What Whitney's Watching

 I have no way of verifying this but I hope that dusting off this blog will feel like walking into the 10 year high school reunion of the class one year ahead of yours. You absolutely don't belong there but you aren't a total stranger either. You know everyone but you were barely friends and that was exacerbated by the fact that they forgot all about you when they crossed that stage. Looking through old, unfinished drafts feels like sitting down at a table with older members of your track team and trying to reminisce about the good old days then remembering that your best and clearest memories of the sport happened months after they graduated. This is when the awkward laughter starts and you pull out your phone because suddenly twitter is interesting again. Maybe you get up and grab a cheese plate, who knows. Then someone you had college algebra with walks up to you and you guys chat for a little bit. They ask if you test-taking skills have improved and you rib back about their...

So It's finally happened. The Oscars has finally acknowledged the brilliance of foreign film and more specifically, the cinematic triumph that is Bong Joon-ho's, "Parasite". By awarding "Parasite" four Oscar awards including best director and best picture, the Oscars has begun to turn a page on the continuous snubs and prejudices it's famous for, or at least give off the appearance that the academy has learned it's lesson. However, while it's easy to get excited at the prospect of an academy that recognizes how film has changed and values its new players, it's hard to ignore the academy's history of cheap placation and how this ultimately distracts from the concepts being explored by these new, acknowledged artists of color. "Parasite" has been described as a "pitch black modern fairy-tale" (Rotten Tomatoes) and some variation of a romp or a thriller by various critics which is basically an accurate desc...

*sighs* How are we doing guys?... Look, I know what the answer is but I'm just being nice by asking. This winter sucks. It sucks and it's bad and if you're like me, you're holding yourself together by a thread. This Winter so far has been brutal and harsh, filled with controversy, tragedy, and honestly very little to celebrate. I'm so miserable, I haven't even thought of any puns for this opening! However, despite how genuinely lame it's been lately, we need to persist and move forward and the best way to do that, is to look forward to the zaddies we can expect to see during the remainder of the season. So grab some hot cocoa and turn the heat up, it's time to talk zaddies: Kai Chisaki (Overhaul) Kai Chisaki (better known as overhaul) is the menacingly sexy main villain of season 4 of the mega-hit anime Boku no Hero Academia. Featuring the sexy voice, unwavering determination, and provocative face mask that you would expect from ...

Before I begin, I want to preface by saying, I desperately wanted to like this movie. In fact, I was absolutely pressed to like this movie. After a long and disappointing year of terrible remakes, big-budget flop adaptations, and the complete destruction of what was once the greatest show on TV, I really realllyy needed this and ultimately... ya girl was not only let down but I left the theater feeling disrespected. What was advertised to me as the conclusion of a somewhat rocky but decent enough trilogy, was instead a 12-year-old boy's star wars fanfic with all of the plot-holes, universe inconsistencies, and poor decisions that you would expect from someone who has not yet entered high school. To put it bluntly, the Rise of Skywalker was an immature, unfinished mess and we have no one to thank but JJ Abrams. There is so much wrong with the Rise of Skywalker that I don't even know where to begin. As soon as I got out of the movie I called one of my best friends...

The best content is the kind of content that not only makes us think about the world around us but content that actively questions our societal foundations and makes us remark upon that questioning. It's not enough to point out the issues (police brutality, capitalism, the automation of everything, etc.) because anyone can say "Thing bad" but it takes real skill and dedication to commentary to force people to engage in commentary about your commentary itself yet, Psycho-Pass does this perfectly. The first season of Psycho-Pass is hands down some of the best action-thriller suspense content I've ever seen across any medium or genre. Every episode builds suspense in an increasingly intense way until the final episode of season 1 gives you the perfect catharsis needed after all of the buildup. However, as with all really good anime, the exploration of it's specific themes are what truly shines in this anime. Without spoiling it, Psycho-pass is mostly an explorat...

Popular Black Cinema is now black trauma porn cosplaying as post-BLM, well-meaning white liberal fan-fiction and I hate it. I just hate it. There's no way around it, no nice and fluffy way of saying it but I hate it and to be honest, I saw this coming but wow am I still disappointed that we actually got here. To be fair, A lot popular black cinema, or at least movies that actually allowed black people to speak, from my own childhood were no better. The 2000's were full of feel-good, white savior movies in which the entire goal was to portray racism as a series of misunderstandings between good white people, their docile and noticeably silent black friends, and completely monstrous, mustache-twirlingly evil white people. These movies that *oh yeah* almost never take place in the present day because real racism ended in 1982 with the release of the smash hit "Ebony and Ivory", typically follow the same formula. A good white person (preferably in the 50's or 60...