A deep dive into the Bridgerton season 2 craze and Pride and Prejudice (2005). The recent release of the second season of the popular Netflix show, Bridgerton, has broken my brain. Based on the paperback romance novels by Julia Quinn, the show has audiences and entertainment news outlets hailing its modern tone embedded within the […]
Dimension 20: Fantasy High Junior Year Around episode four or five of Dimension 20’s third season of Fantasy High (aptly dubbed Junior Year), I thought to myself giddily, “If they keep this up, this will be their best season ever.” This meaning the intensity (and amount) of character pressure on each of the Bad Kids, […]
We missed the month of April in our monthly recommendations, so here’s a quick post to catch-up on everything we might have recommended. Plus some early May knockouts. Plus a cultural shift or two. Cowboy Carter – Beyoncé Cowboy Carter dropped at the tail end of March, and it would’ve been my rec for April […]
your name. (2016) written and directed by Makoto Shinkai your name. begins in media res, meaning when Mitsuha attends school one day, we experience her confusion alongside her: her friends and family report that she acted strange the day before, though she has no memory why. It’s only when she fully body swaps with Taki, […]
Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin Perhaps no other author has painted a whole portrait of a young man as James Baldwin has in Go Tell It on the Mountain. Baldwin begins and ends the story with John Grimes, the stepson of a violently abusive Baptist preacher, on the day of his […]
Anatomy of a Fall dir. Justine Triet The first half of Anatomy of a Fall, the recent film from French writer and director Justine Triet, tells you many times over what it will not do. When the central character (and suspect) Sandra tells her lawyer Vincent that she is innocent, he says (if a little […]
At the beginning of the new year, our writers gathered to discuss our reading goals for 2024, and the conversation devolved from there. Here is a brief collection and transcription of our discussion. It has been edited for length and clarity. EU: Eugene EL: Elise P: Peyton On reading goals: EU: In terms of reading […]
“Change” by Big Thief I listened to the album Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You by Big Thief for the first time earlier this month and its first track, “Change,” just hit the hardest for me. Adrianne Lenker’s voice is beautiful–lingering and haunting–as she contemplates what change looks like at different levels and […]
The Devil’s Plan, Netflix My favorite game show ever–and what I believe to be the best reality TV show ever made–is The Genius, a South Korean show that aired for four seasons in 2013-2015. The Devil’s Plan, a 2023 Netflix show, was created by the same showrunner and acts as the unofficial sequel and inheritor […]
Speed (1994) dir. Jan de Bont I cannot talk about Speed without talking about Los Angeles. On screen LA is represented frequently but not accurately—it is often the site of the apocalyptic, the superficial and fake, or it acts as a synecdoche for the Hollywood industry. I am not a stickler for realism in my […]
Close Read has been writing and recommending for a year now, and what is the one month we skipped? The one month that represents two of our writers (not a small number–that’s 66.66666etc of staff)? We were so focused on finding something different to write about for Pride that we never wrote, well, anything. (What […]
