Welcome back to Survivor: Island of the Idols. Last week, one of our beloved recappers picked a person who proved herself to be shrewd and able to deflect votes from herself when her name came up, and our other recapper picked *checks notes* the person who got voted out this episode? That can’t be right. *checks notes again* Huh. Well, without further ado, let’s get to tonight’s recap of Survivor: Island of the Idols!
Read moreBook Review: Severance by Ling Ma
When Candace Chen, an office worker at a big name publisher specializing in overseas production in China, agrees to keep working when most of her coworkers stay home--sick with a new disease called Shen fever or fearful of contracting the disease--she doesn’t expect to work through the apocalypse, but that’s exactly what happens. As Candace continues going to work each day, she watches New York crumble around her, the infrastructure deteriorating with no one to maintain it, businesses shutting down. The world is ending.
Read more10 Weeks of Spooktober: The Perfection (Week 6 of 10)
We’re deep into Spooktober, my little ghosts and goblins. No turning back now.
And for Week 6, I’m reviewing the movie The Perfection, starring Allison Williams and Logan Browning, and directed by Richard Shepard. This is such a difficult movie to discuss without spoilers, because this entire movie is basically plot twist after plot twist, but I’m going to try my darndest right here to explain this movie without spoiling anything. Deep breaths.
I think my husband Ben actually described it best when he called it Black Swan meets Whiplash. In this movie, Allison Williams plays Charlotte, a former cello prodigy who had to leave a prestigious music academy when her mother fell ill. Ten years later her mother has finally died (Charlotte’s words, not mine) and Charlotte is ready to return to the world of music. Only in her absence, another cellist has risen in the ranks. Lizzie (played by Logan Browning) is the new HBIC of the cello. When these two are reunited, will they become friends? Bitter enemies? Lovers?
Well.
Read moreMTV's "Ghosted": Is It Worth the Watch?
Mary & Emily are avid watchers of MTV’s long-running reality TV series Catfish. So when they learned that MTV was releasing a new show called Ghosted, all about tracking down people from your past who have totally disappeared on you without a word, they both knew they were all in. And then they found out former Bachelorette Rachel Lindsay (or is it Abasolo now?) was going to be a host. That’s when they decided they had to review it for the blog. Here is that review. Some spoilers for past Ghosted episodes to follow.
Read moreSix Poems for Ultimate Autumnal Ambience
It's finally fall, and I'm running on pumpkin spice lattes and dying to wear all of my cute sweaters. (Is it going to cool down anytime soon?) Poetry always gets me in the mood for new seasons, so I'm here with the perfect autumn-inspired poems to help you pretend it isn't 95 degrees outside. Get out your decorative gourds and a cup of (iced) apple cider to read the poems on this list because it's October, damn it, even if it doesn't feel like it yet.
Read moreFall TV Reviews Part I
It’s Fall premiere season, and lots of new shows aired on network TV this week. Interestingly, a lot of shows caught my eye, and so I’m now delivering to you, dear reader, a rundown of television shows you could add to your weekly lineup. I’ve watched them all for you so you can pick out your favorites.
Read moreSurvivor S39:e1 Recap
Our long Survivor-less nightmare is over! That’s right, Survivor is back and Mary and Todd are back to re-cap it. So let’s find out who will outplay, outwit, and outlast all of the other castaways on tonight’s premiere of Survivor: Island of the Idols!
Read more10 Weeks of Spooktober: The Hole in the Ground (Week 5 of 10)
It’s time for more Spooktober, and Irish film The Hole in the Ground is getting us to our halfway point. This is an A24 film directed by first-time director Lee Cronin and written by Lee Cronin and Stephen Shields. The Hole in the Ground is the story of Sarah (Seána Kerslake), a young mother who moves with her son Chris (James Quinn Markey) to a home in the Irish countryside to escape a troubling past and an abusive husband. After Sarah and Chris find a sinkhole in the middle of the forest, Sarah notices that her son is starting to exhibit disturbing behavior. Is he even her son? Or did something else come back from the forest?
Read moreBachelor in Paradise S6 Week 7: Act Civilized! This is a TV Show!
Susan: It’s finally over, y’all. But it did take three hours to wrap it up because this is #BachelorNation’s world and we’re all just living in it.
Emily: I hate everything. Why are we here? Why are we doing this? FML.
Susan: Time for fantasy suites! There are four couples remaining: Dylan and Hannah, Demi and Kristian, Chris and Katie, and Clay and Nicole.
Emily: I really wish they had just found a way to wrap this up last week so that we could just have the reunion special this week. All of this just seems overwrought and overly dramatic for no good reason. I’m unsure of why the pressure to get engaged to someone you’ve known for only three weeks seems so real to these people. All I can think is that their producers must be really good at their jobs, and that the BiP bubble is a very real thing that they’re all experiencing.
Read moreWhere "The Goldfinch" Went Wrong
When the negative reviews started rolling in for The Goldfinch a few weeks ago, I was pretty bummed. You’re telling me I read an 800 page long book for this shit?
Just kidding, I obviously read the book for the sake of reading something by Donna Tartt, an author I’ve admired since The Secret History! Still, I did wait until a few months before the film’s release to finally cross the 2013 novel off of my TBR list. If there’s anything good to come out of this movie’s existence, its that it gave me — and a lot of other people, I’m sure — an excuse to read a novel which, despite its page count and intimidating Pulitzer prize-winning status, is an utterly absorbing read. So, yeah, I went into the theater having adored the book, which already put the movie at a disadvantage. However, I am by no means a stickler when it comes to adaptations. Honestly, I’d rather a film cut more from the plot if it’ll make the story work better on screen. Faithfulness to source material and quality of an adaptation are not mutually exclusive.
In director John Crowley’s The Goldfinch, most of the elements of novel actually do remain intact, if condensed for the sake of time. But the film falls short over and over again in a way that’s hard to define, except to say what many reviews already have: it feels flat. For me, the reason comes down to one important misstep, and that’s the way this film handles the relationship between Theo and his mother.
(Minor spoilers for the book & film ahead.)
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