How Much Should a Video Game Tell You?

 Posted on June 11, 2024  |  10 minutes  |  2065 words  |  Sherie Connelly

Stage Fright Not all video-game levels are created easily. Stage Fright Not all video-game levels are created easily. There is a woman in Elden Ring who offers her embrace to all intrepid travelers of the Lands Between. She can be found in Roundtable Hold, the moldering bastion of an ancient order of knights that serves as the game’s hubzone. Players come here to reinforce weapons, to complete questlines, and — if the mood suits them — to accept a hug from a mysterious old crone in a black shawl, sitting quietly on a cot in one of the Hold’s dusty apartments. [Read More]

How Outlanders Nipple Dress Came Together

 Posted on June 11, 2024  |  5 minutes  |  997 words  |  Aldo Pusey

Kimberly Smart, as Madame Nesle de la Tourelle, had her nipples cast for prosthetics for the swan nipple rings. After all the wool clothing and drab fashions of 1743 Scotland, Claire’s world in Outlander becomes far more colorful once she goes to France. And the women in the French court are more forward-thinking in ways she couldn’t have imagined, especially when it comes to beauty’s sometimes-shocking accoutrements — from genital waxing to nipple piercing. [Read More]

How Rosalas Radical Take on Flamenco Found Worldwide Resonance

 Posted on June 11, 2024  |  10 minutes  |  2093 words  |  Janel Helmers

Rosalía. The first chapter of Rosalía’s world-altering second album, El Mal Querer, is an omen. The Catalan songwriter warns us as much in the song’s title (“Malamente — Cap. 1, Augurio”), so if you’d hoped for a fairy tale, you might want to temper your expectations. In it, Rosalía sings forebodingly about ominous symbols — a red crystal the narrator knew would break long before it did, a phantom voice lingering on the stairs, a bridge that sways just as she musters the courage to cross it. [Read More]

How St. Vincent Reimagines Her Own Songs

 Posted on June 11, 2024  |  8 minutes  |  1648 words  |  Janel Helmers

Annie Clark, a.k.a. St. Vincent. In October 2017, St. Vincent released her fifth album, Masseduction, a critically acclaimed collection of art rock with a pop sheen courtesy of producer Jack Antonoff. Now, a year later, she has put together a companion piece, MassEducation, made up of quiet piano versions of the same songs. St. Vincent walked us through the writing and recording of both versions of the track “Savior,” which explores the discomfort of trying to mold yourself to your partner’s desires. [Read More]

How the Visual Direction of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton Inform Todays Comedies

 Posted on June 11, 2024  |  6 minutes  |  1224 words  |  Sherie Connelly

Many of those with whom I interact on the internet have sent me this fantastic video essay by Tony Zhou in which he eviscerates the experience of watching many popular and successful American comedies for their lack of visual inventiveness. He then goes on to perfectly show why Edgar Wright (dir. Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, World’s End, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World) is an exemplar of comedy direction due to his focus on actually framing exciting, active, and funny frames. [Read More]

How to Blow Up a Pipeline Picks a Fight

 Posted on June 11, 2024  |  7 minutes  |  1370 words  |  Elina Uphoff

A group of 20-somethings sits around late at night, drinking, smoking, and talking about philosophy. The vibe is college dorm with the group grumbling about “the Man” as much as sharing their dreams for the future. The normalcy of all this is exactly what How to Blow Up a Pipeline intends, so when the revelers shift their relationship from acquaintances to comrades, their discussion from theoretical to practical, and their self-identification from activists to terrorists, we understand the conditions that created them. [Read More]

How to Give Gaming Services As Gifts

 Posted on June 11, 2024  |  6 minutes  |  1254 words  |  Zora Stowers

If you love a gamer but would rather die than walk into a GameStop and ask an employee what game to buy them, you might want to consider a gaming service as an alternative gift. First, a primer. A game subscription service is similar to your Netflixes or your HBO Maxes. For a monthly subscription fee, you get access to a library of content (in this case, games) that you can enjoy for as long as you’re subscribed. [Read More]

How to Give Spotify, Apple, and Other Music-Streaming Services As Gifts

 Posted on June 11, 2024  |  10 minutes  |  1975 words  |  Elina Uphoff

Streamliner At your service. Streamliner At your service. If you’re looking to gift your loved ones something they’ll actually use, a subscription to a streaming music service is a surefire winner. While most offer the same thing — access to tons of songs on demand — many come with unique features and exclusive content to entice discerning listeners. A few offer something totally different, whether it’s a library that caters to a specific audience or an experience with curation you can’t get anywhere else. [Read More]

How to Make a Movie Based on Extremely Recent History

 Posted on June 11, 2024  |  9 minutes  |  1809 words  |  Aldo Pusey

Dumb Money hits theaters less than three years after the GameStop short squeeze it dramatizes. Director Craig Gillespie shows us how it was done. They made a movie about the GameStop short squeeze already? Yes, they did: Craig Gillespie’s Dumb Money hits theaters in late September, 32 months after a ragtag group of online investors attempted to get rich by targeting the Wall Street titans betting against the retail chain. [Read More]

How Whitney Cummings Learned to Write Roast Jokes

 Posted on June 11, 2024  |  10 minutes  |  2129 words  |  Janel Helmers

The following is an excerpt from Whitney Cummings’s new memoir, I’m Fine … and Other Lies, out October 3. You can catch her on tour this fall. People always ask me how I got funny. The short answer is: I had to figure out a way to be liked. The long answer is more complicated because humor also developed as a survival mechanism to protect myself and disarm or intimidate people when I didn’t feel safe, to make fun of myself before other people could, to avoid having to feel sadness, or to mitigate the gravity of a situation because laughter was my anesthetic for pain. [Read More]