This year’s Met Gala diverts your gaze from real issues with artificial glitz

Share: As our country, and seemingly the rest of the world, continues to dissolve into further chaos, it’s impossible to ignore the dystopian nature of events such as the Met Gala when protests against genocide can be seen only blocks away. The recent 2024 Met Gala dress code seems to have reached beyond the bounds of dystopian after the dress code was themed after a famous science fiction short story by J.G. Ballard titled “The Garden of Time,” hinting at potentially deeper societal issues bubbling …

Movie studios are making the market bleed with sequel greed

Share: Last year, audiences were gifted with original stories like “Anatomy of a Fall” and “Past Lives,” along with unique stories that were never before adapted, such as “Oppenheimer” and “Poor Things.” This year’s set of releases looks bleak, with most of them being cash-grab sequels or reboots, and at this rate, many even being both. Hollywood executives should be considering beforehand what makes a sequel worth having and that sequels are best done with a purpose.  The list of 2024 movie releases is a …

Automatic gratuity ensures fair wages and better service in restaurants

Share: Restaurants adding automatic gratuities can ensure employees are making an equitable wage. The perspective of many customers who don’t tip or leave less than adequate tips uses the argument that places of business should pay their employees a fair wage and shouldn’t rely on customers to pay their employees. Employers should pay their employees livable wages, but unfortunately, it most likely will never happen in capitalist America. Patrons of a restaurant should understand that they are being provided a service that demands compensation on …

Oregon’s decriminalization tactics failed its people and now it’s too late to fix

Share: After becoming the first state in the nation to decriminalize drugs, the governor of Oregon has signed a bill to reimplement jail time for possession of small amounts of drugs that are used for personal use. The bill was signed after an increase in deaths caused by overdose. Oregon truly never had a real grasp on how to manage a decriminalized drug climate, as they didn’t give enough time to let change happen, they failed in training police in their role of addressing addiction, …

Diddy sucks, and so does the statute of limitations

Share: The recently deserved onslaught Diddy has been receiving from the media seems to only worsen as a video attained by CNN depicts Sean “Diddy” Combs senselessly beating his ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura in a hotel. Diddy issued an apology two days later, a minute and a half of empty words and false claims of being a changed man. “My behavior was inexcusable. I take full responsibility for my actions in that video… I’m so sorry” Cassie Ventura would issue a lawsuit against the artist in …

Paramore is a BAND!

Share: Paramore kicked off the international leg as openers for the Eras Tour and they absolutely rock. Hayley Williams, Taylor York, Zac Farro, and the “parafour” are joining Taylor Swift for a whopping 48 shows from Paris to London. Fans will witness the group in what is arguably their prime and hopefully will come to know Paramore as a band, not just a person. The 21-year-old band formed after Williams fought against becoming a pop singer to instead sing in an alternative rock band. Through …

Less sex on the big screen is the least of our libido problems

Share: With the last two years seeing the releases of “Poor Things,” “Saltburn,” and “Challengers,” it feels as if Hollywood has never been hornier; however, it’s quite the contrary, according to recent data showing movies are depicting less sex than ever, reflecting a wider-ranging issue among youth. Since 2012, there’s been a steady decline in sexual content being depicted in the top grossing-movies released, with Stephen Follows, a media data analyst, reporting in his research, “Using the same method of looking for signals from ratings …

Movie studios are tripping over themselves to devour each other

Share: In what feels like a never-ending contest of shameless corporate gluttony, talks of a potential acquisition of Paramount Global by Sony Pictures and U.S.-based asset management firm Apollo Global Management have thankfully died down, at least for the time being. However,  Sony isn’t the first company to proposition Paramount this past year and it sure as hell won’t be the last.  Following their own surprising merger, Warner Bros. Discovery—despite taking on massive amounts of debt from the previous leadership, plummeting stock prices that typically …

When ‘When Harry Met Sally’ exists, we want anything but ‘Anyone but You’

Share: In the modern age of romantic comedies, there are few and far between that resonate with us the way classics, such as “When Harry Met Sally” or “13 Going On 30,” have impacted us and continue to impact the generations following. After nearly three decades of cinema, many of these iconic movies still live within the cultural zeitgeist, making any new additions to the genre feel lackluster and much like cheap imitations of already near-perfect movies.  Despite the fact that the genre continues to …

Kendrick and Drake are ruining each other’s legacies and leaving us in shambles

Share: Forget the recap, forget the breakdowns, forget the explanations. What in the world are we witnessing right now? There’s no way to minimize this rap beef now, heck calling it just a “rap beef” alone is diminishing at this point. Sure this was interesting for us at the moment but no matter how this unfolds we’re going to be suffering from this as time goes on. This is no longer a “bar for bar” feud between the heavyweights, it’s become allegation for allegation, crime …