If there’s one TV show that captures the tone, atmosphere, and grandeur of high-class living in pre-modern Britain, it’s Downton Abbey. The show encapsulated not only the day-to-day lives, relationships, and dramas of the English gentry of the time, but also the lives of their servants, cooks, and drivers. It blended real-world events with political …
I want to start this review of Sweet Home by mentioning video games, if you’ll indulge me. The games industry has this awkward discourse floating around it right now regarding politics. Fans are telling publishers to keep politics out of their games, and developers are putting out games that take a very clear political stance …
The modern discourse between generations can be summed up by pitting a baby-boomer who’s screeching, “Millennials are killing everything!” against a twenty-something hipster groaning about how their vintage artisan flat white shipping company isn’t getting off the ground. The problem with millennials like myself making jokes like this one, however, dilutes the genuine issues of …
The Good Omens TV adaptation hit Amazon Prime like a meteor, and it caused a tsunami of positive whoops and cheers from long-time fans of the book and newcomers alike. The show, as adaptations go, is perfect. It’s a lesson in how to use costume, set, style, dialogue, and music to mimic the tone set …
The shortlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019 features six books, two of which are oddly similar retellings of stories from Greek mythology, each with a feminist edge to it. Madeline Miller’s Circe reworks the little-know story of Circe, an equally little-known goddess-turned-witch. It’s a biopic narrative with a love affair thrown in. Pat Barker’s …
The most extraordinary thing about Lanny is just how ordinary it is, even as it presents us with the story of a folk creature made of moss and dirt coming to life and hunting down a young child. “Dead Papa Toothwort wakes from his standing nap an acre wide and scrapes off dream dregs of …