Afraid

Boys should be encouraged to read books about girls, said author Joanne Harris, because “a boy who is afraid to read a book with a girl protagonist will grow up into a man who feels that it’s inappropriate for him to listen to a woman’s voice”.The author of Chocolat told an audience at the Hay festival in Wales that if violence against women was to be prevented, it “needs to be addressed really early, long before an actual crime happens”.Harris, who taught in an all-boys school for 15 years, said “the way we educate our…

Film: Beau is AfraidCast: Joaquin Phoenix, Patti LuPone, Amy Ryan, Parker Posey, Nathan Lane, Armen Nahapetian, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Richard KindDirector: Ari AsterRating: 3/5Runtime: 179 min Beau (Joaquin Phoenix) is a paranoid schizophrenic given to hallucinations. This film is basically about his attempt to get to his mother who lives in a different city and it’s an epic odyssey of wildly fluctuating moments of esoteric and quixotic drama, the likes of which we’ve never seen before. And it’s…

Ari Aster, the American writer-director of Hereditary and Midsommar, describes his sprawlingly picaresque third feature as a three-hour “anxiety comedy” – an archly surreal “odyssey of sorts” that is also an “elaborate Jewish joke” inspired by Greek plays and Kafka-esque paranoia. A rambling, labyrinthine, navel-gazing romp, it has narrative echoes of Tristram Shandy (both Sterne’s novel and Michael Winterbottom’s film) and an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink aesthetic reminiscent of the chaotic Cinerama comedy It’s a Mad,…

Earlier this week, Montana became the first US state to announce a statewide ban on TikTok citing national security concerns. This came as federal officials consider a nationwide ban on the app. Unsurprisingly, the decision is already facing legal challenges. TikTok creators have filed lawsuits arguing that the ban is unconstitutional. It appears most US citizens have a similar stance on this decision. A quick survey by cybersecurity firm Secure Data Recovery showed that only 18% of Americans support the idea of a…

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeThere’s a comfort to be found in the savage neuroses of Beau Is Afraid – if you think it’s hell to live inside of your own head, imagine what it’s like to live in Ari Aster’s. Aster’s film takes the so-traumatic-it’s-funny sequences of his previous work – Toni Collette frothing at the mouth in Hereditary, or Midsommar’s bad boyfriend going up in flames – and spins them into a…

So Google I/O 2023's big keynote saw the company announce a raft of new products, both software and hardware. Much of what we saw had already been leaked into oblivion, but that didn't make it any less interesting.In fact, some of what Google showed off almost made me wish that I liked using Android because, frankly, there were some ideas that Apple should have come up with first. Maybe it will steal some of them, who knows?There was of course the continued poking fun of Apple for its lack of RCS messaging support, but…

Interactive coding courses are great, but (by design) they’ll only get you so far. Here’s how to maximise their potential while overcoming their limitationsImage by Alex Radelich on UnsplashI started my first online coding course in 2019.I still haven’t finished it.The course was one which promised to teach you Python through building real-world apps. I loved the course, but it wasn’t particularly focused on Data Science use cases of Python, and before long I’d ditched it.According to a 2019 study by researchers at MIT ,…

When Eminem Wasn’t Afraid To Say ‘Get This Motherf*cker Off Me’ To Sacha Baron Cohen – Watch ( Photo Credit – Instagram; YouTube ) Eminem is one of the most famous rappers ever, and there’s no one like him in the business. The rapper enjoys a massive fan following and has sung some of the best songs in music history. Over the years, he has also been a part of controversies and today, we bring you a throwback to when he attended MTV Music Awards in 2009 and Sacha Baron Cohen, who was dressed as a bird, fell on the…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Job seekers looking to land a role with an altruistic organization may feel too guilty to ask for higher pay, according to a new study from the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. Both for-profit and nonprofit organizations increasingly employ what has been termed…

Screengrab via YouTube Actress Parker Posey recently revealed what it was like filming the daring sex scene in Beau Is Afraid with her co-star Joaquin Phoenix and also opened up about the vulnerabilities that came with that moment.  The film follows a worrisome man named Beau Wassermann (Phoenix), who attempts to confront his fears and find his way home after his mother tragically dies. Beau is Afraid also stars Patti LuPone, Amy Ryan, Nathan Lane, Kylie Rogers, Denis Ménochet, Zoe Lister-Jones, Richard Kind,…