When Suzy was born, her parents filled her mouth with sand. But this is normal and natural and the way things are always done.
And if she finds it uncomfortable to keep it there, to eat with it there, to talk with it there, she’s just going to have to learn to live with it.
“Sand” is a heart-wrenching tale about generational trauma and healing.
For the residents of this mycological ecosystem, creating art feeds the World around you and requires working in harmony with your inner voice. When one artist’s voice begins screaming, he’s forced to travel farther than he ever has before to reconcile with the noise in his head and find his true place in society before it’s too late.
Judge Dee returns to solve a new case involving a Parisian party gone wrong. But this time? Everyone in attendance is a suspect, including the judge himself.
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In this Martian city, each stop along the monorail has a purpose behind its namesake. However, none are quite like the Station of the Twelfth, and if you decide to visit, you’ll be sure to learn why.
In a fairy tale equal parts gorgeous and gruesome, village couples seek approval for marriage from a stag with golden rings adorning its horns. That is until one suitor, determined to convince a woman to fall in love with him, makes a rash decision.
In this provocative and rich retelling of the Greek myth, Orpheus, the musician son of Apollo and Calliope, successfully rescues his wife Eurydice from Hades after her untimely death.
The debate about going out to movies during what is still very-much-ongoing pandemic keeps spiking every time Denis Villeneuve or Christopher Nolan gives an interview, and every time a movie trailer ends with the proud declaration: “Only in Theaters.”
Because obviously, it’s not quite as simple as: “don’t go to in-theater movies yet, it still isn’t safe”—the way we experience art is important, the communal nature of moviegoing is important, and supporting the work of artists, especially marginalized artists, is important. As the months have gone on, the three of us have talked endlessly about our relationship with movies in general and theatergoing in particular, and after the one-two punch of seeing The Green Knight and Shang-Chi together we decided to hash out some thoughts.
I can’t look at the cover of The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan without flashing back to my thirteen-year-old self. I would devour the pages on the bus ride to and from school, tuning out the chatter around me to focus on the stubborn characters from the Two Rivers and their place in the Pattern. And I wasn’t the only one; I spotted other classmates toting the giant books around as well. The Wheel of Time was formative to my understanding of the fantasy genre, and I particularly loved the magic system. At the time, I didn’t see anything problematic about it.
When you think of The Lord of the Rings, what comes to mind first? For me, it’s always been the people.
Tolkien’s series abounds with meaningful and memorable characters, one of the many features that have captured readers’ hearts over generations. Really, beyond the journey and the battles and the magic, it’s a story about people—the bonds they share, the losses they suffer, and the lengths to which they’ll go to fight for what they believe.
Have you got a favorite movie that was either a total bomb at the box office or no one else seems to have ever seen? I’ve got a few, but given the fact that Halloween is nigh, I’d like to talk briefly about one item high on my list right now: the woefully unsung Haunted Honeymoon, which seldom gets mentioned whenever Gene Wilder himself does. This is my Young Frankenstein, my Willy Wonka. And by that I mean a movie starring Gene Wilder that’s close to my heart. I assume we all have one.
Horror television network Shudder has a new anthology film coming out later this month: Horror Noire, which features six stories of Black horror from a powerhouse stable of writers: Tananarive Due, Steven Barnes, Victor LaValle, Shernold Edwards, Al Letson and Ezra C. Daniels.
The film is set to debut on October 28th, and just got its first trailer.
We could talk about how Apex, a Bruce Willis movie that seems to have come out of nowhere, combines elements from more movies than I can count on both hands, including but not limited to Logan’s Run, Hunger Games, The Hunt, and every movie in which a criminal/hero is being hunted by a criminal/hero. Or we could talk about everything else in this trailer, which looks like a made-for-TV movie that Bruce Willis just stumbled into on his way home some random night. Why is he here? Why is Damien Darhk here? Why is Neal McDonough just so good at this kind of totally pointless egotistical bad guy role?
Why does Bruce Willis say he’s, and I quote, “bacon and eggs on Sunday morning”?
After reading Molly Templeton’s two recent pieces on the To Be Read conundrum, I got to thinking about how my own queue is structured. Like many of you, my TBR is in constant fluctuation. I add more to it than I remove. At this point I would have to turn reading into a full time job in order to get through them all, and it would still take me literal years.
To help me prioritize my list, I thought I’d pull together the ten books I’m most eager to read off my TBR. I don’t have any big reasons for not having read them yet, other than a lack of time and *gestures vaguely at the panini*. Will I actually get to them in the near future? I certainly hope so. Until then, they’ll keep glaring at me from my bookshelves.
What’s at the top of your To Be Read queue?
Things are about to get real philosophical in our chats with one of those particular Small Gods.
The laws of physics are forever confounding perfectly reasonable schemes. Whether riding gracefully on the running board of a racing car, adroitly handling semi-molten glass, or gliding lightly down from a roof to the embrace of the sidewalk whilst borne up by what intuition said was a sufficiently large bath towel, the laws of physics are forever barging in to insist that, no, things do not work that way.
What if the laws of physics were altered? Surely then matters would work out to our satisfaction. Right? Right??? Or perhaps not, as these five stories reveal…
Because of Vespertine, I finally watched Venom. I was halfway through the novel when I saw that Margaret Rogerson (An Enchantment of Ravens) had described her new YA fantasy as “medieval Venom starring a nun and a ghost,” and naturally I needed the full context for this darkly charming comparison.
This description is not wrong. But unlike Eddie Brock, Artemisia of Naimes isn’t a hot mess before she meets the being that takes up residence in her body. She’s a teenage girl with the Sight, the ability to see spirits, which no longer pass on to death without help. She wants nothing more than to stay in Naimes, working as a Grey Sister, socializing as little as possible, spending her time dealing with the dead.
Fate—or the Lady—has other plans.
Había una vez, there lived a girl named Petra Peña, who wanted nothing more than to be a storyteller, like her abuelita…
We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Last Cuentista, a journey through the stars from author Donna Barba Higuera—available now from Levine Querido.
“Homestead”
Written by Raf Green
Directed by LeVar Burton
Season 7, Episode 23
Production episode 269
Original air date: May 9, 2001
Stardate: 54868.6
Captain’s log. Neelix is hosting a party to celebrate the 315th anniversary of First Contact Day. He even gets Tuvok to say the words that the first Vulcan who landed on Earth said: “Live long and prosper.” However both he and Janeway fail to get Tuvok to dance, though Neelix promises that he will get Tuvok to dance before they reach Earth.
This lil’ teaser is titled “Change of Plans,” which is a cute way to nod at what Marvel did here: Hawkeye, which begins on November 24th, is now getting a two-episode premiere. Assuming the show doesn’t skip any weeks, that has Hawkeye‘s six episodes wrapping up just in time for Christmas—with a little break before Disney+ is breathing down our necks again about The Book of Boba Fett.
By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes…
…and we’re midway through the month of October, bringing with it longer, colder nights and the scent of apple cider on the breeze. It’s the time of year for traipsing around muddy pumpkin patches, telling ghost stories with a flashlight (or a “torch,” here in the UK) balanced precariously underneath your chin—and, of course, tucking into a good Gothic novel. But let’s say you’ve read the classics. You’ve already torn through The Haunting of Hill House; you want something more modern, less familiar than Dracula. Let’s say you would like to read something fresh; something that encapsulates the Gothic sensibility while taking you somewhere entirely new.
Photo: Johannes Plenio [via Unsplash]
It’s October, somehow, which means we’re settling in to one of the best times of the year. (I have to say “one of,” because when spring rolls around I’ll be like this again.) It’s the time of pumpkins and cobwebs, cauldrons and black cats, candy corns and fun-sized candy. It’s time for witches and goblins, and stories full of foggy pathways and trees that seem to lean a little too close.
I want to talk about those trees, and how they appear in fiction. I like trees. I like when they’re lush and green, when they’re transformed and changing, and when they’re bare-bones things that scritch at the side of your house. But it can feel like it’s always a creepy forest. Where’s the appreciation for the creepy stream or islet or single ominous mountain? Is there nothing eerie to be found in a silent river or an endless plain?
Sonya Gomez first appeared as a fresh-out-of-the-Academy ensign in the TNG episode “Q Who,” where she spilled hot chocolate all over Captain Picard. She was eager to sign up for the Enterprise because the ship was on the frontier. “Whatever’s out here, we’re going to be the first humans to see it. And I want to be a part of that.” She got a major lesson in being careful what you wish for, as shortly after that was Starfleet’s first encounter with the Borg.
Her next appearance was in “Samaritan Snare,” where she helped rescue La Forge from Pakleds, and while she was intended to be a recurring character, that didn’t really work out, and we never saw on screen again—
—until the second season finale of Lower Decks.
If you’re an HBO Max subscriber, it looks like you’ll get to see Dune a bit earlier than expected. According to Decider, the streaming service has sent out a push notification to subscribers saying that the film will debut on the platform on October 21st at 6PM ET, a day before it’s scheduled to officially release in the United States.
Whether it’s Marvel’s What If…? or American Crime Story: Impeachment, in 2021 it can feel as though anthology series have become a firmly entrenched staple of the United States’ television output. And yet, only a decade or so ago, you would have had trouble finding much that fit the description of an anthology series on US or British television. So, what has caused the sudden ubiquity of this format, one that sees little to no connection from season to season, or sometimes episode to episode? The short answer is that they provide benefits and flexibility to storytellers, actors, and audiences alike—but there’s a little more to it than that…
