News
Dirtbag Hamlet Totally Rad, Also a Dirtbag
Mallory Ortberg and Matt Lubchansky re-imagine Shakespeare’s troubled prince as a skateboarding, bird-flipping douchebag, and it is glorious. “im going to the cemetery to touch skulls”
College Could See Funds Cut for Choice of Fun Home
A South Carolina university faces massive budget cuts after including Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir Fun Home on a recommended reading list. The selection of Fun Home, about Bechdel discovering that her father is gay and her own coming out as a lesbian, is accused of “promoting a gay agenda and forcing pornography on its students.”
Collider’s Massive X-Men: Days of Future Past Set Visit
Featuring 90 things to know about the film, interviews with Hugh Jackman and Bryan Singer, and more.
Kurt Vonnegut Diagrams the Shape of All Stories
Vonnegut’s master’s thesis in anthropology–rejected by the University of Chicago because it “looked like too much fun”–becomes a new picto-infographic by Maya Eilam.
Commentary
The Fantastic Four Reboot Casting–Progressive or Not?
Zeba Blay on the new Fantastic Four cast, which includes Michael B. Jordan and Kate Mara:
“But then there’s the question of whether it really is progress. Has he been tokenized? Is the brash Johnny Storm too obvious as opposed to say, the scientific genius and group leader Reed Richards? Perhaps, but at the end of the day, Jordan’s casting is a sort of progress, and an incredibly exciting milestone for a charismatic and promising young actor. But his casting, or rather the casting of the entire Fantastic Four lineup is emblematic of Hollywood’s one step forward, two steps back syndrome.
Because the bigger question, of course, is the Sue Storm question.”
Zeitgeist ’60: 10 Comic Book Characters That Embody the ’60s
Comics Alliance breaks down 10 iconic characters from the swinging 60s, from Barbarella to Mad Mod.
The Dissolve Reviews The Wind Rises
Tasha Robinson on Hayao Miyazaki’s latest film, about the aviation engineer Jiro Horikoshi: “Miyazaki tackles his themes with such an effervescent, lighthearted touch that he makes even the development of lethal weaponry seem swooningly romantic.”
How The Mary Tyler Moore Show Got Women’s Stories Just Right
Indiewire talks to Jennifer Keishin Armstrong about “the first truly female-dominated sitcom.”
