Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Ye be warned! Seriously. If you have not yet seen “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” do not keep reading. Get off your butt, go see the movie, and then come back and enjoy this mind-blowing analysis. This is a literary analysis. This is a literary analysis drawn from my own thoughts and…
Warning: Major spoilers ahead. Don’t read if you don’t want any details on the plot points of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” “Star Wars” is shallow and silly and campy and fun, and a dozen other synonyms that suggest we shouldn’t think about it too hard. I don’t usually—I watch “Star Wars” with an impressionist eye, the way I…
In one of the more visually stunning scenes of the new Star Wars movie, director J.J. Abrams creates a vast rally reminiscent of those Albert Speer organized for Adolf Hitler, replete with rhetoric glorifying a new kind of super-weapon. (Hint: It’s better than the Death Star!) A thousand storm troopers raise their hands in a…
Daisey Ridley as Rey, left, and John Boyega as Finn, in a scene from the new film, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” (Disney/Lucasfilm via Associated Press) This piece is chock full of spoilers for “The Force Awakens.” Also, feelings. One of the downsides of trying to sum up the year in pop culture early in…
Over the weekend, even as most of us were celebrating the fact that a new Star Wars movie did not in any way suck, some portions of the internet got sucked into a pointless, silly debate. Is Rey, the film’s hero, a “Mary Sue”? The answer is no. Next question? Some spoilers for The Force…
From Darth Vader coffee mugs to holiday sweaters with Chewbacca in a Santa hat, “Star Wars” has unleashed a galaxy of goods. Cash registers will ring again when “The Force Awakens” hits theaters on Dec. 18. The film could generate more than $9 billion in revenue for Disney and its partners, from cinemas to TV…
After Josef Stalin’s death in 1953, a mysterious note was found among his private papers. It had been sent by Nikolai Bukharin, Stalin’s revolutionary comrade and for many years the Communist Party’s intellectual figurehead, while awaiting execution after his 1938 show trial for numerous imaginary crimes. Using a nickname only known to the dictator’s oldest…
There I was, standing in line on 68th Street waiting to get into the New York press screening of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” (a film you may have heard something about) and cursing myself for being the sort of person who follows the rules. I could see other critics, either through ignorance, deviousness or…
Now that The Force Awakens has awoken in theaters, various details are emerging about some of the directions NOT taken in the latest Star Wars film. Among them? One character that was supposed to perish after a short amount of screen time. Potential spoilers ahead. Who’s the character? Poe Dameron, according to an interview with…
Related: Harrison Ford dines out in Peckham and our film of the year – the Dailies podcast Daniel Craig did cameo as a stormtrooper in the new Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens – despite having denied doing so – according to Entertainment Weekly. Reporter Chris Lee, who broke the story of the James Bond…