Monday, March 31, 2025

Film: “Knock at the Cabin”: Shyamalan’s Doomsday Airbnb with Feelings

 

There’s something deliciously bleak about a movie that asks you to choose between your family and the planet. It’s like Sophie’s Choice, if Sophie was a gay dad with a concussion and the Nazis were four heavily armed Jehovah’s Witnesses having a collective psychotic break. Knock at the Cabin is M. Night Shyamalan’s latest R-rated philosophical funhouse ride, and I loved it. Four stars—not five, because this isn’t Signs, but not three, because this isn’t The Happening, thank God and all four horsemen.

A Short History of the Apocalypse (Now With Airbnb)

This movie began as a book that terrified people who still pretend reading matters—Paul Tremblay’s The Cabin at the End of the World, a cozy little trauma grenade from 2018. The rights were snapped up before Tremblay could say “royalties,” and Hollywood got to work doing what it does best: sucking the ambiguity out of morally complex material and replacing it with meaningful glances and gritty lens filters.

The original script by Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman earned a prized spot on the Black List—Hollywood’s version of a “We didn’t make this, but aren’t we smart for noticing it?” newsletter. M. Night Shyamalan saw the script, squinted, and said, “I can make this weird.” He then proceeded to do exactly that, rewriting the screenplay, sanitizing some of the moral bleakness, and adding just enough of his patented spiritual melodrama to remind us we are, indeed, in Shyamalan Country: population confused, emotionally bruised, and probably played by Rupert Grint.

Hulks with Soul and the Apocalypse with Eyebrows

Dave Bautista was cast not because he’s a wrestler or a walking protein shake, but because Shyamalan saw Blade Runner 2049 and thought, “That giant man who speaks in whispers could deliver 30 pages of monologue without punching anyone. Perfect.” To his credit, Bautista commits to the role like he’s about to lead a doomsday book club. He’s terrifying and gentle—like a bear who teaches kindergarten.

The rest of the ensemble is equally off-kilter in the best way. Jonathan Groff plays one half of a couple that feels like it probably met at a book signing for The Velveteen Rabbit. Ben Aldridge is the skeptical partner who brings much-needed edge, while Kristen Cui as Wen somehow doesn’t get devoured by trauma. Rupert Grint shows up looking like he just walked off the set of Trainspotting: Hogwarts Edition. And yes, Shyamalan pops up in a cameo, because it’s in his contract and possibly his DNA.

Production was swift and intense. Shot with ’90s lenses to achieve that old-school thriller look, the film’s aesthetic whispers, “You might die, but tastefully.” The cabin is isolated, the camera claustrophobic, and the entire mood is a funeral dirge scored by Herdís Stefánsdóttir, whose name alone sounds like a Norse god of dread.

Apocalyptic Vibes and Critical Chaos

Critics were divided, which is shorthand for “They didn’t know what to do with it.” Rotten Tomatoes gave it a tepid 67%, Metacritic hovered around a nervous 63, and CinemaScore slapped it with a limp “C,” as if audiences wanted Fast & Furious 47 and got The Passion of the Cabin. But buried beneath the critical hand-wringing was real admiration for Shyamalan’s restraint—yes, restraint. The man who once gave us hotdog-loving survivalists in The Happening now delivered a tight, morally agonizing chamber piece where people talk more than they scream.

Some critics complained about the plot holes. To them I say: in a world where billionaires cosplay as astronauts and people still microwave fish in office kitchens, this is the fiction you can’t buy? Please. Shyamalan took a story about personal sacrifice, stripped it of nihilism, and dared to make it, well… oddly hopeful. That’s either bold or certifiable. Maybe both.

The End of the World as We Feel It

Knock at the Cabin won’t be your favorite Shyamalan movie unless you’re the kind of person who meditates with incense made of existential dread. But it will stay with you. It’s tight, eerie, emotionally earnest, and surprisingly tender—like a hostage letter written in cursive. And in a cinematic landscape cluttered with content that goes down like oat milk wallpaper paste, this one dares to provoke, disturb, and—brace yourself—make you feel something.

More than just another entry in the Apocalyptic Airbnb subgenre, it might be remembered as the moment when Shyamalan proved, once again, that the man may be hit-or-miss, but he always swings for the damn fences.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5 Stars)

#KnockAtTheCabin #MNightShyamalan #DaveBautista #HorrorMovies #PsychologicalThriller #MovieReview #FilmCritic #MustWatch #NowStreaming #MovieNight #SuspenseFilm #ThrillerMovies #ApocalypseMovie #HorrorCommunity #CinemaLovers #FilmTwitter #IndieFilm #MovieBuff #ScreenRant #RottenTomatoes



Art: 🌾 The Cotton Pickers – “Muscles, Myths, and Miseducation” By Thomas Hart Benton, Regionalist, Romantic, and Reluctant Realist

Let’s set the scene. You’re standing in a hot Southern field in the 1930s, the kind of place where shade is rationed like moonshine during Prohibition. A lanky man in a straw hat is bent double over a field of cotton, fingers curled like hooks, back bowed like a question mark. Behind him, a few others shuffle sacks the size of woolly mammoths into a wagon under the one damn tree for miles. Welcome to The Cotton Pickers, Benton’s ode to sweat, soil, and the great American gaslight.

🎨 Meet the Artist: Thomas Hart Benton

Thomas Hart Benton was the type of guy who’d walk into an abstract expressionist cocktail party and spit into the punch bowl. While New York and Paris were getting high on Picasso and Pollock, Benton was out in the Midwest painting farmers, factory workers, and folks who looked like they might know how to change a tire. He was America’s Norman Rockwell if Rockwell had a mean streak and a suspiciously good grasp of anatomy.

Benton called himself a Regionalist, but what he really meant was: I’m tired of European navel-gazing. Let’s paint the people who make our bacon and fix our tractors.

He painted murals that felt like WPA posters on steroids—muscular, moving, and ever-so-slightly mythic. In short, he gave America the story it wanted to believe about itself—whether or not it deserved it.

 No, This Isn’t a Hallmark Movie

Painted during the 1940s (or so), The Cotton Pickers shows African American laborers picking cotton in the American South—a setting that had already gone several rounds with slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the whole “separate but definitely not equal” deal.

This is manual labor soaked in generational trauma, gift-wrapped in golden-hour lighting.

Benton paints his workers with reverence—but not exactly agency. There’s dignity in their posture, grace in their movement, but not much choice in their situation. You can practically hear the unspoken motto: “Work hard, keep your head down, die tired.” It’s beautiful and brutal. And Benton—intentionally or not—lets both truths hang there like humidity on the Delta.

🎭 Meaning: Pretty Pictures of Ugly Truths

So what does it mean?

It’s American mythology, dressed up in bib overalls. Benton’s figures are strong, noble, and silent—but that silence? That’s a whole other problem. The painting romanticizes labor—especially Black labor—without bothering to unpack the system that made that labor necessary in the first place.

This is art that lets white America feel good about feeling bad. “Look how hard they work,” it says, quietly sidestepping the question: Why did they have to?

It’s as if Benton stood at the crossroads between nostalgia and justice and said, “Eh, I’ll paint both, and let future critics fight it out.”

If we paint a painful history in warm colors and smooth curves, does it make it easier to look at—or just easier to ignore?

#AmericanArt #ThomasHartBenton #Regionalism #ArtHistory #SocialRealism #CottonFields #BlackHistory #SouthernGothic #LaborInArt #VisualCulture #ArtAnalysis #ArtThatMatters #HistoryThroughArt #FineArtFridays #CulturalCritique #MuseumsOfInstagram #ArtCollectors #ModernMythology #RepresentationMatters #ArtAndPolitics

Sunday, March 30, 2025

Film: The Ultimate Warrior (1975): Yul Brynner Saves What’s Left of the World, in Leather Pants


Somewhere between Mad Max and Soylent Green, there was Yul Brynner, shirt open to the navel, slicing through New York’s post-pandemic wasteland with the solemn grace of a man who once played a robot cowboy and figured that gig had too much dialogue. The Ultimate Warrior is a film that stares down the apocalypse and says, “Sure, we’ll fight gangs and save seeds, but can we do it under budget and in two sound stages?” It’s not a good movie. But it’s not a bad one, either. It’s like dehydrated beef stew: not gourmet, but if civilization collapses, you’ll be glad it’s there.

All Roads Lead to Burbank

Let’s rewind to the early ‘70s: America had Watergate, gas shortages, and the persistent fear that the Earth would either freeze over, burn up, or be overrun by karate-wielding zombies. Enter Robert Clouse, best known for making Enter the Dragon with Bruce Lee, and a penchant for making movies on a shoestring budget held together with duct tape and misplaced optimism. The Ultimate Warrior was originally titled The Barony, which sounds less like a dystopian nightmare and more like a PBS miniseries about depressed nobles.

This film was part of a proposed three-picture deal that would’ve starred Bruce Lee and George Lazenby. Imagine that: Bruce Lee fighting for tomatoes in a crumbling Manhattan. But then fate pulled the rug—or the nunchucks—when Lee tragically died before Enter the Dragon even premiered. So the film went into production purgatory, eventually clawing its way back with Yul Brynner in the lead, a recasting that’s one part inspired, one part desperate, and all parts bald.

Bald Is the New Apocalypse

Yul Brynner as Carson is what happens when a pharaoh, a gunslinger, and a knife salesman from QVC collide in a wind tunnel. He’s hired by Max von Sydow’s “Baron” to defend a compound of hippie survivalists in the ruined belly of New York, circa 2012. Of course, 2012 came and went without warlords named “Carrot” raiding Madison Avenue, but this movie wasn’t shooting for prophecy—it was shooting for gritty desperation and got at least halfway there.


Max von Sydow, usually seen pondering death on a beach in a Bergman film, here grumbles about seeds and dystopian real estate with more gravitas than the screenplay deserves. Fun fact: he was only 11 years older than Joanna Miles, who plays his daughter. But hey, it’s the apocalypse—things age faster. As for William Smith’s gang leader “Carrot,” he looks like he lost a knife fight with a bottle of carrot juice and came back for revenge. He’s got the name of a Looney Tunes villain and the voice of a man who’s gargled gravel for breakfast.

Filmed entirely on the Warner Bros. backlot and MGM sound stages, this movie features zero location shooting and the single most impressive subway set ever built for a film that spent its matte painting budget on Brynner’s leather boots. If you enjoy dim lighting, corridors, and people solemnly handing over pouches of seeds like they’re gold bullion, this is your Citizen Kane.

Cult Classic or Cult Curiosity?

Upon release, The Ultimate Warrior didn’t exactly set the box office on fire, but it quietly made $9 million on a budget of under $1 million—a ratio that would make any modern Hollywood exec pass out from envy. Critics were mixed, with most praising Brynner’s screen presence and ignoring everything else, like someone admiring the hood ornament of a burning car.

The film was resurrected on DVD in 2008 in a Best Buy double feature with Battle Beneath the Earth, which is kind of like pairing a warm beer with a stale hotdog and selling it as a vintage meal deal. But the film has since found its audience—those who enjoy dusty sci-fi relics, low-budget post-apocalyptic visions, and the comforting sight of Yul Brynner surgically eliminating bad guys while rarely breaking a sweat.

It’s not quite The Road Warrior, and it certainly isn’t Children of Men, but The Ultimate Warrior is a weirdly charming artifact of ‘70s grit, grim survivalist fantasies, and cinematic thrift. It doesn’t ask much of you, except maybe to believe that the future of humanity depends on some seeds, a subway tunnel, and a man whose entire wardrobe could fit in a Ziploc bag.

Come for the Apocalypse, Stay for the Attitude

This is the kind of film that inspires you to hoard canned goods, learn knife skills, and maybe stockpile some heirloom seeds—just in case. It’s clunky, dated, and more than a little ridiculous. But you know what? So are a lot of things that outlive their moment and somehow get better with time. Yul Brynner doesn’t save the world, but he walks away like he did—and sometimes, that’s enough.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3/5)

#TheUltimateWarrior #YulBrynner #70sMovies #SciFiClassic #PostApocalyptic #CultCinema #RetroSciFi #DystopianFuture #MaxVonSydow #UnderratedGems #GrindhouseVibes #MovieReview #FilmTwitter #ApocalypseNowish #ForgottenFilms #SciFiMovies #ActionMovieClassic #VintageCinema #MovieNerd #CinephileCommunity



Art: Swinging on the Gate: When Innocence Got Splinters

Ever looked at a 19th-century painting and thought, “Now that’s a kid who’s about three seconds from breaking a collarbone”?

Enter John George Brown’s Swinging on the Gate, a visual poem to childhood mischief, countryside charm, and the kind of rural OSHA violations only nostalgia can make cute. A young girl, somewhere between “adorable” and “menace,” balances on a creaky wooden gate with the poise of a gymnast and the grin of someone who knows the adults aren’t looking. Spoiler: They probably are. They just gave up.

This isn’t just a painting. It’s a time capsule of an America that wanted to pretend it was all haystacks and sunshine while ignoring the rising smoke of industrialization, urban poverty, and a generation of kids who worked real jobs before they lost their baby teeth.

But Brown, ever the sentimentalist with a brush, gave us a world scrubbed clean of soot and sweat. Born in Durham, England in 1831 and shipped over to New York like a Dickensian orphan, Brown made it. He went from glasscutter to America’s unofficial Minister of Moppets, painting street urchins, flower girls, and bootblacks with the kind of adoration usually reserved for cherubs and show ponies.

In Swinging on the Gate, he trades the grimy cobblestones of the city for the pastoral dream of rural innocence. But don’t be fooled. That little girl isn’t just swinging—she’s testing boundaries. She’s the frontier spirit incarnate: grinning, fearless, ready to leap into trouble, consequences be damned.

This was painted in the late 19th century, when Americans were nursing a collective hangover from the Civil War and binge-watching Manifest Destiny. Brown gave the public what they wanted: pictures of scrappy kids with bright eyes and clean fingernails. It was comfort food for the soul—warm, simple, familiar. Paintings like this one sold like lemonade at a revival meeting, and lithographs of Brown’s work were the 19th-century version of going viral.

But behind the sweetness is a subtle rebellion. That kid isn’t posing. She’s owning the fence. She’s saying, “I know the rules. I’m choosing not to care.”

At its core, Swinging on the Gate is a love letter to unsupervised childhood, a now-endangered species. It’s about defiance wrapped in innocence, and maybe, just maybe, a reminder that sometimes the most meaningful art doesn’t preach—it plays.

When was the last time you broke the rules just to feel the wind in your hair—and would you do it again even if the gate splinters?

#JohnGeorgeBrown #AmericanArt #ArtHistory #19thCenturyArt #OilPainting #FineArt #Realism #GenrePainting #ClassicArt #MuseumArt #ArtLovers

Saturday, March 29, 2025

Film: “The Opposite Sex” (1956): A Symphony of Slaps, Sequins, and Studio Shenanigans

 


Let’s be honest: when MGM decided to remake The Women—that legendary 1939 catfight couture-fest—as a musical with men in it, you could already hear Norma Shearer and Rosalind Russell rolling in their technicolor graves (or at least their Malibu beach chairs). The result, The Opposite Sex, is less “feminine ferocity” and more “pastel pageant with a pulse,” complete with a jazz band cameo, a few awkward musical interludes, and an unfortunate slap that allegedly sent Joan Collins to the floor faster than her contract with 20th Century Fox. It’s the kind of film that feels like a gossip column and a satin robe had a baby—and that baby was raised on martinis and mild passive aggression.

Development Hell, But With Better Lipstick

By the mid-1950s, MGM was sweating out the last of its golden age hangover. The suits, high on nostalgia and probably Vermouth, decided to take Clare Boothe Luce’s acidic 1936 play The Women and retrofit it into a musical comedy because nothing says marital betrayal like a big-band number. Out went the all-female conceit (which the studio dismissed as a “stunt”) and in came the men, because “you can’t play a love scene alone,” according to writer Fay Kanin. Never mind that The Women had done just that for over 600 Broadway performances and a film that still slaps harder than June Allyson ever could.

The Kanins tried to smooth things over with a showbiz setting, an idea as thin as a Joan Crawford eyebrow. They tossed in musical numbers, switched up some relationships, added a cowboy, and hoped the pastel CinemaScope palette would distract from the fact that they took the original’s bite and replaced it with blush. Spoiler: it didn’t.

Casting Chaos and Backstage Brawls

This production reads like a who’s-who of who-wasn’t-available. Grace Kelly dipped out before filming
began (royalty beckoned), Esther Williams said no and was suspended, and Eleanor Parker was cast and recast like a game of Hollywood musical chairs. June Allyson—MGM’s perennial girl-next-door with a tremble in her voice and a contract nearing its death rattle—ended up leading as Kay Hilliard, a wronged wife who gets revenge not with poison but passive optimism and one decent ballad (dubbed by Jo Ann Greer, naturally).

Joan Collins stepped in as man-stealing showgirl Crystal Allen, on loan from 20th Century Fox and apparently on the outs with the rest of the female cast. According to Cosmopolitan, Allyson’s on-screen slap was so real it knocked Collins out cold. That’s method acting, baby. Meanwhile, Dolores Gray didn’t get to sing much (a crime), and Ann Miller didn’t dance at all (a felony). On paper, this was an all-star cast. On screen, it often feels like a stage full of musical chairs where nobody gets a solo.

Like the Original, But with Horns and Husbands

The bones of the plot remain: Kay discovers her theater producer husband is stepping out with a showgirl. Cue gossip, Reno divorce papers, an ill-advised marriage to the mistress, and a second act redemption. But while the original The Women gave us venomous wit and haute couture duels, this version serves cabaret-lite and chorines. Instead of razor-sharp wit, we get pastel sarcasm. Instead of Joan Crawford walking into a room and owning it, we get Collins soaking in a bubble bath and catching hives. Progress?

There’s a subplot with a singing cowboy (Jeff Richards) and the Countess (Agnes Moorehead), which gets rewritten here so that he ends up with Sylvia Fowler instead, presumably because studio execs were bored and needed to justify Agnes’s wig budget. And if you’re wondering how Harry James wound up blaring a trumpet in the middle of this estrogen opera, don’t. It’s 1956. Nothing needs to make sense.

When Pretty Isn’t Enough

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called it a “venomous mixture of deadly females vs. deadlier females” and meant it as a compliment. Audiences, however, were less amused. Despite the gowns, the color, and the fighting-in-heels choreography, The Opposite Sex flopped like a sequined pancake. MGM took a $1.5 million loss, proving that even the best wardrobe can’t cover up a weak script and studio micromanagement.

Still, some critics—and modern audiences squinting through nostalgia-tinted glasses—find pleasure in its glossy absurdity. It’s campy, it’s gaudy, and there’s enough eye shadow and spite to fuel a whole season of Real Housewives of MGM. Even Crawford, never one for subtlety, allegedly dismissed it with her usual grace: “We towered compared to those pygmies in the remake.”

Sequins, Slaps, and Soap Opera Stardust

Today, The Opposite Sex stands as a glittery cautionary tale of what happens when a studio remakes a classic and underestimates the power of estrogen-only storytelling. Sure, there’s a place for men in cinema. Just not in The Women. And certainly not doing doo-wop behind Dolores Gray. This was June Allyson’s MGM swan song, and though her ballad may have been dubbed, her swan still managed a few good flaps.

It’s fun. It’s flawed. It’s fashion-forward fury without the bite. A film that wanted to be champagne and ended up as pink soda—still sweet, but with bubbles that fade too fast.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3/5)

#TheOppositeSex #JuneAllyson #JoanCollinsDrama #MGMMusicals #GoldenAgeHollywood #CinemaScope #FashionFights #HollywoodHistory #MusicalMisfires #MovieSlaps #PastelPower



Art: 🌊 When the Sea Punches Back: William de Leftwich Dodge’s “Seascape”


Ever look at the ocean and think, “Yeah, I could take that”?

William de Leftwich Dodge did not.

Instead, he painted it like it was a drunk uncle at Thanksgiving—loud, unpredictable, and one ill-timed word away from flipping the whole damn table. This glorious mess of froth and fury, this Seascape, isn’t just a painting—it’s a bar fight between light and shadow, hope and despair, nature and your fragile little ego.

And Dodge? Well, Dodge was supposed to be a nice, respectable muralist. The kind who painted stoic allegories for domed ceilings while wearing a waistcoat and pretending not to think about death. He was the guy they called when a state capitol needed some Greco-Roman gravitas or when the Library of Congress wanted Lady Liberty to show a little tasteful side-boob.

But then one day he looked at the sea—really looked at it—and said, “To hell with allegory. I want to paint this bastard.”

🎨 The Artist Who Swerved Left

Born in 1867 and trained in the Parisian trenches of academic art, Dodge was a highbrow boy wonder with classical ambitions. He drank deep from the Beaux-Arts chalice, made friends with mythological figures, and painted murals so high up they gave pigeons vertigo. He was respectable, award-winning, and exactly the kind of guy your grandmother wished you’d become.

Then this happened.

This Seascape isn’t refined—it’s rabid. Gone are the toga-clad muses. Here, the muses are seagulls with an attitude problem. The ocean isn’t blue; it’s bruised. The waves don’t roll—they lunge, like they’re coming for your kneecaps. A sickly green glow pulses from the crests, like Poseidon’s hungover and glowing radioactive.

Dodge doesn’t just flirt with Impressionism here; he shacks up with it for the weekend, raids its liquor cabinet, and smears his hands across the canvas like he’s in a bad marriage with the Atlantic.

🕰️ Context? Oh Fine, Here’s Your Context

It’s likely from the early 20th century, when Dodge had already hit the muralist jackpot and had some time to explore his wilder urges. This was the moment American artists were wrestling with Europe’s influence, shrugging off classical corsets, and getting a little… messy. Think Winslow Homer after one too many ryes. Think Turner, but with less fog and more “fight me.”

This seascape fits that mood perfectly. It’s not about observation—it’s about confrontation. The sea isn’t calm, and it isn’t contemplative. It’s flipping you off with every curling wave.

💡 So What’s It Mean, Smart Guy?

It means nature doesn’t care about your plans. It means beauty doesn’t have to be polite. And maybe, just maybe, it means even the most decorous artist occasionally wants to chuck a paintbrush at the abyss and see what happens.

It’s Dodge unbuttoning his collar, grabbing a bottle of absinthe, and telling the sea, “Let’s dance.”

When was the last time you painted your own storm instead of just weathering someone else’s?

#SeascapeSavage #WilliamDeLeftwichDodge #ArtThatBitesBack #BrushstrokesAndBreakdowns #ImpressionistRebellion #OceanMood #MoodyBlues #WaveRage #StormInACanvas #HighArtLowMorale #MuseumVibes #AngryWater #ArtHistoryWithTeeth #PaintDontPreach

Friday, March 28, 2025

Film: View from the Top: High Hopes, Low Altitude

There are films you forget because they were never meant to be remembered. And then there are films you remember only because you wish you could forget them. View from the Top is that rare airport cinnamon roll of a movie: bright, sticky, over-processed, and weirdly comforting in its total lack of nutritional value. It aspires to be Working Girl with wings, but ends up more like Legally Blonde’s jetlagged cousin who spent too much time in the duty-free section and mistook perfume ads for feminism.

The Road to Paris, First Class, International

Originally shot in 2001, View from the Top sat on the tarmac of Miramax for two years, because, well, 9/11 happened—and suddenly, a frothy comedy about ditzy stewardesses navigating the friendly skies felt about as tasteful as a stand-up routine at an airport security checkpoint. The studio delayed it, then delayed it again, slicing out cameos from Robert Stack and Regis Philbin, editing out a training montage about handling terrorists (with Mike Myers no less), and trimming every sharp edge until the film resembled a plastic fork at an in-flight meal.

The script started as a plucky spec by Eric Wald, blessed by the hand of Brad Grey, then waterboarded with rewrites by Cruel Intentions auteur Roger Kumble. It was supposed to be an aspirational comedy about escaping your roots. Instead, it’s a museum exhibit of 2003: lip gloss, LeAnn Rimes, Chanel, and characters still calling flight attendants “stewardesses” without irony.

Barbie, Bitch, and the Burnout

Gwyneth Paltrow, right before becoming Hollywood’s most expensive yoga mat, plays Donna Jensen—Big Lots cashier turned mile-high Cinderella. Her performance teeters between sincere and Xanaxed, as if she’s trying to transcend the material by sheer force of cheekbone. Christina Applegate, ever the professional, somehow sells her role as the competitive, petty blonde villain Christine Montgomery like she’s auditioning for Mean Girls: The Prequel.

Then there’s Mike Myers, whose character is inexplicably cross-eyed, and whose office decor includes
real-life celebrities with ocular issues—because when in doubt, make the joke about someone else’s eye socket. Add in Candice Bergen as a Vogue-spawned Yoda of sky service, Mark Ruffalo doing his best “nice guy from Cleveland” impression, and Kelly Preston stuck in what might be the most thankless sidekick role since Robin held Batman’s cape. It’s a packed cast that feels like a cocktail party where nobody knows why they’re there.

Plot-wise, it’s a strange cocktail of makeover montage, sabotage thriller, and rom-com checklist, all stitched together with scenes that could double as promotional videos for Delta’s lost-and-found department. You can practically hear the studio notes in every frame: “Make her sassier. Now make her softer. Now put her in Chanel.”

Turbulence and Touchdowns

When View from the Top finally crash-landed in theaters in 2003, it made a respectable thud at the box office, grossing $19 million on a $30 million budget. Not a total disaster, but not exactly Catch Me If You Can. Critics circled like vultures in coach class. Rotten Tomatoes gave it 14%, which seems generous if you’ve ever had to sit through the Paris scene without wincing. Gwyneth Paltrow later called it “the worst movie ever”—which is rich, considering she also made Mortdecai.

And yet, like the fake cheese in a prepackaged airline meal, the film refuses to die. British comic Richard Ayoade turned its failure into philosophical comedy gold with Ayoade on Top, an entire book-length meditation on why this pastel, polyester disaster might actually be a misunderstood capitalist parable. Somehow, by being so bad, the film became oddly bulletproof.

It also landed on the comedy podcast How Did This Get Made, where it was dissected like a glamorized instructional video from 1998. Watching it now is like opening a time capsule labeled “Early 2000s White Women in Crisis: A Study.” It’s not good. It’s not bad. It’s…a SkyMall catalog in cinematic form.

Final Descent

Ultimately, View from the Top is like turbulence on a red-eye flight—you don’t enjoy it, but you’ll probably live through it. It’s candy-colored nonsense dressed up as empowerment, with just enough charm and absurdity to justify a hate-watch. You won’t remember it tomorrow, but you’ll hum LeAnn Rimes’ “Suddenly” in the shower and wonder what the hell just happened.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3/5)

#FlyingTooCloseToMediocrity #MileHighMediocre #GwynethInPastels #ChristinaApplegateWasRobbed #MikeMyersWhy #AyoadeOnTopIsBetter #ViewFromTheMiddle #ThreeStarsBecauseICouldn’tLookAway




Art: 🎵 “The Piper” Plays On… But Who’s Listening?


You walk into the gallery. Your feet hurt. Your soul hurts. And then you see him: a man puffing his cheeks like a dying accordion, squeezing what appears to be a wine bota filled with angry bees. That, my friend, is a bagpipe—and this is The Piper by Robert Ryland Kearfott, America’s answer to, well, someone who would rather paint Europe.

Let’s start with the artist. Kearfott (1875–1951) was born in Virginia, which already gives him a deeply complex relationship with progress, boots, and banjos. He was a Southern gentleman who dabbled in portraiture, genre scenes, and the kind of regional nostalgia that makes Civil War reenactors weep into their mustache wax. But instead of painting tobacco barns and lost causes, here he’s gone full Francophile, slapping us with a scene straight out of 19th-century Brittany: cobbled streets, stoic drinkers, and two musicians who look like they’ve been playing the same wedding for 43 years straight.

The central figure—the titular piper—has cheeks like grapefruits and fingers like sausages. He clutches his bagpipe like it owes him money. His partner in crime, a wizened hobbit with a double-reed instrument and a thousand-yard stare, looks like he’s been smoking something stronger than Galoises. Behind them? A crowd of Breton dancers, oblivious to the melancholy bleeding out of this folk duo like so much warm cider.

So what’s going on here?

Well, this is no cheerful pub scene. It’s not a quaint postcard. This is a funeral dirge for tradition, disguised as a Saturday market. Kearfott isn’t just documenting Breton life—he’s freezing it, taxidermying it for American audiences who will never step foot outside of Peoria. It’s the cultural equivalent of buying a bottle of French wine and mispronouncing “terroir.”

Here, Kearfott gives us the grim reality of being a vessel for heritage in a world that’s already halfway through its second jazz record. These men are not happy. They are relics—auditory fossils in hats big enough to qualify as medieval architecture.

And yet there’s humor here, if you look for it. It’s in the exaggerated poses. It’s in the fact that one of the musicians appears to be judging us with every wrinkled fiber of his being. Kearfott seems to say: “Here lies tradition. It plays on, whether you clap or not.” And maybe it’s funny, maybe it’s sad, but it’s definitely a mood.


So here’s the question:

What happens when you’re the last one still playing the tune—and everyone else is dancing to something else entirely?


#BagpipeBlues #KearfottAndOn #FolkMeetsFury #TraditionIsTired #FrenchFolkFever #RuralRage #MitchMeetsMoMA #ArtWithAttitude #ThePiperSaidWhat #NotAllWhoPuffAreLost

Thursday, March 27, 2025

Music: Places and Spaces – Donald Byrd (1975)


Let’s be honest: when a hard bop legend like Donald Byrd shows up at your disco party in platform heels and a satin shirt, your first instinct might be to call the cops—or worse, DownBeat magazine. But here’s the thing: Places and Spaces doesn’t care about your instincts. It’s already two drinks deep, gliding across the floor like a trumpet-toting Barry White with a PhD. This album is jazz-funk’s bougie uncle: smooth, expensive, a little ridiculous, but undeniably cool—and just when you think it’s all gold chains and synthetic strings, Byrd hits you with a muted solo that makes you spill your Campari all over your polyester.

By 1975, Donald Byrd was no longer the Miles Davis protégé who slayed bop sets at Birdland. No, he’d traded smoky clubs for college campuses and classrooms, lecturing about Black music, Black economics, and Black excellence. He had tenure and a top 10 album—something few jazz cats could claim without lying or dying. This was a man who saw the writing on the wall and decided to scribble something funkier over it.

The writing said “jazz is dying,” and Byrd responded by calling in the Mizell brothers—Larry and Fonce, musical alchemists with a penchant for analog synths, tight grooves, and lyrics that sounded like horoscope affirmations set to a wah-wah pedal. Byrd, a professor of music and a scholar of hustle, saw a lane and took it, swerving right past the purists with their clutching pearls and into a new decade of groove. Places and Spaces was the third act of Byrd’s commercial reinvention after Black Byrd and Steppin’ into Tomorrow—both bestsellers that made Blue Note execs weep with joy and jazz critics weep with despair.

Byrd didn’t just slap his trumpet on a funk record and call it a day. This was carefully orchestrated groove science. Recorded at The Sound Factory in L.A., Places and Spaces feels like it was built by a team of musical NASA engineers. Every hi-hat click, every clavinet riff, every ethereal backing vocal was calibrated for maximum smoothness—yet Byrd’s horn cuts through the syrup like a scalpel. He’s not showing off, but he’s not about to let you forget who’s boss, either.


The Mizell brothers brought their full arsenal: velvety Rhodes, tight horn arrangements, proto-synth flourishes, and lyrics that whisper “trust the universe” even as the bass line screams “get on the dance floor.” The band is a murderer’s row of session legends—Harvey Mason on drums, Chuck Rainey on bass, Jerry Peters on keys—and they never miss. It’s like the Ocean’s Eleven of jazz-funk, except the heist is your heart, and the loot is a sweaty, satisfied grin.

Byrd himself seems both above and within the sound. His solos are clean, minimal, sly. He’s not trying to play a thousand notes per second like it’s 1963. He’s vibing, like the elder statesman who knows how to shut down the room with three notes and a smirk.

TRACK-BY-TRACK OVERVIEW

1. “Change (Makes You Want to Hustle)”

Instant floor-filler. Latin percussion meets electric funk. This track wants you sweaty and satisfied by minute three. Byrd’s horn doesn’t so much lead as it nudges you toward enlightenment via dance.

2. “Wind Parade”

A stone-cold classic. The kind of song that makes you believe in astrology and good credit scores. So ethereal, it practically floats. Sampled to death, and for good reason.

3. “Dominoes”

Soft introspection wrapped in Fender Rhodes silk. You can almost hear Byrd in a velvet robe, contemplating love, loss, and his 403(b).

4. “Places and Spaces”

Title track and mission statement. Slightly spacier, darker, more reflective. It’s the album’s thesis—what if jazz got lost in a galaxy and liked it there?

5. “You and the Music”

Sounds like Earth, Wind & Fire took a weeklong yoga retreat and came back with a groove. It’s feather-light but hooks you in by the soul.

6. “Night Whistler”

A little mystery here. It’s a noir-ish stroll down a well-lit alley in bell bottoms. You don’t know what it’s about, but you trust it.

7. “Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)”

Yes, that Temptations cover. Yes, it works. It’s loungey, dreamy, and respectful to the original, but with enough brass to justify its presence. Like a loving remix by a professor with good taste.

Upon release, Places and Spaces was embraced by exactly the people Byrd hoped would love it: dancers, record buyers, soul radio DJs, and future hip-hop producers not yet born. Jazz critics, meanwhile, clutched their berets and groaned about betrayal. “Where’s the fire? Where’s the improvisation?” they cried. It was in the groove, you clowns—but you were too busy polishing your Coltrane box sets to hear it.

Over time, Places and Spaces has become a Rosetta Stone of groove-based jazz. It’s one of the most sampled records in hip-hop—“Wind Parade” alone gave rise to cuts from The Pharcyde, Black Moon, and Madlib. Byrd’s music reached immortality not through Carnegie Hall, but through MPC drum pads and dusty basement mixes. And that, honestly, feels like justice.

These days, Places and Spaces sits comfortably on “Best of Blue Note” lists and in crates of DJs who know the power of a perfectly modulated horn over a velvet groove. It’s aged like a fine cognac in a bottle shaped like a lava lamp. Go ahead, judge it by the cover—it’s exactly what it promises: slick, stylish, and smarter than it lets on.

Donald Byrd didn’t sell out—he bought in, ahead of everyone else. Places and Spaces is the sound of a man with one foot in bebop and the other in bell-bottoms, riding a groove-powered hovercraft into the future. It’s not perfect—but damn if it isn’t perfectly listenable. And in a world full of noise, that counts for something.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

#JazzFunkForever #MizellMagic #DonaldByrdDidItBetter #WindParadeIsLife #VinylSnobbery #FunkUniversity #BlueNoteGlowup




Art: Rock Me Softly With a Table Saw: Bill Rutherford’s “Guitar” and the Curious Case of Frozen Funk


Here stands a man—maybe—strumming a purple guitar with the kind of detached elegance you’d expect from a mid-80s Prince backup dancer turned suburban art teacher. This is Guitar by Bill Rutherford, and it does not rock. It glides. It poses. It doesn’t want to be your idol; it wants to be your attitude.

The figure is lean, expressionless, and possibly allergic to emotion—but dressed like they were vacuum-sealed from a Solid Gold taping. Painted teal pants? Check. Burgundy boots with golden cuffs? Oh, honey. And that red guitar? It’s slung like a weapon, but the only thing being slain here is subtlety.

Bill Rutherford, born in 1945 and too cool for the mundane, carved his niche (literally) in painted wood sculptures that fuse African American culture, folk art energy, and more 80s visual flair than a Trapper Keeper caught in a high-speed collision with a Ken doll. He came of age artistically in a post-Civil Rights, post-funk America where expressive identity wasn’t just permitted—it was power.

While others were throwing paint on canvas and calling it therapy, Rutherford was whittling entire personalities out of pine and giving them enough color to make Miami Vice look grayscale. He was a quiet rebel, carving joy into geometry, soul into stillness.

Guitar is a time capsule: not of history, but of vibe. This figure doesn’t just play music—it is music. Mid-thrill. Mid-riff. Mid-“I’m so cool I don’t have to try.” And isn’t that exactly what we want to be? Effortless. Poised. Flawlessly dressed in a fantasy where rock and roll never gets greasy, and art school never calls your bluff.

And yet—beneath that varnished veneer—is this a celebration or a eulogy? Is Rutherford preserving the purity of performance, or is this sculpture the wax museum version of soul—immaculate, impersonal, and just a bit too perfect? Has the spontaneity of funk been turned into museum-safe decor?

Or more provocatively:

If a guitarist shreds in a gallery and nobody hears the solo, did it even wail?

#HashtagMeLikeOneOfYourFunkBoys #FrozenFunk #BillRutherfordDoesntBlink #GuitarSculptureMood #80sRealnessMeetsFolkArtFeels #SoulCarvedNotSampled #MuseumOfPosersAndPoets


Wednesday, March 26, 2025

Film: The Phantom Menace That Wore a Pillowcase

 


You can measure a town by the stories it tells itself to sleep at night. Texarkana, that misty borderland where Texas and Arkansas shake hands like two drunk uncles at a family reunion, chose to turn trauma into entertainment. And bless Charles B. Pierce for answering that call—armed with a 16mm camera, a bag of duct tape, and what I can only assume was a case of Lone Star beer. The Town That Dreaded Sundown is a film that wants to be a documentary, a horror movie, a crime procedural, and a trombone PSA all at once. It doesn’t quite succeed at any of them, but damn if it doesn’t die trying—bloodily, theatrically, and with all the subtlety of a possum in a blender.

Origins: Boggy Creek and Other Backwoods Legends

Before Sundown, Pierce gave us The Legend of Boggy Creek, a docudrama about a hairy man in the swamp that terrified a generation and probably inspired more than a few restraining orders against local cryptids. Riding the high of that success (and, rumor has it, the fumes of whatever they were huffing in 1970s Shreveport), Pierce decided to dramatize the real-life 1946 Texarkana Moonlight Murders—a series of killings so gruesome they inspired a town-wide blackout and a 70-year conspiracy theory.

The film claims to be “true,” then changes every name and detail like a witness in the Federal Protection Program. It says the killer struck in Arkansas when most of the crimes were in Texas. It tells you the victims were chewed on like rawhide and tied to trees, which makes it sound like Hannibal Lecter was moonlighting in the woods. And then it has the gall to open with a narrator telling us solemnly, “This actually happened.” Sure it did, buddy. And Elvis is still alive, working in a Dairy Queen in Texarkana.

Casting, Plot, and Other Crimes

Ben Johnson—yes, that Ben Johnson, the Oscar-winner from The Last Picture Show—wanders through the movie looking like he took the role under court order. He plays “Captain J.D. Morales,” based on Texas Ranger M.T. “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas, a man whose nickname sounds like a bourbon label. His sidekick, Norman Ramsey (Andrew Prine), spends the movie furrowing his brow, writing the ending of the film on the fly, and dodging snakes—one of which was a real moccasin on set. No symbolism there.

The Phantom himself is a silent, hulking figure in a sack mask who kills with the creativity of an avant-
garde butcher. One victim is murdered by a trombone—a sequence so gleefully deranged that it bypasses bad taste and laps itself into surrealist art. Elsewhere, you get long stretches of folks talking in diners, loitering in barbershops, and driving through soggy fields in what might be the slowest police pursuit this side of a funeral procession.

Production was more local than a church bake sale. Extras show up multiple times in different “roles,” either due to budget constraints or Pierce’s belief that the town was small enough no one would notice. You’ll spot the same guy crossing the street, serving coffee, reinforcing windows, and later handing out punch at the prom. He’s basically Texarkana’s Forrest Gump.

Blood, Lawsuits, and the Trombone Heard ’Round the World

Critics in 1976 panned the film like it owed them money. The New York Times called it unprofessional. Variety said it was all shock and no substance. Gene Siskel gave it half a star and probably set his chair on fire afterward. But amid the carnage, some praised Pierce’s unflinching murder scenes—especially local reviewers, who gave polite golf claps while squirming through the trombone sequence like it was a Baptist sermon on venereal disease.

And then came the lawsuits. The family of one of the real victims sued for $1.3 million over the film’s portrayal of their sister as a loose, dropout floozy—which, given the facts, was like rewriting Anne Frank as a blackjack dealer. The case was dismissed. Texarkana itself tried to get the movie’s tagline—“This man still lurks the streets”—removed. Pierce agreed… then left it on the posters anyway. That, friends, is what we call marketing with malice.

The Killer Who Wouldn’t Die

Somehow, The Town That Dreaded Sundown survived obscurity. It went out of print, lived on bootlegs, and finally resurfaced in 2013 on Blu-ray thanks to Shout! Factory, who deserve hazard pay. Now it’s a cult classic, shown every October in the very town it terrorized. Talk about closure through Stockholm Syndrome.

Oh, and that creepy final shot? The Phantom standing in line at a movie theater to watch The Town That Dreaded Sundown? That’s either high-concept meta or a sign the editor gave up and pasted in a fever dream. Either way, it’s the kind of moment that gets you invited to speak at horror conventions… or restraining orders.

Curtain Call

Three stars for the guts (literal and figurative), the ambition, and the unforgettable insanity of that trombone kill. It’s messy, exploitative, strangely regional, and mostly fiction—but it crawled out of the drive-in graveyard and found immortality in cheap polyester and myth. Just don’t ask it to solve the crime.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3/5)

#BloodInTheBayou #SackMaskKiller #TromboneDeath #TexarkanaTrashfire #CultCinemaGold #DriveInDreams 



“Yes, Queen, But Make It Ancestral”: On Laylah Amatullah Barrayn’s Unapologetic Lens

Somewhere between Vogue’s tired attempts at “ethnic chic” and the endless carousel of influencers doing “diaspora cosplay” for clout, there’s actual substance—enter Laylah Amatullah Barrayn. A woman with a camera and, dare I say, purpose. And not the TEDx-Tulum kind, either. This is real-deal documentation with heart, heat, and the kind of eye that sees what museums only figure out 20 years too late.

The image in question? A study in power disguised as portraiture. A woman—regal without being performative, layered in wax prints that could make a color theorist weep—stands against a rough brick wall, her gaze cast slightly off-camera like she knows something we don’t. (Spoiler: she does.) This is no accident. Barrayn doesn’t just “take” photos. She offers them, like heirlooms, like testimony. She has this knack for making her lens a stage and the subject the director. No colonial gaze, no trauma porn, no filter-happy exotification. Just presence. Radiant, complicated, and very much alive.

Born in Brooklyn but spiritually fluent in Senegalese sand and Harlem stoop wisdom, Barrayn is part of a generation of photographers refusing to beg for the mainstream’s approval. She’s a co-creator of


 MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora, a publication that doubles as a reckoning and a renaissance. Her work has spanned continents, mosques, matriarchs, and marketplaces—and yet never loses that intimacy that makes you feel like you’ve interrupted something sacred (but were graciously allowed to stay).

Now let’s talk history. This kind of portraiture owes something to the legacy of West African studio photography—Malick Sidibé and Seydou Keïta—but with a radical Black woman’s twist. Where Sidibé gave us youth in motion and pride in polyester, Barrayn gives us the unbothered beauty of Black women who own their image. She captures not just attire, but ritual. Not just posture, but inheritance. The beads? Ancestral. The smile? Earned. The backdrop? Who cares—it’s not the point. The subject is the story.

And what does it mean? Well, maybe everything. Maybe nothing. Maybe it’s a reminder that African identity isn’t a monolith—it’s a patchwork quilt with gold thread, spiritual receipts, and a few choice side-eyes. Maybe it’s Barrayn daring you to decolonize your eyeballs.

So here’s the question:

What would it look like if the next time you picked up a camera, you weren’t trying to capture—but to witness?

#LaylahWasHere #DecolonizeTheLens #PrintsWithPower #BlackWomenPhotograph #DiasporaGlow #TextilesTellStories #ThisIsNotAnAfropunkAd #MFONMagic #UnfilteredAndUnapologetic #BrooklynToDakar #GazeResisted #SheAte #NoNotes

Monday, March 24, 2025

Film: The King and I (1956): A Colonial Waltz with a Hoop Skirt and a Wink

Once upon a time, in a land of grand sets, too-tight corsets, and a studio head who thought a white elephant death was the peak of drama, The King and I danced its way into cinema history. Not waltzed—danced, dammit, like two stiff-lipped lovers with unresolved cultural trauma. This 1956 Technicolor behemoth is the cinematic equivalent of your great-aunt’s beloved porcelain doll: ornate, imperious, and unsettlingly racist if you look too close. It’s beautiful. It’s sweeping. It’s also a colonial fever dream with a show tune playlist and a stubborn refusal to check the facts.

From Memoir to Musical to Mega-Budget MGM Mayhem

The film is technically based on Margaret Landon’s novel Anna and the King of Siam, which is based on the probably-exaggerated, possibly-fibbed memoirs of Anna Leonowens, a real-life Victorian governess who tutored the children of King Mongkut of Siam in the 1860s. Anna’s gift for storytelling rivaled Stephen King’s, only with fewer clowns and more imperialism. She claimed to tame an exotic monarch, promote British values, and subtly end slavery while dodging malaria with nothing but sheer moral superiority and a feathered hat.

Rodgers and Hammerstein, Broadway’s favorite sugarcoated sermonizers, latched onto this with their usual flair for turning sociopolitical friction into tap-worthy musicals. After conquering the stage with Oklahoma! and South Pacific, they took one look at the East and thought: “What this needs is a polka.” The musical debuted in 1951 and became an instant hit. So naturally, 20th Century Fox saw box office dollar signs and greenlit a film version that would cost ten times what the stage production did. Because why just suggest Orientalism when you can paint it across 40 massive sets with elephants and gold lamé?

The King, the Queen, and the Dubbing Queen

Now enter Yul Brynner, a man so committed to baldness and bellowing that he made playing a patriarchal despot charming. He originated the role on Broadway, won a Tony, then sauntered onto the Fox lot and grabbed his Oscar like it was his birthright. His competition was Marlon Brando, whom the studio briefly considered for the role. Imagine The King and I with Brando mumbling about “the white elephants of our discontent.” Brynner was better. He knew the part, owned the part, and probably rewrote the part while the director blinked.

Opposite him was Deborah Kerr, luminous and composed, a red-haired pillar of British resolve. Just one problem: she couldn’t sing. Enter Marni Nixon, the ghost singer of Hollywood, who matched Kerr’s facial expressions beat-for-beat while coughing through a head cold. Between the two of them, they gave us a pitch-perfect Anna who could warble about getting to know you while internally debating if hoop skirts should come with hazard pay.

Production was hellishly ornate. Irene Sharaff’s gowns weighed as much as a small toddler, and Kerr bruised herself dancing in them. Rita Moreno’s headgear caused migraines, the sets were the size of football fields, and there was real talk of rewriting the ending so the King dies by elephant impalement. Yul Brynner reportedly threatened to torch the Fox lot if they went through with it.

From Censored in Siam to Shelved in Bangkok

When it premiered at the Roxy Theatre in 1956, The King and I became a box office hit and the fifth highest-grossing film of the year. It won five Oscars, including Best Actor for Brynner, but was the only Rodgers and Hammerstein musical adaptation to land an acting win. Still, critical voices grumbled about the sanitized politics and missing songs. Studio cuts dropped gems like “I Have Dreamed” and “Shall I Tell You What I Think of You?”—probably because the latter hit a little too close to Darryl Zanuck’s ego.

Thailand banned it outright. Turns out the Thai royal family didn’t love being portrayed as a collection of childish concubines and indecisive autocrats. They also didn’t appreciate Anna’s inflated importance, or her claim that she singlehandedly dragged Siam into the 19th century by teaching polka. Subsequent kings even told her to stop lying—she didn’t. In modern terms, Anna was history’s original LinkedIn influencer.

Still, the film has endured, if only as a glittering time capsule of mid-century moralizing and Technicolor ambition. It’s a staple in AFI’s endless parade of lists: greatest musicals, greatest romances, greatest songs you didn’t know were about cultural assimilation. And yes, there have been remakes—a dull TV series in 1972, a bizarre animated film in 1999, and a planned reboot announced in 2021 that may or may not involve CGI elephants and Lin-Manuel Miranda.

A Waltz with Complications

The King and I is lavish, iconic, and deeply problematic. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a diplomatic dinner where everyone gets food poisoning but the desserts are exquisite. You can admire the artistry and still wince at the subtext. For every unforgettable polka, there’s a reminder that this is Orientalism dressed in organza. But hey, it’s a puzzlement, isn’t it?

⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3/5)

#YulBrynnerRules #DeborahKerrMelts #MarniNixonDeservedMore #HoopSkirtTrauma #ShallWeDanceOrColonize #BannedInBangkok #RodgersAndHammersteinButMakeItImperial #CinemaScopeDelusion

Art: Touba Rising (With Scaffolding): A Love Song to the Divine, Under Construction


Here we are, standing in the courtyard of eternity—or at least in front of the Great Mosque of Touba, which, depending on your level of spiritual maturity or travel budget, may be close enough. Captured by Laylah Amatullah Barrayn—a photographer who doesn’t just document Black life but writes visual psalms in light and shadow—we’re given a front-row seat to faith, form, and five o’clock scaffolding.

Barrayn, a Brooklyn-bred daughter of Senegalese and African-American diasporas, doesn’t deal in your tourist-trap National Geographic exotica. She shoots with the soul of an archivist, the eye of an artist, and the subtle defiance of someone who knows that the real story is rarely told in English—or with a straight face.

So what’s in this image?

A mosque the size of a cosmic epiphany. Domes like upside-down bowls of celestial couscous. Minarets rising like fingers pointing Godward—or middle fingers to colonial arrogance. This is the heart of the Mouride brotherhood in Senegal, founded by Cheikh Amadou Bamba, a man the French tried to exile, silence, and erase. (Spoiler: they failed. Miserably.)

Look closer. This isn’t some hushed, empty monument to belief—it’s alive. A woman balances her burden with elegance the Met Gala couldn’t fake. A man in white robes leans over a child with a tenderness that could make even Instagram’s algorithm feel something. Meanwhile, the mosque looms, half-wrapped in construction netting like a holy mummy about to wake up and ask what century we’re in.

Barrayn has shot Harlem, Senegal, New Orleans—places where Blackness doesn’t beg for inclusion, it is the standard. She’s one of the founding voices of MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora, which is less a photo book than a visual manifesto wrapped in a hard cover.

And here’s the kicker—amid this grandeur and gravitas, the mosque is under renovation. Yes, divinity is being power-washed. Sanctity is wearing scaffolding. Which begs the question:

What if even the holiest places are always a work in progress—and we are, too?

Are you scaffolding your soul, or still hoping someone else will build it for you?

#LaylahAmatullahBarrayn #ToubaUnderConstruction #BlackMuslimFutures #ScaffoldedSouls #FaithInHD #NotYourTouristPostcard #DiasporaDidThat #SacredAndSnatched #GreatMosqueOfMood

Sunday, March 23, 2025

Film: Alien: Romulus – In Space, No One Can Hear You Say “Wait, Didn’t We Do This Already?”

 


At this point, the Alien franchise is like your favorite band from college that keeps reuniting every few years to play “the hits” at smaller and smaller venues. You go for the nostalgia, endure the new stuff, and spend most of your time wondering if they’ll do “that scream part” just like they used to. Alien: Romulus, directed by Fede Álvarez, is the cinematic equivalent of that reunion tour. It’s competent, slick, and tries really hard to feel important—but mostly reminds you how good the original was, and how much you miss Sigourney Weaver’s thousand-yard stare.

Nostalgia, With a Splash of Desperation

Development for Romulus began the way most modern franchise entries do: with a whisper, a panic, and a PowerPoint deck labeled “IP Revival.” After Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant landed with the grace of a malfunctioning dropship in 2017, the series seemed destined for cryosleep. But in Hollywood, nothing truly dies—it just gestates in the chest cavity of a tax write-off until it bursts out again. Enter Fede Álvarez, best known for the Evil Dead remake and Don’t Breathe, who apparently approached Scott with a pitch so bold, it made even the man behind Prometheus say, “Sure, why not? Just keep the android sex metaphors to a minimum.”

Originally greenlit as a Hulu original (because nothing says epic science fiction like streaming it next to reruns of Cake Boss), Romulus was later upgraded to a theatrical release—indicating either studio confidence or a desperate attempt to fill the summer calendar after every other tentpole moved to 2026. Set somewhere between Alien and Aliens, the film’s timeline is the cinematic equivalent of shouting “prequel midquel rebootquel!” and hoping audiences just nod politely.

In terms of intent, Romulus aimed to return the franchise to its roots—namely, dark corridors, isolated terror, and the unnerving realization that being in space basically sucks. And to its credit, the film mostly delivers on that. But it also spends so much time channeling its predecessors that it feels more like a séance than a story.

Children of the Nostromo

The film stars Cailee Spaeny as Rain Carradine, a name so generically sci-fi it could double as an off-brand shampoo. Spaeny does what she can with a script that mostly requires her to breathe heavily, crawl through ducts, and act like she’s not contractually allowed to say “Ripley.” Joining her are David Jonsson as the requisite android, Andy—because every Alien movie needs one emotionally stunted synthetic to remind us what it means to be human—and Isabela Merced as Kay, who channels maternal instinct and latent trauma with the efficiency of someone who watched Aliensonce on a plane.

Álvarez, to his credit, has a real knack for tension. The film was shot largely in sequence, which is rare, and the practical effects are gloriously gloopy. The xenomorphs look tactile and terrifying—like something that crawled out of H.R. Giger’s haunted basement. The setting, a crumbling space station named “Romulus,” is appropriately grimy and claustrophobic, a perfect metaphor for this franchise’s inability to escape its own gravitational pull.

Plot-wise, you’ve seen this one before: a group of bright-eyed, tragically expendable young people explore a place they shouldn’t, find a thing they shouldn’t, and promptly get skull-punched by bio-mechanical murder lizards. There’s a bit more character development than in Covenant, but that’s not saying much. And yes, there is a twist—one involving a xenomorph-human hybrid (affectionately dubbed “The Offspring”) that feels like a leftover concept art sketch from Alien Resurrection. By the time we reach the climax, the film asks you to suspend disbelief so hard your brain gets a hernia. Let’s just say the ending is somewhere between “bold” and “let's insert the most improbable sequence here.”

Chestburster or Chestache?

Critical reception was lukewarm, like a facehugger soaking in a warm bath. Some praised the atmosphere and Álvarez’s commitment to practical effects. Others, understandably, pointed out that the film doesn’t say or do anything new. The characters are serviceable but mostly there to scream and die artfully. The horror is effective but derivative. And the film’s final act—complete with science-defying xeno-babies and emotional beats that collapse under their own melodrama—might leave longtime fans alternating between eye rolls and chuckles.

Still, the film performed admirably at the box office, bringing in over $350 million worldwide. For a mid-budget sci-fi thriller, that’s impressive. For a franchise that’s been dragged through more resurrections than Lazarus with a Netflix deal, it’s borderline miraculous. Fans are already debating whether Romulus is a worthy successor or a glorified tribute act. Álvarez has teased a possible sequel, but unless it includes something radically new—like, say, xenomorphs running for office—it’s hard to see how this ends differently.

What Romulus proves is that Alien is now a legacy brand, less about innovation and more about preservation. It’s a museum of its former self, occasionally shocking, frequently stylish, but ultimately constrained by the very thing that made it great: its past.

“In Space, No One Can Hear You Say ‘Meh’”

Alien: Romulus is a well-made, sometimes thrilling, occasionally silly entry in a franchise that refuses to die—and maybe shouldn’t. It’s got enough gore, tension, and Giger-inspired weirdness to satisfy fans, but not enough narrative muscle to justify its existence beyond nostalgia. Like a xenomorph clawing at the airlock, it’s clinging on for dear life. The result? A serviceable three-star ride that, for better or worse, still knows how to play the hits.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3/5)

#ChestbursterBlues #OffspringOfChaos #RipleyWeMissYou #AndroidsHaveFeelingsToo #SpaceIsStillTerrible #AlienRomulus #ThreeStarsAndAHugFace

Art: Have You Ever Prayed So Hard Your Shawl Glowed Like a Sunrise? On Laylah Amatullah Barrayn’s “Cheikh Bamba’s Tomb” (2014)


 Let’s get one thing straight right now: you’re not supposed to be looking at this.

Not because it’s off-limits, forbidden, or scandalous (though isn’t that always more interesting?), but because what’s happening in this photo—this hushed, golden, incense-thick hush of a moment—is not for you. It’s not performance. It’s not for Instagram. It’s not even for the art world, bless its wine-and-brie stuffed soul. It’s for God.

But Laylah Amatullah Barrayn—photographer, documentarian, spiritual ninja with a Nikon—lets you in anyway. Just barely. She leaves the door cracked open, gives you a peek into the spiritual engine room of Touba, Senegal, where the Mouride Sufi faithful sit before the tomb of their founder, Cheikh Amadou Bamba, and vibrate in stillness.

Yes, vibrate. Because silence isn’t empty in this photo—it’s loaded. With prayer. With presence. With centuries of Black Muslim resilience, resistance, and radiant, kaleidoscopic faith.

Barrayn, a Brooklyn-born, globe-traveling chronicler of the African diaspora, knows how to make a photograph feel like both a benediction and a brick through a stained-glass window. She’s not here for your Orientalist nonsense or your National Geographic exoticism. She’s here to say: “These women are sacred. Their space is sacred. And your gaze better come correct.”

In Cheikh Bamba’s Tomb, six women and girls sit with their backs to us, draped in sherbet-colored veils that could shame a Pantone chart. They face a gilded lattice enclosing the tomb of Amadou Bamba—a man so holy he made the French colonialists nervous just by existing. He preached submission to God and defiance to empire, and the Mourides still take him seriously. His tomb in Touba is basically Mecca for people with exceptional textile taste and unshakable dignity.

And these women? They are not “on display.” They are in audience—with history, with God, with the ghost of a man who resisted colonizers by writing poetry instead of picking up a gun (and still terrified them more than a rifle ever could).

You want symbolism? Try this on for size: Barrayn positions us outside the grille, the decorative ironwork acting as both barrier and metaphor. We don’t get to be “in there.” Not spiritually. Not socially. Not unless we shed some layers—of ignorance, of ego, of colonialist residue still clinging to our travel-guide brains.

So what is Barrayn doing here?

She’s giving us a lesson in reverence. And not the Hallmark kind. This is the kind of reverence that wears bright fabric, plants itself on a prayer rug, and sits still as the world turns sideways.

So here’s your question, you spiritually curious, aesthetically hungry, attention-deficient pilgrim:

What’s your sacred space—and when’s the last time you actually sat in it without needing to document the moment for likes?

Because maybe the truth is this: the holiest things aren’t the loudest. Maybe they’re just what happens when six women sit in a room together, not saying a word, and absolutely commanding the universe.

#SufiGlowUp #ToubaIsHoly #LaylahSnapsSouls #MourideMagic #NotYourOrientalistFantasy #PrayLikeBamba #TextileGameDivine #SacredStillness #DiasporaDeities #BacksToTheCameraHeartsToTheHeavens

Saturday, March 22, 2025

Books: Sawdust, Skeletons, and Summer Heat: A Caustic Love Letter to Bare Bones


There’s a moment in every beach reader’s life when they stare at their sun-scorched paperback, wipe the margarita condensation off the spine, and mutter, “This again?” Bare Bones, the sixth installment in Kathy Reichs’ forensically frosty Temperance Brennan series, is that book. It’s not bad. It’s not great. It’s like being served room-temperature rotisserie chicken on fine china: technically satisfying, but also an existential insult.

The Archaeology of a Franchise

Once upon a time, Kathy Reichs was a forensic anthropologist—like, a real one. Before the cameras, before the TV money, and long before David Boreanaz showed up brooding in a trench coat, Reichs was digging up corpses and studying jawbones that had more personality than half the men in her books. Then she did what every rational, overworked scientist dreams of doing: she monetized her trauma.

By the time Bare Bones came out in 2003, Reichs had successfully shoehorned her alter ego, Temperance Brennan, into five novels. This sixth entry promised something edgier: environmental smuggling, skeletal infants in woodstoves, and Southern Gothic creepiness. Reichs, to her credit, took the procedural formula she’d patented and slathered it with fresh taxidermy. But formula it remained: a cocktail of sarcasm, science, and just enough sexual tension to make it feel like you’re watching CSI through a foggy bathroom mirror.

Written in Bone, Published in Bulk

Bare Bones was churned out in the golden age of airport thrillers—those glory years when crime fiction was less about innovation and more about hitting the Barnes & Noble bestseller table with the subtlety of blunt-force trauma. It was released in hardcover by Scribner, who must have realized that no one was here for literary nuance. We wanted bones. Preferably charred. Preferably arranged in a puzzle, Temperance could solve while sipping black coffee and insulting men in authority.

Reichs leaned into her strengths—clinical detail, forensic authenticity, and Brennan’s irresistible compulsion to poke her nose into multi-jurisdictional crime scenes like a golden retriever with a Ph.D. The book practically screams, “Trust me, I dissect cadavers for a living!” And we do. Until page 212, when the villain is unmasked with all the finesse of a Scooby-Doo episode gone grimdark.

Tepid Praise, Warm Sales

Critics gave it the literary equivalent of a thumbs-up while texting under the table. Fans of the series inhaled it like stale popcorn, content that their favorite bone-plucking heroine was still doing her thing. But you could feel the seams. The mystery is fine—but “fine” in the way your therapist says you’re “coping well” when you’ve clearly just wept into a Pop-Tart.

The novel was neither groundbreaking nor embarrassing, just another brick in the Reichs industrial complex. It didn’t redefine crime fiction, but it didn’t have to. It was built to be devoured in two sittings and left on a hotel nightstand next to a dog-eared People magazine.

The Legacy of Mediocrity

Since its release, Bare Bones has become one of those mid-series placeholders—important enough to keep the narrative train running, forgettable enough that even die-hard fans must reread the blurb to recall what happened. It sits between the high of Déjà Dead and the “oh no, she’s still writing these?” of book fifteen.

It also inadvertently paved the way for the Bones TV show to do everything better—or worse, depending on how you feel about technobabble and quirky lab interns. Still, Reichs deserves credit for building a forensic empire that’s less about shock and gore and more about slow-burn competence. Temperance Brennan may never be the life of the party, but she’ll catalog your dental records before dessert.

Final Thoughts

Bare Bones is the literary equivalent of a dependable Honda Civic: reliable, slightly dull, and equipped with enough horsepower to get you through rush hour, even if you can’t remember the ride afterward. It’s not a must-read, but it’s also not a crime against literature. Just a mildly interesting crime with an autopsy report attached.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3/5)

#BareBones #TemperanceIsTired #ReichsRolling #BoneDryProse #MidSeriesFatigue #CSIWithFeelings #BeachReadWithBlisters

“Is This It?” Yes, Tragically, It Is.

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