‘About Time’ Is the Donald Trump of Romantic Comedies
About Time professes to celebrate life, but instead celebrates perhaps the most narcissistic, selfish behaviour ever rendered in film.
Colin Dray
drayfish (Colin Dray) is a Lecturer in Literature at Campion College of the Liberal Arts, Australia, and has taught Creative Writing at the University of Wollongong, Australia. His writing and criticism has appeared in Australian Literary Studies, Meanjin, Voiceworks, Antipodes (forthcoming).
The Spoiled Little Man-Child They Made King: Celebrity, Richard II, and Donald Trump
Did Shakespeare predict Trump? No. That's ridiculous. He just wrote a play about a thin-skinned, petty, self-aggrandising narcissist whose poor leadership drove an empire to ruin. Totally different.
Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’ Trumps Reality TV
Shakespeare's As You Like It employed every signature reality show convention three and a half centuries before television even existed.
Things Strange: The Dungeon Master of ‘Stranger Things’
Stranger Things crafts something wholly individual out of the chrysalis of the past, turning the comfort of nostalgia against itself.
‘I Ain’t Afraid of No Bros’: What’s Really Scary About the New Ghostbusters’
The new Ghostbusters have to fight twice as hard to be considered half as good as the old Ghostbusters. As a recipe for heroism, it's perfect.
Romeo + Juliet + Baz Luhrmann: Reconsidered
Baz Luhrmann's films are not subtle. So why do I like Romeo + Juliet so much?
Chaos Does Not Mean Despair in Bowie’s Soundscapes
What Bowie's music describes, again and again, is that we were endlessly, relentlessly killing ourselves.
Night-Wing Media: Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart’s Lessons in Discourse
Through the levelling power of humour, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report cut through the culture's sensationalism and panic to remind us of the baseline of normality beneath all the hysteria.
’24 – Live Another Day’ ‘Cause You’re Gonna Die Anyway
24 began sugared-up on gooey clichés of liberty and freedom -- and ended in hypoglycemic shock. Would a new series be worse for our health?
Look at You, You Big Silly, Says ‘Assassin’s Creed 3’
Assassin's Creed 3 is an enormous, beautifully rendered sandbox game designed to kick sand in your face.
Still Life: The Portrait of Time in ‘Boyhood’
Boyhood sets itself the daunting task of reflecting the breadth of a human adolescence, but it instead reveals that it is in life's minutia that we find the most meaning.