I ask her, “Wouldn’t it be too cruel

for a god to make us and nothing

after?” If she were my parrot,

I could point

to a silver bowl, saying: “What’s that?

What’s that, again?”

When I was thirteen years old, I decided to dip my toes into classic literature. I started with Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen because it's supposedly beginner-friendly.

I ordered a cheap copy online; when the parcel arrived, I was thrumming with excitement as I tore it open. But even with a hefty dictionary beside me, trying to read the first line had me intimidated and lost.

There I was, watching the downpour through my window, stuck in quarantine in the height of the pandemic. I was daydreaming of a summer romance in Cousins Beach, entertaining the idea of camaraderie and burgers at Luke’s Diner, wishing to be as cool as characters in K-Dramas.

At age twenty-three, I’m unsure if I’ll continue to be a lifelong superhero fan.

As the weather gets colder, the days get shorter and the leaves begin to change colors, it is once again time for everybody’s favorite fall holiday — I am, of course, talking about OCD Awareness Week.

Welcome, reader. Now that I have you here, I earnestly hope that you-who-clicked at least enjoyed Barbie (2023), because there is tremendous bias to behold throughout the forthcoming wordcount. I absolutely loved Greta Gerwig’s interpretation of Barbieland. I was absolutely transfixed during Barbie's runtime; I was transformed by the time I left the theatre.

Four Asian Film Recommendations for Poetry Lovers

In the Mood for Love (2000)

It’s no secret to anyone with a pulse and a Netflix subscription that the American film industry is in crisis right now. We as viewers have likely yet to feel the worst of the effects of the combined WGA and SAG strikes, and even before that, things have been… not great. But in our darkest hour, a hero has come to save us all from the endless slog of reboots, sequels, and cinematic universes — Emma Seligman’s sophomore directorial outing, Bottoms.

Why is a woman no longer allowed to be seen as ambitious once she’s fallen in love? Must she be forced to decide between a career and marriage in order to find security? More often than not, modern-day feminism seems to suggest that women who choose romance over work are contributing to patriarchal ideals—but can one not exist alongside the other?

Brian Hiatt of Rolling Stone recently described Greta Gerwig as an auteur, a term I will be exploring when analysing cinema in the present day.

I’m neither a film connoisseur nor a brilliant poet, but there’s something beautiful about the merging of poetry and film. Both are intended to conjure emotion in their audience; in that way, when a film features a certain poem, the words and the visuals can impart a message together.

Anyone my age or older will remember when Twister came to theaters and blew us all away with its cinematic visuals and cutting-edge computer graphics. It was hard not to be wowed back in those days; Jurassic Park, Titanic, True Lies --okay, maybe not True Lies. But seriously, even The Blair Witch Project had me thinking it was real footage for weeks of sleepless nights before I found out the truth.