Fever

Image via Paramount Pictures Whether it be a new wave of zombie-genre media interest as a result of The Last of Us, a quiet week on the streaming charts, or something else entirely – for one reason or another, a decade-old zombie film starring Brad Pitt has poked its way into the top ten most-watched movies on Netflix this week. That movie, is of course World War Z – which snagged the number nine spot in Netflix’s global movie charts for the March 6 – 12 period, with a little over 5.5 million hours viewed.…

There can’t be many more significant 21st-century artists than Karin Dreijer, AKA Fever Ray. In and out of the Knife, their band with sibling Olof, they’ve created powerful, original outsider art in visual media, written an opera and treated gigs like Marina Abramović installations. In smartly choreographed performance, they play with identity and anonymity with thrilling verve, until you never know – or care – who’s singing or playing on stage. Yet their most recent album, 2017’s Plunge, was brittle and abrasive, with…

via Sony In a turn of events we never had on our 2023 bingo cards, McG’s Charlie’s Angels duology has become the latest franchise to be placed under the glaring microscope of reappraisal, and people are shockingly pleased with what they’ve discovered. Not long after the opening installment was given a pass for being so unhinged in its conception and execution that it just about passes the nostalgia test, sequel Full Throttle has almost immediately been given the same treatment. Remarkably – given its…

The viral popularity of ChatGPT has stirred a frenzy within China where tech companies, battered by a two-year regulatory clampdown and the Covid-19 pandemic, have been seeking new sources of growth. Search engine owner Baidu Inc., e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and social-media conglomerate Tencent Holdings Ltd. are among those that have announced investments to develop their own equivalents to the artificial-intelligence chatbot, which isn’t available in China. Stocks of other…

A recommendation from Oprah is enough to launch any book into the bestsellers list, but it still can’t explain why one 1999 work of Black feminist thought has recently become the designated emotional handbook of the heartbroken. If you’ve not read All About Love by bell hooks, you’ve probably had it recommended to you – or at least seen extracts on Instagram accounts like @savedbythebellhooks, where stills from the 90s teen show Saved By the Bell are matched with lengthy quotes on patriarchal masculinity and revolutionary…

Has anybody else noticed that Animorphs is everywhere these days? The ’90s sci-fi young adult books by K.A. Applegate about a group of teenagers who fight an alien invasion by transforming into various animals (a superpower given to them by a friendly, non-invading alien) has been popping up all over social media lately, most notably in a viral Twitter thread last week detailing “the wildest thing that happens in every Animorphs book.” Maybe there’s something in the air — but whatever it is, I’m on board, because I…

Welcome to Screen Gab, the newsletter for everyone who draws the line on their trash TV consumption at “MILF Manor”...... but might be morbidly curious anyway. In Screen Gab No. 68, staff writer Meredith Blake explores TLC’s new “30 Rock"-joke-come-to-life reality show, which finds women in their 40s and 50s vying for the attentions of their fellow competitors’ sons.Also in this week’s edition, we catch up with “La Brea” star Chiké Okonkwo, field recommendations for your weekend and more. Plus, we want to know what you’re…

Photo: Dan McFadden/HBOThe fourth and final seasons of HBO Max’s excellent Doom Patrol and arguably not-quite-as-excellent Titans TV series will end after their fourth seasons, according to The Hollywood Reporter. And according to James Gunn, who so recently became overseer of the DC live-action universe, and who’s been wiping the proverbial slate clean, it was a decision made before he came on board. Either way, this is a bummer.First of all, I don’t see any reason Gunn would be fibbing here. Ever since new Warner…

A24 and horror darling Ari Aster has more than earned his ability to drum up hype at the mere mention of his name; the filmmaker first made his mark with the universally acclaimed Hereditary before following up with the delightfully terrifying Midsommar a year later. Now, appropriately equipped with his most fearsome weapon yet in the form of Joaquin Phoenix, Aster will soon be emerging from the shadows with Beau Is Afraid, a surrealist horror-comedy that, if this brand-new trailer is anything to go by, can stake a claim…

The shocks come fast in Bret Easton Ellis’s first novel in 13 years: The Shards is prefaced by a sweetly sincere – or is it? – thank you note from the notoriously misanthropic author “for your support over the past four decades… I’m more appreciative than you’ll ever know”. The story proper begins with the audacious ruse of “Bret Easton Ellis” looking metafictionally back across time at the defining events that befell him and his friends in the autumn of 1981, during their final year in high school. Bret acknowledges the…