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I honestly thought Wes Anderson wanted to make a cute doggo movie set in Japan. I mean, that's what people saw in those trailers, right? Dogs saying funny things, the Japanese kid not doing much, the obligatory cultural tourism of Japan that's somehow more passionate than Logan Paul throwing plush Pokéballs at random taxis in Setagaya AND somehow more stereotypical than the '80s "Japan economic conquest" imagery of contemporary pop culture and early vaporwave, the symmetrical framing, the usage of chapters as if you were reading a storybook, etc. Wes Anderson is a pretty controversial figure. I've heard the racism angle many a time, all the way when he did The Darjeeling Limited . Now, I hadn't seen the film - I saw the opening, but not the rest of it - so I can't say for certain if he was aiming at the same subversive critique of power structures that I think he was getting at here, but I know a lot of people have problems with it due to its cultu

Chapter One: This is, Huh, Wow Meet Unkle Adams. Born Curtis Adams, this Regina, SK artist is known for many things: by claiming that he's the most positive in the conscious hip-hop scene and by amassing tons of debt in order to make it look like a damn miracle whenever he gets his second viral hit. I first heard about this guy in 2016 through one of my Facebook friends. They had shared a picture from Unkle Adams' Facebook page - I think it was the cover of "I Am Stronger" - and I thought that it was the end of it. A mere joke on a hip-hop artist with a bad logo. And then a few days later, as if by sheer luck, I stumbled upon a post by the Facebook page "Young Thugga La Meme" - a video claiming that "even people who hate rap love this!" In the description was a boast, claiming that "this rapper rips the mic without talking about hoes, guns, drugs, jewelry, or women." And of course, it was one of those trendy viral Facebook ra

(spoilers for Black Mirror episodes "White Bear" and "San Junipero" and  Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi ) (CW: child abuse, gaslighting, cyberviolence, societal violence, vigilante justice) Insincere Criticism and How It's Adopted Chapter One: The One Where Victoria Skillane Gets Killed by Robot Bees One of my favorite shows on Netflix is Black Mirror . Specifically, I really love the first two seasons - not only were they perfectly paced, they often had thought-provoking ideas regarding media perception ("The National Anthem"), the contradiction of being a rebel in an age where being provocative in any way gets you a big payday ("Fifteen Million Merits"), and the false security of insisting that monogamy be the default and "right" relationship alongside the insistence of knowing everything about a person ("The Entire History of You"). At its most mediocre (which is still pretty solid by must-see-TV stand