Brace yourself, True Believers. The Phoenix Force is coming to earth in X-Men: Dark Phoenix, slotted to hit theaters November 2, 2018. Sophie Turner returns as telepathic powerhouse Jean Grey and she’s in for the fight of her life in this big screen adaptation of the classic X-Men story, The Dark Phoenix Saga.
Jessica Chastain, long rumored to be playing Shi’ar Empress Lilandra Neramani, recently confirmed on Twitter she was not playing the intergalactic monarch, but an entirely different character altogether. So what gives? We know Chastain is playing the film’s big bad (cite her Instagram to fellow castmate James McAvoy) and if Lilandra isn’t the film’s villain then who is?
Read MoreI’ve made no secret of my love and admiration for Joan Didion. I first read her when I was an editorial assistant at a big publishing house. Blue Valentine was the movie everyone in the bullpen was discussing, and I YouTubed Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams to see how their chemistry translated off-screen (it was pretty epic). Fortuitously, I came across a Nightline segment where Michelle discussed Heath Ledger’s death, and how she read Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking to help cope with his passing. “It didn’t seem unlikely to me that he could walk through a door or could appear from behind a bush,” she said in the interview. “It was a year of very magical thinking.”
Read MoreBack in July, I wrote at length about my hopes and fears for the first student reading I’d be hosting at The New School. The story was published with Slice magazine, and I ended it on a relatively positive note, saying we’ll have to wait till September to see how it goes. Well September happened and my followup essay never saw the light of day (my Slice column was transformed into a monthly Q&A). So here, at long last, is my follow up. I hope you’re ready for a tale of gut-wrenching humiliation, because spoiler warning, that’s exactly what happened.
Read MoreDavid Foster Wallace once said, “The person I’m highest on right now is George Saunders.”
At twenty-nine years old with no steady income other than the .10 cents a word I get from my freelancing gigs, I am shocked that I am able to afford a better drugdealer than the late David Foster Wallace’s.
Don’t let my bad pun fool you. George Saunders is indeed worthy of a good high. Just this past summer he gave the commencement speech for the Syracuse University class of 2013 where he famously said: “So here’s something I know to be true, although it’s a little corny, and I don’t quite know what to do with it: What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded…sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly. I’d say as a goal in life, you could do worse than: Try to be kinder.”
Read Moreby Paul Florez
Walking down John F. Kennedy Boulevard in Jersey City is a curious thing. There’s an odd combination of retail chains sprinkled with what’s left of the great mama and papa shops that defined our countries culture for so many years.
In many ways Jersey City is a place of redemption and new beginnings. Resting in the shadow of Lady Liberty, it’s not unusual to see families that have recently immigrated to the United States walk the streets with their loved ones on a damp Saturday morning. These families seem at peace with the burning logos of Quiznos, CVS, and Papa Johns and do don’t yield to wayward pedestrians who spring pass them trying to avoid the rain.
Read MoreIn the very multicultural Miami, one would think they were in another country. People speak Spanish first and English later; the caffeine of choice is not ice coffee from Starbucks, but café con leche purchased from a no name bodega on calle ocho; and Spanish music blasts from the rolled down windows of cars with a Cuabn flag on its bumper. Miami is another world and in many profound ways, separate from the rest of the United States.
Yet as you drive through Miami you see some of the hallmarks that makes this country so great: freedom, hard work, and family. Miami is full of people who immigrated to the USA for political reasons and they want to relish in our values. You even notice the feats of American business and achievements: Fords, Best Buys and McDonalds. I don’t say this in a scolding, diminishing way. Rather I want to convey a sense that no matter how foreign Miami may seem, it’s adopted many core American values and franchises. It may not be America in the conventional sense but it is still America.
Read MoreAccording to Deadline, Marvel Studios and Joss Whedon are trying to court Aaron Taylor-Johnson for the role of Quicksilver in the highly anticipated Avengers 2 due out in theaters sometime in 2015.
Do those blue eyes look familiar? Well they should! Taylor-Johnson is best known for his role as the titular hero in the Kick-Ass movie franchise.
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