MEDUSA

The scientists named the jellyfish Santjordia pagesi because of its bright red stomach that resembles the Cross of St George. Credit: Dhugal John Lindsay/JAMSTECThe creature has been observed just twice within the depths of the Sumisu Caldera, a volcanic formation in the Ogasawara Islands. The scientist was part of the group that documented a scarce medusa species discovered at a depth of 812 meters.A gelatinous animal with a diameter of about 10 cm and a red stomach resembling the Cross of St George when seen from above.…

With its squishy synth soundtrack, candy-coloured teen environs and role-playing girl-gang violence, this second feature from Brazilian writer-director Anita Rocha da Silveira feels like a time-warped precursor to Heathers, Clueless and The Neon Demon. It’s a satirical nightmare inspired by the giallo of Dario Argento, fired by the rise of former president Jair Bolsonaro’s reactionary populism and campily refracted through the televangelising aesthetic of The Eyes of Tammy Faye. Having racked up a string of international…

It’s flawed and all over the place in conventional script terms, but there’s real interest in this freaky, peculiar, interestingly directed psychodrama satire from Rio-born artist and film-maker Anita Rocha da Silveira, which takes aim at the conformist-authoritarian patriarchy of Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil.Mari (Mari Oliveira) is a member of an evangelical Christian young women’s singing group called Michele and the Treasures of the World, who (like the Barden Bellas in Pitch Perfect) sometimes squabble when one of their…

A macabre murder mystery set in the world of competitive hairdressing: it’s such a fun premise, like something that John Waters might have tackled in the mid-80s. But while Medusa Deluxe starts promisingly, with a bracingly toxic rant of bitter professional rivalry from thwarted stylist Cleve (Clare Perkins), it soon deflates, like a badly backcombed beehive. What could have been a luridly camp romp from first-time writer-director Thomas Hardiman descends into listless speculation and clumsily manufactured intrigue.Some,…

Agatha Christie meets Pedro Almodóvar in this flamboyant British murder mystery set in the unglamorous world of regional hairdressing competitions. The victim is a hairdresser who’s been scalped backstage at an event seven hours into coiffing his piece de resistance. He’s found dead by the model returning from a fag break. “One minute he’s shaping my ’fro, the next he’s dead,” she marvels.Medusa Deluxe is packed with funny, outrageous lines, and there are excellent performances especially from the female cast of…

Nebulae are one of the most spectacular sights to see in space. These celestial objects are a giant cloud of dust and gas in space, according to NASA. Nebulae exist in interstellar space, which is the space between stars. Some nebulae originate from the gas and dust thrown out by the explosion of a dying star while other nebulae are star-forming regions. Due to the star-forming nature of Nebulae, they are also known as Star Nurseries. A Nebula can contain as few as ten stars or as many as millions of stars.Today's NASA…

Nick Nolte starred in the new episode of Poker Face, and he has some friends.Screenshot: PeacockHave you been keeping up with the best superhero show on television? We’re talking, of course, about Poker Face, the episodic detective show created by Rian Johnson and starring Natasha Lyonne. Lyonne plays Charlie, a woman with a secret ability to detect a lie, which Johnson himself admitted that, yes, is kind of a superpower.The season’s eighth episode, “The Orpheus Syndrome,” was just released (watch it here!) and sci-fi…

There’ve been a lot of kids books that have been announced to be getting their own TV adaptations, but few are quite so anticipated as Disney’s upcoming Percy Jackson series. Based on Rick Riordan’s five-book series that later became an entire media franchise called Camp Half-Blood Chronicles, the show cast its three leads—Walker Scobell as Percy, Aryan Simhadri as Grover, and Leah Sava Jeffries as Annabeth Chase—earlier this summer. While the show is still a ways off, the three kids showed up D23 with a teaser in hand.In…

“Ancient Archetypes, Amber Heard, and How to Avoid Both” read a headline on a rightwing US website in May. It was illustrated with Caravaggio’s painting of Medusa, her hair a writhing mass of snakes, her eyes bulging, her mouth open in a silent scream. “Don’t look at her, Johnny! She may turn you to stone!” read the first line of the piece.There is no more potent symbol of male fear of the female gaze than Medusa. She can destroy you with a single glance. For my generation, we knew this at a very early age, from the 1981…

One person was killed and dozens others were injured this weekend after a stage collapsed at Medusa Festival in Valencia, Spain.According to CNN, the tragedy took place Saturday morning at 4:18 a.m. local time, when high winds caused a portion of the main stage to collapse. The incident resulted in the death of a 22-year-old man, and left approximately 40 others injured; of those, three people suffered serious injuries, BBC reports. “We are completely devastated and dismayed at what happened last morning,”the festival …