, Jim said I should drive Steve McQueens car. Gulp. I was on the Baja 1000 course, in the same seat, on the same roads, doing what one of the worlds biggest icons had done nearly 50 years ago to the day. Pinch-yourself moments dont get more pinchy than that. Well, actually they do. As Jim told me to give it the beans. Problem was, the old Boot requires quite a lot of grit to drive quickly. Its basically a pedalo with a honking great V8 and a spare wheel lashed to the back; you sit legs wide manspread wide with two shoebox-sized pedals at your feet. Theyre oversized for a reason: so that theyre always there. Youre constantly jiggled and jumped around by Bajas rugged scenery, with all nine inches of suspension travel being spent easily, so when you get to a particularly deathy bit of landscape, you want to stop when you want to stop. But its surprisingly easy to drive: steering is light and manageable, and its amazing how a car with no doors or windows can have such a vibrant musk pure vintage with a hint of military. But God knows how Steve and Bud Ekins used to hammer this thing at 120mph through the desert, in the dark, and not turn to dust after 40-odd hours. They were made of differentgravy.

Having sampled Steves car for a stage, I handed it back. Primarily because the crippling and very real anxiety that I could be the one that stuffs Steve McQueens historically significant car started getting the better for me. Time for its son, Bootv2.

With Jims words of potential rollover encouragement ringing through my ears, I bury the throttle just to see what happens. Ho-lee-s**t. The two rear wheels bury themselves into the dusty floor like circular saws, throwing the scenery behind the truck until it hooks up and accelerates unlike any other road car on sale. First, youre hit with a wall of noise as the angry LT4 roars round until the rev-limiter on the Motec dash starts looking like the Blackpool illuminations. Thats compounded by a high-pitch supercharger harmonising proceedings as the gearbox starts sounding like a hamster in a blender. But noise quickly turns to movement. A hilarious amount of movement. With each throttle input, the rear suspension compresses until youve used all the travel, where you then start to plane above the desert like a speedboat. Stomp the brakes and with no servo assistance, it is a stomp and the bonnet points itself at the floor literally at the floor. Tip into a corner, and the body roll makes it feel like the whole thing is about to pitch right over.

The closest thing to it on sale is an Ariel Nomad. And I dont mean to cause any disrespect to the scrumpy enthusiasts in Somerset in fact, Ive been quotedas saying the Nomad is the most entertaining four-wheeled driving instrument on the planet. Well, I was wrong. The Boot is a Nomad thats been to Hell Week, got jacked and angry. In the off-road Atom, you can happily hit toaster-sized boulders all day. In the Boot, fridges. Commercial fridges. Thats the scale of hard, unforgiving desert furniture you can simply fire it at and drive over with ease. Its mind-scrambling. You wince, expecting the suspension turrets to fire out of the top of the arches like mortars, but it just compresses and swallows them whole. You have to condition yourself, mind. Its very easy to overdrive, as the dynamics quickly become trustworthy and unbelievably confidence-inspiring. So much so, I just huck it over a jump for the sake of it. Ive never smiled so much behind the wheel in mylife.

Marauding across Mexicos ruffled, pitted and jump-laden landscape in the Boot never gets old. And despite being 2,517kg, its surprisingly agile and adjustable. See, the SCG has got that very rare quality of being set up properly, by people who care and use quality hardware. As soon as you strap in, its like youve dockeddirectly in the chassis and become part of the machine. A well-set-up car means you dont need to think; it becomes intrinsic, natural and telepathic in its communication. This is what you need when racing for 1,000 miles across the desert, across booby-trapped fields with six-foot whoops that go on for hundreds of miles during the night. The fact its got numberplates and can be used on the schoolrun is a bonus. A brilliantbonus.

From an entertainment point of view, its simple: its the best car Ive ever driven. And being able to make progress through places no cars should rightly go is a significant selling point. The SCG Boot is the modern-day Lamborghini LM002. Its the car many wanted the Urus to be but never got. And, at 197,000, its a similar price. Which, when you consider its a small-time manufacturer using ritzy bits, seems like a bit of a steal. Especially as Jims now done what hed said hed do (surprise!) and proved you can rock up and finish the Baja 1000 in it. Try that in your Cullinan, Urus orDBX.

Boot vs Bronco: TheRematch

In 1969, the Baja Boot raced the Ford Bronco in the Baja 1000. Exactly 50 years later, and one week after we drove the car, this duel was reignited as the new SCG Boot raced the new Ford Bronco in the 2019 Baja1000.

Just as Jim had intended, his road-legal race Boot drove down from LA to the start line. For the race, beefier, longer-travel dual shock suspension was used, a race box and a non-scharged, 450bhp LT1 Chevy engine for reliability. All of which can be specced in your Boot if youlike.

The Bronco R prototype (testing the new engine and drivetrain for the road car) and Boot competed in their own class. As expected, both were pummelled by the terrain. But there was only one finisher. And as everyone knows, to finish first, first you have tofinish.

The Boot crossed the line with less than 47 seconds remaining of the 34-hour race cut off. With 33 hours gone, a front brake caliper cracked and seized the wheel. So the support crew raced to fix the issue, breaking two wrenches just trying to get the wheel off. Meanwhile, the Bronco and team Ford retired just shy of the 600-mile marker. And if thats not a statement of intent from Jim, we dont know whatis.

See more here:

Driving the Baja Boots in... Baja - Top Gear

Danez Smith was born into a devout Baptist household in St Paul, Minnesota. Smiths grandmother still lives there, in one of only two black households on a street that was mixed but is becoming increasingly white. Smith grew up, on this border between the blacker areas and the white middle-class enclaves of the city, as a black, queer, God-fearing child.

The future poet and spoken-word artist would listen to family members and friends telling stories on the porch, impressed by their way with words. The friends came and went but there was always one constant: church. Smith may have struggled to fit in among the congregation but Sunday morning meant worship, and more importantly a sermon. It was that rousing religious oration that opened up the world of writing and performance.

The first writing I ever loved was the Sunday sermon, Smith says when we meet in Manchester, ahead of a live performance. There are moments in a Baptist church when the pastor gets caught in the spirit I think thats what Im trying to do. I just have to get it out. Just let me get it out.

For the last decade Smith who is non-binary and uses the pronouns them/they has been letting the spirit take over. Three books of searing, brazenly queer and political poetry have made them one of the most discussed poets of their generation, and placed them at the vanguard of an African American movement that has seen spoken-word artists move from stages and backrooms to book deals and awards success.

Smiths 2014 debut, [insert] boy, marked the arrival of a new voice; their 2017 collection Dont Call Us Dead confronted issues that were raging in the US as the Black Lives Matter movement gained momentum, holding a mirror up to Americas racism and advocating urgently for change, while touching on Smiths own HIV diagnosis. It was a finalist for the National book award in the US, and at 29, Smith became the youngest ever winner of the Forward best collection prize, beating US poet laureate Tracy K Smith to take the top honour.

The poem dear white America became a viral sensation, with Smiths intense performance of it earning comparisons to Howl Allen Ginsbergs exasperated condemnation of the US in the 1950s.

i tried, white people. i tried to love you, but you spent my brothers funeral making plans for brunch, talking too loud next to his bones. you took one look at the river, plump with the body of boy after girl after sweet boi & ask why does it always have to be about race? because Jordan boomed. because Emmett whistled. because Huey P. spoke. because Martin preached. because black boys can always be too loud to live.

Dont Call Us Dead was a collection that spoke truth to white power and made Smith a literary star. But their new book Homie is different. This book does not care about white people, Smith says bluntly. Its about saying hello to the people of colour in the room, lets talk.

In person Smith is softly spoken and polite, carefully crafting each response, though still standing out in the hotel where we meet, with their basketball shoes, nose rings and Whitney Houston T-shirt a hint of the performer that lies beneath.

Maybe that was the thing with Dont Call Us Dead, it was a lot angrier with white people, Smith says. With Homie I stopped asking myself: What should I do with the white gaze? Because I realised I wasnt interested in it. I asked myself: Why am I spending so much time worried about this gaze? I think white people can learn a lot from the poems, but thats not who Im writing for.

I didnt want trauma porn. I dont think thats what I ever created but it was being used as that

That imagined reader is a specific group Smith calls Beloveds: the largely black and queer friends and acquaintances Homie addresses. Originally, the book was going to have poems named after black people killed by state-sanctioned violence, with a section about a friends suicide. The latter part stayed but Smith decided to make the titles and themes more personal. I was writing to friends, to family, to people I wanted to speak to. I had to shut off the idea that my poems are now being read by this wider audience. Im still invested in this intimate and small table: I can name the people that my poems are for.

Another reason for this more inward-looking perspective comes from Smiths struggle with writers block in the lead-up to the deadline for Homie. Theyd had bouts of it before but this was different the usual stimulants of exercise, sex or weed (Smith says they have a long-term relationship with marijuana) were useless. I was writing, but it was just all shit, says Smith, who put it down to the strain of living up to their newfound reputation. I felt a lot of pressure after Dont Call Us Dead was a thing. It meant a lot to people and it won awards, and as much as I like to say that stuff doesnt affect you, it does. Its great, its a confidence booster, but it also fucked with me for a while.

I was in my own head for a little bit, asking myself: What does it mean if my next book doesnt win the National book award or some big thing? I dont like that side of myself. I felt like I had been to the top of something. I had to come back and say: That is not at all why I started writing poems. Thats not why I still write poems.

The New Yorker said of Dont Call Us Dead that Smiths poems cant make history vanish, but they can contend against it with the force of a restorative imagination. That imagination was honed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where Smith studied before going on to form the Dark Noise Collective with other artists including Franny Choi, with whom Smith co-hosts the poetry podcast VS.

Today, Smith makes a living from book sales, touring and teaching in Minnesota, where they still live, but has struggled with the idea of making money from a book so expressly about black suffering. Youre doing the work because you want real change for your folks, but that also means capital gains for yourself. I felt I was profiting.

Dont Call Us Dead pigeonholed Smith as the person the media went to for angry black poems; an easy fix for white editors and publishers looking to tap into the zeitgeist. I want my work to be useful, says Smith. So it felt good to know a poem was good for healing and rage or whatever for my people. But it also felt really gross.

I couldnt write Dont Call Us Dead again, they add. There will always be America in the news and real black people will always be in my poems, but maybe thats why the focus of Homie is a lot more personal. I didnt want trauma porn and I worried about that. I dont think thats what I ever created but it was being used as that.

Homie is deeply moving and funny, with poems such as all the good dick lives in Brooklyn Park combining a story about a booty call with the tragic decline of a lover dying from an unnamed illness. But it is a step change from Smiths earlier work. With Homie, Smith decided to focus on the theme of friendship and what they refer to as a deep investigation of the n-word. That process starts from the very first page. A note says: This book was titled Homie because I dont want non-black people to say My Nig out loud. This book is really titled My Nig. If that doesnt hit home, the contents page will. Poems titled niggas!, shout out to my niggas in Mexico, white niggas, and an explicit quote from a Lil Wayne song make the point again. Its playful, provocative and serves as a kind of warning to those unprepared for what is about to come.

For Smith, it is important that Europeans include themselves in those conversations about race and language: not being a white American does not absolve European readers from the burden of racism. At readings in the UK and Europe, Smith often addresses the elephant in the room directly. I think that sometimes folks forget that, just because America seems to be the most proud of what it does to its black, brown and indigenous folks, Europe invented that shit and spread it, says Smith.

There was always this idea that Britain was done with racism but Meghan Markle left because you guys were racist

The poet has been coming to the UK for a decade, since being invited by Manchesters Contact theatre, which has always been on the cutting edge of queer culture. Over that time Smith has observed the hypocritical standards of the race debate in Britain. There was always this idea that racism was a thing that Britain was done with and had been for a long time, they say. But Meghan Markle is Canadian now. She convinced a whole prince to leave because you guys were racist. They tried to send all the Jamaicans back too. Look. You are still up to it. So its just to pull back from that moment and say: Hey, I might not be talking about your particular situation but you can find yourself a seat at the table.

Many of the column inches dedicated to Smith have concerned performance and identity: either their own or their works exploration of it. But Smith says they are fundamentally a formalist, who loves to geek out over sonnet crowns and voltas. In her New York Times review of Homie, critic Parul Sehgal identified a new form invented by Smith in the poem how many of us have them, called the dozen, whereby each stanza grows by one line until the final one, comprising 12 lines. Id like to invent or order up new adjectives to describe the startling originality and ambition of Smiths work, she wrote.

Does the general focus on Smiths identity rather than the work grate? That is the story of the black writer throughout time, says Smith. I think that is true but its not particular to me. Some reviewers, Smith argues, are so blinded by identity that they dont realise they are being marvelled by craft. They are connecting to the work, but they are having a different journey to someone who can understand the authors point of view.

With a more forgiving eye, there are ways in which all of us come at the work with whatever references we have because that is just what we know, Smith says. So there are people I have been compared to more canonical folks who I dont even know. I might have read a poem or two in school but I dont really bang heavies with whoever that might be. But there are ways in which other influences come to you. You might be a student of Whitman because one of your favourites really liked Whitman.

For Smith, the bigger crime is that too few reviewers are aware of many of the established poets who have been influences people such as Patricia Smith, Lucille Clifton and Amaud Jamaul Johnson. If your understanding of black radical art starts and ends with Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez, then you dont really know a lot of the archive. I think a lot of folks only know the canon, but there are so many canons to pull from, Smith says. All writers deserve that type of deep reading and seeing.

Danez Smith

lately has been a long timesays the girl from Pakistan, Lahore to be specificat the bus stop when the white manask her where shes from & thensays oh, you from Lahore?its pretty bad over there lately.

lately has been a long timeshe says & we look at each other & the look saysyes, i too wish dude would stopasking us about where we frombut on the other side of our side eyesis maybe a hand where hands do no gooda look to say, yes, i know lately has beena long time for your people too& im sorry the world is so good at makingus feel like we have to fight for spaceto fight for our lives

solidarity is a word, a lot of people say itim not sure what it means in the fleshi know i love & have cried for my friendstheir browns a different brown than mineive danced their dances when taught& tasted how their mothers miracle the ricedifferent than mine. i know sometimesi cant see beyond my own pain, past black& white, how bullets love any flesh.i know its foolish to compare.what advice do the drowned have for the burned?what gossip is there between the hanged & the buried?

& i want to reach across our great distancethat is sometimes an ocean & sometimes centimeters& say, look. your people, my people, all that has happenedto us & still make love under rusted moons, still pullchildren from the mothers & name themstill teach them to dance & your pain is not mine& is no less & is mine & i pray to my god your godblesses you with mercy & i have tasted your food & understandhow it is a good home & i dont know your languagebut i understand your songs & i cried when they camefor your uncles & when you buried your niecei wanted the world to burn in the childs brief memory& still, still, still, still, still, still, still, still, still& i have stood by you in the soft shawl of morningwaiting & breathing & waiting

From Homie, published by Chatto on 20 February.

See the article here:

Danez Smith: White people can learn from it, but thats not who Im writing for - The Guardian

The Academy Awards are tonight but are they just an opportunity for the rich and famous to slap each other on the back, or do they really say something important about the world? Writer at Large Neil Mackay takes a closer look

ITS Oscars Night. The world will stop this evening to watch a carnival of wealth, adulation, fame, talent, glamour and most of all power. It is a night bestowed with global significance. Millions around the planet see it as the cultural and artistic heart of the year. Were told that the Oscars matter.

But is that true? Do the Oscars say anything about the world we live in, about our culture, our society? Or is it all, as the cynics believe, just an empty, gaudy show that signifies nothing?

Who decides?

First of all, lets be clear what the Oscars are. Like their British equivalent, the Baftas, the Oscars are an expression of how a very narrow sliver of society sees both culture and the world at a specific moment in time. When it comes to the Oscars, that sliver of society is the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

It is the academys roughly 7,000 members who hand out the gongs. All members are part of the film industry directors, cinematographers, producers but actors make up the biggest proportion, 22%.

Of the academys active voters, 94% are white, 77% male and 54% over 60, and about one-third are former Oscar nominees and winners. Given were in Hollywood, the academy also has a liberal bias. Right-wing movies unless youre Clint Eastwood dont get far.

For such a youthful art form as cinema, the old, white, wealthy, male demographic is jarring and it lies at the heart of the Oscars diversity problem, with not enough black or female artists up for awards.

The question of race

The movie Green Book, which won Oscars in 2019 for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor for Mahershala Ali, is a good case study when it comes to liberalism and diversity.

In an elevator pitch it sounds the perfect pro-diversity film: a white, working-class man learns to be a better person by working for an intellectual black man.

The only problem is the film was hammered for its white saviour narrative. In the film, the black guy only learns about himself thanks to

the white guy. Green Book was criticised for perpetuating a fantasy that racism only happened in the

past its set in the 1960s rather

than today.

Green Book is a perfect example of Hollywood trying to be liberal, but falling on its face with a story about black life filtered through white eyes. If the academy wanted to hand the Best Picture Oscar to a good film about race last year it could have awarded BlacKkKlansman by Spike Lee.

American power

So the Oscars represent a very narrow worldview. They also represent a very American worldview. Of course, America is the planets cultural powerhouse, but the Oscars crowd out the vast majority of films which dont come from the English-speaking world.

The rules have a built-in bias against foreign films. Any contender for the big awards Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Director, Screenplay must play for seven nights in LA. That might be hard for a brilliant but broke filmmaker from Africa or Asia.

The nominee for Best Foreign Film doesnt have to open in America but it does have to be its countrys official selection, which in itself is a mountainous task of networking, campaigning and schmoozing.

The schmooze

Speaking of schmoozing thats the other problem which erodes belief in the Oscars having real cultural significance. If you want your film to win you need deep pockets.

Winning an Oscar is all about campaigning and campaigning costs. In 1967, Doctor Dolittle was a turkey. Over budget, critically hated and a box office disaster, it still managed to get a Best Picture nomination, and eventually won Best Song and Visual Effects after 20th Century Fox launched a champagne-fuelled charm offensive for Academy members.

In 1999, the schmaltzy Shakespeare In Love beat Saving Private Ryan when Harvey Weinsteins studio Miramax spent an unheard-of $15 million on an Oscar campaign.

Money, however, does not buy cultural significance, or lasting appeal. Who cares about Shakespeare In

Love today?

The golden age

So the Oscars have more than their fair share of problems and its hard

to argue that the awards, as a whole, have something consistently significant to say about the world, culture

and society.

However, that doesnt mean individual Oscar-winning films arent important. Many speak directly about societys big issues, the problems confronting the world and the changing shape of culture. When the Academy gets it right which isnt often it gets it very right.

The seventies is a good era to explore after all, its the golden age of modern cinema. In 1979, Kramer vs Kramer swept the boards, winning five Oscars including Best Picture. It stars Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep, and tells the story of their divorce. The film focuses a lot on their child, Billy, caught in the middle.

Billy was a symbol of generation X the first generation to grow up with divorce normalised. The film explores gender roles who should raise a kid and why? womens rights, fathers rights, the growing demands of corporate careerism, work-life balance and single parenthood. Kramer vs Kramer was socially astute and culturally ahead of its time.

That same year Apocalypse Now won two technical Oscars Cinematography and Sound. Today, its Francis Ford Coppolas film which has stood the test of time much more than Kramer vs Kramer.

Divorce is no longer a zeitgeist subject, but Apocalypse Now continues to say something culturally significant: that Western power is dangerous. Often it is films which are nominated for Oscars, but dont scoop the Best Picture award, which make the most interesting cultural statements. In 1980, the academy basically replicated what happened the year before it gave four big gongs to another family drama, Ordinary People.

However, Raging Bull hailed as one of the greatest movies ever made, and a film which has easily outlasted its Oscar rivals only won two awards, including Best Actor for Robert De Niro as the boxer Jake LaMotta. It was a study in toxic masculinity decades before the term was coined.

Sometimes, though, the academy just goes a bit mad like in 1976 when it gave four Oscars to Network but still handed the Best Picture award to Sylvester Stallones Rocky. Network is a brutal, brilliant satire, which still says something culturally significant about the media and society.

War: where it all began

If we go right back to the first Oscars, in 1929, we see the Best Picture winner, the war film Wings, struggling to make sense of the First World War. The US Library of Congress has listed Wings, which starred early screen idol Clara Bow, as a film of cultural significance because it was a real pioneer in the industry.

The following year, 1930, saw cinema still wrestling with the aftermath of war and looming danger in Europe. All Quiet On The Western Front was the big winner. After protests by the Nazi Party in Germany, the film proved its cultural significance by promptly getting banned.

The Second World War profoundly affected the Oscars as neutral America tilted towards Britain. Gone With The Wind although racially unsettling today made clear that war was monstrous. It beat The Wizard Of Oz to the Best Picture award in 1939. Oz, though, summed up better the sense of dislocation, confusion, fear and nostalgia sweeping a world facing global conflict.

In 1942, British and American culture fused when Mrs Miniver which tells the story of an ordinary English housewife during wartime took six Oscars, including Best Picture, Director and Actress (for Greer Garson). Casablanca won Best Picture the following year with a clear message about Americas attachment to Europe: well always have Paris.

The big issues

As the years march on, we see that so many Oscar nominees were commercially successful but artistic non-entities. The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, anyone?

Still, a few of the Best Picture winners stand out, capturing perfectly the spirit of the times in which they were made. On The Waterfront, which won Best Picture in 1954, looks at life from a uniquely 20th-century working-class perspective. West Side Story in 1961 used the cover of a musical to tackle immigration.

In 1962, though, To Kill A Mockingbird a film fuelled by the US civil rights movement lost out to Lawrence Of Arabia. David Leans epic is a visual delight, but its a clunking and colonial take on the Arab world.

In The Heat Of The Night, the 1967 drama starring Sidney Poitier as a black detective in the Deep South,

won Best Picture and put African-Americans front and centre. In 1969, homosexuality was explored in Midnight Cowboy, although the film is critiqued for homophobia today.

Mental illness was the theme in

1975 when Best Picture went to One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest. Gandhi in 1982 turned attention to colonialism. Rain Man in 1988 looked at autism albeit in an exceptionally misinformed way. And American Beauty in 1999 grappled with the crisis in masculinity.

Identity

From the turn of the millennium, it is often who the filmmaker is rather than the film theyve created which makes the biggest cultural statement. The Hurt Locker took six Oscars in 2009 and made history when Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win Best Director. An emotionally astute war film, it signalled the power dynamic between the sexes shifting both in Hollywood and across the west.

Then, in 2016, Moonlight took Best Picture. Its a film about being black, gay and poor, by a black writer-director, Barry Jenkins, and with an all-black cast. Its one of those films which crystallised the time in which it was made in Moonlights case right in the middle of Black Lives Matter.

In 2017, the bizarre fairy tale The Shape Of Water won Best Picture. Beneath the surface lay an examination of female sexuality, with all its quirks and wonders laid bare. Its central character, played by Sally Hawkins, may be mute but the story is about women finding their voice in the world of men.

This years nominees

So what of tonights Best Picture nominees? Do they speak to our times? Certainly some do. Joker is perhaps

the film with most cultural clout.

Some see it as a comment about

the left-behind, gun nuts, socially awkward losers and the alt-right.

Thats mistaken, but even if it were

true it would show a film unafraid of tackling the big social questions.

What Joker really explores is the increasing isolation of modern life, the breakdown of community, the corruption of decency in an amoral world. In the era of social media, hate, and disinformation, Joker couldnt be more of its time. It speaks directly to the experience were all going through right now.

However, its unlikely Joker will win Best Picture though Joaquin Phoenix should be a cert for Best Actor. Joker is too edgy for the academy to give it the top prize.

The most likely winner is 1917. Wartime heroism wins awards think Schindlers List and The Pianist. The only thing that wins more awards than wartime bravery is Meryl Streep nominated a record 21 times.

Sam Mendes First World War film does speak of something prevalent in our society nostalgia for a glorious past. The veneration of the past lurks within the rise of Western populism. Thats not to say 1917 isnt a good film, it is its just that it says something a little disturbing about our current cultural obsessions.

The gangster epic The Irishman sees Martin Scorsese return not just to form but also old ground as he rummages through the undergrowth of toxic masculinity again. Jojo Rabbit, a dark fairy tale about life in the Hitler Youth, may seem quirky (the Fuhrer is our childhood protagonists goofy imaginary friend) but its also back on safe Oscar territory: wartime heroism.

Like Greta Gerwigs multi-nominated Lady Bird in 2017, Little Women (also by Gerwig) continues

the rebalancing of the cultural scales

by telling stories specifically about women and by women. The Netflix movie Marriage Story is essentially a Kramer vs Kramer reboot for millennials.

Ford v Ferrari finds itself in the slot marked well-made film that no-one particularly cares about. Still, it had enough star power to ensure nominations. In terms of cultural import, its functional. Think The Big Short from 2015 nominated for five awards, won one. In a decade, few will remember it.

Quentin Tarantinos Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is fun, but its really just an in-joke for Tinsel Town. For comparison, theres Robert Altmans 1992 movie The Player it too was Hollywood on Hollywood and earned a clutch of nominations. Again, few remember or care today.

Parasite is the oddball in the mix. Firstly its foreign and although foreign films rarely make it into the Best Picture category, the last few years saw things change with The Artist, which inexplicably won in 2011, and Roma, which inexplicably lost to Green Book last year.

Could a South Korean comedy-horror win Best Picture? If were judging a film on what it says about culture and society then Parasite should be a leading contender. If you want a movie which explores lifes inequalities and the deadly nature of the rich-poor divide, then pick Parasite.

Who emerges as top dog all depends on whether this is a year when the academy gets it right, and rewards a film which explains where we are right now when it comes to culture and society or if the academy gets it wrong and just slaps a gold star on what it thinks is an important film, but is in reality just an ephemeral piece of entertaining fluff which says nothing about the world.

See the rest here:

The Oscars 2020: do they really matter? - HeraldScotland

When Bong Joon-Ho went onstage to simply accept the Academy Award for Easiest Global Movie for Parasite on the 2020 Oscars, he concept his night time used to be achieved. Im able to drink this night till subsequent morning, he stated gleefully. He had already gathered one Oscar sooner than that, for Easiest Authentic Screenplay.

However as an alternative, Bong would go back to the degree to gather two extra trophies: one for Easiest Director, making him the second one Asian to win that award, after Ang Leeand one for Easiest Image. Parasites disappointed win within the greatest class of the night time, over frontrunner 1917, made it the primary overseas language movie ever to win Easiest Image throughout 92 years of Oscar historical past.

I believe like an overly opportune second in historical past is occurring at this time, one of the crucial movies manufacturers, Kwak Sin-ae, stated whilst accepting the award.

bong joon ho watching an oscar in awe percent.twitter.com/s2SjwHZUUW

Kathryn VanArendonk (@kvanaren) February 10, 2020

Long past are the times when overseas movies most effective stood a possibility of opening to coastal cinephiles. Parasite has proven that overseas language movies may also be unifying blockbuster occasionsand its good fortune is evidence of the truth that, as director Bong Joon-Ho himself stated on the Globes, If you triumph over the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, youre going to be offered to such a lot of extra superb movies.

Launched at the same time as with many structural adjustmentstogether with the arrival of streaming and concerted fashionable efforts to champion rangeParasites runaway good fortune may mark a pivotal turning level for overseas language movies, and particularly Asian ones, in The united states. It is a massive breaking of a mental barrier, Janet Yang, a veteran Hollywood manufacturer, tells TIME. This wall weve constructed, wherein non-English language motion pictures had been restricted no longer simply in liberate or field place of work however in folkss minds, is being cracked.

However Parasites good fortune additionally arose from an overly explicit set of instances that is probably not simply replicable. And in Korea and somewhere else, a brand new crop of Asian filmmakers is operating laborious to be sure that Parasite isnt only a temporary bout of glory however the get started of a brand new international generation.

Issues had been very other for overseas language movies initially of Yangs multi-decade profession. When she arrived in Hollywood within the 80s, Asian-language movies, specifically, werent even thought to be an opportunity for mainstream broad liberate. Theyd be advertised differently. It used to be all about getting the Asian target market out, along side the distinctiveness pageant crowd, she says. Indie vendors that are actually lengthy long past, like New Yorker Motion pictures and Circle Motion pictures, funneled world movies to theaters like New Yorks Movie Discussion board, the place they discovered good fortune with erudite and adventurous audiences.

However those movies had been most commonly low-budget, low-grossing distinctiveness affairs that hardly made a dent on the field place of workand obtained even much less popularity from the Academy Awards. Whilst Hollywood likes to consider itself as the middle of the movie global, 92 years of Oscar nominations strengthen Bongs declare that the Oscars are very native. Simply 12 overseas language movies have ever been nominated for Easiest Imageand maximum of the ones movies depicted a enormous historic tournament or determine, whether or not its the Holocaust (Lifestyles is Gorgeous), Global Warfare II (Letters from Iwo Jima) or Pablo Neruda (Il Postino). The Academys possible choices pointed to the concept electorate valued the fashionable lives of folks around the globe not up to their historic or American opposite numbers.

In 2000, Ang Lees Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon exploded to $128 million on the North American field place of work, turning into the highest-grossing overseas language movie produced in a foreign country on the American field place of work. The 18th-century martial arts movie, the primary Asian-language film and most effective different one but even so Parasite to land a Easiest Image nod, confirmed that audiences can be keen to learn subtitlesbut additionally bolstered the concept the one overseas movies price taking note of had been those who instructed unique or historic tales. Over the following couple of years, different martial arts movies like Hero and Kung Fu Hustle effectively replicated Crouching Tigers good fortune, however did little to make bigger the scope of overseas language movie in The united states.

Whilst Lee used to be stringing in combination a run of multilingual epics, a brand new technology of Korean filmmakers used to be in the middle of its personal golden age. Emboldened by means of the rustics increasing democratic rights and flush with money from chaebolshuge family-run conglomeratesa bunch of auteurs led by means of the trio Bong Joon-Ho, Kim Ji-woon and Park Chan-wook rose within the 90s with movies like The Quiet Circle of relatives, Joint Safety Space and Barking Canine By no means Chew. In 2004, Parks Oldboy turned into the primary Korean movie to win the Grand Prix at Cannes.

But it surely used to be Bong, specifically, who would chart a trail towards world stardom via a suite of savvy strategic possible choices. Hes ready to suppose 10 years forwardhe understands the trade very, rather well, Jason Bechervaise, an leisure professor at Korea Soongsil Cyber College who additionally wrote a Ph.D. thesis on Bongs paintings, instructed TIME. In 2013, Bong crossed over to Hollywood with Snowpiercer, his first English-language movie, which raised eyebrows for being one of the crucial first movies to return to streaming quickly after theatrical liberate. In 2017, his bilingual movie Okja led to a firestorm at Cannes when target market individuals objected to the inclusion of a Netflix manufacturing within the pageant.

This chaos is all excellent information for Bong as a result of they speak about him, and extra folks turn out to be conscious about who hes, Bechervaise says. Having won a global profileand plenty of top profile pals and admirers like Tilda Swinton and Quentin TarantinoBong ensured that after he returned to Korea to make an absolutely overseas language movie, the sector would nonetheless be paying consideration.

On the similar time, American audiences had been additionally seeing extra faces of colour on their monitors because of the erosion of conventional gatekeepers in movie and tv. In 2015 and 2016, #OscarsSoWhite exploded on Twitter after two consecutive years of all-white performing nominees, main the Academy to announce an initiative to double their selection of feminine and minority individuals by means of 2020. In 2018 and 2019, social media campaigns helped carry Black Panther and Loopy Wealthy Asians to very large field place of work returnsor even non-blockbusters like Roma (in Spanish) and The Farewell (in Mandarin and English) fared higher than anticipated because of insistent strengthen from communities of colour.

All of those successes confirmed manufacturing corporations and vendors that larger illustration used to be, if not anything else, a wise financial transfer. It used to be on this local weather that the distributor Neon got here to the fore as a emerging powerhouse that invested each in English and non-English movies. In 2019, they launched 4 well-received overseas language movies, together with Parasite, Honeyland and Portrait of a Woman on Fireplace.

Whilst conventional movie manufacturing corporations and vendors warmed to a broader vary of releases, in addition they obtained a push from streaming products and services, whose doable subscribers may come from any place on the planet. In 2016, Netflix put a stake down in South Korea, spearheading no longer simply Okja however the zombie collection Kingdom and the romantic teenager drama Love Alarm. Their set of rules positioned Okja in the similar style cluster as Mad Malesthat means that audience with out a enjoy with overseas language movies would possibly nonetheless be triggered to observe it, and provides it a possibility from the relief in their sofa. Within the coming years, the Jap truth display Terrace Area and the Spanish language drama Narcos: Mexico would turn out to be international phenomena.

In Would possibly, Parasite opened at Cannes to an eight-minute status ovation, sooner or later successful the pageants peak prize. In October, the movie opened within the U.S.and because of rapturous critiques, word-of-mouth campaigns that integrated the efforts of Gold Areaan Asian American group that had shaped in 2018 to spice up Loopy Wealthy Asians on the field place of workand the entire components discussed above, Parasite claimed the biggest-ever opening for a global movie within the U.S.

In fact, it used to be no longer simply those exterior components that drove Parasites good fortune, however the high quality of the movie itself. Whilst the film is distinctly Korean in its solution to horror and humor, its incisive exploration of inequality hit the zeitgeist on the actual proper second. Asymmetric distribution of wealth is a illness all of us reside with, anyplace youre, Suk-Younger Kim, a theater and function research professor at UCLA, tells TIME. Its one thing we will be able to all relate to. This topic subject material increased the movie from a neighborhood Korean tale into a bigger wave of films exploring the similar topicfrom Burning to Us to Joker.

And it may possiblyt have harm that the film used to be shot in a emerging middle of tradition and type because of the expanding dominance of Okay-pop. Seoul is a cultural hub: a modern position that extra folks wish to consult with and learn about, Kim says.

Due to a shrewd rollout from Neon, Parasite endured to excel on the field place of work right through the autumn and achieve momentum into awards season. The awards season good fortune of Roma the yr sooner than had eased the trail, as had the the larger range throughout the ranks of the Academy. Since 2015, the proportion of feminine Academy electorate has risen from 25 to 32 %, whilst the selection of minorities has doubled from eight to a nonetheless paltry 16 %. This yr, the invitees hailed from 59 nations.

However the films momentum used to be additionally carried by means of Bong Joon-Ho who led the way in which as a witty and charismatic presence at the circuit. He temporarily turned into the principle tournament at many Oscars events and generated headlines for his extraordinarily quotable speeches. Its not possible to not be charmed by means of him, evidently, Yang says.

In January, Parasite turned into the primary overseas language movie to ever win the SAG Award for absolute best forged of a movement image. Behind the scenes, Choi Woo-shik, who performs Ki-woo, used the platform to open the door for the following technology. Instead of us, there are such a large amount of legends available in the market in overseas nations, he stated. I truly in point of fact hope that once this second, possibly subsequent yr, we will be able to see extra foreign-language movies and Asian movies.

Whilst the SAG Awards had been a thrilling bit of popularity, the Oscars had been any other topic. It used to be broadly anticipated that Parasite would fall to the closely appreciated 1917, that means that the primary non-English Easiest Image winner must wait a minimum of any other yr. However Parasite pulled out a shocking disappointed, a lot to thrill of many on-linewho christened themselves the #BongHiveand the celebs within the target market. When the manufacturers attempted to show the lighting fixtures out on a display that ran part an hour extra time, the gang roared at them to let Parasites group end.

I dont truly consider in God however God bless Tom Hanks for main the price to stay the lighting fixtures on in order that Bong Joon-Ho and the #Parasite team may end talking and completely experience their victory. #Oscarspic.twitter.com/hawx8PKMcL

Jay Thomas (@ThisJayThomas) February 10, 2020

However Parasites absolute best image win does no longer ensure lasting alternate. The Korean movie trade has not too long ago turn out to be stagnantwith admissions plateauing since 2013and top-heavy, with many blockbusters taking over an expanding quantity of house at theaters. (Ultimate yr, a Korean Movie Council find out about stated that on any given day, 67.5% of all screenings can be occupied by means of the 3 maximum screened movies).

And whilst any film by means of Bong, Park and Kim draws fashionable pastime, the remainder of the rustics filmmakers are a long way much less identified around the globe. The trade, globally a minimum of, is closely reliant at the auteurs, Bechervaise says. He worries that the instances that ended in their ingenious upward push arent replicableand that younger filmmakers is not going to most effective need to deal with the trios lengthy shadow, however festival from the onslaught of world content material arriving in Korea because of streaming products and services.

However for some Korean filmmakers, Parasites good fortune is already inflicting a trickle-down impact. On the 2020 Global Movie Pageant Rotterdam remaining week, the director Kim Yong-hoon spotted a transformation in the way in which folks had been having a look at his new movie Beasts Clawing at Straws. I for sure felt this larger international pastime, no longer most effective from the pageant programmer however from the target market, he wrote in an e mail to TIME via a translator. Those world movie trade folks now realize that there are many excellent filmmakers in Korea.

Beasts Clawing at Straws received the pageants particular jury award, whilst any other Korean movie, Yoon Dan-bis Transferring On, received the Shiny Long term prize. At Sundance, Lee Isaac Chungs Minari, which is about in Arkansas however spoken most commonly in Korean, made a giant splash, successful the Target market Award and the Grand Jury Prize for the dramatic class. The Steven Yuen-led movie, produced by means of Brad Pitts corporate Plan B Leisure, can be dispensed by means of A24, which effectively introduced motion pictures like Moonlight and Woman Chicken.

So any person hoping to search out the following Parasite receivedt have to seem a long way. The Fact, Hirokazu Kore-edas first non-Jap-language movie, stars two French legends in Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche and arrives in March. On streaming, Alan Yangs Tigertail, which is most commonly delivered in numerous Chinese language dialects, will arrive on Netflix, whilst an adaptation of Min Jin Lees Pachinko in Jap and Korean is within the works at Apple. Due to Parasite, all of them find a way to make an have an effect on no longer simply at Movie Discussion board however throughout america and the sector.

I believe Parasite is usually a milestone and on the similar time a motivation to the following technology filmmakers, Kim Yong-hoon says. It is a massive alternative.

More:

Parasites Easiest Image Oscar Is Historical. Is This the Starting of a New Generation in Movie? - MR Invasion

There is a tradition in Shakespeare lore that Elizabeth I, upon seeing a performance of Henry IV, Part I, so enjoyed the comical John Falstaff that she requested another play be written in which Sir John would fall in love. But a request from the queen means Kindly have it done in fourteen days. This may or may not be true, but it would explain the thin plot of The Merry Wives of Windsor in which the bumptious Falstaff does indeed fall in love with the money of the husbands of the Merry Wives.

Sometimes you just have to let a thing be what it is. The Merry Wives is, at best, a rom-com in which the greedy would-be swain is humiliated, goes in for a second try, is humiliated worse, is found out, and eventually repents. There are plenty of laughs along the way with the requisite feel-good comeuppance.

In that regard, Folgers production (the last at this location while a two-year renovation gets underway) satisfies what you come for. A tip-top cast does their job with sparkling timing and well-placed buffoonery. Where things get a little far out is in the concept.

Director Aaron Posner has an earnest and well-intentioned theory behind setting Merry Wives in 1972. Something about the Womens Lib movement, the social energy of the times, the general zeitgeist, I suppose. He even imagines that the play tells a little uncomfortable truth in its exposure of mortals flagrant flaws. I must have missed that part in my puzzlement over Tony Ciseks 1959-era House Beautiful inspired set (loved the Mondrian color-changing windows, whatever the point), the late 60s slogans, and the mish-mash of costumes and styles ranging from early 60s to mid 70s. And while its true that in 1972 many folks were still too stoned to know what year it was, a bit more clarity in setting and purpose would have been welcome here.

Nevertheless, we would still have the fabulous Brian Mani making a rollicking, lusty Falstaff with or without the psychedelic tie-dye shirt encompassing his enormous belly - a feature that is almost a character in its own right, so prominently does it figure. Sir John dreams big, and his armor-plated ego persuades him that he can court two married women with the same love letter, thus winning their affections and access to their husbands funds.

Mistress Ford (Ami Brabson) and Mistress Page (Regina Aquino) play him for the big fish he is with complications authored by the suspicious husband, Ford (in a splendid performance by understudy Ryan Sellers). Fearing cuckolding more than death, poor Mr. Ford disguises himself as Brook, a hopeless suitor of the virtuous Mrs. Ford and pays Falstaff to try to seduce her in order to find out if she can, in fact, be led astray.

Meanwhile, three hopeful swains vie for the hand of their lovely daughter, Anne Page (Linda Bard). The aptly named Abraham Slender (Brian Reisman) woos in an outfit that, even by Sixties standards, should be burned. The sympathetic Fenton (Dante Robert Rossi, who also plays Nym) seems a likelier choice, but still has to contend with the fieriest, funniest Frenchman, he of the hot blood and ready sword, Dr. Caius. Cody Nickell is a treasure in this role and makes all that time and place confusion irrelevant, so wickedly funny is his every appearance.

As an assistant to Dr. Caius, Mistress Quickly (played by the inimitable Kate Eastwood Norris) is one perfectly groomed nurse right out of a 1964 yearbook, topped off with an every-hair-in-place blonde flip. Shes also warm, and droll, and burdened with other peoples messages which put her in the line of fire. Sir Hugh Evans (Todd Scofield) unwisely asks her to support Slenders love suit, a proposition which presages an invitation to duel from the choleric Dr. Caius. Be not alarmed. This is a comedy, so no one dies.

There are a few moments when servants or messengers run in and out with urgent news and cant seem to resist acting out Every. Single. Word. complete with hand gestures and full body exclamations. Its not necessary. We get the gist.

Never let it be said that Mr. Posner didnt want his cast to have fun. The energy crackles, and references to songs of the time were like raindrops falling on my head. The most shameless of all these side doors from the script is delivered by Ford (as Mr. Brook) wearing his very best Rolling Stones shirt and complaining that he cant get no satisfaction. I blush to report it.

Trying to relate this two hours of whimsy to an era best remembered for demonstrations, civil rights marches, sit-ins, paisley bell-bottoms and horrified parents is iffy at best; the comic potential is realized, but the connection is a strain.

Maggie Lawrence is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association. She is a retired English and drama teacher.

WANT TO GO?

What: The Merry Wives of Windsor By Wm. Shakespeare

Where: Folger Shakespeare Library, 201 E. Capitol St. SE, Washington, D. C.

Call: (202) 544-7077 or visitwww.folger.edu/theatre

Playing through March 1

Continue reading here:

CURTAIN CALLS: 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' Feelin' Groovy - Inside NoVA

One of the most popular aspects of Netflixs incredibly popular fantasy series The Witcher is its viral hit song, Toss a Coin to Your Witcher. Sung by a troubadour named Jaskier in the shows second episode, the song has been earworming its way through the zeitgeist, expanding well beyond the reach of the show since it debuted on December 20.

Last week, after a strangely long delay, the song finally became available on Spotify and other streaming services, where it quickly drew attention for its catchy chorus and quirky lyrics all over again.

Even though its mostly a piece of lyrical nonsense based on the events of the shows second episode, Toss a Coin to Your Witcher has amassed legions of fans. In the month since it premiered, in fact, no fewer than four versions of it three different metal covers of the song, as well as the original soundtrack version have all charted in the UK. On YouTube, where all current uploads of the soundtrack are unofficial, the four most-watched versions of the song have a combined view count of more than 40 million.

If youve heard Toss a Coin to Your Witcher, youll know that its something of a many-headed hydra. The song has aspects of medieval instrumentation and classical song structure, as you might expect for a song appearing in a medieval fantasy show. But its also replete with pop movement and rhythm, and even has a dollop of musical theater stylization.

One reason for this jumble of influences is that the songs composers, Sonya Belousova and Giona Ostinelli, wanted to reflect the fusion of genres and aesthetic influences that comprise The Witcher itself. The show is based on a popular book series that later inspired a hit fantasy video game series, so its got a distinctive, game-influenced aesthetic but its also channeling everything from the epic feel of Game of Thrones to the tongue-in-cheek musical parody Galavant.

I confess that upon first hearing Toss a Coin to Your Witcher, I really, really didnt understand the appeal. In fact, I was jarred by the songs many discordant elements. So I decided to talk it over with Charlie Harding, a musicologist and co-host of Voxs Switched on Pop podcast, to get a sense of why so many people were so infatuated with this strange tune. And through our discussion, I realized that the parts of the song I was most baffled by actually were the key to its appeal.

At a glance, Toss a Coin is trying to have its cake and eat it: that is, it wants to be both an earnest song that fits diegetically within its weird fictional universe and a catchy meta-pop song. Its presentation is deeply earnest and straightforward, with actor Joey Batey singing along to an orchestral accompaniment that gets more and more sweepingly dramatic.

But its also replete with syncopation: Its words land on the off-beats, and it uses rhythms that didnt really exist in the historical medieval culture its attempting to channel. And in keeping with the scores of video games, where big, synthesized drum sections are a common feature, it also has a percussion-heavy backing track. Its the kind of thing you might expect to hear in a fantasy game soundtrack right when the fighting gets good but that isnt exactly what you might expect to hear from a song set within that game universes story.

Not only that, but the lyrics are deliberately tongue-in-cheek, with lines like he cant be bleat (a goat-related pun) and he thrust every elf far back on the shelf, a meta-joke that completely breaks the fourth wall.

Theres something almost like [an] uncanny valley in the way that [the song] borrows so fluidly between different styles that we expect to exist in very different media, like video games, musical pop, Renaissance music, all blurred together, Harding said. He pointed out that Batey also uses a style of singing thats closer to musical theater than to a folk/troubadour sound, which further creates a sense of disconnect between the songs many different elements.

Compare all this to a song like Game of Thrones The Rains of Castamere, which keeps to a clear folk aesthetic, both lyrically and musically: Its simple, using few instruments, with a naturalistic singer and a song that feels very balladic. The official soundtrack version of Rains of Castamere was also recorded by the well-known indie rock band the National, whose gritty folk influences naturally complement Game of Thrones aesthetic. So between the band and the show itself, there was an established milieu for how to hear the song. With a more hybrid-genre show like Witcher, that milieu doesnt quite exist.

Harding explains that these discordant elements are part of Toss a Coins basic appeal. I think its drawing on people who love video game scores and anybody thats played [something] like Diablo or World of Warcraft: Kings, he told me. The backing tracks of those games are all pseudo-medieval but are also very much contemporary music. ... And that sound has become the sound of any sort of video game music.

Harding told me the popularity of Toss a Coin to Your Witcher actually illustrates a larger point about pop culture which is that what we think of as pop music is in fact much, much larger than just whats topping Billboard at any given moment.

A lot of people will say all pop music sounds the same, and that usually whats happening on the Billboard [charts] will be the dominant sound currently, that sound would be trap music, he told me. But I actually believe that what is in the popular zeitgeist at any given moment is much broader, and includes whats happening in film scores, whats happening in video game music, whats happening with musicals.

We are comfortable with very different kinds of music given the context and space in which theyre played, Harding added. By experimenting with the boundaries between various musical genres and aesthetics, he explained, Toss a Coin to Your Witcher plays with the idea that were all comfortable with radically different musical styles given different contexts.

By playing with the context of all these different musical genres, and combining them with a catchy hook, Harding said, Toss a Coin ultimately becomes something you might stream in the background of your day.

The success of Toss a Coin also owes a lot to a genre you might not expect: musical theater. In fact, Toss a Coin is perhaps best thought of as a musical theater number because like many musicals, The Witcher employs a conceit in which the time period of its setting and the style of the production itself dont need to align.

Like when you listen to Grease, Harding noted. Grease is also not 1950s music.

Every musical has its own aesthetic rules that it needs to adhere to, and then it uses allusions to other styles to evoke another period, he explained. Like Phantom of the Opera evokes a baroque quality, even though it is thoroughly a contemporary 80s musical.

Toss a Coin also predominantly uses a traditional harmonic chord progression from the world of classical music. At the songs climax, around the words a friend of humanity, the song shifts to what musicians call a perfect cadence. Thats when a cadential chord progression emphasizes its crucial dominant chord a chord built from the fifth note in a typical scale before resolving to its home chord, or tonic chord. It sounds like this:

When we hear a dominant chord played in this context, our ears naturally want that chord to resolve back to the tonic chord, which is the root chord of the key. The power of the dominant chord and our need for it to resolve creates a progression of buildup, tension, and release.

When that cadence happens in a song thats written in a minor key, like Toss a Coin to Your Witcher, the effect is one of incredibly dramatic suspense. (In fact, such chords are often called suspended chords if they dont immediately get resolved.) Toss a Coin to Your Witcher all but overemphasizes its dominant chord. The result is a sound that not only creates high drama for the listener but also recalls the idea of a more classical structure. It adds a sense of tradition and even loftiness to the whole song, in keeping with the musical theater vibe.

And most importantly, Harding told me, that extra drama gives listeners the freedom to be sentimental a freedom pop music often denies them. It has this very revelrous sort of quality to it, he said. And I think that is the magical thing that musicals still allow for. In pop music, sentimentality is so scorned. Musicals, however, allow for embracing heightened emotions: They give you permission to wave your fist in the air.

So the next time you listen to Toss a Coin to Your Witcher, and you feel like joining the heightened revelry, you can participate with full awareness of what the song gets right and how the joy you get from hitting replay is really about so much more than just a catchy hook.

The rest is here:

Toss a Coin to Your Witcher, explained by a songwriter - Vox.com

At the nexus of fashion and sport, Wilson, MCM Worldwide, and the NFL created a Limonta gold football to celebrate the 100th anniversary of professional football. Three panels of the football feature MCM's iconic Visetos design, and the main panel features the Wilson script logo and NFL's 100-year season logo. The ball is finished with sleek black laces.

"Our partnership with MCM celebrates the cultural phenomenon and energy of the sports lifestyle movement," said Amanda Lamb, Wilson's Global Marketing Director of Team Sports. "For Super Bowl LIV, we wanted to create a football that brought together the very best of Wilson, MCM, and the League. The result is a ball that is unlike anything football and fashion fans have seen before, and that celebrates the 100th anniversary of the game in style."

"We are excited to see our partnership with Wilson continue to evolve. This year we set out to create a truly unique, limited, collector's football to commemorate the NFL's 100th anniversary, and the result has exceeded expectations again," said Patrick Valeo, President of MCM Americas. "Sports and Football have created a natural platform for players to express their personal style and MCM is honored to have so many athletes representing and supporting the brand on and off the field."

The gold Wilson x MCM x NFL football debuts today at MCM's new Miami store. This limited-edition ball is also available on http://www.mcmworldwide.com. Wilson will feature this collector's edition football in its retail and experiential space within the NFL Experience at the Miami Beach Convention Center and on http://www.wilson.com. The ball retails for $349.99 (USD).

ABOUT WILSON SPORTING GOODS CO.

Chicago-based Wilson Sporting Goods Co., a subsidiary of Amer Sports, is the world's leading manufacturer of sports equipment, apparel, and accessories. As the official football of the NFL, the College Football Playoff, and more high school and youth teams than any other company, Wilson is the undisputed performance leader in football. Through its dedication to creating products that enable athletes at every level to perform at their best, Wilson has earned its place as a leader in sporting goods for over a century.

About MCM (Modern Creation Munchen)

MCM is a luxury lifestyle goods and accessories brand founded in 1976 with an attitude defined by the cultural Zeitgeist and its German heritage with a focus on functional innovation, including the use of cutting edge techniques. Today, through its association with music, art, travel and technology, MCM embodies the bold, rebellious and aspirational. Always with an eye on the disruptive, the driving force behind MCM centers on revolutionizing classic design with futuristic materials. Appealing to the 21st Century Global Nomad generation - dreamers, creatives and digital natives - MCM's millennial and Gen Z audience is genderless, ageless, empowered and unconstrained by rules and boundaries.

MCM is currently distributed in 650 stores worldwide including Munich, Berlin, Zurich, London, Paris, New York, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo, Middle East and more. For further information about MCM: http://www.mcmworldwide.com.

SOURCE Wilson Sporting Goods Co.

http://www.wilson.com

Read the rest here:

Wilson Sporting Goods, MCM Worldwide, And The NFL Team Up To Create Exclusive Collector's Edition Football For Super Bowl LIV - PRNewswire

Once the horror genre had been slapped across the face by the financial success of The Blair Witch Project there was no going back. Cropping out from the darkest corners of small town America and cinema worldwide came replicas and rip-offs, some of which were great, most of which were almost unwatchable.

New technologies saw a horror ascension, giving many outside the studio system the chance to create and explore the genre without the need for large budgets and effects. Though despite this, the bizarre cinematic zeitgeist of the new millennium was for gore in extremity. James Wans Saw franchise rolled out seven films across the decade, each as absurd as the last, the culmination of which ended in 3D version, sending copious limbs toward the audience for our viewing pleasure. This was joined by the comparatively short lived Hostel series, all whilst across the European pond, new French extremity was also proving popular taking the audiences violence tolerances to new heights with 2007s Inside, pushing the sub-genre to its very limits.

This gave an interesting tone to horror in the 2000s, where themes, cultures and subgenres collided, here are the best and most interesting from 2000-2010.

10. Drag me to Hell, 2009Director:Sam Raimi

Raimis first real return to his self-made horror/slapstick sub-genre since his iconic Evil Dead trilogy is a wild crowd pleaser, mixing disturbing satanic context with sickeningly gory goo and guts seamlessly.

The comedy is perfectly compiled, fun and totally over the top yet strangely still very disturbing, a skill that Raimi and few others have ever mastered.

9. Martyrs, 2008Director:Pascal Laugier

The most infamous film of new French extremity, Martyrs brings untold nastiness to the mainstream fold, encased within a story which is inarguably original and strangely insightful.

Starting off as a good old revenge thriller, Martyrs quickly descends into something far more deprived at around the halfway mark once a girl seeking payback for her disturbing childhood finds herself in an inescapable trap. The worst date night movie.

8. Pulse (Kairo), 2001Director:Kiyoshi Kurosawa

A spiritual spin-off to 2000s Ringu, Pulse played off similar fears of technology at the time, focusing on PCs and the internet, lumbering pieces of bewildering equipment connected to an ethereal otherworld.

The film follows a group of young Japanese residents when they believe they are being tailed by dead spirits, and haunted through the screens of their computers. Like many Asian horrors, Pulse brings ancient evil to contemporary life, unsettled spirits terrifyingly realised as malevolent forces, formed together within a gripping mystery of genuine terror.

7. Slither, 2006Director: James Gunn

Better known for his recent adventures with the Guardians of the Galaxy, James Gunn was once a more altogether bizarre writer and director.

His first fully helmed project, Slither (2006), brought body-horror to the contemporary fold. An ode to the ooze and gunk of Sam Raimis Evil Dead trilogy and 1989s Society, Slither is an overlooked release that perfectly fuses intense horror and gross-out comedy for a highly enjoyable, stomach churning watch.

6. Ringu, 2002Director:Gore Verbinski

Spawning sequels, spin-offs, remakes, restorations and re-releases, Ringu and its following series has become a horror trailblazer for all things grungy, supernatural and long-black-haired.

Ringu takes a traditional Japanese horror, rooted in fears of vengeful and unsettled spirits, and merges this with the paranoia of the turning millennium. Ugly, unfinished and bulky technology, inhabit ancient spirits, making a generation question just how trustworthy the white noise flicker of their TV truly was.

5. The Descent, 2005Director:Neil Marshall

Part monster film, part a claustrophobics worst nightmare, the descent is a cinematic achievement on the smallest scale. Shot in very limited, tight spaces, the underground world of the descent was shot largely on a set, though this is never made obvious.

Horror is at its best when its at its most simple, with the Descent playing on the same fears as the unknown fears of a gloomy forest, though replacing this overused cliche for the depths of some underground caves. Its a horrible, highly uncomfortable watch.

4. Let the Right One In, 2008Director:Tomas Alfredson

In the midst of the vampire renaissance in the mid-2000s, Let the Right One in appeared as the dark and twisted counterpart to the cultural sweetheart, Twilight. Instead the film created a smaller cultural rejuvenation of its own, bringing dark Nordic drama to the forefront of mainstream entertainment.

Following a downtrodden, quiet boy who finds young love in a mysterious girl new to the community. Deftly transitioning between quiet drama and brutal, unforgiving horror, Let the right one in, set a new president for sophisticated contemporary horror.

3. 28 Days Later, 2002Director:Danny Boyle

The idea of a zombie pre-millennium was more of a nuisance than a terrifying threat. Something that would knock all your furniture over rather than aim for the jugular.

28 days later would change all that, giving an infected sub-category to the zombie genre, and spawning a whole movement of zombie enthusiasts. Its now iconic opening sequence, stalking the ghostly Cillian Murphy around Londons desolate streets, sets a pessimistic benchmark for the rest of the film, a drab, realistic and highly entertaining depiction of viral infection.

2. Audition, 2000Director:Takashi Miike

Takashi Miike isnt unfamiliar to the explicitly disturbing, renowned for his frank and blunt approach to sex and violence. Audition is no different, taking the word disturbing to new cinematic heights, in the tale of a widower auditioning local women to be his new wife.

Its a slow burner which patiently builds a gripping drama, whilst behind the curtain crafting something far more sinister. Delivering the climax with a devastatingly uncomfortable blow.

1. Rec, 2007Directors:Jaume Balaguer,Paco Plaza

With the help of Danny Boyles 28 days later and Oren Pelis Paranormal Activity, Rec took 21st-century innovations in horror and formed together with its own ingenious take on the genre.

Truly innovative, Rec plays out in real time following a TV reporter and a group of firefighters who report to a mysterious disturbance at a block of flats. What conspires to be the result of an occult medical science, Rec spirals into a grungy, dirty take on the infected sub-genre.

A tangible panic and urgency maintaining you glued into position for 80 minutes.

Read the original:

The 10 best horror films of the 2000s - Far Out Magazine