Culture

Taylor Swift is considered one of the most successful artists of our time. She is able not only to accurately guess the desires of her fans, but also extremely skillfully present her new works. For example, Taylor told about the upcoming album The Tortured Poets Department from the stage of “Grammy”, when she received the award for the album Midnights. Interestingly, fans themselves were expecting a re-release of the Rep’s album – the thing is, she’s been all about re-releases in recent years. But now it will apparently have to wait a bit longer. But The Tortured Poets Department will be released on Friday, April 19th. Let’s tell you what we know about the record itself.

The Tortured Poets Department sounds quite poetic, but fans are sure that it’s a curtsy to the singer’s former boyfriend. Recall that Jo Alwyn and Paul Mescal revealed in a December 2022 interview that they have a group chat room under the colloquial name The Tortured Man Club. The artist generally talks about failed relationships quite often in her work, so the reference isn’t that surprising.

The album currently features two major collaborations. The track Fortnight was recorded by Taylor Swift in collaboration with Post Malone. It sounds interesting and intriguing. However, even more memorable is the duet with Florence + The Machine in the track Florida!!!!

Interestingly, Taylor has previously spoken more than once about her admiration for the lead singer of this band. “What makes Florence different from the others? Literally everything. Every time I’m in her company, I realize that this is the nicest person in the room. And all the other people just wish they could be closer to her – that’s how fascinated they are,” the artist shared.

Fans are once again waiting for the most different versions of the album. So, she promised an edition of The Bolter with a different cover and an additional bonus track. Fans are also waiting for several different versions of the album artwork.

Taylor herself assures that the upcoming work is the most cathartic she’s had in her musical career. “It reminded me why songwriting actually helps in life. I’ve never had an album where I worked as hard on the tracks as I did for Tortured Poets,” the star explained.

By the way, the singer’s current boyfriend, Travis Kelsey, was one of those who have already listened to the beta version of the record. “I’ve heard some of the new album and it’s just incredible. I can’t wait for it to finally rock the world,” the star’s chosen one shared in an interview with Extra.

In one of our previous articles we have already discussed the fact that Hollywood movie bosses and streaming services are gradually running out of ideas about “how to make money” – and this leads to endless remasters, remakes, spin-offs, screen adaptations and so on. Making movies or TV series based on games is both easy and difficult. It manages to do this to an exceptional minority. For example, “Lara Croft” as a movie, thanks to Angelina Jolie, is almost as famous as the game. But the “deeper” the original story is, the more difficult it is for people to faithfully and with the same depth transfer it to the screen.

As an example, we can take the conventional “Silent Hill” – why did it, unlike “Resident Evil”, did not receive any response in the movie? It’s simple – the game “Silent Hill” – a psychological horror, in which every detail is thought out. This work can be compared to a novel, where there is not a single superfluous word. Even the monsters that need to be destroyed by the player, represent a special artistic value. And if you are just curious, but you are afraid to play the game, you can read the book Lost Memories: Silent Hill Chronicle – it was released by the developers themselves and told a lot of interesting facts about the game.

Let’s move on to the topic of today’s conversation – Fallout. It is a role-playing game where you create the main character yourself. You can make him good, bad, evil, stupid, charming, funny, humble or even boring. In this game universe there are a lot of ways to solve certain problems, as well as an extremely elaborated world and very clear ideas embedded in the work itself. One and the most basic of them is reflected in the famous quote “War never changes”.

Deep meaning, interesting ideas, fascinating stories, variability and simply unique atmosphere and aesthetics – all this in its time helped Fallout to become a truly legendary series. And although the third and fourth numbered parts of the game did not get the best reviews from fans, they still sold out perfectly, and for developers this is the main indicator of success.

And what could go wrong with the series, which was created literally side by side with the game studio, you ask. It’s very simple. The Fallout series is exactly what the fifth part of the game could have been, in the worst sense of the word. The world, which already in the fourth part seemed unreal and plastic, in the series became even more absurd and fabulous. The vast majority of the characters look like they came out of a beauty parlor, not living inside the post-apocalypse. Injuries heal as if by magic, and equipment is endless and, most importantly, constantly serviceable. How this is possible in a world where everything is constructed from materials known to everyone is not very clear, but very interesting.

No sooner had the first week passed since the start of the Cannes Film Festival than the first contender for the category “longest standing ovation of the Côte d’Azur” appeared. The musical “Emilia Perez” gave the audience a standing ovation for 9 minutes. The director and screenwriter Jacques Audiard thanked the audience quite discreetly. After the man finished, again sounded two-minute ovation. At this point, the actresses who played the main roles, Zoe Saldana and Selena Gomez, could not contain emotions and simply cried.

In general, to call the musical a simple genre, the language will not turn. It is quite logical that it causes discussions among movie critics. What is the movie “Emilia Perez” about? It tells the story of the formidable boss of the Mexican cartel Haua Del Monte, who decided to leave the criminal business and disappear forever. However, everything is not so simple, because for this he will have to change sex. And to help him should be a qualified lawyer named Rita, who works in a large Mexican company engaged in money laundering criminals.

It would seem that the plot does not hint at the musical genre at all. That’s probably why IndieWire journalists called the movie “a fiasco that is hard to forget”. According to their critics, “Emilia Perez” lacked psychological depth and complexity. However, Variety reporters disagreed with this – they say that the tape turned out to be “dazzling”. “Emilia Perez” appears as a powerful, unfiltered portrait of a man who defies several stereotypes at once”, – say the reporters.

But Deadline critics couldn’t help but note the musical component – in such movies, it plays an almost pivotal role. “It may be too early to talk about the Palme d’Or, as the Cannes Film Festival is still a week away, but ‘Emilia Perez’ looks like a winner,” they argue. According to these critics, the songs were skillfully woven into the narrative and Selena Gomez “brought a Disney twist.”

Interestingly, reporters from the publication Vanity Fair were also quite delighted. First, they noted Audiard’s reluctance to make a comedy out of such a story. Instead, the musical keeps the viewer in suspense all the time, because until the very last moments it is not clear whether we are waiting for an uplifting story of redemption or inevitable tragedy.

Moreover, on the other side of the law, the former head of the Mexican cartel begins to realize how much evil actually happened solely because of his connivance. Once on the side of “good”, he is horrified by what he has done before.

“The movie balances on a fine line between audacity and ridiculousness, unlike other films that have been a big hit at Cannes this year. Emilia Perez stays on the side of good. A criminal’s heart ends up in the right place,” Vanity Fair summarized their review.

“Megalopolis” is one of the most anticipated films of the year and a major favorite at the current Cannes Film Festival. Studying the reviews of numerous critics, we are beginning to doubt that the other directors have any chance at all at the current film festival.

Recall that “Megalopolis” is Francis Ford Coppola’s dream project. The idea for the movie came to him after filming “Apocalypse Now” in 1979 – and from that moment the director nurtured the idea and protected it as his own child. Probably because of the fact that “Megalopolis” was “in the project” for a long time, it left traces of Francis’ entire creative path. Critics have considered and techniques from “The Godfather”, and tricks from the picture “Tucker: A Man and His Dream”. That said, “Megalopolis” is clearly older than the current era. From the outside it may seem that the viewer is looking at the tape, which together filmed a wise grandfather and his fidgety grandson, lost in all the possibilities of the world before him.

Film critic Vulture notes: “There’s nothing about ‘Megalopolis’ that feels like a conventional movie. It has its own logic, rhythm and colloquial language. Characters speak in archaisms, weaving shards of Shakespeare and Ovid and sometimes actual Latin into their speech. Some characters use rhyme, others use sublime prose. At one point, Adam Driver’s character performs an entire monologue from Hamlet. And no one understands why. But it sounds good.

At the same time, the movie reveals much more topics than it may seem at first glance. Coppola talks about greed, corruption, loyalism, power. The confrontation between a conservative and greedy politician and a forward-thinking urban designer is captivating from the very first frames.

However, not all viewers are delighted. For example, critic Variety says that Coppola made a mistake, deciding to make a movie on this topic. In his opinion, much better in this case would have looked much better cartoon. “Animation, rather than visual effects-laden live-action, might have been the best way to tell such a story, helping to balance the slightly Shakespearean tone and the jokes of LaBeouf’s browless shiat. Animation would also have given Coppola more control over the setting – he could have synthesized modern New York, ancient Rome and the forests of Pandora,” the critic explains.

However, we don’t quite agree with this conclusion. The fact is that Francis Ford Coppola has never taken the easiest path – and this time the 85-year-old director again tried to jump above his own head. Whether he succeeded will be shown by history. We doubt that in cases like this, and “Megalopolis” is a big, complex, complicated and controversial movie, anyone but time will be able to judge the critics.

Literature has always developed hand in hand with society and was a logical reaction to what was happening in society. That is why in the work of absolutely any great author you will certainly find hints of the historical context. Thus, the Age of Enlightenment was the reason why writers began to exalt human intelligence and reason over nature. And as a natural reaction to all this, the “pendulum swung” in the other direction – such a movement as Romanticism appeared. Writers began to praise the ideal of nature. They wrote a lot about feelings and about the natural beginning in man. The main idea was to restore the unity of man and nature, and innovations and modern technology seemed only to spoil the character. Such lofty motifs lingered in literature for a long time, but everything changed with the appearance of Honoré de Balzac.

Although he was passionate about writing, he still saw it as a means of making money. His initial works were almost entirely commercial in nature. And popularity comes to Balzac only in 1829, after the publication of the novel “The Last Shuan, or Brittany in 1800”. Ordinary readers liked the work very much, but the critics were not delighted.

After that, other works appeared, thanks to which Balzac becomes his own among the cream of society. It is interesting that such an opportunity the writer uses in order to collect as many characters as possible for his future works. Honoré thoroughly studies the high society. Later, the people he met during that period will become prototypes for one of his greatest works – a series of novels and novellas.

“The Human Comedy” is a cycle of essays that consists of 137 works. It includes novels with real, fantastic and even philosophical plots. In his book, the writer chose to portray French society during the Bourbon Restoration and the July Monarchy. For us today, there is nothing surprising in realism or something that would be reprehensible. But in Balzac’s time, this was not the case at all. The author was well aware of how original his literary position was. That is why, before starting his collection in 1838, he wrote: “The author expects other reproaches, among them will be the reproach of immorality; but he has already made it clear precisely that he is obsessed with the obsession to describe society as a whole, as it is: with its virtuous, honorable, great, shameful sides, with the confusion of its mixed estates, with the confusion of principles, with its new needs and old contradictions …. He thought there was nothing more to be marveled at than the description of the great social disease, and it could only be described together with society, for the sick man is the disease itself.”

It is quite possible that Balzac’s main idea was to write a kind of “encyclopedia of life”. Dante Alighieri had the same plan in his time, and it resulted in “The Divine Comedy”. “The Human Comedy” opens with “Shagreen Skin.” And this novel describes with horrifying accuracy what happens to the fates of people because of their desires.

Shagreen skin is the main symbol of human life. On the one hand, this subject demonstrates man’s desire to pursue what he wants. On the other hand, shows that on a permanent basis, such behavior will only lead to self-destruction.

At the same time, time plays an important role in the novel – it affects a person in such a way that he becomes even more inclined to sacrifice. Thus, the protagonist is ready to give his health, life and happiness in order to get what he wants. But at the same time, the main thing that happens in this case – he is deprived of all close people. That is why at the end the hero remains lonely and unhappy.