SwiftBlog

emergency discussion Nov. 10, 2022

Does The Crown Like the Royals or Not?A season about the Diana and Charles divorce would seem like a prime opportunity to tear into the monarchy. And yet …

By Jackson McHenry and Kathryn VanArendonk

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7t8HLrayrnV6YvK5705qerGeknbJur9Gorqdn

The Curse Under the Big Tree Season 1 Episode 4 Editor’s Rating 4 stars **** «Previous Next» « PreviousEpisode NextEpisode » The Curse Under the Big Tree Season 1 Episode 4 Editor’s Rating 4 stars **** «Previous Next» « PreviousEpisode NextEpisode » What’s a curse? I’ve looked at a bunch of definitions, and the gist is this: some wish, expressed aloud or perhaps in writing, that harm will be visited upon another person. [Read More]

I can’t say that Master Class (playing at the Friedman through August 14), Terrence McNally’s wittily imagined version of the tutorials held by a phlegmatic, reminiscing, mot juste–dispensing Maria Callas at Julliard in the seventies, has ever really spoken to me. I’m no opera buff, and since I’m in a confessional mode, I’ll tell you that I’m not much for “divas” either; at least, not as theatrical fetish objects. I mostly find them exhausting — the regret, the defiance, the one-liners, I get it. [Read More]

All week long, Vulture is exploring the many ways true crime has become one of the most dominant genres in popular culture. Alice Bolin is the author of Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession. The “true-crime boom” of the mid- to late 2010s is a strange pop-culture phenomenon, given that it is not so much a new type of programming as an acknowledgement of a centuries-long obsession: People love true stories about murder and other brands of brutality and grift, and they have gorged on them particularly since the beginning of modern journalism. [Read More]

After moving up their premiere date one week out of fear of the force of Taylor Swift, The Exorcist: Believer has one week of owning the screams of terror before the Swifties take over with screams of delight. The sequel film (one that is launching a new trilogy, mind you) earned $11.9 million on Friday and is expected to earn $28 million over the opening weekend. Compared to recent horror releases like the playful Saw X and the lucrative but biblical The Nun 2, Believer falls somewhere in the middle. [Read More]

A&E’s upcoming Ku Klux Klan docu-series has been met with a tepid response in recent weeks, so much so that the network decided to change the title from Generation KKK to Escaping the KKK: A Documentary Series Exposing Hate in America to alleviate people’s concerns that the Klan would be glorified in the series. Although the eight-part television event follows several families involved with the infamous organization “and efforts to help some members of those families extricate themselves from the hate group,” the official first look specifically focuses on the Howard family in Mississippi — the father, Stephen, wants his teenage daughter, Maggie, to be the first female imperial wizard of the KKK, even though she’s, um, not particularly keen on doing that. [Read More]

The Gold Rush Brought to you by The Gold Rush Brought to you by It’s rare to be nominated for an Oscar, but what does it take to be nominated for your very first performance? That depends on a variety of factors, but looking at the 15 people nominated for their true-blue debuts, the Oscars tend to recognize consciously different performances, ones that employ a lack of actorly pretense or evince a humanizing lack of self-consciousness. [Read More]

When Tom Clancy introduced the world to Jack Ryan in his 1984 novel, The Hunt for Red October, he surely had no idea that the character would still be at the forefront of American pop culture three-plus decades later. Clancy passed away in 2013, but Jack Ryan’s spy-thriller adventures still hit bookstores at the rate of about two a year as other authors take the mantle of the series. [Read More]

The Good Lord Bird Last Words Season 1 Episode 7 Editor’s Rating 5 stars ***** «Previous Next « PreviousEpisode Next Episode » The Good Lord Bird Last Words Season 1 Episode 7 Editor’s Rating 5 stars ***** «Previous Next « PreviousEpisode Next Episode » “Did John Brown fail?” Daveed Diggs-as-Frederick Douglass asks in voiceover at the beginning of The Good Lord Bird’s spectacular season and series finale. [Read More]

The Great You the People/Stag Season 3 Episodes 3 - 4 Editor’s Rating 4 stars **** «Previous Next» « PreviousEpisode NextEpisode » The Great You the People/Stag Season 3 Episodes 3 - 4 Editor’s Rating 4 stars **** «Previous Next» « PreviousEpisode NextEpisode » Peter really, really wants two of his horses to bang. It is the first step to creating a “European superhorse” that will be his legacy. [Read More]