Themenastics

‘Star Trek: Discovery’ and ‘The Orville’: To Boldly Go Where We’ve Already Gone

/ 3 November 2017

Whereas Star Trek: Discovery continues to explore ideological complexities, so far The Orville seems little more than a celebration of Seth MacFarlane's love of the Star Trek property and his ability to indulge in expensive cosplay.

Featured: Top of Home Page/Television

‘Twin Peaks’ and Its Twisted Reflection

Colin Dray

/ 14 August 2017

The return of Twin Peaks fundamentally reshapes the theme of the entire text, refashioning it into a meditation upon reflection, and the inability to know oneself.

Featured: Top of Home Page/Film

‘About Time’ Is the Donald Trump of Romantic Comedies

Colin Dray

/ 14 April 2017

About Time professes to celebrate life, but instead celebrates perhaps the most narcissistic, selfish behaviour ever rendered in film.

Culture/Featured: Top of Home Page/Politics/Theatre

The Spoiled Little Man-Child They Made King: Celebrity, Richard II, and Donald Trump

Colin Dray

/ 9 February 2017

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.

Featured: Top of Home Page/Performing Arts/Television/Theatre

Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’ Trumps Reality TV

Colin Dray

/ 8 December 2016

Shakespeare's As You Like It employed every signature reality show convention three and a half centuries before television even existed.

Featured: Top of Home Page/Features/Television

Things Strange: The Dungeon Master of ‘Stranger Things’

Colin Dray

/ 4 October 2016

Stranger Things crafts something wholly individual out of the chrysalis of the past, turning the comfort of nostalgia against itself.

Featured: Top of Home Page/Features/Film

Romeo + Juliet + Baz Luhrmann: Reconsidered

Colin Dray

/ 11 April 2016

Baz Luhrmann's films are not subtle. So why do I like Romeo + Juliet so much?

Featured: Top of Home Page/Features/Music

Chaos Does Not Mean Despair in Bowie’s Soundscapes

Colin Dray

/ 5 February 2016

What Bowie's music describes, again and again, is that we were endlessly, relentlessly killing ourselves.

Culture/Featured: Top of Home Page/Features/Television

Night-Wing Media: Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart’s Lessons in Discourse

Colin Dray

/ 14 October 2015

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.

Featured: Top of Home Page/Features/Television

’24 – Live Another Day’ ‘Cause You’re Gonna Die Anyway

Colin Dray

/ 17 August 2015

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?

Featured: Top of Home Page/Features/Games

Look at You, You Big Silly, Says ‘Assassin’s Creed 3’

Colin Dray

/ 12 June 2015

Assassin's Creed 3 is an enormous, beautifully rendered sandbox game designed to kick sand in your face.

Featured: Top of Home Page/Features/Film

Still Life: The Portrait of Time in ‘Boyhood’

Colin Dray

/ 17 April 2015

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.

Themenastics

‘Star Trek: Discovery’ and ‘The Orville’: To Boldly Go Where We’ve Already Gone

‘Twin Peaks’ and Its Twisted Reflection

‘About Time’ Is the Donald Trump of Romantic Comedies

The Spoiled Little Man-Child They Made King: Celebrity, Richard II, and Donald Trump

Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’ Trumps Reality TV

Things Strange: The Dungeon Master of ‘Stranger Things’

Romeo + Juliet + Baz Luhrmann: Reconsidered

Chaos Does Not Mean Despair in Bowie’s Soundscapes

Night-Wing Media: Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart’s Lessons in Discourse

’24 – Live Another Day’ ‘Cause You’re Gonna Die Anyway

Look at You, You Big Silly, Says ‘Assassin’s Creed 3’

Still Life: The Portrait of Time in ‘Boyhood’

Avant-Metal’s Lords of Terror: Fantômas’ Eponymous Debut at 25

Jules Verne’s ‘20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’ Goes Deeper Than You May Realize

Taylor Swift Overcomes Breakup on ‘The Tortured Poets Department’

Einstürzende Neubauten Discuss Their Improvised Utopias

The Tooth Hurts: John Patrick Higgins on Pain and Porcelain

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